2024 Year in Review: Top 10 Performances

I really enjoyed the exercise last year of handing out plaudits across a wide variety of performance categories, rather than limiting myself to a strict top 10. The goal here, as always, is to celebrate cinema, so the more films we get to talk about, the more we get to celebrate. And, we could all use a little celebration right now.

Admittedly, the reason I did it last year was because a traditional top 10 would have been stuffed with entries from All of Us Strangers and May December, so I wanted to recognize more performers and films than just those two. There is no similar issue this year, and in fact, all 10 of my top performances come from different movies. Still, it’s fun to talk about the great ensembles, the great debuts, and the great wild cards from a year of cinema.

First, let’s do some honorable mentions, and this is going to be a theme this year, so bear with me, but the honorable mentions are overflowing.

Two ensembles that just missed the top five: His Three Daughters, featuring tonally daring and emotionally brave work from a trio of brilliant actresses – Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, and Elizabeth Olsen – as well as show-stopping single-scene work from both Jovan Adepo and Jay O. Sanders; and A Complete Unknown – you’ll hear more about Timothée Chalamet below, but Elle Fanning, Monica Barbarbo, Edward Norton, and Boyd Holbrook are the highlights of a cast that does not so much imitate as embody these well-known folks.

As far as individuals, I’ve got eight honorable mentions. That’s the kind of year it was. Here they are, alphabetically: 

Kieran Culkin in A Real Pain, whose real prize will be the Oscar he is going to win but I love this performance just like everyone else; Jesse Eisenberg in A Real Pain, who is doing the most subtle, interesting, and impressive work of his lengthy acting career while directing himself, which is no easy feat; Mia Goth in MaXXXine, who finds new depth and nuance in a franchise not wholly committed to subtlety; Hugh Grant in Heretic, whose charm is finally being put to proper use and whose villain era I am totally here for.

Demi Moore in The Substance, who has redefined the word comeback with the boldest, bravest work of her career; Margaret Qualley in The Substance, who must embody an ideal, along with the burdens and contradictions that implies; June Squibb in Thelma, a national treasure who walks a fine line with a performance that garners sympathy but not condescension; and Denzel Washington in Gladiator II, who proves once again that he is the greatest of all time – let this man have fun like this always.

Okay, those are the honorable mentions. Now, for the awards of special merit, I brought back last year’s categories and added a couple new ones.

Awards of Special Merit

Best performance by a child actor: Izaac Wang in Dìdi

Wang just gets it. He’s a star. Much like Eighth Grade made it clear Elsie Fisher was destined for greatness, Dìdi – an Eighth Grade for those of us who grew up just as social media became a thing – does so for Wang. I was lucky enough to see Wang speak after a screening of this film, and he was bright, funny, outgoing, effusive – everything his character is not. Yet, Wang brilliantly captures the malaise of constantly feeling like your bones are going to explode out of your skin, like you don’t belong anywhere while everyone else belongs everywhere. It’s funny, it’s sad, and most importantly, it’s honest.

Best debut performance: Nykiya Adams in Bird

A 12-year-old non-actor when writer-director Andrea Arnold spotted her at her school during the casting process, Adams absolutely levitates off the screen in Bird. Her character, Bailey, is holding everything together for a family that is falling apart, all while dealing with the stuff any normal preteen would be dealing with, as well. It’s a tight-rope walk between snotty adolescent and overburdened youngster, and Adams navigates it like a seasoned pro, holding the screen with ease against international stars Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski.

Most surprising performance: Gabriel Labelle in Snack Shack

Labelle is very good as a young Lorne Michaels in Saturday Night, but I saw The Fablemans. I knew he could play a sensitive artist almost monomaniacally focused on executing his vision. What I didn’t know he could do was channel Jonah Hill circa 2008 and steal a movie out from under the sensitive artist lead with a gonzo performance of equal parts vulgarity and heart.

The Mia Goth Award for Most Unhinged Performance: Mikey Madison in Anora

Goth does not defend her title here as I found her tremendous work in MaXXXine to be some of her quietest and most introspective. Taking up the mantle instead is Mikey Madison for Anora. I won’t lie. You’re going to hear more about her below, so I won’t spend too much time on her here. Madison’s Anora performance is not solely based on how unhinged she can get – the beauty is in the modulation – but when she needs to, Madison blows the hinges off the damn door.

Best overall year: Fred Hechinger for Thelma, Gladiator II, and Nickel Boys

I considered a few different performers for this, and Scoot McNairy (A Complete Unknown, Nightbitch, Speak No Evil) probably has the best runner-up case. But at the end of the day, no one could match Hechinger’s 2024 for the variety of roles, the quality of the projects, and the skill with which he brought each of them to life. Shy, sweet grandson. Demented emperor. Racist toady. It’s the definition of range, and I can’t wait to see what he does in 2025 and beyond.

Top 5 Ensembles

5. Civil War

Outstanding cast members: Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Jesse Plemons

Civil War makes a nice double feature with the Kate Winslet-starring biopic Lee, about Vogue photographer Lee Miller. Journalists who cover war zones are a different breed. It takes a disregard for the self in service of something greater. War reportage is one of the noblest professions because it seeks to warn of the dangers we pose to ourselves if we continue down this path. The Dunst character in Civil War, named Lee after the real-life Lee Miller, says as much: “Every time I survived a war zone, I thought I was sending a warning home – don’t do this.”

