It's Just Like The Movies

| 2024 Films Seen Chronologically | 2024 Films Seen by Grade |

Yeah that’s right faggots! Two years in a row! Consistency, right down to releasing this around the same time as last year even though I hit 50 films way earlier! I may be negging myself in the previous sentence but seriously, this is so cool! I can do dis! I can do dis, any time I want!

Anyways! This honestly feels like a ballot of the year’s best that I could preserve in amber for the rest of 2024. So much great stuff has already been released already, even for us pitiable folks who can’t make the festival circuit to hit the buzzy titles. And I am absolutely looking forward to all the cool stuff coming out of TIFF, but let me be clear: plenty of good shit is already here. Much of that good shit can be found throughout this post!

Edit: Allow me to put a caveat at the top here about one absent performance: Bridgette Lundy-Paine in I Saw the TV Glow, who is so arresting in how they depict Maddie’s friendship with Owen, how their fixation on The Pink Opaque is forever tinged with life-saving reverence and deluded fatalism, and so flexible with short but significant increments of aging and personal reinvention. Lundy-Paine being nonbinary and me being unnecessarily beholden to gendered acting categories meant I wasn’t sure where to place them without feeling like I was arbitrarily assigning their gender for my own convenience, which is so shitty. If and when the I Saw the TV Glow crew release an FYC campaign, I’ll put Lundy-Paine in the appropriate category. Or maybe I’ll just abolish gendered acting categories altogether for my end-of-year ballot! Either way, their absence isn’t a reflection on their acting, just on my sensitivities.

All of the films eligible for this feature: 20,000 Species of Bees, Abigail, Alien: Romulus, Apolonia Apolonia, The Beast, The Beast in the Jungle, Bye Bye Tiberias, Challengers, Chicken for Linda!, Chronicles of a Wandering Saint, Close Your Eyes, Cold Blows the Wind, The Concierge, Daddio, Deadpool x Wolverine, Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, Drive-Away Dolls, Dune: Part Two, Evil Does Not Exist, The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed, Firebrand, The First Omen, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire, Hit Man, Hundreds of Beavers, I Saw the TV Glow, In a Violent Nature, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, Io Capitano, Janet Planet, Last Summer, Longlegs, Love Lies Bleeding, Lypsinka: Toxic Femininity, Madame Web, Mars Express, The People’s Joker, Power, Problemista, Red Rooms, Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus, Samsara, Sing Sing, The Truth vs Alex Jones, The Vourdalak, We Grown Now, Yannick.

Picture

• The Beast, prods. Justin Taurand, Tatiana Bouchin, Bertrand Bonello, & co. – In delicious cinematic style, proposes so much about love, fate, and loneliness across a century of romantic misfortune.
• Close Your Eyes, prods. José Alba, Odile Antonio-Baez, Agustin Bossi, Pablo Bossi & co. – A look towards the past that sees the vitality of mementos and the cavernous space between Then and Now, told with elegant simplicity.
• Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, prods. Radu Jude, Adrian Sitaru & Ada Solomon – Captures the overstimulated chaos of modern living, and how interactions that are “only” about work, sex, politics, etc., always relate back to each other.
• Evil Does Not Exist, prod. Satoshi Takada – Taken as a more “minor” achievement than Drive My Car, but just as impressive a showcase for Hamaguchi’s skills as cineaste and storyteller.
• I Saw the TV Glow, prods. Ali Herting, Sam Intili, Dave McCary, Emma Stone & Sarah Winshall – Such an oppressive mood, yet Schoenbrun’s formal and thematic creativity allows room to explore the reverberations enveloping Owen and Maddie.
• Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, prods. Jeremy Chua & Tran Van Thi – A journey about the place religion holds in one’s life that remains potent and accessible across its three hours, leaving us to consider its questions.
• Love Lies Bleeding, prods. Oliver Kassman & Andrea Cornwell – Beautiful lesbians, rich in pulp, ready to fuck shit up. Tremendously entertaining and sturdily built.
• The People’s Joker, prod. Joey Lyons – Miraculous that it exists, and that it got released. Most inspiring as a living, breathing artwork, a collaborationn that’s utterly its own.
• Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus, prods. Aiko Masubachi, Norika Sky-Sora, Eric Nyari & Albert Tholen – Unbeatable as a private concert, shot and mixed with real style. So much more poignant as a last hurrah for not being about that.
• Samsara, prod. Leire Apellaniz – An ethnographic study of resurrection. An overwhelming sensory experience rooted in spiritual guidance. A goat. What more could you want?

