Happy New Year, Viscerals!

I know I say this every year, but this year seemed particularly exhausting. It's been kind of wild in many ways, with stuff I can talk about and stuff I can't, but it felt (to us, at least) like a year of setting up the bowling pins in place to (hopefully) knock down in 2026. 

It felt like a year of closing off old avenues, of leaving behind things that were bad or toxic (habits, jobs, situations), clearing the decks for a new, refreshed era, finding us a year older but perhaps a little wiser. 

After our beautiful fur girl Mally passed away at the robust age of 17 in July 2024, we felt it would be a great way to start 2025 by opening our home to another kitten, so on January 3rd, we adopted a little furry madman named Crowley (full name: Anthony J. Crowley Pyewacket Nelson-Cummings) who immediately brought chaos and energy as well as love into our lives, and we now couldn't imagine our little home without him. ​

As well as our own new baby, our extended family, which, as of Christmas Day 2024, contained no actual babies, grew by three by year's end. On Boxing Day last year, I became an uncle as my brother and his wife brought their first little boy into the world, then in June I became a Step-Grandparent for the first time as Pez's eldest daughter and her husband had a little girl, and then in November, I became an uncle again as my brother (on my mum's side) and his partner gave birth to their first daughter (and my brother's second child). My sister Taylor and her partner Kieran also adopted a beautiful puppy, Olive, to further boost the fur baby count. So our Christmas was a bit hectic, traveling over 1800km across two states to spend time with all the newly extended families, as well as my eldest sister and her husband, as well as the nephew I'd not seen since he was 5 or 6 (he's now in his early 20s). So the festive season was draining, but a lovely experience. 

From a more professional standpoint, we successfully raised over $8,000 -- boosted to over $13,000 with a matched grant from Creative Partnerships Australia -- to make our new short film, Release, for which we are currently deep into pre-production, with shooting planned for late January and into February of 2026. An unsettling psychological drama about a damaged woman prematurely released from a psychiatric institution after a quarter century inside, and her struggles to adapt to the new and unpredictable world outside, with Release we're hoping to explore and experiment with levels of preparation, rigour and style that we've never tried before, which is exciting for us (and slightly terrifying). 

Pez also finished an incredible rewrite of a feature screenplay we've had in the works for years, really sharpening it to the finest shape it's ever been in, which has been backed up by some truly lovely response we've had from a couple of professional script assessors, so part of Pez's 2026 will be doing the last few nips-and-tucks to make this one even sharper before launching it into market and trying to -- gasp! -- attach talent and producers...

The project we can't really go into yet is a documentary project -- again, uncharted territory for us -- which was cooked up by friends new and old over a few drinks but, once we all started taking real, tangible steps to flesh it out, has moved like wildfire through early development, faster than any project we've ever been involved with! It's been a wild ride already, and we're thrilled and intrigued to see where it leads in 2026... Stay tuned.

All of this -- the short film pre-production, the documentary development, the family events and obligations, as well as some personal stuff (such as... leaving my old job -- the less said there, the better -- deciding to focus on filmmaking and development, recording a fistful of audio commentaries, writing my very first booklet essay, making my first video essay -- which was scotched due to rights issues, so became my second booklet essay, and having my first ever dental surgery), this has been one of the busiest years of mine and Pez's lives, and we're so grateful for even a brief pocket of time at the end of this year/start of next year to get some rest and relaxation before it all starts again. So that was our year: crazy cat, crazy kids, crazy projects, crazy life. Oh, I turned 50 as well. Crazy. 

Shall we get to the countdowns?

Yeah, I'm only doing a top 10 this year, due to time constraints and ease of readability, but I will list the films that were very unlucky to miss out on this year's list of first-time film discoveries (anything made before 2020)... Inherit The Wind (1960, Stanley Kramer), The Entertainer (1960, Tony Richardson), Working Girls (1986, Lizzie Borden), Seven Days in May (1964, John Frankenheimer), Titicut Follies (1967, Frederick Wiseman), Never Take Sweets From a Stranger (1960, Cyril Frankel), Pulse (2001, Kiyoshi Kurosawa), Eve's Bayou (1997, Kasi Lemmons), The Bad Sleep Well (1960, Akira Kurosawa), Fascination (1979, Jean Rollin), Nights of Cabiria (1957, Federico Fellini), Stagefright (1987, Michele Soavi), The First Great Train Robbery (1978, Michael Crichton), Seven Days... Seven Nights (1960, Peter Brook), The League of Gentlemen (1960, Basil Dearden), Ninotchka (1939, Ernst Lubitsch) and The Little Shop of Horrors (1960, Roger Corman). 

However, from a pool of 107 films, these are the 10 that lit my fire the most...

10. PERFECT BLUE (1997; director: Satoshi Kon)
A deeply stressful picture. As someone who identifies as anime-allergic, this went down like a smooth, disturbing cup of arsenic. Big Brian De Palma vibes in this great horror film about fame, artistic demands, fractured identity and the daily terrors inflicted upon women in the entertainment business (let alone society). 

9. LA VÉRITÉ (aka THE TRUTH; 1960; dir: Henri-Georges Clouzot)
Clouzot's courtroom drama about a free-spirited young woman (Brigitte Bardot) put on trial for murdering her lover, this is a brilliant exploration of the lies patriarchal societies fashion about women, punishing them when they try to live outside the lines. Feels very relevant now, and a reminder of how good Bardot could be when she had the right role. 

