The Twenty Best Films of 2024

I'm fucking tired, man. 

As I write this, Fuckface McDumbfuck has begun his second term of office and immediately made things worse for vulnerable groups, the great David Lynch just died days before his seventy-ninth birthday, and Los Angeles is on fire. 2024 was an objectively Bad Year for various political and personal reasons. 

And it wasn't a great overall year for movies, if I'm honest, perhaps a knock-on effect of the SAG and WGA strikes, resulting in a relative lack of strong material to release. In some previous years I've struggled to keep my list to a reasonable level; this time I found myself including some movies that, while fun, probably don't belong on any "great films" list. So these write-ups are going to start pretty short, and then slowly become more voluminous until you won't be able to stop screaming "JESUS, DO THESE SENTENCES EVER END?" at your screen. 

But there's a point to it all. I swear this to you. 

Let's begin. 

    20. Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F

Great, necessary filmmaking? No. Did I start grinning as soon as "The Heat Is On" kicked in and didn't stop for two hours? Yes. 

19. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

The nicest surprise of the year, a belated but lively and inventive sequel. Maybe Tim Burton still has some gas in the tank after all. 

18. Trap

I am one hundred percent on board with M. Night Shyamalan's second act as purveyor of fine high-concept B-plus movies. Extremely silly—sometimes intentionally, sometimes not—but always fun. 

17. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Those apes are such good actors. 

16. The Fall Guy

Overlong but otherwise breezy and delightful, the kind of star-driven, purposely insubstantial confection we don't get that often these days. (And probably won't again soon, given the box-office receipts on this one.)

15. Monkey Man

Dev Patel's directorial debut is a satisfyingly bone-crunching howl against encroaching authoritarianism in India, invigoratingly chaotic and with its heart firmly in the right place; it's tough to resist a film where a a sect of transfemme warriors just absolutely ninja the fuck out of a room of fascist goons. 

14. Fancy Dance

Lily Gladstone and Isabel Deroy-Olson are terrific as, respectively, a small-time hustler on Oklahoma's Seneca-Cayuga reservation and her niece, whose flighty mother has gone missing. The kind of low-key slice of Native life we don't get to see often enough.

13. Heretic

Hugh Grant is bracingly creepy as the most terrifying of horror antagonists—the INTERNET ATHEIST!!! [music sting, thunderclap] Doesn't quite stick the landing, but fun throughout, and Grant gets extremely able support from Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East as cheerful Mormon missionaries caught in his snare. 

12. Hit Man

Richard Linklater's peppy black comedy turned me from Glen Powell agnostic to Glen Powell believer, as our current Generically Handsome White Guy Laureate turns in remarkably skillful and engaging work as a New Orleans professor who aids police in trapping people embroiled in murder-for-hire schemes. Powell has sizzling chemistry with Adria Arjona, turning the film on a dime from a Coens-esque "look at these idiotic criminals" romp to a Paul Thomas Anderson-ish "aww, the freaks found each other!" romance. 

11. Late Night with the Devil

Ace character actor David Dastmalchian absolutely nails a rare starring turn in the Cairnes brothers' delightful mockumentary horror as fictional Johnny Carson rival Jack Delroy, hoping to juice his flailing show's Sweeps Week ratings by inviting on a very special guest…whose identity you've presumably already guessed from the title. A blast from start to finish, this low-budget indie (I have never seen so many production company logos before a film) did strike a sour note with its use of AI-generated "artwork" on screen. I know you didn't have much money, guys, but I'm pretty sure you had enough to pay an actual fucking artist. Sort your shit out. 

10. The Order

Based loosely on a true story, Justin Kurzel's docu-thriller features Jude Law as a grizzled FBI agent with the sublime movie name Terry Husk, tasked with taking down the titular organisation, a hate group guilty of, among many other atrocities, the murder of progressive Jewish talk radio star Alan Berg (a cameoing Marc Maron)—the same story that inspired Costa-Gavras's deeply wrongheaded Betrayed, in which Debra Winger fell in love with Nazi Tom Berenger. (I guess you'll just have to trust me that this was considered a reasonable movie plot in 1988.) Just a straight-down-the-middle, gritty star vehicle for the ever-impressive Law (with excellent support from Nicholas Hoult and Jurnee Smollett), and for some reason I found it very satisfying watching the government punch white supremacists in the face rather than invite them to the White House. 

