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End of Year Favourites, top 7

Top 7 – My Favourite Films of 2024

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.

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End of Year Favourites

My Favourite Album of 2024 – brat by Charli XCX

I do think that broadly, I have listened to more music than usual this year. I also think that for pop music, this has been an absolutely fantastic year and proof that great years of music aren’t just whatever year you were 14 in. With both of those things said, my favourite album of the year does not stray from the consensus and has not had a great deal of competition in my heart since its release in May. My urge to be a contrarian has been stifled, squashed and beaten down. By whom, you may ask? It’s Charli baby.

In every conceivable sense, brat (stylised to be lowercase in a move that frustrates my inner and outer pedant) is the album of the year. If you weren’t overly familiar with the work of Charli XCX before this year, you are now. Her landmark album, ten years after exploding onto the pop scene, has created iconography that spilled over into films, TV and even politics (much as we all try to move on from that one.) Even if you went the whole year without listening to the album, you know what brat is. For many, the album snuck up on them. If I may have permission to be smug, I knew from the second I heard lead single “Von dutch” that I was going to be locked in. In the second half of that first verse, there is a pulsating bass that gets brought in which acts as a sort of emotional Shepard tone. For those unaware, the literal Shepard tone is an audio illusion in which a piece of music appears to keep raising in pitch, despite not doing so. Metaphorically, that’s what “Von dutch” did for me, ever escalating in intensity until the song finally wraps up and leaves me a broken man. Appropriately, my closest comparison isn’t music but the film Uncut Gems, a janky rollercoaster that I love to be thrown around on. The music video featured Charli beating the shit out of the cameraman while they followed her through an airport and yeah, that’s about the effect this song has on me, a banger that leaves me bruised.

If you’re here for bangers, my oh my are you in the right place. “360” gets us off to a great start and the refrain “I’m so Julia” (in reference to the breakout star of the aforementioned Uncut Gems) has never been far from conversation since release. We then jump into the wicked and wild “Club classics”, in which beats are all slowly layered on top of each other in a way that caused me to burst into a wild grin the first time I heard it. It’s outlandish, as is all of A. G. Cook’s production on the album, and you can’t shake the feeling that there’s no way he and Charli can get away with this. Speaking of getting away with it, the sheer transparency of “Sympathy is a knife” is audacious too, a barely concealed attack on the likes of Taylor Swift that conveniently also has a beat to shake your head to. Another favourite of mine is “Mean girls”, a ripping yarn about being horrible that out of nowhere drops the best piano solo of the century. Debussy would be proud, even if he wouldn’t know what the Staples Centre is. Final amongst the bangers is the closing track “365”, which interpolates the opening track but folds it in deeper and deeper and deeper until it bursts. As someone who no longer enjoys clubbing, this nightmare banger is the most appealing adaptation of how horrible being trapped in the club can feel. It’s a phenomenal way to end the album.

Lest we think Charli is just capable of bangers and bops, there’s also songs on brat that slow it down and get in depth about her life. “I think about it all the time” comes as a strange turn when you first hear it, really slowing the tempo down as Charli reflects on the purpose of her career and whether she should scrap it all for the chance to have a child. It is raw and a little messy, but both of those elements compliment the other to make a song that just feels real. The song on the album that really moves me though is “So I”, a song that is an ode to Charli’s friend, collaborator and hyperpop icon Sophie. In 2020, Sophie died after falling off a roof, having gone up there to stargaze. I wouldn’t usually specify cause of death but in contextualising Sophie for those who haven’t heard of her, I think it is important to know that to her last breath, she was in pursuit of intangible beauty in the world. This slow ballad reimagining a possible future that never was is at once a beautiful tribute to such an artistic soul and at the same time, entirely against what Sophie was known for, Charli even musing “Would you like this one? Maybe just a little bit.” The rawness comes through in these songs like a sledgehammer, enhancing the high energy of the songs that sit alongside it in a way that only a well structured album can.

