The 10 Best Movies of 2024

The world of film came to the year 2024 with many uncertainties. A strike had just taken place over 118 days, leaving many productions coming to a halt and thereby postponing many movies to be released months, if not years later. The battle of the theatrical versus streaming release is ever present, too, even with the impressive results that many films had seen in the box office over the past couple years following the now eased COVID restrictions. For a moment, it seemed this might be a throwaway year until things in the industry could get back on track. 

That being said, the only bad years for films are years where you aren’t looking. These 12 months gave us cinematic spectacles from the world of Oz to the sands of Arrakis; inside Brooklyn mansions and across Pennsylvania landscapes; love stories with hitmen and stuntmen, and horror tales with teenage vampire girls, black-market drugs, and Count Orlock. We rode alongside a bygone motorcycle gang, befriended a wild robot, hung out with Dylan and Wolverine again, and watched as incarcerated men found a new means of expression through theater. All across the globe, from Iran and India to Brazil and Latvia, there was something for everyone to identify with theatrically in 2024. Listed below were some of my very favorites: 

10. Conclave

Who knew priests could be so scandalous? Following up on his devastating antiwar remake All Quiet on the Western Front, director Edward Berger goes to the Vatican to show audiences how easily power is won and lost yet simultaneously shows how impossible it is to dismantle the institutions that grant it to us. As the Catholic Church is in crisis over who to select as their next Pope, Ralph Fiennes’ Cardinal Lawrence does his best to keep things in check while continuously denying the responsibility of taking on the responsibilities himself. The editing in this film by Nick Emerson is what keeps Conclave consistently entertaining and nail biting, with the story never quite going where you think it will next. 

9. A Real Pain

In A Real Pain, writer/director Jesse Eisenberg and Kieren Culkin make one of the best movie buddy pairings that we have seen in some time. The two play cousins who take a tour to Poland to visit their grandmother’s home before the war, but like with all great stories of reconnections, learning what it was that drifted the two apart is really what makes the journey. Culkin is the scene-stealer here, knowing how to hit just the right notes of funny, charming, or obnoxious depending on what the scene is calling for, and perhaps most importantly, presenting grief and suffering in a mature and honest manner. His character broke my heart in all the right ways. As with The Brutalist, 2024 gave us a strong showcasing of Jewish navigation in the western world. 

8. The Substance // Love Lies Bleeding

For the eighth slot, I chose to combine two wildly original body horror films where a female protagonist takes experimental drugs to alter her body image. In Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, the drug allows Demi Moore’s Elizabeth Sparkle to produce an “other” out of her body that meets the impossible beauty standards set by the entertainment industry; in Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding, two friends (Kristen Stewart as Lou and Katy M. O’Brian as Jackie) juice up with steroids – initially for a bodybuilding competition and then to protect themselves against Lou’s criminal family. Apart from some gratuitous violence and nudity across the board, the comparisons mainly stop there, as each film approaches the revenge concept through very different styles. Throughout The Substance, we see a more personal character study of Ms. Sparkle where she quickly begins to deteriorate by the effects of this drug, juxtaposed by Margaret Qualley as her young and successful other half Sue. Love Lies Bleeding, instead, presents its neo-noir thriller through the centralized romance of Lou and Jackie. The pairing makes for a greatly disturbing double feature.

7. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story

Far before the MCU, DCEU, FOX and SONY franchises, and even the Nolan Dark Knight trilogy, there was Christopher Reeve as Superman. First appearing on screens in 1978, Richard Donner’s film was a breakthrough in how seriously audiences could connect with a superhero on the big screen. The tagline of Superman was “YOU’LL BELIEVE A MAN CAN FLY” and this was only possible through the palpable decency that Reeves’ performance exemplified as the man of steel. 

Just shy of twenty years and four films later, Reeves nearly dies in an equestrian competition as he is thrown off his horse. He narrowly survives, becomes quadriplegic, and devotes the rest of his life to raising awareness of those with spinal cord injuries and funding research to help him and millions others one day walk (and fly) again. Through archival footage and testimonies from friends and family, here is a documentary that captures the essence of a man who was larger than life in every sense of the phrase. 

6. A Different Man

Sebastian Stan has had one hell of a year in 2024. Now an Oscar nominee for his not-so-flattering portrayal of President Trump as he rises to power in The Apprentice, it’s actually his layered performance in Aaron Schimberg’s surreal, David Lynch-esque identity crisis A Different Man that highlights the best of what this former Captain America actor has to offer. In the film, Stan’s Edward undergoes a facial reconstruction surgery because he believes it’s his physical limitations that prevent him from finding love and success as a theater actor in New York. The surgery goes well, but soon Oswald (played by Under the Skin breakout Adam Pearson, who actually lives with neurofibromatosis) introduces himself to Edward’s life as a reflection of all the man’s shortcomings that he chalked up purely to his ailment. Equal parts funny and unpredictable, this low-concept sci-fi is one of 2024’s hidden gems. 

5. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Part of what made Mad Max: Fury Road so special is that it immediately thrusts the viewer into the intensity of the story. The way in which Tom Hardy’s Max Rockatansky was forced to digest the insanity of the world he took part in reflected the audiences’ absorption. Charlize Theron’s Furiosa, however, was the emotional heart of the story, and desensitized to it by the time we were introduced. By that metric, it makes sense that Miller wanted to revisit this world a decade later to give a fleshed out introspective into what broke the one-armed heroine herself. Here, Anya-Taylor Joy dawns the younger role, and it is that delicate balance between the thoughtful character development of Furiosa (her romance with Praetorian Jack, her determination to take down Dementus) and the same jaw dropping action set pieces so intricately staged that they are a marvel to witness, making Miller’s return to the Citdal so worth the wait. 

4. Challengers

Tennis is officially the most cinematic sport to film. Luca Guadagnino’s brilliant love triangle drama Challengers proved that without a doubt, filming a match on the court with the same intensity and more originality than you can find in most blockbuster action setpieces all year (they put the camera on the tennis ball!). Zendaya’s best performance is on full-front here as Tashi, and her push and pull relationships with Josh O’Connor’s Patrick and Mike Faist’s Art as they go to war for her approval makes for some of the most entertaining moments at the movies all year. Challengers is like if you took out the overt eroticism found in movies of similar romance stories and instead replaced it with the thrill of the game and easily the most energetic Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross score outside of a David Fincher movie. 

3. The Brutalist 

I find myself at a loss for words at both the gargantuan scale and operatic beauty of Brady Corbet’s three and a half hour long magnum opus. Split in two parts, The Brutalist is an American dream epic that in broad terms is reminiscent of its classic Hollywood contemporaries like Citizen Kane, The Godfather and There Will Be Blood yet functions in a way unlike anything of its kind has done before. Adrien Brody (once again) plays a Shoah survivor – László Tóth – a visionary Hungarian architect who immigrated to Pennsylvania and rises above his limitations to the satisfaction of his employer Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) through his brilliant designs. At home, he has a wife and niece in Budapest who he was separated from amidst the war. László refuses to compromise on his work in the face of adversity: “the architecture speaks for itself.”

The second half of The Brutalist takes the foundation of the film’s first 100 minutes and deconstructs it to an unsubtle but likely inevitable outcome. Tonally, it might feel like you’re watching a different film entirely in points but it is just as beautiful, heartbreaking, and essential. The two halves ultimately come together to create a larger picture of a timeless truth in this country in regard to the immigrant experience. 

2. Nickel Boys

Upon hearing about RaMell Ross’ bold new drama Nickel Boys, I was skeptical that 

its first person perspective camera technique would be something of a gimmick: more attuned to a video game rather than a character study of two black adolescents trying to survive in a notorious reformatory in the Jim Crow era south. To say I was mistaken is in an understatement. Ross and his cinematographer Jomo Fray use this filmmaking technique to fully transport the audience to a time and place in America that those lucky would like to forget existed and those less so have to live with the trauma of half a century later. In the film we follow Elwood and Turner as the two navigate their harrowing experiences, and in Elwood’s particular case, wait with little hope for any good news about his grandmother’s attempt to appeal his conviction. The camera shifts back and forth between the two perspectives, fleshing each boy out in a way that it never becomes confusing from whose eyes we see the events unfolding. It makes for a true out of body experience. 

1. Anora

I have been a huge fan of Sean Baker’s work since his breakout Tangerine, where he followed the trials and tribulations of California sex workers through the lens of an iPhone 5S. Two years later, he teamed up with Willem Dafoe and moved locations to an impoverished Orlando motel community in The Florida Project and, afterward, to Texas City for the most failed attempt at a pornstar’s redemption with Red Rocket. In Anora, Sean Baker builds upon a decade of portraying societal “outcasts” through a tenderness and authenticity seldom found in mainstream Hollywood (he writes and edits his films in addition to directing!)

Mikey Madison plays Anora, or Annie as she prefers to be called, who works as an escort and stripper in Manhattan. She resides in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, a neighborhood adjacent to the one in which I grew up and one many probably do not think of when they picture New York City. She meets a charming but arrogant Russian kid, ignores the red flags of how he could possibly own his home or travel to Las Vegas on a whim at his age, and he then marries her. Soon after, reality kicks in for Annie when his oligarch parents come to town and try to annul the marriage; this is where the script of the film really flips and begins to shine. Seamlessly, Anora turns from a hilarious oddball romance that would double bill perfectly with Pretty Woman to a (still very funny) nightmare odyssey across southern Brooklyn that more so takes on the likes of a Martin Scorsese or Safdie Brothers drama. Stick around for that intense, jaw dropping ending and keep your eyes on the lookout for Yuriy Borisov, perhaps the breakout performance in a film full of well-rounded characters. 

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