Dunst, Moura, and Henderson play longtime journalists who have seen it all. That constant exposure to the worst of humanity has hardened them. Dunst, in particular, shines as a woman questioning whether she is still capable of empathy and what this was all for if we still ended up in the same place. Into this collection of folks walks young wannabe Jessie (Spaeny), who idolizes Lee but cannot see the toll it has taken on her.

I mentioned Plemons in my Top 10 Moments column, but it bears repeating the level of menace he brings to a brief appearance on screen (he’s also great in Kinds of Kindness this year). I saw this movie not too long after I finally caught up with Priscilla, and Spaeny is clearly destined for big things. I missed the Elite Squad movies and I’ve never seen the television show Narcos, so Moura was an actor with whom I was completely unfamiliar, but he is fantastic as Lee’s counterpoint, equally hardened but unbothered by deeper questions. Meanwhile, Henderson elevates everything he appears in, and this is no exception.

4. The Piano Lesson

Outstanding cast members: John David Washington, Danielle Deadwyler, Ray Fisher, Corey Hawkins, Samuel L. Jackson, and Michael Potts

The third of producer Denzel Washington’s 10 planned August Wilson adaptations to make it to the screen, The Piano Lesson is a domestic drama about family legacies and the debts we owe to those who came before us. Like any Wilson play, it is an absolute feast for the performers smart enough not to chew the scenery; the words are meal enough.

John David Washington and Deadwyler go toe to toe for the duration of the film, battling over their family piano and the value of history against the possibilities of the future. Jackson and Potts represent the older generation, content to leave well enough alone and let the past be the past, regardless of how traumatizing. Hawkins is likewise superb as a preacher trying to woo Deadwyler’s character, trapped between his love for her and society’s expectations of him.

The real surprise here, though, is Fisher as Lymon, a little slow on the uptake but more emotionally attuned than any of the other characters. After the Justice League debacle that partly centered on Fisher’s Cyborg character – a mess the actor had no hand in creating – it is a joy to see Fisher break free of the CGI superhero fare and embody a flesh-and-blood human. Hollywood should ask him to do that more often. He’s excellent at it.

3. Anora

Outstanding cast members: Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov, and Karren Karagulian

For all of the other things it is, Anora is a fascinating exploration of what happens when characters don’t realize they are on the same side. Ani (Madison) loves Vanya (Eydelshteyn) and wants to believe he could love her. Toros (Karagulian) is the lackey for the Russian oligarch who is Vanya’s father, and Igor (Borisov) is his muscle. 

Ani believes it’s she and Vanya against the world, which is what the first half of the film establishes. What the second half makes clear, however, is that Ani, Toros, and Igor all operate at the whim of the oligarch – and by extension, Vanya. Because of all these cross-purposes and shared purposes, the character dynamics are constantly shifting. Who has power over whom is an ever-changing negotiation. All four actors embody these complexities flawlessly.

Madison is the heart and soul of the film, the eye of the storm, the center around which all things revolve. Eydelshteyn perfectly captures a certain brand of youthful idiocy combined with wealthful ignorance. Karagulian’s part of the put upon fixer is familiar, but the actor finds new levels to play within the classic trope. And, Borisov is the emotional fulcrum of it all, the audience surrogate who sees what is happening but is powerless to stop it. Together, it makes for a fascinating stew. 

2. The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Outstanding cast members: Misagh Zare, Soheila Golestani, Mahsa Rostami, and Setareh Maleki

Because of the circumstances of filming, which we will get into more in the next column, much of the action of The Seed of the Sacred Fig is confined to a couple locations and a limited cast of characters. At the core of that cast are Zare, Golestani, Rostami, and Maleki as a family torn apart by the winds of change in a nation that often violently resists such ideas. 

Zare is Iman, the patriarch of the family, given a promotion within the “justice” system of the oppressive Iranian regime. Najmeh (Golestani) is his loving wife who is thrilled at the potential for social advancement and monetary reward. Rezvan (Rostami) and Sana (Maleki) are their two teenage daughters, part of a new generation of Iranian women, intent on questioning the ways and wisdom of the old guard.

As emotional violence evolves into real violence, the actors clue us in to every step of the journey their characters are on. Zare shows us how power corrupts a man who was concerned with justice but now is concerned only with power. Golestani is spot on as a woman who is so close to everything she wants but is forced to watch it crumble just as it is within her grasp. Rostami is the older daughter, the one of whom much is expected and to whom little is given, and the actor makes us part of her struggle. Maleki, finally, is tremendous as the younger daughter with the most to lose from a fractured family but the most to gain from a changing world.

1. Conclave

Outstanding cast members: Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini, Lucian Msamati, Carlos Diehz, and Sergio Castellitto

Conclave is the kind of movie ensemble awards were created to honor. It’s a massive cast of capital ‘A’ Actors doing capital ‘A’ Acting in all the best ways. Director Edward Berger, writer Peter Straughan, and this magnificent cast craft a group of distinct characters defined by their individual wants and needs, debts and grievances, qualities and faults.

As I said in my moments column, Conclave is a movie about decisions, and every character has multiple decisions to make. When they make them, we fully understand why because the actors (and filmmakers) have imbued them with such internal life that they could only do the things they do. It is destined. This is who they are. We know this because each performer is able to take that internal life and externalize in ways both big and small, allowing us to see inside this world with all its challenges and contradictions.

