Last year, there were four year-end movie posts: one for the ‘best’ movies of 2023, one for favourite movies of 2023, one for best pre-2023 movies I watched in 2023, and one for favourite pre-2023 movies I watched in 2023. We are going to do the same thing for 2024, and today we’ll start with the ‘best’ movies I watched in 2024 that were released before this year.
When it comes to discerning between ‘best’ and ‘favourite’, there is sometimes an overlap. However, I think there are movies that are excellent (for technical reasons, for writing, for acting, or usually a combination of the three) that I likely wouldn’t spend a Friday night to sit down and re-watch, and those are the ‘best’. Then there are movies where I would absolutely throw on for a re-watch at midnight when I just want to enjoy myself, and those are ‘favourites’. Clear? Hope so.
Anyway, here are the five ‘best’ movies I watched this year that weren’t from this year.
His Girl Friday (Comedy, 1940)
Starring: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell
Director: Howard Hawks
The plot is both straightforward and the right amount of preposterous that it slides perfectly into the ‘screwball comedy’ realm. Grant’s character (Walter) is a newspaper editor and Russell’s character (Hildy) is both his ex-wife and a former news reporter. Hildy is about to re-marry, Walter doesn’t feel great about it, so he convinces her to help him with one final story: A man (Earl Williams) is convicted of murder, but is likely innocent. The twist is that the convicted murderer escapes from jail and Hildy hides him in the press room. Of course, not everything goes to plan when trying to clear his name and things devolve from there.
This movie is absolutely flying when the dialogue is going. Generations before the snappy, quick-witted dialogue that was re-popularized for modern audiences by Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark character, screwball comedies like this had a dozen zingers per minute. The chemistry between Grant and Russell is palpable, the jokes oscillate between jabs and haymakers, and the physical comedy adds another dimension entirely.
Sometimes when I got back to watch an old ‘classic’, I walk away wondering what people see in the movie. This isn’t one of those cases – it holds up incredibly well 85 years later and is a genuine comedic masterpiece.
Singin’ In The Rain (Musical, 1952)
Starring: Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds
Director: Gene Kelly
I watch every kind of movie that is made, but musicals are ones that are usually at the bottom of the hierarchy. Maybe that’s why ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ never made it on my screen before the age of 38. Whatever the reason, much like ‘His Girl Friday’, it’s easy to see why this movie was revered at the time, and still is to this day nearly three-quarters of a century later.
There isn’t much complicated about the premise: This is set in 1920s Hollywood as the industry is shifting from silent films to ones with sound. Kelly’s character (Don Lockwood) is working with Jean Hagen’s character (Lina Lamont) as that transition is being made, but the problem is her voice sounds like a dog’s chew toy, so they bring in Reynolds’s character (Kathy Selden) to dub over Lamont’s scenes. Of course, this a Golden Age Hollywood romantic comedy/musical, so Don falls for Kathy as Lina gets pushed to the side, and the interplay between the characters plays both as a drama and a comedy, sometimes simultaneously.
The musical numbers are not only fantastic, but they are timeless. The dialogue and chemistry between the stars is obvious, and while the characterization of Lamont might be a bit unfair by today’s standards, it gives a glimpse into what this crucial period in movie history was like at its epicentre. This is a stone-cold classic, and I’m kind of angry it took me so long to get to it.
Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961)
Starring: Audrey Hepburn, George Pappard
Director: Blake Edwards
Okay, maybe this movie wouldn’t hold up well by 2024 standards – Hepburn’s character (Holly Golightly, which is an amazing character name) is an upper-class socialite who is looking to marry rich while Pappard’s character (Paul Varjak) is a struggling writer with a wealthy (older) girlfriend. The two meet when he moves into her apartment building, and the entire film revolves around a will they/won’t they scenario as they move from room to room, party to party.
Aside from the ‘marry rich’ thread that starts the movie, there is also an awful caricature of a Japanese landlord played by Mickey Rooney. Needless to say, this wouldn’t fly in 2024, and it wouldn’t have even passed the screen test in 1994.
All that aside, when watching this movie, it’s easy to see why Hepburn was one of the biggest movie stars in the world during her heyday. In every one of her scenes, she’s a gravitational force around whom everything revolves, and her quick wit absolutely crushes nearly every line delivery. She shows a bit of her dramatic side as well, but this movie is at its best when she’s playing the high-class socialite, and Hepburn gives a performance for the ages.
This movie wouldn’t pass audience standards in 2024, but it’s carried to greatness by an all-time performance from Hepburn. We need more movies (mostly) like this: Contained stories with attractive performers possessing top-notch comedic timing. The closest we’ve had recently, to my mind, was Jennifer Lawrence in ‘No Hard Feelings’. It isn’t hard to see someone like Florence Pugh or Zendaya doing the same, and bringing in a big box office because of it.
Mulholland Drive (Thriller, 2001)
Starring: Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts
Director: David Lynch
I’m not sure why this slipped through the cracks, but it did, and it’s easy to see why this movie has been hailed as one of the best of this century.
This is another Hollywood-centric movie, only this time it’s Watts’s character (Betty Elms) landing in California as an aspiring actress. A woman (Rita, played by Laura Elena Herring) gets into a car accident, is suffering from amnesia, and is found by Watts in Watts’s apartment. The two of them set off to figure out what happened, so the story is straightforward enough, but as with anything made by Lynch, nothing is as straightforward as it seems.
A person’s enjoyment of ‘Mulholland Drive’ will largely depend on their enjoyment of Lynch’s work in general. He isn’t necessarily one of my favourite filmmakers, but at the least I appreciate him doing non-linear, dream-like scenes that blur between reality and fiction. It can get confusing if the audience is checking their BlueSky timeline every 10 minutes, but the resolutions hit like a 100 MPH fastball to the nose.
Watts has to cover a lot of range in this movie, and without her doing it, the whole thing would collapse. But she is tremendous, Theroux’s character (Adam Kesher) plays well both as sympathetic and pathetic, and how all the chaotic strands tie together at the end is very fulfilling. It might not land for everyone, but this is one of the best neo-noir thrillers I have ever seen.
The Bombardment (Drama, 2022)
Starring: Alex Hogh Andersen, Fanny Bornedal
Director: Ole Bornedal
If I am a sucker for one thing, it’s comedies/romcoms set in a foreign country. If I’m a sucker for two things, it’s that, and a non-fiction war story. ‘The Bombardment’ is the latter, and it’s something to behold.
This true story from the latter months of World War 2 is set in Copenhagen, Denmark. The set up is that the English Royal Air Force is setting up for a bombing raid on the Nazi Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen. (Remember, this is still an era with manual navigators.) There are three sets of planes set to bomb the headquarters at different time intervals. During the mission, one of the lead planes clips a tower and crashes into what is effectively an elementary school that happens to be down the street from the Gestapo headquarters. The subsequent planes believe the school is the target, so they rain down their bombs on the school rather than the Gestapo. The second half of the movie is the rescue attempts to retrieve however many children are still alive but buried under the rubble.
Needless to say, this is a brutal movie to watch, but it’s very well-crafted and the story is too good (and important) to ignore. It might not hit for everyone, given the subject matter, but it is an excellent film on a subject that doesn’t often get this kind of exposure (namely, the blunders made during war that cause needless casualties).
Cliffy's hell-hole 