#witches 2024

[kathleenkatmary]

My Top 30 Movies of 2024 (as of 12/31/24)

Disclaimer: This is by no means my 'completed' list. There are still a lot of movie I want to see that I won't have access to for awhile yet. I don't usually 'close out' - though I never really 'close out' my yearly lists - until around Oscar time. But I always like to take stock of what my list looks like at the actual end of the year. So here that is. I'll have more complete version around the end of February/beginning of March. Also, I tend to do go by non-festival domestic (US) release dates to determine the year of a movie's release, roughly going by Academy Awards eligibility. But I am kind of loose with that if a movie becomes widely available, even if only on the high seas, before it gets a non-festival US release.

30. A Different Man

A Different Man is the year's most effective exploration of identity and loneliness. It's hardly the first story or movie to look at the idea that changing the physical things that you don't like about yourself won't necessarily make you feel less lonely or more equipped to connect with other people, but it does it in such an interesting way. It's equal parts sad and anxiety inducing.

29. Blood for Dust

This is definitely one of the most underrated movies of the year. It seems that the perception of this is that it's just another low-grade suspense/thriller, but it's actually a really dark look at what modern poverty looks like for so many people, the desperate state the broken system we live in leaves people in, and the lengths people are willing to go to in an attempt to escape it. Every moment is infused with a feeling of dread, but even then it's so easy to relate to Scoot McNairy's character and his choices because of the situation he's in.

28. Civil War

I wouldn't say that Civil War is an apolitical movie, but it's completely uninterested in the one side versus the other side politics that led to the titular war. Instead, it explores the politics of journalism during such a time, the role journalism plays in such a world, and what existing in that line of work does to a person. Through a character like Kirsten Dunst's Lee it shows war as a fact of every day life, and it looks at the United States would look like in that kind of situation.

27. Caddo Lake

Caddo Lake is probably the biggest surprise of the year for me. I went into it knowing pretty much nothing, and what I got was a deeply melancholy time travel tale that used it's sci-fi storyline to dig into ideas of how we're tied to the generations of our family that came before us and how those connections and the things that happened to the people who came before us echo through the generations and continue to impact us. It's such an incredibly effective use of time travel to tell a very human story.

26. The Substance

I doubt I have much to say about The Substance that others haven't already said. Is it subtle? Of course not, but I don't think it needs to be. The over the top atmosphere and slightly bizarro world it sets up feels like the perfect fit for the story it's telling. It's not saying anything that plenty of other pieces of media haven't said, but I do think it captures that feeling of living in a femme body in this culture better than most other movies of this type.

25. Alien: Romulus

I've been a fan of the Alien franchise since I was a kid in the 90s, but it's been in a weird place for a long time. Alien: Romulus feels like a return to form, prioritizing the horror over the sci-fi much of the time and not getting to bogged down with lore and backstory. Most of the characters do feel kind of like stock characters, but the movie does a good job of giving them all solid motivation for their actions and behaviors. And Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson give such great performances, providing the movie with its emotional core.

24. Wicked Little Letters

Wicked Little Letters is a fun movie that unapologetically places women of all kinds at its center. Yes, it's a movie about a feud between two women, but at its core its a movie about the way society pits women against each other, and how we'll always be stronger together. It's also got one of the best ensemble casts of the year, lots of women with amazing chemistry and perfect comic timing.

23. Between the Temples

Definitely the most anxiety inducing moviegoing experience of the year. But it's also one of the sweetest. It's another exploration of loneliness - a theme that's been popular and will probably continue to be - but this one is quite hopeful about finding connection in unexpected places. At its heart it's a love story, but not in the traditional way.

22. Nosferatu

The 1922 original is one of my all time favorite movies, so I was both excited for and a bit skeptical about Robert Eggers's remake. While I don't think it ever reaches the heights of FW Murnau's original or Werner Herzog's version from the 1970s, and while some of the performances could be better in spots, Eggers has such a feel for the dark atmosphere of the story and such an interesting take on the titular vampire. And I think he went in a really interesting route by putting the ideas of grooming and sexual assault that are just sort of naturally an aspect of this story at the forefront.