Fiennes is the fracturing conscience of the film. Tucci is the realist who so badly wants to be an idealist. Lithgow, always so great to see on screen, is the establishment, the representative of the way things have always been done. Rossellini gives voice to a group of women who see all but are expected to share nothing. Msamati is an embodiment of the limits of forgiveness and the past that haunts us. Diehz is the stranger, the wild card, the man who could mean anything to anyone and so represents everything to everyone. Castellitto is the pull of tradition, the lure of the old way because wasn’t it all so much simpler then?

Top 10 Performances

10. Nicolas Hoult in Juror #2

Much was made of Clint Eastwood and Juror #2 getting the short end of the stick from Warners this year. It’s a shame what it means for the industry at large, yes, but it’s also a shame for Hoult, whose career-best work went underseen because of studio politics. The heart of Juror #2 is a moral dilemma, and as the title juror, Hoult must infuse his performance with all the searching, the fear, and the pain of that dilemma. Not every actor thrives under Eastwood’s one-take style of filmmaking, but Hoult does more than thrive. He excels. 

9. Nell Tiger Free in The First Omen

There were a lot of great performances this year in horror films, a genre always criminally underappreciated by the Academy. We might sneak a couple in there this year, but I can guarantee it won’t be for anything as fierce and fearless as Free’s work in this shockingly good prequel. Free gives herself fully to the role of Margaret, a young nun paranoid for good reason and haunted by a past she cannot quite access. Free, whom I mostly recognize as the ill-fated Myrcella on Game of Thrones, plays every level of grief and anguish imaginable, from screaming in pain to near catatonic shock, and it’s riveting.

8. Danielle Deadwyler in The Piano Lesson

Two years ago, Deadwyler was robbed of an Academy Award nomination for her absolutely stunning work in Till. If it happens again this year – and it very well could – we riot. As Berniece, Deadwyler carries the weight of a tragic family history and must live with the consequences of what that history has wrought. Deadwyler finds every nuance, every subtlety in August Wilson’s words and brings them to life with the full force of her talents. Then, in the film’s remarkable climax, she wordlessly brings the house down, allowing 200-plus years of grief and loss to flow from her like a river.

7. Ralph Fiennes in Conclave

Fiennes uses stillness like a weapon. His stoicism is his gift. When he speaks, it matters because you can see the contemplation that comes before. The words carry weight because you know each one has been carefully chosen, precisely placed, specifically enunciated. Cardinal Lawrence is a man with a lot on his mind and with no one to turn to because everyone keeps turning to him. He is cursed by uncertainty, but he turns that doubt into a cause. Fiennes allows us to see the gears turning within a man who is working overtime to make it all make sense. It’s sensitive. It’s insightful. It’s brilliant.

6. Timothée Chalamet in A Complete Unknown

Chalamet has crafted the perfect movie star playbook for the modern era. He does all the silly press stuff that’s required of stars these days, but he knows it’s silly and has fun with it. He works with great directors like Greta Gerwig, Denis Villeneuve, and James Mangold. He takes the work seriously – he spent years learning the guitar for A Complete Unknown. And, he’s got the talent to back it all up. Here, he captures the essence of Bob Dylan without ever tipping into parody. He never makes the mistake of trying to solve the mystery of our most unknowable icon. He lives in that mystery, which is the most Dylan-esque thing one can do.

5. Juliette Gariépy in Red Rooms

Canadian filmmaker Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms is the most disturbing movie of the year. It’s also excellent. It owes both of those facts largely to the lead performance of Gariépy as a woman obsessed with a serial killer who is on trial for his murders. Her quiet remove from the people around her is almost inhuman. She seems nearly possessed by the object of her obsession. 

She is a cypher, and we read into her what we believe about our society, about each other, and about ourselves. We can’t understand why she does what she does because we barely understand why we do what we do. Gariépy somehow makes these puzzle pieces fit, and it’s on us if we don’t like the picture it creates.

4. Sebastian Stan in A Different Man

It’s kind of a bummer to look at Stan’s upcoming projects and see three more Marvel movies on the slate. That said, the double bill this year of A Different Man and The Apprentice prove that Stan is more capable than most of turning his MCU caché into artistic gold. If he is willing to strap on the spandex a couple more times to get these kinds of projects made, then so be it. A brief word on The Apprentice, in which Stan is also excellent: I do think the film has been unfairly maligned due to its subject matter, but it is a fascinating document that maybe hits a little too close to home right now. It will age well.

In A Different Man, Stan portrays a man with a facial deformity who undergoes an experimental medical procedure that turns him into someone who looks like Sebastian Stan. Ultimately, this does not have the desired effect because, as the film argues, the soul remains the same. As a performer, Stan inhabits that soul, capturing the despair of a man who is desperate to be seen but who cannot bear to look at himself, no matter what he looks like. In physicality, in speech, in spirit, Stan embodies this character fully, and it is a sight to behold.

3. Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Hard Truths

I held off on compiling my year-in-review content for an extra week specifically so that I could see this film. I missed a couple early-access screenings and had to wait for its general release. I’m so glad I did. Jean-Baptiste is electric in the role of Pansy, a woman who is almost psychotically unpleasant. She is all sharp edges and corners, and Jean-Baptiste does nothing to soften her. That would defeat the purpose. 

