As I write this post, I’d feel remiss not to mention the context I write it under. This past week saw the death of David Lynch, potentially one of the great American auteurs and certainly one of my favourite cinematic figures. Despite living a fruitful life artistically and personally, his loss feels grand and shocking, a hole forever left in an art form by his absence. I’m going to write a bigger and more reflective thing because he’s too big a part of my love of film not to, but for now, this is my acknowledgement of a crater that has been left in cinema.

To move to lighter territory, what treats we have had this year. As by the nature of UK release dates, the start of the year saw the overflow of 2023 films and the end saw us narrowly miss out on other future classics (we will come back for Nosferatu next year) but in between, we were hardly starved. When I examine the year, while we lack the amount of stone cold classics I felt we had last year, I see a crop of films I still love, admire and respect in equal measure. Ranking them feels tricky, because they’re such a diverse group that all succeed in different fields. How do you put Hundreds of Beavers on the same list as The Zone of Interest? Not with ease, but we strive for greatness here. As ever, a full ranked list of everything I saw from 2024 is here, argue amongst yourselves about The Beekeeper being ranked higher than The Substance or whatever it is that really riles you, but I’m here to get giddy and chat film. Let’s get into the honourable mentions!

The Delinquents

We start with what sounds like an act of self-parody, because one of my favourite films of the year is a three hour slow cinema heist movie, in which the heist happens in the first half hour. Don’t let that mislead you though, this is a warm and funny movie that absolutely basks in its luxuriously long run time.

Sleep

I am a sucker for a slick thriller with an unrelenting pace, of which Sleep is a top class one. A simple seeming story about a man with insomnia blooms into this unpredictable ride that I would recommend to everyone.

Conclave

On the one hand, Conclave can be enjoyed as a juicy drama about gossiping cardinals talking shit behind each others backs and vaping furiously. On the other hand, it’s also a very sincere drama about people grappling with their faith in a time of crisis. Whichever hand you take, it’s an old fashioned thriller that will delight everyone.

Kill

No other film on this list uses its title as a statement of intent this powerful. You go into Kill knowing that a lot of people are going to die but when the title card appears on screen halfway through the film, the action ratchets up to apocalyptic levels. It immediately joins the pantheon of cinema’s two great genres; violent action movies and train movies.

La Chimera

The world would be a richer one with more films like La Chimera. For her latest magical journey, Alice Rohrwacher takes us into the underworld through the lives of graverobbers and once again proves how much joy can be found by just digging a little deeper.

Better Man

The Robbie Williams monkey movie is phenomenal! That’s the headline! In a world plagued by boring biopics, choose something that feels alive. Hyperbole aside, I was in tears for huge portions of this film and sat with my jaw agape at the rest. Don’t be the last one to discover this slice of fried gold.

Dune: Part Two

Dune: Part Two may be one of the most important and seismic achievements in sci-fi film this century. It also doesn’t even crack my top 7 this year. Maybe this is a great year in film. The original source novel is one of the knottiest of its type and where the first part was an admirable adaptation, this second is a true treat, two and a half hours of all cake after finishing your main meal.

The Iron Claw

If you ever wanted to know what it feels like for your emotions to be hit by every car on a motorway, try The Iron Claw! This story of wrestling brothers goes from heartbreak to heartbreak in a true life story so sad that they had to remove some of the events because it would have seemed too ridiculous. My beautiful boys love each other so much and are so bad at processing any familial trauma, come suplex my heart!

And now onto the big Top 7!

7. Anora

I’ve been a fan of Sean Baker since his film The Florida Project and a full-blown fan after Red Rocket knocked my socks off a few years ago. With his newest film Anora, he has returned with a film that is at once the culmination of all he has been building to over the decades, and also his most accessible and purely enjoyable film yet. It’s the comedic tale of a sex worker who falls in love with the son of a rich Russian family and how that relationship spins in and out of control. To say this thing is charming is an understatement. Baker’s usual mastery of script and editing are on display but with Mikey Madison, he has found his most electric lead yet (which I promise is tough competition). Her performance is what holds this big film together, playing up the comedy and anchoring the pathos in what may be my favourite performance of the year. She keeps you utterly and totally engaged until the sucker punch ending, one which I was unsure of the first time I saw it but which completely stuck with me after and devastated me on a second watch. I’m still working out where Anora sits in my overall Baker rankings, but just on its own merits it is very soundly one of the best films of the year.

