Tolu's very important list of favorite first watches in 2024
Limited by the insidious existence of capitalism
This year, I thought it necessary to dive deeper into the unconventional parts of this format, and although I am unsure if I did little more than swim at walking depth, I’m reasonably satisfied with the experiences I allowed myself to be open to.
Special mention to films that I really loved but didn’t make the cut: Crash (1996), A Different Man (2024), Conclave (2024), Punch Drunk Love (2002), Paris, Texas (1984), The Night of The Hunter (1955), Look Back (2024), All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001), and *many* more! The full list of my favorite first watches is on Letterboxd here!
These are my top *26* favorite first watches of the year!
26. Trap (2024)
I am not pretentious enough to pretend that I didn’t enjoy this movie a LOT. Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (cinematographer) knocked it out of the park this year with Queer (haven’t watched this yet), Trap, and Challengers, and I’m really glad he used a style we hadn’t really seen him use before on this film. It fit so well with Shyamalan’s esoteric storytelling, and who doesn’t love the unexpected twists and turns of a Shyamalan movie? They’re not cringe. You are!!
25. Hundreds of Beavers (2022)
Perhaps the funniest movie to hit wide release (at least in the US) this year, this movie is a throwback to the slapstick comedic style of the silent movie eras, particularly Charlie Chaplin’s films. Watching characters go through absurd situations with heightened facial and body expressions and in wacky costumes is a recipe for a good laugh, and this was a great laugh! Highly recommended.
24. The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (2013)
Last year, I watched Isao Takahata’s Grave of The Fireflies and I fell in love with it, so it’s not surprising that another one of his films has made my top 25 this year. I really cannot appreciate the beauty of the watercolor painting animation of this film enough; it is mesmerizing. The environmentalist and feminist themes, coupled with such groundbreaking animation and Joe Hisaishi’s best score (in my opinion), made me want this film to go on for three hours more. I could have kept watching Lil Bamboo send obnoxious monarchs on more impossible missions for the fun of it.
23. Memories of Murder (2003)
I know. I know. I should have watched this a lot earlier. I’ve watched almost every other available Bong Joon-Ho film, and this one joins a pretty occupied list of masterpieces by the South Korean filmmaker. It’s brilliant. Gripping. The ending is bone-chilling. Great crime thriller.
22. Columbus (2017)
I really wanted to explore Kogonada’s filmography after stumbling across his film essays on YouTube early last year. I started with this one, and I was not disappointed. I love architecture, and Kogonada’s camera is so in love with the city of Columbus in this film. But that’s not what I love the most about this film. I love a good coming-of-age story, and Haley Lu Richardson delivers a beautiful, measured performance as an only child struggling to make ends meet with her recovering addict mother exploring the city with the son of a legendary deceased architect who had a complex relationship with his father. Watch this!
21. The Network (1976)
My first Sidney Lumet movie! I hope to watch many more next year. This one is so good. The drama! It’s so fun watching corporate people in dramatic situations, none more dramatic than a legendary TV presenter announcing on live television that he will kill himself! Highly recommended!
20. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
It’s criminal that I only just watched this film THIS year, but by all I know, I cried a lot after this film. Charlie Kaufmann is a great writer, I loved Synecdoche, New York last year, and I can’t say I expected less from this film, but my God, this shit hits like a trainwreck. Avant-garde storytelling on connection and the anxiety of falling in love, scored by Jon Brion (Lady Bird, Punch-Drunk Love, Magnolia), makes for an emotionally wrecking watch. One you will most definitely enjoy.
19. Eyimofe (2020)
The Esiri brothers are remarkably talented. I watched their student film Goose recently and you could see the talent waiting to emerge. It most definitely did in Eyimofe. Eyimofe is an accurate depiction of the many troubles that come with attempting to migrate away from Nigeria in search of a better life as a working/lower-class individual. Being a Nigerian can grab misfortune from the jaws of fortune just because you are one, but there is hope. Hope that maybe staying put and making the best of your situation is the answer you’ve searched for all along.
18. Collateral (2004)
Michael Mann is the most dudebro filmmaker to exist, but what separates him from the rest of the dudebro filmmakers we know is that his films don’t glorify hypermasculinity. Instead, they are a critique of conditions that force men to accept certain societal behaviors as accepted and normal. Collateral is a microcosm of his work. I enjoyed watching two characters on opposite sides of the class struggle and, with opposing philosophies, be affected by each other after perhaps the craziest night ever. Also, who does not like watching Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx?? Holy CINEMA.