In committing to this level of unlikability, the performer forces us to confront our own capacity for empathy. Can we show compassion to a woman who seems to have none to give? Can we see through the complaints and insults to find the woman crying out for someone – anyone – to understand her? There is no happy ending, no easy answer, just a question of how far we are willing to extend kindness to the people around us when kindness seems to be in such short supply. It’s a beautiful, shattering performance that demands our attention.

2. Colman Domingo in Sing Sing

It only seems like Domingo is having the kind of later-in-life career emergence awarded to a precious few. In reality, Hollywood was just behind everyone else in taking notice of a Broadway star who deserves the biggest stage possible. Last year was a screen breakout of sorts for Domingo who received an Academy Award nomination for his lovely work in Rustin and who portrayed the antagonist of the popular musical adaptation The Color Purple. Those were both wonderful showcases for his talent, but Sing Sing is something else entirely.

Here, Domingo portrays John “Divine G” Whitfield, a real-life prisoner (the actual Divine G has a cameo in the film) who is an integral member of the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program, which gets incarcerated people involved in putting on theater productions. While fighting to overturn his own wrongful conviction, Divine G dedicates his time in confinement to helping others, both with the theater program and through clemency efforts.

Through Domingo, we see the toll incarceration takes on the body and spirit, the inhumanity of a system designed to conceal the humanity of those trapped within it. We see the freedom that performance grants but also the limits of that freedom when everything in your world reminds you that you are chained. It is a textured, lived-in performance, unafraid of darkness but always seeking the light.

1. Mikey Madison in Anora

As I was watching Anora, I knew I was watching the best performance of the year. The further from that initial viewing I get, the greater in stature it grows. It’s a performance that sticks with you, gets under your skin, insists you consider it from every angle, and no matter which way you look at it, it is absolute perfection. 

This is not some “sex worker with a heart of gold” story, and Madison never plays it that way. The work is so much more complex than all that. This is not Pretty Woman. If anything, a more apt comparison might be Leaving Las Vegas about the call girl who watches her lover drink himself to death. Except, in Ani’s (Madison) case, the thing slowly dying in front of her is her future, as well as all the hopes and dreams she had tied up in that idea. That’s the level of devastation we’re talking about here.

Madison is great at inhabiting Ani’s bluster, the unchecked confidence that nearly reads as antagonism, as if she is saying, ‘Here I am, world. Take it or leave it.’ But, Madison also finds the vulnerability in the character, and the final 25 minutes are some of the most heartbreaking moments of the year. She is unforgettable, and this performance should open every door in Hollywood for the 25-year-old. Personally, I can’t wait to see which one she walks through next.

2024 Year in Review: Top 10 Moments

The best moments of the year are those that simply brought the most of whatever it is they had to offer. The tensest. The grossest. The most thrilling. The most shocking. The most heartbreaking. The most transcendent. Great filmmakers know how to build up a sequence, a scene, and a moment so that it conveys the deepest impact. None of these moments can be taken out of the context of the films that surround them. Rather, they exemplify the best of what comes before and after them.

When I reflect back on the films of 2024, these are the scenes I keep returning to in my head, asking what it all means or how they accomplished this. Some are moments of grand spectacle that only the movies can offer, while others invite deeper questions about life and existence. Neither is more valuable than the other, and both are required to make the cinema the grand experience that it is. So, I share with you the 10 moments this year that mattered the most to me.

First, a couple runners-up: when Kelly-Anne and Clementine watch a video together in Red Rooms; when Kneecap perform “H.O.O.D.” in Kneecap; the final dance in Fancy Dance; the underpass sequence in Twisters; and the interrogation scene in The Seed of the Sacred Fig.

Now, the top 10:

10. Thelma takes a fall. (Thelma, directed by Josh Margolin)

Ninety-three years old at the time of filming, June Squibb brings such life and energy to the title role of Thelma Post that I believe wholeheartedly she could star alongside Tom Cruise in one of the Mission: Impossible films her character watches in this. She is sharp, funny, and spry – but she is also 93. Margolin never lets us forget the vicissitudes of aging, usually in lines given to Richard Roundtree’s Ben. Thelma refuses to acknowledge that there are some things she can’t, or at least shouldn’t, do, and we’re there with her every step of the way.

Until one fateful step. After a fight with Ben, Thelma storms off into the night, determined as ever, then she makes one wrong move – and that’s all it takes. She tumbles to the ground. The first time I saw this scene in the theater, I gasped. It was legitimately shocking. We in the audience intuitively know the dangers of an elderly person falling, and the movie reminds us, in mostly subtle ways, of this fact. But, you can’t believe it could happen to Thelma.

Squibb plays the moment perfectly with equal parts anger, frustration, and fear. A long, quiet moment passes, then Ben returns. He helps her up using a method he learned in a safety class at the senior center. The quest continues. This moment, however, lingers in the mind as the perfect distillation of the film’s primary theme: Just because you’ve aged doesn’t mean you can’t be a badass, but just because you’re a badass doesn’t mean you have to do it alone.

9. Ani gets tied up. (Anora, directed by Sean Baker)

The first 45 minutes to an hour of Anora play out like a fairy tale, as sex worker Ani (Mikey Madison) meets, falls in love with, and impulsively weds Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn). The next half-hour plays like a home-invasion thriller, except that nobody wants anything except to have a conversation. We meet Toros (Karren Karagulian) and Igor (Yura Borisov), the hired goons of Ivan’s father. From the first moment they arrive, the train goes off the tracks – for Ani and the audience.