The exciting thing about brat is that this isn’t even half of the project. In October, Charli released Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat, which was a remix album full of guest stars. They aren’t all home runs (regarding Matty Healy being on the song “I might say something stupid”, I’m sure he will) but they are way more hit than miss and all reshape their original songs into new and worthwhile experiences. Ariana Grande emphasises the difficulty of fame on “Sympathy is a knife”, Caroline Polachek sings about foxes having sex in the newly downbeat “Everything is romantic” and “So I” is finally turned into the kind of weird up-tempo song Sophie might have liked. An honourable mention also goes to the “Von dutch” remix, a remix I originally rejected for being too different to the original, but that not only converted me to its new take but also eventually brought me around to the musical prowess of Addison Rae. Once again, we end on “365”, but now ratcheted up to a new insane level. When I head the song for the first time as I walked into a Lidl, I felt like I had been electrocuted. It was phenomenal and a massive statement to prove that months after brat originally came out, it could still be the talk of the town.

There is a song I have conspicuously not mentioned so far, because it is not only the best song of the album but also the best song of the year. The song is “girl, so confusing”, Charli’s ode to confusing female friendships where you love the same person whose downfall you secretly root for. With the lyric “people say we’re alike, they say we’ve got the same hair”, many immediately assumed the song was about Lorde. Instead of denying, or even just staying quiet, Charli pulled a power move; she released a remix of the song with Lorde. As someone who is a huge Lorde fan (remember, Solar Power was my album of the year for 2021), I have to say that her verse here is some of the best writing she has ever done. Much as Charli used brat to scratch the surface of her soul, Lorde turns up to “work it out on the remix” and deliver an album worth of iconic lines in one verse. I’d be remiss to not mention the “you walk like a bitch, when I was ten someone said that” line which changes the whole vibe of the verse to one of total self evisceration, but I also get goosebumps whenever I hear the line “inside that icon, there’s still a young girl from Essex.” To borrow a dumb twitter phrase, it is a song of two queens coming together to maximise their joint slay. It is the greatest song of the year in every sense, something that will forever define the album that defined the year.

We will see how time treats brat. Ultimately, we will enter an era where it is viewed as cringe. We all are stuck with the legacy of “Kamala is brat” for at least another four years and whenever something is this popular, it has to be unpopular before it can be popular again. But trust and believe, coming from the music expert that I am, brat will be beloved again in the future and endure its criticism. There is no argument that it will define 2024 but its greatness will endure too. Not bad for a young girl from Bishops Stortford.

Honourable Mentions:

Imaginal Disk by Magdalena Bay – Though this list is unranked, Imaginal Disk is my second place. I liked it on a first listen but I haven’t been able to stop listening to it since. It’s playful in its experimentation, welcoming in its oddness, yet always in reach of an operatic grandness. It’s an easy listen that only gets more thrilling the longer you’re there.

Found Heaven by Conan Gray – Like many on this list, Conan Gray is someone whose earlier songs I liked but whose albums have always missed the mark. Found Heaven really did do as its title promised, delivering a fun 80s spin on Gray’s sound that marks them out as someone who continues to have real promise.

Radical Optimism by Dua Lipa – The great crime of Radical Optimism is not being Future Nostalgia, which is tough as one of the great pop albums of the decade. However in the right time, with the sun shining and the world being right, it hit like an absolute freight train.

Don’t Forget Me by Maggie Rogers – As with Radical Optimism, this is an album that needs the sun shining and the open road ahead of you. Rogers really commands a laidback rock style here on what feels like an exciting new direction for her sound.

Short N Sweet by Sabrina Carpenter – Short N Sweet is the sixth album by Sabrina Carpenter but might as well have been her first. It was a big announcement to the world of who she was, what her sound has become and why she’s worth putting in your headphones. True to the name, it’s a delicious dose of sugar that doesn’t outstay its welcome.

The Great Impersonator by Halsey – Consider this my big prediction for the future, one day The Great Impersonator will be looked upon as a misunderstood masterpiece. It came out to a baffling herd of misogynistic hatred, despite being a painfully sincere examination of someone who thought they were about to die finally realising the value in their life.

Charm by Clairo – I’ve liked a few Clairo songs before but always found her albums a little incoherent. Consider me delighted then that she finally scores a true homerun here, in a wistful album that is playful enough to never teeter over into full sadness.

Eternal Sunshine by Ariana Grande – It’s nice to have an Ariana Grande thing from 2024 that I really like! Though she takes a risk by referencing my favourite film of all time, the albums narrative isn’t reliant on it and is able to blossom into its own confident project.

Songs About You Specifically by Michelle – My partner put a song from this album on one day and after it worming its way around my brain for days, I was drawn to the album. Simple pop brilliance, start to finish, I cannot wait for more.

