The Best Movies of 2024

Image courtesy of A24.

Needless to say, 2024 was not a good year. For movies, it was a slow burn, starting off with a few highly recommended films and then ending with a bang following a gap in which only a few films of interest were released. 

It has been nowhere near as good as the banner year of cinema in 2023, but not so dire as some lesser years of recent memory. My top 20 this year had more genre - mostly horror - films than in recent years, and while my two favorites of the year were epics in length, my top 10 had some shorter entries than usual.

Three of the films in my top 10 were from actors-turned-directors, though to be fair one of them already had a few under his belt. Also, only two of my top 10 films this year were from directors who had previously cracked the list. The other eight were all newbies.

Also, while this wasn't one of the best years in film in recent memory, there were as always a number of films that just missed my top 20 that deserve to be recognized. These include: Malcolm Washington's "The Piano Lesson," Steve McQueen's "Blitz," Agnieszka Holland's "Green Border," Josh Greenbaum's "Will & Harper," Nuri Bilge Ceylan's "About Dry Grasses," and George Miller's "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga."

There are also a few acclaimed films that I have yet to see. Once I catch up with them, I'll add them to the top 20, if warranted. These include Aaron Schimberg's "A Different Man," Paul Schrader's "Oh Canada," Greg Kwedar's "Sing Sing," Mohammad Rasoulof's "The Seed of the Sacred Fig," Gints Zilbalodis' "Flow," Tim Mielants' "Small Things Like These," and Tim Fehlbaum's "September 5." Also, Francis Ford Coppola's "Megalopolis," which I liked, also deserves points for its sheer chutzpah and existence.

These are my 10 runners up (20-11) for 2024:

20. Nosferatu (Robert Eggers) - One of the better adaptations of Bram Stoker's novel in recent years. Atmospheric and cryptic. Reviewed here.
19. Oddity (Damian McCarthy) - Hands down, the scariest horror movie I've seen in recent years. This Irish picture is long on atmosphere and features some of the most gasp-inducing moments of recent memory.
18. The Wild Robot (Chris Sanders) - At a time of such discord, this lovely film is a good-hearted and gorgeously animated fable that will lift your spirits.
17. Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood) - This legal thriller/morality tale is Eastwood's best film in a few years. It deserved more attention than it got. Reviewed here.
16. Perfect Days (Wim Wenders) - Some might considered this a 2023 movie, but it didn't make it into wide release until February - so, in my book, it's fair game. Wender's film is his best in a long time and it makes a strong case for living a life of simplicity. Reviewed here.
15. Hit Man (Richard Linklater) - This film's tone often swings wildly, veering from comedy to romance to dark noir territory, but Linklater handles it all deftly. One of the year's most flat-out enjoyable films. Reviewed here.
14. A Complete Unknown (James Mangold) - While Todd Haynes' "I'm Not There" is the definitive Bob Dylan movie, Mangold's more traditional biopic is surprisingly engrossing, very well performed, and makes the wise choice of focusing on a specific period of the icon's career, rather than doing an all-encompassing career overview. Reviewed here.
13. Challengers (Luca Guadagnino) - The sexiest movie about tennis ever? Guadagnino's first (and best) of two films this year is a wildly entertaining sports movie and romantic triangle drama. Reviewed here. 
12. The Substance (Coralie Fargeat) - Nothing I can say will prepare you for the insanity of this horror/satire revolving around the pressure on women in Hollywood - and American society - to remain young-looking and beautiful. Demi Moore gives what is likely her best performance and viewers' jaws are likely to hit the floor again and again. Reviewed here.
11. Longlegs (Osgood Perkins) - Nothing more and nothing less than a great genre picture, Perkins' serial killer thriller is long on spooky atmosphere and unsettling imagery. Also, Nicolas Cage gives one of the year's most frightening performances. Reviewed here.

And, now, for the top 10:

10. I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun) - It took a little extracurricular reading before I fully got this occasionally dreamy, sometimes nightmarish allegory for gender dysphoria, but I grew to really like it. The film has mid-career Gregg Araki vibes, but with the low-fi style to which Schoenbrun fans have become accustomed. This one will stick in your memory. Reviewed here.
9. Woman of the Hour (Anna Kendrick) - One of the year's genuine surprises, Anna Kendrick's directorial debut is a true crime thriller about an actress who comes across a serial killer on a game show. Tense and chilling, this is a harrowing thriller about a society that doesn't listen to women's concerns. 
8. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross) - It's a rare thing when I love a movie based on a book that I revere. This is likely because I prefer something new over adapting a story with which I'm already familiar. But in this case, Ross' adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer winner is something new - a first-person POV account of two young Black men who were abused at a reformatory school during the height of segregation. Unique and powerful. Reviewed here.
7. Conclave (Edward Berger) - Less about religion than it is about power structures, Berger's film about the choosing of a new pope plays like a paranoid 1970s thriller. It features a great Ralph Fiennes performance and a bevy of solid supporting performances as well as a genuinely surprising ending. Reviewed here.
6. All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia) - As luminous as its title suggests, Payal Kapadia's directorial debut is a moving and visually gorgeous tale of sisterhood as well as a city symphony of Mumbai, where it is set. One of this year's biggest hits the Cannes Film Festival - and it's easy to see why. Reviewed here.
5. Anora (Sean Baker) - Although "The Florida Project" remains my favorite Baker joint, his latest is a crass, stylish, brassy, and all-around film that starts as a tale of amour fou before slowly transitioning into a chronicle of the haves vs. the have nots. Mikey Madison gives a star-making performance. A firecracker of a movie. Reviewed here.
4. Hard Truths (Mike Leigh) - If Leigh's "Happy Go Lucky" was the story of an overly pleasant person, then his latest is a chronicle of an overly unpleasant one. But in the case of both films, there's much more to it than that. A film about the difficulties of living in the modern world, which - I don't have to tell any of you - is a lot. Reviewed here.
3. A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg) - Eisenberg's sophomore feature is a major leap forward. Easily the year's funniest, but also among its most moving, the film suggests that it's an honorable thing to try to put oneself in another's shoes to understand their pain, but a lot harder than one might think. Reviewed here.
2. The Beast (Bertrand Bonello) - I saw this film back in April and have been thinking about it ever since. Although I'm still not 100 percent sure I could explain it to you, Bonello's latest is part period piece with Giallo touches, part futuristic Cronenbergian sci-fi chronicle, and part Lynchian surveillance thriller set in Los Angeles, with a Henry James short story as a jumping-off point and an overall concept having to do with the fear of falling in love. Reviewed here.
1. The Brutalist (Brady Corbet) - In this third film as a director, actor Brady Corbet aims for an American epic in the vein of "There Will Be Blood" or "Once Upon a Time in America," and succeeds, although the film's style and imagery clearly has been inspired by the European masters. "The Brutalist" is also fascinating in that it is many things at once - an immigration tale, a saga of how capitalism destroys art, and an increasingly mysterious story about obsession that culminates in an epilogue that shines a new light on the entire endeavor. Reviewed here.