9. The Substance

Demi Moore gives a scorching, career-redefining performance in Coralie Fargeat's satirical body horror as an "ageing" (actually a decade younger than the still-stunning Moore's real age; trust me, this film has layers) star that Hollywood has fewer and fewer uses for, leading her to seek eternal youth in the form of the eponymous medicinal sludge. Similar to Mickey Rourke's equally great work in The Wrestler, Moore brings every element of her career to date—the ups and downs, the plastic surgery, the lack of critical respect, the treatment from men—to bear in a role tailor-made for her, so it's a slight shame that the movie itself doesn't quite know when to quit and bloats out to an untenable 141 minutes. But Moore, costar Margaret Qualley as her younger doppelganger, the satirical edge, and some spectacularly gross set pieces still make The Substance more engrossing and memorable than higher-minded fare like The Brutalist (an entirely fine movie that nonetheless found no place on my list). 

8. In a Violent Nature

An arthouse spin on Friday the 13th, Chris Nash's slasher is a deliberately paced exercise in sustained tension. You already know the story—there are woods, there are campers, there is an unkillable evil unleashed—but you're probably unused to seeing most of this unfold from the killer's POV, a conceit that Nash plays to the hilt with a series of long takes and minimal dialogue, slowly cranking the anxiety levels with rigid formal control rather than jump scares and shakycam. Does end up feeling slightly thin despite a sub-hundred-minute running time, but it's an impressive feat nevertheless. 

7. Woman of the Hour

Given Anna Kendrick's sparkling onscreen presence and "fun best friend" public persona, you might not expect her directorial debut to be a deeply disquieting chronicle of how simply existing as a woman in the world can be a terrifying experience, but hey, that's on you, not her. Based on the story of so-called Dating Game Killer Rodney Alcala, but wisely centring his victims, Woman of the Hour attempts to get across the skin-crawling anxiety of living with the threat of violence constantly dangling overhead, and does so with such effectiveness that there are scenes where you won't want to move a muscle for fear of setting the creep off. 

6. The People's Joker

I saw Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola's heartfelt, long-gestating, self-financed $100m paean to sucking his own dick, in 2024. Folks, it was absolute fucking dogshit. I also saw Vera Drew's wildly inventive, personal ode to trans self-realisation, made for ten bucks and a pack of Parliaments, and friends, it pisses in the face of Megalopolis and then kicks its ass all over Gotham. Freely combining live action on wobbly green-screen backgrounds and snatches of work from dozens of animators, Drew's opus (a clear parody of the Batman universe, as much as Warner Bros. may have tried to claim otherwise) is a riotous collage of passions, hilarious, touching, and gloriously zine-y. 

5. A Real Pain

A lot of us know someone like Benji (a surely Oscar-bound Kieran Culkin) in A Real Pain: brash, honest, a bit much, funny, charming, manic, depressed, would definitely give you a kidney if you needed it, secretly you kinda wish you were more like them. I lost such a friend in 2024, so perhaps that's partly why I was so taken and moved by Jesse Eisenberg's second directorial effort, about two cousins visiting Poland after the death of their grandmother—but A Real Pain is so finely considered that I would've loved it regardless. Eisenberg has got the goods. 

4. Lake George

With a face like a crumpled pack of cigarettes and an expression that perpetually says "ah, Christ, this shit again," character actor Shea Wigham was made for noir, and Jeffrey Reiner's is a prime modern version of the sunburnt L.A. variant. Wigham is Don, a former gambling addict and recent parolee who, in classic noir fashion, finds himself in dire circumstances and agrees to a "favour" for wannabe crime kingpin Armen (Glenn Fleshler)—knocking off the dirtbag's sort-of girlfriend Phyllis (the great Carrie Coon, dynamite as usual). Chaos must inevitably ensue, but what makes Lake George so much more than a catalogue of genre tropes is Wigham's performance as a dope who's just old and tired and would really like to rest awhile before he's done. 