6. The Zone of Interest

Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, there’s no easy way to talk about The Zone of Interest and compare it to other films from the year. It is singular, it is urgent and it is distressing in ways that no other film has been. It’s also an inherently cinematic way of approaching the Holocaust but without exploiting or turning the event into melodrama. For what is somehow only his fourth film, Johnathan Glazer places us inside the house of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, a house he shares with his family and that shares a wall with Auschwitz itself. We follow not the atrocities being committed inside the extermination camp but the banality occurring inside the house. People are planting flowers, making dinner, having their friends over, all while ignoring an evil they are complicit in. For me, Glazer’s film works for three big reasons. First, the boredom. It forces you to be alone with your thoughts as people do chores, making you perversely wish for something to happen. That leads into the second thing, it creates complicity between the audience and the lead characters, putting us in the uncomfortable place of being on the side of fascists. But that’s wrong, isn’t it? We aren’t a world that could sit by and write blogs, eat at restaurants, watch Bargain Hunt while a genocide is being committed, are we? Are we? The third and final reason is a scene near the end of the film, in which Höss stares down a dark corridor and is greeted by a vision of modern day Auschwitz, in which staff are seen cleaning the exhibitions that house the former possessions of the victims of the Holocaust. It is a startling reminder that though these events happened many decades ago, we are not as removed from them as we may wish to believe we are. All of these things have made the reputation of The Zone of Interest a little sticky, with many not really knowing how to approach it, though they are the same things that will cement this as one of the truly important films of our time. It is a purely cinematic product and a thing to marvel at, which is good because it is not a film you should look away form.

5. Poor Things

There’s no easy segue between that and this, but now it’s time for a new adventure from Yorgos Lanthimos! Though I enjoyed his demented triptych Kinds of Kindness, I found myself more wholly transported by his earlier film last year, Poor Things. Here, he dips his toes into the fantastical more than ever before (we can argue if The Lobster is sci-fi or just odd) in creating a story unlike any other. His tale is of Bella Baxter, a perfectly ordinary young woman except for the fact that she has the brain of a baby. Literally. Poor Things follows Bella’s journey as she discovers the world and herself, embracing all with a joy that is infectious. I’ve left many Lanthimos films with a feeling of being absolutely sick to my stomach from dread, violence or some combination of the two. Poor Things is the first of his films that I’ve left feeling gleeful. It’s as if, after two decades of peering at humanity’s depravity, pain and hatred, Lanthimos found the joy of the world. Naturally, the joy he finds is in the world of his that least resembles this world of ours, but the point stands regardless. There’s a quote from It’s Such a Beautiful Day that rolls around my head a lot, where the main character Bill, facing their likely death, says to a stranger “Isn’t everything amazing?” When we’re distant from death or birth, we fail to grasp the beauty that Bill or Bella see, and it’s beauty that Lanthimos leaves his audience with. He’s still too much of a gleeful trickster to play it completely sunny (the main character exists only because of a suicide to posit just one downer note) but Poor Things feels like a special addition to his filmography because it gives the audience genuine hope for the first time. Maybe the last time.

4. The Taste of Things

There are, if we are to cast broad aspersions, two types of French film. There is the weirdo, surreal, arthouse nonsense (more on that later) and there is the slow, sensitive, rather sexy film. Your mileage with both will vary but with The Taste of Things, we find perhaps the most French take on a French film yet. It’s a slow paced romance about two people cooking for each other and without wanting to be dramatic, it is one of the most searingly romantic films I have ever seen. I would be lying if I tried to extend the summary and say that actually this film is about more than that, but the very strength of The Taste of Things is that it is about nothing more than food and love. You know, food and love, those two things that are essential to our physical and emotional wellbeing! No biggie! The cooking scenes in this are unbelievable, some of the finest cooking scenes I have ever seen. Through the eyes of a young participant in the kitchen, we are guided through every step of preparing these elaborate meals, with one prepared over the course of half an hour of in-film time. You will wish for longer before dessert is even mentioned. It’s one of those films where you need to slow down and get into the pace of the film, because when you do your stomach and heart will be filled. Sensual is the only word that comes close to explaining the alchemical power of The Taste of Things, so lean in and take a bite. You may be hungrier than you realise.

3. Hundreds of Beavers

When I have slow cinema, surrealism and big serious movies populating my best of the year list, I worry that I’m losing my touch. Where is my silliness? My joy? My ability to wind people up? Then I see a film like Hundreds of Beavers. This is a film in which a huntsman goes to war with hundreds of beavers. That’s it. That’s the plot. Man versus beast, again and again and again. While that may sound ridiculous, what may shock you is that it actually is just as, if not more, ridiculous than it sounds. This is slapstick comedy at its finest, building off simple pratfalls into unbelievably elaborate references, call-backs and set-pieces that are engineered into a perfect little structure of a film. By the time you reach the top, you look back and are in awe of how well all the little pieces from before fit in to the whole. I find myself stuck with finding more to say. The film speaks itself is evidence enough of its own brilliance. This is a funny film that is very smart in how it chooses to make you laugh, made on a budget that couldn’t even cover catering for most of the other films on this list. If you’re in the UK (as I know most of you lot are), the film is embarking on a nationwide tour with an in-person Q&A and a bunch of merch at each stop. Even though I’ve already seen the film, this is an idea so tempting that I might forsake my blu-ray copy and go in to the cinemas for another chance to hoot and howl with strangers again. I highly suggest you do too, and if you do please buy me merch, I need a poster for this, please.

