2024 is drawing to a close and a lot of UK cinemas are stuck in a holding pattern showing the same selection of winter crowd pleasers (Home Alone, Die Hard, It’s a Wonderful Life) and pop hits (Wicked, Paddington in Peru, Moana 2), leaving a lot of the year’s smaller releases adrift for places to be seen. So these pages have been a little barer this December. The films are out there… but they’re harder to find than ever. With an unusual amount of time to kill, then, here’s a look back at the best of the decade so far. The movies worth digging for. Some were blockbusters, some should have been, others you’ll have to search for on streaming platforms or boutique physical media labels. But all will be worth it…
50. De Humani Corporis Fabrica (2022, Véréna Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor)
The directing duo of Paravel and Castaing-Taylor made waves in the 2010s with their nightmarish documentary on (and sometimes off of) a fishing trawler – 2012’s Leviathan – which seemed to come from a place of unlearned cinema, presenting an understandable – even banal – environment from whole new angles. That same sense of leftfield curiosity occurs here as they traverse an even more hellish space; the human body. Filmed within a European hospital and, as frequently, from within the human body, De Humani Corporis Fabrica shows us ourselves anew, from the inside out. A fair warning; a great many surgeries are performed here, but from vantage points never previously realised, while the banal chatter of surgeons provides a darkly comic context for the assembly line of medical care. Not presently available in the UK.
49. Ferrari (2023, Michael Mann)
Yes, there’s some circumspect accent work worthy of a Ridley Scott picture happening across Ferrari, but Michael Mann’s blistering return is a stirring exploration of fatherhood vying with an innate competitiveness in the face of overwhelming odds and dangers. Adam Driver is coolly compelling as Enzo Ferrari, while the manner in which Mann and his cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt reconstruct the tragic 1957 Mille Miglia race is heart-stopping. Grand, operatic and deadly serious, Ferrari was unjustly lost in the shuffle during last year’s busy awards season and sidelined from cinemas by Sky’s limited release. Available on Sky, Blu-Ray & 4K.
48. Trenque Lauquen (2022, Laura Citarella)
Something’s stirring in Argentina at the moment. A collective of filmmakers are unfurling their imaginations, taking cues from the likes of Jacques Rivette and David Lynch and experimenting with form and length, with cinema that stretches out and wanders like improvisational music. Rodrigo Moreno’s The Delinquents is one such example. Laura Citarella’s sweeping Trenque Lauquen is another. Presented in two parts over more than four hours, its an oft-inspiring shaggy dog story of a missing woman and the mysteries that surface in her absence, some romantic, some fantastical. The finale might feel knowingly like a long walk to nowhere, but Citarella’s undulating interest in every detour and diversion means her work never loses the magic. Available on Blu-Ray from Radiance.
47. Hoard (2023, Luna Carmoon)
Hoard never got the review it deserved on here as I came to it late (streaming on MUBI) after it’s all-too-limited theatrical run in early 2024 had concluded. But rest assured, Luna Carmoon’s feature debut is a must-see; a tough enquiry into working class Britain that doesn’t come off as cloying, condescending or wildly biased. Saure Lightfoot Leon is Maria, a teenage whose luminous mother Cynthia (the ever-wonderful Hayley Squires) was a hoarder. The arrival of Michael (Joseph Quinn) in her life draws connections and recesses to past behaviours in an eclectic, energised missive from marginalised Britain that feels genuine and lived-in. A tour-de-force rebuttal of staid kitchen-sink handwringing that typifies the UK independent scene. Available on MUBI and coming soon to Blu-Ray from Plumeria Pictures.
46. I’m thinking of ending things. (2020, Charlie Kaufman)
One of the more bizarre Netflix Originals to have slipped through the streaming giant’s rigorous filter for constant banality. Leave it to Charlie Kaufman (Sycnedoche, New York) to take Iain Reid’s inscrutable debut novel and make it even more knotty and challenging. If that sounds off-putting, Kaufman teases from the source a sense of wit and the uncanny, and this is ably conveyed through the performances by Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons – a fractal couple struggling through a strained family visit during a snowstorm that winds up digging into the past as it blasts trippily into the future. Anyone idly half-watching from behind their phone on the sofa will lose their way quickly. This one asks for and rewards your attention. Available on Netflix.
45. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022, Laura Poitras)
Poitras’ documentary cinema is always awash in the political, from tackling fundamentalism (The Oath) to rights to privacy and cyber whistle-blowers (Citizenfour). All the Beauty and the Bloodshed continues in this vein, itemising how the Sackler family profited from their addictive pain medication OxyCotin, but in doing so it explodes the personal, coming at the material from the perspective of Poitras’ own hero; artist and activist Nan Goldin. Doing double-duty as an act of biography and as a catalogue of activism-in-action, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed becomes her most personal-feeling film to date, awash in anger but also an act of affection for a fellow trailer-blazer. Available on BBC iPlayer.