21. Witches

Looking at the witch hunts and trials of the 1500s and 1600s in Europe and North America through the lens of mental illness isn't really anything new, but the documentary Witches looks at it through a very specific lens: that of post partum depression and psychosis, the continued lack of systemic and cultural support for people suffering from such things, and the way cultural expectations of gender norms surrounding motherhood put people in a position of feeling isolated and even unsafe in seeking help. It's a fascinating way to look at witch hunts, but more than anything it's a deeply personal and cathartic look at experiencing post natal mental health crises in our current world.

20. La Chimera

La Chimera is the most magical feeling movie of 2024, while still feeling very firmly set in the real world. I love that, because it allows for that feeling of magic in our ordinary world. The Italian setting now doubt contributes to that feeling, and the way it's filmed is full of so much whimsy and freedom of spirit that it only enhances the mystical, magical tone that encompasses the story.

19. His Three Daughters

One of 2024's great films about grief. But it's not just about grief. It's about that uniquely agonizing experience of waiting for someone to die, of grieving before the death has actually happened, of being unable to escape that feeling of just wanting it to happen already so that you can get back to your life and all of the guilt that comes with that. Take all that an mix in the complex relationships and rifts between the three sisters at the film's center, and His Three Daughters is one of the best explorations of family dynamics and the impact that a major death can have on them in years.

18. Things Will Be Different

I knew almost nothing about Things Will Be Different going into it, and was very pleasantly surprised to find a quiet little sci-fi story that inserts its genre elements in really clever ways that allow for the low budget. It uses time travel to explore that feeling of the way we can sometimes commit the same mistakes with the people we love over and over and over even when we try to do thing differently, and it ends up packing in incredible emotional punch as a result.

17. I Used to Be Funny

From what I've seen, most of the very few movies out there that focus on the aftermath of sexual assault are very revenge-based. So it's nice to see something like I Used to Be Funny, which has no interest in ideas of revenge and is far more interested in really exploring the long term impacts such a thing can have on a person, on their ability to live life day to day, their relationships, the things they can't get back and the things they can. It's refreshing to see a movie like this that, for the most part, is pretty uninterested in the perpetrator himself, focusing more on the trauma they caused to the people around them, and the way those people find their way to healing.

16. The Last Stop in Yuma County

This is probably the most tense I was watching a 2024 movie (so far, anyway). From pretty much the very start, the tension just keeps building and building and building, at such a steady and methodical pace as more information is revealed, more characters are introduced, and things become more chaotic. The tension then breaks in one of the best end-of-second-act turns I thing I've ever seen. It then goes on to build a completely different kind of tension through its final act. The Last Stop in Yuma County really is a masterclass in tension building. I'm not kidding, this should be studied in schools.

15. The Dead Don't Hurt

The Western has, historically, been a pretty male-centric genre. And while we have seen more westerns focused, at least in part, on women in recent years, The Dead Don't Hurt is the first one I've seen that's really focused on what the experience of a woman really would have been like when the man in her life went off to have the kind of western adventure they usually make movies about. This is very, very much a love story, but what it's about above all is about what a woman alone in that kind of world would go through. It's rough and horrific at times, but in a way that never feels fetishistic or voyeuristic.

14. Dune: Part 2

Villaneuve's Dune movies are stunning achievements not just because they're adaptation of a difficult-to-adapt work that feels complete and true to the source, but also because of how effectively they explore the novel's themes, themes that are still startlingly relevant today, and because of how fantastically it sets up the universe the story takes place in, laying the groundwork for future entries into the franchise.

13. Small Things Like These

I feel like a lot of people might not like Small Things Like These because "nothing really happens", but I feel like it's all right there in the title. This isn't a movie about some grand heroic act where some everyman hero saves a huge amount of people or exposes some major organization. It's about the small things we can do, that a completely ordinary person like Cillian Murphy's character can do to help. It's about the value of every person, every life, and the tremendous, life saving impact even one normal person choosing to do the right thing can have. It's a small, quiet movie. But it's a tremendously powerful one.

