21 hours Ago By Michael Phillips
My love of movie scoundrels has been sorely tested this year. When I was young, I daydreamed of exotic heists, slick con artists and lovable crooks I’d seen on screen. For most of my moviegoing life, I’ve been a sucker for larceny done well.
Most of us are, probably. But now it’s late 2024. Mood is wrong.
It’s scoundrel time. Maybe Charles Dickens was right. In “American Notes for General Circulation” (1842), the English literary superstar chronicled his travels and detected a widespread, peculiarly American “love of ‘smart’ dealing” across the land.
It’ll pass, this scoundrel reprieve of mine. In fact it just did. All it took was thinking about the conspicuous, roguish outlier on my best-of-2024 list: “Challengers.
” It’s what this year needed and didn’t know it: a tricky story of lying, duplicitous weasels on and off the court. The best films this year showed me things I hadn’t seen, following familiar character dynamics into fresh territory. Some were more visually distinctive than others; all made eloquent cases for how, and where, their stories unfolded.
“All We Imagine as Light,” recently at the Gene Siskel Film Center, works like a poem, or a sustained exhalation of breath, in its simply designed narrative of three Mumbai hospital workers. Fluid, subtly political, filmmaker Payal Kapadia’s achievement is very nearly perfect. So is cowriter-director RaMell Ross’ adaptation of the Colson Whitehead novel “The Nickel Boys,” arriving in Chicago-area theaters on Jan.
3, 2025. “Nickel Boys,” the film, loses the “the” in Whitehead’s title but gains an astonishingly realized visual perspective. If Ross never makes another movie, he’ll have an American masterpiece to his credit.
The following top 10 movies of 2024 are in alphabetical order. Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha in “All We Imagine as Light.” (Janus Films/Sideshow) “All We Imagine as Light”: Both a mosaic of urban ebb and flow, and a delicate revelation of character, director and writer Payal Kapadia’s Mumbai story is hypnotic, patient and in its more traditional story progression, a second feature every bit as good as Kapadia’s first, 2021’s “A Night of Knowing Nothing.
” “Anora”: Mikey Madison gives one of the year’s funniest, saddest, truest performances as a Brooklyn exotic dancer who takes a shine to the gangly son of a Russian oligarch, and he to her. Their transactional courtship and dizzying Vegas marriage, followed by violently escalating complications, add up to filmmaker Sean Baker’s triumph, capped by an ending full of exquisite mysteries of the human heart. Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones in “The Brutalist.
” (A24) “The Brutalist”: As played by Adrien Brody, the title character is a visionary architect and Hungarian Jewish emigre arriving in America in 1947 after the Holocaust. (That said, the title refers to more than one character.) His patron, and his nemesis, is the Philadelphia blueblood industrialist played by Guy Pearce.
Director/co-writer Brady Corbet’s thrillingly ambitious epic, imperfect but loaded with rewarding risks, was shot mostly in widescreen VistaVision. Worth seeing on the biggest screen you can find. Opens in Chicago-area theaters on Jan.
10, 2025. “Challengers”: Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor play games with each other, on the tennis court and in beds, while director Luca Guadagnino builds to a match-point climax that can’t possibly work, and doesn’t quite — but I saw the thing twice anyway. Zendaya (right, with Josh O’Connor) plays a former tennis pro turned fiercely competitive and romantically conflicted coach in “Challengers.
” (MGM) “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World”: In Bucharest, production assistant Angela zigzags around the city interviewing people for her employer’s workplace safety video. If that sounds less than promising, even for a deadpan Romanian slice-of-life tragicomedy, go ahead and make the mistake of skipping this one. llinca Manolache is terrific as Angela.
“Green Border”: Like “Do Not Expect Too Much,” director Agnieszka Holland’s harrowing slice of recent history was a 2023 release, making it to Chicago in early 2024. Set along the densely forested Poland/Belarus border, this is a model of well-dramatized fiction honoring what refugees have always known: the fully justified, ever-present fear of the unknown. Julianne Nicholson and Zoe Ziegler star in debut feature filmmaker Annie Baker’s “Janet Planet.
” (A24) “Janet Planet”: A quiet marvel of a feature debut from writer-director Annie Baker, this is a mother/daughter tale rich in ambiguities and wry humor, set in a lovely, slightly forlorn corner of rural Massachusetts. Julianne Nicholson, never better; Zoe Ziegler as young, hawk-eyed Lacy, equally memorable. “My Old Ass”: I love this year’s nicest surprise.
The premise: A teenager’s future 39-year-old self appears to her, magically, via a strong dose of mushrooms. The surprise: Writer-director Megan Park gradually deepens her scenario and sticks a powerfully emotional landing. Wonderful work from Aubrey Plaza, Maisy Stella, Maria Dizzia and everybody, really.
Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson star in “Nickel Boys.” (Orion Pictures) “Nickel Boys”: From the horrific true story of a Florida reform school and its decades of abuse, neglect and enraging injustice toward its Black residents, novelist Colson Whitehead’s fictionalized novel makes a remarkable jump to the screen thanks to co-writer/director RaMell Ross’s feature debut. “A Real Pain”: Cousins, not as close as they once were, reunite for a Holocaust heritage tour in Poland and their own search for their late grandmother’s childhood home.
They’re the rootless Benji (Kieran Culkin) and tightly sprung David (Jesse Eisenberg, who wrote and directed). Small but very sure, this movie’s themes of genocidal trauma and Jewish legacy support the narrative every step of the way. Culkin is marvelous; so is the perpetually undervalued Eisenberg.
Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin in a scene from “A Real Pain.” (Searchlight Pictures) To the above, I’ll add 10 more runners-up, again in alphabetical order: “Blink Twice,” directed by Zoe Kravitz. “Conclave,” directed by Edward Berger.
“Dune: Part Two ,” directed by Denis Villeneuve. “Good One ,” directed by India Donaldson. “Hit Man,” directed by Richard Linklater.
“Joker: Folie a Deux,” directed by Todd Phillips. “Nosferatu,” directed by Robert Eggers, opens in Chicago-area theaters on Dec. 25.
“The Outrun,” directed by Nora Fingscheidt. “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” directed by Johan Grimonprez. “Tuesday,” directed by Daina O.
Pusić. Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic..
