The 10 Best Movies of 2024
SlateFor the past eight years—ever since the last time there was an end-of-year movie season that fell in the shadow of a presidential election with results that were this, let’s just say, suboptimal—I’ve had to dispel a sense of ambient futility as I contemplated the process of Top 10 list-making. The analogy isn’t perfect: Parasite’s yearlong reign as a critical and popular smash signaled a shift from a Hollywood-centric film industry to a global one, while Anora’s more modest box-office success mostly just signals that writer-director Sean Baker will be free to make whatever movie he wants next. The story was created in collaboration with the movie’s star, the wildly charismatic Ilinca Manolache, whose character Angela spends the film driving around Bucharest working multiple gig-economy jobs. Secrets and Lies was one of Leigh’s most successful and beloved films; Hard Truths may find a smaller audience, thanks to the script’s uncompromising gaze on a relentlessly unpleasant yet painfully relatable main character. Like most of Leigh’s movies, this one was scripted only after long discussion and improvisational sessions with the performers, so Jean-Baptiste’s unforgettable miserabilist is as much her creation as that of the now 81-year-old director.
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