Every year my friend Derek and I rate out favourite films for the previous 12 months or thereabouts. It’s a way of keeping track of what both of us have seen, and of helping to ensure that neither of us misses out on something we shouldn’t: a neglected gem, perhaps, or maybe a film that has been deceptively marketed. A movie that belongs in this last category might be Downsizing, which was released in 2017, and which I recall giving short shrift at the time. In fact, it’s an excellent movie. Highly original, moving, funny, and quietly captivating, if such a thing can be said to exist.

In the past, with the exception of the pandemic years, D and I had no way of rating films we’d seen that were not strictly released in the previously calendar year. Not that you need to bother rating the films you see, of course. You can watch a movie, enjoy it or not, and that’s that. But if you are going to do the exercise, you might as well apply some rigour. And some of the best films I saw in the previous 12 months were not released for the first time in 2024. Chinatown, Two-Lane Blacktop and Aftersun join Downsizing in this category.

Our deadline for including films for consideration is the Australia Day long weekend. I should note that I hadn’t seen Rebel Ridge or Perfect Days by then, checking them out after I saw them on D’s list. So here are 10 films (well, actually it’s 11, and could easily have been 12) that I enjoyed watching in 2024 for the first time. Not all of them are from 2024, and the list is in alphabetical order.

Aftersun
In this dreamy yet riveting coming-of-age drama, Sophie (Frankie Corio) recalls a time in the 1990s when as a young girl on the verge of teendom, she went on a final summer holiday to a fading Turkish resort with her separated and troubled father Calum (Paul Mescal), and the moments and memories that unfold.

A Complete Unknown
In the early 1960s, a 19-year-old mumbling Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) arrives in New York and becomes a compelling voice in popular music in this evocative, moving and rousing biopic. That he was kind of a love-rat, and pen pals with Johnny Cash are just some of the nuggets we discover.

Chinatown
Only a few years after his wife Sharon Tate was murdered by the Manson Family, Roman Polanski returned to the US to direct this gorgeous pean to 1930s Los Angeles. Red herrings and confusion abound in this detective caper in which Jake Gittes (a young, handsome Jack Nicholson) is tasked with (of course) tracking down a missing husband. Water rights and incest are involved. Even though it was made 50 years ago, with its themes of corruption and the futility of good intentions, Chinatown is undoubtedly a film for our time.

Conclave
Much mystery and intrigue surround the election of a new pope in this well-crafted tense thriller boasting compelling performances from Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci and Isabella Rossellini.

Downsizing
As a way of dealing with climate change in the near future, scientists hit upon a formula for reducing humans down to the size of Ken and Barbie dolls. Surprisingly engaging and moving, with standout performances from Matt Damon and Christoph Walz, who is hilarious as an annoying upstairs neighbour.

Dune: Part Two
Denis Villeneuve not only made sense of Frank Herbert’s labyrinthine space saga in a way that David Lynch could not, he crafted it in a way that is spectacular, visceral and exciting.

Fast Charlie
No doubt Pierce Brosnan is getting too long in the tooth to play an over-the-hill trigger man (the titular Charlie), but I have a soft spot for Elmore Leonardesque crime stories. This one set in Missouri is a hoot, with Morena Baccarin bringing a certain something to the part of a sexy taxidermist.

Monsieur Blake at Your Service
In this ridiculously contrived feel-good French dramedy, John Malkovich plays a wealthy businessman mistaken for a servant when he returns to the small hotel where many years before he honeymooned with his now-departed wife. Of course, maintaining the façade is the only way he’ll be permitted to stay.

The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan
Swash, buckle and derring-do are on full display in this big-budget adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas classic. En garde!

Two-Lane Blacktop
Originally made in 1971, this self-styled almost homemade film from Monte Hellman is both unique and influential. There isn’t much of a plot: two young guys known only as the Driver (James Taylor) and the Mechanic (Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys) engage in a bet with an older dork, GTO (Warren Oates), who they keep encountering out on the road, tooling around in their two-door 1955 Chevy. Both car and film are stripped down to the basics.

Wolfs
Brad Pitt and George Clooney play slightly amended versions of their Oceans personas in this shoot ‘em up. Both are “fixers” (perhaps in reference to Harvey Keitel’s Mr Wolf character in Pulp Fiction – surely inspired by Victor the Cleaner from La Femme Nikita) who are accidentally – or is it an accident? – called in to clean up the same job.

Honourable mentions
A Real Pain, The Fall Guy, Lee, Perfect Days, Rebel Ridge