If a cinematic year delivers new works by David Cronenberg, Jia Zhangke, Albert Serra, and Mike Leigh, four filmmakers I’ve spent a great deal of time with over the past fifteen years or so, is it possible to summarise it without having seen a single one of them? And not just these four, but several others, too. Dozens of films I’ve wanted to track down but for one reason or another haven’t yet been able to. The answer is, of course, yes. Yes it is possible, but I’m certain that this roundup, more than any of the others I’ve written over the past decade, will be one I look back on as being frustratingly incomplete. A fragment of a fragment. A skim of a year that most likely demanded a much closer read than I’ve been able to give it.
It’s rare that I feel as if I’ve missed more than I’ve seen, certainly in terms of the major films, which perhaps isn’t fair to the films I did manage to see, but I’m leaving 2024 with the impression that there’s still so much more left to unearth. Thankfully a year’s worth of cinema doesn’t just disappear because the calendar ticks over, and I’ll be able to see the majority of these films eventually. It’s just a lot harder to keep up with them all retroactively. The bigger ones, like Here, or The Brutalist, will inevitably be released in cinemas in the coming months, and a few others will end up on streaming services sooner rather than later. But not all of them. Plenty will be lost in the shuffle. And a new year brings its own cinema, its own riches to mine, and so the pile continues to grow. For the sake of keeping track, I’ve felt the need to list everything that has piqued my interest from the past twelve months that I've seen yet. At the time of writing, it has fifty-two films on it.
A backlog like this is usually the sign of a strong year, and from what I’ve seen I’d say it’s been a pretty good one. I did my usual trek around Europe for a couple of festivals (Berlin, Ghent, London), caught a few interesting new releases and one-off screenings, and made some exciting discoveries at home. Another year of the same routine, and while familiarity and structure isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I am once again wishing I’d managed to mix things up a little more than I did. But, then again, life has moved on for me. When I started this blog in 2015, I was twenty-four and able to spend as much time as I wanted immersed in cinema. I’m thirty-three now, and I just do not have the same time or the same energy to roll the dice anymore. I spent a lot of my time in my early twenties as a prospector, diligently taking the time to sift through the silt and the mud to find an occasional nugget of gold. As I’ve entered my thirties I’ve become a card counter, trying to game the system as much as I can in order to spend what little free time I have as wisely as I can. Aside from the odd misstep, this has largely worked for me, and I’ve still ended up seeing a decent number of good movies. I can’t really complain too much about that.
With all that in mind, it feels as if this year has been one of dilemmas, of balancing the scales of one’s own conscience. A look of horror suddenly spreading over a new father’s face as he’s forced to confront the consequences of his actions in Juror #2. A smirk of uncontainable joy passing over the face of an online reseller as he watches his stock of fake designer handbags sell out in real time on a screen in an empty room in Cloud. A glimmer of resigned sadness etched on the face of a woman at the precise moment she realises just how much she risked for the sake of a dream that was never going to happen in Three Friends. And the desirous glances made by a priest across a dinner table towards a mysterious young stranger in Misericordia. A year of faces, and facades, and how, when it comes down to it, they’re the first thing to give the game away.
But of everything, I’ve returned most frequently to the closing moments of Leos Carax’s It’s Not Me, in which several veiled puppeteers work to recreate a scene from Mauvais Sang, set to David Bowie’s Modern Love, with the marionette from Annette, not out in the streets of Paris but in a studio, with a revolving backdrop and a treadmill, and the uncannily expressionless face of a puppet. In some ways, this is a work of archaeology on the part of Carax, but it’s also a step into the future. A new way to keep the old ghosts alive. The past is the past, but it can exist again as something new. Yes, some part of it is lost, but something else takes its place. I think this is where I’m at as 2024 draws to a close. A happy card counter, keeping an ear to the ground, seeing what I can, noting what I can’t, and being okay with the balance. So while I’ve not covered as much ground as I’ve perhaps wanted to this year, I think I’m in a pretty good place all the same.