8. THE GOOD GIRLS (1960; dir: Claude Chabrol) 
Speaking of films that feel relevant today, I did not expect this to be a French New Wave Looking For Mr. Goodbar, but here we are. Following four young French women living their lives, it's lots of fun when it’s not completely unnerving (much like most young women’s dating experiences). Every woman we lose to male violence is a world cut short. 

​7. THE BAD SEED (1957; dir: Mervyn LeRoy)
The O.G. "killer kid" movie is a crazy one in many ways, but also genuinely effective. While it makes little attempt to hide its Broadway origins, its high points are SO dizzyingly high that it can’t help but leave a mark. In spite of its indulgences, campier delights and whacko ending, there's stuff in here -- a mother grieving for her child, a blow-by-blow account of a murder and a moment of true mania -- that are hard to get out of your head. 
​
6. THE BOY FRIEND (1972; dir: Ken Russell) 
​‘70s musicals are a soft spot of mine — mixing old-school production values and rousing numbers with New Wave/Hollywood grit, grime and emotional honesty — and mad genius Ken Russell doesn't disappoint. A valentine to British music halls, Busby Berkeley choreography, backstage shenanigans and bordering-on-assaultive Theatre Kid exuberance, it's a sheer delight!

5. TUCKER: THE MAN AND HIS DREAM (1988; dir: Francis Ford Coppola)
Our year began with a deep dive into Coppola's filmography, and this was by far my fondest new discovery: a biopic both rousing and sad, an ode to idealism and creativity, extolling the possibilities of capitalist American ideals while highlighting how quickly they become corrupted and how broken and gamed the system is. If anyone’s looking for the skeleton key to who Coppola is as a man, artist, dreamer and gambler, this film is it.

4. LE TROU (aka THE HOLE; 1960; dir: Jacques Becker)
Becker's prison break procedural tunnelled so future classics like Escape From Alcatraz, The Shawshank Redemption and their ilk could run free. Builds its characters through observation - how they negotiate incarceration, their cellmates and the process of escape - leading to a shattering ending. It's to prison break movies what Army of Shadows is to WWII spy/resistance movies, and I promise you'll never be more riveted by watching sweaty men hammer at cement for minutes on end. 

3. SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING (1960; dir: Karel Reisz) 
One of the foundational films of the British New Wave, Reisz' social realist hand grenade is somehow both bleak and beautiful study in post-war masculinity and humanity, full of emotional honesty, complex but ultimately loving family dynamics, poetically shot urban squalor and ace work from newcomers Shirley Anne Field, stunning and quietly steely, and Albert Finney in his first lead role, hitting the screen like a hurricane. 

2. THE CANDIDATE (1972; dir: Michael Ritchie) 
As great a drama as any I've seen about how political idealism mashes up against the compromised and homogenised reality of the political machine, and a reminder of what Robert Redford gave us, as an actor, star, filmmaker (he’s a producer here) and activist: an artist who dug beneath the surface of the American condition in a tireless search for the truth, acknowledging its possibility while revealing its corrosive flaws, to help a nation better know itself, to hope it could do the work to be better. 

1. A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (1974; dir: John Cassavetes)
​I'm kind of addicted to, and invigorated by, the way Cassavetes' films and his peerless casts investigate humanity, in all its messiest, weirdest, irrational, ugliest, most loving, hateful and honest guises. Gena Rowlands is the show here, playing a woman stretched beyond snapping point by obligation and societal pressures to hold herself and family together, while her husband (Peter Falk, also incredible), seemingly loving but probably more harmful than good, struggles to hold her together, making terrible decisions at almost every step, while their kids heartbreakingly battle to withstand their parents' erupting storms. A seismic work of indie cinema. 

I saw 93 new movies this year, way up from 70 last year, and the high-60s of previous years, mostly thanks to a new part-time job where I basically watch movies for a living (ie. quality checking digital files to screen in cinemas and on TV/streaming). 

As usual, for the purposes of this list, "New Releases" are feature films I saw this year that received their premiere paid public release — whether in cinemas, on streaming, rental, or at festivals — in Australia during 2025.​ 
​
There were very few films I hated this year (I've got a reasonably good radar for what I'll like, so I'm not buying tickets to, say, A Minecraft Movie); in fact, of the 93 I saw, I largely liked 78, really liked 53, and loved exactly 20. But of those, 12 - rather than 10 - really got into my head this year. So let's kick off with my... 

HONOURABLE MENTIONS (from 20-13)

James Litchfield's quietly deranged, oddly romantic Alphabet Lane, Sepideh Farsi's heartbreaking document of Palestinian humanity Put Your Soul On Your Hand and Walk, Anthony Frith's hilarious account of making The Asylum's first Australian film Mockbuster, Sara Khaki and Mohammad Reza Eyni's equal parts inspirational and aggravating portrait of a Iranian trailblazer in Cutting Through Rocks, Alexandre O. Phillippe's absorbing Texas Chain Saw Massacre deep dive (with astonishing B-roll footage!) Chain Reactions, Zach Cregger's wildly entertaining ensemble horror Weapons, Michael Morris' unexpectedly thoughtful and moving Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, and James Gunn's invigoratingly comic-bookish and heartfelt DC relaunch Superman. 

But here were the 12 new release films I loved the most this year... 