3. Love Lies Bleeding

And speaking of people in over their heads… Rose Glass's Love Lies Bleeding recalls the small-town neo-noirs of John Dahl (Kill Me Again, Red Rock West), but with a queer perspective. Kristen Stewart's New Mexico gym manager Lou catches the eye of just-passing-through bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O'Brian), and soon enough the corpses start piling up. Blood is spilled, cigarettes are smoked, steroids are injected, and cinematographer Ben Fordesman casts everything in the most lurid of reds and the darkest of shadows. Sweaty, thrilling, and refreshingly sleazy.

2. Rebel Ridge

Utilising the "these small-town cops messed with the wrong guy" formula of First Blood (and the eighties programmers that ripped it off), elevated-genre expert Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room) makes the riveting Rebel Ridge a sustained outcry against injustice while delivering the action goods. Aaron Pierre takes a hopefully star-making turn as Terry Richmond, an ex-marine biking into a Louisiana town to bail his cousin Mike out of jail, stymied at every turn by corrupt police and an uncaring bureaucracy. And then these motherfuckers just have to push him too far… But that's just the beginning, and Terry finds himself tangled up in something even bigger than he imagined. Top-notch support from Don Johnson and AnnaSophia Robb, combined with Saulnier's spare, tight direction, make Rebel Ridge possibly the best action film of the last decade ("without Mad Max or John Wick or :Impossible in the title" division). 

1. I Saw the TV Glow

Roger Ebert liked to describe film as "a machine that generates empathy". I dearly wish Roger had lived long enough to see I Saw the TV Glow, writer/director Jane Schoenbrun's second work after the fascinating We're All Going to the World's Fair and one of a small handful of films in the last decade I can quite confidently label a masterpiece. A trans narrative shot through a magical-realism horror lens, rarely has a movie so captured a feeling of wanting to crawl out of one's skin because something isn't right, so captured the ways pop culture can help us understand ourselves, so captured the soul-destroying pain of not living the life you need. It's a movie I hesitate to even describe at a basic level, so full is the film with the wonder of discovery (for the characters and the viewer), stunning visuals, and striking, heartfelt performances. I Saw the TV Glow is a machine that generates empathy. It is the best film of 2024, and nothing comes close. 

I hope David Lynch saw it. I think he would've loved it. 

The 23 Best films of 2023

For the first time in a while, keeping my list of favourite films of a given year at a reasonable number was tough. When I can't find room for bold, entertaining works like Poor Things, Godzilla Minus One, and The Killer, you know it's been a good year. And so it's the twenty-three best films of '23. 

23. They Cloned Tyrone

A canny melding of blaxploitation and sci-fi tropes, the wickedly fun They Cloned Tyrone goes down smooth thanks to a trio of terrific performances by John Boyega, Teyonah Parris, and Jamie Foxx. To reveal too much of what it's about would spoil the fun. 

22. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

I thought I might finally be over Wes Anderson after the stultifying The French Dispatch, but thankfully he came back with a vengeance in 2023 with not one but two great efforts (plus sundry short-short films). The feature-length Asteroid City was damn fine, but I personally preferred his forty-minute adaptation of a classic Roald Dahl story. Almost an audiobook reading of the story with visual accompaniment, so faithful to the original short it is, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is a synergistic meeting of two great talents (only one of whom is an anti-Semite, I think).

21. May December

A sensational Julianne Moore positively devours the screen in Todd Haynes' (mostly) fictional spin on the Mary Kay Letourneau/Vili Fualaau story. Natalie Portman portrays an actress doing research in order to play Moore's wife/mother/convicted sex offender in a movie based on her "affair" with a teen boy (now an adult played by an excellent Charles Melton). Often intentionally campy, May December walks a wobbly tightrope with remarkable success, though the real Fualaau's revealing that the filmmakers never reached out to him leaves a somewhat sour aftertaste. Nonetheless, an effective piece of candy laced with strychnine. HOT DOGS. 

20. M3GAN

The year's nicest surprise came early with 2023's first wide release, a goddamn delightful piece of knowing nonsense about a robot doll gone mad. A combination of genuine frights and abject silliness the likes of which we've seen rarely since Gremlins.