44. Barbie (2023, Greta Gerwig)
There were few cinematic ‘events’ like ‘Barbenheimer’ in the summer of 2023. UK cinemas saw attendances sky-rocket as a result of the viral phenomenon. In the parlance of the extremely-online, we were so back. It helped that the movies that incited the public were both Worth It. Oppenheimer was Christopher Nolan at his most typically-stern and seismic, and Barbie saw Greta Gerwig take a corporate IP and attack it with a wit and creativity not normally attributed to such wafer-thin fare. Debates will rage on about the film’s success at reclaiming Barbie’s feminist credo, but what’s harder to challenge is the riotous entertainment of Gerwig’s piece, with career-best work from stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling alike. Available on Blu-Ray and 4K.
43. Memoria (2021, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Often nicknamed ‘Joe’ by the western press – something that the director himself seems to have wholly embraced – Thai master Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s first English language film is a breathtaking proposition, taking acting royalty Tilda Swinton and plonking her adrift among the canopies of the Colombian jungles as her character, Jessica, searches for the ineffable – an intangible, indescribable sound that seemingly only she can hear. In the process Memoria catalogues an intrepid and personal odyssey into obsession, prying into an all-too-human compulsion to give order and definition to even the most miraculous of things. Available on Channel 4+ and on DVD/Blu-Ray.
42. Notturno (2020, Gianfranco Rosi)
Master of the pared-back documentary, Gianfranco Rosi reduced further with Notturno, a thoughtful and spacious collage of images captured along the intersecting borders of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Kurdistan. In its meditative stillness, Rosi captures a prevailing sense of tension between these regions; a sense of peace existing only in temporary moments. In its gloaming there’s a sense of tentativeness. Can life be lived, or resumed, or will the machinations of war and politics explode the moment into something more dismally eventful? Waiting for a moment that never comes… until it does. Available on MUBI, and on Blu-Ray.
41. Polite Society (2023, Nida Manzoor)
Criminally underserved by its distributors here in the UK (and treated like shit on physical media – a DVD only? What is this, 2010?), We Are Lady Parts creator Nida Manzoor valiantly shakes-up the staid status quo of British cinema with this action-packed coming-of-ager in which wannabe stuntwoman Ria Khan (Priya Kansara) rallies to intervene in her sister’s arranged marriage, only to uncover a bizarre conspiracy. Presented as a series of beat ’em up style bouts, the end result could reductively (but accurately) be described as Scott Pilgrim meets Get Out. Manzoor may wear her influences on her sleeve, but the energy and specificity of her offering is all her own and long may she be able to continue invigorating our screens. Available on DVD.
40. Beginning (2020, Dea Kulumbegashvili)
Emerging Georgian talent Dea Kulumbegashvili’s sophomore feature April has been garnering praise on the festival circuit this year, and will hopefully find UK distribution sometime in 2025. Until then, look back at her compelling debut – the aptly-named Beginning – which itemises the intolerance directed toward a community of Jehovah’s Witnesses and particularly to teacher Yana (Ia Sukhitashvili) who is sexually assaulted as part of the campaign of terror. Beginning is typified by inscrutable static shots, owing a debt to the slow cinema of Taiwan but also – in its elliptical closing moments – the poetically cinematic spectres of Central and Southern American masters like Carlos Reygadas and Lisandro Alonso. A fully-fledged arrival. Available on MUBI and on Blu-Ray.
39. The First Omen (2024, Arkasha Stevenson)
Initially it seemed as though the no-stakes nature of The First Omen (another belated horror IP extension from a lazy studio?) was accountable for its surprising success with genre fans, but the year since it’s release has borne out its quality; a durable repost to the current climate and an evident response to the overturning of Roe v Wade (Stevenson started work on the script the day of the verdict). Servant star Nell Tiger Free is terrific here as inquisitive novitiate Margaret, unearthing a devilish eugenic conspiracy in the cold corridors of early 1970s Rome. Horror’s popularity with studios is at a peek as they struggle to fill the gap of superhero movies. If it means we receive surprises this good then long may it perpetuate. Available on Disney+ and on Blu-Ray.