12. Late Night with the Devil

I'm not sure I can explain exactly what it is about Late Night with the Devil that captivated me so much. I'm not generally a horror fan. Not because I think the genre is somehow 'lesser', I just don't enjoy being scared. If I love a horror movie, that means there was something in it that I loved so much it overrode how much I don't enjoy being scared. I think this movie really excelled with its main character, exploring him from a really interesting angle and creating a lot of depth with a pretty simple central conceit.

11. Lies We Tell

I'm not 100% sure if this is actually a 2024 film or a 2023 film, but it looks like it was released in he US in 2024, and I didn't have any way to view it until 2024, so I'm counting it as 2024. Lies We Tell is an adaptation of the gothic novel Uncle Silas, and it manages to be even darker than its source material. I think above all this is, obviously, a very woman-centric story, exploring they ways society, especially at the time the story takes place, can leave a woman completely powerless even in her own home. But it's also a very interesting look at family secrets, at the horror of learning that what we thought about the people we loved isn't true, and the ways that those truths being kept from us can put us in danger.

10. I Saw the TV Glow

Again, I doubt I can say anything about I Saw the TV Glow that anyone else hasn't already said. It works most obviously and clearly as a story about the trans experience, but I think it's something that anyone who struggles with their identity, who feels like society or the world they live in keeps them held back from being who they really are, can connect with. And it does that in an incredibly powerful way by focusing really hard on the nostalgia we feel for our youth and the way that, as we grow up, we're constantly looking back to what we remember as 'simpler times' for comfort, even if those times weren't all that simple.

09. Late Bloomers

I'd probably say that Late Bloomers is the most underrated movie of 2024, as I don't think I've seen anyone else talking about it. It's a simple, quiet movie that I found so easy to relate on such a deep level. While, obviously, people in situations more similar to what the characters are going through will find it easy to relate, I do feel like a lot of the ideas being explored here - difficulty connecting to other people, feeling like you're failing or that you haven't done enough or the right things with your life, being selfish at times that you shouldn't be, and at times that you should be, etc. - are probably relatable to most people.

08. Love Lies Bleeding

What a weird little movie Love Lies Bleeding. Most of it has the tone and feeling of a gritty crime movie, but there are strong elements of magic and spirituality. Honestly, in that way it kind of reminds me of a Frank Borzage movie. Borzage never really veered into actual fantasy, but his films were very much about the healing, purifying, spiritual power of love and all of the unlikely and seemingly impossible things it can cause to happen, especially within harsh and unforgiving environments. That's Love Lies Bleeding all over, it just leans a little bit further into the fantastical at points.

07. Woman of the Hour

The true crime genre has been experiencing something of a reckoning lately (and rightly so) for multiple reasons, not least of which is the way victims - especially women victims - are so often loss in the stories of their own deaths, with most of the focus being places on the men who killed them, and with so much attention paid to the gruesome violence of their murders. Woman of the Hour comes out of that reckoning, seeking to tell a story that's usually told because of the murderous man at its center, particularly because he appeared on The Dating Game while he was actively murdering women, in a way that centers his victims, and that doesn't linger on the violence committed against them. It's an incredibly effective film that manages to be quite scary at times and capture the genuine menace of its murderer while still feeling like it's actually honoring the stories of the women he killed.

06. Mother, Couch!

Mother, Couch! did not do well with critics. Most labeled it incomprehensible. Clearly, I disagree. Yes, it's surreal as hell, but I think it all makes sense as a deeply felt exploration of the grief you experience when your relationship with the person you've lost or are losing is messy and complicated and there are more negative feelings than positive ones. It's a look at the very sad reality some people live in where sometimes when someone close to you dies, your life is better for it. Those are some complex and deeply unpretty things to explore, and Mother, Couch! does an incredible job of it, unfolding the relationships between Ewan McGregor's character and his family through a series of confrontations set in a surrealist furniture shop. And it has what I think is the best performance McGregor has ever given.

05. Saturday Night

This felt like the quickest moviegoing experience of the year. It's not the shortest movie from 2024 that I saw, but it was so perfectly paces that it felt like the shortest. The movie is just near-constant action, breaking only occasional to give is a more slowed-down moment between characters. And in that it really captures the frantic feeling Lorne Michaels, played fantastically by Gabrielle LaBelle, is experiencing in trying to get the first episode of Saturday Night Live on the air. It's also got an incredible ensemble cast who do a great job of embodying the real people they're playing.

