Everyone can google IMDB and Metacritic, in about a second, or Variety or Den of Geek or Sight and Sound , and find other lists of the best movies of 2024. Here are 17 out of 20ish I will post eventually, though the final ones may only come in a few months, since in the UK many of the releases are due later in the year (or I have yet to see the movies). Of the films I expect may appear later, some you will have heard of - A Complete Unknown, The Brutalist, and The Nickel Boys. Still - each of these 17 listed below is already on many end of year lists, and is, in their own right, a very good or great movie. At least five of the films listed below have a good chance of winning the Oscar for Best Picture in a few months (their list is ten films long) - an asterix indicates the three I currently believe have the best shot. *ANORA - heartachingly sad, side-splittingly funny, sometimes scary, often sexy, it's uniquely potent A REAL PAIN - some will find it slight, bu...
David Lynch has died. Perhaps the last time an American death of a cultural icon was so massive was the loss of Warhol . This blog is of the opinion that David Lynch was probably the most significant global artist of the past 45 years; perhaps only David Bowie approaches his immense contribution to multiple senses of art forms and identity in this period, and had such ubiquitous impact. But Lynch, more even than Warhol or Bowie, or any other film-maker of the period, was consistently and openly also an artist, musician, painter, and writer/visionary. To call him a "surrealist" barely does him justice, and is in many ways misleading. Lynch's transgressive visions were sometimes dreamlike, but controlled evacuations from the underbelly of the conscious/unconscious divide in the psyche/soul - demonic expulsions, like solar flares, or toxins released in the bloodstream; his dreams are never entirely merely random or absurd (like Dylan Thomas serving string in tea cups). Wh...