Nathaniel's Top Ten List. The Film Bitch Awards Begin...
Saturday, March 1, 2025 at 3:00PM by Nathaniel R
For this cinephile, the film year doesn’t officially end until the naked gold men are handed to their blessed new owners, deserving or otherwise. (If you’re looking for my predictions that article is here or in various Oscar volleys) So as we enter the third month of 2025 the books must now close on 2024. It’s time for even champion procrastinators like myself to participate in their mandatory subjective “Best” proclamations. For the next week or three I’ll be posting the Film Bitch Awards, the public honors for my private darlings, beginning with this Top Ten List / Best Picture, announcement today. These awards are the site's most enduring annual tradition and though I agonize over them (call it ‘permanent record’ anxiety as I never change them after the fact because I want them to feel respectable in a time capsule way) I deeply love the process of listing and favoriting and ranking. It’s one small ritual to bring order to the chaos of life. I imagine I’ll still do it even after the world collapses in three years time and we’re all living in a hellish installment of the Mad Max Saga. What will there be to rank… Rocks? Cancerous growths? Abandoned ruins? Who knows but I’ll do it. Until then we have civilization and the movies...
Speaking of hellscapes… though I don’t believe in “worst movie” honors, I do think it’s worth acknowledging that when you see into the triple digits of movies each year, you won’t love them all. The nadir of the films I happened to see this year were Spellbound, Madame Web, IF, Atlas, A Family Affair, and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Still, I never regret seeing movies. Would I appreciate beautiful character designs, coherent storytelling, non-formulaic plotting, genius acting, and franchises that find ways to stay fresh as much in other films, if I didn't see some duds along the way?
While I loved more than two dozen movies in 2024, you have to narrow it down for top ten articles so I’ll control myself and name just 13 extra movies that didn't make the Offical Top Ten as we celebrate the Film Bitch Awards grand opening. The beauties are alphabetized by tiers…
Honorable Mention. So glad that these movies exist
THELMA
Cheers to a return to form for Tim Burton with the clever legacy sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Sean Wang captured adolescent moodiness beautifully in Didi. Even if audiences didn't notice Fly Me to the Moon it was a fine example of a stylish mainstream romcom. I’m Still Here and The Seed of the Sacred Fig, both nominated for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars, are riveting and depressingly timely looks at life under fascism and/or corrupt repressive patriarchal regimes. For sheer spirited fun and comfy comic pleasure Thelma was hard to beat in 2024. Finally, The Wild Robot was deservedly popular and a beautifully animated tale about finding your purpose... "Do you need assistance?"
Runners Up. Thisclose to the top ten list
ARMAND
Payal Kapadia’s patiently moving All We Imagine As Light has such a way of lingering, doesn’t it? I was also riveted by Halfdan Ullman Tøndel’s weird and expressive parental breakdown drama Armand which took the Camera D’Or at Cannes. Luca Guadagnino’s horny, sporty, and restless menage a trois Challengers would have made my top ten but for how exhausting its non-linear fetish ultimately proved. Edward Berger’s popcorn papal thriller Conclave is not serious cinema but it sure does a good job pretending to be! Goran Stolevski’s tense queer found-family drama Housekeeping for Beginners (Macedonia’s Oscar submission for 2023, but released in the US in 2024) hit me hard in the way Stolevski’s movies always do; he’s three for three now after You Won't Be Alone and Of An Age. And though I wasn’t as obsessed as its most ardent fans were, Coralie Fargeat’s body horror satire The Substance sure made a case for itself as an indisputable “Must-See”.
NATHANIEL’S 2024 TOP TEN LIST
ANORA
Enthralling right from its curtain draped opening with that weirdly soothing ASMR opening of listening to “Hi, I’m Ani” on loop as Anora (Mikey Madison) works for her tips in a strip club. The movie never lets up thereafter like a runaway train of sudden foolish nuptials and fight-or-flight jolts. There's no stopping it until the abrupt ice-water douse of its last intimacy. Sean Baker's latest life-on-the-fringes tale is positively alive. Rarely do movies that feel this spontaneous, also pack this much of a structural jolt.
BABYGIRL
No split second of a movie last year slayed as offhandedly hard as Romy (Nicole Kidman’s) panty-soaking reaction to an unexpected glass of milk. Bless our goddess Kidman for still taking risks and betting on provocative auteurs (Dutch director Halina Reijn) this long into her career. Everything from the clever costume design to that amazing breathy/feral score is inspired and working in tandem with Director and Star to make this erotic drama as satisfying as an orgasm.
