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Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies Top Ten

Top Ten Movies (and more, excluding re-releases) 2024

Work in progress – subject to change. Because I am still watching movies released in 2024, so it’s always possible that a new title could usurp the number one in due course. Before that, I have a lot more movies still to add.

All films received either a theatrical or an online release in the UK between 01/01/24 and 31/12/24. Prior to 2020, I’d never included online releases (well, maybe the odd one or two as a special case) but that year saw the film distribution business turned upside down by COVID-19. The movie business is still changing, and the dust hasn’t yet settled.

This version excludes re-releases (My Neighbour Totoro and Seven Samurai would top everything here). In addition to re-releases, this version also excludes films seen in festivals which haven’t had any other UK release in 2024. For that even longer list, click here.

Beyond the first 25 titles, there may be numerous errors (missing links to reviews where I wrote one, year of release, country, and maybe more). All this will be fixed in time, but I wanted to get something online in the holidays.

Finally, last year’s list is here.

Top Ten Movies (and more, excluding re-releases) 2024

Please click on titles to see reviews.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies Top Ten

Top Ten Movies
(and more)
2024

Work in progress – subject to change. Because I am still watching movies released in 2024, so it’s always possible that a new title could usurp the number one in due course. Before that, I have a lot more movies still to add / sort.

All films received either a theatrical or an online release in the UK between 01/01/24 and 31/12/24.

This version includes re-releases, but those aren’t numbered. It’s hard to imagine movies improving on Miyazaki’s My Neighbour Totoro or Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.

In addition to re-releases, this version also includes films seen in festivals which haven’t had any other UK release in 2024.

The star ratings may occasionally differ from the star rating I gave a particular film at the time of review.

Beyond the first 25 numbered titles, there may be numerous errors (missing links to reviews where I wrote one, year of release, country, and maybe more). All this will be fixed in time, but I wanted to get something online.

Finally, last year’s list is here.

Top Ten Movies (and more) 2024

Please click on titles to see reviews. (Links yet to be added.)

The numbering will mostly be added later when I’ve watched more of the outstanding 2024 titles, and they have stopped moving around.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies Top Ten

Top Ten Movies
(and more),
excluding re-releases)
2023

All films received either a theatrical or an online release in the UK between 01/01/23 and 31/12/23.

List with re-releases and festival films added in is here.

*****

1. Full Time (France, 2021)

2. Girl (UK, 2023)

3. The First Slam Dunk (Japan, 2022)

4. Junk Head (Japan, 2023)

5=. 20 Days In Mariupol (Ukraine, 2023)

5=. Beyond Utopia (US, 2023)

5=. The Blue Caftan (Morocco, 2022)

5=. Infinity Pool (Canada, Hungary, France, 2023)

9=. Past Lives (US, South Korea, 2022)

9=. Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms (China, 2023)

9=. Reality (US, 2023)

12=. Godzilla Minus One (Japan, 2023)

12=. Bobi Wine: The People’s President (UK, 2022)

12=. Smoking Causes Coughing (France, 2022)

12=. Enys Men (UK, 2022)

12=. Holy Spider (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, 2022)

12=. Blue Jean (UK, 2022)

12=. Fashion Reimagined (UK, 2022)

12=. Name Me Lawand (UK, 2022)

12=. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (US, 2023)

Tokyo Story (Japan, 1953)

12=. Ferrari (US, 2023)

22=. The Boy And The Heron (Japan, 2023)

22=. Killers of the Flower Moon (US, 2023)

24. How To Blow Up A Pipeline (US, 2023)

25. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning: Part One (US, 2022)

26. Klokkenluider (UK, 2022)

27.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Dreaming of Lions
(Sonhar com Leões)

Director – Paolo Marinou-Blanco – 2024 – Portugal, Brazil, Spain – 85m

****

A woman diagnosed with terminal cancer signs up with a corporate programme allegedly aimed at helping people in her situation to humanely end their own lives – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

“Chemo never worked. So I decided to beat the fucker to the punch.” Thus says Gilda (Denise Fraga) at the start of this tale about voluntary euthanasia. Gilda has cancer and a year and a half left to live. She exasperates her husband when he hilariously stumbles into the bathroom as she’s trying to shoot herself in the head, both of them winding up in hospital as a result.

She is determined to kill herself. If she does nothing, the condition will take its course and the end of the process won’t be pleasant. In the hospital, she picks up a leaflet of a company which might provide some help for those considering voluntary euthanasia. So Gildagoes for an interview with Joy Transition International and finds herself facing a panel of three: Isa (Joana Rebeiro), Eva (Sandra Faleiro), and Bruno (Alexander Tuji Nam).

Isa has her mouth fixed in a somewhat ingratiating, permanently lipstick-painted smile.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Streets of Glória
(Ruas da Glória)

Director – Felipe Sholl – 2024 – Brazil – 103m

****

A man mourning his late grandmother but estranged from the rest of his family embarks on a gay relationship with an escort – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Gabriel (Caio Macedo) arrives in Rio de Janeiro with his late grandmother’s ashes in a box. He is not short of money, and rents a hotel room. He wanders around during the day talking to his grandmother, who he clearly misses a great deal. At night, he finds a club named Glória, fronted by an area with tables where style queen Monica (Diva Menner) hangs out with her small entourage of friends. She explains she is the owner. Further inside is the dance floor where he spots Adriano (Alejandro Claveaux) and attempts but fails to pick him up, instead spending the night with another man.