In alphabetical order:
A Traveller’s Needs | Hong Sang-soo
The Cats of Gokogu Shrine | Kazuhiro Soda
Cloud | Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Favoriten | Ruth Beckermann
Grand Tour | Miguel Gomes
Juror #2 | Clint Eastwood
Megalopolis | Francis Ford Coppola
Misericordia | Alain Guiraudie
7 Walks With Mark Brown | Pierre Creton, Vincent Barré
Sleep With Your Eyes Open | Nele Wohlatz
Super Happy Forever | Kohei Igarashi
Three Friends | Emmanuel Mouret
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Ten discoveries, of which seven were watched at home; two in London; and one, Herzsprung, in Berlin, as part of the festival’s retrospective strand, screened to a full-house in the CUBIX in Alexanderplatz with the director and lead actors present for an all-German Q&A. It’s rare that I see something without any semblance of context, but that’s what I did with Herzpsrung, and that intangible curiosity was rewarded ten times over. A spectacular reminder that beneath the canon lies some truly extraordinary movies. A nice incentive to keep digging.
In chronological order:
My Darling Clementine | John Ford, 1946
Silver Lode | Allan Dwan, 1954
Rio Bravo | Howard Hawks, 1959
Stolen Kisses | Francois Truffaut, 1968
American Graffiti | George Lucas, 1973
The Village of Mist | Im Kwon-taek, 1983
Herzsprung | Helke Misselwitz, 1992
Kamikaze Taxi | Masato Harada, 1994
Mahjong | Edward Yang, 1996
The River | Tsai Ming-liang, 1997
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Against all odds, I’ve managed to keep my monthly newsletter, Strange Days, running for another year. It’s been nice to get back into the habit of writing on a consistent basis again, and I think I’m a lot better off because of it. If you’re inclined to keep up with what I’m reading and playing and watching and listening to, then please feel free to pore over the archive here, and subscribe if you'd like to.
Elsewhere, I think it’s fair to say that I, and many of you, I’m sure, have been gradually checking out of social media, but in the spirit of keeping an ear to the ground I’m not entirely done just yet. I have a Bluesky account that I use sporadically to post screenshots of movies like it’s 2014, and for now it’s serving its purpose. I have to say it’s difficult to muster much enthusiasm for it, but I’ll be there for a little while longer.
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Best Albums (5 old, 5 new)
Long Season | Fishmans, 1996
Fantasma | Cornelius, 1997
A Demonstration | Kolya, 1999
The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place | Explosions in the Sky, 2003
Origami | Ichiko Aoba, 2011
Tigers Blood | Waxahatchee, 2024
If I Don’t Make It, I Love You | Still House Plants, 2024
All Hell | Los Campesinos!, 2024
You Never End | Moin, 2024
GNX | Kendrick Lamar, 2024
I didn’t dig too deeply this year, or too widely. In terms of live music, I saw Explosions in the Sky in Brighton, Death Cab For Cutie and Phoenix (and several others) at All Points East, and Ichiko Aoba and Cornelius at the Barbican. I’m hoping to see more and hear more in 2025.
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I read twenty-five novels in 2024, which is up from zero last year. Rediscovering my love of reading has been a wonderful thing for me, and I can only imagine that this will continue. I’m currently half-way through Mo Yan’s Big Breasts and Wide Hips (1996), which would almost certainly have made this list if I’d been able to finish it in time.
In chronological order:
Another Country | James Baldwin, 1962
Portnoy’s Complaint | Philip Roth, 1969
The New York Trilogy | Paul Auster, 1987
The Black Dahlia | James Ellroy, 1987
American Psycho | Bret Easton Ellis, 1991
Kafka on the Shore | Haruki Murakami, 2002
The Road | Cormac McCarthy, 2006
The Vegetarian | Han Kang, 2007
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead | Olga Tokarczuk, 2009
Small Things Like These | Claire Keegan, 2021
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If you’ve made it to the end of this roundup, thank you. It really does mean a lot to know that someone reads these things. As the year comes to a close, all that’s left for me to say is that I hope you’re well, and happy, and that you can find the time to take a break over this festive season. All the best for 2025.