19. Air

"Product biopics" became an oddly hot subgenre in 2023, but none was better than Ben Affleck's rollicking tale of how Nike signed a young Michael Jordan and changed the game. Matt Damon is rock solid as Sonny Vaccaro, the marketing exec who believed in Jordan almost as much as his mother Deloris (a typically commanding Viola Davis), and is joined by a murderer's row of acting talent—none better than Affleck himself, a supremely underrated comic performer who makes nothing but perfect choices as Nike founder Phil Knight. Maybe one or two fewer on-the-nose "wow, the eighties, right?" needle drops whenever they do the story of how Puma signed Ralph Sampson or whatever, though. 

18. Albert Brooks: Defending My Life

It's been a long time since the once-great Rob Reiner made a film worth a damn, but it turns out that all he needed to do to regain form was get his best friend Albert Brooks to talk about his life and career a little bit. Defending My Life is a pretty straightforward retrospective documentary, but when said retrospective concerns one of the most remarkable comic minds of all time, that's more than enough, especially since the bulk of his classic material remains as hilarious as ever. 

17. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

Do I even need to say anything about a new Mission: Impossible movie? One of the great action franchises rarely misses, especially in the capable hands of returning director Christopher McQuarrie. The plot is some nonsense about an evil artificial intelligence or something, but we're here to see Tom Cruise dramatically jump off things and land on other things, and jump off shit he does. Delightful newcomers Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff keep things humming despite the lengthy running time. 

16. The Zone of Interest

Certainly a movie to admire rather than actually enjoy, Jonathan Glazer's film—only his fourth in twenty-three years—is like staring the banality of evil dead in the eye for 105 minutes. A (very) loose adaptation of the late, great Martin Amis's novel, The Zone of Interest depicts the horrors of Auschwitz not via graphic recreation but by showing the bucolic existence of the family of real camp commandant Rudolf Höss just outside the gates of hell itself. As Höss's wife hosts tea parties and shows off her lush garden, the viewer is quietly assaulted by the background sounds of gunshots, arriving trains, and industrially assisted death. A deeply disquieting, necessary watch. But probably only once. 

15. Anatomy of a Fall

A forensic examination of a French murder trial, Palme d'Or winner Anatomy of a Fall is the kind of wide-ranging, impeccably crafted tale that John Grisham fucking WISHES his feeble mind could dream up. Sandra Hüller (also in The Zone of Interest) is a German expat accused of pushing her French husband out a window at their remote house. Seeing all sides of the Gallic judicial system puts one completely off ever committing a crime in France. Shame. 

14. Priscilla

A necessary corrective to the lumbering yet frenetic Elvis, Priscilla is a typically deliberate, lush Sofia Coppola Joint concentrating on the, uh, iffy relationship between the titular teen and the oft-childlike superstar. Cailee Spaeny remarkably and convincingly plays Priscilla from ages fourteen to twenty-eight, opposite a towering Jacob Elordi as Elvis (much taller than the real man, knowingly exacerbating the imbalanced power dynamic between predator and prey). Yes, it's another Coppola film about a pretty person locked in a gilded cage, but goddamn she's good at it. 

13. Eileen

Another literary adaptation, William Oldroyd's big-screen version of Ottessa Moshfegh's novel is a grimy grunge-noir about Thomasin McKenzie's lonely juvie staffer who becomes enamoured with the facility's new psychologist, an impossibly glamourous (for 1960s Massachusetts, anyway) Anne Hathaway, who effortlessly proves again to be one of our best actors. A discomfiting melodrama that makes you want to scrub yourself afterwards. I mean that as a compliment. 

12. Ferrari

Michael Mann is unquestionably my favourite director, and while I might've preferred his first film in nearly a decade to involve many more stoic cops or criminals in silvery suits staring manfully at a twinkling skyline or striding purposefully across a runway, I'll take what I can get, especially when the result is as compelling as this. While obviously a real figure, Adam Driver's Enzo Ferrari is almost an archetypal Mann protagonist—steely, cold, brilliant, indifferent to the emotional needs of others if it gets in the way of his getting what he wants. Shailene Woodley is wobbly as Ferrari's mistress (and father of his second child), but Penelope Cruz burns up the screen as Enzo's business partner and wife Laura. Technically impeccable, of course, and thankfully thrilling enough to overlook the fact that a character unironically says "Wrong son died!"