17. The Big Lebowski (1998)
The Coen Brothers made a lot of funny movies in their day, and this one is no different. I was locked in from the moment Sam Elliot’s husky voice first spoke as the narrator of the story of Los Angeles’ most pathetic guy going through so much trouble to get a new rug after being falsely identified as the big Lebowski by a bunch of idiot henchmen that messed up his old rug. If you don’t like this, then well, you know… that’s like, uh… your opinion, man.
16. Kamikaze Hearts (1986)
Kamikaze Hearts is an autobiographical narrative documentary about a sex worker and her lover navigating the erotic film industry as actresses and managers working with other people. They live an erratic, drug-filled life, but beneath the layers of uncouth debauchery is a story of the struggle between desire and reality. It’s a spellbinding documentary and one that, like The Metamorphosis of Birds, I will frequently cite as a creative reference going forward.
15. Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
The dilemma presented by this movie on the surface is whether a frustrated woman murdered her depressed husband or not, but subtextually, it poses the question of what we, the audience, the judges in the film, can really know about a complex relationship between two people put under a microscope that ignores the many layers of their relationship. What justifies incarceration? On further inspection, you realize that this is nothing more than a spectacle for people to be entertained by. You feel no sympathy. You aren’t inclined by goodwill to justice for the victim. But it is fun to deliberate over the prospect of a writer murdering her writer husband because it is more compelling than a writer simply killing himself (something that happens often). An evil we are all complicit in.
14. All About My Mother (1999)
Pedro Almodovar is a filmmaker I’ve been meaning to get into, and I’m so glad I watched this movie this year! It’s a beautiful narrative of grief, love, found family, and acceptance that pushes your heart's buttons with its sincerity toward its characters with a sensually delightful score. I can’t wait to explore Pedro’s filmography in more detail next year.
13. Dahomey (2024)
Dahomey is a film that forced me to confront my perception of identity as a West African whose ancestors were victims of the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism. It’s a documentary that follows the return of 26 artworks back to the Benin Republic, formerly known as Dahomey, that uses a unique device to elicit introspection. One of the treasures muses on its expectations for its return back home in Ewe, which shares some similarities with the Yoruba language. This musing carries us into an important student debate on reparations, the politics behind reparations, and the need to decolonize our minds and embrace our heritage going forward. I think it’s important work and maybe something I’ll write about in detail next year.
12. Cry-Baby (1990)
John Waters is the KING OF CAMP (sorry, Gregg Araki). He invented the word debauchery. This movie is so fucking good. It’s a satirical musical rendition of the ubiquitous Romeo and Juliet story, and my God, does it go so hard. The music is legendary! The performances are great! The outfits are rad! It is everything I love about movies. PLEASE watch this!
11. Drive My Car (2021)
I watched Drive My Car at a time when I was going through a breakup. I needed something to fill the emotional void I felt, and I had always wanted to get started with Hamaguchi’s work, so I decided to watch Drive My Car on Mubi. It’s a well-crafted film about grief featuring a 50-minute prologue that approaches filmmaking in an unconventional form. There’s an atmosphere of loss that hangs heavy on the characters in this film that is transferred to the viewers in such a pristine manner that it’s really hard to quantify or explain if you have not felt any loss at all. Every shot, every word spoken and unspoken, is done with tenderness and care, so much that you do not feel like a second has been wasted investing your mind and soul into it. I will return to this many times in the coming years because although loss is not preventable, hope shall remain.
10. The Beast (2023)
Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast was my most anticipated film of this year, and for good reason. It features Lea Seydoux and George MacKay as people eloped by the fear of love and death across three generations: the Edwardian era, the Contemporary era, and the year 2044, where artificial intelligence has solved all of humanity’s problems, and there is a distinct lack of physical human interaction. There are many interesting pieces to pick out of this film: the film’s use of silicone dolls, talking dolls, and eventually AI as a metaphor for humanity’s receding sense of self, the very poignant commentary on incel culture, and accurate depiction of the violence that occurs from it, and the anxiety of love, the resistance that comes with that. It’s a visual treat that starts with one of the most ambitious openings I’ve seen from a film in recent times. Highly recommended!
9. Birth (2004)
I fell in love with Jonathan Glazer this year and three of his movies feature in my top 10! This is the most recent watch, and I can’t wax lyrical enough about how bold it is to write this type of story. It’s insanely bold. It weaves together themes of romance and fantasy in a contemporary setting for most of its runtime, then knocks you right out of that fantasy towards the end, leaving you with as much hollowness as its main character, played by the evergreen Nicole Kidman. I also really loved the opening sequence; it’s the most Jonathan Glazer thing ever.