12. PENNY LANE IS DEAD
​(dir: Mia'Kate Russell)
​Full disclosure: Russell is a very good friend of mine. Also full disclosure: I'd be wowed by this film even if I'd never met her. This '80s-set One Bad Night nail-biter is everything I want in a new pop-horror flick: super-fun and airtight, with a sharp and expedient approach to revealing character and story, a fun and likeable cast and a new female villain for the ages. A perfect Ozploitation throwback with some killer needle drops and blood and gore galore. Premiering at the 2025 Adelaide Film Festival but coming to more festivals and cinemas in 2026, it absolutely lives to be seen with an audience. Ya moll!

11. THE BALTI-MORONS (dir: Jay Duplass)
​Don't believe the title: this is a genuinely sweet rom-com-adjacent character piece more akin to something like The Holdovers than a Dumb and Dumber-style comedy. The script, credited to director Duplass (his first film in 13 years) and improv artist/star Michael Strassner, is mostly improvised, but the film's as tight as a drum, and a magnificent showcase for Strassner and co-star Liz Larsen, as two bruised adults with little in common but their loneliness. Such a beautiful, big-hearted, human story of loneliness, mental illness, ageing, community, and dunking on Baltimore Ravens fans. And it's a Christmas movie! A surprise worth seeking out. 

10. DIE MY LOVE (dir: Lynne Ramsay)
​Nobody locks you into a character’s head - and throws away the key - like Lynne Ramsay. From the opening shot to the quietly devastating closer, it's a disquieting, white-knuckle, but also darkly funny emotional headtrip of an increasingly unwell, but often justifiably angry, woman on the edge, without any help from those who supposedly love her. The trust Ramsay builds with her actors must be extraordinary, encouraging such open, raw, violent emotional exploration. There’s abundant emotional reality underpinning every move, no matter how berserk or outré it may seem. Lawrence is tremendous, while Pattinson, Spacek and Nolte, even in small scenes, deliver their best work in years. 

9. SORRY, BABY (dir: Eva Victor)
​A lovely film about the journey of healing from trauma, one that feels so heartfelt and honest, infused with as much humour, tenderness and humanity as it is with hurt, shock and anger. The framing and visual storytelling had a mature graphic novel sensibility I found disarming as well; occasionally reminiscent of something like Daniel Clowes’ work. Loved this so much. On both sides of the camera, Eva Victor proves themself a hell of a talent. Beautiful work from Naomi Ackie, Hetienne Park and (especially) John Carroll Lynch, too, powerfully moving me at moments I didn’t expect.

8. THE MYSTERIOUS GAZE OF THE FLAMINGO (dir: Diego Céspedes)
​Imagine a desolate world where a gruff all-male mining town sits side-by-side with a small outpost of a queer chosen family of drag queens, somewhere in the 1980s, where myths about transmission of a mysterious new disease abound: welcome to the world of this stirring modern fairytale of empathy and connection, sparkling and grimy in equal measure, which starts by confronting prejudice and fear and winds up in a place as beautiful and transcendent as it is unexpected. A true original.

7. THE UGLY STEPSISTER
​(dir: ​Emilie Kristine Blichfeldt)
​Both a visually exquisite throwback to Czech fantasy-horror tales of the 1970s and a perfect modern feminist fable about the societal pressures placed on women to be beautiful, desirable and socially graceful, Blichfeldt's debut (how??) turns the Cinderella story on its head in this grimly funny, gut-wrenching body horror film, with a lead performance by Lea Myren that holds nothing back and, most of all, grounds the film in unexpected empathy.

6. THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG
​(dir: Mohammad Rasoulof)
Made under clandestine circumstances in Iran, this is a forensic examination of a waking nightmare so many women are forced to live daily delivered as a gripping piece of genre cinema. Makes a specific situation (the everyday effects of the wider misogyny and fascism of the Iranian state) frighteningly relatable, while working as an unbearably tense thriller… which veers into unexpected territory (think The Shining) that feels completely in step with what precedes it, both in terms of story and themes. Breathlessly great. 

5. HARD TRUTHS (dir: Mike Leigh)
​The old master returns with his best character study in years, with Marianne-Jean Baptiste delivering an open nerve of a performance as a character so consumed by sadness, disappointment and rage that her only response to the world is to witheringly hate on it at every turn. Incredibly funny at times and heartbreakingly sad at others, the way this looks at family, unresolved wounds and the state of our current world is unceasingly intelligent, perceptive and poignant. 

4. THE LONG WALK (dir: Francis Lawrence)
The best of the year's many Stephen King adaptations is immediately moving, locking into its characters and situation with ferocious economy, before throwing us into hell, anchored by an all-timer of a bromance at its centre. A picture of an America so fundamentally broken that its biggest hope and thrill is watching 50 young men shuffling toward a dangling carrot promising unimaginable wealth or certain death, it may feel too real for too many right now, but a more compelling metaphor you'll scarcely find. A bracing, disturbing, thrilling and genuinely moving experience. I didn't know Francis Lawrence had this in him!

3. ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER
​(dir: Paul Thomas Anderson)
​I love that PTA’s most explicitly political film (since There Will Be Blood, at least) is also his most escapist; full of fun and complex characters we care deeply about (or find hilarious), innovative car chases, laugh-out-loud humour and white-knuckle suspense, all wrapped in a tense structure with a lovely father-daughter dynamic at its core, and a revolutionary spirit that couldn’t be more plugged into 2025. While it’s an unsettling vision of the fault lines (or tunnels) that run beneath modern America, I can’t stress enough how fun this picture is. 

