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Cinema is Not a Sport: My End of the Year List, 2024
One-Eyed Jacks At the end of each year comes the excitement of listing my favorite released films. This is a moment where I like to reflect on the status of modern cinema. When great films populate my list, ones that make my heart pound, I become alit with hope. Great is the desire to believe in the work being made today, especially as the gems of today’s moviemaking are often found on the deeper pages of Letterboxd.com’s most popular movies. In the 1950s, for example, the most critically lauded films are ranked at the top of page #1, sorted by the most popular with users. In the 2010s, and now halfway into the 2020s, one must dig past the sea of cynical films made for profit by committee to find the gems. More and more often are critically praised works found on Most Popular’s page three, four and even five.
Then we see the lists of the journalists which always cause a thrill, their “Best of 2024,” where our Olympic impulse and fetishes for greatness are activated. So quickly and seamlessly there follows an unsavory temptation to order movies from greatest in value to least, just as you might a pack of fowl for cockfighting. Although I partake, I know deep down that this is a silly act. Generally speaking, a rough ordering of pictures ranked by what inspires hope and fills with me with life is an enjoyable indulgence. But when we get down to the specifics, questions like: “is Friends and Strangers better or worse than Saint Omer?” may provoke interesting conversations,but are ultimately meaningless and ridden with the same impulses that may cause one to rank countries visited, people met at a party, and so on.
There’s another list I like to create each December, one that I’ve been making annually for a few years now. I make a list of film screenings that I found to be the most powerful. While exact ordering isn’t so important, I like to acknowledge the screenings that really were a cut above, those once-or-twice-in-a-year type moments where the stars aligned and the magic of being unveils its hand once again. What’s so special about this list is that it often does not contain the “best” films I see each year, or even my favorite movies. It takes into account the experience, above all else. The entire history of cinema making and cinema viewing is first and foremost experiential. Even more so than any other art form is experience inherent to cinema. One could argue that other time-based mediums such as music, video games and theater are rooted in a similar sense of ontology. But there’s a prime difference between the experience that theater, VR or live music gives to us and the declaration of ontology that is innate to the cinematic medium. In this declaration, “I lived this, and now so will you,” brings the uniquest of gifts. Cinema becomes something of the mind (of memory) that is less potent in other media.
To receive this gift, I am wildly spoiled in my city of Los Angeles, where moviegoing is an act of pleasure. Since the pandemic our repertory and independent movie theaters have blossomed along with the audience attendance. What differentiates Los Angeles from any movie loving city I’ve been to is twofold— enormous, single screen theaters and the fact that most movies “come to town” for one night and often one screening only. This is not ideal for a certain practice of cinephilia — repeated viewings within a day of masterpieces to garner the deepest knowledge of them — and let’s not forget how much more robust, interesting and in-depth NYC/Paris repertory programming goes. But there is something I appreciate here, for my end of the year lists — because when you wait four or five years for a certain movie to come to town (maybe you missed it when it played three years ago) and here’s your only chance, in this theater, where everyone has gathered to experience only that film, all together— the cannon is properly loaded for THIS-IS-IT moviegoing. Then there’s the fact that (much like other great cinema capitols) the LA auditoriums are always crowded and the movies are very often projected on 35mm. With a “this-is-it, here-and-now’”moviegoing mindset, 35mm can only serve to heighten the spell. Forgetting the fact that I love the way it looks — that the screen appears to be breathing and the flickering images remind me of how faint my early memories look in my mind’s ey e— when a print comes to the local cinema it’s all the more special and rare. It costs the theaters more and requires a human being with a very odd and unique skillset to be present (who are those beautiful angels who seek the profession of projection?). If you grow to value this mode of projection, the gratitude that the audience brings to the theater, the programmers, and projectionist further load the cannon. I should clarify, though, while the most powerful screenings of each year are often on celluloid and in a beautiful auditorium, sometimes they’re at home in bed on a laptop. I realize that the vast majority of places to see movies in the world aren’t equipped with such luxuries, but the point made here is worth addressing anyway. For example, I think back to films I saw years ago, and I usually can remember who I went with and where I watched it; because the details of the ritual are the ritual.
The beauty of this practice is that you never know where or when the holy moments will be. You just gotta keep living. It also puts the onus on us as filmgoers. This year I’m releasing a few films, one which I directed, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point. I find it exceedingly difficult to really open myself up to a film (which is to say, to life) during a release year — my head is often spinning with self-conscious thoughts and impurities. Or I’m just simply depressed. I feel that the ceiling within me for sensitive experience has lowered — I can only be moved so much, I can only care so much. The onus is on us to maintain a position that opens ourselves up to experience, for all that it may contain. Just as David Lynch says, “If you have a golf-ball-sized consciousness, when you read a book, you’ll have a golf-ball-sized understanding.” Therefore we can be of two minds, one that looks at films, actors and directors like Olympic athletes to be measured on a scale of greatness, and the other, that looks at these moments we share with works of art (and our bodies and minds as the vessels to meet these moments) as points of life to be nourished. I know that as movie lovers, we keep both sides of this spectrum close to our chests, but we must acknowledge how one of these camps far outweighs the other in our collective discourse and even in our private headspace. Far too heavy is the impulse to rate a film out of five stars and leave a public paragraph review, just as we may do when a purchasing a bathmat on Amazon. I think back to the audiences of Hollywood’s golden age and the pure experience that they knew, at a time when moviegoing was far less self aware — of course, pre-internet. The first impulse in the late 1920s to award films may not have been motivated by profit and may not have been rooted in daydreams of domination and supremacy, but that is certainly what they reflect in our cultural zeitgeist. I’ve never seen a list made by friends or colleagues about their most cherished film screenings of the year (or even of their lives), and so I feel like it’s worthwhile to share mine with you. A list that acknowledges the paradox that film critics and lovers rarely admit; that even great films can rock our world in one viewing and leave us a bit indifferent during another. What makes an experience of watching a film cause rapture or rupture? Is it our mood? One person in the crowd who texted the whole time or laughed contagiously, snow falling outside of a window, a community gathered in a town square on a summer night, the film screening that comes at the end of a depressive spell, shaking us alive again. I once saw Todd Solondz’ Happiness at the New Beverly with a packed house. One deranged audience member cheered at the mass shootings and pedophilic depictions on screen. It was utterly disturbing, and I’m confident that anyone who heard them felt immense fear. It brought the images and storytelling presented that night to a frighteningly real context and created a viewing of that film that I will never forget.
