A Year in Film with Khalil
A recap of 2024’s best in 🎞️ with Khalil
GRAPHICS BY Benjamin Uribe
EDITED BY Christopher Buchanan
Editor’s Note: Khalil, Khalil, Khalil... I met Khalil this summer during the New York Summer Bonanza that everyone from each of the four corners of our great country seemingly got a golden ticket to. A two month vacation from our normal, less bustling lives. For this reason I didn’t always meet New Yorkers, much less pure nativos; those who didn’t need breaks because the city already bent them into form. When Khalil arrived, camera strapped over his shoulder with clear, poindexter classes and a demeanour that matched his looks, I noticed he looked more comfortable than everyone around. It was like a kitchen trip for him to be at a random Brooklyn park, when I felt like a grease fire. I took a great liking to Khalil because of these facts and some others, but once I found out he needed a place to get some love for a medium I haven’t much explored off of his brain-grooves, I started to love him. I think you will too. Guy is a real movie buff and chill to the bone. I could gush about him more, but this is about beautiful things that happened on big screen and not my 6.5 inch display. So. here is Khalil Hardy, reporting for The Bum Diary.
I loved a lot of movies in 2024. Loving so many new movies is a bit rare for me, so this year has been a welcome surprise. It's funny. In a year most critics and fans have considered a down year, I loved more movies than any year in the new decade. 2023 brought the auteurs and the mainstream titans out, but many failed to move me. In 2024 I fell in love at the movies multiple times and that's really all I could ask for. I’ll kinda just talk through these from 10 to 1. Any ranking of mine is always subject to change but I’ll stick by these 10, for now.
Any ranking of mine is always subject to change but I’ll stick by these 10.
Janet Planet really touched me and brought me back to the late summers I spent in North Carolina with family, at times isolated from friends. It's a movie about textures, feelings, and words left unsaid. A rather quiet movie, but in an increasingly loud world that's what we need more of. Janet Planet is full of beautiful performances but the stars of the whole thing are Julianne Nicholson and Zoe Ziegler.
Set during the summer in Western Massachusetts, our two leading ladies orbit around each other for the entirety of the film. It's all about Janet (Nicholson) and Lacy (Ziegler). Mother and Daughter. They’re extremely close, maybe too close, but all they really have is each other. Men come and go, but the space that they leave in their place matters more than the men themselves. The two leads create their own respective worlds and the visitors should feel lucky that they ever get a chance to visit. I love these two performances because every gesture means so much. In Janet Planet, Annie Baker makes the small moments linger.
Problemista is one of the more life affirming movies that I saw this year. Julio Torres is a one of one artist that will, hopefully, be in our lives for years to come. Torres plays an aspiring toy designer who is struggling to bring his creative ideas to life and ease some trouble with his U.S. work visa. While looking for a sponsor, he happens upon Tilda Swinton. Swinton plays Elizabeth, who at first seems like the worst person you have ever met in your life. Swinton is a wreck, and she doesn’t even realize it; Swinton quickly becomes the most important person in Torres’ life, for better and for worse. As the movie unfolds you begin to understand how she was made that way. Without noticing, you come to realize that Swinton has lost the love of her life and Torress is dying to try and save his nonexistent legacy. Julio is in the process of trying to create a legacy, of sorts. He wants to create TOYS — those he has been dreaming about as a kid. This is the path he wants to travel and life is constantly trying to knock him sideways.
The movie works as an ode to reclaiming your podium in a place that is constantly trying to knock you off of it. Tilda Swinton won’t take no for an answer in any situation. She’d be a disaster to be around in real life but in the movie it works. It's hilarious and beautiful. Full of characters who feel like tangible people in a magical world. RZA of WU-TANG plays a painter who can only paint eggs. It's a great time at the movies.
If you’ve heard of Sing Sing you’ve probably seen or read that it's very important. And it is. But its also really great. It's a movie full of beautiful performances and gorgeous moments. Colman Domingo plays a man in prison for a crime he didn't commitm, and while incarcerated he participates in and becomes the nucleus of the theater program.