Cowboy Carter by Beyoncé – My big critique of Cowboy Carter? It’s not Renaissance. That album undid years of preconceptions I had about Beyoncé in a big way, so I was going to be very receptive to whatever was next. Though overlong and unwieldy, it does cohere as a project and unlike other epics this year, I can see myself going back often for the whole thing in addition to those regular doses of its highlights.

Cartoon Darkness by Amyl and the Sniffers – I like listening to Australians swear and scream loudly. Easily the best album of the year that your mum will hate.

Only God Was Above Us by Vampire Weekend – There was a Vampire Weekend album this year! Even more impressively, it was great! This band so defined by one era continue to impress as they blaze into the future with a constantly shifting sound.

Kissing With a Cavity EP by Sophie Truax – The puppet girl from tiktok made an EP that I think is fantastic. Opener “fifty50” sets a bleep boop tone before getting nice and silly with an ode to electronic cars in “MFPR1US”. I wish Sophie Truax luck in becoming a bigger artist and not just being “the puppet girl from tiktok.”

GNX by Kendrick Lamar – There are two reasons Kendrick Lamar is on here. First, GNX is a fantastic album that I’ve had on a real solid rotation since its release. Second though, consider this a placeholder for all his songs attacking Drake. “euphoria”, “meet the grahams” and especially “Not Like Us” came together to contribute to a historic downfall of the former biggest name in rap music, a blaze of gunfire that rocketed Lamar to the top of the charts and into legend.

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End of Year Favourites

My Favourite Video Game of 2024 – Balatro

My favourite game of the year is a game where you just play poker. Not in a Red Dead Redemption way, where you can play poker and then go out of the bar to do quests, kill some guys, enjoy some voice acting. No. It’s just poker. Except of course, it isn’t. Balatro is more than just poker. It is a special and singular little game that has managed to completely consume my year.

When you boot Balatro up, it does appear unassuming. You are given a hand of cards and, over the course of a few more hands and discards, you are asked to score a set amount of chips. Typical poker rules apply, where a two pair is fine but if you can get something like a full house you’re going to get a much bigger score. Once you hit the blind, you are taken to a shop. Here is where Balatro starts to evolve. In the shop, you can buy Jokers, which will radically change the course of play. Some change the rules, such as cards which allow you to build a straight with a gap of one or with four cards, or perhaps a Joker that will treat Spades and Clubs, and Hearts and Diamonds as two interchangeable suits of black and red. Some however change your score. It might be more chips for playing face cards, a bonus for how long you go without playing your most frequent hand, perhaps a x3 multiplier for when you play your last hand. These Jokers that change your score are the key to making it through the escalating gauntlet of “blinds” (rounds) that make up the game.

These blinds themselves provide challenges, as on every third blind, you will be given an additional obstacle to overcome. Some are as simple as facing a bigger blind or only being able to play one hand, but some are potentially game ruining as they debuff all cards of a set suit or disable all Jokers until one is sold. If you’ve built your entire run around playing diamonds, a blind like that can ruin everything. Speaking of though, the shop doesn’t just offer Jokers. There are vouchers which offer long-term improvements to your run, as well as booster packs that can add cards to your deck, change the cards already in your deck or make certain hands more valuable. What this leads to is insane runs where depending on the random number generation (or RNG to the real losers) you could be picking up five of a kind on the ace of spades while holding Jokers that boost your score when playing aces and only having black suits in your hand. You will eventually break the game. That is how the game is designed and quite frankly, that imperfection of structure is the perfection of the game.

Everything I’m saying will sound crazy if you’ve not played or watched footage of Balatro. I admit, when I heard about it, I was confused too. But, where there can be strategic complexity, the face of the game is refreshingly simple. All areas of the screen are neatly segmented and overlaid with a CRT filter that gives an old school vibe to the game that the gameplay is also leaning into, which allow the personality on the Joker cards to pop. They are all given unique and fun designs that weirdly create a connection between them and the player. You’ll do a run of the game and see that Joker that got you your first win. A warm nostalgia spreads across your chest and you smile, picking the Joker again. This time you fully shit the bed and are out on ante 4. But what a face that Joker had. Crucially, the musical score for Balatro is also perfectly weighted, this endlessly looping track that never once got on my nerves throughout all my playthroughs. While I would often substitute it with a podcast or an album, playthroughs with the sound on were never grating. Those little noises as cards clock up extra points are so well judged too, little addictive bursts of pleasure to stimulate the brain. I would be remiss though if I failed to mention the fire effect in the game. Early in your time with Balatro, you will notice you get a score that causes the score boxes to set alight. This is what happens when you play a single hand so good it eclipses the entire blind. That is the high you will spend the rest of that run and every run forever after chasing, a small design decision that can itself be enough to sustain a gameplay loop around.