And so, without further ado, here is my list, with notes for my own memory. Please consider this piece I’ve written to be a call against our common compulsions, perhaps rooted in our cultural narcissism in which we are so deeply intertwined. I hope this inspires in others the same spark that I have felt, the same reminder.
Favorite Screenings of 2024
Brokeback Mountain (Academy Museum, Geffen Theater). I’d seen it just a month before for my first time and it played even better in this full, 1,000-seat auditorium. It was my girlfriend Alexandra’s first time watching, and we swooned at the greatness on screen. I don’t typically fawn over Rodrigo Prieto’s work, but hot damn! Also, this really brought Reichardt’s career into perspective for me— it was made one year before Old Joy.
One-Eyed Jacks (Vista, two nights in a row). The first night I wasn’t sure how I felt. But there was something in Pina Pellicer’s performance that brought be back and the depth of this film dawned on me. Something in the way she speaks, and the way Brando’s body moves (and how he frames his body moving) The emotions run so deep in each frame. It’s magnificent and now one of my favorites.
Uptown Girls (New Beverly). This might be the most powerful experience I’ve had all year. I laughed so hard and I cried so hard. How different this movie plays with Brittany Murphy’s tragic death in our hindsight. It’s a movie about mental illness, and with some distance from childhood (hadn’t seen it in nearly 20 years), I was so struck by how my family valued this film so much. And Michael Ballhaus’ photography— good god!
Lovers Rock (Nouvelle Vagues Film Fest, Biarritz). A modern masterpiece. Only we wouldn’t know its full power until we see it in a theater, which I was extraordinarily lucky to do so in Biarritz. We must have been one of the first theaters if not the first, to project this one. It’s interesting how many of us fell for this movie during COVID on our laptops (or in automobiles at NYFF) because it’s a movie about people coming together. And if you haven’t experienced the scene of group singing in a crowded theater, you’re missing one of the most transcendent passages in this decade of moviemaking, bar none. After the screening there was a Q&A not with director Steve McQueen and not with anyone who worked on the film, but with Black anthropologists who discussed the cultural context which deeply enriched the film— not to mention, they played reggae during the whole discussion!
Black Coal, Thin Ice (Film Financier’s Mansion). I saw this at a very odd venue, a private home theater up a winding road I’ve never driven on before in Pasadena. The drive up the mountain took forever and even the driveway was impossibly long. At the end of the road was this banger. A film so elusive that I later wondered, and took several days to figure out, if I had dreamt one of its scenes.
Megalopolis (Deauville 1500 person theater). Everybody around me hated this movie in Deauville, even after Coppola’s heartfelt introduction about how he fell in love with his recently passed wife only a few miles from the cinema on the French coast. I was floored by this film until an hour in, when for another hour or so I repeatedly looked at my watch and was deeply confounded. Later in the night, the film revealed itself to me as I felt increasingly alienated from my environment, even from my body. This piece has grown in me even more since then. I watched it in a suit and tie— there’s something very fitting about this fact as the film is truly an occasion.
Pacifiction (Egyptian Theater). My return to this banger was the first screening of 2024, and such a great way to begin the year. It was even more enchanting and spellbinding than my first viewing at NYFF. The Egyptian theater is one of the biggest screens around, and Magimel’s once-in-a-lifetime performance requires the biggest possible.
The Pride of the Yankees (Los Feliz 3, Sunday Print Edition). Although I’ve been wooed by Eephus, I should say I’m not a baseball fan, and I’m definitely not a biopic fan. But still, there’s some odd beauty that only the Golden Age of Hollywood can pull off in all its artifice-driven glory. I didn’t know what to expect at all from this film, I went in completely blind on a Sunday morning and saw it by myself. The theater wasn’t that crowded and it made all the crying I did a bit easier.
Earthquake (Academy Museum, Geffen theater). Went with my former student now that he’s old enough to drive and we had an amazing time imaging our city crumbling with incredible VFX. I especially enjoyed seeing this somewhat dry, outmoded filmmaking with such a young person and to see how he really enjoyed it was very touching.
Malibu High (At home, on projector). What a haunting film. Alexandra and I didn’t expect this type of darkness from a Crown International (we’ve been on a kick this year) and watching their movies on the couch is a nice vibe. Those shots of the lead actress and her suitors entering the scene through the tall grass (or were they sunflowers?) go very deep into the mind.
