With only two films with a major studio imprimatur this year, the movies on the just-released AFI Awards Motion Pictures of the Year lean heavily towards smaller, indie-style entries.

Named as best of 2024 are Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, Emilia Pérez, Nickel Boys, A Real Pain, Sing Sing and Wicked.

Only the aforementioned Wicked from Universal and Dune: Part Two from Warner Bros represent a major, however Searchlight, now owned by Disney, nabbed two spots with A Complete Unknown and A Real Pain and Universal’s Focus Features landed on the list with Conclave. Streamers were only represented with Netflix’s Emilia Pérez, though Amazon obviously has a connection with MGM/Orion’s Nickel Boys.

Not making the grade this year were a number of Oscar hopefuls including Paramount’s trio of Gladiator II, September 5, and Better Man; Apple Original Films’ Blitz; Netflix’s The Piano Lesson and Maria; two Luca Guadagnino films, Challengers and Queer; Venice Golden Lion winner The Room Next Door; Cannes titles like The Substance and Donald Trump origin story The Apprentice; plus two praised animated films The Wild Robot and Inside Out 2, the latter being 2023’s No. 1 grossing film at the box office. I was also sorry to see AFI favorite Clint Eastwood missing out with the barely marketed by Warner Bros critically acclaimed drama Juror #2, which would have been a nice surprise.

Here’s the official list:

AFI MOTION PICTURES OF THE YEAR

ANORA
THE BRUTALIST
A COMPLETE UNKNOWN
CONCLAVE
DUNE: PART TWO
EMILIA PÉREZ
NICKEL BOYS
A REAL PAIN
SING SING
WICKED

If you didn’t make the list take heart. For the past three years when both organizations named 10 movies as best pictures, AFI and Oscar agreed on eight of them in 2021 and 2023, and only seven in 2022. But all that comes with an asterisk as AFI deems “ineligible” most international or foreign films and usually makes up for it by giving a “special” mention — in 2021, for instance, to Oscar-nominated Belfast, and in 2022 to Oscar-nominated The Banshees of Inisherin. In fact, in 2022, the three movies that got Oscar Best Picture nominations but failed to make AFI’s list were all international including All Quiet on the Western Front and Triangle of Sadness. In 2021, one of the two including Belfast up for Oscar that weren’t on AFI’s Top 10 due to ineligibility was Japan’s Drive My Car.

Interestingly, French Oscar entry Emilia Pérez did make AFI’s Top 10 this year even with its clear international roots, something that hasn’t happened in recent years.

The AFI Awards luncheon will talke place January 10, 2025 at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills.



Source link