38. Godzilla Minus One (2023, Takashi Yamazaki)
A 70th anniversary victory lap for the world’s most famous, fearsome and beloved monster, Godzilla Minus One proved out as another terrific prequel (albeit one that acts as a semi-reboot for the series, establishing the kaiju some years before Ishirō Honda’s 1954 original). Where previously Godzilla has been a looming metaphor for the ecological consequences of atomic experimentation, here ‘he’ is reconfigured as a totem of wartime PTSD, shaking Japan in the wake of their defeat at the tail of WW2. Director and special effects supervisor Takashi Yamazaki mounts a traditional but immensely anthemic spectacle, taking in the popularity and influence of western talents Spielberg and Nolan for something broadly rousing. A word-of-mouth hit worthy of its menace’s size and scale(s). Available on Netflix and on Blu-Ray and 4K.
37. The Souvenir Part II (2021, Joanna Hogg)
The second half of Joanna Hogg’s autobiographical two-hander turns its attention from a willowing relationship tragedy to artistic expression, as Hogg’s on-screen avatar Julie (Honor Swinton-Byrne) uses her recent experience and loss of heroin-addict heartthrob Anthony (Tom Burke, uncredited) to inspire her final project for film school. An ode to the therapeutic possibility of creating, as well as the collaborative nature of the medium, the back-half of Hogg’s opus is the more immediately charming of the two, even if Part One is its bruised and broken heart. Available on BFI Player and on Blu-Ray.
36. Perfect Days (2023, Wim Wenders)
Wenders’ fascination with Tokyo has been persistent, but never as fully realised or as popular as here. Boasting an (overdue) Cannes Best Actor performance from living-legend Koji Yakusho as lonesome (but not lonely) public toilet attendant Hirayama, Perfect Days relishes in the minutiae of small pleasures and the security of routines. Itemising a week in the man’s life, Wenders’ handsome film makes marvels of the every day, and cherishes time spent enjoying the sunlight in the trees, a good book, or the sound of a classic rock album. Available on MUBI and on Blu-Ray & 4K.
35. Crimes of the Future (2022, David Cronenberg)
Another great filmmaker with a new film awaiting UK distribution (The Shrouds), David Cronenberg emerged from semi-hiatus with his first original work since 1999’s underrated eXistenZ… offering us possibly his most self-consciously ‘Cronenbergian’ work yet. In a near-future in which pain has been all-but-eradicated, surgery has become a clandestine performance art and perverse sexual expression. At the centre of this counter-cultural movement are Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) and his partner Caprice (Leá Seydoux), fulcrums of clandestine political intrigue and the emergence of a new evolution in humanity. Also, crucially, features Kristen Stewart at her most tweaked. One for the sickos. Available on Blu-Ray & 4K from Second Sight.
34. Azor (2021, Andreas Fontana)
An understated, underplayed yet economically riveting thriller in the vein of peak Graham Greene, this Swiss/Argentinian cross-pollination is a beguiling, enigmatic (even frustrating) watch on first encounter, capped with a sudden ending that leaves you adrift. But the itch to re-watch and reevaluate is strong, and the rewards plentiful. Fabrizio Rongione is terrific as Genevan banker Yvan De Wiel, lured to Argentina in search of his missing partner, René Keys, who finds himself in the midst of unspoken – and unspeakable – political upheaval. His soul at risk, the pull of corruption exists all over the peripheries of this taut, menacing thriller. Not one to underestimate. Available on MBU and on Blu-Ray.
33. Licorice Pizza (2021, Paul Thomas Anderson)
After the swoon of his prestigious Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson’s pendulum swung back to the ’70s hangout movies that seem to call to him over and over. As romantic (and horny) as anything in his illustrious career to date, the meandering, anecdotal Licorice Pizza is among Anderson’s more relaxed pictures, but even in this mode he can’t help but show flex and flare, spinning out the best soundtrack of the decade to score his tale of an intrepid entrepreneurial high-schooler (Cooper Hoffman) and his quest to win the heart of an older, immature slacker (Alana Haim). Along the way you can also marvel at the likes of Sean Penn and Bradley Cooper acting like dicks. A joyous, heartfelt romp. Available on AppleTV and on Blu-Ray.
32. Earth Mama (2023, Savanah Leaf)
Former Olympian Savanah Leaf traded her volleyball for a film camera and put together one of the decade’s most criminally underseen debuts. Her A24 offering Earth Mama peeks into the poverty-line communities of the San Francisco Bay Area, as pregnant Gia (a revelatory Tia Nomore) vies to regain custody of her children from the state. Leaf’s film is caught in a swooning flush of sunset oranges and hazy violet hues, mustering the ephemera of magical realism without ever manifesting the fantastical. It’s a hushed, balmy affair. A tone poem of soulful emotion that deserves a wider audience. Leaf is already major. Available on AppleTV and Sky.
