Top 5’s of 2024: A Special Edition, Pt. 1
Welcome to the first part of our Top 5’s of 2024 special edition of the Denver Cinema Club Dispatch!
As we kick off another exciting year, we’re celebrating the movies, hidden gems, and unforgettable experiences that defined the past year. We’ve asked our members to reflect on their cinematic journeys in 2024 and share their personal “Top 5” lists. These films don’t have to be from 2024—they simply had to be watched during the year. The results are as diverse and inspiring as our community.
This is just the beginning—look out for Part 2 tomorrow, where we’ll share even more lists and reflections. For now, let’s dive into Part 1!
NOTE: Click or tap on the member’s name if you’d like to view their Meetup profile. Click or tap on the film’s title to view it on Letterboxd.
Annie’s Top 5 Movies of 2024
These are films that did not get as much exposure as Anora, Emilia Perez, and Conclave–but in my opinion, they are little gems. In no particular order.
About Dry Grasses (2023, Nuri Bilge Ceylan). Turkish film set in windswept desolate expanses of Anatolia. It is a little long, but beautifully shot and excellent acting. Deals with injustice, duty, responsibility, jealousy, and the influence and impact of external influences on life.
The Apprentice (2024, Ali Abbasi). Insight into Donald Trump’s youth and the influence of attorney Roy Cohn on molding the Trump we know today. Outstanding acting, in particular Jeremey Strong.
The Count of Monte Cristo (2024, Alexandre de La Patellière, Matthieu Delaporte). A masterwork. Every scene is great. Stunning photography. First class epic adventure. Beautiful, satisfying!
Driving Madeleine (2022, Christian Carion). Two excellent leads (Line Renaud and Dany Boon). A poignant, exquisite movie. A bittersweet tale of laughs and tears.
All We Imagine as Light (2024, Payal Kapadia). A story of intertwined lives of three working women in Mumbai today. A slice-of-life-type movie. A heartfelt story of love, friendship, resilience, and light.
Stew’s 5 Movies I Loved from 2024
Here are five movies I loved from 2024. Not necessarily my top movies, but ones that may have flown under the radar:
Memoir of A Snail (2024, Adam Elliot). The movie hit the perfect blend between serious topics, like mental health and sexuality, with humor and clever animation.
Bird (2024, Andrea Arnold). Made me a Barry Keoghan fan boy! Great story about a family struggling to survive extreme poverty, with a bit of magical realism.
MaXXXine (2024, Ti West). As a fan of 80's schlock horror, I really appreciated this throwback horror movie. From the over-the-top villain to the homages to Chinatown and Body Double, the movie was pitch perfect.
Will & Harper (2024, Josh Greenbaum). Surprisingly poignant roadtrip movie featuring Will Farrell and his trans friend Harper Steele. Will and Harper's relationship is genuine, the conversations and situations personal. The movie struck the right balance of Will Farrell goofiness and sincerity.
Hundreds of Beavers (2022, Mike Cheslik). This movie pays homage to classic slapstick silent movies, and NAILS it. I thought the schtick would get old after awhile, but never did.
Kristen’s Movie Picks from 2024
For my movie viewing picks from 2024, I selected films that touched either a personal or nostalgic note for me. In no particular order:
Aftersun (2022, Charlotte Wells). This movie centers on a woman’s reflections of a holiday spent with her struggling father. Having lost a family member to depression, this quiet and understated movie hit an emotional point for me and serves as a reminder of how our memories of former loved ones become disoriented and uncertain over time.
The Holdovers (2023, Alexander Payne). This story of a somewhat strict instructor watching over remaining students during the Christmas holiday at a prep school was both funny and bittersweet. Watching this movie with a dear friend, where we laughed the loudest in the theater, was a great memory.
Encounters at the End of the World (2007, Werner Herzog). This documentary does cover some of the science conducted in Antarctica (with less emphasis on penguins). However, its charm relates to the focus on the unique and weirdly wonderful people who either work or conduct research at the ends of the earth. Antarctic research completely changed the trajectory of my life, so this was a fun walk into this icy world.
The Wild Robot (2024, Chris Sanders). It seems silly to include this movie, but it hit a nostalgic spot in me that I didn’t know I needed. This movie centers on a robot that washes up on an island and tries to impart human programming onto the natural world. This beautifully animated film made me want to revisit all the wonderful films from my youth (thanks to my late grandmother who introduced me to all the gems of the 80s). It also gave me some throwback vibes to Short Circuit, which was a favorite growing up.
Wendy and Lucy (2008, Kelly Reichardt). This movie is very simple, quiet, and melancholic. It centers on a homeless woman and her dog just trying to survive on a day-to-day basis. As my love for animals knows no bounds, this movie hit hard on the deep pain and loss life can bring.