2. Challengers

Like with Yorgos Lanthimos, Luca Guadagnino released two fantastic films this year and while his sad and mercurial Queer just missed out on the list, Challengers absolutely storms the top two. No film left me with such ecstasy pulsing through my system as Challengers did. I immediately came home, breathless, and attempted to explain to my partner how good the film was (poorly, apparently, she still hasn’t seen it.) For those who still carry the shame of not being in the know, Challengers is the story of two best friends who both fall for the same girl, all while they’re coming up in the professional tennis scene. The film zips around in their life, from when they exit the amateur scene up to a climactic match between the two friends, never once losing a single shred of momentum. No film this year has moved like Challengers, which has if not the best then certainly the most exciting cinematography, editing and structure of any film this year (not that the Oscars would agree.) During my first viewing, I kept feeling worried that there would be a mistake, a slip-up, some fault that would make the film fall on its knees. Reader, there was no such incident, this is a film that only gets stronger as we careen towards the finale. And the finale? Oh man. If you thought the film was great before this scene, you have another thing coming, as the entire creative team fire on all cylinders. It is the kind of scene that makes you sprint out the cinema, run back home and excitedly tell whoever you see that they have to watch Challengers (source: I did this.) If somehow I still haven’t convinced you, put the score on. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross created a pulsating techno beat that runs under the whole film and is so good that I almost put it on my best albums of the year list. Please please please, watch Challengers. Though it isn’t my number one film of the year, it is an effortless recommendation to all and the film I am most desperate to rewatch at all times of every day.

1. The Beast

In a purely accidental move, here is a film whose surreal brilliance feels like a modern answer to David Lynch, a pushing at the form of the medium that I imagine he would have loved. The Beast is a sci-fi tale that leaps through time and through worlds to tell a tale of eternal love. You’re going to have to stick with me on this one. Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) is a woman who, in the near future, decides to purge her emotions in order to make herself better at her job. To do this, she must explore her past lives and purify them from strong feelings, often connected to the same man (George MacKay) who keeps haunting her pasts. In one life, we are in a flooded Paris shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. In another, we are in modern day Los Angeles, seeing actresses and incels mingle like oil and water. The two meet in all these times in different guises and also meet in their future present, sharing hushed conversations and glances across the room at a retro nightclub. During this exploration, the two find themselves drawn together romantically, yet always being tragically torn apart before they can act upon the romance that threatens to explode from their chests.

It’s at this point that I should mention that The Beast is adapted from a Henry James novella called The Beast in the Jungle, which I wasn’t familiar with before the film but that provides a crucial lens to read through. In this story, a man finds himself drawn towards a lover but cannot consummate the relationship as he has been told of a catastrophe that awaits him (the titular and metaphorical Beast) and so lives an unremarkable life, just distant enough from his love to avoid hurting her. It is only at the end of his life though that he realises the great catastrophe he was warned of was to find love and squander it, to spend your life too paralysed by fear to ever act on your own happiness. As someone who finds himself in the clutches of anxiety, I’d be lying if I said that didn’t resonate, and it’s this anxious feeling that permeates the film from start to pulse racing finale. Our two characters keep approaching, keep getting close, keep waiting for the terrible thing to happen, until they realise that this terrible thing has already happened, born out of their own fear. Lynch feels like the touchstone for me because while I wasn’t always sure of the narrative thrust of The Beast, I was always certain of its emotional intent and it was an emotion that struck me deep to my core. This is a film that pushes at its audience, plays with cinematic form, practically begs you to disengage. Yet, if you make the leap that the protagonists couldn’t and commit yourself fully before the film reaches its denouement, you will be wildly rewarded. What a remarkable film. A thing so tangibly romantic, yet pierced by horror and doomed by tragedy. Like the love at the films core, I hope it transcends time itself and becomes eternal.

You may have noticed, we’ve skipped over best album and best TV show this year. That’s my bad, I’ve been in a writing slump and for those interested, I’ll have my rundown of some of my favourite of both at the end of the list. I know it’s mainly me who beats myself up over that but considering I don’t often share my opinions on those things, I wanted to just throw them out somewhere. ANYWAY! Movies! Aren’t they rad? It has genuinely been an excellent year for films, especially if we go by the UK release calendar. Like sure, films like Poor Things and Evil Does Not Exist are worthy of the list but when you see what made the cut, you won’t be so mournful. As I said, we’re doing UK release dates, feature films only and for obvious reasons, only films I’ve seen. I saw over 100 so we have a good pack (and the full list is here for anyone who wants to get angry over nothing) and I’m even allowing myself some extra honourable mentions because of how many films I loved this year. That is it for introductions, let’s rock and roll!