8. Under The Skin (2013)
Another ambitious storytelling achievement by Jonathan Glazer features another stunning woman, Scarlett Johansson, playing an alien with human skin that preys on the sexual desires of men for its feeding. The line between fiction and reality is blurred so much that the only thing that reminds you that this is fiction is when the alien draws its victims into its pitch-black nest for feeding. The alien possesses a demeanor that is unsettling, but as the film progresses, its self-image slowly degrades, and its identity becomes confused with that of a human, which is the skin it puts on. It begins to linger in front of the mirror and think about the uniqueness of the humans it has fed on, so much so that it abandons its nest and tries to experience human life as a human. In the end, however, it is hit with the worst of humanity and dies with its true nature exposed.
7. Dune Part 2 (2024)
I don’t think there’s anything I can say that hasn’t been said before. What a glorious cinematic achievement. I watched this in theaters, and it is, by far, the highlight of my movie-going year. Just fucking incredible.
6. The Zone of Interest (2023)
This was the first of the Jonathan Glazer films I watched this year, and I don't think it’s farfetched to call this film the most important film of the 2020s. The way it approaches the horrors of the Holocaust is bone-chilling. We’re a fly on the wall in the house of a commandant who lives directly beside the concentration camps at Auschwitz. The camera never ventures into the concentration camps, but we feel its presence throughout. We hear the screams of people burning in gas chambers; we see the smoke; we see the remains flowing into the river, and the characters complain about the smell. We feel the unnerving evil underneath the layers of a family with a beautiful life, a beautiful home, and a beautiful lush garden. There is much to dissect about this film that I can’t contain in a small paragraph, but you simply cannot ignore its relevance in a world where Israelis party and have concerts while Palestinians are bombed into oblivion.
5. Blue Velvet (1986)
This list would be incomplete without a David Lynch film. Blue Velvet follows a guy who discovers a human ear in a field, leading to an investigation that takes him deep into the underworld of criminal activity in his small hometown. He meets a nightclub singer whose child has been kidnapped by a drug and sex-addicted sadist, and motivated by his attraction to her, devotes his time to helping her get her child back. It seems like a straightforward story, but it isn’t. There’s something off about this town and the people in it. None of it feels real. And at the end of the film, when you see mechanical birds instead of real ones, you can’t but wonder if everything you’ve seen is a dream or not.
4. La Chimera (2023)
Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera is an existential treat. Alice loves contextualizing myths and legends into contemporary settings, and she continues along this line of storytelling in La Chimera. One definition of a chimera is a thing hoped for that is impossible to attain or achieve. In this film, Alice explores a chimera in relation to grief. The chimera for our main character is the woman he fell in love with who died while he was away in prison. The main character possesses the power to recognize treasures buried in graveyards, so he goes along with his old band of exhumers with the intention of finding his chimera. Her memories drive the narrative of this beautiful and tender film. It’s such a unique exploration of grief and love, and I have a keen liking for Alice’s work as a result of it.
3. Silence (2016)
There is no one who loves Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Silence more than a person who grew up in a Christian household and abandoned the religion. The questions posed during the runtime of this film are so pertinent to the internal battles of the efficacy of doctrines that were fed to me all my life. I finished watching this film and sat in silence (unintended pun), trying to gather my thoughts about the various themes littered across its runtime, and I still don’t think I have a full grasp of the raw reaction it got from me. It’s a lot to talk about in one paragraph, but if you are someone like me who grew up religious and wants to turn away (or has turned away) from religion, I recommend you add this film to artworks that will help you confront your established identity.
2. The French Dispatch (2021)
Look, I love Wes Anderson; that’s already well-established. I’ve actually written about this film before in an article that discusses Wes Anderson’s evolution in his recent films, and you should read that if you want something more in-depth than just a few lines. I love this movie. It pulls at my heartstrings in the way I want it to because it is about writing and journalism in a broad sense. I love all the stories in the film, but my favorite is the Revisions to a Manifesto section. Live. Laugh. Love Wes Anderson.
1. I Saw The TV Glow (2024)
I ignored the glowing TV deep within my unconscious because I simply did not want to accept that it was true. Intentional ignorance evolved into suppression. I tried to turn the TV off for so long, but as if carrying some spiritual essence, it just never went off. What scared me most was that the TV didn’t glow in exotic colors of purple, green, or blue. The TV’s glow was a stark grey. A stark nothingness. I had not found a way to understand what this feeling was before this film. I could not stop crying after my first time viewing it because I finally found something that made me understand myself. I finally found something that gave me enough courage to embrace the TV’s beautiful grey glow. I found something that opened up my heart to self-acceptance. I have cried after watching this film many times more. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me in the future, but I can find comfort in knowing that the TV is no longer suppressed, even if I can’t let it glow outwardly yet.
Thank you for reading this year’s recap! This year’s edition is really long and you didn’t have to finish, but you did, so thank you. See you next year!