Connor’s Least Favorite Viewings of 2024
This is my list of least favorite films I watched last year. I would call this list "Least Favorite" movies and not necessarily "Worst Films" because I definitely saw worse technical movies (I love amateur B Movies), but the below movies were the least enjoyable to sit through.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024, George Miller). While maybe not a bad movie, it was my biggest disappointment of the year. It's like the filmmakers had no idea what made Fury Road so brilliant. The world is over-explained, the backstories are spoonfed to the audience, and it's about 30 minutes too long. In short, I was reminded of the Star Wars prequels.
2012 (2009, Roland Emmerich). I didn't think you could make the complete destruction of the planet a dull affair, but Roland Emmerich does just that. All I wanted was some dumb fun to laugh at, but the repetitive escape sequences stretched close to three hours pushed my patience and goodwill far past its limits.
Battlefield Earth (2000, Roger Christian). John Travolta plays an alien Psychlo bureaucrat who squares off against a caveman named Johnny Goodboy. No, really.
Red One (2024, Jake Kasdan). Where do I even start with this one? The plot is needlessly complex, the cast has zero chemistry, and worst of all, Krampus the Austrian Christmas monster delivers a twenty-minute lore dump instead of immediately punching Dwayne Johnson in the face. I can't think of a single redeeming quality about this movie.
Cats (2019, Tom Hooper). Watching this film feels like stumbling through a nightmarish fever dream. I get the sense that we're supposed to be swept up in the whimsical world-building a la Dr. Seuss, but when the world here is populated by terrors straight out of a Hieronymus Bosch hellscape, there was no reason to want to stay in the world of Cats.
Mike’s Top 5 Slow Movies of 2024
Fremont (2023, Babak Jalali). A lonely Afghan immigrant working in a San Francisco fortune cookie factory sends a message in a cookie. Wryly hilarious. Jeremy Allen White (from The Bear) makes an appearance.
Here (2023, Bas Devos). Another movie about immigrants, set in Brussels. Not much happens, there's no drama, and everybody is nice. Soup and moss play big parts. The ending is funny, and the end credits are cool. Awesome.
Tony Takitani (2004, Jun Ichikawa). A reclusive illustrator falls for a woman with a clothes-shopping addiction. A short Japanese feature about loneliness and grief. Also awesome.
The Passengers of the Night (2022, Mikhaël Hers). A recently divorced French mom (the terrific Charlotte Gainsbourg) brings a troubled teenager into her family. Everyone's a good person, they're all just trying to work things out.
Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023, Rachel Lambert). Daisy Ridley in a non-Star Wars film, what a treat! Her character is the opposite of Rey: awkward, disengaged, and sensitive.
Weston’s Top 5 of 2024
My top 5 films of 2024 include three new releases and two older films that each offered a unique experience.
Flow (2024, Gints Zilbalodis). As an animal lover I knew that I had to see this ASAP when I first saw the trailer. During my first viewing at the Denver Film Fest, I was invested in the fate of an animated cat, yellow lab, ring-tailed lemur, capybara, and a secretary bird from the opening scene. I enjoyed it so much that I saw it again at the Sie less than a month later; the only film I watched twice this year!
Memoir of A Snail (2024, Adam Elliot). This was my first film at the Denver Film Fest and I was not prepared for a 95-minute stop-motion animated film that made me laugh, and cry, and left me thinking about the individual control we have over our own life and identity and the importance of maintaining a connection with family and friends while we have the time.
Soundtrack to a Coup d’État (2024, Johan Grimonprez). I love documentaries and could spend an entire film festival watching them. However, they often follow the same “talking heads” format of cutting between interviews with people directly involved in the event, subject matter experts, and relevant news clips. Soundtrack dared to do something different by changing the pacing of the film and jumping forward and backward in time, much like the music of the jazz musicians featured in the film. It wasn’t always easy to follow, but I appreciated the film’s inventiveness, and I learned about the assassination of the Congo’s first democratically elected leader, a topic that was strangely skipped in my high school history classes.
Laura (1944, Otto Preminger). Film noir is one of my genres; the striking visual style, snappy dialogue, and cynical characters fighting to survive in an unjust world. It was a toss-up between Laura and The Big Heat.
Make Way for Tomorrow (1937, Leo McCarey). The director, Leo McCarey, had a wide directing portfolio that included screwball comedies with Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, and Harold Lloyd, bigger pictures with Cary Grant and Bing Crosby, and tearjerkers like Make Way for Tomorrow. If you’re looking for a sad story, look no further than this story about an elderly couple who lost their home during the Great Depression and are forced to live apart because none of their adult children will take them both.
We’re just getting started! Don’t miss Part 2 of our Top 5’s of 2024 special edition, coming tomorrow!