2. BRING HER BACK
​(dir: Danny and Michael Philippou)
​I wasn't as wowed by Talk To Me as most, so I was completely disarmed by how much I loved this. As fully realised and satisfying a horror film as I’ve seen in years: tightly plotted, draws its characters in quick, clear strokes (beautifully played by all, especially Sally Hawkins as a great modern monster), fearlessly goes to unrelentingly bleak places, ups the complication stressfully, fashions one of the most original methods of necromancy I've ever seen and ends with a subtle grace note that is genuinely moving. It’s not a fun time, but a deeply terrifying one.

...and my #1 film of 2025 is...

1. IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT
​(dir: Jafar Panahi)
​Finally free (briefly?) of prison and house arrest, Panahi maintains the rage and cements himself as one of modern cinema's greatest storytellers with this clarion call of rage from a deeply personal place that manages to be relentlessly entertaining, frequently funny and breathlessly tense, with a brilliantly-drawn ragtag band of deeply broken characters at its centre (all played by non-professional actors, which is astonishing, given how brilliant they all are), leading to a truly confronting conclusion, this is a masterpiece - both timely and enduring - that you won't soon forget. 

Hi Viscerals!

Let's be honest: the less said about 2024, the better.

For reasons both personal and professional, this was the hardest year of my adult life. But as this post is an annual wrap-up of Cinema Viscera business and a countdown of my favourite films of the year, I'll spare you the gory details. 

Here were the highlights:

WE WENT TO THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL!!!

Given I'm currently working with a film distributor - and thus can be accredited as a buyer - and the fact that our 2022 feature Apparitions was picked up by a distributor and given a DVD & digital release in the US & UK - which enabled us to be officially recognised as producers - Pez and I took the opportunity to claim official accreditation and attended our very first Cannes Film Festival (or Festival de Cannes, for La Français out there)!

As we were (and are) still knee-deep in writing screenplays, and only had one-pagers and synopses prepared, we weren't really in a position to pitch our projects just yet, so instead, from a Cinema Viscera perspective, we treated this trip as an exploratory mission, a fact-finding expedition to the biggest film festival on Earth to see how it works, how folks pitch, take as many meetings, see as many talks, and as many movies, as possible. 

As a buyer, I was able to meet with sales agents from around the world, so Pez and I were able to score meetings we would never have gotten back here in Oz, meeting some wonderful people, discussing our pitches and getting some great responses. We saw 12 movies -- well, technically 13, but we bailed on one 20 minutes in to have a lovely late-festival drink at a beachside bar -- met some friends from Oz over drinks and coffees, eavesdropped on all manner of spirited meetings and insane pitches (which happen absolutely everywhere in Cannes; in cafés, bars, elevators, street corners...) and spotted stars (Nic Cage at the premiere of The Surfer, Abel Ferrara having a meeting, Sean Baker, Mikey Madison & co at the world premiere of Anora), and, because we had full market passes, sat in on genre filmmakers presenting their proof-of-concept pitch videos to buyers and distributors, which was massively instructive, all providing us with tons of inspiration to keep writing, sharpen our materials, get brave enough to look for a producer to attach, and pitch our projects far and wide over the next few years.

In many ways, it was a rollercoaster experience of emotions, swinging wildly between feeling Imposter Syndrome and realising we were a lot closer to being in a position to pitch our wares and be part of the festival than we might have believed. Looking forward to our return in 2026... 
​

Completed and unveiling almost a year later than originally anticipated, our 8th short film (and most experimental/weirdest yet?), Three Sisters, was selected by the fine folks at Monster Fest to make its World Premiere at their 2024 edition in Melbourne this last October! It's the third film of ours, following 2021's Apparitions and 2016's Cigarette, to make its debut at Monster Fest, so we really feel like part of the Monster Fest family -- even more so this year, as Pez's daughter Cate O'Connor's debut short film as writer-director, Under The Influence, was selected premiere at the festival as well!

Seeing Three Sisters on the big screen in front of a packed audience was a thrill, as we realised the film actually held an audience who didn't know us, highlighted the beautiful cinematography of Sarah Alkemade, lighting of Dylan James, stellar audio work of Kristina Benton and The Backlot Studios' Mark D'Angelo, and the three lead performances by Shanon Kulupach, Benton and, of course, a certain Perri Cummings. 

We've not received a second festival screening as yet (another fun aspect of 2024), but we're hoping 2025 comes up with a nice surprise and we can show the film to more audiences, because we're incredibly proud of it. 

PEZ FINISHED A DRAFT OF A FEATURE SCRIPT!!!
Can't say too much more about this one, other than it's a script we've been working on for years that is finally taking satisfying, thrilling shape, and I'm so incredibly proud of her. Now, for the rewriting... 

...and those were the Cinema Viscera highlights of 2024! 

Now, let's get to the main reason you're all here... the countdowns!!! 

...wherein I count down the top 20 older films (released before 2020) that I saw for the first time in 2024. 

Oh, and this is the reason there are so many 1969 films in this list. 

