A brutal(ist) top 10 list for 2024’s best movies
This list of the top 10 movies of 2024 should more accurately be called the top 10 movies I have seen in 2024.
Some titles that might have been included, such as “Nosferatu,” I have not seen because of conflicts with press screenings. Others I have not seen for other reasons. So, here we go with the best of what I have experienced.
1. “The Brutalist”
It just won the 2024 Best Picture from the Chicago Film Critics members, and for good reason. Audiences have not seen anything quite like writer-director Brady Corbet’s raw, original, successfully ambitious, 3-hour-15-minute artsy twist on the classic American immigrant story, one so hefty and dense that it features a built-in 15-minute intermission (the movie runs a blank screen during this part).
It follows a Hungarian-born Jewish architect named László Tóth (Adrien Brody), who journeys to America after World War II to stay with his Pennsylvanian cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola), and to take whatever jobs come his way.
We soon find out that Tóth used to be a celebrated master architect back in Budapest. His talents come into play when he redesigns a huge mansion library for an initially unappreciative Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), a self-centered, pretentious control freak who quickly figures out how to capitalize on this immigrant for his own self-aggrandizement.
That’s only a small portion of Corbet’s complex, ultra-nuanced epic examination of art vs. commerce, assimilation vs. independence and family vs. career captured by Lol Crawley’s boldly composed camera work, accompanied by Daniel Blumberg’s crackling, penetrating score.
2. “The Substance”
Stuffed with goop, spurting with puss, obsessed with mutilated body parts, and crammed with eye-popping nudity and violence, “The Substance” comes from director/writer Coralie Fargeat, who elevates an exploitation premise into an explosively visionary, blackly comic cinematic experience that rails against society’s addiction to superficiality in entertainment and cosmetic enhancements, all rendered through a sharp feminist lens.
Demi Moore is comfortable in her skin — and skin only — in a challenging role as Elisabeth Sparkle, an aging actress-turned-TV-aerobics coach who agrees to take a substance that will make her young again … but with a catch.
Her gyrating body splits along her spine, and out pops a stunning Margaret Qualley, wearing only a coat of mucus.
This strange and fantastic horror tale won’t be an easy one to embrace, especially with a Grand Guignol finale during a New Year’s Eve telecast that makes the twin-bladed lawn mower massacre in Peter Jackson’s “Dead Alive” look like a “Charlie Brown” film short.
Nonetheless, Fargeat’s movie possesses something most current horror tales lack: actual substance.
3. “Wicked”
The ubiquitous hype for “Wicked” has been insane, and Jon M. Chu’s movie translation of the Broadway musical still exceeds it with spellbinding set pieces, split-screen duets, camera lens gymnastics, Oscar-caliber performances, and elements reminiscent of the Harry Potter movies with a touch of “Planet of the Apes.”
Not bad for an original stage show that lost the coveted Best Musical Tony Award to the “Sesame Street”-inspired “Avenue Q.”
“Wicked” tells the backstory of how Glinda the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch of the West once became best buds as students at the Shiz University in the Land of Oz.
Radiating combustible charisma, Cynthia Erivo (Elphaba) and Ariana Grande (Glinda) play off each other with the testy flair of Olympic-class fencers.
Based on Gregory McGuire’s novel, “Wicked” has evolved into a freakishly prescient political allegory about a powerful leader who turns out to be a fraud, and uses a defenseless group (the talking animal academics at Shiz University) as literal scapegoats for causing all the problems in Oz.
Not only does the fraudster demand loyalty from his minions, he institutes a Big Lie to silence his opposition, mainly the virtuous Elphaba.
Who could have possibly imagined that L. Frank Baum’s literary classic “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” would inspire something so … Orwellian?
4. “Conclave”
Stripped to its dramatic core, “Conclave” could easily be a two-set or even a one-set stage production, as most of the action takes place in one big room at the Vatican.