THE BRUTALIST
The drive to create, to build something monumental, isn’t a rarity for ambitious architects OR storytellers. Having the enormity of talent to manifest these ambitions is another thing altogether. Three cheers to the dreamer Brady Corbet and the haunted Lazlo Toth (Adrien Brody) for scaling this mountain of a movie and reaching its peak. Their task is never so single minded that they miss mysterious dark fissures, temperature changes, and graceful rivulets along the way.
A DIFFERENT MAN
This year “Beauty” standards and their ugly effect on our inner selves, got a much lauded workout in The Substance. I wish that more audiences had also noticed / worshipped its less flashy but differently brilliant fraternal twin brother. Aaron Schimberg’s heady darkly comic spin on this multi-faceted theme features Sebastian Stan (on complete fire in 2024) who goes from disfigured to gorgeous. Or does he? His new “beauty” proves a cheap mask once he meets his inverse (Adam Pearson) and exploits himself for a beautiful neighbor (Reinate Reinsve) in this twisted psychodramedy about shiny surfaces and inner rot.
THE FALL GUY
Great popcorn movies, even more than horror I’d argue, struggle to win deserved flowers from critics and industry voters. But Ryan Gosling goes two-for-two consecutively following up his Oscar-worthy work in Barbie with another entertaining all-audiences romp. Director David Leitch (Bullet Train, Atomic Blonde) continues to excel at staging inventive action sequences that somehow perform double duty as stylish bespoke star vehicles perfectly engineered to amplify the megawatt performance at the center, whoever that star happens to be. Exhilarating fun from it’s near-death dropped opening, through its neon hallucinations, and on to its spoofy biting the hand that feeds it finale.
FLOW
Have you ever encountered a movie that feels like it was made specifically just for you? As a crazy cat lady, animal lover, water baby, and someone who is intrigued by nature but perpetually wary of it, struggles with the spiritual when its too forcibly human-defined, and believes in the sanctity of found families, Flow was that movie for me in a dozen startling ways. Was Director Gints Zilbalodis staring into my soul? Cat, our protagonist looks grey in some scenes and black in others even mirroring the two most definitive feline soulmates of my life, grey Monty (1998-2016) and black Nero (2011-2023). In this Oscar-nominated saga, Latvian feature, a lone cat travels a post-human, flooded world, trying to survive while finding unexpected companionship with other animals along the way. Mesmeric moments come frequently but the peak was a surreal quiet climb for Cat amongst vertical ruins and pouring rain. As Cat watches his Crane friend circle upwards into the heavens, I felt a transcendent spiritual pull that I will not soon forget.
PROBLEMISTA
Writer Julio Torres has been working his comic gifts and truly singular point of view (see his comedy special “My Favourite Shapes” immediately – you can thank me later) for years. Bless the cinematic heavens that he has lost none of his peculiarities as an artist as he expands his multi-hyphenate career. He wrote, produced, and stars in his feature directorial debut, a comedy about a would be toy designer from El Salvador who gets mixed up with a frazzled art critic (Tilda Swinton) after accidentally unplugging her cryogenically frozen painter husband. And that’s not even the half of the absurdities, plot-wise! The eccentricities of the story beats and characters, and the hilarious curlicue offshoots of the same ("Craigslist" is divine), should all be too much. Yet the screenplay’s beautifully expressed throughlines --immigration anxiety, self-actualization, and dehumanizing bureaucracy -- anchor and humanize the surreal and silly journey.
A REAL PAIN
Everyone who reads The Film Experience knows that I treasure economy in storytelling. It’s so rare now that I almost couldn’t believe how many ideas and story beats Jesse Eisenberg was packing into this estranged cousins travelogue drama in 90 minutes flat. It’s a small miracle that it doesn’t feel overstuffed. It’s quick on its feet but with the keen sense of the weight of psychic luggage people always drag behind them, bumpy and awkwardly -possibly with a broken wheel –even when they’ve intentionally packed light. Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg shine bright as twinning wisps in this ineffably sad diamond.
VERMIGLIO
A ravishing throwback to Italy’s cinematic glory years, Maura Delpero’s lush drama manages to feel truly epic in just two hours. It’s portrait of a large family, specific place (mountain village), troubled time (fascist Italy, 1944), and even the passage of time (the seasons brilliantly shifting), grows ever more expressive and expansive with each scene, while never losing its early intimacy. Best in show is the genius lensing by inspired Russian DP Mikhail Krichman (The End, Loveless). While Italy has won too many Oscars in Best International Feature Film, it’s a real pity that they didn’t add to that tally this season.