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

The thing about Guardians is that it is so much bigger than a swansong for a trilogy of lovable rogues, because it manages to also be an accidental swansong for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was the only success for the company this year and also the only one that deserved to succeed.

Eileen

Big controversial choice for me, because no one else seemed to fall under Eileen‘s spell. However, this thriller on a road to nowhere had me totally under its seductive spell for the whole breezy runtime.

All The Beauty and The Bloodshed

There are very few documentaries as profoundly moving as this one, a dual tale of Nan Goldin’s life and her battle against the Sackler family, in which the personal and political are inextricably connected. The telling of the tale doesn’t slack though, demanding the audience watch at every moment.

The Killer

David Fincher proves again that he has a wickedly dry sense of humour, in this hitman tale that doesn’t sacrifice thrills for a chance to wryly play The Smiths. Again, not a popular choice, but I’m very happy to see Fincher having fun again.

May December

Kudos to Todd Haynes for a balancing act that few others could complete, in which comedy and media satire are balanced with a heart-breaking tale of abuse. Charles Melton should be winning awards for this role every year for as long as we do awards.

Talk to Me

For a horror film, this is basically everything I could ever ask for. Thrills are paired with proper scares, complimented by some deliciously and realistically unlikable characters, all of which absolutely barrel towards an ending as bone crunching as it is inevitable.

Blackberry

Matt Johnson has made his most mainstream film yet, without losing any of his personality. Blackberry could so easily just be a Canadian riff on The Social Network but it has much more fun and is clearly a film that is so excited to simply exist.

Asteroid City

Justice for Asteroid City! Both this and The French Dispatch have been criticised for being “just Wes Anderson doing his thing again,” which is brutally unfair. No Anderson film before has made me cry which Asteroid manages while creating some of the most beautiful artifice we’ve ever had on screen. He is an artist at the height of his powers and Asteroid City is yet more proof of that.

Beau is Afraid

Love it or hate it, good luck forgetting Beau is Afraid. From the opening scenes in which we meet “Birthday Boy Stab Man,” through to the… I suppose testicular is the best way to describe the ending. Either way, Aster got a blank cheque and God bless him for running with it into hell.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

I feel hesitant to give a film which is so blatantly half of a story a higher placement, but Across the Spider-Verse was one of those truly exciting cinema experiences that worked on every technical level (once it was sound mixed properly.) Fingers crossed part two comes out, doesn’t disappoint and is made with minimal employee exploitation.

John Wick: Chapter Four

This is one of the best action films I’ve ever seen and still just barely misses out on the top seven of the year, that’s how good a year this is! Where I usually love a film with a bit of restraint, John Wick: Chapter Four is a three hour buffet of action that never stops and never once becomes less than captivating.

Anyway, huge selection of honourable mentions done, it’s time to get to the actual Top 7! If you thought those films were good, wait until you see these.

7. Rye Lane

Romcoms are, broadly speaking, one of my least favourite genres of film. Favourites stand out but generally, if Richard Curtis has been near it, I’m unlikely to warm even slightly to it. Rye Lane though is special. It exists within that mould that Curtis laid, but makes it feel modern, fresh, like an actual film about actual people! Obviously, there’s the part of that which relocates the action from the rich realm into the slowly gentrifying area surrounding Brixton, yet relocates in a way which still maintains the feeling of love for location. That’s not the only updating though because, at risk of sounded both pretentious and vague, Rye Lane just feels so well built. Scenes are presented in abstract form to create the most exciting presentation, music gently tinkles behind conversations that are about everything and nothing and the setups are paid off in ways to make you hoot and holler. Oh, it’s also 82 minutes long. There are six films I ended up loving more than Rye Lane but there were none that made me love love as much. Everything in my life felt better each time I saw it and it is the very easiest recommendation on this list. If you only come away from here with one new film on your watchlist, make it Rye Lane.

6. Oppenheimer

Judging by the box office, you almost definitely saw Oppenheimer. To be very honest with you, I do regret my time with Oppenheimer, because I only saw it once. It feels like such a rewardingly dense film that one viewing seems like a bit of an insult. Even in that fleeting three hour encounter though, what is on display is stunning. Nolan has made many absolutely brilliant films before and while Oppenheimer is a continuation of that craft, it feels distinct. What seems on the surface to be a telling of one man’s life story blossoms out into a grander tale of politics, science and ethics, in which there is no black and white. Again, you probably saw it! And that’s amazing, that an obtuse but well crafted and serious drama managed to draw in almost a billion dollars at the box office (and may yet make it there.) It is a rare instance of one of the greatest films of the year also being the most successful.