11. Past Lives

Able to sit proudly beside Richard Linklater's masterpiece Before Sunset as an exquisite portrait of opportunities lost and roads not travelled, Celine Song's stunning debut is a delicate semi-romance about childhood friends Nora and Hae Sung's reuniting in the present. The kind of touching, low-key indie film that inspires the cutting of trailers featuring quotes like "An exquisite portrait of opportunities lost and roads not travelled! - Variety" and "Able to sit proudly beside Richard Linklater's masterpiece Before Sunset! - The Tallahassee Democrat". 

10. The Holdovers

The knock that Alexander Payne "hates" his characters has always felt a bit off base anyway, but it's unlikely any critic lobbed that epithet at this warm, funny comedy of misfits in and around a Massachusetts boarding school in the seventies. Young Dominic Sessa is perfect as a sullen student, and the immortal Paul Giamatti absolutely Giamattis it the fuck up as his grumpy teacher, but it's the wonderful Da'Vine Joy Randolph (who's quietly been doing nothing but killing it the past few years) who provides The Holdovers with its beating heart. A big hug of a movie, with nary a hint of Payne's trademark acidity to be found. 

9. Barbie

When I first learned that Greta Gerwig was up next in a long line of attempts to bring a live-action Barbie to the screen, my first thought was that there must be SOMETHING that compelled such an extraordinary talent to bother with such a seemingly vacant property. Nonetheless, I became a bit cynical when all and sundry proclaimed it a masterpiece and said anyone who dislikes it hates joy, meaning I took way too long to see it. Well, whaddya know—everyone was right. Barbie IS something of a pop masterpiece, a pure delight from beginning to end that smuggles in all sorts of surprisingly complex thoughts on feminism and this perfect doll's place within it. Ryan Gosling almost runs away with the film as a staggeringly funny Ken, but Margot Robbie is the necessary glue to pull this off, and she's every bit as likeable, wide-eyed, and capable as the film requires. Yup, it really is that good. 

8. American Fiction

The premise outlined in the trailer is a killer—snooty professor/novelist Thelonious "Monk" Ellison gets so enraged by the mostly white public's embrace of "street" novels with titles like We's Lives in da Ghetto that he spitefully bangs out a vicious parody of the type that he calls My Pafology (later retitled Fuck), only to see it become immensely popular. But that's just one aspect of this complex, incredibly sharp satire by first-time director Cord Jefferson (based on the book Erasure by Percival Everett). Big laughs abound (especially courtesy of a scene-stealing Sterling K. Brown), but it's the quieter moments that cut like a knife. 

7. Oppenheimer

Yes, yes, Barbenheimer. I went with Oppenheimer first, and I don't regret it. This extraordinary biopic takes nothing less than arguably the most important invention of the twentieth century and makes it sing courtesy of whipcrack editing (it's one of the shortest three-hour movies you'll see) and Christopher Nolan's intense familiarity with obsession. Cillian Murphy is a dead cert for the Most Haunted Eyes Oscar I just made up (but he'll probably lose to the Flash entering the Speed Force anyway). 

6. John Wick 4

Earlier I did not refer to Mission: Impossible as THE greatest action franchise because, well, motherfucking John Wick exists. The glorious end of the Keanu Reeves-led corner of what will supposedly become a wider cinematic universe, the absolutely goddamn gorgeous John Wick 4 is the most ruthlessly stripped-down 170-minute film I've ever seen. Reeves glides gazelle-like through another round of increasingly inventive action set pieces, Donnie Yen lends credibility and his eternal coolness, and the climax is the best darn homage to Walter Hill's The Warriors ever. See you in the next life, or whenever they decide to resurrect the character, John. I love you. 

5. Origin

As flawed, emotional, and vast as life itself (but not Life Itself), the master Ava DuVernay's first feature in five years adapts Pulitzer winner Isabel Wilkerson's nonfiction bestseller Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents as both docudrama and a biography of the creative process, resulting in one of the most audacious, ambitious films of 2023. A luminous, powerful Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (shoutouts to Sistah Girl from Undercover Brother) gives one of the year's best performances as Wilkerson, beset by a level of grief and tragedy that would seem over the top were it not true, but resolute in putting together her thesis viewing worldwide discrimination through the lens of caste, rather than purely through race. Sometimes stumbles in its disarming earnestness, resulting in parts that would provoke eye rolling had they come from any other filmmaker, but Origin positively bursts with feeling and ideas due to DuVernay's control over the complicated material and incredible work from Ellis-Taylor, Niecy Nash, and a never-better Jon Bernthal. 