04. Anora

I think Sean Baker deserves a lot of respect for the work he's done to destigmatize sex work in his films, but what I really want to focus on with Anora is how much it feels like a screwball comedy from the 1940s. Sure, on the surface you wouldn't think it, considering it's about a sex worker and there's a lot of nudity and sex. But when you zoom out and really look at it, from the setup of a quickie green card marriage, to the heroine struggling to survive and hopefully finding a way to do that through marriage, to the fast paced dialogue and physical comedy, this thing is a classic screwball comedy from top to bottom, and I love it.

03. Challengers

Challengers just crackles with energy from beginning to end. Writer Justin Kuritzkes and director Luca Guadignino take tennis being a metaphor for the relationships between the characters and makes almost every scene about that thing, with almost every conversation and argument that happens feeling like a tennis match where everyone is trying to win, trying to exploit each other's weaknesses, seeking that win without thinking much about what happens after they get it. I also think it's a really interesting looks at relationships and how they operate - or don't operate - when one or both parties in a relationship love something - in this case tennis - more than they love the other person.

02. The Beast

The Beast is a twisty, Lynchian adaptation of Henry James's The Beast in the Jungle, taking the general idea and themes of the story and adapting it in three different time periods - the past, the present - and the future - all of which are connected as a presentation of the characters' past lives. It explores feelings of isolation and loneliness, and the way the society and culture we live in specifically puts is in a position to feel those things, in the way the stories connect to each other. With the way this story is told, it's able to be so many different things: tense and scary, achingly romantic, strange and alienating, and always heartbreaking.

01. Conclave

Conclave really was a big surprise for me. I knew almost nothing about it, but my mom wanted to see it so I went with her for her birthday, and I'm so glad I did. I love watching political process in media. Lincoln is my favorite Spielberg movie, The West Wing is one of my all time favorite shows. So Conclave, a movie about the college of Cardinals trying to elect the new Pope and all the political jockeying and intrigue that goes on while that's happening, is so up my aisle. And as someone who was raised Catholic but always struggled with doubts (and who is now no longer religious), the fact that one of the major themes of this movie is doubt, and how doubt is a necessary part of faith, really spoke to me. It's also just amazing looking. Really, a movie about priests should not be this exciting and fun.

[tophuukiey]

There's a wicked production somewhere where Elphaba kisses Glinda on the cheek sometime in act 2... And because I can't find it anymore I sketched it 🥹

[slothliart]

Elphaba’s locked in

[mysweetgelphie]

i haven’t stopped sobbing about this since i saw it, like ouch

[iwasbored777]

I HATE HOW HARD I LAUGHED

[mellkellyismyhero]

I love how Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel specifically cameoed during One Short Day, because that’s the song where Glinda and Elphaba are talking about their future together- a future that we know they’ll never get. BUT having Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth there feels like we got to see a version of Elphaba and Glinda who DID get their happy ending together living in the Emerald City 💚🩷

[thephantomofanastasia]

Really cool wicked fanart by APOLAR on Instagram - apolar.arch their work is incredible. Check their page out!

https://www.instagram.com/apolar.arch/profilecard/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

[sabeedraws]

This is your friendly reminder that Elphaba is alluded to being trans in the book <3

Edit: been informed that she was implied to be intersex, actually – sry, its been 10 years and I am overdue for a reread haha

[crowlixcx]

Two good friends. Two best friends.

[agir1ukn0w]

sorry but having strains of "For Good" sprinkled throughout the soundtrack, particularly during Elphie and Glinda's most important moments - essentially having it be their Theme - was a stroke of genius and definitely didn't rip my heart out every time I heard that little motif

[nariaein]

so that one deleted scene....

[usuallydyinginside]

"No One Mourns the Wicked" is about Glinda, not Elphaba

Okay, but hear me out. Wicked songs are so good at saying one thing and meaning something entirely different once you have more context. For instance, "I'm Not That Girl" is Elphaba singing about Glinda initially, then in Act 2 flips to Glinda singing about Elphaba. Because it turns out, Elphaba IS that girl and Glinda is not. When we meet the Wizard, he sings about how he always wanted to be a father. When you get to Act 2, you get the sad little reprise in the background music as he realizes that WHOOPS, he was one and he destroyed his only kid. "Defying Gravity" starts with "I hope you're happy" in the sarcastic sense and ends with them both using the same phrase to genuinely wish one another well.