The movie is based on a real program that exists, and alongside Colman Domingo, it stars men who have been incarcerated. Clarence Maclin is one of these men and in Sing Sing, he turns in one of the best performances of the year. Maclin and Domingo are magic on screen together – it's a movie about performance, masculinity, and finding passion in a world trying to crush you (I know you can relate). End credits of rhis one will make you cry and believe in this chaotic, often unruly world, for just a moment.
Mati Diop is back in Dahomey and we’re all better for it. Dahomey tells the story of twenty-six royal treasures that were returned to Benin after being stolen hundreds of years ago. In Dahomey, Diop gives a voice to the artifacts themselves and the people from whom these artifacts are stolen. The portion of this movie that blew me away were the student debates on repatration. Very simple in form, but cut together in such a beautiful way that the real-world arguments to be made on repatriation are represented in their truest forms. It all becomes so magical. The students talk about whether or not the return of the artifacts is a positive sign or a slap in the face. Only twenty six items are returned out of the many, many more that were stolen.
I tend to agree with the students who feel like it's a slap in the face, but I really do empathize with the ones who desperately want repatration to be a positive sign of progress toward something better for all of us. So much is lost when works of art are stolen and appropriated. At times it feels like it won’t ever stop. Dahomey helped to certify that art will still live forever, regardless.
The sexiest movie of the year. At least the sexiest on my list. All We Imagine as Light is absolutely stunning. More Yearning, More Life. Prabha and Anu are two roommates living in Mumbai. It's a portrait of a city and two women simultaneously at odds with the place and its ways. Prabha is in an arranged marriage to a husband she never sees and doesn’t hang out with most of the women at work at the start of the film. It’s never said but she feels uncomfortable around them. Anu is living her life to the fullest. She's full of youth and in love. As the movie goes on the two grow closer. They also grow a bit disillusioned with Mumbai. The city doesn't allow for them to make time for themselves. It’s always crowded, always trying to make a buck. The third act the movie moves away from the city and the characters have a chance to stop and breathe. In these moments their needs and desires become clearer than ever.
Bird might be the coolest movie of the year. I won’t write too much about the plot because I don’t want to give anything away. Andrea Arnold has created a world that exists apart from everything else I’ve seen this year. Bird is the story of a young girl (Bailey) and the two older male figures that exist at this point in her life. Barry Keoghan plays Bug, Bailey's step father and Franz Rogowski plays Bird, a stranger who walks into Bailey's life towards the beginning of the film. All three central performances are incredible but Franz Rogowski really might be one of the actors of his generation. I couldn’t look away from him on screen. Bird tackles many subjects and in a lot of ways it's not treading new ground story wise. It's the way Andrea Arnold decides to tell a familiar story that makes it beautiful, in my eyes.
In a few years I could easily see this being one of my favorite coming of age movies. The best movies are completely unpredictable and familiar at the same time. Bird is the definition of that. Andrea Arnold makes something work in live action filmmaking that I never thought would work for me. The movie is a magic trick.
Evil Does Not Exist is a really hard movie to write about. Mainly because of the ending. The ending is special and I don't truly have my head wrapped around it yet, but everything that leads up to it is what makes the movie special.
If Evil Does Not Exist‘s main character is a man named Takumi played by Hitoshi Omika. He’s a single father to a young girl named Hana (Ryô Nishikawa) who lives in a small village that has just become aware of a real estate project and the impacts it would have on their home. To me the details of the project aren’t that important. It's a story we often see in real life.. The creators of the project have no regard for the people who live in the village and have this idea that they're smarter than everyone they step over. When the company sends two of its members to the town to answer questions about the project they do so under the assumption that they can talk in circles and trick the members of the community. Takahashi (Ryûji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani) are, for lack of a better word, our antagonists for the moment. This sequence, which might be my favorite of the year, is incredible because the community members absolutely annihilate these two footsoldiers, so much so that Takahashi and Mayuzumi rethink their entire lives. They spend a day with Takumi and Takahashi basically develops a man crush on him. Though, it seems he wants to be Takumi, or at least what he thinks a “man of nature” is.
