by Mattie Lucas
Cinema from a Decidedly Queer Perspective
The Best Films of 2024
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.).
I.S.S./Pictures of Ghosts | 2024
I often found myself thinking about Agnes Varda's Daguerreotypes and Tsai Ming Liang’s Goodbye Dragon Inn in the way Filho examines the power of cinema to preserve while also using it to document its own death; faded movie palaces now replaced by towering high rises, replaced by ramshackle churches, the temples of cinema swapping one religion for another.
There's something agreeably no-nonsense about Alex Parkinson's Last Breath, a straight-down-the-middle, meat-and-potatoes true-life rescue thriller we rarely see anymore. Perhaps I'm looking at the past through rose-colored glasses, but there once was a time when mid-budget actioners like this were multiplex staples. Nowadays, you're more likely to see movies like this relegated to streaming rather than playing on a big screen.