2024 was a year of contradictions; of an ascendant right-wing that swept Donald Trump to victory in the American presidential election, coupled with a banner year for queer and trans filmmaking. There are not one, but two trans filmmakers in my top 10 list. There’s even a transgender actress making serious Oscar season waves (although in talking about the best films of the year, the less said about Emila Perez the better.).

There was a time when the erotic thriller was something of a Hollywood staple. Karina Longworth's "You Must Remember This" podcast recently did a two-season deep-dive into the erotic films of the 1980s and 90s, a series that inspired me to explore the genre myself, focusing mainly on 90s erotic thrillers like Single White Female, Indecent Proposal, and Basic Instinct. It's a genre that is essentially dead; a shifting media landscape and changing social mores have not only sanitized sexuality in movies but have also made erotic thrillers essentially a thing of the past.

There will undoubtedly be a lot of words written about Brady Corbet's The Brutalist that are some variation of "they don't make 'em like this anymore." And it's easy to say such things in a media landscape such as ours, where genuinely epic, prestige pictures, the kind that felt like real events, arriving to great acclaim and solid box office, are increasingly rare.

Based on the novella by William S. Burroughs, Luca Guadagnino's Queer exists in a hazy milieu of dingy gay bars and shady back alleys, hearkening back to a time when being gay wasn't just socially unacceptable but an actual crime.

On the surface, Janet Planet has all the trappings of a quirky indie comedy from the early 2000s. It's filled with awkward silences, deadpan humor, and characters who do a lot of standing and staring, creating an air of disaffection that creates both an unusual rhythm and a sense of ironic disconnection with the audience.

Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow is ostensibly a film about the bonds created by the communal act of watching favorite TV shows. These are the kinds of deeply personal cult hits that feel as though they're made just for you; like a secret shared amongst friends that not only defines you but gives you an identity as a member of an exclusive club in which minutiae and trivia become a kind of language only the initiated can understand.

Love Lies Bleeding is perhaps the horniest, most aesthetically electrifying film I've seen in a multiplex in very long time. It's a sweaty, sweltering, heady mix of queer eroticism, crime thriller, magical realism, and dark comedy that feels genuinely rebellious in a way films rarely do anymore.