 #20: DEATH GAME (1977; Director: Peter S. Traynor)
One of my favourite things Pez and I did this year was see an amazing double-feature (on 35mm!) of this and Daisies (see #11) at London's Prince Charles Cinema -- and they turned out to be incredibly well-matched. This is basically Daisies for psychos, where two hot young women (Sondra Locke, Colleen Camp) mess with the patriarchy by invading the home of a husband (Seymour Cassel) whose wife and kids have left him for the weekend, and sexually manipulate, rape and mentally & physically torture him for two days straight. It's seedy, VERY darkly funny and incredibly tense, and gives you a sense of what an interesting career Locke might've had, had she not met a certain controlling mega star-director-producer. 

#19: IN MY SKIN (2002; D: Marina de Van)
Invites a lot of takes and interpretations, but de Van's contribution to the early aughts' French New Extremity movement is a beguiling work of body horror that's as genuinely melancholy as it is bloody, as de Van (as both filmmaker and lead) interrogates female roles in society, dissociation from one's body and societal environment leading to a craving to feel something, to reconnect with it, with oneself. It's deep AND gory!

#18: BITTER MOON (1994; D: Roman Polanski)
Why did nobody tell me this was funny?! Had the pleasure of doing an audio commentary for this one (with Emma Westwood for Imprint Films' Polanski box set), and discovered a mordantly deranged sex comedy masquerading as an erotic thriller, with a terrific cast in great - and game - form. Polanski's usually terrible at comedy, but there are some audacious/crazy scenes and satire here, feeling like the midway point between his earlier films like Cul-de-Sac and his latter-day dark relationship comedies like Carnage or Venus in Fur. 

#17: THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE (1969; D: Ronald Neame)
What seems like a genteel costume drama from the outset was not at ALL the movie I was expecting. Instead, it's a razor-sharp, acid-dipped warning against the dangers of idol worship and the cult of personality. One hell of a performance from Dame Maggie (and Pamela Franklin), in one of the more truly odd, challenging and admirably complex character studies I’ve seen for some time.

#16: TRUE GRIT (1969; D: Henry Hathaway)
I'm a huge fan of the stunning, elegiac Coen Brothers' 2010 adaptation of Charles Portis' novel, and not much of a fan of John Wayne, so count me as shocked as anyone that this film shotgunned its way to my heart. Along with The Searchers and Rio Bravo, this is Wayne's best role, but Kim Darby as the determined Mattie Ross and (shockingly) Glen Campbell as vainglorious bounty hunter La Boeuf damn near steal it from him. While it doesn't linger in the mind for quite as long as the Coens' take, it's equally as great from scene to scene, a powerful elegy to the myths of the west, like a kinder, gentler Wild Bunch.

 #15: ALICE'S RESTAURANT (1969; D: Arthur Penn)
Penn's counterculture musical, co-penned by and starring folk singer Arlo Guthrie, was a surprise, both a sincere wish for and searing critique of the utopian ideals of the 1960s, soulful, frequently funny and sweet, benefiting hugely from a charming performance by Guthrie, a fascinatingly awkward, wry presence, as well as his witty tunes and incisive point of view - but don't discount Penn's contribution as director and co-screenwriter, given the role he played in deconstructing Hollywood cinema during this period; he and Guthrie make a devastating team. 

#14: SING STREET (2016; D: John Carney)
Just a big bowl of charm from start to finish, Carney's memory trip through starting a high school band in the early '80s -- to impress an unattainable girl, of course, why else would anyone do it? -- uses hit tracks of the era to brilliant effect and, most crucially, the teen band's songs are friggin' awesome. The mostly unknown cast are perfect, the relationship with his older brother (Jack Reynor), who sees his own lost potential in his younger sibling, is fascinating and sweet, but can we all agree that the real love story is between lead Cosmo and the Lennon to his McCartney, Eamon? 

#13: ARMY OF SHADOWS (1969; D: Jean Pierre Melville)
Melville's ice-cold, mournful testament to the heroism of the French Resistance in WWII is riveting in the best tradition of wartime and espionage procedurals, but ultimately far more moving; this isn't about hyper-capable super-spies saving the world but ordinary people forced into life-and-death roles they should never have had to play, just to be able to return to the lives cruelly torn from them by enemy occupation. 

#12: THE HAUNTING OF JULIA (1977; D: Richard Loncraine)
One of my favourite horror discoveries in years is this stunningly shot, bracingly scored, surprisingly somber British ghost story, with more than a little giallo mixed in, with Mia Farrow as a bereaved mother who breaks away from a controlling husband and moves into a house that may or may not be haunted. Tom Conti is a delight as Farrow’s platonic pal, the domestic situation is as beautifully drawn as the supernatural one, and it all ends up in a rather sad place, with an all-timer of a final shot. 

#11: DAISIES (1969; D: Vera Chytilová)
Chytilová's Czech New Wave bombshell of a film -- disruptive in its form, its choice of leads, its f-you attitude, its treatment of food -- is the sweetest, funniest and most joyful angry feminist anarchist statement I’ve ever seen, a delirious collision between flower power and punk rock (a decade before punk) whose influence is still being felt. 

 #10: IRMA VEP (1996; D: Olivier Assayas)
Speaking of punk rock, the spirit is carried through to the '90s with Assayas' funny and fierce satire of moviemaking and auteurism, from the chaos of a film set in turmoil and a crew pulling in different directions, to a once-great director who's lost the plot (a wonderful Jean-Pierre Leaud, who knows a thing or two about nutty auteurs) and an ending that finds the very film itself being defaced. The gravitational force this elusive and entertaining film revolves around, though, is the exquisite Maggie Cheung, playing a Hong Kong movie star struggling to adapt to this very Parisian variety of behind-the-scenes mania and, perhaps, flirting a little too close with the edges of her role and reality. 