All of that would be enough. I have roguelikes that I have returned to frequently throughout the years that offer me no new content but retain that addictive gameplay hook, and Balatro would remain a great game if the same were true for it. The same is not true though. Balatro has a level of depth to it that makes returning to it frankly a necessity. There are more Jokers to unlock by playing in unusual ways, new decks that can completely change your playstyle and even a challenge mode, full of twenty hand crafted runs that are all intended to push the rugged Balatro player into doing something new yet again. Roguelikes often become a game of bashing your head against the wall, yet Balatro doesn’t stop at making it fun to hit your head against the wall. There are new ways to hit your head against the wall, new walls to hit your head against and new treats hiding behind the wall. You’ll have so much fun that you won’t realise you’ve given yourself concussion (for the sake of the metaphor, replace concussion with losing five hours of your life to Balatro that you could have put towards writing the next great American novel). People have managed to 100% Balatro but not without sacrificing hundreds of hours to it. Even without getting close to that feat, I can’t admit my playtime isn’t staggering.

Again, this all sounds like complete nonsense, so do yourself a favour and buy a copy of Balatro. It is on all consoles, PC, even your phone and you will not regret a single one of the (many) hours you lose to it. It is proof that not only is the indie gaming scene the most exciting facet of that industry right now, but also proof that even a genre as overextended as the roguelike still has plenty of juice to be squeezed. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s time for another round. Dealer, I’m all in. Poker reference. Yeah.

Honourable Mentions:

Buckshot Roulette – If you thought Balatro didn’t go far enough in perverting an existing game and turning it into something new, may I present to you Buckshot Roulette, a game that boldly asks “what if you played Russian Roulette with a shotgun?” The vibes are rancid but undeniably compelling.

The Casting of Frank Stone – I’m always a sucker for Supermassive Games and their now classic playable movie style of gameplay, so another serving is always welcome. While Frank Stone falters a little with an ending that hews too close to Dead by Daylight to be fully satisfying as a standalone game, the journey getting there was one of their best yet.

TCG Card Shop Simulator – I always question if I can put a game in early access on this list, but seeing as I sunk 20 hours into this over four days, it feels wrong not to acknowledge that I have had and am continuing to have a blast with this game. There’s nothing like coming home from a hard day of being a manager and decompressing by playing a managerial sim.

Peglin – “What if Peggle was Slay the Spire?” is a pretty simple premise as far as they go, but then why hasn’t it happened until now? Though lacking the purity of either game, Peglin combines the two into a game I keep dipping back into.

UFO 50 – I can’t claim to have even scratched the surface of UFO 50, a densely packed and carefully curated compilation of 50 full-length retro games from fictional developer UFO Soft (but actually developed by Spelunky team Mossmouth.) From what I have already discovered though, this is a feat as vast as it is special, that I want to keep returning to all next year.

Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2 – This is undeniably little more than a big dumb shooter game that failed to get me actually invested in the Warhammer universe. However, blasting and slashing through hordes of goons with a friend was a great time and I don’t think my time with it is yet done, a thought that does still excite me.

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End of Year Favourites

My Favourite TV of 2024 – The Traitors

At the tail end of 2022, my partner and I were searching for something fun and easy to watch together and stumbled across a show on iPlayer called The Traitors. The show is a British adaptation of a Dutch format called De Verraders in which Claudia Winkleman guides a series of guests through missions to earn cash. Amongst them, however, are traitors, looking to murder faithful players every night and sew the seeds of chaos. Players vote to eliminate traitors and if any are left at the end of the game, they steal the whole prize pot. It’s a simple format, which has spread across the globe to broad success, but the British series is king for me, primarily because it casts normal people. The American and Canadian versions both fill their casts with celebrities, which still makes for entertaining TV, but loses the sheer purity of the game. And if we’re talking purity, the second season of The Traitors UK is the place to go for the purest joy that reality TV has to offer. It kicked off the year in TV with a bang in a way that left everything else in the dust.