4. Monica

Often when we get to the dreaded Awards Season, the narrative of whatever work the actor did becomes as important as the performance itself. Did you know Bradley Cooper spent literal YEARS practicing conducting that one Leonard Bernstein piece accurately for Maestro (by the way, ask me to do my "Bradley Cooper playing Leonard Bernstein" impression for you sometime)? Did you know Robert DeNiro PUT ON WEIGHT for Raging Bull? Did you know that Jared Leto spent decades playing at being a talentless asshole in preparation to play a talentless asshole in Talentless Asshole: The Jared Leto Story - Portrait of a Fucking Dickhead? Sadly, such nonsense, and the money required to mount a campaign, has meant that Trace Lysette's amazing work in Andrea Pallaoro's low-budget drama of a trans woman reuniting with her family, particularly her hate-filled mother (Patricia Clarkson, flawless as usual), has been almost entirely overlooked by awards bodies. Apparently someone waiting their entire goddamn life to play a role, bringing every moment of their very existence to bear, is an insufficiently compelling narrative. Well, fuck 'em all, because Lysette's deeply felt performance—my pick for best of the year—will live forever anyway. It is rare for me to observe a character that feels like they existed before the movie began and will continue to live after the credits, but Monica is such a creation—flawed, messy, sexy, smart, and human, and Lysette brings her to extraordinary, vivid life. 

3. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

While I was generally impressed by the earlier Into the Spider-Verse, I found the constant hum of "greatest comic book movie ever" a bit hyperbolic. Not so at all with the utterly spectacular Across the Spider-Verse, for my money a genuine contender for that title. Apart from an oddly timed cliffhanger ending, the continuing adventures of Miles Morales improve on Into in every conceivable way—more emotionally complex (gone are the simplistic, if effective, "be yourself" bromides of the first movie), more eye-popping, funnier, more thrilling. Every frame is packed with excitement and beauty. A feast for the senses. 

2. Bottoms

Quite simply the funniest fucking thing I've seen in a decade, Emma Seligman's gloriously queer, unhinged Bottoms is violent, absurd, and can sit alongside, or even above, acid-tinged teen classics like Heathers and Mean Girls (so look for Bottoms: The Musical to dominate the Tonys at some distant point). Rising star Ayo Edibiri and co-writer Rachel Sennott (who delightfully shares some "chain-smoking Jewish auntie" DNA with Natasha Lyonne) are a pair of self-described "ugly, untalented lesbians" who spin a tale of a murderous summer spent in juvie ("Once, a girl tried to kill me with rat poison so I took her outside and punched her till she died") and start a fight club at their high school for clout and possible virginity loss. Scene after scene takes bonkers comedic chances, and the hit rate nears a hundred percent. Even ex-football star Marshawn Lynch adds surprisingly honed comic chops as one of the few adults in the film. Yeah, Hazel, let's do some terrorism. 

1. Killers of the Flower Moon

It's a special time in every white film dork's life when he can proclaim that a film by the dean of American cinema, Martin Scorsese, is the best of the year. And the king's (yes, he is both dean and king) adaptation and reframing of David Grann's tome on the severely underreported murder/genocide plot against wealthy Osage people in 1920s Oklahoma is certainly that. Earning every second of its 206-minute length, Killers of the Flower Moon is a deeply American epic, a saga of the racism and greed that the very country was founded upon. Leonardo DiCaprio does perhaps career-best work as dopy WWI veteran Ernest Burkhart, dragooned by uncle William King Hale (a suitably smiling but malevolent Robert DeNiro) into a scheme to drain oil-rich Osage of their money—principally the stunning Lily Gladstone's too-trusting Mollie. Here is the US in all its glory—full of natural beauty and resources and wondrous culture, ready to be strip-mined and annihilated for the white man's profit. Was Scorsese the right person to drag this harrowing story of an oppressed people further into the light? He's not sure himself, but hopes he's done his best, as outlined in the movie's bold epilogue. The eighty-one-year-old legend somehow continues to learn and grow as a filmmaker and a person, and we are lucky enough to bear witness.