For Oscar Night: My Best Films List (Finally)

Plus "SNL" and various cartoonists on the latest Trump disgrace--and new music from Jason Isbell.

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books and now writer/director of three award-winning films aired via PBS, including “Atomic Cover-up” and “Memorial Day Massacre.” Now watch trailer for acclaimed 2025 film “The Atomic Bowl.” Before all that, he was a longtime editor of the legendary Crawdaddy. At Blue Sky and Twitter: as @gregmitch. You can still subscribe to this newsletter for FREE. Sustain this newsletter by ordering one of his books.

Yes, it’s the big, overhyped, night, but I never enter a contest or wager money—no Oscar gamble—but down below I do (finally) offer my annual best films of the year ballot, and then the usual cartoons, many from abroad. If you think Americans are appalled by Trump’s latest, imagine what they feel in Europe.

Here’s last night’s SNL cold open on the Trump-Zelensky tragedy. Uneven but then again they only had 24 hours to put it together…

Moving to music….my man Jason Isbell appeared on Jimmy Fallon’s show the other night with a song from his upcoming album. "Robert’s” is a famous Nashville bar…

Which reminds me of Jason’s rocking song “Hope the High Road” inspired by the arrival of Trump’s first term, with the oft-quoted lined, “There can’t be more of them than us / There can’t be more.”

Best Films 2024

Every year for about 20 years I have been compiling and posting a “Best Films of the Year”—not that anyone asked—at my old blog Pressing Issues and now here. I often write that it was a “bad year for great films” saved mainly by some terrific documentaries and dramas from abroad, and this year is no different. I usually produce a tentative list at the end of December, noting that it will be updated as I catch up with a few more films in January and February.

I would say that I am a pretty critical critic, so my lists are usually not exactly expressive of popular tastes. To provide some idea of my ‘aesthetic’ let me list my picks for 2023, in no order (and, of course, there were no doubt a few terrific films I had not seen at that time): Past Lives, Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest, Fallen Leaves, The Teacher’s Lounge, Revoir Paris, Four Daughters, Casta Brava Lebanon, American Fiction, Monster.

So now, sound the trumpets, my best of 2024 as of March 1:

»Top 2:

Green Border (trailer below)

No Other Land

>Next tier:

Perfect Days

All We Imagine as Light

Flow

Say Nothing (TV series)

September 5

A Complete Unknown

Good One

Evil Does Not Exist

Sing Sing

(note: I’m Still Here very likely to make that list but not seeing it until today or this week)

Mainly Good but Not Among Very Best

Conclave (far-fetched twist), The Return, Didi, His Three Daughters, The Apprentice, Nickel Boys (final ten minutes confusing and self-indulgent), Dahomey (ditto), Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, Sugar Cane, The Goldman Case, Civil War.

>Still have not seen (in some cases due to little interest)

I’m Still Here, Emilia Perez, 2nd half of The Brutalist, Wicked, The Bibi Files, Vermiglio, La Chimera, Dune 2, Nosferatu, The Girl With the Needle.

Loony Toons