Looking forward to, and then feeling fundamentally changed by, certain brand-new movies every year helps keep me going during patches of my life where getting through the day feels like enough. The same applies to movies whose release has come and gone, though I would say that, in those cases, that feeling can be even stronger, lent a “where has this been all my life” rush. Below are my favorite first-time watches of 2024, in no particular order. (The sometimes lightly edited blurbs for linked movies cull from previously written reviews.)
Vengeance is Mine (1984), dir. Michael Roemer
Few movies I’ve seen capture, with Vengeance is Mine’s same understated, true-to-life vividness, the way abusive patterns from childhood can manifest in new contexts in adulthood, and how formative traumas can still be psychologically and emotionally omnipresent in one’s life long after initially materializing.
Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), dir. Max Ophüls
Letter from an Unknown Woman’s brand of devastation would be just as much at home in a breathier, broader kind of melodrama, but Ophüls takes his heroine’s plight so seriously — and by proxy, so do we — that to watch Lisa endure a generations-long heartache feels like a slow death.
A Tale of Winter (1992) and A Summer’s Tale (1996), dir. Éric Rohmer
Over and over again in 2024 I found myself turning to Rohmer’s movies — reliably thoughtful, unusually literate, and frankly life-affirming films about the vagaries of love — when I felt stuck in a rut. A Tale of Winter and A Summer’s Tale, which are part of a “four seasons” series that took up the bulk of Rohmer’s 1990s, were my favorite.
The Fall (2006), dir. Tarsem Singh
One is used to being eager for what a good movie will tell you next. The relentlessly stylish The Fall makes you just as, sometimes more, eager for what will be shown.
Last Holiday (2006), dir. Wayne Wang
The self-discovery dramedy Last Holiday is unabashedly schmaltzy — the type of engineered-to-be-uplifting movie to almost inevitably feature one of Michael Franti’s mawkish empowerment anthems prominently on the soundtrack — but it’s made with such good humor and warmth by its director, tearjerker doyen Wayne Wang, that even its most contrived plot points felt earned rather than emotionally manipulative on the day we crossed paths.
Shu Qi in Visible Secret.
Visible Secret (2001), dir. Ann Hui
Hui’s intoxicating 2001 movie posits what a rom-com might look like with a Sixth Sense-esque underlay.
Island of Lost Souls (1932), dir. Erle C. Kenton
The bold-for-their-time questions Island of Lost Souls raises, and the images it conjures, stay with you.
The Entity (1982) dir. Sidney J. Furie
What if the person responsible for your sexual assault were an invisible, perhaps spectral force, with even the people likeliest to believe your story not unreasonably disposed to think that what’s happened is a manifestation of some personal psychological problem? The Entity, led by a superb Barbara Hershey, chillingly indulges those questions.
Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), dir. Mike Leigh
Leigh’s new movie, Hard Truths, features an abrasive lead character who just might be the opposite of the unswervingly sunny protagonist of Happy-Go-Lucky. Played by the effervescent Sally Hawkins, she might be my favorite character that I’ve encountered this year.
Sans Soleil (1983), dir. Chris Marker
That I don’t know quite what to make of Marker’s mysterious, largely unclassifiable visual college that, among other things, ruminates on the slipperiness of memory is part of what’s made it stay with me for so long.
Eric Bana in Munich.
Munich (2005), dir. Steven Spielberg
Spielberg’s 2005 fictionalization of the aftermath of the Munich massacre is a potent testament to the futility of revenge.
Nine Queens (2000), dir. Fabián Bielinsky
Writer-director Bielinsky’s feature-directing debut is a sterling example of the chokehold a con-artist thriller can have, keeping you on your toes for so long that it isn’t until its last five-ish minutes that you feel able to confidently exhale.
Bitter Rice (1949), dir. Giuseppe De Santis
Bitter Rice is both an incisive commentary on labor struggle and a captivating romantic melodrama.
Victims of Sin (1951), dir. Emilio Fernández
This tentpole cabaretera melodrama spins an emotional story about an ungovernable nightclub performer (a wonderful Ninón Sevilla) who risks everything to rescue and then raise a newborn she discovers in a garbage can. (I loved this astute piece from June about the movie, which prompted me to watch it in the first place.)
