More 2024 Lists: Ten Best Older Films + Favorite Reappraisals and English-language Cinema

Ten+ Favorite Older Films (viewed for the first time in 2024; in chronological order):

Kohlhiesel's Daughters (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920) 

Johan (Mauritz Stiller, 1921) 

Girl Shy (Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor, 1924) + For Heaven's Sake (Taylor, 1926) 

As this first set of films should suggest, I made a concerted effort to see more silent cinema in 2024 (after realizing that I had mostly neglected this field of cinematic inquiry the year before). Among my biggest viewing highlights last year was Lubitsch's deliriously entertaining Kohlhiesel's Daughters, which I saw at the Berlinale with live orchestral accompaniment. I also remade my acquaintance with the early Swedish masters, Stiller and Victor Sjöström, and the great Harold Lloyd, who belongs forever in the company of the better remembered Chaplin and Keaton.

There's No Tomorrow (Max Ophüls, 1939) 

Mr. Shôsuke Ohara (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1949) + Dancing Girl (Shimizu, 1957) + Image of a Mother (Shimizu, 1959) 

For me, Shimizu is the fourth figure of the classical Japanese cinema, after Mizoguchi, Ozu, and Naruse. Having the opportunity to attend a long weekend of late Shimizu films at the Japan Society in New York, I was able to fill in some important gaps (of which I was not previously aware). The great Shimizu of the 1930s and early 40s was more or less present in these post Children of the Beehive films, but even where the idiom was a little less familiar, he invariably brought a depth of feeling and visual grace that reaffirmed the director as one of his industry's best, through the end of the 1950s.

West Indies: The Fugitive Slave Ship of Liberty (Med Hondo, 1979) 

Bona (Lino Brocka, 1980) 

Brocka showed a true mastery of constricted, interior spaces and crowds, while Hondo's master-shots introduce leaps in time and conceptual space that very much belong to the same art-historical moment as Greek master Theo Angelopoulos. 

Toute une nuit (Chantal Akerman, 1982; pictured)

A work of extraordinary purity, and easily one of the best films I saw in 2024, period, this rediscovered masterpiece helped to bring to a close Akerman's greatest period, when she rated with Tarkovsky, Fassbinder, and few others as one of her moment's top filmmakers.

Maine-Ocean Express (Jacques Rozier, 1986)

Very of its mid 80s moment, and perhaps the most pleasurable of Rozier's highly aleatory post-Adieu Philippine efforts.

Moving (Shinji Sômai, 1993)

Best Reappraisals (where my opinion moved furthest in a positive direction; in chronological order):

That Night's Wife (Yasujiro Ozu, 1930)

A film where the actors' hands are consistently the source of narrative content. One of Ozu's greatest silent films.

The Devil, Probably (Robert Bresson, 1977; pictured)

I was, rather ironically, as a young Christian viewer, too young when I first saw this on videotape a quarter century ago. No one else made movies exactly like this, and seeing it a quarterly century later, any confusion I once had evaporated in the sight of the the magnificent control that Bresson asserted over his mise en scène.

Music (Angela Schanelec, 2023)

The same quality of singularity as Bresson, seeing it on the big screen--rather than on a screener--made a huge difference for this gem-like, and more crystalline than I remember, art film. Sometimes it takes me twice with Schanelec.

Ten Favorite (Predominately) English Language Films (in order of preference):

The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)

Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood)

Trap (M. Night Shyamalan)

Anora (Sean Baker)

Despite liking his previous work and especially The Florida Project, I didn't expect to be as captivated as I was by Baker's profane, propulsive and populist Cinderella, led by the undeniable Mikey Madison and her very creditable supporting cast. I guess it really does belong to 2024.

Hard Truths (Mike Leigh)

Harvest (Rachel Athina Tsangari)

A threshold story of the shift from subsistence to the land as profit-generating, Tsangari's work equally suggests Peter Watkins and zoom-lensed 1960s and 70s English cinema.

Friendship (Andrew DeYoung; pictured)

About the very poignant homosocial anxiety of losing a friend (who is much too cool to be your friend) as a result of one small, easily avoidable mistake. The optimal Tim Robinson vehicle.

Rap World (Conner O'Malley & Danny Scharar)

Between the Temples (Nathan Silver)

Carry-On (Jaume Collet-Serra)

Biggest Blind Spot (for now): 

The Room Next Door (Pedro Almodóvar)

Though I am eager to see it based on the quality of the images I've seen, it's hard to say exactly where I will land given my mixed record with the Spanish auteur. Still a very big blind spot given its top prize at Venice.

For my "Ten Best Films of 2024," click here. For my best films for each year since 1930, click here, and for the silent era, here. Note that all of these lists are updated as I feel it necessary, and are subject to revision. While many of the above older films cracked their respective top tens, in some stronger years I couldn't find space--a testament to how much great cinema has been created (and how much remains for discovery and rediscovery).