Runners-Up: As of this minute, I’m not sure I’d trade this top ten for anything else eligible for this lil’ feature. Still, three films made very strong bids, and I’m so curious to see how they’ll stick to my memory and/or hold up on rewatch. Problemista is a fucking riot of labyrinthine beaurocracy and neurotic artists, a self-consciously odd film that earns its weirdo bonafides in spades. Mars Express is perhaps the year’s feat of plausible, captivating genre worldbuilding, compressed and assured in its choices, and nailing its last fifteen minutes. I’ve been surprised how much Bye Bye Tiberias has stuck with me, and I expect its smart, tightly woven storytelling will only be more impressive as the year continues.

Director

• The Beast, Bertrand Bonello – Bonello’s made a career on films that defiantly refuse to conform to expected structures, and takes this predilection to new, sumptuous heights.
• Close Your Eyes, Victor Erice – Keeps the proceedings startling intimate within an epic canvas, refusing abstraction even as he aims for the miraculous.
• Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, Thien An Pham – Supremely confident, especially for a debut. Earns his show-offy gestues by keeping his film scaled to quotidian truths.
• The People’s Joker, Vera Drew – A John Waters for the green screen age, whose coloratura of kitsch is made even more sublime by the palpable heart powering it.
• Samsara, Lois Patiño – Defamiliarizes so much in color, noise, and environment, yet never closes his film off to those who wish to immerse themselves in its otherworldly glow.

Runners-Up: Yes, everyone who directed a movie in my top ten, and who directed a film that just missed that cutoff. But to draw your attention to directorial feats outside of the above-listed titles: Catherine Breillat, whose control of tone and imagery in Last Summer conspires with Anne’s point of view but is outside them just enough to show the cracks of her fantasies. Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson step up their game as visual filmmakers for Ghostlight, which maintains their complex eye towards character in a non-autobiographic scenario. Lastly, I don’t love everything about the scripts that Pascal Plante and Osgood Perkins wrote for themselves with Red Rooms and Longlegs, but their handling of major setpieces and creeping atmosphere are real achievements, and make the creakier stuff more intriguing than it might’ve been.

Documentary

• Apolonia, Apolonia, dir. Lea Glob – Portrait of an artist’s talent and a director’s fascination made richer for fractured style and candor with life’s unexpected curves.
• Bye Bye Tiberias, dir. Lina Soualem – Considered, complicated portrait of how one relates to their family across generations, of immigrant experiences, and of Palestinian displacement.
• Lypsinka: Toxic Femininity, dir. Chloe Sevigny – Surreal sense of structure and editing make this an even better showcase for Lypsinka’s unconventional act.
• Power, dir. Yance Ford – Surveys several chapters of US history to convey a dense, prickly catalogue on the violence built into police institutions.
• Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus, dir. Neo Sora – Interested not just in honoring Sakamoto but in making an honest-to-God film through which to mold and amplify his genius.

Runners-Up: The Truth vs Alex Jones could have taken Power’s slot on this lineup, and is comparably impressive at cataloguing its subject in digestible terms that don’t simplify or undermine Jones’s monstrousness.

Ensemble

• 20,000 Species of Bees, Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren – The current gold standard for deftly sketched family dramas, and for fully realized child performances. Gives and takes so rewarding.
• Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, Silviu Velicu – Each figure arrives with their own dignities and foibles, endowing genuinely human perspective to Jude’s high style and harsh judgments.
• Ghostlight, Alexis Link, Mickey Pascal and Jennifer Rudnicke – Tertiary players suggest as much going on as the central cast, all of whom negotiate in-the-moment feeling and heavy baggage marvelously.
• The People’s Joker, Vera Drew – Major and one-off roles play equally to the sincerity and vulgarity that gives the film its weird little soul. Gold standard for Bits Committed.
• Sing Sing, Rita Powers – No better argument for Sing Sing’s views of art, masculinity, and human truths than the lived-in emotional clarity and articulate expressions of this largely debut cast.