Fear not, for director Edward Berger’s version of Robert Harris’ book (adapted by screenwriter Peter Straughan) proves to be a real movie-movie, featuring cinematic acrobatics from Stephane Fontaine’s constantly moving, probing, encircling cameras and Suzie Davies’ luxuriously detailed production designs suggesting the foreboding atmosphere of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.’
When the aging pope dies under seemingly natural circumstances, it falls to the Vatican dean Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes’ most reserved, nuanced performance of his distinguished acting career) to preside over the election of a new pontiff, a process that piles more levels of anxiety on top of the cardinal’s deepening doubts about his faith.
“Conclave” is a rare find at local theaters, political intrigue merged with a thinking viewer’s thriller slowly unfolding like a classic murder mystery.
Who will become the pope? The American Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci in sterling mode)? The power-thirsty Cardinal Tremblay of Montreal (John Lithgow)? The fiercely conservative Cardinal Tedesco of Venice (Sergio Castellitto)? Or a mystery cardinal, the soft-spoken Benitez of Kabul (Carlos Diehz)?
Fiennes’ expressive eyebrows remain at a full-throttle-furrow in this enthralling, slow-boil political thriller that insults no one’s intelligence.
5. “A Real Pain”
Jesse Eisenberg’s indie gem reflects the pain of loss, of disappointment, even something mainstream movies prefer to avoid — the pain of powerlessness.
This compact 89-minute relationship study works with an almost nonexistent plot and with sharply drawn, realistic characters brought to life by a sublime cast. And it never quite goes where you think it will.
David (Eisenberg) so obviously wants to help his spontaneous, impulsive cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin) get his life together, find a good job, meet the right woman and, you know, be normal.
Most of us probably know a Benji or two, people incapable of or simply not interested in going with the flow of social and cultural conventions.
With money supplied by his late grandmother, who survived internment at a Nazi concentration camp, David goes to visit her former home in Poland, taking cousin Benji along on a guided tour of the country, with stops at key locations including Warsaw, Lublin and the Majdanek concentration camp.
Benji and David join a small group of tourists, mostly American Jews, among them an elderly couple named Diane and Mark (Liza Sadovy and Daniel Oreskes), a Rwandan named Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan) who has converted to Judaism, and an adventuresome recent divorcee named Marcia (a still magnetic Jennifer Grey).
These strangers interact with the moody Benji in remarkable, unpredictable ways, sometimes funny, sometimes critical and judgmental.
“People just can’t walk around being happy all the time!” Benji complains, his raw honesty puncturing the group’s polite facade of all-rightness.
Culkin combines empathy and charm, along with explosive surprise in a shrewdly written comic drama that confirms Eisenberg as a first-rate storyteller able to juggle wit, humor, sentiment and unobtrusive exposition with aplomb.
6. “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”
This exquisitely detailed, explosively sensational prequel of pure cinema hooks into our retinas and drags them into a dark, postapocalyptic tribal world of savage brutality, Terry Gilliam-esque production designs, outrageously thrilling stunts, spectacular set pieces, plus a gearhead’s dream fetish of deadly demolition derbies involving suped-up motorcycles and monster trucks.
This classic revenge tale features a crackerjack cast headed by Anya Taylor-Joy as the verbally conservative titular heroine and Chris Hemsworth having way too much fun as an exuberantly ruthless, white-caped warlord of the Wasteland, appropriately named Dementus.
The plot, like its villain, may be one-dimensional, but it’s flushed out by layers of visual treats, such as organically designed firearms and stick shifts resembling bones, and Dementus driving a chariot pulled by three motorcycles. Talk about horsepower!
“Furiosa” traffics in pessimism and cruelty. It delivers a bleak and blunt commentary on the inevitability of war and suffering, pointing out humanity’s propensity for justifying self-extinction, be it religion, oil, water, revenge or empire.
A feel-good movie this isn’t.
But Taylor-Joy’s striking oval eyes and alien-like countenance more than compensate for a few shortcomings in George Miller’s supercharged thriller, the fifth in his “Mad Max” franchise.
