Films
By far my favourite film released in cinemas this year was Civil War (Alex Garland, 2024). While it confused mainstream viewers who expected a postapocalyptic action adventure, the totally sober approach to a plausible breakdown of society pushed all my buttons. I loved the passivity of the journalist protagonists, I loved the non-specific, non-partisan background to the conflict. And I loved the soundtrack, particular the early double-whammy of ‘Lovefingers’ by Silver Apples and ‘Rocket USA’ by Suicide, and the abrupt introduction of De La Soul’s ‘Say No Go’ to undermine an atrocity was one of my favourite moments in any film this year.
Another recent film I adored was The Beasts (Rodrigo Sorogoyen, 2022), a very adult and considered drama about a French couple far out of their depth in the Galician countryside in Spain. The tension is taut throughout, and I loved every minute of its long running time.
I loved Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass, 2024), a more garish film than Rose Glass’s previous one, Saint Maud, and a lot more fun, though equally squeamish. I really liked Challengers (Luca Guadagnino, 2024), which continues Luca Guadagnino’s stellar run of successes while maintaining arthouse complexity. La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher, 2023), also starring Challengers’ Josh O’Connor, is an oddball delight, and it’s the film I’ve recommended to others most often this year. All of Us Strangers (Andrew Haigh, 2023) may turn out to be less of a puzzle box than it appears to be, but Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal are both excellent. Similarly fantasy-adjacent and reliant on a strong lead is The Five Devils (Léa Mysius, 2022), which is as watchable as it is due to the presence of the amazing Adèle Exarchopoulos. Hoard (Luna Carmoon, 2023) is the sort of straightforwardly excellent and downbeat British drama that people claim aren’t being made nowadays. The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023) is as compelling as I’d hoped it would be, and likely to be more memorable than any other film listed here, but unlike Glazer’s other films I’m unlikely to watch it again.
Alongside Civil War, my favourite blockbusters were The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan (Martin Bourboulon, 2023) and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (Wes Ball, 2024), particularly the early non-plot-related scenes of ape society.
As for slightly older 21st-century films, the one that’s stuck with me is Holiday (Isabella Eklöf, 2018) which I believe was quite controversial upon reliease, and it really is repellent, but constantly thought-provoking. I finally watched It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 2015) on the recommendation of several writer friends, and I liked it very much, though like many modern horror films the final act doesn’t hold up too well. Another film I’ve been meaning to watch for years is La Antena (Esteban Sapir, 2007), which is far more wondrous and inventive than I’d imagined. I loved two films with similarly rambling, Twin Peaks-lite tone: Under the Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell, 2018) and The Kid Detective (Evan Morgan, 2020). My favourite family film was Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (Dean Fleischer Camp, 2021).
I’m a little ashamed that I haven’t delved very deeply into cinematic history this year. Boudu Saved from Drowning (Jean Renoir, 1932) was the most affecting and humanistic film I watched, and I’m certain I’ll watch it again before long. Another film I considered a known quantity and was surprised by was Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957), which is far more snide and funny than I’d anticipated.
Other films I ticked off the list included the bitter classics The Draughtsman’s Contract (Peter Greenaway, 1982) and Naked (Mike Leigh, 1993. Kes (Ken Loach, 1969) was far less about a kestrel than I’d expected, and far more about the school system, and Kramer vs. Kramer (Robert Benton, 1979) was a great deal less saccharine than I’d supposed, though it was undermined when my wife and I noticed that method actor Dustin Hoffman contrives to pick up and play with a prop in every scene. My most pleasing archive discovery this year was Full Circle: The Haunting of Julia (Richard Loncraine, 1977), an effective, low-budget ghost story starring Mia Farrow that deserves to be better known than it is.
TV
I adored Ripley, the adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley. While some elements were a little off (Andrew Scott’s age, Johnny Flynn’s lack of charisma), the show came into its own after the central murder, when screenwriter Steven Zaillian was able to increase the tension to an unbearable level. And the whole production looked gorgeous. It’s a real shame it’s unlikely to be recommissioned, as I’d love to have seen an adaptation of Ripley’s Game with the same cast and crew.
Another show that was bittersweet due to prompt cancellation was Kaos, which hewed far more faithfully to Greek mythology than I’d imagined, while stretching and humanising the stories to suit modern TV tastes. The fifth season of Fargo was the best since the first couple, with a simpler tale of a woman on the run which often had me genuinely on the edge of my seat. My guiltiest pleasure was watching both seasons of Outlast, a survival reality TV show which encouraged amoral behaviour in its contestants. My favourite comedy shows were both second seasons: How to With John Wilson and Colin From Accounts, both of which were almost as wonderful as their first seasons.
Videogames
My favourite videogame was one I played only at the very end of the year: Dragon‘s Dogma 2. It’s the most likeable open-world game I’ve played since Assassin‘s Creed: Odyssey, but the fact that it’s considerably less bloated gives it extra points. Travelling with a party of AI followers is jolly rather than frustrating, and the giant enemies and emergent gameplay are out of this world, with ogres and harpies and dragons wrestling and often ignoring the player entirely. The Gigantus sequence, in which you’re tasked with preventing a giant stone statue from trudging out of the sea and destroying a city, is like an interactive Ray Harryhausen film – which, now that I think about it, is exactly what I want out of a game like this.
The other games I particularly enjoyed this year were relatively small ones. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a cheerful Metroidvania that knows when to stop, with the result that I’ve played it three times over. Animal Well is similarly short, though markedly less sweet, and its pixel graphics are wonderfully eerie. I loved the quasi-retro minigame collection UFO 50, though actually I’ve only unlocked a handful of the games because I became obsessed with Party House and stopped there. I’m currently playing Rise of the Golden Idol, which is as good as the first game in the series and which features puzzles that make you feel insanely clever when you solve them.
Tim Major 
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