Here are we again as expecting the beginning of 2025, but, boy, what a depressing year 2024 has been. While we were all surely hopeful around the beginning of this year, there were actually some good moments of hope and optimism to cherish, but the world seems to keep going down as shown from the dreadful result of the 2024 US Presidential Election. In addition, the South Korean society was shocked and shaken by those vile, mean, and incompetent politicians including the current President of South Korea during this month, and I and many other South Koreans were all the more devastated by a horrible airplane accident which happened yesterday.

While being quite angry, shocked, and depressed during these last several weeks, I kept watching and reviewing movies as usual, probably because that is the only way to soothe and lighten up myself besides reading books. This year, I wrote more than 300 reviews just like I did in last year, and I still believe that I will go to hell for writing so many reviews every year without getting paid at all for this.

Although I must confess that it was rather hard to pick the No.1 movie of this year, I watched a number of really good movies during this year, and I will gladly share my inconsequential annual list with you as before. Maybe cinema is really dying as some people said again and again during last several years, but there are still interesting old and new stuffs out there, and I came to learn more as enjoying both old and new movies at my home and local theaters.

By the way, mainly because I am just an amateur reviewer in South Korea, I could not watch many notable films of this year including “Babygirl”, “Dahomey”, “A Different Man”, “The Brutalist”, “An Complete Unknown”, “No Other Land”, “Queer”, and “A Real Pain” before the end of this year, but I will probably watch and then review them in the next year. Of course, they will be mentioned at the end of the next year if they are as good as many other folks said.