2024 was forecast as a potentially poor year for movies due to last year's Hollywood actors' and writers' strikes that delayed set productions for six months, moving movie release dates into 2025. However, a slew of superb films coming at the end of the year ("Anora," "A Complete Unknown" (with Timothy Chalamet's early Bob Dylan, his best performance since "Call Me By Your Name"), "A Real Pain,"(Jesse Eisenberg's superb odd couple post-Holocaust road trip to Poland with a devastating Kieran Culkin as a dysfunctional cousin), "September 5," "Babygirl," "Wicked," "Conclave," "The Brutalist," and "Nickel Boys") has transformed a mediocre slate into a top-drawer one.
As far as 2024's LGBTQ films, it's been a slightly above average year, with streaming platforms, indie projects, and international cinema the source of almost all queer movies, with more higher quality narrative features than documentaries. Perhaps in reaction to the anti-trans attitude sweeping the nation in the last two years, trans films were the highlight this year, encompassing four out of the ten films selected as the best of 2024.
These lists are highly subjective, but a common theme appears to be the importance of queer folk fearlessly expressing themselves even when others object. As we shakily approach a new administration in 2025, it will be artists fearlessly expressing their visions, who could lead any cultural/political resistance.
1. Emilia Perez. This wild ride plays like an opera, or more fittingly a telenovela that's a mix of genres from crime caper to musical to lesbian romance, makes the film unpredictable and exhilarating. Rita (Zoe Saldana), a disillusioned lawyer, is asked by a drug cartel boss, Manitas, (trans Karla Sofia Gascon) to help him fake his own death, arrange to have gender-affirming surgery so he can become the woman he always felt himself to be, then relocate his wife Jessi (Selma Gomez) and children to Switzerland.
Part two occurs four years later when Rita again encounters Manitas as Emilia Perez, who asks her to help make amends for the suffering she caused in her former criminal life, but also to reunite her with her children. The film is filled with hit or miss songs. All three actresses are standouts, especially Gascon who creates a capacious, enigmatic, contradictory character.
A French film made in Mexico, it's already been nominated for ten Golden Globe awards and a likely Oscar Best Picture contender. Yes, it is a hodgepodge of styles and moods with some arguing the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts, but its enthralling audaciousness compels one to forgive its flaws and embrace its originality as a twisted, tragic fairy tale complete with life affirming social commentary.
2. Sabbath Queen. The compelling story recounts the 20-year journey of gay Amichai Lau-Lavie, descendant of 38 generations of Orthodox Jewish rabbis. Outed by the Israeli press, he emigrates to New York where he gets involved with the Radical Faeries and develops a hilarious stage drag persona.
He establishes a God-optional, pop-up experimental Jewish synagogue (Lab/Shul), enacting his religion as performance approach that welcomes everyone. He's ordained a Conservative Jewish rabbi, criticized by his family, but gets in trouble when he performs a same-gender marriage. This must-see thought-provoking documentary is a piercing critique on how divisive queer voices are marginalized in institutional religion today.
3. National Anthem. A dynamic visionary film on America's LGBTQ rodeo subculture focuses on Dylan (Charlie Plummer), a 21-year-old unskilled day laborer in rural New Mexico, who starts working at a queer dude ranch. He develops a crush on the free-spirited, flirty trans barrel racer Sky (Eve Lindley), who's in an open polyamorous relationship with owner Pepe (Rene Rosado).
Dylan finds a real sense of belonging so he can explore freely his identity. Rather than a parody of hetero-cowboy machismo, the film depicts a safe space for those victimized by toxic masculinity. Anchored by Plummer's what-should've been-a-star-making performance, the film presents an inclusive fantasy of what America could become, where disruptive binaries separating us from one another are dispelled, and we live in harmony with each other.
4. All Shall Be Well. This gem from Hong Kong concerns a successful lesbian couple, Angie and Pat, together for 30 years. Pat dies unexpectedly, leaving Angie at the mercy of Pat's family. Because there's no same-sex marriage in Hong Kong, Angie must cede to the wishes of Pat's surviving brother, which might include kicking Pat out of her apartment. It's about grief and maintaining dignity in the face of family opposition, especially what can happen when you don't have legal rights or a will. A tender, beautiful but heartbreaking film, it seeks acceptance amid the sustaining power of memories of love.