5. Barbie

Speaking of! You definitely saw Barbie, which made eight Barbillion dollars. Even more of an achievement than that though, Barbie was actually a really great film! I’ve loved all three of Gerwig’s solo directorial films and what is so great about them is that all three feel like films made by the same person. Admittedly, I think Barbie is the weakest of the three but considering that Lady Bird and Little Women are not just films I love but are also cornerstones of who I am as a person, third place can still be great. And it is! Barbie is so so much fun and one of the films on this list that I rewatched very soon after first watching, because it filled me with this absolute lightness. We can talk around it or try and be snobbish about it, but that gleeful lightness isn’t an easy thing to create and kudos to Gerwig for doing it in a way that seems effortless (if you ask the Academy Awards, it maybe seemed too effortless.) It’s hard to know what else to say. It’s Barbie! It was everything, or it was just Ken, but it has rightfully defined cinemagoing for many people this year.

4. The Royal Hotel

When I first saw The Royal Hotel, I didn’t realise that it wasn’t really going to have much of a ripple out in the world. I saw it at Cambridge Film Festival and was so electrified that I assumed on release, it would just be an absolute hit. It then… just kind of wasn’t, I can only assume because no one saw it. Because if you did see The Royal Hotel, I can’t imagine feeling anything other than exhiliration. It’s the story of two young American women who, while on holiday in Australia, find themselves working in an outback pub to make up a bit of extra cash. Stuck in the middle of nowhere though, they’re at the mercy of a murder of men, all of whom have an element of sketchiness to them. The rest of the film plays out as a queasy thriller with this pulpy edge, in which very little happens all while a sick feeling builds. The women may not be actively threatened but there is a lingering air of bad. Something bad could happen. Something bad might happen. Surely, something bad is about to happen. That feeling never really disappears, despite moments of respite, and the film delivers on that by having an incredibly satisfying finale that left me breathless as the credits rolled. If The Royal Hotel somehow escaped you, I really recommend a trip. It’s thrilling and a little bit pulpy, but always the right side of good taste and with this lingering dread that I absolutely loved.

3. Tár

The best film about a composer from the last year and it’s not even close! Tár is an absolutely swaggering work that is immediately imposing. It’s a long film about classical music that starts by making you sit through the entire credits and then listen to the lead character literally lecture you on music. This is all some wicked foreplay though, as Todd Field slowly ratchets his film up to pace. What you’re actually watching is the study of a woman who is falling apart because of things she may or may not have done, but is definitely capable of. Calling it a dissection of cancel culture way undersells the final product, which while included is just a fraction of what we’re going to explore. Lydia Tár is such an intricately drawn character, both from Field’s screenplay and an all timer performance by Cate Blanchett. Together, these two create someone who is repellent yet enticing, despicable yet admirable, awesome yet very much not awesome. The momentum of Tár comes from our fascination with Lydia Tár and watching her spiral into… Something, even after all this time it’s not worth spoiling the ending. Needless to say, it is an ending that is already pretty legendary and reveals a wicked glimmer of comedy that was hiding throughout the film. For such a dense work, that tease of humour at the end sent me back to the film very quickly and I absolutely adored my second viewing, even more than the first one. Maybe on the surface, Tár seems like this big serious film about classical music and cancel culture, but once you step inside you will be rewarded for your patience by a ghostly atmosphere that crumbles into mania. It it a riot. The best film about a composer from the last year and it’s not even close, it bears repeating!

2. Babylon

Hehe. Damien Chazelle does it again, at least for me. Since his second film Whiplash, I’ve been an adorer of Chazelle’s films. La La Land made me realise I can love a musical, First Man was the kind of unconventional biopic that I’m perpetually thirsty for and the aforementioned Whiplash remains one of the best films I’ve ever seen. Fair to say then, my anticipation is always high for a new Chazelle film and when that film is a three hour ejaculation that celebrates some of the best (and worst) years of Hollywood, anticipation grows yet higher. Unlike most of the viewing public though, Babylon easily met those expectations. Sure, its flagship party scenes really are special, these festivals of debauchery that (while not especially shocking) are a hell of a lot of fun, but there’s something greater going on. There are these warring emotions happening, in which we are both eulogising what the film industry was and also not shying away from how horrible a time it was for pretty much everyone. Scenes become a dialogue between grief and celebration and the audience is pulled in uncomfortable ways that have stayed with me for the year since I saw Babylon. Crucially, the film does all this while also being incredibly funny. One scene in which a battle is filmed is an absolute riot and features the best Spike Jonze cameo outside of Jackass. I know that the three hour runtime and the 18 BBFC rating both seem daunting, but they’re only in play because we have so much to do here. We have to laugh, we have to cry, we have to write a powerful eulogy to cinema as we know it. All of this is to be done before we get to the most divisive ending on this list where brilliant endings are something of a speciality. For me? It’s a home run, an ending so brazenly sincere as to fly past cringe and into genuinely amazing. Put it on tonight, gather round the family and make up your own mind (please don’t get the family together for this, lol, I cannot be responsible for that again.) I hope you love it as much as I do but I can’t expect everyone to be capable of this much love for something this wonderfully stupid.