As a warning, this is sort of going to devolve into a recap of The Traitors UK season 2 as that’s the easiest way to explain why it’s so excellent. I will keep spoilers on other seasons light so that there is still plenty for you to discover if this makes you realise what you’re missing out on. Our first two episodes are pretty standard fare, with the players going on missions together and our traitors being chosen. This series there are four traitors, three chosen by Claudia who are then tasked with recruiting a fourth. Our first three are Harry, Paul and Ash, who recruit Miles and start off pretty strong. Ash’s name is thrown around but the traitors all look out for each other. Things start to get special though in episode three. Everyone has been joking that Paul looks like the son of Diane, another contestant on the show. Diane jokes about it in a confessional interview and says “Paul’s not my son… But Ross is.” Usually on the show, when a pair know each other from the start the audience are told this information. Here though, we are surprised, deceived and flummoxed. It is an incredibly exciting structural move that sets up an insane episode.

One of the joys in every single season of The Traitors is that the people who breakdown, lose their mind or otherwise act a fool are almost always innocent. People with nothing to hide suddenly become the most volatile cast members and borderline force the group to banish them out of sheer confusion. Episode 3 features one such case, as a faithful named Brian gets in his head. During a mission, it is revealed that the other players all think he is a sheep, allowing himself to be led blindly by others. This disconnect between how the others see him and how he saw himself sends Brian mad and he is rabidly running around the group asking people what they think of him. It is unbelievably suspicious behaviour that itself pushes him to a rambling monologue at the round table in which he cuts off Claudia Winkleman, just to dig his own grave deeper. Early on, it felt like a special moment we would all remember forever, a chorus of “am I or amn’t I?” ringing out across the nation.

The moments kept coming though. Ash eventually found herself banished and the three male traitors carried on, planning to murder Diane, which was to be a murder in plain sight. For this to work, they had to convince Diane to drink a glass of pink fizz. Unfortunately, Diane bloody loves pink fizz and downed the whole thing. However, the juicy part of this is that the murder isn’t instant and the traitors all have to come to breakfast, expecting Diane to be dead and seeing her alive and well. That’s because today is her funeral. The mission for the players is to work out who hasn’t been killed, slowly whittling down options and leaving a handful of players walking to what might just be their grave. Once we reach the graves, the final three must climb into caskets and the players put flowers in the grave of the person they think has died. This leads to a genuinely heartbreaking moment as Ross walks up to his mother’s grave and throws a rose on her body, having to avoid tears because no one knows about their connection. This whole scene is a moment that somehow rides a delicate line between delicious camp and genuine sentimentality, in a way that I think even a scripted show might struggle to.

Shortly after Diane’s death comes a big moment. This season, Paul was a particularly smug traitor, someone who seemed very certain of his own success from the word go. Even though the show often has you rooting for the traitors, he was someone whose downfall promised to be legendary, a promise which the show wisely delivered. You see, while faithfuls usually crack over nothing, traitors are often tripped up when they buy too much into their own hype. Become popular, get traitors out, but don’t look too in control while doing it or people will be suspicious. It’s a tough balance and it’s fair to say Paul got vertigo. Earlier in the season, he attempted an elaborate double bluff that, to cut a long story short, ended with Paul losing his place as the most trusted faithful and casting a permanent shadow of doubt on himself. Harry saw this and understood that a downfall was coming. With Paul having kicked out two fellow traitors already, Harry lays his trap, allowing all the faithfuls to do the talking for him while he comes in with the killer blows. The mere reaction alone to what comes next is a highlight of the show. Paul is voted out, delivers a speech and bows as he admits to being a traitor. Cue screaming and shouting, chairs being thrown, people hugging Harry, pure cinematic chaos.

With Harry being a “traitor hunter” now though, he needed a get out scheme, which leads us to the smartest play a player has ever made for their game. In a mission, Harry picks up a shield, meaning he is safe from murder that night, though obviously as a traitor he is safe every night. His friend Molly, a faithful, sees him get the shield, but he asks her to keep it a secret. Later in the day, Harry tells two other players about this shield in order to gain their trust. That night, he recruits another traitor and at breakfast, magic happens. Due to the recruitment, there was no murder, but the three who knew about Harry’s shield immediately start blabbing that the traitors must have tried to kill Harry the night before, meaning Harry couldn’t be a traitor and that anyone gunning for him probably was. It was an absolutely stunning move which cemented a trustworthy clique around Harry and made him one of the all time great Traitors contestants.

