Sugar and spice

Part one of the tastiest dramatic features of 2024

Boiling down both halves of this list almost broke me, with a brilliant year in cinema meaning far too much to consider. I watched some 20-plus dramatic features in a last-minute marathon because I thought they could be contenders – some were, others, not so much – and had to draw the line somewhere. We can’t see ‘em all, but I heartily recommend catching this lot, sticking to Australian release date.

25. Inside/The Order

Crime has long been the primary export of Australian cinema. Our filmmakers are exceptionally good at examining broken masculinity and its consequences through this lens. Coming at it from two very different angles, Charles Williams’ debut feature Inside (read my full review at ScreenHub) delivers a career-best performance from Guy Pearce and another corker from Shōgun star Cosmo Jarvis, as clashing prison big beasts, but it’s newcomer Vincent Miller who blew me away. Snowtown helmer Justin Kurzel’s American story The Order, starring Jude Law as a grizzled FBI agent facing down the ubiquitously excellent Nicholas Hoult’s cultish neo-Nazi terrorist is muscular moviemaking at its finest.

24. The Holdovers/The Teachers’ Lounge (Das Lehrerzimmer)

Raised by a hard-working primary teacher mum, I lean heavily into films that show the frayed realities of the educational calling, as with Sideways director Alexander Payne’s big-hearted Christmas drama (debuting weirdly late here) about lost souls reconnecting. At the more frazzles end, I also dug German-Turkish filmmaker Ilker Çatak’s heart-pounding thriller that puts Leonie Benesch’s kind-hearted soul through the wringer when she steps into a petty theft charge that spirals. Here’s my Berlinale interview with Çatak.

23. Infested (Vermines)/Crocodile Tears (Air Mata Buaya)

What do you get if you splice the feisty DNA strands of Attack the Block and Arachnophobia with Les Misérables (the Ladj Ly take)? A stonking good time. Set in a rundown ‘la banlieue’ suburban Parisian tenement, Sébastien Vaniček’s skin-itching horror movie hangs on a brilliant performance by Théo Christine as a stolen runners-pushing lad who loves creepy crawlies. Bringing home the wrong eight-legged beastie one day sparks a battle for survival that will have you snort-laughing as much as screaming. I freaking love this freaky one, as I do Indonesian director Tumpal Tampubolon’s wild Crocodile Tears, which transmogrifies from claustrophobic family drama to wildly original possession chiller with added bite.

22. Monkey Man

Raised in Britain and now based in Australia, Dev Patel shot his bone-crunching debut, a frenetically paced revenge thriller set in a fictional Indian metropolis and shot in Indonesia while contending with rolling lockdowns. And it’s a riot, packing some of the best fight choreography of the year while showing off what he can do both behind and in front of the camera – which loves him. Tackling religious fanaticism and the corrupt overlap with politics plus holding space for a kick-arse Hijra (third gender) subplot, it moves like a lynx, looking and sounding just as fabulous. I’m super-pumped to see what’s next for Patel.

21. Hoard

English filmmaker Luna Carmoon’s sticky delight of a feature debut innately understands the chaotic heart of young womanhood and the fraught path to a possibly precipitous downfall that is the destiny of a damaged mother falling through the cracks. I, Daniel Blake star Hayley Squire continues to excel as the garbage-hoarding mum who holds her daughter tight within what initially feels like a makeshift wonderland. But when Lily-Beau Leach’s wide-eyed Maria ages up to the horny teenager stage (watch out for an iridescent Saura Lightfoot Leon) and Joseph Quinn’s lanky bin man appears, the legacy of her mum’s imaginative gift could topple at any moment. Viscerally vital.

20. Julie Keeps Quiet (Julie Zwijgt)

The only good film about tennis this year, Belgian director Leonardo Van Dijl’s feature debut delivers on the serve of a promising young woman whose burgeoning career is threatened by toxic masculinity. Tessa Van den Broeck is a revelation as the titular character. Determined to stay focused on the prize after the suicide of a fellow student at her elite tennis school and the suspension of her coach while an investigation is conducted, she chooses not to contribute to that inquiry, staying tight-lipped as staff flurry back and forth, attempting the achieve the impossible in supporting students and preserving the school’s good name. The tension held taught as a rope in Julie speaks volumes in this Dardenne brothers-produced ace.

19. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

There are few films I’ve felt as keenly as Raven Jackson’s luminous tone poem, capturing that specific magic of silt trickling through your fingers as you raise a line-traced hand from water dancing with dappled sunlight. The Mississippi meander generously invites us into the lone woman’s life, from infancy towards the impending grave in a non-linear dance that is as close to the reality of memory as I’ve seen in a good long while: flitting haziness and eternally clear focus in equal measure. An energising debut alive with wonder, this sparkling Melbourne International Film Festival gem will never fade from my mind’s eye.

18. Toxic

A highlight of this year’s Adelaide Film Festival, Lithuanian filmmaker Saulė Bliuvaitė’s Locarno Film Festival Golden Leopard-winner is yet another astonishing debut for an emerging director. She hurls us headlong into the corrugated iron rust and dust of a crumbling former industrial town in the Lithuanian sticks where the promise of a glamorous life hoodwinks a Lord of the Flies-like cohort of teen girls via a skeevy model school run by gnashing piranhas. Vesta Matulytė and Leva Rupeikaitė excel as frenemies who team up, set on a better life by hell, high water or tapeworm in this lacerating take-down of the smoke and mirrors industry’s desolation of young women’s bodies.

