10 Best Films 2024: Sam Sewell-Peterson
5. Perfect Days
Beginning life as a proposal for a Tokyo tourism documentary and organically developing into a narrative feature, Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days is a modest, meticulous and beautiful way to spend 2 hours.
Tokyo toilet cleaner Hirayama (Kôji Yakusho) is content with his daily routine and takes immense pride in his work, until a number of small changes in his life in quick succession upsets his equilibrium.
Perfect Days is only repetitive as far as it wants to be – Hirayama’s routine does vary, as does the cassette soundtrack to his day, but he likes things to be a certain way and relies on his little comforts to keep sane. The time we spend with him, and the unhurried pace of the piece as a whole, quickly gets you in Hirayama’s headspace and can become an almost meditative experience. It’s not a film of fireworks, but you’re completely and utterly compelled by the quiet, enigmatic protagonist, his passions and his appreciation of every small moment.
4. All of Us Strangers
Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers opens with one of the most beautiful and thematically resonant shots in recent memory and doesn’t let up from there.
Lonely writer Adam (Andrew Scott), living in a near-deserted tower block in London, simultaneously begins a passionate relationship with neighbour Harry (Paul Mescal) and meets the time-displaced ghosts of his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) while visiting his childhood home.
As well-honed as all four performances are, and as emotionally intelligent as the script is, what really makes All of Us Strangers hit as hard as it does are the questions it prompts. If you were gifted more time with someone you loved and lost, how would you use it? What would you ask them, and what would they ask you, no matter how difficult the question? Who is really dead in this film’s world? This is one of the most moving works of cinema this year; one that subverts expectations in fascinating ways and speaks to all the quiet outcasts out there on a particularly profound level.
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3. Robot Dreams
Not only is animation cinema, but it’s therapy too. Pablo Berger’s Robot Dreams will doubtless become a firm favourite for introverts everywhere and may convert even those who are not normally fans of “cartoons” to the power of the medium as an act of purely visual expression.
In a 1980s New York populated by anthropomorphic animals, a lonely dog orders a robot friend by mail and they become instant soul mates until a tragic series of events leads to them being separated and aching to find each other again.
In one of the great animation traditions, this film tells its story entirely without dialogue, but from the opening moments it becomes apparent that with these ultra-expressive, hand-drawn characters, actual words would be surplus to requirements. This takes its time to allow us to really connect on a profound level with the lead pair, and we quickly adjust to the slow pace of their life, particularly relating to enjoying the little things and hanging on to a meaningful connection as tightly as you can, whatever life might throw at you to rob you of it. It may also be one of the most emotionally intelligent, mature films of the year in that it acknowledges that time passes, people change and things won’t be tied up with a little bow even in an animal-dominated alternate reality.
