Yep, it's that time again to round up my favorite films and albums released in the past year. And if you're among the select few people who find their way to this obscure corner of the internet where I document my thoughts and creative musings on an old school Blogger site, then you probably have something in common with me, be it a shared love of film and music, compatible political views, or simply a similar obsession with creating lists and rankings to organize your thoughts. If so, then I thank you for indulging me, and I'd love to hear your own lists of 2024 favorites!
I will say that I did not have a single outstanding film that blew me away this year (though I'm still holding out for Sing Sing as a conventionally "great" movie). But though the entries on my list this year are not perfect, they each left a mark on me as films that told a compelling story in a starkly original way, enthralled me, or just made me feel something deeply. As for music, my favorite albums this year may not exactly be short n' sweet (no I still haven't listened to that album), but the selections I chose feel like some of the strongest, if not most downright iconic, releases I've heard in some time.
The following are my top five films and albums released in 2024, ranked:
Film
5. We Grown Now
This story of two young Black boys experiencing the joys and hardships of growing up in the Cabrini-Green housing complex in early 90s Chicago explores the contradiction between the attachment one feels to the community they're from and the ubiquitous American experience of always striving for better for oneself and their family. The conflict that results when one boy's family finds a way out, requiring him to both leave behind his old life and his best friend, sets the stage for a heartbreaking, bittersweet finale. There's a fair dose of heavy handed social commentary here, but it hardly seems to matter for a film with such a big heart and earnest emotional core.
4. Anora
Sean Baker's latest comes off at first glance as a modern day, adult Cinderella story about a sex worker from Brooklyn who falls in love with the son of a Russian oligarch. But that expectation suddenly disintegrates within one disastrous scene in which the titular character finds herself abandoned by her new husband and held captive by the cronies of her in-laws, who want to see the marriage annulled. What follows is an outrageous and maddening odyssey that pits a seemingly strong-willed character up against an impenetrable wall created by power and Anora's station in society. Like in Baker's previous works, the wild comedy and eccentric characters overlie more subtle, keen observations of the human condition. The crushing truth at the heart of the Anora is that sometimes even people with dreams and a fighting spirit find themselves lost and unable to break out of their current situation.
3. Kneecap
As a musical act, the Irish hip hop trio Kneecap have always towed a careful line between an earnest embrace of Irish Republicanism and parodying the more egregious and violent elements of that movement throughout its history of fighting for Irish independence from British rule. They have also found a balance between their values-driven narrative and simultaneous promotion of drug use and party culture. In short, you never really know how serious they're being, but somehow it works and you get it. In Kneecap, a semi-fictionalized narrative film about the group's origins in which the band members play themselves, they take it all on, including the politics, drug abuse, and wild escapades that characterize their story. Not only is it a thrilling adventure (think Trainspotting but with a heavy dose of Irish language political hip hop), but the film has been hailed as a rallying cry for the defense of native languages and cultures. Not bad for a few self-professed "low life scum" rappers whose music has been as controversial as it has been riveting.
2. Evil Does Not Exist
As Evil Does Not Exist opens, Takumi lives a slow life in peaceful coexistence with his surroundings in a Japanese mountain village. He chops wood, collects jugs of water from a forest stream, and teaches his young daughter how to live within the ecosystem they call home. It's only when plans for a luxury camping site to be built in the village gets introduced that things begin to change, as Takumi finds himself at the center of the controversy in the community over the proposal and the environmental impacts it will bring. The story continues to unfold at a measured pace until something snaps, like a wounded animal prodded one too many times, and the film's message is hammered home in one fell swoop. If you're not prepared for this conclusion (as I was not), this ending may leave you feeling unsettled and trying to pick up the pieces of what just happened. But Evil Does Not Exist doesn't aim to be easily digested, just as it doesn't offer easy answers to the moral questions it poses. Because, as the title suggests, there are no hard and fast morals in nature, especially when its balance has been thrown off and the peaceful existence of its inhabitants threatened.
1. I Saw the TV Glow
We all had those shows (or movies, or video games, or whatever) when we were younger that we would turn to out of boredom, a need to escape from whatever was going on in our lives, or to seek a sense of artificial connection when that connection didn't exist in the people around us. Sometimes we would spend so much time with these shows that the worlds within them felt just as real, if not more so, than our own world, and we felt as though our identity was somehow represented or intertwined within these worlds. For some people, like director Jane Schoenbrun, these shows were not just an escape into an alternate reality but a way to find resonance with their identity as a trans person when they knew that something was different about them but had not yet come to fully understand they were trans. This experience formed the basis for I Saw the TV Glow, about a teenager named Owen who becomes invested in a horror series called The Pink Opaque before it gets canceled and the girl he bonded with over the series mysteriously disappears, causing him to lose a grip on his sense of reality. Although the idea of being transgender is never directly referenced in the film, the story is an allegory about gender dysphoria and the sense of fear a trans person experiences confronting the notion of transitioning to the gender they identify with, leading some to never fully embrace their true identity. While this may sound like a straightforward idea to capture on film, it is anything but, and this is represented in the unconventional plot and tone of the film. The world inside I Saw the TV Glow, as experienced through Owen's point of view, feels surreal, like an uneasy dream where time moves unevenly and the people around you seem to be out of sync with your own movement through life. Although perhaps a strength of the film is that anybody who has ever felt like an outsider (and particularly those who have sought comfort in some form of media) can find resonance with the portrait of isolation it so vividly paints, the method is meant to be very specific to the trans experience. Schoenbrun has stated their desire to "build a genuine trans vocabulary" through film, because trans experiences have had such narrow representation in the film industry thus far. That vocabulary may at times be confounding to people who don't identify as trans, but that's precisely why movies like I Saw the TV Glow so desperately need to be made. Because media does have power in helping people find acceptance in their identity, and creating more films that are specific to the trans experience that can't be told by cis people is one way of broadening acceptance of all people of marginalized identities in our society.
