The cover of the December issue of Sight & Sound – the publishing arm of the British Film Institute (BFI)- proudly announces a listing of the 50 best films of 2024 and an accompanying e-mail to subscribers (of whom I am one) asks conversationally “How many have you seen?”
This question is, as it turns out, a disengenious one. Unless you have attended all the major film festivals of the year or live in the USA with ready access to an arts cinema there is no hope in hell that even the most avid movie buff will have watched all fifty.
In this way, critics maintain their fragile status as arbitors of good taste in all things cinematic.
Five of the titles , including two in the top ten (The Nickel Boys and Hard Truths) will not be released in the UK until January or February 2025. Seven titles, including one (Caught By The Tides) in the top ten, have no current release date in the UK. Some may have already reached cinemas in the States but, given that Sight & Sound is a British publication, this should not be a factor in my opinion.
Release dates matter. A further oddity is that four of the films already figured in Sight & Sound’s top fifty of 2023 – The Beast, Taste of Things, Zone of Interest and La Chimera. The last of these, an excellent Italian movie, was listed at number 20 in 2023 but in 2024 the very same film has now risen to the giddy heights of number 3!!?
If this were a post about the merits of the relative top 50s, I would question the inclusion of Coppola’s embarassingly awful Megalopolis and the exclusion of Steve McQueen’s flawed but still impressive Blitz. Not including Wicked or Gladiator 2 also smacks of elitism.
No matter. Ultimately what’s in or out is so subjective that complaints of this kind are fairly pointless. It would be nice though to actually be able to see the movies listed so that I can make up my mind.
For what it’s worth, I wholeheartedly agree that Payal Kapadia’s magnificent ‘All We Imagine As Light‘ was the best film of the year. It also has the advantage of being released in the same year as the list and can actually be seen in UK cinemas.