31. Parallel Mothers (2021, Pedro Almodóvar)
The maternal theme continues with one of Pedro Almodóvar’s very best films (in a career overstuffed with gems) where he conjures yet another great performance from the inimitable Penélope Cruz. In a typically melodramatic and twisting tale of love springing from unlikely happenstance, Parallel Mothers catalogues the growing relationship between single mothers Janis (Cruz) and Ana (Milena Smit). As giving and sensuous as this story is revealed to be, Almodóvar sets it against a more politicised reckoning with Spain’s past, flanking his romance with an eclipsing B-story about unearthing the bodies of those killed in the civil war. A moving collision of sensibilities. Available on AppleTV, Sky and Pathé Blu-Ray.
30. Petite Maman (2021, Céline Sciamma)
Hell, let’s call it a trilogy on mothers. Swiftly following her Sight & Sound conquering magnus opus Portrait of a Lady on Fire with this shorter, looser offering, Céline Sciamma returned to the theme of childhood that has perpetuated through her career which a simple yet touching fantastical conceit; a young girl, Nelly (Joséphine Sanz), happens upon her doppelganger Marion (Gabrielle Sanz) while wandering in the forest, only to come to the realisation that her new friend is her own mother from the past. An exercise in mother-daughter bonding that transcends time, Petite Maman is short in stature (running to a tight 72 minutes) but deep in heart. Available on MUBI and on Blu-Ray.
29. Small Axe: Lovers Rock (2020, Steve McQueen)
Continuing the argument that a svelte running time can still make a substantial impact, consider the second act of Steve McQueen’s landmark BBC Small Axe strand; a collection of five films intended to highlight different elements of the Black experience in London from the perspective of it’s West Indian communities. Lovers Rock is just 70 minutes, but within it McQueen observes the joys and rituals of a 1980s blues party on Ladbroke Road. Bodies in swing together, voices in chorus. It isn’t all halcyon (this is McQueen after all), yet the euphoric delirium of this intimate night-in stands as the British filmmaker’s most heady and accomplished effort. Given his career to date, that’s no small claim. Available on BBC iPlayer.
28. Evil Does Not Exist (2023, Ryūsuke Hamaguchi)
The popular vote may go to his three-hour Oscar winner Drive My Car, the hipster vote might turn (with good cause) to the erotically-charged triptych Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, but for my money the standout Ryūsuke Hamaguchi joint of the decade thus far is his ecologically-minded missive Evil Does Not Exist. The seemingly trivial tale of a small mountain community jostling over the positioning of a septic tank for a gentrified glamping proposal, what unfolds at a judiciously measured pace is a thrilling breakdown of values, pitting the urban against the rural, the capitalist against the (literally) conservative. Upended by – but also made great by – its disarming eleventh hour swerve, Evil Does Not Exist perches in the back of the mind, refusing to let go of one’s attention. Available on Blu-Ray from Modern Films.
27. Red Rocket (2021, Sean Baker)
Forget Anora. Well, don’t forget it, it’s still a must-watch, but for peak Sean Baker in the 2020s, look just a little further back to Red Rocket, which Universal summarily ditched in the UK with a dismal release back in early 2022. Another of Baker’s enquiries into the lives and (mis)fortunes of America’s sex-working fringe, Simon Rex barnstorms as the buzzingly ADHD Mikey, a fading-porn star and permanent hustler who returns to Texas City after being thrown out of LA on his ear, who sees opportunity in the sparkling naivety of donut salesgirl Strawberry (Suzanna Son). You’ll never listen to Backstreet Boys the same way again. Available on AppleTV and on Blu-Ray.
26. Saint Omer (2022, Alice Diop)
In which Alice Diop changes the perspectives of the courtroom drama, a genre that the 2020s have thrillingly challenged for new angles and avenues of interest. Here Diop – formerly a documentary filmmaker – traverses narrative cinema in order to recreate her own experiences and emotions on witnessing the public trial of a Senegalese woman accused of infanticide. Saint Omer offers no easy answers or comfortable conclusions, yet manages to be both stirring and as gossamer-light as a sunbeam. A contemplative and measured offering rightly hailed as one of the decade’s most impressive and understated efforts. Available on Curzon Home Cinema and on Blu-Ray.
25. R.M.N. (2022, Cristian Mungiu)
Another slow-burn feature that improbably pivots around a sensational town meeting, Cristian Mungiu’s portrait of a rural Romanian town in the grips of a xenophobic fervor acts as a treaty on the director’s wider concerns and indignation over the rise of nationalism in his home country. Mungiu seems as contemptable of his kin-folk as Haneke circa The White Ribbon, but in that anger he finds an urgency that powers this long and bitter film toward its thrillingly enigmatic conclusion. Available on Curzon Home Cinema, BFI Player and on Blu-Ray.