What this actually represents is the end of the fairy tale, the joy and opulence of the first act colliding with the harsh reality of the world. The spoiled Ivan makes a break for it, leaving Ani to wonder what the hell is going on with these two men she has never met, standing in the living room of the home she believes is hers. Things escalate quickly from shouting match to wrestling match to Ani being tied up with a phone cord.

The sequence goes on forever and you keep wondering how Baker and cast will top each wild moment, but somehow they do. By the time Madison is screaming, “Rape!” at the top of her lungs, the audience is stunned into silence, unsure if we can be seeing what we’re actually seeing. It’s the movie’s finest set piece, the dial being turned up to 11 on a story that starts at 10. It’s also the beginning of the end for Ani’s dream, and as fun as it is to watch, the truth hits like a ton of bricks.

8. Margaret goes into labor. (The First Omen, directed by Arkasha Stevenson)

The First Omen has no right being as good as it is. A prequel to a nearly 50-year-old horror masterpiece that already has three sequels and a remake, we’ve seen this formula go wrong much more than it’s gone right. Hell (pun intended), we’re less than 18 months removed from the truly dire The Exorcist: Believer. Going to the well one too many times can be deadly.

Against the odds, Stevenson makes it work. A lot of that is due to the work of leading actress Nell Tiger Free as Margaret, but spoiler alert, we’ll talk about her more in the top performances column. For now, let’s focus on Stevenson’s skill with putting together a horror sequence. 

There are a number of tremendous thrills and chills in this film – not to sound like an Entertainment Weekly blurb – from the riot scene to the first car crash. However, the director truly ups the ante in the third-act sequence in which Margaret makes her escape from the Satan-worshipping cultists with whom she has been living. It’s a harrowing sequence with one shocking twist after another, better seen than described, so I will leave it to you to seek out. Suffice it to say that each moment builds on itself until the sum of the parts is greater than you could have imagined.

7. Monstro Elisasue hosts the New Year’s Eve special. (The Substance, directed by Coralie Fargeat)

Fargeat’s style is the definition of maximalism, a go-big-or-go-home approach finely tuned to wring the most possible spectacle from her scenarios. In filmmaking terms, “the substance” may as well be steroids, and it’s wonderfully exciting. When subtlety is not the point, anything can happen, and how often do we get to be surprised at the movies anymore?

The tale of Demi Moore’s Elisabeth Sparkle and Margaret Qualley’s Sue (just Sue) is not particularly grounded to begin with, but in the last 20 minutes, Fargeat goes full 1950s monster movie. No joke, characters in this movie literally stand up from their seats, point their fingers, and yell, “The monster!” “Shoot the monster!” and “It’s a freak!”

Then, in one of the movie’s many unsubtle metaphors, the ones pointing their fingers are the ones who end up with blood on their hands. And their faces. And their suits. Really, on everything. We’re talking geysers of blood erupting from orifices just invented for this movie. It was serial killer John Doe in Seven who said: “Wanting people to listen … you have to hit them with a sledgehammer, and then you’ll notice you’ve got their strict attention.” Fargeat, now and forever, has our strict attention.

6. “What kind of American are you?” (Civil War, directed by Alex Garland)

Garland’s superlative war film is being unfairly lost in the Academy Awards fray, presumably because it was released so early in the year. At more than $100 million in worldwide box office, though, this is A24’s second-biggest hit ever, so good for them. One imagines, however, that a later-year release may have ensured the film would be recognized for its considerable crafts. 

Regardless, we have the work, and it is considerable. Garland expertly captures the uncertainty and paranoia inherent in the conflict he is portraying. He builds tension through the slow burn of having to work your way across a devastated landscape in which you have no idea who your friends and enemies are. Perhaps more importantly, they have no idea who you are.

Jesse Plemmons gives one of the year’s great one-scene performances as a militiaman who captures our protagonists and holds them at gunpoint, questioning what kind of Americans they are. It’s another way of asking, simply, ‘Are you like me or are you not like me?’ which is what the whole American mood seems to have boiled down to at this point. With me or against me. My tribe or not. Does your life have value, or doesn’t it? It’s a scary time, getting scarier, and Garland nails it.

5. Bob and Joan perform “It Ain’t Me, Babe.” (A Complete Unknown, directed by James Mangold)

There are two love triangles at the heart of Mangold’s wonderful Bob Dylan biopic: the first is among Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet), Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), and Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning); the second is Bob Dylan, the past, and the future. At the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Bob settles all accounts, whether he means to or not.

The whole movie builds to the infamous “Dylan goes electric” moment, and that is pulled off flawlessly by Mangold, Chalamet, and Co. But, that’s the plot climax. The emotional climax of the film comes the day before when Bob invites his long-estranged ex, Sylvie, to watch him perform. On a whim, though not without some prodding, she agrees. They go and Bob is called onstage to perform his hit “It Ain’t Me, Babe” with ex-lover Joan, who by this point, barely tolerates him.

Their performance is tremendous – four performers at the absolute peak of their powers, Bob and Joan and Chalamet and Barbaro. Mangold’s camera, however, centers Sylvie in the wings, heart shattering as she watches the man she loves share something with another woman – and with the world – that she could never share with him. The moment is equally beautiful and crushing, signifying that Bob is lost to her but also that Bob may be inherently uncatchable.