1. Killers of the Flower Moon

We find ourselves now at a number one entry that surprises even myself. Don’t get me wrong, I was very excited for a big new Scorsese film, but how can someone who made classics like Goodfellas and modern bangers like The Wolf of Wall Street be expected to top himself? Like this! Again, Killers of the Flower Moon hasn’t made itself an easy pitch by being three and a half hours long and about (depressingly real) atrocities committed upon the Osage Nation in Oklahoma, but fortunately what they did to balance that out is make the best film of the year. It is this absolutely incredible sweep of a story, which begins as a man falling in love with an Osage woman and descends into this wretched court case about whether an act of genocide has been committed or not. It is basically the ultimate in feel bad film, tempered only by the joy you feel in getting to watch some of the best filmmaking you’ve ever seen. Scorsese is working on levels that are both immediately impressive and also basically subliminal, making me start to physically shake in my seat as the evil on screen starts to course through my veins.

All of this manages not to overshadow all the stuff on the surface that is immediately and undeniably excellent. The performances range from merely great to absolutely iconic, where actors with great faces get to play on the greatest canvas there is. Robert De Niro gets to capitalise on the last decade of friendly granddad roles by twisting benevolence into evil, Leonardo DiCaprio gets to play a level of dumb where you’re constantly guessing if he doesn’t know or doesn’t care what’s happening, and then there’s Lily Gladstone. Her eyes contain a beauty and a pain that should never have to coexist, but which speak to a darker truth about the intertwined nature of both. She shouldn’t have to but her face speaks to an entire fading culture of people in ways that have haunted me mercilessly. Even a cameo at the end of the film is a performance that brought me to tears, bringing together the narrative of the film while also dissecting true crime as a genre and our complicity in it. Again, in a year of amazing endings, this was one that appeared out of nowhere and somehow summarised with grace the three and a half hour movie I’d just seen, as well as the great American project. People who are much smarter than me have struggled to appropriately appraise Killers of the Flower Moon, so I won’t keep you here any longer, other than to say that this is an absolutely major work from an artist who has made a habit of creating an absolutely major work at least once a decade since the 1970s. Do not miss it.

Favourite TV Shows

Physical 100 – A great format for a reality TV show, made all the better by competitors who were committed to the love of the game and of each other. The greatest sportsmanship you could ask for.

Drag Race (US15, All Stars 8, Sweden, France 2, Down Under 3, UK 5, Canada 4) – I think I might do a longer post on all things Drag Race soon but as the franchise gets bigger, it has often gotten better too. Of all the seasons, I’ve been so happy with the fourth season from Canada, it’s a version of the show that deserves so much more love.

Taskmaster – Sam Campbell from series 16 won my heart, but series 15 of the perennially perfect Taskmaster has been one of the best yet, with a cast that would fight for every single pointless point.

Beef – I love a good limited series, and so while I’m obviously annoyed at the possibility of a second series, what we got of Beef was ace. Complicated character dynamics built to an unexpected place, where I only hope we remain.

Black Mirror – I think I’m the one person left who will still defend Black Mirror, but I must do it, like clockwork! This season, the big standout was “Loch Henry,” a profoundly upsetting episode that feels like Brooker pointing the biggest middle finger possible at Netflix.

Succession – For many, the obvious choice of best of the year, a consensus which I’m hard pressed to disagree with. “Connor’s Wedding” hits hard for all the obvious reasons but “America Decides” was the episode I kept coming back to, a nauseating crash to Earth as the Roy siblings meet the consequence of their actions.

Favourite Albums

10,000 gecs by 100 gecs – For a while, this was the album I would play when I started work at 9am. If you know the album, you know why that is insane, but I am very comfortable in that insanity.

the record by boygenius – Three artists in their prime, coming together to make an album where the best of every artist is fused into something beautiful. Whether you’re screaming in pain or ecstasy, this was the album for you.

Fantasy by M83 – I am always so glad to be in a world where M83 are making more music. Their soundscapes make me so happy and their testament is always in their endurance.

The Last Rotation of Earth by BC Camplight – BC Camplight is basically the only cool taste in music I have, so I like to shout his name nice and loud when I can. He’s awesome! Listen to him, this is the best one yet!

The Age of Pleasure by Janelle Monae – Going back and listening to this album in December was bleak, but The Age of Pleasure makes complete sense when the sun shines and a drink is in your hand. I can’t wait to go back.

The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We by Mitski – I cannot believe that in a world where I have a girlfriend (humble brag), Mitski is still capable of making an album that caters to my emotional needs, gentle and sublime it is.

The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess by Chappell Roan – If we’re talking just sheer weight of bangers, no album has been as great a heavyweight champion as this, god bless girly pop music.

Something to Give Each Other by Troye Sivan – The biggest shock this year for me was Troye Sivan not only making an album this good, but also filling it with samples this outrageous that all (without exception) work completely.

