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Best and Worst Films from July 2024

Best Films from July 2024:

3. Victim

I had a surprisingly strong streak of excellent movies this month, so it was difficult to choose three best of the bunch. I sadly had to exclude ‘The Age of Innocence’ and ‘The Collector’ from this list, but both are absolutely superb adaptations of literary works. As for Victim, this is an impressively groundbreaking and important movie about homophobia that treats its subject in a surprisingly subtle and emotionally effective manner. This is a terrific thriller that isn’t just a message piece, but a genuinely suspenseful ride too.

2. Oliver Twist

I watched a couple of adaptations of books that I’d read previously this month, but this one takes the cake as the best one. Yes, David Lean’s Oliver Twist is the quintessential take on this famous literary work. Lean’s directing is sublime, the editing is fantastic and the movie elevated the written story to this highly cinematic experience – the score and sound are superb, the production design is phenomenal and the black-and-white cinematography is not just striking and polished, but also evoking silent cinema in its expressiveness and artistry. It’s a classic.

1. The Imaginary

And the best movie I saw this month is this Studio Ponoc little wonder. A story about the power and importance of imagination, the movie also deals with grief and loss in a very potent way. The art style mixes 2D and 3D technologies in such a unique way, making for a truly dazzling viewing experience. The score is also beautiful and the voice acting is top-notch. It’s a wonderful flick that made me cry more than a couple of times and that will undoubtedly land in my top ten best movies of the year when it’s over.

Worst Films from August 2024:

3. Bringing Out the Dead

I watched only one bad movie this month, so this list doesn’t quite equate with bad, but rather disappointing. This lesser-known Scorsese movie has a solid, important and at times quite moving story about the honorable work of paramedics, but it was also too episodic in its structure and, thus, muted in its impact.

2. Come to the Stable

Come to the Stable is a solid, charming movie about nuns that is more lightweight and comedic than serious and dignified in its approach, which was done for the better, but it’s also slim in its plot, weak in direction and lacking any truly memorable thematic or technical aspects.

1. The Garfield Movie

The Garfield Movie is easily one of the worst animated films of the year. It has a bland visual style to it, terrible characterization and a truly horrible script. Garfield should be a lazy cat who doesn’t want to move often, but here he gets to go on an action-packed adventure, which makes for one of the worst cases of character assassination you can think of. It’s your standard action/heist cartoon with nothing interesting or fresh to offer and the only bad movie I watched this month.