4. Rain navigates a maze of blood in zero gravity. (Alien: Romulus, directed by Fede Álvarez)

It’s kind of wild that Romulus is the ninth theatrical Alien feature film. “Unsuspecting crew meets a vicious and unrelenting alien” is just a reliably sturdy premise. Of the nine, I’d rank Romulus smack dab in the middle. Álvarez, of course, is a master at building suspense and crafting terror, so it’s always a ride. But, this film is content to play the hits and rarely breaks new ground – with one glorious exception.

Romulus takes the Aliens, more-is-more approach and gives us lots of xenomorphs. And, one of the key things we know about xenomorphs is that their blood is highly acidic. Like, burn through multiple levels of an industrial mining ship acidic. Álvarez makes excellent use of this terrifying fact throughout Romulus, but the pièce de resistance comes toward the end of the second act, when our heroes have their backs against a wall, facing down a horde of aliens.

They can’t shoot the aliens because the blood will burn through the hull of the ship, causing catastrophic failure. However, we learn early on that the gravity on this ship can be turned off for a short period of time. Turn off the gravity and the blood floats. But remember, their backs are against a wall. The only way out is through the blood maze. It’s one of the most gripping sequences I’ve seen in any Alien movie. Credit to Álvarez and everyone involved here that nine movies into a franchise, they still found a way to show us something we had never seen before.

3. Cat and bird climb the mountain. (Flow, directed by Gints Zilbalodis)

Much of the animated masterpiece Flow is rooted in reality, a heightened sci-fi-esque future reality, but reality nonetheless. Meaning, carnivores eat meat, if you don’t have gills, the rising water level will eventually drown you, and cats are mercurial under the best of circumstances. We accept all of these things and happily go along for the ride.

Then, late into a relatively short movie, Zilbalodis gets transcendental on us and crafts the single most beautiful sequence of the year. Our protagonist is a small black cat who picks up a variety of animal friends throughout the film, including a secretary bird who has been looking out for the cat in ways both seen and unseen. Their connection is one of the key emotional fulcrums of the movie, so when they get separated in a storm, it is devastating.

Eventually, they reunite at the top of a mountain, where time and space and reality itself seem to fold in on each other. The rain reverses direction, returning to the sky above. The heavens part. Cat and bird float into the clouds, but only one is prepared to transcend. The other clings to the earth, to life, the will to survive being innate. Call it god. Call it the universal connection among all things. Call it an acid trip at the end of days. Whatever it is, it is breathtaking.

2. Paul Atreides rides a sandworm. (Dune Part Two, directed by Denis Villeneuve)

In my At the Movies piece, I took time to write a paean to the beauty of the small, quiet movie and the need for meditative space at the cinema. I believe that with all my soul. But, sometimes, Paul Atreides rides a freakin’ sandworm through the desert, and you just have to get up from your comfy movie theater seat and applaud.

As the most recent crop of Star Wars projects largely dropped the ball (give or take a Last Jedi or Rogue One), a gap in the culture was created for high-minded space opera. With his Dune series, Villeneuve has only been all too happy to fill that gap. I can’t say that I’m 100 percent buying everything this franchise is selling, its champions perhaps placing the films on too high a pedestal. That said, no one is making movies like this these days, and when you want an epic tale on the grandest scale about intergalactic warfare and centuries-long birth conspiracies, accept no substitutes.

Honestly, there’s too much plot going on to fully set up this moment in the movie in these brief paragraphs. The short version is that Paul (Chalamet again, having just a helluva 13 months, going all the way back to Wonka) is embedded with the Fremen people and may or may not be their messiah. For reasons, it’s important that he ride a sandworm, so of course, he rides the biggest one. Conveniently for us, he does so in IMAX, and for about five minutes, we remember why cinemas need such big screens.

1. Cardinal Lawrence casts a vote for himself. (Conclave, directed by Edward Berger)

Conclave is a locked-door thriller all about electoral procedure that turns on who votes for whom and why. Yeah, it achieved a certain amount of relevance in 2024, but that’s not what makes it great. The achievement of this film is the way that Berger, fresh off the accomplishment of All Quiet on the Western Front, infuses every moment with drama and tension, using little more than the weight of moral inquiry. 

It’s a movie about decisions. For the audience to care, those decisions must have meaning, and the audience must understand that meaning both intellectually and emotionally. Berger and screenwriter Peter Straughan do an expert job of communicating that meaning, and Ralph Fiennes, portraying Cardinal Lawrence, carries that burden effortlessly.

The titular conclave has one purpose: to elect a new pope. There are a few viable candidates, and over the course of the film, that pool of candidates narrows, and it becomes clear that this is an election about the very soul of the church. Will they move backward or forge new paths (again, relevant)? Lawrence finds himself in the midst of a crisis of faith, not lacking belief in god but rather in the institution of the church. He does not want to be pope, but certain interested parties insist that not only should he be pope but that deep down, he must want it. They all want it.

So, when push comes to shove, Lawrence finally votes for himself – and all hell breaks loose. The how is one of the year’s great cinematic surprises, so I will not reveal it here. But in this moment, everything comes to a head: the weight of history, the burden of expectation, the fecklessness of our institutions. The world may be run by (mostly) men in locked rooms, but while they hide in their bunkers, the world turns. They can neither stop it nor control it. They play their games while the rest of us simply want to live our lives.