Guts by Olivia Rodrigo – After an album as good as Sour, Olivia Rodrigo had plenty to live up to. In many ways, Guts is superior and even in the ways it isn’t, it’s so impressive that complaints are totally pointless.

Desire, I Want to Turn Into You by Caroline Polachek – I discovered this album just as the year ended and it consumed me for a week. These are songs that are laced with something beautiful and have the addictive qualities of something evil. Going back in almost feels dangerous.

It’s the big one! The list that I spend my entire year building up to, so that people can look at it and validate all of the hours of my life I have spent watching films to get great taste. And while 2021 has proven to be another not great year in general, I think there’s been a lot of incredible films to distract us from all the everything. So incredible in fact, that even excellent films like Dune, Spencer and Judas and the Black Messiah have failed to crack the honourable mentions. As per usual, my rules are simple. It needs to have been released in the UK during 2021, it must be a feature film and this whole list is entirely subjective. You can find my full ranking of all the 2021 releases I saw here on my Letterboxd, which will allow you to judge me more thoroughly and understand which films didn’t make the cut because I didn’t see them. I’m also going to link to any posts I’ve written about any of the films mentioned, in case you want to know more about them. With all of this said, into the honourable mentions!

Honourable Mentions

Pig – Nic Cage has done many incredible things throughout his career, but with Pig he does something he’s never done before: he made me cry. In a career spanning decades, Pig has immediately marked itself out as a special film for Cage.

Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time – If you are not into Evangelion then this film will not convince you in any way, but those (like me) who are completely on board with the whole nonsense of this franchise, you are in for a treat that goes as big visually as it does emotionally.

Sound of Metal – I don’t know whether to celebrate Sound of Metal for its unbelievably brilliant lead performance, its emotional reckoning with the unavoidable or the way it gave the Deaf community the stage many of us never knew it needed. I don’t have to choose though, all three are worthy reasons.

Censor – As we will get to a couple of times more on this list, I seem to love horror films that everyone else falls out of love with because of something weird in the third act. Censor is that perfectly, a film I am so deeply in love with that its idiosyncrasy only enhances it.

Last Night in Soho – My most controversial choice I’d imagine, I saw Last Night in Soho twice in cinemas and had a blast both times. It might be Wright’s weakest fiction film, but it’s also a lot of fun and an experience I have kept thinking about since release.

Invisible Life – You have not heard of this film. After playing festivals in 2019 under a longer name, Invisible Life has had to wait until 2021 for a UK release, which even then was in very few cinemas. Please, I urge you to check it out, it’s a sensational Brazilian melodrama that will pull you in so slowly that you won’t realise how deep you’re in until you start crying.

Promising Young Woman – I almost put Promising Young Woman higher up the list, but I haven’t seen it since release and feel like it could do with a second watch to confirm some feelings. As it stands though, note perfect casting and some tricky emotional wire walking have had me thinking non-stop all year.

With these very honourable mentions done, into the full ranked list!

7. The French Dispatch

There is a criticism surrounding The French Dispatch that it is too much of Wes Anderson’s style and artifice. After my first watch, I kind of got that. This is an anthology film that is so full of different visual quirks and character moments that you may not have time to actually form any emotional attachments. But then there was the second watch. Again, I was a really big fan of the film the first time, as I say in my review. That second viewing though, man. It opens this entire film up into something approaching one of Anderson’s best. The jokes are funnier, the visuals are even more impressive and finally, that emotional core so many believed to be absent opens up. In the second story, much maligned by detractors, I found myself welling up at the denouement. It is the culmination of this collection of stories about beautiful things taken away before their time is over but being forced to face that truth and enjoy the melancholy nostalgia of the past. Genuinely, I cannot recommend enough watching this film twice, at least. Your appreciation will soar and you too will realise that The French Dispatch is one of the best films of 2021 and one of the best in a filmography that is hardly full of duds.

6. Drive My Car

I’ll get it out the way now, Drive My Car is three hours long. That in itself is probably going to put most people off but believe me when I say that every minute in all three of those hours is essential. Drive My Car is the second excellent film adaptation of a Murakami short story in the last few years, but much different from the simmering tension of Burning. It is the story of a theatre director and actor who, after facing a personal loss, is attempting to adapt Uncle Vanya using a cast all speaking different languages. While putting on this production, he is required to have a driver driving his car and during these drives the two listen to tapes that contain the voice of a ghost on them. I’m aware this doesn’t sound thrilling so far, but believe me when I say it works because it is so hard to put your finger on what the film is. After seeing it, I said to one of my colleagues that I was surprised how sexy it was, which garnered the response “actually I thought it was really sad.” This conversation is testament to the brilliant fluidity that powers Drive My Car, a film that manages to be three hours long yet still leave room for interpretation. Set aside that time, put your phone away and settle in for this film which will quietly and slowly draw you in very deep.