#9: BABY FACE (1933; D: Alfred E. Green)
Perhaps the platonic ideal of Pre-Hays Production Code Hollywood cinema, a film where the indomitable Barbara Stanwyck plays a woman who screws her way up the corporate ladder thanks to some Nietzschean advice, yet it's so much more than that; a knowing, subversive, whip-smart satire that hits the patriarchy and gender expectations with both fists, but is unafraid to be gloriously silly and glamorous, with the indomitable Stanwyck putting on her usual masterclass, shifting between comedy, allure and pathos with effortless precision. 

#8: BABETTE'S FEAST (1987; D: Gabriel Axel)
“An artist is never poor.” (A beautiful sentiment expressed here, even if my bank statements disagree.) In a year where sweet and meditative films proved a welcome salve, I was enraptured by this gentle, beautifully crafted tribute to artistry and kindness, as frequently funny as it is poignant and laced with loss. I’ve rarely seen a film critique the folly of piety and suffocation of religious dogma in such a disarmingly kind and human way as this one. A big-hearted, small-stakes triumph.

#7: SWEET COUNTRY (2017; D: Warwick Thornton)
After seeing this and The New Boy this year (the latter, as a 2022 release, is sadly too new for this list, and too old for the next), Warwick Thornton stakes his claim for me as one of Australia's best directors and, along with Ivan Sen, its most potent chronicler of the Indigenous Australian experience and the open gaping wounds that remain unhealed between Black and White Australia. In this tale of an Aboriginal stockman who murders a White landowner in self-defence, Thornton fashions a moving tragedy that not only reflects the racism that still exists today, but is also a thrilling Western chase movie, one which never resorts to tired or strident stereotypes that other films so easily cave into, finding humanity in even the most despicable of characters, and flaws in the most heroic.  

#6: THE WAGES OF FEAR (1953; D: Henri-Georges Clouzot)
I may have done this film a disservice by seeing William Friedkin's perfect remake, Sorcerer, first, but I was thrilled to find this is every bit as great, with Clouzot's brilliant direction of tense action involving huge vehicles, rickety terrain, murky sludge and rocky explosions setting new standards for the form, but even more of a magic trick is the way it gets us to care about these scoundrels, by digging into and breaking down their illusory masculine self-images, not to mention hinting (not-always-so-subtly) at the homoeroticism underpinning their relationships, which lends the film an unlikely pathos. Crackerjack stuff.

 #5: THE CREMATOR (1969; D: Jurai Herz)
A singular film experience like nothing I've ever seen, this jet-black satirical horror-comedy-drama account of the rise of a Prague cremator -- a somewhat vain but seemingly ordinary man who, in the absence of any personal belief system, regards his profession with the reverence of religion -- who finds his vocation to be a growth industry with the arrival of a certain group of fascists looking for the perfect delivery system for their Final Solution. For a while, you're not even quite sure what you're watching, but as this man's tale (and he's in almost every frame, we're strapped to his point of view whether we like it or not) becomes increasingly opportunistic and horrifying, it chills to the bone, leading to an ending that leaves us speechless. 

#4: Z (1969; D: Costa-Gavras)
A crackerjack political thriller from the jump, this (apparently barely) fictionalised account of the 1963 assassination of a progressive Greek political candidate and the fascist Junta that seized power in its wake, is urgently, thrillingly told, from its opening scene (where an official compares protests with weeds that need to be exterminated) to meeting the team heading the resistance, to Jean-Louis Trintignant's straight-arrow prosecutor hired by the right-wing regime to investigate the assassination (an appointment which bites them in the arse), to the ensuing trial of the rulers in charge, it's riveting, tense, surprisingly funny, tragic and one of the most righteously furious films ever made.

#3: KES (1969; D: Ken Loach)
Oh, so this was Loach’s move since day one, huh? Beautifully built character studies about forgotten people, against a backdrop of socioeconomic crisis or decay, where hope battles an ingrained, systemic, thoughtless cruelty, leading to a shattering ending. This one is anchored by an almost unbearably honest lead performance by David Bradley, as a kid struggling at home and school who finds passion and solace in learning to train a pet kestrel, which begins to connect him to his teachers and community, and give him a purpose... but, Loach being Loach, the other shoe is always waiting to drop. Powerful, hearbreaking stuff. 

#2: FACES (1968; D: John Cassavetes)
People seem to really connect with Cassavetes' filmmaking style or really not -- count me as the former, as this blew my brain apart. Absolutely floored by this, such invigorating, inspirational filmmaking. Chock full of show-stopping scenes, probing middle-class American malaise in a way that’s as real and recognisable as it is so bracingly heightened, improvised scenes that run on in a way that continually reveals, surprises and amuses, with a 16mm camera that somehow captures everything at the perfect angle, in beautiful light, even when it’s out of focus or actors are standing out of their light. And for a movie that’s just people talking in houses and rooms, it’s constantly as breathlessly kinetic and propulsively edited as any action picture, performed by a pitch perfect cast. How does Cassavetes create the atmosphere to get these performances?! Can’t wait to see the rest, more excited than I’ve been for any films for some time.