2024 Year in Review: At the Movies

Last year, I introduced an adventures-in-moviegoing-style column to the Year in Review series. This year, I christen it At the Movies, in tribute to my favorite writer and critic, Roger Ebert. In April 2025, it will be 12 years since his death, but he is never far from my mind or my heart, and whether consciously or not, I carry him with me every time I walk into the theater.

In the spring, I read Matt Singer’s essential Opposable Thumbs, which recounts the history of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert as professional rivals entered into a mutually beneficial pact that evolved into a unique brotherhood. It also tells the tale of Siskel and Ebert™, the cultural force that would define the way generations watched, discussed, and thought about movies. It gets my highest Last Cinema Book Club recommendation. (Remember when I tried to make that a thing? Perhaps I’ll bring it back.)

I wrote the following in this piece last time around: “We’ll start in my neighborhood, a scant 10-minute walk from my front door, at the Highland Park Theater, itself the subject of closure rumors. As of now, it survives.” From the time I published those words, it would survive just another 51 days. The 100-year-old theater closed Feb. 29, 2024. 

Community chatter about potentially reopening it started pretty much immediately but died out quickly after. It sits vacant, the marquee marked by graffiti. Most days, you still can see inside. Despite the end-of-February closure, for a while, someone continued to update the posters in the lobby. The last such update came with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which released May 10. That poster still hangs, and there is something haunting about that ghost of a theater forever advertising a film it never got to show and probably never will.

There are many such haunted houses in the city, the most prominent of which is probably the Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard. One of the COVID pandemic’s many economic casualties, the dome just sits there at that vacant intersection, waiting for some hero of the cinema to come save it. It supposedly was set for a 2025 reopening, but the last anyone heard about that was in 2023. I’ll give it a couple more years, then start the Last Cinerama Dome Standing Fund and buy it myself, if necessary. Quentin Tarantino can’t save them all.

And, that’s as fine a transition as any to a May 22 screening of Pulp Fiction at Tarantino’s own New Beverly Cinema. The theater hosted a week of showings to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the film’s triumphant debut at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or. Though I had seen the film bordering on 50 times, I had never seen it on the big screen. It was like seeing it with fresh eyes. Everything that is radical and inventive and shocking about that film – the kinds of rough edges that get sanded away by cultural ubiquity – felt new and exciting again.

A couple weeks before, I caught Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece High and Low at the New Beverly, as well. It’s hardly breaking new ground to call it one of the great director’s best. I look forward to Spike Lee and Denzel Washington reinterpreting and remixing the premise for our modern age with a film that is slated to come out in 2025.

Staying on that side of town, the programming at the Academy Museum continues to impress, as one might expect. A couple days before Pulp Fiction at the New Bev, I visited the Academy for a screening of the Telugu megahit RRR. This was my fourth viewing but first in a theater. It is a spectacle that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible with the loudest speakers, both of which describe the Academy Museum to a ‘T.’ The crowd was raucous and lively, cheering and hooting and hollering. Super fans compared résumés – ‘I’ve seen it 15 times in theaters’; ‘I’ve seen it 20!’ I had a wonderful time, but once is enough, thanks.

On the other hand, a couple days after my birthday in July, the Academy screened a film I could never tire of watching. The Addams Family is on a short list of films that potentially could lay claim to the title of movie I have seen the most times in my life. My best guess puts it right at the top, just ahead of Addams Family Values. It was shown as part of the Branch Selects program, in which a different branch of the Academy selects a movie each week that represents the best of its craft. This particular screening was hosted by the Makeup and Hairstylists branch and was preceded by an introduction by Kevin Haney, one of the film’s makeup artists.

Seeing it on the big screen was a reminder of what a miracle that film is. It could have been a cash grab, a relatively untapped piece of IP, generated to prey on Boomer nostalgia. In that respect, it worked and was a massive hit. But, it is also a beautifully crafted piece of art when it didn’t need to be. The depth and texture of the set design. The inventiveness of the camera moves. Of course, that wonderful makeup. Those performances. A C+ movie would have been a hit. These artists went for the A+ and the extra credit. Their reward: a legacy as a multigenerational cultural touchstone.

From one gothic treat to another, my annual sojourn to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery for its Halloween programming consisted of a night under the stars watching modern horror anthology classic Trick ‘r Treat. Director Michael Dougherty made a surprise appearance before the screening to talk a little about the difficulty in getting the film made. He seemed genuinely moved to be speaking to a thousand-plus fans who made the trip out to demonstrate their love for his creation.

The programming of the American Cinematheque is a highlight of any year of moviegoing. I didn’t make it out to the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica as much as might have liked, though advanced screenings of Nickel Boys and Nightbitch were particular highlights. Likewise, I still have not attended a film at the newly reopened Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, but I expect to rectify that in 2025. On the other hand, I found myself at the Los Feliz 3 often for many of the Cinematheque’s wonderful offerings.

In July, I caught an early showing of Sean Wang’s excellent coming-of-age film Dìdi. Wang and cast members Izaac Wang and Joan Chen hung out for a truly insightful Q&A afterward. In October, I attended a special double bill of Guy Maddin’s Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton and My Winnipeg, part of a tribute to the filmmaker in honor of his latest release, Rumours. Maddin spoke afterward and was exactly as rye, prickly, and brilliant as I had always hoped. 