5. Malignant

I watched Malignant at home and spent, as an educated guess, half of it slapping my bed with complete giddy joy. Most of this list is full of cerebral films that make me seem very smart (though I am letting weird ones slip through more than ever this year), but there is something about really powerful genre films that allows them to circumvent my consciousness and hit the middle of the monkey brain. A lot of the time it happens with really fun bad movies, but Malignant is a top-tier seat slapper the likes of which I haven’t experienced in a big budget movie this past decade. The story is barely important, something about a woman who had a surgery when she was younger and is now experiencing hallucinations of murders seemingly as they are committed. What is important, is that the story is a means of servicing some wild twists, very silly performances and a healthy portion of absolutely gonzo set pieces. Everything I love about bad genre movies is here, but done genuinely well and with deliberate intent. The fact that I’ve only seen this the once and by myself is frankly the only thing that holds Malignant this far back on the list. It is some of the most fun I’ve had with any film this year, you should have it too.

4. Never Gonna Snow Again

It’s finally here. I finally get to talk about Never Gonna Snow Again again. Back when I was covering the virtual London Film Festival in 2020, this film snuck up on me and became my favourite of the festival. The problem was, I didn’t know when I’d see it again. Being my most extensive stint at a festival to date, I realised that while some of the higher profile films already have distribution, a lot of smaller but still excellent films can fly under the radar and remain in film purgatory. Fortunately, Never Gonna Snow Again was picked up by Picture House Entertainment (who, full disclosure, are my employers) and it came out. For real. For finally. Having gotten what I’ve asked for though, I now have the difficult task of explaining this film to you. It’s a fairy tale about a masseuse in an upper class suburb, who may or may not have magical powers, but it’s also not that. It’s a comedy, a tragedy, a modern day myth about the destructive nature of late capitalism. It feels special in its uniqueness and has gone cruelly under appreciated before and since its release. So please, seek out Never Gonna Snow Again, a film that has to be seen to be felt to be believed.

3. Bo Burnham: Inside

I don’t care if you don’t think it’s a film, Bo Burnham: Inside is a feature film in my eyes and an excellent one at that. It’s also part of a very specific time in my life, where despite my degree being over I was still in a weird emotional limbo and feeling very stranded in the midst of a pandemic that remains a huge part of our lives. For as long as he’s been performing, Bo Burnham has been great at verbalising these tricky emotions that make up modern life, but he brought his A-game for his finest project to date. At first, Inside appears to be more of the same, a series of fun songs about modern life that contain a hint of darkness, but then it grows into something bigger. It gets a lot darker as the film develops, with Burnham visibly starting to crumble, yet I think even this is an attempt to mislead the audience. Inside is definitely a look into the emotional reality of living during the pandemic, but it’s also very specifically about being a creative person and how you separate your own life from your art. This thin line that divides reality and performance is one of my very favourite themes to see explored and at every turn, Inside tackles it. I think it is very special and to be incredibly honest, it became a part of me. Of course it made the list.

2. Petite Maman

Cėline Sciamma almost made the top spot on my best of the year list for a second year in a row, but take that only as a comment on how much I loved the top film this year and not even a shadow of a suggestion that Petite Maman isn’t as close to perfection as a feature film has gotten since Paddington 2. It’s a film about a young girl who, in the wake of her grandmothers death, returns to the home her mother grew up in and makes a new friend while adventuring in the woods. Importantly, it is also a film that is 72 minutes long. When was the last time you saw 1. a film that short or 2. a film that short that still manages to feel so full of affection? More than that makes Petite Maman special though, everything else about it is special too. The sparse but powerful use of music is special, the way editing is used to time travel is special and the two lead performances are incredibly special. Sciamma has yet again made a film that feels like an already timeless classic. She is too powerful. Arguably, she may need to be stopped. Until we stop her though, may we continue to get more knockout masterpieces like Petite Maman.

1. Titane

I’m tempted to just leave my thoughts on Titane as 😈. Words can only do so well at conveying how delicious the cinematic chaos hidden inside this film is, why not finally succumb to emojis? I also am tempted to leave it there because I don’t want to be the one who spoils Titane for you, a film so full of treats to unwrap, some of which may contain razor blades. In an inverse of the way I love Petite Maman because of its simple perfection, I adore Titane because of its chaotic mess. There is A LOT going on with this film. We’re talking serial killers, we’re talking the performativity of gender roles and we’re talking human relations with machines. Those all happen in the first fifteen minutes. If you didn’t know by now, Titane is a hell of a ride. The film uses the language of extreme cinema to speak to an innate truth about the extraordinary human capacity for love. It’s not that the extremity is all smoke and mirrors per se, more that it is a necessary leap of faith to get audiences to release their inhibitions. I do not doubt that this film will not be for everyone. A few years ago, it wouldn’t have been for me. But now it is. It really is. Titane is a lot of things to a small(ish) group of people and I am proud to consider myself in that number. You might be too. Take a bite and find out. 😈