Not a movie year goes by without many lamenting the state of the art form. That, despite the occasional huge box office weekend, cinema is in dire straits, awash in endless IP, while good-to-great adult fare gets buried amongst the pile of "content" housed in the basement of the streamers. But for me, and many others, who try to take stock of the recently-passed calendar year, end up with a glut of great movies to discuss. Are movies really dead (again)?
Well it depends where you look. Hollywood kind of does suck right now. This is endemic to the industry and to the people who run it. The crevasse between the two parts of the term show business has never been wider and reflects the culture and infrastructure of a country whose defining characteristic in middle of the 2020s is its intent on tightening that very stranglehold. When a great Hollywood movie comes out, it's a miracle--a bug, not a feature.
But movies outside that system (or at least ones that are created mostly outside of it and only entering it for marketing and distribution purposes) flourished as it always does. Because, as it turns out, there are still artists out there and, when left mainly to their own devices, turn the movie year into another great movie year.
And here's another thing about the term "movie year." It's too nebulous. My favorite movie of 2024 is technically a 2023 movie. Sometimes that's not a concern for this kind of list--movies often get, say, festival releases one year only to get legitimate distribution the following year. But La Chimera, though it only got released locally in my area in early 2024, was a wide enough release that many considered it a 2023 release and eligible for Oscar consideration that year and made many year-end lists. Had I seen it in 2023, it would have been my #1 of that year too. But outside of the big markets, it only came out in 2024 and even some of the bigger critics and publications included it in their 2024 lists. Once I started to notice that, rather than let it vanish into the ether, I decided it would be included here. And while the other top choices on my list were outstanding, La Chimera was always going to stand alone.
I hope you enjoy the video.
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Full list: https://boxd.it/EeKbS
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