Runners-Up: One of these films nearly lost its slot at the last minute, in close competition with the zany, many-flavored enthusiasm of Drive-Away Dolls and Yannick’s synchronicity with a droll but no less ridiculous scenario. Both films have a deep bench of talent to pull from for one-off confrontations, background color, and story-driving engines of chaos – call them if you’re looking for a good time.

Lead Actress

• The Beast, Lea Seydoux – Our premier interpreter of finely grained emotionalism, cerebral and cinematic, Seydoux makes this tragic romance unbearably human.
• Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, Ilana Manolache – Embodies the stressed and laconic attitudes of demanding grunt. Deft with big moments and watchful interactions. Fucking hysterical.
• Last Summer, Lea Drucker – Counter-intuitive choices for when to play to her current moment or her sordid situation, revealing so many faces of this vile, impulsive clown.
• Problemista, Tilda Swinton – Shades of sympathy and calculation keep this lonely, frustrated hydra legible to Torres’ playhouse and the world we live in. Weirdly admirable, too.
• Red Rooms, Juliette Gariepy – With a model’s poise and a voyeur’s watchfulness, Gariepy projects a host of dangerous possibilities within a clenched reserve.

Runners-Up: The closest miss in any acting category was Sofia Oferi in 20,000 Species of Bees, who conveys almost telepathic gradations of recognition and exploration about the choices she’s making with her body and her family – revelatory work I hope more people see. After her is Vera Drew in The People’s Joker, so agile with comedic timing and relating to co-stars; Monica Villa in Chronicles of a Wandering Saint, who conjures an arresting hold on the audience in her character’s misguided actions; Nell Tiger Free’s commitment to The First Omen in physical extremity and psychic terror; and Adria Arjuna’s charismatic cohesion of a somewhat unevenly written role in Hit Man. Two shouts to the dynamic duos of Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brien in Love Lies Bleeding, and Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan in Drive-Away Dolls, powering their very different vehicles with comparable levels of chemistry, comedy, and iffy decision-making.

Lead Actor

• Challengers, Josh O’Connor – The easy MVP of his film. Keeps us on our toes with unexpected inflections while offering a concrete personality. Spry, sexy, and sweaty.
• Ghostlight, Keith Kpuferer – Who builds his performance in small gestures, poignant observances, and long-congested pains, earning Dan’s big moments.
• Sing Sing, Colman Domingo – Connects fully and robustly with a huge cast. Wears every minute of Divine G’s life so comfortably on his shoulders, without making him a paragon.
• Sing Sing, Clarence Maclin – The debut of the year? Such an assured, grounding figure, giving the film a distinct emotional reality while considerably elevating its game.
• Yannick, Raphael Quenard – Puts over his disgruntled audience member by staying surprisingly even-keeled, making his relations with the theatre weirdly believable.

Runners-Up: Only three performers made a real bid for this lineup: Manolo Solo in Close Your Eyes, who pours so much detail into his character’s relationships that he’s always tangible as his own person; Seydou Starr in Io Capitano, whose marvelously open face is Garrone’s best asset in maintaining the register of heightened parable; and Justice Smith in I Saw The TV Glow, for heartbreaking variations of recognition and congestion, smothering himself to death before our eyes. Below those two but still in consideration were Jude Law’s unfamiliar grotesquery in Firebrand, Kacey Mattet Klein’s hormonal observer reactor to backwoods peasants and a rotted beast in The Vourdalak, Chris Hemsworth’s mania as the post-apocalypse’s third party candidate in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, and Julio Torres serving great comedy and a solid anchor for other nuts to bouonce off in Problemista. I expect I’ll have another date with Glen Powell in Hit Man before the end of the year, but I had a hard time connecting to the film and his performance as more than an audition reel.

