Movies watched in 2024

My 22 favorite films of 2024, and a few thoughts on the moving pictures I’ve seen this year.

Previous years: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020,
2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012.

As you look over my favorites, keep in mind that I haven’t had a chance to see Challengers, The Substance, Anora, Fall Guy, The Wild Robot, I Saw the TV Glow, Love Lies Bleeding, Smile 2, Kinds of Kindness, Conclave, A Complete Unknown, Dìdi (弟弟), and Megalopolis but they (among others) are on my watchlist.

I continue to spend a lot of time tracking the preservation efforts of early-20th-century films, as well as short films.

Details:

• Letterboxd – Zepfanman’s 2024 year in review (for these top 22 and various lists) duplicated here for searchability, sorted by least-recently watched.
  • Society of the Snow: Who Were We on the Mountain?
  • The Greatest Night in Pop
  • Dune: Part Two
  • Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
  • Anatomy of a Fall*
  • Civil War
  • Strange Way of Life
  • Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story
  • Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
  • HAIKYU!! The Dumpster Battle
  • The First Omen
  • The Watchers
  • Alien: Romulus
  • Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
  • Laapataa Ladies
  • Hit Man
  • Inside Out 2
  • Thelma
  • Flow
  • It’s Not Me
  • Wicked
  • I’m Hip
• Trakt – Zepfanman’s history (if you’re curious about TV shows I’m watching)

* 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die – I’ve now seen 526 of them. The 15th (German) edition returned in 2024 after a 2½-year hiatus, although this edition has not been published in English.

Here’s a list of my favorite films seen for the first time this year (sorted by release date):

• Godzilla Minus One (2023)
• NYAD
• Travelin’ Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall (2022)
• Three Minutes: A Lengthening (2021)
• Neither Here Nor There (2021)
• The Brilliant Biograph: Earliest Moving Images of Europe (1897-1902) (2020)
• I Am Easy to Find (2019)
• Bad Seeds (2018)
• The Centrifuge Brain Project (2012)
• The Watermelon Woman (1996)
• Naked Lunch (1991)
• Talking Heads (1980)
• Free, White and 21
• Chess of the Wind (1976)
• The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived (1974)
• The Owl and the Raven: An Eskimo Legend (1973)
• All the World’s Memory (1956)
• The Irresistible Piano (1907)
• The Finish of Mr. Fresh (1899)

The Mr. Fresh film is one of the 68mm (IMAX-sized!) Mutoscope & Bioscope original nitrate films. After doing a lot of research, I created a (still incomplete) list of the existing 68mm films. I was excited to see Eye Filmmuseum post a 4K copy on their YouTube this year, too:

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