24. Nope (2022, Jordan Peele)
Three for three. Jordan Peele followed Get Out and Us with a more ambitiously rendered tale of the unexpected, further splicing horror and science fiction, here with a healthy and propulsive dose of Spielbergian magic. Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer make for charismatic siblings OJ and Emerald, eager to capture – for prosperity and profit – the first quantifiable evidence of alien life. In the process Peele offered for our entertainment a film about looking, about wanting to see where – of course – the key to survival is looking away. Features some of the absolute finest visual effects of the new century. Seamless and sensational. Available on Blu-Ray and 4K.
23. Purple Sea (2020, Amel Alzakout, Khaled Abdulwahed)
The ‘noise’ of the refugee crisis from Syria faded into the chatter of a greater number of cataclysmic global news stories as the new decade emerged, but Amel Alzakout’s singular diaristic documentary is an abstract cry from the abyss, one rendered accidentally when the Go-Pro attached to her wrist recorded her capsizing in the ocean on an attempted crossing to the safety of Europe. Alzakout narrates obliquely as the camera spirals, images becoming dizzying and impressionistic. It’s a difficult film to find now (it used to be on MUBI but has since departed) and remains the most obscure title on this list, but few modern documentaries have so personally and poetically captured an act of struggle – and survival – like this. Not presently available in the UK.
22. Titane (2021, Julia Ducournau)
The Palme d’Or has had some contentious winners in the recent past, but few in recent years have felt as provocative as Julia Ducournau’s perverse ode to David Cronenberg; a demented and gloriously explicit tale of one female serial killer’s one-night-stand with a car (yes, a car) that results in the unholiest of pregnancies… and that’s only the start. Morphing into an unexpectedly tender and affecting gender-bending tale of found family, Ducournau’s genre hybrid also calls to mind the tonal sensibilities of Claire Denis (buoyed in no small measure by the commanding presence of Vincent Lindon). In a time when far lesser efforts are celebrated as the new titans of body horror, here’s a picture that lives up to that mantle and just acclaim. Available on Curzon Home Cinema and BFI Player.
21. Both Sides of the Blade (2022, Claire Denis)
Speaking of Claire Denis, its about time she showed up (with Vincent Lindon in tow, of course). Dismissed in some circles as ‘lesser’ Denis (there isn’t such a thing, it seems), Both Sides of the Blade is a COVID-era, mixed-media examination of a marriage in crisis, bristling with melodrama and menace. At times it feels like Denis’ INLAND EMPIRE; noirish, intimidating and of uncertain shape, but it is held and grounded by its two tempestuous leads; the aforementioned Lindon and fellow Denis-stalwart and French acting royalty Juliette Binoche. It’s also another title on this list woefully underserved by it’s UK distributor and worthy of a wider physical release to encourage reappraisal. Available on Curzon Home Cinema.
20. Flux Gourmet (2022, Peter Strickland)
Every new iteration of Peter Strickland’s idiosyncratic cinematic universe engages more gleefully with the absurd, and so it goes with his typically-offbeat and brilliant sixth feature, which follows the exploits of a band of sonic caterers as they embark on a residency under the tutelage of eccentric administrator Jan Stevens (Gwendoline Cristie). Strickland regular Fatma Mohamed finally gets her shot at a leading role and runs with it madly, while the director himself indulges his own proclivity for sonorous distortions. Strickland is a national treasure who ought to be funded for anything and everything he wishes to turn his hand to. Available on Curzon Home Cinema and on Blu-Ray.
19. Censor (2021, Prano Bailey-Bond)
A horror debut to be reckoned with from one of the most distinctive new voices to emerge in British cinema, Prano Bailey-Bond’s Censor sees a prim 1980s film censor, Enid (an impeccable Niamh Algar), spiral into psychological terrors and hallucinogenic myopia when she grows convinced that her long-lost sister is hidden within the latest ‘video nasty’ to pass through the BBFC. Burrowing into a specific era of fear and moral panic in Thatcher’s Britain, Bailey-Bond delivers both a love-letter to genre filmmaking and a compelling investigation into unresolved trauma. Bailey-Bond’s follow-up is eagerly awaited. Available on Blu-Ray and 4K from Second Sight.
