As we were finalising our 50 favourite films of 2024, reports noted that, with December looming, the 10 highest-grossing titles of the year were all sequels. By then, healthy US opening figures for Wicked suggested this unhappy situation would not, for the first time since records began, prevail at year’s end. But 90 per cent follow-ups is still a depressing figure.
Rejoice. Half of our least-favourite films may be sequels, but there are none in the 50-best list. (No, Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2 is not a second entry to the Jurorverse.) The most creative film-makers are still finding new stories – or new ways of telling the old ones.
We must, again, apologise for unavoidable release-schedule oddities. You first encountered one film here in our reports from Cannes film festival a year and a half ago. This list will, however, always remain focused on Irish release dates.
These are, with one or two late-December exceptions, films readers would have had the opportunity to see and assess.
Are there any trends to be discerned from the selection? Well, we are a long way from the glory days of the 1970s, when critics’ lists and the end-of-year box-office top 10 frequently overlapped. There is no going back to that. Nonetheless, audiences did turn out in numbers for “cultural cinema” such as The Zone of Interest, Anora and Poor Things. Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, a satirical shocker featuring Demi Moore, won over festivalgoers, critics and hard-core horror fans. Maybe we are all in this together.
Speaking of festivals, the venerable European events once again proved their indestructibility. More than half the films on this list premiered at Cannes, Venice or Berlin. Almost all of those opened in Ireland in cinemas before hitting streaming.
One more thing. There have not been so many “the Irish are coming” articles in the press as we have sometimes endured. But this has, nonetheless, been a good year for domestic features. Small Things Like These and That They May Face the Rising Sun won raves and played strongly in domestic cinemas. The incorrigible Kneecap was a genuine hit and stands a decent chance of landing a nomination for best international feature at the Oscars. There is life beyond Planet Sequel.
50
Juror #2
Directed by Clint Eastwood. A family man (Nicholas Hoult) serving as a juror in a highly publicised murder trial suspects he might be the killer. Read Donald Clarke on Clint Eastwood.
49
Mami Wata
Directed by CJ Obasi. Eye-catching monochrome drama from Nigeria set in a village that still pays respect to the titular water spirit. A visual sideswipe that breaks new ground in folk cinema.
48
Cuckoo
Directed by Tilman Singer. Hunter Schafer is Gretchen, the committed, physically enduring final girl cast adrift at a weird Bavarian resort in this flamboyantly unhinged tribute to Euro-horror. Read the full review.
47
Late Night with the Devil
Directed by Colin Cairnes and Cameron Cairnes. Another brilliant original horror in a busy era for the form. The Cairnes brothers’ flick fakes a late-night talkshow in 1977. Read the full review.
46
Janet Planet
Directed by Annie Baker. In rural Massachusetts, 11-year-old Lacy spends the summer of 1991 at home, enchanted by her imaginings and her poignantly close mother, Janet. Read the full review.
45
Disco Boy
Directed by Giacomo Abbruzzese. The Italian director’s striking debut concerns the relationship between a French Foreign Legionnaire and an African guerrilla fighter. Franz Rogowski restates his claim to be actor of the moment. Read the full review.
44
Hounds
Directed by Kamal Lazraq. Two hapless henchmen – Abdellatif Masstouri and Ayoub Elaid, brilliant – are dispatched by a Casablanca mobster to execute a kidnapping, with darkly comic results. Read the full review.
43
The Holdovers
Directed by Alexander Payne. The film-maker’s warmest movie to date casts Paul Giamatti as a grumpy teacher befriending an oddball teen over Christmas in the early 1970s. Read the full review.
42
Tiger Stripes
Directed by Amanda Nell. Eu Zaffan (Zafreen Zairizal) is a 12-year-old girl with a big personality in a small Malaysian village. As the first among her peer group to hit puberty, she’s swiftly ostracised, with monstrous consequences. Read the full review.
41
Conclave
Directed by Edward Berger. Ralph Fiennes stars in this indecently exciting adaptation of Robert Harris’s novel about the election of a new pope. Beautifully made. Impeccably acted. Mad ending. Read the full review.
40
Soundtrack to a Coup d’État
Directed by Johan Grimonprez. In 1961, seven months into his term as the first prime minister of the newly independent Democratic Republic of the Congo, Patrice Émery Lumumba was tortured and assassinated. This vibrant, fleet-footed chronicle deconstructs the complexities of Lumamaba’s murder and finds an unlikely villain in its propulsive score: jazz. Read the full review.
39
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
Directed by Rungano Nyoni. The film-maker moves on from the singular I Am Not a Witch to tell the tale of a young Zambian woman uncovering secrets after an uncle’s death.
38
Emilia Pérez
Directed by Jacques Audiard. Outrageously sexy, heated musical telenovela follows Zoe Saldaña’s faithful lawyer on a mission to help Manitas, a terrifying Mexican cartel leader (Karla Sofía Gascón), undergo gender-reassignment surgery. Read the full review.
37
Small Things Like These
Directed by Tim Mielants. Cillian Murphy runs up against the Magdalene laundries in 1980s New Ross. This painfully sad film triggered a debate about how awful Ireland then was. Read the full review.
36
The Promised Land
Directed by Nikolaj Arcel. Ludvig Kahlen (Mads Mikkelsen) is a formidable retired army captain of low birth seeking title and legitimacy by colonising the punishing, barren heath of Jutland, a wilderness characterised by Gypsies, wolves and frozen ground. Read the full review.
35
One Night in Millstreet
Directed by Andrew Gallimore. The Irish When We Were Kings. No, really. Gallimore’s doc about Steve Collins’s 1995 fight against Chris Eubank is hilarious and moving. The past really is another country. Read the full review.
34
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person
Directed by Ariane Louis-Seize. Mopey undead teenager (played with zip by the emerging Quebecoise star Sara Montpetit) encounters a human boy in a similar state of despair. Puppy love ensues. Read the full review.
33
The Iron Claw
Directed by Sean Durkin. Impressively gloomy – literally and figuratively – drama about the tragically, almost unbelievably doomed Von Erich family of wrestlers. Like watching a flower slowly die. Read the full review.
32
The Settlers
Directed by Felipe Gálvez Haberle. Based on gruelling events from turn-of-the-century Chile, this genocidal odyssey sees a savage landowner instruct three mercenaries to venture into forbidding terrain to ensure safe passage for his sheep. Genocide ensues. Read the full review.
31
The Idea of You
Directed by Michael Showalter. Lovely romcom – with emphasis on the “rom” – featuring Anne Hathaway as a mum who falls for the pop star (Nicholas Galitzine) her teen daughter idolises. They almost never make these so well any more.
