8 pieces
Two years after Challengers arrived in its pastel pressure-cooker, the film's trick is clearer: it is not really about tennis. It is about what love looks like when three people are too competitive to admit they love anything but competition.
Guadagnino's second film of 2024 was the quieter one, the one with the more difficult source material, and the one that has settled, a year later, as the more specifically strange.
A year on from Hit Man's Netflix release, the film is a quieter argument than it first appeared. Richard Linklater made a star-launcher for someone he knew would not, in the end, need launching.
Two Oscar nominations, a slow-burn awards run, and a second viewing at home. Celine Song's debut keeps revealing itself. An argument for the film that refuses its own climax.
Aki Kaurismäki's 2023 film, out of retirement and better for it, is one of the shortest great films of the decade. An 81-minute case for the romantic comedy as serious cinema.
Tran Anh Hung's 2023 film, released theatrically in February 2024, is the best film about food and cooking since Babette's Feast. It is also a deeply disciplined romance in disguise.
Raine Allen-Miller's 2023 debut is the rare contemporary British romantic comedy that actually commits to its register. Specifically a London film in a way very few London films are.
Andrew Haigh's film is a queer ghost story, a family reconciliation, and a grief piece. What it does with all three in 105 minutes is astonishing.