18. The Beast (2023, Bertrand Bonello)
Following the psychological confinement of his COVID feature Coma (worth checking out!), Bertrand Bonello expanded his gaze for this ambitious era-traversing parable, a wild reworking of classic Henry James that interpolates everything from AI to incel culture into its sprawling vortex. Léa Seydoux is our intrepid heroine, plunging into the repressed memories of her past lives and discovering an inexorable connection to George McKay’s Louis. Redolent of David Lynch’s mammoth undertaking Twin Peaks: The Return in its formal choices and narrative reach, Bonello compresses a multitude of ideas into his singular sci-fi serve. Among the decade’s most enterprising and uncompromising works so far. Available on MUBI and on Blu-Ray.
17. Aftersun (2022, Charlotte Wells)
The Scottish debut that took the knees out from under the arthouse scene and squarely placed Paul Mescal on the map as a major movie star, Aftersun has all the melancholy of a faded polaroid; a profoundly personal snapshot of a ’90s summer holiday shared between father (Mescal) and daughter (Frankie Corio) presented through the winsome, troubled lens of memory. It’s a patient, observational piece that at first seems as distant as Mescal’s closed-off Calum, only for the facade to slowly shatter in its most naked and bittersweet of moments. Wells immediately became a name to watch. Available on MUBI, BBC iPlayer and on Blu-Ray.
16. Priscilla (2023, Sofia Coppola)
Sofia Coppola soared back to her best with this effort that chipped further at her pervasive interests; girlhood, celebrity and the isolating intersections of the two. All of the elements of Coppola’s trademark alchemy are present. An expertly curated soundtrack. An array of objects that speak to her protagonist’s (Cailee Spaeny) insular mindset. That distant observational eye that enhances the sense of a princess trapped in a castle. Priscilla approaches the Elvis myth from a unique and sobering angle. Made on a shoestring but made to feel rich throughout, this is a carefully curated fulcrum of everything that is quintessentially Sofia. Available on MUBI and on Blu-Ray & 4K.
15. May December (2023, Todd Haynes)
Cribbing the soundtrack wholesale from The Go-Between, Todd Haynes mounted an inscrutable thriller to sit alongside his best in this deeply sour (some might even say camp – though that’s debatable) enquiry of artistic integrity. Natalie Portman is a famous actress visiting the subject of her latest role; Julianne Moore’s predatory child-snatcher still living with her young husband (the awards-worthy Charles Melton), much to the consternation of the local, lakeside community. In retrospect it’s clear to see why Hollywood turned its back on Haynes’ scabrous sifting of its collective dirt. May December is a fiery hoot, one that ends on a wickedly bitter punchline. Available on Sky and on Blu-Ray.
14. Happening (2021, Audrey Diwan)
Circling back to the cinematic influence of Roe v. Wade, Audrey Diwan’s Happening was conceived and completed way before events took their depressing turn, but it arrived at the peak of the zeitgeist. Set in ’60s France, Anamaria Vartolomei is sensational as Anne, a talented academic whose prospects severely diminish when she learns that she is pregnant, with few recourses at her disposal to avert the situation. Happening is a focused, angry feature, dismayed at the ways in which society diminishes women’s choices, then and now. A film that felt so keenly necessary that it took the Golden Lion at Venice (not to mention Best Film of 2022 here at The Lost Highway Hotel). Available on Curzon Home Cinema, BFI Player and on Blu-Ray.
13. Malignant (2021, James Wan)
First big eyebrow raiser? Hold up and let me make a case here. Malignant was disastrously released between lockdowns and months before the Halloween season that it could have ruled. Thus a commercial disappointment, not enough people saw or got the tonal tightrope walked by James Wan in his return to horror after blockbuster action fare Furious 7 and Aquaman. Wan brought sensibilities from those movies to a canny, knowingly-camp picture that flitted between genres (teasing a haunting, tilting at giallo) before letting rip with the fieriest final act of the decade. It didn’t help that all of this worked so well the less you knew, making it tough to market. Especially given Wan’s past form for birthing franchises, Malignant ought to be stacking up enough sequels to make Freddy Kreuger stagger. As it is, this has cult classic written all over it. Available on Blu-Ray & 4K.
12. Malmkrog (2020, Cristi Puiu)
Transylvania, somewhere around the turn of the last century. A collective of aristocrats gather at a snowbound mansion for a luxury dinner where they debate the pros and cons of an organised society while civil unrest looms ethereally in the night. The longer this goes on, the more irrelevant and arcane these elites seem, until one wonders if the party isn’t made-up entirely of ghosts. Cristi Puiu’s 200-minute chamber piece won’t be for everyone but, for those up for it, this crepuscular marathon is an eerie, satirical and slyly spooky missive from Eastern Europe. Available on AppleTV.