After that play, there was almost no way Harry wouldn’t have made the final, which is fortunate as he leads us somewhere very emotional. Over the episode, the numbers are slowly whittled down and the only thing standing in Harry’s way is a man named Jaz, also known as Jazatha Christie. Jaz has been picking up clues very slowly but has been the only one with solid suspicions of Harry. It became a race against time for Jaz to gather enough evidence and create enough alliances to take Harry down before it was too late. Alas, Harry’s trump card was Molly, an ally who he knew would take him straight to the end. Indeed she does, eliminating Jaz and triggering the end of the game. The two stand there, excited. Both are asked to reveal their allegiance. Molly smiles, saying faithful. Harry pauses. Molly’s smile fades. She has been absolutely played like a game of Kerplunk and now the balls have finally dropped. She runs off crying and Harry wins every single penny of the prize fund. What a brutal game, ending on a note that only isn’t dour because the strategy was just that impressive.

Those paragraphs leave out so much, so genuinely, don’t consider this season a loss if you still fancy watching it. It really is one of the most gripping seasons of television I’ve ever been lucky enough to witness. This year I also got properly into the franchise as a whole, watching all the US, New Zealand and Canadian seasons, as well as the final Australian season. The only one of those I wouldn’t recommend is Australia S2, in which the faithful are complete fools the entire season, reject all potential evidence and are blindsided at all times. Its sole redemption is the final three minutes in which the traitors face off and get what was coming to them. As I say though, all the others are well worth your time. Aus 1 is a special blend of a season with some phenomenal moments, the New Zealand seasons have some of the best connections between contestants and both UK seasons do remain a golden standard. With UK and US seasons 3 starting this week (and in fact, UK starting tonight), now is the perfect time to get into The Traitors. Enjoy what these new seasons have to offer, before enjoying the extensive and highly rewarding back catalogue of the greatest reality competition show with men in capes that isn’t Ru Paul’s Drag Race.

Honourable Mentions:

Ru Paul’s Drag Race US16, All Stars 9, UK vs the World 2, Canada vs the World 2, France 3, Global All Stars, UK 6, Down Under 4 and Canada 4 and 5 – Welcome to Drag Race corner! Lots of confusing seasons this year with wrong winners (according to what the show was telling us, all love to the queens), with the highlight being, for the first time ever, the UK season. All the queens were instantly iconic, wore terrible wigs and made us fall in love with them in every fantastic lip sync. Something to be patriotic about finally!

Hunted – This year I finally got into Hunted, a show in which contestants must go on the run from fake police officers. The hook is simple and the show always seems to deliver the goods, it’s that good kind of reality TV done well.

Baby Reindeer – Look, I did watch things that weren’t reality TV! Baby Reindeer burst onto the scene with an unbelievable mix of gripping shocks, dark humour and complex exploration of how we allow ourselves to be manipulated. If you didn’t see it, it really is the show this year you have to see to believe.

Doctor Who – I like Doctor Who and I think it’s nice to have a good series of it again. Nothing mindblowing, just fun Saturday night viewing with big ideas and a heart, even (and often especially) when it’s being stupid.

Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont Spelling Bee (Aus and NZ) – One of my favourite discoveries from Taskmaster New Zealand was Guy Montgomery, whose dry absurdism I find hysterical. Here, he transplants that to his own show in which spelling is mixed with torturing comedians for our enjoyment. Until you watch it, you won’t realise what you’re missing.

Taskmaster (UK and NZ) – As I was saying above, nothing warms my heart like dry absurdism, stupid challenges and melting comedians brains. Of the year, my highlights were cricket nut Andy Zaltzman, as well as frenemies Rosie Jones and Jack Dee. Long may the mighty Davies and the pathetic Horne reign!

Boybands Forever – I have an issue with where this documentary ends, especially given recent incidents in pop culture, but it’s a really interesting documentary that allows its villains to dig their own graves and allows the exploited boyband members plenty of time to air their grievances.

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