Albums
5. What Now - Brittany Howard
The title of Brittany Howard's second solo album could be an exclamation of exasperation at life's ongoing string of misfortunes, a declaration of confident defiance, or a signal of creative restlessness, searching for the next musical idea to try out. Really, it's all three. On What Now, Howard boldly probes an array of frustrations and anxieties through an eclectic range of genres, seamlessly moving between soul, funk, rock, and electronic stylings. She may be "all out of rainbows," as she laments on the punchy closer "Every Color in Blue," but her artistry is more vibrant and colorful than ever before.
4. Loss of Life - MGMT
MGMT have long flirted with darkness and death in their lyrics, from imagining themselves succumbing to their party lifestyle by choking on their vomit in "Time to Pretend" to frankly and unsympathetically imagining someone's death in "When You Die." However, this macabre lyricism has usually been tongue and cheek and buoyed by the band's bizzarro psychedelic pop instrumentation. So as MGMT sing about death and the anxieties of daily life in a somewhat more restrained, serious fashion on Loss of Life, their first album in six years, some might feel a bit taken aback or even disappointed. But although the album may lack the pop hits and sonic exploration of their previous efforts, the more mature, soft-rock-leaning songs here hit a sweet spot for me. In particular, some of the more expansive and slow burning tracks, like the the epic Sisyphean lament of "Nothing Changes" and the gorgeously haunting closer "Loss of Life" about coming to terms with one's death, are some of the band's most emotive and moving works they've produced to date. It may be that with Loss of Life, MGMT have grown up and settled down a bit, but as they have proved across five distinctive albums, they are nothing if not true to themselves as purveyors of unique and captivating works of art.
3. Brat - Charli xcx
Okay, let's get this one out the way. We all loved it. We all had a brat girl summer. It was the perfectly pitched pop album that was infectious and cool enough to make it a viral internet sensation, was musically innovative enough and had enough lyrical depth to win over critics, and had smart enough marketing to make it a commercial hit and inspire aesthetic trends (anything lime green is now automatically "Brat"). And because apparently being a brat now evokes empowerment and living a happy, carefree live in spite of one's imperfections, here's to embracing brattiness again in 2025.
2. Cowboy Carter - Beyoncé
It's impossible to deny the cultural power of Beyoncé and this year she made major waves with her epic country-themed album Cowboy Carter. Conceived as a response to racist claims that she didn't belong in the genre after she performed at the Country Music Association Awards in 2016, the album imagines a reinvention of country music in America by paying homage to the overlooked contributions of Black artists throughout its history and putting her own spin on country and folk music through a diversity of tracks blending old and new influences. Like her 2022 album Renaissance, which paid tribute to the Black progenitors of dance music, Cowboy Carter is undeniably a landmark contribution to today's musical landscape. It's also a more personal album for Beyoncé, taking inspiration from her roots in Texas where country and western culture had a major impact on her upbringing. And while, at 78 minutes and 27 tracks long, the album feels a bit bloated and unwieldy compared with the more tightly focused Renaissance, even this feels like a statement, emphasizing the breadth of Black influences on country music and the many possibilities that a more diverse understanding of the genre could open up. With the album inspiring a wave of new interest in country music and widespread cultural conversations on diversity in the genre, that reinvention imagined in Cowboy Carter may well already be underway.
1. As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again - The Decemberists
The Decemberists' ninth studio album plays out like both an overview of the band's career and a history of humanity itself. The first half of the double LP focuses on the folk-oriented sound and lyricism infused with historical themes from decades or centuries past that the band has built their repertoire on. Included here are songs about the ubiquity of labor in making society run ("The Reapers") and the ill fate of those who are deemed criminals and rounded up by the police ("The Black Maria"). The second half transitions into the more modern indie rock the band has explored in recent years, centered on the rousing track "America Made Me," where singer and songwriter Colin Meloy explores his complicated relationship with his home country. Finally, the album concludes on the 19 minute "Joan in the Garden," inspired by a book Meloy read on Joan of Arc but which imagines him attempting to place himself within the world of that 15th century French hero to write a song about her. Finally finding the divine inspiration he needs, he proclaims, "As it ever was, so it will be again," and the cycle is complete, from past to present and back to the past again. The strength of The Decemberists' music lies largely in this idea, that the struggles and dramas of the past remain relevant today because times change but human nature does not. In that sense, their sweeping new album is both timeless and contemporary, an epic for the ages.