So Close (2002), dir. Corey Yeun
The best (and most unapologetically over-the-top) action movie I saw this year. Shu Qi is a knockout.
Shu-Chen Li and Chi-Kuang Wang in A Summer at Grandpa’s.
A Summer at Grandpa’s (1984), dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien
You feel a little voyeuristic watching this sneakily moving film, not because anything particularly lurid happens but because the action unfolds like slivers of footage from variously planted hidden cameras. Some of that sensation comes from Hou’s propensity for long takes. More of it comes from how much you don’t sense its performers acting, the curvatures of plotting.
Millennium Mambo (2000), dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien
Millennium Mambo doesn’t need us to know too much about its characters’ inner lives; it’s more about capturing feelings and moods — the listlessness of a woman floating through life because she isn’t sure what else to do.
Summer with Monika (1953), dir. Ingmar Bergman
Being young and carefree eventually takes a toll in this emotionally brutal early Ingmar Bergman drama.
Young Soul Rebels (1991), dir. Isaac Julien
In Young Soul Rebels, you can’t help but be moved, and disheartened, by how the simple pursuit of art and self can be turned into something practically revolutionary in a society inhospitable to both.
Dressed in Blue (1983), dir. Antonio Giménez-Rico
Giménez-Rico’s reality show-esque documentary about six transgender women living in Spain is a powerful snapshot of a moment in time.
Yû Kashii, Bae Doona, Shiori Sekine, and Aki Maeda in Linda Linda Linda.
Linda Linda Linda (2005), dir. Nobuhiro Yamashita
This high-school movie makes you want to start a band.
Come Drink with Me (1966), dir. King Hu
This essential wuxia thriller memorably features Cheng Pei-pei playing who many consider cinema’s first woman action heroine.
A Question of Silence (1982), dir. Marleen Gorris
An essential work of feminist filmmaking, Gorris’ feature-length debut follows a psychiatrist, Janine (Cox Habbema), as she probes the psyches of three women (Edda Barends, Nelly Frijda, and Henriëtte Tol) who, despite being complete strangers to each other, one day murdered and then castrated the male owner of a dress shop they were perusing ostensibly for no other reason besides his gender.
Death Walks at Midnight (1972), dir. Luciano Ercoli
Death Walks at Midnight’s driving murder mystery, and the obligatory, climactic explanation of it, does not make sense. But I didn’t mind, because I loved its heroine — a headstrong fashion model named Valentina (Susan Scott) with a lustrous head of stoplight-red hair that matches a very hot temper — so much.
The Wicked Lady (1945), dir. Leslie Arliss
Margaret Lockwood is so good as an often scheming, often smirking anti-heroine that feels like a prototypical Joan Collins character; it’s inevitable, since the movie was released in 1945, that she won’t get away with her transgressions, but I will only remember her as triumphant.
Hanane Hajj Ali in Return to Haifa.
Return to Haifa (1982) dir. Kassem Hawal
This crushing, 1967-set drama follows a Palestinian family as they visit the city and home from which they were expelled by Israeli colonizers in 1948.
Senso (1954), dir. Luchino Visconti
It can be hard to accept the fragility of fantasy. Devastatingly, tragically, the romantic melodrama Senso pushes it to its limits.
Crush (1992), dir. Alison Maclean
I loved this unwaveringly unsettling story of guilt, misplaced blame, and ever-shifting power dynamics.
Late Marriage (2001), dir. Dover Kosashvili
This movie about the corrosiveness of an arranged marriage also happens to feature what might be the most effective sex scene I’ve seen in a movie — sexy because it’s trying to approximate sometimes awkward real life more than it is the fantasy-mindedness we’re accustomed to in cinema.
News from Home (1977), dir. Chantal Akerman
Akerman’s follow-up to her magnum opus, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), is more conspicuously personal than its predecessor and is, since it’s not 201 minutes long, I suppose more approachable. Otherwise it feels like, with how it centers domestic malaise, like the continuation of a conversation.
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