WICKED
“Good News!” are the first words sung in the Broadway phenomenon “Wicked” and they prove prophetic as the opening words of Jon M Chu’s adaptation. There are a thousand ways that Wicked could have gone wrong onscreen but none are readily visible. Good news indeed! If Wicked: For Good (2025) manages to stick the landing (no small feat given that Act Two is weaker in the stage show) this movie musical will become a miracle. Wicked- Part One is blessed with incredibly well-cast leads in Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, who get the core appeal of their archetypes and humanize them just enough to hook you emotionally but not so much that they weigh down the broad fantasy. Beautiful Costumes! Beautiful Production Design! Beautiful Voices! Beautiful Bailey. The film is soaring even before the witch defies gravity.
THE FILM BITCH AWARDS CAN NOW BEGIN…
Pg 1 Picture, Director, Screenplays, and Animated Feature
Pg 2 Acting TBA
Pg 3 Visual Categories
Pg 4 Sound & Music
Pg 5 Extra Acting TBA
Pg 6 Characters of the Year TBA
Pg 7 Best Scenes TBA
Reader Comments (10)
Along with some excellent well-praised flicks, it's nice to see my beloved Vermiglio in your 10, as well as Fall Guy! I had such a good time with that one - it should have been a bigger hit!
My 20 favourite films in no particular order,i've not seen A Complete Unknown,I'm Still Here,The Brutalist or The Last Showgirl.
The Substance
Nosferatu
Civil War
Longlegs
Alien Romulus
Queer
September 5
The Apprentice
Heretic
A Real Pain
Juror #2
Twisters
The First Omen
Blink Twice
Wicked
Conclave
Late Night With The Devil
Speak No Evil
A Different Man
Lee
Love this piece every year. The way you express your love for film is always a joy.
Great list Nathaniel. My top ten this year is -
Seed of the Sacred Fig
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dune: Part 2
Anora
Nickel Boys
A Real Pain
Flow
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat
Greatest Night in Pop
The Substance
I don't think I've ever overlapped 50% w best picture like this. I'm getting older, the academy's getting younger, and we've met in the middle.
Cool, cool, cool
And I'm surprised at how similar our Top Tens start out (5/10):
Anora
Babygirl
The Brutalist
Challengers
The Fall Guy
Femme
Nickel Boys
Nosferatu
Queer
Wicked
And ten honorable mentions: A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune 2, Emilia Pérez, The Fire Inside, The Last Showgirl, A Real Pain, The Room Next Door, Sing Sing, The Substance
Fun picks!
2024 was a strange year for movies. There wasn't one that I clearly loved above the rest. And while there were plenty I really loved, none of them blew me away. I didn't give a single 10/10 or even 9/10. I did give 14 8/10s, which are the following:
Babygirl
The Brutalist
A Different Man
The Girl with the Needle
Kinds of Kindness
Memoir of a Snail
Queer
A Quiet Place: Day One
Red Rooms
I Saw the TV Glow
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Sometimes I Think About Dying
The Substance
Problemista
Aw, Nathaniel, I feel ya. *Hugs* As long as we have movies, I hope you'll keep doing this.
Anyway, a high quality list as always. I just saw VERMIGLIO last week - it took that long to come to D.C.! - and found it absolutely transfixing. Would definitely have made my top 10 if I'd seen it in time.
The only selection I really disagree with is FALL GUY, which I found extremely tedious despite Gosling and Blunt's best efforts.
And THANK YOU for the nod to THELMA (which made my own top 10) and also FLY ME TO THE MOON (which did not, but which I enjoyed and think should have been better received).
Great choices! My top 10:
1. The Beast (dir. Bertrand Bonello)
2. All We Imagine as Light (dir. Payal Kapadia)
3. The Taste of Things (dir. Trần Anh Hùng)
4. Flow (dir. Gints Zilbalodis)
5. Babygirl (dir. Halina Reijn)
6. I'm Still Here (dir. Walter Salles)
7. Hard Truths (dir. Mike Leigh)
8. The Substance (dir. Coralie Fargeat)
9. La Chimera (dir. Alice Rohrwacher)
10. Janet Planet (dir. Annie Baker)
Gosling should've gotten a musical/comedy Globes nod for The Fall Guy!
I always love reading your top tens, even if we rarely match. This year, we have zero overlap between our tops, though BABYGIRL and VERMIGLIO are very close to making mine.