Supporting Actress

• 20,000 Species of Bees, Ana Gabarain – Proves the most nuanced observer of her family’s entanglements, recognizing who needs her comfort or her steeliness.
• Close Your Eyes, Ana Torrent – Could have settled for luminous nostalgia, but tempers her reveries with a mature, wounded reluctance to let the past keep hurting her soul.
• Janet Planet, Sophie Okonedo – Who forever finds sly variations in line readings, body language, and expression to make her visitor more and less welcoming than we expect.
• Love Lies Bleeding, Anna Baryshnikov – Brings Martha Vickers levels of moment-to-moment unpredictability to her dim, cunning ex. Kicked-puppy sweetness makes her an even more humiliating foe.
• Red Rooms, Laurie Babin – Whose electric charge doesn’t steal the spotlight from her reserved lead, unbalance her film, or prevent later gradations in this vacuous creature.

Runners-Up: Both supporting categories are ridiculously crowded – especially this one, where about ten other women circled on and off this list. Chief among them is the trio of Dolly de Leon’s fierce, no-bullshit pal, Katherine Kupferer’s negotiation between performative and genuine behaviors, desperate to be understood by her parents, and Tara Mellen’s palpable weariness at holding her family together in Ghostlight, all of whom do superb work. Itziar Latkiano’s frosty maternalism in 20,000 Species of Bees is just as sharp as Gabarian’s cozier register of communicating family relations and petty hang-ups. S. Epatha Merkerson is ideally cast in We Grown Now, a font of loving support mixed with a pragmatism necessary to survive tough times. Katia Pascariu in Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World is a late-breaking treat, emerging from the sidelines to emit so many conflicting motivations once her family takes center stage. Lynn Downey’s harried mother in The People’s Joker heroically evolves from shrill caricature to . . . . maybe not three dimensions, but as many dimensions as the rest of the major cast has. Khady Sy in Io Capitano offers a casually layered figure in the early going, someone I’d have liked to spend more time with.

Supporting Actor

• Close Your Eyes, Josep Maria Pou – Distills the old-soul wamrth and ache of Erice’s saga in bookending scenes, with a gravitas and economy befitting a Golden Age heavy.
• The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed, Scott Cohen – Raises so many questions about Ann’s appetites by being so incredibly dull, making his bland, vanilla dom genuinely provocative.
• The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed, Babak Tafti – You can’t fake the hormonal excitement Tafti brings to this sweet bean. Great shading of a sub being sculpted into domhood.
• Longlegs, Nicolas Cage – Synthesizes all the outre, even errant impulses of his film and refracts them with an inspired madness all his own.
• Yannick, Pio Marmai – Whose every action in putting over a bad gig – as a showman and a hostage – shows a diva desperate to be praised for powering through it.

Runners-Up: A very deep roster of contenders, many of whom could have taken a slot or two on different versions of this list. I wouldn’t even call these guys ranked as listed – nothing but vibes. Anyways! Ryuji Kosaka in Evil Does Not Exist, who plays a salaryman’s tentative steps towards a different way of life so earnestly, and for nailing his last close-up. Nathan Faustyn is a stalwart ally in The People’s Joker, grounding the vibe in a way that makes his jokes even funnier. Issako Sawadogo’s terse refugee in Io Capitano has stayed with me longer than I’d expected him to, and I wonder whether he might grow even higher in my estimation on rewatch. Blair Underwood in Longlegs gives an uncommonly textured spin on the Jack Crawford type, a welcome presence even as you suspect time is running out on a good man. Javier Bardem is my very favorite performance in Dune: Part Two, chummy and commanding, and somehow making the same epiphany matter each time he has it. I sure didn’t expect to see Elias Koteas in Janet Planet, and it’s so nice to see him give such a soft-spoken, sensual spin on a guy who could have been much less appealing. Finally, Olivier Rabourdin and Samuel Kircher both give distinct spins on adultery drama archetypes in Last Summer as, respectively, the solid husband whose instincts are neither what the wife or the audience automatically expect, and the hormonal, eager young thing unaware he’s being eaten alive.

Original Screenplay

• Close Your Eyes, Michel Gaztambide and Victor Erice – Memory and cinema as two slow dancers, coiled and embracing in such elegant movements. So much detail poured into its epic canvas.
• Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, Radu Jude – Launches so many provocations from the start. Keeps adding new wrinkles to its catalogue of contemporary rot and comic futility.
• Evil Does Not Exist, Ryusuke Hamaguchi – Unspools its communal portraiture, socioeconomic divisions, and sudden denouements with the skill of a carefully crafted novella.
• The Feeling That the Time Doing Something Has Passed, Joanna Arnow – A mosaic where sex is refreshingly framed alongside work and family as one of many facets in a woman’s ongoing self-exploration.
• Problemista, Julio Torres – Hard to imagine Torres making a better leap into feature films, beautifully preserving his smarts, heart, and eccentricity.