#1: FESTEN aka THE CELEBRATION (1998; D: Thomas Vinterberg)
My favourite older film -- hell, favourite film -- I saw this year is Thomas Vinterberg's extraordinary Dogme 95 launcher, a film that lulls you into a cringe comedy of family errors but, in a blink, goes somewhere much, much, much darker and more resonant... but never loses its wild humour, continually whipping between the two tones with a virtuosic dexterity, delivering a deeply felt story that's heartbreaking in its casual vulnerability, and astounding in its granular detail examining this open wound of a family. Not a single false note is played; while its stripped-back trappings, handheld camera and cacophonous audio may seem loose and haphazard, this must have been as ruthlessly planned and controlled as any Kubrick or Fincher film. The screenplay is airtight and devastating, and once you add these performances and that filmmaking, Festen's tale of expunging family trauma lands on you like a wrecking ball (I love how closely Festen phonetically hews to the English word "fester", a descriptor which could well apply to this family). I was exhilarated by every frame. Looking back, Dogme 95 never had a chance: how could it ever top this??

Readers of last year's column will recall that I decided to keep my annual countdown to a Top 10 this year, due to two factors: a seemingly endlessly hectic schedule and the fact I'm only seeing about 65-70 new movies a year nowadays, compared to the 85-120 I used to see. I saw 70 new movies this year, in Australia and Europe, up from 69 last year and 68 the year before, meaning I'll feel ready to do a top 20 again in 2040 or so. 

I found this to be a pretty good year for cinema, not extraordinary, but very good, enjoying more than half of the 70 films I saw. So, naturally, there are a metric shit-ton of...

HONOURABLE MENTIONS
From #30 to #11:
David Vincent Smith's emotionally raw He Ain't Heavy, George Miller's Fury Road prequel and loose Oliver Twist remake Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Coralie Fargeat's furious and berserk The Substance, Alain Guiraudie's bonkers slow-burn queer-adjacent provincial noir Misericordia, Francis Ford Coppola's even more bonkers utopian passion project Megalopolis, Rose Glass' muscular queer neo-noir fantasia Love Lies Bleeding, Anna Kendrick's chilling Woman of the Hour, Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson's hugely empathetic metatextual family drama Ghostlight, David Hinton giving us the opportunity to watch Marty Scorsese rave about his favourite directors for two hours with Made In England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, Jane Schoenbrun's hallucinatory and vital transnarrative nightmare I Saw The TV Glow, Ivan Reitman's chaotic valentine to the mythos of Saturday Night Live Saturday Night, Adrien Beau's intoxicating neo-classical-horror-comedy genre mash (with added dancing and puppetry!) The Vourdalak, Justine Triet's mesmerising family courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall, Alice Rohrwacher's soulful arthouse adventure of a grieving archeological grave robber La Chimera, Guy Maddin & Evan & Galen Johnson's berserk surreal G7 satire (with masturbating zombies!) Rumours, ​Jane Giles and Ali Catterall's absorbing tribute to cult UK repertory cinema Scala!!!, Bao Nguyen's rollicking account of the Ocean's 11 of song recordings The Greatest Night in Pop, Greg Jardin's fiendishly clever and stylish body-swap horror-thriller It's What's Inside, Josh Greenbaum's hugely moving (and, right now, hugely important) road trip documentary Will & Harper, and the better of this year's Sebastian Stan double-feature, Aaron Schimberg's provocative brainworm A Different Man. 

But here were the 10 new release films I loved the most this year:

 #10: STOPMOTION (D: Robert Morgan)
In a horror landscape drowning in trauma narratives, this was one of the more unique takes I've seen on the theme, using a meta-narrative of a stopmotion animator (Aisling Franciosi), making her first film outside of her domineering mother/mentor, who finds her painful past too powerful to keep contained within a mere 24 frames per second. Morgan has a history of making terrifying stopmotion short horror films, and his jump to features has produced one of the most original and chilling films of the year, unfolding with just the right amount of mystery, doling out the right amount of information and letting the rest come through performance, the tortured faces of those anguished puppets, and formal disruption, to make this one of the best new films you'll see on Shudder this, or any other, year. 

#9: LA COCINA (D: Alonso Ruizpalacios​)
Chaos in the kitchen is everywhere right now (and, as zealous a fan of The Bear as I am, I was likely primed for this) but Ruizpalacios goes back to the O.G. 'chaotic kitchen' narrative — Arnold Wexler's 1957 play 'The Kitchen' — setting it firmly in a big Times Square "family restaurant" whose behind-the-scenes teems with racial and class divisions between its white and (often undocumented) immigrant staff, on one afternoon where everything comes apart. Filmed in gorgeous black-and-white, the story swirls around the arrival of a new employee who virtually cons her way into the place and the Romeo and Juliet-style narrative of a Hispanic line cook, a White waitress and the baby they're expecting, and the issue of pending immigration papers, which their boss holds over their heads like a tyrant. Almost unbearably tense throughout, with beautifully drawn, painfully human characters in a teeming, sweaty car crash waiting to happen, leading to some jaw-dropping scenes as this fragile ecosystem unravels — but there are some moments of true grace here, too. Looking back, perhaps no other film I saw this year felt more like 2024 to me.

