10 Best Films 2024: Sam Sewell-Peterson
8. Sometimes I Think About Dying
For the clinically introverted or anyone whose life is stuck in a rut, this low-key drama will either be a new favourite or far too painfully truthful for you.
Committed loner office worker Fran (Daisy Ridley) copes with workplace changes, new relationships and more social interactions than she has had in years.
Sometimes I Think About Dying is a film of telling details and quiet emotional devastation. Like other young film stars who broke big early at the head of a massive franchise (Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart are probably the best examples), Daisy Ridley seems to be making a concerted effort to make interesting career choices. This is a role that puts her under the microscope as a scrunched ball of neuroses, micro expressions and physical tics conveying far more than pages of dialogue ever could. Director Rachel Lambert and her screenwriters drop you into a mundane reality where not a lot happens, interspersed with strangely calming artistic tableaus of death, to experience so much of what many of us go through when struggling to form meaningful human connection. The emotional catharsis of seeing certain aspects of Fran’s burgeoning relationship with Robert (Dave Merheje) frequently blindsides you.
7. Kneecap
By all rights, music biopics should have gone the way of the dodo after Walk Hard so memorably spoofed all of the most egregious genre conventions a decade and a half ago. But as this year’s films about Bob Marley, Amy Winehouse and Bob Dylan prove, they’re still big business. If the life stories of musicians on film do have to keep coming, then you should at least make the effort to stand out from the crowd. Kneecap certainly does that.
In a highly unconventional music biopic, Irish republican rappers Kneecap (stage names: Móglaí Bap, Mo Chara and DJ Próvai) play themselves struggling to find success and avoid reprisal from both the UK authorities and sectarian gangs in West Belfast.
Director Rich Peppiatt makes a striking directorial debut by imbuing this anarchic story with style in abundance; punchy editing and dynamic cinematography bringing musical performance sequences and hallucinogenic drug trips alike to life in a manner that recalls Quentin Tarantino or Danny Boyle. The Kneecap lads are born stars who grow beyond their natural rebellious charm to play scenes of genuine pathos and to embody the film’s secondary message (behind “Brits Out”) of the importance of keeping the Gaelic language alive as an essential form of cultural expression.
6. The Zone of Interest
A Jonathan Glazer film doesn’t come along very often (Under the Skin was his last, 10 years ago), so he makes every one of his singular works count. The Zone of Interest quite rightly left audiences reeling from its unflinching depiction of an atrocity from almost 80 years ago, but more should have taken his words on the current atrocities in Gaza to heart rather than much of the industry turning its back on him.
The commandant of Auschwitz and his family live an idyllic life in their house adjacent to the death camp, paying little attention to what occurs on a daily basis over their garden wall.
The Zone of Interest is a harrowing watch, but it is also essential. Glazer controls your field of vision in long takes in wide shot of picturesque domestic scenes while abject horror is happening just beyond the frame or just out of earshot. The oppressive, relentless soundscape is the most uncomfortable aspect of the film, almost daring you to try and tune it out as much as the privileged family we are following have over time. Sandra Hüller plays one of the most unrepentant monsters in recent memory as a woman prepared to ignore any level of inhumanity if it means the level of comfort she has grown accustomed to will continue, and her husband Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), a glorified prison guard personally responsible for the infrastructure that killed millions, seems to be momentarily overwhelmed by the weight of his atrocities echoing through time at the film’s close in a rare fantastical flourish in this otherwise grounded film.
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