Runners-Up: These five have felt cemented for a good while, but still a close miss for Chronicles of a Wandering Saint, which puts its lead through one heck of a ringer on her quest to mortal adoration and religious benediction. Bye Bye Tiberias is a huge feat of documentary screenwriting, detailing complex histories of family and country and showing how choices you don’t always grasp the significance of shape your whole life. Ghostlight is an even more astute feat of character observation than O’Sullivan’s previous Saint Frances, maintaining such delicacy amidst even trickier tones. Yannick puts over its situation pretty marvelously. I Saw the TV Glow has a great feel for the rhythm of creepypasta narratives, slowly devouring itself as its protagonist retreats further into emptiness. I’ve highlighted the spiritual unrest of Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell and Samsara plenty in other categories, yet even their formal ingenuity wouldn’t ring without such strong scripts from their writer/directors..

Adapted Screenplay

• The Beast, Bertrand Bonello, Guillame Breaud, & Benjamin Charbit – Audacious reworking of James across genres and decades, preserving that delicate loneliness and expanding it across so many other planes of alienation.
• The Beast in the Jungle, Patric Chiha, Axelle Ropert & Jihane Chouaib – “Does” less to reinvent Beast in the Jungle but just as insightful at preserving James’s mysteries, sorrows, and complex interactions.
• Last Summer, Catherine Breillat & Pascal Bonitzer – Jagged connection of scene-by-scene development, making the inexplicable affair a cruel, titillating folly.
• The People’s Joker, Vera Drew & Bri LeRose – Cultural riffs and purloined tropes abound, yet Drew ensures her leftist, alt-comedy queer chops are indisputably the authorial voice.
• Sing Sing, Clint Brently & Greg Kwedar – Men telling themselves and each other stories to remember and revitalize their humanity. Blessedly free of prison-yard tropes.

Runners-Up: Not a deep bench of options so far, as is usually the case before October – I’m sure lots of heavy-hitters are being saved for an awards-friendly release, and it at least gives me time to try reading The Nickel Boys. Outside of these five, my only other real contender was The Vourdalak, which has some spellbinding passages and some longeurs that pay off as directed more than as written. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga deserves points for storytelling ambition, though Miller’s audiovisual ingenuity outshines his script.

Cinematography

• Chronicles of a Wandering Saint, Pablo Lozano – Peculiar framing and handling of light showcases the sublime wonders of musty churches and dingy lamps. Best asset to the film’s comedy.
• In a Violent Nature, Peirce Derks – Show-offy goals, sure, but the experiment wouldn’t land without such smart choices with camera placement and knowing when (not) to move.
• Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, Dinh Duy Hung – Astonishingly confident use of deep focus and fluid mobility, heavy but never ponderous in showing Thien’s struggles with his faith.
• Samsara, Mauro Herce and Jessica Sarah Rinland – Palette encompasses every color under the sun, yet the camera negotiates jewel-tone saturation and light to conjure holy affects.
• The Vourdalak, David Chizallet – Grainy 16mm film deft with natural lighting and spooky inflections, preserving mystery and unreality even in less tense passages.

Runners-Up: Janet Planet should probably be on this list, and likely would have made it if I’d rewatched it before finalizing my ballot. Maria Von Hausswolf, a nominee on my Fifties and my final personal ballot last year for Godland, does such colorful, inventive work for her film, and I hope to see it recognized at the Indie Spirits. I also loved the crisp monochrome photography of Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus, which gives such potent dimension to Sakamoto and his music. Behind those films but still worth shouting out: the spooky tableaus of I Saw the TV Glow; Ghostlight’s sensitive negotiations of light and total blackness; the sheer beauty and tactility of The Beast; Sing Sing’s crackling use of color and mobility; and the mix of sharp lines and doomed atmospherics in Longlegs. Lastly, Greig Fraser’s dexterity with palette and gargantuan scale is still a huge asset for Dune: Part Two, though the trapping of actors in repetitive close-ups to move the film (probably Villenueve’s fault, but still) sours me on his achievements.