"Thank Goodness" is set up as a cheerful engagement song where Glinda genuinely means "thank goodness for how great my life is" and ends in a place where she's insisting that she IS happy even as she realizes her engagement is a sham, her best friend is gone, and she's left with the Wizard and Madame M, who she doesn't even like.

You get the picture.

Basically, the whole musical is about subverting what you expect, starting with the base premise of "what if the Wicked Witch was the hero of the story" and digging in from there.

Honestly, I'd never paid much attention to the first song. It's a good opener, sets things up well, but it has some big competition with later songs. However, in the movie the staging and camera choices made me really notice it for the first time. Because you know what? Someone DID pay attention to that song, and you can really really tell.

For those who need a refresher, the lyrics to the chorus Glinda sings are: And Goodness knows The Wicked's lives are lonely Goodness knows The Wicked die alone It just shows when you're Wicked You're left only On your own I was always so busy noticing Glinda's grief over thinking Elphaba was genuinely dead that I failed to notice Glinda's grief over her OWN fate. The movie did such a good job with this because every time we get to the pink lines about being alone, Glinda IS alone. She is standing apart from the crowd who adores her. Standing above them. Standing at the center of a bunch of people yet still, isolated.

Because in the end, we know that Elphaba DIDN'T die alone. We know she wasn't on her own. We know her life WASN'T lonely ultimately. She had her flying monkey and animal friends. She had Fiyero.

And who does Glinda have?

Everyone, but realistically, no one. She is an ideal, not a person to most of Oz, just as much as Elphaba has become the token scapegoat. Where Elphaba is the "Wicked Witch," Glinda is "Glinda the Good Witch" - she is literally supposed to be the embodiment of goodness.

And what does Glinda have at the end of this whole thing (as of this song at least)? A disastrous end to her engagement, the death of her best friend, a sorceress who has hated her, demeaned her, and dismissed her from the start, and a con man who is also just a symbol more than a person.

I think it really hit me when Glinda throws the fire on the giant effigy of Elphaba. Ariana's acting was SO good there, because I'd expected us to see that private moment of horror or regret. What I didn't expect was the sort of determined and almost angry glare at the effigy.

But it makes sense. At this point, Glinda has realized that she lost everything and everyone she actually cared about.

As she so aptly puts it in "Thank Goodness"...

Though it is, I admit The tiniest bit Unlike I anticipated. But I couldn't be happier, Simply couldn't be happier, Well, not "simply" 'Cause getting your dreams It's strange, but it seems A little, well, complicated.

There's a kind of a sort of cost. There's a couple of things get lost. There are bridges you cross You didn't know you crossed Until you've crossed!

And if that joy, that thrill Doesn't thrill like you think it will Still-- With this perfect finale, The cheers and the ballyhoo! Who wouldn't be happier? So I couldn't be happier, Because happy is what happens When all your dreams come true.

Well, isn't it?

Happy is what happens when you're dreams come true.

It's not Elphaba's fault that Glinda has ended up this way. Glinda chose it every step of the way. Yet, if Glinda had never met Elphaba, (if she'd never known her, you could say), she might have stayed shallow and vain. She might never have been challenged to look deeper and realize how empty it all felt.

So as Glinda sings "No One Mourns the Wicked," she realizes that even if the Munchkins are singing about the "Wicked Witch," she's not.

She's singing about herself.

The one who traded her morals, friendship, and love for a taste of the admiration and power over those who don't really know her. The one who was so worried about being likable that she herself doesn't like who she's become.

Even after she makes things better for Oz and herself by sending the wizard away and getting rid of Madame M, it just leaves Glinda by herself as the leader and source of goodness in Oz. It leaves her on a pedestal she can never step off of.

It leaves her lonely.

Entirely alone.

[sisalrian]

doomed yuri doodle

[radiomomo]

What is this feeling?

So sudden and new

[prent1ssjareau]

[iwasbored777]

I love literally every post about this movie