11. Zola (2020, Janicza Bravo)
“You wanna hear a story about how me and this bitch fell out…?” Zola isn’t kinda long, but it is full of surprises. Adapted from A’Ziah ‘Zola’ King’s viral tweet thread detailing a shaggy-dog trip from Detroit to Tampa, Zola (Taylour Paige) discovers that her meet-cute new acquaintance Stefani (Riley Keough) is more than just an exotic dancer offering her a weekend trip, and a messy crime caper unspools with ribald zest and twinkling humour. Janicza Bravo mounts an over-the-rainbow sex-positive road movie that captures the free-wheeling hustler spirit of Florida, while Mica Levi sugarcoats with a score that dusts Bravo’s visuals from on high. It maybe lack an ending, but the journey itself is a hot-stepping riot. Available on AppleTV and on Blu-Ray.
10. Benedetta (2021, Paul Verhoeven)
Trust Paul Verhoeven to all-but-perfect the collision of the sacred and profane, here turning in one of the very best films of his career. A man of no small religious interest himself, Verhoeven unpacks the mythos surrounding Benedetta Carlini, the novitiate-turned-abbess of 17th-century Pescia, Italy who claimed holy visions in the midst of wild controversies. Benedetta is a riot of nunsploitation anarchy, cunty barbs and apocalyptic conditions – everything from comets to the black plague – while Verhoeven and a fearlessly brilliant Virginie Efira turn blasphemous exclamations and lesbian carnality into the stuff of high-wire pantomime. About as entertaining as movies have been this decade. Available on MUBI and on Blu-Ray & 4K.
9. The Zone of Interest (2023, Jonathan Glazer)
A strong contender for the dubious award of the defining film of the so-called ‘Biden era’, Jonathan Glazer’s starkly focused depiction of compartmentalisation is a truly stifling watch, inspired by the real commander of Auschwitz and his proximity to the notorious concentration camp. The act of cleaning throughout is of particularly loaded symbolism, both in the family’s transparent efforts to rid themselves of tarnish and the boldly reflective harsh-cut to modern day. The Zone of Interest might well quality as Difficult Viewing™, but – as with all such art – that makes it all the more urgently deserving of your attention. Available on Curzon Home Cinema and Amazon Prime.
8. Pacifiction (2022, Albert Serra)
Albert Serra’s much-vaunted latest – Afternoons of Solitude – is another on the slate for a UK release in 2025. Until then there’s plenty of time to savour his prior effort, a heady French-Polynesian tale of intrigue that centres around a career-best Benoît Magimel as the louche, cream-suited French official De Rolle, whose secure hold over Tahiti slowly crumbles as he descends into paranoia over rumours of renewed nuclear testing in the area. Pacifiction oozes over you. It’s a dryly humid, restless picture. One boasting a see-it-to-believe-it excursion out onto the rolling surfer waves that skirt the Pacific island. Hypnotic stuff. Available on Curzon Home Cinema and on Blu-Ray.
7. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020, Eliza Hittman)
Hittman came through toward the tail end of the 2010s with the little-seen but well-regarded Beach Rats (which introduced the keen-of-eye to an up-and-coming Harris Dickinson), but her 2020 follow-up Never Rarely Sometimes Always thoroughly broke the hearts of all who saw it (not many; of all the COVID casualties, this is the cruelest). Sidney Flanigan is astonishingly good as Autumn, a Pennsylvania teen who travels with her cousin Skylar (rising star Talia Ryder) to New York to obtain an abortion on limited means. NRSW scrutinises the economic discrimination of America’s disreputable relationship to abortion, as well as the more obvious retrograde standards. When it presses on more harrowing personal causes, Hittman’s film fractures with acute pain. Indie stalwarts Julia Holter and Sharon Van Etten help bolster the movie’s overall cool, but this is a seismic work on all fronts. The scene depicted above will kill ya. Available on AppleTV.
6. Great Freedom (2021, Sebastian Meise)
Well-received but generally underseen and overlooked, Sebastian Meise granted Germany’s finest Franz Rogowski one of the best roles of his career as imprisoned gay man Hans Hoffman – incarcerated under Paragraph 175 of German law – whose only crime is his sexuality. The film’s masterstroke is using solitary confinement as a kind of time travelling device, transporting us between eras in the narrative as we crisscross one of the decade’s most touching and expansive romances. The transportive ability of the darkness is like the magic of cinema itself, moving us not just through time, but internally, through our emotive responses. Available on MUBI and on Blu-Ray.