Editing

• Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, Catalin Cristutiu – Maintains Jude’s anarchic structure without losing track of the pitch-black humor, political cogency, or life’s little vulgarities. Those last 40 minutes? Wow.
• Last Summer, Francois Quiquere – Edits blunt scene transitions, isolate complex interactions, and suggest omissions as cavernous as the predation we see, replicating Anne’s self-serving compartmentalization.
• Longlegs, Graham Fortin and Greg Ng – From individual cuts, unique staging, and hideous montages, so much of Longlegs’s horror comes from incisive editing.
• Love Lies Bleeding, Mark Townes – A new peak in Townes’ impressive portfolio of obsession and fraying realities, synced to character- and genre-specific inflections.
• Samsara, Lois Patiño – Mid-film bifurcation is brilliantly executed. Provides just enough shaping to make this meditation work as cinema.

Runners-Up: The two closest misses are In a Violent Nature, where the timing of its cuts are just as essential to maintaining tension as the camera placement, and the plethora of dissolves and superimpositions that make The People’s Joker such a dizzying experience. A rewatch may give me greater appreciation for Close Your Eyes, which moves so smoothy and stays so intimate I might be taking it for granted. The Beast’s precisely-timed edits go a long way to executing its tricky conceits. Drive-Away Dolls has a lot of fun throwing its audience off-balance, starting and ending scenes at unexpected moments to give its road trip even nuttier energy. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga takes a surprising risk with its withholding of cuts, less maximalist than its predecessor but just as skilled at generating momentous tension. I don’t love how Dune: Part Two is paced as a two-and-a-half-hour spectacle, but the scene-level construction is often very impressive.

Sound Design

• I Saw the TV Glow, Tim Korn and Daniel Timmons – Incredibly textured soundscaping, playing with volume and irreality to slide under your skin. A+ soundtrack;
• In a Violent Nature, Tim Atkins, Michelle Hwu & co. – Cliched slasher dialogue given new weight(lessness?) when extrapolated with twittering birds and crackling campfires.
• Janet Planet, Paul Hsu – Full-bodied mix keeps suggesting a teaming natural world outside of Janet’s eccentric framing. Sounds of summer.
• Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus, ZAT, Seiji Itabashi and Takashi Kobayashi – Captures the tactility of live performance in such a specialized room, highlighting the muscularity and spontaneity of every note, every key.
• Samsara, Xabier Erkizia and Luca Rullo – Lush jungles, running water, bleating goats – we hear them all the time, but we’ve never heard them like this.

Runners-Up: We fucking hate movies made with a lot of money in this category, but if we have to acknowledge anything made for more than a couple million dollars, the rip-roaring, densely packed soundscapes of Dune: Part Two and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga are impressive to behold. Io Capitano was an even closer miss for seizing Senegal’s musicality and the dangers of the desert, conjuring strong tones without always offering real resolutions. Love Lies Bleeding manages its sonic elements with compression and clarity. Longlegs and The Vourdalak get a joint mention for investing such tactility into familiar horror tropes. As a special shout-out to would-be Sound Editing nominees that weren’t really contending for a sound mixing lineup, give a hand to the farcical action sfx of Hundreds of Beavers and The People’s Joker (which also has a pussy-popping soundtrack, btw) and the whorish tennis moans of Challengers.

Score

• Challengers, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – Even if I resist how it’s used in several scenes, the score itself is an absolute banger. Techno-rave tunes ready for the court and the club.
• Evil Does Not Exist, Eiko Ishibashi – Full-bodied and foreboding, expansive yet funereal, Ishibashi’s music conveys the overwhelming despair haunting this town on the brink.
• I Saw the TV Glow, Alex G – Rarely the star in the way the songs are, but sawwing strings provide so much creeping, heartsore ambiance to the whole film.
• Mars Express, Fred Avrille & Phillipe Monthaye – Connects fully to the genre-blending and the philosophical ambitions of its film. EDM for pondering the fate of humanity.
• Red Rooms, Dominique Plante – From almost folkoric melodies to ominous atonal movements, Plante’s inventive orchestrations balance opaque surfaces and troubling tremors.