Finally, in December, the Cinematheque presented a series of Steve McQueen films around the release of Blitz. I attended a late-night showing of Lovers Rock, widely considered the crowning achievement of the filmmaker’s monumental Small Axe. You’ll hear no argument from me, and it was an absolute privilege to see this Amazon-produced pandemic release on the big screen, where it belongs.

There were other special experiences this year such as catching writer-director-star Lake Bell and cast at the Eagle Theatre for a 10th anniversary screening of her excellent debut, In a World; a very early screening of the magnificent Sing Sing at the Alamo Drafthouse with a live-streamed cast Q&A afterward; and the Alamo’s Bob Dylan Costume Party attached to an advanced showing of A Complete Unknown.

But, I’d like to close with some thoughts on three movies that reminded me of what I love so much about the cinema. I saw a lot of blockbusters this year and probably caught more movies in IMAX than in any previous year that I can recall. Dune Part II, Twisters, Alien: Romulus, etc. Spectacle is alive and well on the big screen. I support that fully. I am a great enjoyer of popcorn and soda and explosions and stunning vistas and grand images projected to unfathomable heights.

This year, however, what I appreciated most were the movies with the opposite intent. If cinema is the only church I attend – and it is – then occasionally, I’d like that church to be a place of reflection and meditation, of peace, calm, and tranquility. So much of life is noise and distraction that to find two hours, more or less, to be unburdened, unbothered, and untethered feels like a necessary balm for the spiritual wounds we endure.

Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, Ryuske Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist, and Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light could rightly be classified as slow cinema, but I prefer to think of them as the cinema of mindfulness. There is no room for split attention. You are either fully in or fully out. These films insist that you be present in the moment, that you engage your mind, body, and spirit, and that you give yourself over to these filmmakers and their worlds. It’s a rare and humbling thing when it happens, and it speaks to everything I want from the cinema. Here’s to another great year at the movies.

2024 Year in Review: It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world

No one who knows me or follows this site will be surprised to learn that on Jan. 7, I was on my way to a movie. I am often on my way to or from a movie, but what made this particular sojourn eventful was that it came amid a historic windstorm here in Los Angeles. That windstorm would lead directly to one of the most catastrophic fire disasters in state history. 

As I type this, those fires continue to burn. The smoke from the nearer of the two major fires – the Eaton Fire, raging in the hills above Pasadena – has clouded my home to one degree or another for seven straight days. It is a cruel irony that I am prepared to brave the smoky conditions because of the facemasks I have left over from the last catastrophic event to destroy lives and shake the foundations of our institutions.

At the time I was headed to the movies on that fateful day, I was aware that the Palisades Fire had begun and that it was getting worse. Thousands were without power, and in fact, the street lights on much of the route to the theater were out. It was dark and eerie. Winds howled and blew debris back and forth across the road. The neighborhood was abnormally vacant.

A view from my office of the Palisades Fire on Day 1, taken by my company's CEO.

This was at the Eagle Theatre in Eagle Rock, home of Vidiots, which I have mentioned a number of times before on this site. I was attending a screening of Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev’s Porcelain War, about a pair of married artists in Ukraine, forced to take up arms to defend their homeland from the Russian invasion. Collaborating with the US-based Bellomo, Leontyev and partner Anya Stasenko document their lives, their work, and their daily experience under constant threat of attack. It is a truly powerful piece of art that offers a firsthand account of a conflict most know only from cable news.

Leontyev, Stasenko, Bellomo, and producer Paula DuPré Presmen were in attendance, along with Leontyev and Stasenko’s small dog, Frodo. If you see the movie, you cannot forget Frodo. I thought on the irony of these real-life heroes sitting before me, having come here from a war zone only to find themselves bit players in a disaster movie.

One woman in the audience stood to ask whether Leontyev and Stasenko were concerned about the incoming US administration – one which has given considerable comfort to the enemy over the years – and the impact that might have on their fight. Leontyev dismissed this notion, suggesting that the Ukrainian people can hardly be bothered with American politics while trapped in their homes and enduring 23 hours a day of shelling. 

Their concerns are much more immediate, and both expressed a firm desire to return home as soon as possible to rejoin the fight for their land, their culture, and their very existence. They talked about participating in the making of Porcelain War because, as artists, they recognize that a people’s culture is equivalent to a people’s history. This film is an everlasting document, recording the Ukrainian people’s struggle and resolve. It cannot be destroyed.

Slava Leontyev, Anya Stasenko, and Frodo, after the Jan. 7 screening of Porcelain War

Here, on our shores, the war we wage is not against a threat from without but from within. It is a fight for culture and decency and for a nation’s soul, which may have been sold a very long time ago. Whether it can be retrieved or redeemed remains an open question, and the answer to whether we deserve rescue or redemption may not be one we like.

In this little corner of the world, I will continue to consider these questions through the lens of our cinema. It is an artform with the power to reflect who we are and to demonstrate who we wish we could be. It is a medium more capable than any of sending a message about the lines we draw and the transgressions we abhor. It is our most significant cultural force and most powerful cultural weapon. 

At Last Cinema Standing, we fight to preserve, record, and amplify this medium because as Marshall McLuhan said: “The medium is the message.” In 2024, the message of the best in cinema was clear: recognize and resist. Recognize the forces that seek to divide and destroy us, then resist their every attempt to do so. In many ways, this has always been the mission of this site. Without cinema, there is no history. Without history, there is no identity. Without identity, there is nothing. So, long live cinema.