17. Dune: Part 2/Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

In a big year for giant-sized movies, I was genuinely surprised by Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic sequel. Having been so thoroughly bored by his tediously dull in every sense of the word opening instalment, I found reasons to avoid it all year long. Finally catching it on the small screen, I was enthralled, mostly thanks to Zendaya distracting from the tiresome Atreides white messiah complex, but also because it finally embraced BIG sci-fi battles. And while George Miller’s Fury Road prequel was probably unnecessary and certainly left in the dust by its predecessor, it still gives a guttural roar. Here’s my full review at ScreenHub.

16. Emilia Pérez/National Anthem

It was a big year for musicals with queer themes – sorry Wicked, you’re heaps of fun but ultimately hobbled on the all-important song front. Despite a few undeniably icky lines and a flubbed ending, old white Frenchman Jacques Audiard somehow manages to pull off an audacious song and dance-led fable about a Mexican drug cartel boss who fakes death to transition, sacrificing family as the too-high price. Emilia Pérez shouldn’t work, it’s totally valid if you think it has no right to, but it soars on the shoulders of a never-better Zoe Saldana, a grand Selena Gomez and, above all, a towering Karla Sofía Gascón. Very different in scale, but also channelling the emancipating freedom of embracing the true you, photographer and music videographer Luke Gilford’s luminously anti-patriarchal queer rodeo rancher debut feature is a gift to those doing things differently with purpose and also thrums like an acoustic guitar as Charlie Plummer brings that Lean on Pete energy to a heartsore romance with luminous co-star and proud trans woman Eve Lindley.

15. Civil War

Sparking a civil war of its own as critics divided down those who dug it and a seeming majority baying for explicitly outlined specificity in a film I honestly don’t think is lacking it, implicitly, nor should it be forced to spoon-feed audiences, Alex Garland’s apocalypse now blew up big time. For what it’s worth, I dug the world-weary determination of Kirsten Dunst’s jaded war photographer, Priscilla star Cailee Spaeny irksomely snapping at her heels, and the hot mess of a muddy country sprawling out between New York and Washington, with that final panic attack-inducing assault on the White House the stuff cinema is made of. A few thoughts shared on Joy FM.

14. Robot Dreams/Flow (Straume)

It’s been a grand year for animation not aimed specifically at kids, with this glorious dialogue-free pair equally capturing my attention. The listless ennui that opens Spanish director Pablo Berger’s ‘70s New York-but populated by anthropomorphic animals adaption of the Sara Varon graphic novel is palpable. A lonely pup orders in an AI mate not for sexbot stuff or writing piss-poor copy that sounds like it was pooped out by penguins with a gun to their head, but instead for the simple and profound joys of friendship. The journey they go on together and then apart was almost too much for my wee heart and impossibly sweet without being saccharine. As is the gorgeous river-rapids surfing pluck of a grieving cat determined to survive the end of everything, even if that means relying on other annoying species in Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis’ mesmerising misadventure.

13. Conclave

Trust me that German-Austrian director Edward Berger’s mind-boggling follow-up to his engaging All Quiet on the Western Front remake is way more intriguing than any film about prissy old dudes deciding who the next Pope will be has any right to. Of course, that’s got a lot to do with the inimitable Ralph Fiennes, working a fine line in snooty preening, and grand company in the likes of John Lithgow – snarlingly camp – and Stanley Tucci – lovely as ever. None of the competing camps can out-scowl Isabella Rossellini, but the most-watchable crown goes to Carlos Diehz’s Mexican non-contender who, heaven forbid, just wants the industrial child-molesting machine that is the Catholic church to be better. Think Game of Thrones manoeuvring, but with more frills and a spill you’ll never forget.

12. The Zone of Interest/The Brutalist

The shitfight English filmmaker Jonathan Glazer had to put up with for suggesting, with abundant humanity in his Oscar acceptance speech, that he and his colleague, “Stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people,” is appalling, deliberately twisted by bad faith actors. His resolutely human film makes abundantly clear where he stands against the banality of evil we must collectively resist. Staggering stuff, I just wish he’d resisted an undermining little flourish in the final moments of an otherwise meticulous film. Likewise, if the second half of Vox Lux director Brady Corbet’s 20th-century fantasy doesn’t quite live up to the masterpiece that is its opening gambit, it’s magnificent nonetheless, demonstrating the terrible lasting impact the Nazi’s monstrous charnel houses have wrought on those attempting to rebuild a new life in America. Guy Pearce is excellent again, opposite an astounding Adrien Brody.

11. The Beast (La Bête)/Marcello Mio/Misericordia (Miséricorde)

The battle I had trying to place three exhilaratingly wild French fancies before realising that what connects them – pushing back against the spectre of rigid masculinity – is greater than what separates them. Actor and filmmaker Bertrand Bonnello’s formally daring dystopia pairs an equally chameleonic Léa Seydoux and George MacKay in a time-hopping puzzle box that’s as romantic as it is skin-crawling, constantly second-guessing us while staying three steps ahead. I was all the way in. As I was with French singer and actor Chiara Mastroianni’s discombobulating, gender-euphoric turn, assuming the ghost of her late father much to the consternation of her titanic mother Catherine Deneuve in Christophe Honoré’s reality-bending tribute to creative genius. And if you think Stranger by the Lake director Alain Guiraudie isn’t going to fuck you up as hard as the inexplicable French word for mercy in his jet-black comedy of murderous errors, think again. All three are wicked good, though Honoré’s is the least challenging in this trippy ménage à trois (and that’s saying something).

Jump to the top ten over here.