25 Favorite Rewatches & First-Time Watches of 2024
what it says on the tin
Presented with very little editorializing…I give to you…my favorite non-2024 releases that I watched in 2024. Going through my Letterboxd to write this, the 3 biggest phases/trends I noticed in my viewing last year were:
1. Erotic Thrillers (as discussed)
2. New, old, anything Italian — I watched a lot of classic midcentury Italian films this year, inspired by a desire to unpack contemporary Italian directors’ influences. 2024 was the year I fell in love with Italian filmmaking after many years of reading and loving Italian fiction & poetry in translation. Big resolution of 2025 is to get more serious about learning Italian (if anyone has any recs for NY based conversation groups lmk…)!! I’d love to be able to experience films like Journey to Italy senza subtitles.
3.Beloved period pieces — A staple in my rewatch diet every year, though last year I made an effort to see more of them with a crowd which I definitely will continue into 2025. Hearing a crowd of people squeal when Alan Rickman appeared in Sense and Sensibility was a joyful, silly highlight of the year. Seeing these movies that I’ve watched one thousand times at home up on a big screen for the first time felt like hearing a favorite album on a hi-fi system. Noticing details in performance and camera movement that I’d never appreciated before, little breaths and pauses that made me feel like I was rediscovering these movies all over again.
So…without further ado…