#8: ALL OF US STRANGERS (D: Andrew Haigh)
Haigh has crafted a beautiful, profoundly elegiac film more akin to the kind of finely crafted Japanese literature it's based upon, a sort of dream-narrative about a writer in his mid-forties (Andrew Scott) reckoning with his life, loneliness and relationships, living in a building seemingly only occupied by one other tenant (Paul Mescal) and paying visits to his childhood home and his long-dead parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell). The budding romance is touching, but everything to do with the parents left me sobbing inconsolably. The cast are all brilliant, but Scott is truly astonishing in what, for me, was hands-down the year's best performance.

#7: THE ZONE OF INTEREST (D: Jonathan Glazer)
Jonathan Glazer returns to feature directing after a decade's absence to chill and mortify us once again, with this clinical, distanced adaptation of Martin Amis' novel about German commandant Rudolf Höss, his wife Hedwig and their family, whose fresh new home is situated right next to his new assignment... that happens to be overseeing the Auschwitz concentration camp and its furnaces. Rarely has the concept of "the banality of evil" ever been more fully and powerfully expressed on film, but it's a grower, a film whose impact doesn't really land on you until long after it's ended (as one initially emerges just stunned, numb, even). 

#6: KNEECAP (D: Rich Peppiatt)
A crackerjack, rocket-fuelled fist in the air for the Gaelic language, the Irish people and indigenous languages everywhere, that is also a vastly entertaining blast of a movie — funny, fast and fookin' furious. The band members acquit themselves beautifully on the big screen, and the more experienced supporting cast ground everything perfectly. I delighted in every beautiful, chaotic moment and immediately bought 'H.O.O.D' the minute I got home. A banger, good craic, all that and more, this.

 #5: MAY DECEMBER (D: Todd Haynes)
We know Haynes serves melodrama better than anyone outside of Almodovar, but here he serves it with an extra dose of arsenic — there are moments here more skin-crawlingly creepy than most horror movies — while interrogating the art of acting, performativity, and the True Crime industrial complex. But it's the trio of tour-de-force lead performances — especially heartbreaking work from Charles Melton — and Samy Burch & Alex Mechanik's supercharged screenplay, both hilarious and horrifying, full of fireball dialogue and finely observed character moments (which Haynes directs exquisitely), that make this a supremely satisfying character study, even if you might feel like taking a shower afterwards.

#4: BIRD (D: Andrea Arnold)
British social realist cinema meets magical realism in the most beautifully persuasive way in this smashing, deeply moving film from Andrea Arnold, her best to date. I can't recall the last time I found a film so unnervingly tense and bleak, yet huge-hearted and soulful, often in the same scene. Franz Rogowski and Barry Keoghan are simply wonderful (I spent the whole film with my proverbial heart in my mouth, terrified something bad would happen to both of them), but this is Nykiya Adams' film. It seems not everyone is willing to go with the big swings this film takes, but I felt it all connected perfectly, with a seemingly hopeful ending that could be (well, it was to me) much darker than it first appears. A complex masterpiece. 

#3: ANORA (D: Sean Baker)
Baker's ridiculously entertaining neo-screwball comedy continues his peerless run of chaotic character studies of sex workers, introducing a potential fairytale scenario that turns into a (frequently funny) nightmare, before subverting even that with his gift for creating multilayered characters trying their best in the difficult situations that life (often for economic reasons) has forced them into. Mikey Madison announces herself as a star with a performance that screams, kicks and charms its way into your heart, but there are no slouches in this cast. Once again, Baker and his team have clearly researched the hell out of this world; the texture of the strip club and this crazy corner of the metropolis that surrounds it, feel so mordantly authentic. Bonus points for the Armenians.

#2: THE HOLDOVERS (D: Alexander Payne)
Just a beautiful, small-scale, affectionate tribute to those who struggle through the bullshit of life, and find purpose and salvation with a chosen few, enough to help us get, if not through life, at least through the night, and then the next. A big-hearted triumph with a terrific trio of characters, perfectly played by Giamatti, Sessa and Randolph, that sneaks up on you emotionally in the way many Alexander Payne films do, marking him as a filmmaker I often find myself under-appreciating (to me, he’s a less chaotic, more humane David O. Russell), whose films are little treasures to be lived in. Absolutely adding this to the semi-annual Christmas rotation. 

...and my #1 film released in Australia in 2024 is...

#1: PERFECT DAYS (D: Wim Wenders)

Call this stunning film “twee” at your peril: there is an aching darkness at the centre of every frame of Wenders’ otherwise beautiful, immersive and humanistic portrait of a Tokyo toilet cleaner who lives a simple, ordered, almost ascetic life — of taking great pride in his work, eating the bare essentials, taking moments to appreciate simple sights and sounds, reading, sleeping — led by a perfectly calibrated performance by Koji Yakusho. 

The character’s every ritual feels like such a deliberate choice rooted in self-protection, or self-preservation (and I say this as someone who, at least in part, aspires to such everyday simplicity… likely for the same reason), that beneath his inherent sweetness and childlike openness to small gestures, there’s a weight of melancholy that he carries into every scene. There’s no way that exquisite final shot lands that hard without it. So, inevitably, this ends up as a celebration and interrogation of such a life. Beautiful, layered work from a legendary filmmaker (who also still knows how to put together a killer soundtrack; aka, basically my CD collection from ages 22-30), that, in a year like I've had in 2024, I sorely needed.