5. One Fine Morning (2022, Mia Hansen-Løve)
In which Léa Seydoux gifted us the most emotionally naked performance of her considerable career thus far, embodying professional translator Sandra Kienzler, grappling with the highs and lows of two emotionally distant men in her life. On the one hand there’s non-committal married lover Clément (Melvil Poupaud); source of much joy and sadness as Sandra relocates the romantic and sexual urges she thought were fading. On the other, there’s her father Georg (Pascal Greggory) succumbing to the long goodbye of dementia. Mia Hansen-Løve’s obsession with the passing of time here manifests in bittersweet nostalgia for the things passed that can’t be recovered, making the moments in the present we can hold onto all the more precious. An incredibly moving and humane work from an artist at the top of her game. That goes for Hansen-Løve and Seydoux. Available on MUBI and on Blu-Ray.
4. Furiosa – A Mad Max Saga (2024, George Miller)
Maybe it raises eyebrows to say it but, as the (desert) dust settles, Furiosa stands as the defining and best artefact of George Miller’s career-long exploration of his mythic post-apocalyptic wasteland. This origin story revenge saga does roaring work as an examination of unattainable justice, while doing double/triple/quadruple duty as a broadly entertaining and action-packed work of single-minded auteurism, one with a vast array of influences and signal points spanning art history. Some of the digital amalgamations rather loudly announce Miller’s far-reaching ambition, testing the limits of what such collaging can achieve, but – rather like Lucas’s oft-reappraised prequel trilogy – its all in service of something with such recognisable and admirable authoritative sweep. Anya Taylor-Joy, Tom Burke, Chris Hemsworth and Alyla Browne all knocking it out of the park helps, too. Available on Blu-Ray & 4K.
3. The Matrix Resurrections (2022, Lana Wachowski)
I wasn’t a Matrix fan until The Matrix Resurrections. It converted me, and it re-contextualised the other films while taking bold gambits with both the nature of the story so far and the methods of presenting itself. Lana Wachowski’s use of natural light in her belated sequel is in rousing, touching contrast to the cold digital veneer of the original trilogy, but it feels like sunbeams bursting into view after a long overcast storm. Resurrections is a dizzying recalibration of a franchise and the most romantic offering in the series. A technical tour-de-force with a fond, beating heart. It is that rarest of things; a blockbuster masterpiece. Available on Blu-Ray and 4K.
2. Killers of the Flower Moon (2023, Martin Scorsese)
If The Zone of Interest has competition for the defining ‘Biden era’ film it is Scorsese’s stirring epic, which also concerns itself deeply – and furiously – with our ability to compartmentalise a tragedy happening in plain sight. Leonardo DiCaprio has rarely eschewed the glamour of his Hollywood persona so surely as here playing Ernest Burkhart, a thick-eared WW1 veteran lured into a callous conspiracy by his domineering uncle (Robert De Niro) to harvest the head rights to oil reserves from the local Osage population. Based on a genuine criminal enterprise and harrowing tragedy, Scorsese’s picture thrums to a relentless heartbeat. Rodrigo Pietro’s cinematography stuns, while the old master in charge isn’t beyond holding himself accountable for making entertainment from real-life misery. Lily Gladstone, you were robbed. Available on AppleTV and Italian 4K.
1. I Saw The TV Glow (2024, Jane Schoenbrun)
I make no apologies for this. A choice that I feel is at once both entirely personal and biased and objectively reasonable. Jane Schoenbrun’s second feature continued to reach fingertips out to those awkward, lonely, caged souls just out of reach in the digital slipstream around her, but it also reflects nakedly tender and personal emotions. Reminds us to feel things by showing others in those liminal spaces.
Gorgeously rendered in a purple haze of ’90s melancholy, I Saw The TV Glow sees two high-school outcasts united by a shared passion for the escapism of a fictional fantasy television series called ‘The Pink Opaque’. That show opens doors for both of them, triggering personal revelations of identity so strong that reality itself comes into question.
Schoenbrun’s suburbia is a wasteland of silenced hearts, a somnambulist nowheresville of bungalows and retail parks. It is a sleeping world. While ‘The Pink Opaque’ allows her to pay homage to ’90s cult TV touchstones like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (hi Amber Benson!), the lure of nostalgia-bait is over-ridden by the raw, emotionally honest work of Justice Smith and Brigitte Lundy-Paine as intrepid lost souls Owen and Maddy.
I’m 41 years old. I look and present as male. But inside I know those definitions are reductive. A facade even. As an obsessive devotee of filmed stories, I Saw The TV Glow saw me. As a person it damned-near X-rayed me. And with a critical eye I can only respect how skillfully Schoenbrun achieved those things through the flicker of her moving pictures.
Available on Amazon, AppleTV and Blu-Ray from A24.
The Lost Highway Hotel 