Runners-Up: Hans Zimmer’s Dune: Part Two score is an even stronger achievement than his previous Oscar-winning entry. Io Capitano‘s music helps refute a miserablist or tourist-y view on the character’s suffering with its loopy instrumentations. To pay quick respects to film whose scores are most essential as well-utilized elements of their sound design (or perhaps I’m underrating how craftily they improve their films), three cheers for The Beast, Longlegs, Samsara, and The Vourdalak.

Production Design

• 20,000 Species of Bees, Izaskun Urkijo – Unusual artworks, voluminous beehives, homes accumulated with treasures and mementos all communicate so much about this family.
• I Saw the TV Glow, Brandon Tonner-Connolly & Paige Mitchell – Almost mocking variations on suburban congestion, a series of colorful, uncanny signifiers transformed into a prison. There is still time!
• Longlegs, Danny Vermette – For homes and offices that better resemble mausoleums their inhabitants have already sealed themselves in. Bonus points for Bill Clinton, and for creepy dolls.
• Problemista, Jasmine Cho and Kendall Anderson – Relishes the creative absurdism of artists, toymakers, and architects, from the mundanely odd to the truly wondrous. Eggs!!
• We Grown Now, Merje Veski – Sets convey the intimacy and remove of cramped public housing. Personal affects and the care shown to them speak such volumes.

Runners-Up: Easily the most difficult field to narrow down to five slots, and the one likeliest to have changed between the seconds before and after I hit “publish”. The clearest sixth spot is Close Your Eyes, for its decades of well-kept paraphernalia and old movie theaters, its ultra-sleek modern sets, and devising crafty strategies to make cinema resonate through unlikely spaces. To machine-gun through a whole host of alphabetically-ordered baddies, we have: Abigail’s indelible murder mansion, more storied and captivating than any human; the uncanny echoes between eras (the dolls!) and standout singularities (the tar pit!) of The Beast; the purgatorial club of The Beast in The Jungle; Firebrand’s royal courts and lush gardens; the deep dives into familiar terrain in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga; the utterly convincing science fiction and moody noir riffs of Mars Express; and the mix of towering stability and vulnerability to The Vourdalak’s intimidating but not impenetrable stone masonry.

Costume Design

• The Beast in the Jungle, Claire Dubian – Eye-catching club fits convey a crowd alluringly flung out of linear time, even as the leads wither away.
• Challengers, J.W. Anderson – Designs convey distinctions and overlaps between its dissatisfied trio. Great instincts for when to take off clothes. Zendaya’s outfits? All keepers.
• Dune: Part Two, Jacqueline West – The only artist who truly elevates their game from Part One, adding cultural detail and visual splendor where it’s badly needed.
• Firebrand, Michael O’Connor – O’Connor remains unparalleled at using fastidious historical detail and eye-catching wares to reach and alienate modern viewers
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Jenny Beaven – Much like West, Beaven finds so many new ideas for giving this desolate wasteland color and movement.

Runners-Up: The biggest miss here is Problemista, which relishes in the wacky colors and silhouettes of its leads, two dysfunctional children playing pretend as barely-functional adults. Two very near misses for the very French: Last Summer, whose chic loungewear say so much about how comfy this family feels in its own skin, and The Vourdalak, for a wardrobe. A joint shout-out to the delightful makeshift theatre costumes of Sing Sing and Ghostlight, rightly befitting thoughtful troupes on a budget. Lastly, though In a Violent Nature isn’t really a costume movie, they found a great look for their slasher.

Makeup & Hairstyling

• Firebrand, Hattie Leviston, Paul White & co. – For Catherine’s sculptural smoothness and the variations of grooming and excess to the men’s beards.
• In a Violent Nature, Steven Konstanski & co. – Devises spectacularly gross kills, executed with bloody glee and a Friday the 13th-style primal brutality. Tactile, weathered treatment of Johnny.
• Longlegs, Sheila Erdmann & Pamela Warden – Cage’s face tells a whole story of botched wannabe rockstardom, bleached and festered into a movie monster. Great squibs, too.
• Love Lies Bleeding, Carmen Jones, Jane Maier & co. – Plausibly ‘80s, courting scuzz, sweat, and silliness to better acquaint us with its colorful cast, not just in hair but complexion and dental work.
• The People’s Joker, Jake Bennett and Vera Drew – So good about realizing Joker’s transition, in both incremental and ostentatious steps forward. Memorable, clever designs on a budget.

