Mr F’s Top Ten Films of 2024
Anora
No film this year captured the essence of what it means to be alive like Anora.
Writer-director Sean Baker weaves scenes and situations that resist easy classification. For example, a number of sequences are simultaneously terrifying and hysterically funny. But they’re never funny despite the terror, or vice versa. Each emotional response lives and breathes together, both amplifying and complimenting the other. These scenes - and frankly, the movie as a whole - are delightfully messy, complex, and escape easy categorization. It’s a lot like real life.
2. Challengers
What happens when a director known mostly for his travels in the world of highbrow art house films decides to throw his talents into a mainstream, genre picture? Absolute magic. Challengers is an unforgettable, hypnotic, and dizzying piece of pure entertainment.
3. Furiosa: A Mad Max Story
Following up a masterpiece is hard. Furiosa folds in all the kinetic, dazzling action of Fury Road inside of an engaging, epic narrative. What emerges is a more complete movie than Fury Road, not a lesser one.
4. September 5
Ninety percent of this film takes place in a single room. You’ll never notice. It’s a masterclass in editing and screenwriting. It bristles with compelling performances. It’s a testament to the importance of legacy media. And it’s a retelling one of history’s darkest moments from a new, riveting point of view.
5. Sing Sing
Unforgettable performances are the heart of this tale that reminds us that art, creativity, and beauty have the ability to blossom even inside one of the ugliest places mankind has invented.
6. The Piano Lesson
The Piano Lesson is perhaps the best stage-to-film adaptation in recent memory. The ensemble is the year’s best, and I will be eagerly tracking each actor’s next move. Yet it’s Malcolm Washington who wins the MVP with his audacious, impressive directorial debut.
7. Didi
The world in which Didi (the titular character) comes of age could not be more different than my own. MySpace, Facebook, and the internet as a whole had yet to overtake our world when I was a teenager. Yet Didi’s emotional journey rings unbelievably true and familiar. The film reminds us that despite different races, beliefs, abilities, - or even historical eras - we are all much more similar than we are different.
8. Conclave
Conclave feels old school in the best possible way. It contains notes of political thriller, gorgeously rendered and acted with impeccable excellence.
9. Chicken for Linda!
No film this year better demonstrates the power of - and the joy that comes from - a simple story well told. It’s unlikely we’ll see Chicken for Linda! nominated for Best Animated Picture at this year’s Oscars. The five films widely tipped for nominations are all excellent, but no other film made better use of the medium to tell its story.
10. We Grown Now
A story that’s simultaneously simple, powerful, fragile, and bursting at the seams with promise and hope. Just like childhood itself.
A few other films that came close:
Babes
Civil War
Daughters
Flow
Girls State
Heretic
I Saw the TV Glow
A Missing Part
My Old Ass
Nosferatu
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin
Will & Harper
Young Woman and the Sea