However, a spark has been lit, and the next night Gabriel is more successful. He and Adriano embark on a passionate relationship. Adriano is an escort, and shows Gabriel the park benches where escorts pick up clients; he takes servicing his male clients in his stride, occasionally persuading the hesitant Gabriel to join him in a paying threesome.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Noah’s Ark
(Arca de Noé)

Directors – Alois di Leo, Sergio Machado – 2024 – Brazil, India – Cert. U – 96m

**

Two musical performing mice attempt to board Noah’s Ark, where a despotic lion and his thuggish entourage attempt to lord it over the other animals in a singing contest animated feature is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 23rd

Two mice – Tommy (voice: Marcelo Adnet) who sings and his accompanist pal Vini (voice: Rodrigo Santoro) who plays a four-string guitar – appear to be at the pinnacle of success, but when the lights go down, they are revealed to be playing the empty bar of Mrs Ferret (voice: Rachel Butera), from which they’re unceremoniously ejected.

On the lam, one of them overhears an old man in the desert wilderness remonstrating with a voice in the sky at its wits end – “I tried my best, it says, but what’s a God to do?” – and being instructed as per the Biblical myth to build an ark and fill it with male and female members of each animal species. “How do I tell the animals?”, asks the bewildered Noah (voice: Ian James Corlett), for it is he. “Well,” says God (voice: Luis Bermudez) in a rare moment of wit uncharacteristic of the screenplay overall, “I can get the invitations out.”… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies Top Ten

Top Ten Movies
(and more)
2023

Work in progress – subject to change. Because I am still watching movies released in 2023, so it’s always possible that a new title could usurp the number one in due course. Before that, I have a lot more movies still to add / sort.

All films received either a theatrical or an online release in the UK between 01/01/23 and 31/12/23.

This version includes re-releases, but those aren’t numbered. It’s hard to imagine movies improving on Powell and Pressburger’s i know where i’m going or The Red Shoes, Powell’s Peeping Tom or Von Trier’s Melancholia.

In addition to re-releases, this version also includes films seen in festivals which haven’t had any other UK release in 2023.

The star ratings may occasionally differ from the star rating I gave a particular film at the time of review.

Beyond the first 25 numbered titles, there may be numerous errors (missing links to reviews where I wrote one, year of release, country, and maybe more). All this will be fixed in time, but I wanted to get something online in the holidays.

Finally, last year’s list is here.

Top Ten Movies (and more) 2023

Please click on titles to see reviews. (Links yet to be added.)… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Nobody Leaves Alive
(Ninguém Sai Vivo Daqui)

Director – André Ristum – 2023 – Brazil – Cert. none – 86m

****

After a woman is incarcerated in Brazil’s notorious Colonia psychiatric hospital simply because she is pregnant outside of marriage, her hold on reality starts to disintegrate – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Lovingly shot in a stylish black and white that both makes the whole thing feel like a dream and detracts from any sense of reality, this opens with a young woman being bundled by two men into what looks like a cattle truck. Inside the truck are other people, and the group is clearly being sent somewhere specific.

Once off the train they are frogmarched down a country track, through some wrought metal gates of late 19th / early 20th Century design and into a hallway where they are separated into men and women and the women (since it is one woman’s story we are following here) are taken to a large, tiled room and hosed down by two women, the younger of whom is Laura.

Then the woman we are following is taken for interview with a man who denies he’s a doctor. Her name is Elisa, and she explains there’s been some sort of mix-up.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Great Sertão
(Grande Sertão)

Director – Guel Arraes – 2023 – Brazil – Cert. none – 114m

*****

The constantly shifting relationship between a man and his friend constantly shifts against the backdrop of a war between a street gang protecting their turf and an army trying to impose law and order – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Riobaldo (Caio Blat) tells his story. As a young boy in the urban jungle of Brazil’s Sertao, he bonds with fearless kid his own age Diadorim, who shows him how to scale brutalist towers and scare off predatory adults with an effective flick of the knife.

By the time Riobaldo has grown up to become a teacher, this concrete sprawl has become the battleground for a struggle between a gang led by local, criminal warlord Joca Ramiro (Rodrigo Lombardi) and forces under the command of Colonel Zé Bebelo (Luis Miranda) determined to restore law and order to the country. They may trade in violence, but both leaders are honourable men.

Not so one of Joca’s lieutenants Hermógenes (played with great relish by the ingratiating Eduardo Sterblitch), a seemingly unstoppable force of nature who has sold his soul to the devil to advance his own ends.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Medusa
(Medusa)

Director – Anita Rocha de Silveira – 2021 – Brazil – Cert. 15 – 127m

***

Pro-purity, fundamentalist, Christian church girl band singer indoors by day; slut-shaming, Evangelical, vigilante group member outdoors by night… a woman is haunted by a facially disfigured figure from the past – out in UK cinemas also available on PVOD and ESVOD on Friday, July 14th, and to rent on BFI Player from Friday, July 21st

Night. An exotic dancer, bent over backwards so both hands and feet touch the floor. Writhing.

A young woman, watching this on her smartphone on the bus at night. She reaches her stop, gets off and starts walking. A gang of white masked, female vigilantes on the prowl, suddenly, behind her. She walks faster, they catch her, surround her, slut-shame her, call her a homewrecker, threaten her into “serving the Lord”. Afterwards, the female vigilantes walk off in a line across the road. On the wall, posters depicting a fist and a snake.

To better herself, another young woman Clarissa (Bruna G.) is taken our of an ordinary school and sent by her aunt to an up-market, fundamentalist, evangelical Christian church school where she’s quite nervous about fitting in: but Clarissa needn’t worry – she’s soon befriended by Mariana aka Mari (Mariana Oliveira) who takes the newcomer under her wing.… Read the rest