5. Mad About the Boy: The Noël Coward Story and Merchant Ivory (tie). Both are absorbing and revealing documentaries on two high culture icons. Coward (1899-1973) was a playwright ("Private Lives," "Blithe Spirit"), songwriter ("Mrs. Worthington"), director, Las Vegas cabaret star, and actor, a gay mid-20th-century Renaissance performer. The film looks at his life through a queer lens, told through his own inimitable words, proclaiming Coward was his own greatest invention as a closeted, witty, sophisticated English playboy.
Merchant/Ivory was the long-running, gay independent film production team that created such elegant Oscar-winning costume period dramas as "A Room with a View," the gay romance "Maurice," "Howard's End," and "Remains of the Day." An open, interracial couple, their private dramas rivalled anything they made for the screen. Neither in the closet or openly out, James Ivory, at 96, for the first time discusses his sexuality and partnership with Ismail Merchant, who died in 2005.
6. Luther: Never Too Much. An affectionate appreciation of singer Luther Vandross (1951-2005), this documentary recounts the life of the composer, arranger, producer, nominated for nine Grammys, winning once. Pidgeon-holed as R & B, he never hit # 1 on the pop Billboard charts. A victim of racism, homophobia, and cruel jokes about his weight, he was probably gay but wouldn't deny or confirm it. He never found one person to love. His final song, "Dance with My Father," was his biggest hit right before he died of a stroke. This is a sad story of a vocal virtuoso artist who didn't receive the respect his music deserved.
7. Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story. Shane was a dynamic Black trans soul/R & B vocalist in the 1960s, poised to become a big star. She toured throughout Canada and the U.S., scoring a modest hit, "Any Other Way." Worn out by the daily pressures and cruelties of being her true trans self, she left the industry in 1971, becoming a virtual recluse.
Shortly before she died in 2019, she approved a CD-box set retrospective, nominated for a Grammy, with talk of a comeback tour. She left her nieces a storage room of memorabilia and a handwritten unpublished autobiography. Absolutely terrific film that is a tragic story, but a posthumous victory, since Shane will now not be forgotten.
8. High Tide. Brazilian immigrant Lourenco (Marco Piossi) finds himself alone and heartbroken in Provincetown after being dumped by his American boyfriend Joe. He's staying in a cottage owned by Joe's sympathetic widower friend. He survives by cleaning houses, but his tourist visa is about to expire. He meets Black tourist/nurse Maurice (James Bland) on the beach, starting a brief affair that can only last through the end of the week.
This melancholy under-the-radar romance shows two drifting souls trying to make a solid connection, with a lovely performance by Marisa Tomei as a queer advocate/friend. Handsome Pigossi as Lourenco is a star in the making, with P'town never looking more visually sumptuous.
9. My Old Ass. The lesbianish "All of Us Strangers" asks, if you could go back to an earlier time in your life, would you correct any mistakes? Elliott (Maisy Stella), celebrating her 18th birthday by tripping on psychedelic mushrooms, encounters a 39-year-old woman (Aubrey Plaza) who claims to be the person she will become in twenty years. She warns her to stay away from anyone named Chad. The next day she meets student Chad, who's hired as a summer worker on Elliott's family farm. She's attracted to him, despite identifying as a lesbian. It's poignant, but not sentimental, reminding us it's the small moments of life that matter most.
10. I Saw the TV Glow. A surreal, mind-bending, claustrophobic fantasy by trans, non-binary writer/director Jane Schoenbrun features Owen (Justice Smith), who becomes obsessed with his favorite TV show, "The Pink Opaque" and its grotesque imagery. The film details how his continued fixation affects his life as he feels like an outsider in his own world. Probably trans, Owen has a sense he's someone other than himself, searching for a true self he can't identify. Among the most debated films of 2024, this provocative, inventive movie's message, don't be scared of being who you are because secrets and lies are soul-killing, seems even more relevant post-election than it did back in May.
Honorable Mentions: "Queer" (a surreal film on gay obsessive desire marred by addiction in the repressive 1950s, but elevated by Daniel Craig's tour de force performance as a stand-in for William S. Burroughs);
"Sally" (documentary on Sally Gearhart, the lesbian San Francisco State professor, fantasy writer, and political activist, who joined forces with Harvey Milk to defeat 1978's Briggs Amendment attempting to ban LGBTQ people from teaching in California schools);
"Sebastian" (a young, ambitious gay British journalist freelancing as a sex worker to obtain research for a book, but really avoiding intimacy);
and "Linda Perry: Let It Die Here" (documentary on the lesbian singer/songwriter and former 4 Non Blondes band member, revealing her emotionally raw and ruthlessly honest creative process).
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