7. “Ghostlight”
Sincere, moving affirmations about the healing and restorative powers of the arts never get old. A sad and angry construction worker named Dan (Keith Kupferer) deals, ineffectively, with his rebellious teen daughter Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) while grieving his son’s recent suicide. A woman spots one of Dan’s public outbursts, and, on a hunch, invites him to audition for the role of Lord Capulet in a nearby community theater production of “Romeo and Juliet.”
With his professional and personal worlds falling apart, Dan finds solace and acceptance in the theater, until circumstances put him in the unlikely lead role of Romeo, who must deliver his suicide speech near the end.
Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson direct this heartrending drama (written by O’Sullivan) with gentle assurance and unhurried affection. Kupferer’s transparent lead performance bleeds with empathy in a remarkable indie film reminding us that during the darkest times, we can still find light, even if it breaks through yonder window. (Local tie: O’Sullivan studied theater at Northwestern University and Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company's School.)
8. “Challengers”
In Luca Guadagnino’s menage-a-troisy sports drama, the tennis balls come at your face with such three-dimensional power, you flinch. The comic sexual tension comes at you the same way. But you can’t duck the racy chemistry of stars Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, who inject fun into this love-triangle tale about two former best-bud tennis players still competing for the win-obsessed former tennis pro who’s now married to one of them.
Not exactly the classic French film “Jules and Jim,” but a breezy, nonlinear time-jumping narrative (bravo editing, Marco Costa!) hitting key moments between 2019 and 2006.
Top tennis champ Art Donaldson (Faist) has had trouble with love lately — not the romantic type, but the type as in zero points on the court. His wife and coach, Tashi (Zendaya), books him in a lower-tier “Challenger” match to help boost his ego, but doesn’t realize his former best-pal-turned-adversary Patrick Zweig (O’Connor) is also there.
This movie truly belongs to Zendaya, whose cool confidence and effortless sexual vibe not only command the screen but also control the two male competitors who might just harbor more affection for each other than either one realizes.
Wait. Maybe this IS like a French film after all.
9. “The Devil’s Bath”
Not since “The Exorcist” has a religion-themed historical horror tale haunted me the way this slow-burn Austrian production — written and directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala — scorched my conscience. It begins with a distraught mother killing her crying baby, and it spends the rest of its running time (“walking time” would be more accurate) answering the implied question “but why?”
In 1750, young Agnes (Anja Plaschg) marries a man from their devoutly religious rural village. He turns her away in bed (suggesting he might be gay) and her childless, lonely life sets her on a desperate quest for relief from depression under the crushing moral rules of her church.
I saw “Devil’s Bath” stone cold — avoiding all information about it, a choice that undoubtedly enhanced my viewing experience and greatly increased my ability to be surprised and shocked.
Only at the ending do you realize how every single scene has fiercely pressed the plot forward to its “Midsommar” finale, and how the double-edged sword of Christian forgiveness of sins can be interpreted as permission, even approval, to commit unspeakable acts.
10. “Nickel Boys”
Some movies use first-person POV (point of view) as a tiresome gimmick. RaMell Ross’ “Nickel Boys” employs it as a daring narrative device, a way to break down barriers, to allow viewers to empathize with characters on a level far deeper than traditional neutral, objective POVs can.
Ross and cinematographer Jomo Fray immerse us in a story witnessed through the eyes of two young Black men (Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson) to expose the abuses in a Florida reform school called Nickel Academy (inspired by the Dozier School for Boys in Florida, where more than 100 graves of murdered young men have been discovered).
Based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Nickel Boys” first tells its story through what Elwood (Herisse) sees and hears. After being arrested for unknowingly hitchhiking a ride in a stolen car, a white judicial system sends Elwood to Nickel, where Ross cleverly hands the narrative baton over to his fellow inmate Turner (Wilson), our POV guide for the next segment.
With Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and Daveed Diggs in the cast (the former as Elwood’s supportive grandma and the latter as a key figure we only see from behind), “Nickel Boys” takes a big risk with its chancy format. And it pays off nicely.