Top 10 Films of 2024: PBS Film Guy Bill McCuddy's Best Reaches New Heights
Hamptons International Film Festival Artistic Director David Nugent told the audience before Emilia Perez that it was “like nothing you’ve ever seen before.” He was right. And I was with the sex-change-drug-dealer-musical right up to almost the end. So it may get Oscars, but it’s not on my Top 10 List. Same goes for the wildly overpraised Anora which has a Best Actress Oscar in sight for Mikey Madison and that’s the right decision. But a long second act keeps it off my list.
Full disclosure, I see around 250 films a year for PBS and several podcasts, but I still haven’t seen I Saw the TV Glow, All We Imagine As Light or The Seed of the Sacred Fig. All of which are ending up on other lists. I have seen The Brutalist and all I can say is it lives up to the name. It’s brutal. Brutally long, brutally boring.
Here’s what I did like. Let the kvetching begin.
Top 10 Films of 2024
10. My Old Ass is a comedy starring Aubrey Plaza and a 21-year-old whose name you’ll hear a lot in the future: Maisy Stella. Speaking of future, this time travel-ish screenplay has Plaza visiting a younger version of herself. It’s funny and touching. That usually doesn’t work unless it’s Ted Lasso. This fires jokes and pathos on all cylinders.
9. The Bikeriders is an early ‘60s Chicago-area motorcycle gang drama starring the bulletproof Tom Hardy as a charismatic leader and Austin Butler as his perhaps appointed successor. The real knockout performance is from Harley hanger-on Jodie Comer. She never disappoints and this is no exception. Take the ride.
8. Some first films have critics saying “This is a guy to watch in the future.” Well, Dev Patel is a first-time director to watch NOW in Monkey Man. He also stars as the title character. Easily the best action film of 2024, it’s got revenge and kung foolery fight scenes to burn. You might need a Xanax. (Though for legal and journalistic reasons I can’t actually advise that.)
7. Remember when Jude Law was in everything including your home movies? After a career hiatus, he’s back and terrific as an FBI agent trying to bring down a white supremacist group in The Order. His costar Nicholas Hoult is in everything this year, but this is the best. When does he eat? This tense procedural drama was off everyone’s radar and they’re all wrong.
6. I saw Saturday Night at the Hamptons International Film Festival this year and director Jason Reitman had just hung up with Lorne Michaels. The Yoda of late-night live comedy gave his blessing. And I’m stunned this behind the scenes look at the show’s first night in 1975 didn’t find more success. Now that it’s streaming you can watch it like SNL — at home. It’s laugh out loud frenetic and funny.
5. Imagine Mark Zuckerberg and Roman Roy on a road trip and you’ve got A Real Pain. Written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg (he also stars) and costarring Kieran Culkin, the pair embark on a trip to Poland to visit German camps and their grandmother’s home. It’s tough where you’d expect but light and very funny where you wouldn’t. Culkin is in the conversation for Best Supporting Actor and that wouldn’t surprise me at all.
4. September 5th is the best ‘found footage’ movie ever made. Because the footage is real. It’s from ABC’s coverage of the Munich massacre at the Olympics in 1972. It seamlessly blends what the world actually saw with the other drama inside a television control room. The real Peter Jennings, Jim McKay and Howard Cosell are here along with actors portraying them. Peter Sarsgaard is a very believable bad-ass Roone Arledge. By the way, 900 million people watched this unfold on television. `
3. Conclave is another film I saw at the HIFF and it captivated a sold-out Guild Hall (on a Saturday morning no less.) Ralph Fiennes has to oversee the election of a new Pope. God help him. This is ‘Succession in a sanctuary.’ And could easily win Best Picture along with Best Actor for Fiennes and Best Supporting Actress for Isabella Rosselini. The ending bothers some people and I admit it’s forcing a timely conversation but that’s not a bad thing. And everything that comes before it is first rate.
2. Man, did I think Timothee Chalamet was gonna fall flat on his 1960s folk face as Bob Dylan. And was I was dead wrong. Everything about A Complete Unknown is almost perfect. The time, the sense of change a comin’ and the poet musician who helped lead the charge. Unplugged, then plugged in. Chalamet is miscast in the Dune films. Here, he IS Bob Dylan. Sings and plays the guitar, too.
1. Go to Netflix right now. Pop a Dramamine. (It’s over-the-counter so I’m safer with this medical recommendation.) And then watch Skywalkers: A Love Story. Even as a documentary it’s the best thriller, action film and love story of the year. Two people who break laws by climbing buildings around the world and posting it on social media could have been just okay. Instead it’s the best movie of the year. You’ll be dizzy in lots of ways. And thank me.
See you next year. Unless you run into me first at Trivia Night Mondays at the Green Room in the Sag Harbor Cinema. Bring your A-Game. It’s a tough room whether I’m there or not.
PBS Film Critic Bill McCuddy contributes regularly to Dan’s Papers, the New York Post, New York Daily News and nine podcasts, three of which are movie related. He also covers the year-end awards race for GoldDerby.com. He lives in Bridgehampton with a 100 inch TV so he doesn’t get out much.