Runners-Up: If you can believe it, this was the last category for me to finalize. Some very stiff competition from Challengers, for giving its three leads handsome looks with natty variations throughout the years, for the shiny oils and body hair and sweat, dear lord the sweat. Problemista has great fun with Tilda, as all make-up artists and wigmakers do, but I’m just as delighted by the idiot antenna on Julio Torres. Hit Man has even more kooky wigs than Problemista, finding fun outfits for Powell to strut in. Abigail’s explosions of blood, Alien: Romulus’s disgusting adult son, The First Omen’s surprise hand and sickening hairography for Nell Tiger Free and Sônia Braga, and The Vourdalak’s uncanny variations on court pomp and Gothic decay all round out horror’s annual strangehold on this category, for myself and every right person in the world.

Visual Effects

• Dune: Part Two, Arnaud Brisbois, Franco Galiano & co. – Still weighty, expansive and tangible where other American blockbusters are preternaturally weightless. Now with even more hot worm action!
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Jabin Dickens, Xavia Matin Bernasconi, Llyod Finnemore, Andy Williams & co. – Maintains Fury Road’s pulse-pounding speed and danger without repeating past glories. Desert paratroopers??? That’s sick as fuck!!
• Hundreds of Beavers, Mike Chesik and Brandon Kirkham – Silent-era stunts, gags, and props honor a century-old comic tradition with plenty of its own wacky spirit.
• The People’s Joker, Jake Myers & Jasperi Wirtanen – Every set, effect, character is rich with personality; A crazy-quilt of clashing styles that form a cohesive whole.
• The Vourdalak, Lisa Girardou and Franck Limon-Duparcmeur – Because I’ve never seen a vampire rendered like this, an uncanny parody of rotted humanity too proud for anyone to call it out.

Runners-Up: So much of Alien: Romulus is just jaw-droppingly good, especially the ring around whatever planet they’re on, but the moral rot and bizarrely ugly grave-robbing perpetrated against Ian Holm keeps it forever off this list. My actual sixth-spot (which might be back on the list now anyways) is I Saw the TV Glow, for how smoothly it incorporates old-school and hi-tech embellishments to vivify its worlds, especially the different versions of Mr. Melancholy. Abigail’s explosions of gore deserve some love, as do Longlegs’s blood splatters and devilish spectres. Love Lies Bleeding gets a great workout for its fantastical elements – the dangling jaw’s iffy, but everything with that finale looks excellent. Last but never, ever least, Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire, which suffers from a Subspace Emissary weightlessness but devises some great set pieces, and the image of Godzilla curled up in the Colosseum is worth its weight in gold.

Nomination total:

6 – The People’s Joker.
5 – Close Your Eyes, Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World.
4 – The Beast, I Saw the TV Glow, Longlegs, Love Lies Bleeding, Sing Sing.
3 – 20,000 Species of Bees, Challengers, Evil Does Not Exist, The Feeling That The Time for Doing Something Has Passed, In a Violent Nature, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, Last Summer, Problemista, Red Rooms, Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus.
2 – The Beast in the Jungle, Dune: Part Two, Firebrand, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Janet Planet, The Vourdalak, Yannick.
1 – Apolonia Apolonia, Bye Bye Tiberias, Chronicles of a Wandering Saint, Hundreds of Beavers, Lypsinka: Toxic Femininity, Mars Express, We Grown Now.

A huge thank you to everyone who’s let me bounce ideas off them, suggested I watch any of these movies, watched them with me, talked to me about movies at all. Y’all are superb. If you have any recommendations, any lists of your own, please feel free to share them with me! Do check out my writings at The Film Experience too – great site, with lots of great writers. I’m very proud of what I wrote on The People’s Joker, Sing Sing, The Vourdalak, Power, and Evil Does Not Exist, and plan on/desperately hope to maintain this energy and keep writing on new releases the rest of the year. Cláudio Alves also did his own Fifties post, and that guy’s bread and butter is watching cool stuff and telling everyone about it, so go check that out! Thanks for reading, and have a good day!