This film has an incredible rhythm to it, thanks to the musical score of the year and Hamaguchi himself. Hamaguchi is an incredible artist. Drive My Car is a beautiful movie and this one may be even better. Evil Does Not Exist feels like a radical piece of art to me. The heart of this film is a desperate plea for us to treat this world better. The nature that exists on it and the people who exist within it.
Mike Leigh, you are the greatest and I hope you know it. Over the last few years I have fallen in love with the films of Mike Leigh. In Hard Truths, Leigh teams back up with Secret and Lies Collaborator Marianne Jean-Baptise.
Baptiste turns in my pick for performance of the year. It's a devastating performance; so much humanity to be seen on screen. Baptise plays a woman who is scared of the world around her, and she takes that out on everyone around her. When we meet Pansy (Baptiste) and her sister Chantelle — played wonderfully by Michele Austin — their mother has recently passed. They’re both navigating the world around them in different ways. Chantelle is incredibly close with her daughters and she spends her days with them or telling/listening to stories in her salon. All of the salon scenes are incredible. Chantelle is grieving but her grief has caused her to lean closer to others. Pansy, on the other hand, has removed herself from everyone — or at least a part of herself. She never talks to her husband and she's unable to connect with her son (Moses). Even though the relationship between mother and son seems to be completely broken down, they are equally disconnected from everyone else. In an ideal world this would bring them closer together, but Leigh is never one to go the ideal route. Moses is played by Tuwaine Barrett and barely speaks throughout, but it's a beautiful performance. He has a silent moment towards the end of the movie that melted my heart.
I have so much to say about this movie and I'm so glad Mike Leigh made it.
La Chimera was a jolt to the heart. One of the most romantic movies I’ve ever seen, a movie with so much soul. Honestly if we show this to everyone it might bring those lost souls back. La Chimera is an ode to love and loving, an ode to grieving the ones we have loved and lost. Alice Rohrwachers direction and Josh O’Connor’s performance work together to create a portrait of love and grief that moved me beyond belief. Josh O’connor plays Arthur, an archeologist with a sort of super power. He has a knack for finding meaningful artifacts. It's Indiana Jones by way of the Neil Young ditch trilogy. Arthur ran with a troupe of grave robbers until he lost the woman that he loved, Beniamina.
The entire movie exists in the shadow of the love that the two characters shared. We don’t even see much of the love they shared, but we feel it. Arthur meets new characters and even strikes up a new romance with a woman named Italia and Carol Duarte lights up the screen in the role. They share beautiful moments together but Arthurs heart is still with Beniamina. It always will be. La Chimera is a movie that I know I will carry with me for the rest of my life. It's all about the yearning.
Nickel Boys is the movie of 2024 to me. The movie that is the greatest intersection of my taste in movies and what's important to me in this world. Usually the movie that I feel is the greatest technical feat of the year and the movie I was the most emotionally moved by are not the same. This year the number 1 is the same in both categories. It's Nickel Boys. Ramell Ross and Crew use a First Person POV to shoot the entire movie. We see every frame through the eyes of two characters. Elwood and Turner. Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson play the two young men who we live with throughout the movie. The beauty of their performances lies in the way they gaze at the camera, at us when they are interacting with each other. It's the only time we get to see them. This should be alienating to a degree but they allow for the viewer to know and love them in a single glance.
Elwood and Turner attend Nickel academy, a juvenile reformatory school in Florida. The school is completely segregated, the black boys on one side of the school, the white boys on the other. A lot of this film is horrifying and rightly so, but its use of archival footage, music, and flashes into the future provide a sense of hope that allows the movie some sense of warmth in the frigid cold. Outside of Elwood and Turner, the heart of this movie is Elwoods grandmother, Hattie. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor plays this role with so much soul. Through Elwood's eyes we see her and through her performance we feel safe, the same way that Elwood would. We also see pain and fear in her eyes. These fears become real when Elwood is sent away. We only see her sparingly after Elwood arrives at Nickel but her spirit hovers over the entire movie. It's the reason Elwood is the way he is. Nickel Boys is the most gorgeous movie I have seen in years. Go see it.
Go see all of these movies and fall in love over and over again.