The Best Movies of 2024

The year 2024 probably won’t go down as one of the greatest film years of all time. At this point, it’s hard to say if movies, as we know them, will even exist a decade from now. When films from Clint Eastwood, Francis Ford Coppola, and Robert Zemeckis can’t even get proper theatrical releases, people who loves movies find themselves wondering what the point is. On the other hand, there have been a number of gigantic box-office releases, some whopping returns from sequels, and a number of very entertaining films both from mainstream sources and obscure indie ones. As always, it’s impossible to see everything, but our critics see a lot. If you can’t find something in the list below, then we guess you just don’t like movies much.

London Faust

Nightbitch–Perhaps the only truly unusual film of the year. The other “odd” stuff is the kind of capital O we’ve all come to know and mostly love, but Marielle Heller here marries normalcy and gonzo in a way that actually challenges our conception of narrative

AGGRO DR1FT–Harmony Korine, the master, had a major hand in ushering in a now stale era of “strong objectivity” ground level freakazoid empathy, so it’s a testament to karma that he gets to make what truly feels like the first film of the new era: the Chud era. A hilarious and  involving parody of esoteric manosphere-ism.

I Saw The TV Glow–Despite the comonality of the experience of social alienation in the modern age, only two pictures this year dared to tackle it directly, this and the next on the list. Jane Schoenbrun flexes some visual beauty after proving the ability to see it emotionally in the film of the decade, 2022’s We’re All Going To The World’s Fair. Far more heartfelt than any of the A24 prefab gonzo that presaged it.

La Bete–The year’s most culturally incisive work even accounting for Korine, Bertrand Bonello proves his unparalleled understanding of the zeitgeist in a work that’s post-postmodern in both genre and politics. Lea Seydoux’s eternity of ennui sits uncomfy within the high0keyed, enlivening quirk of this thing. It’s a work that if rightfully embraced should reinvigorate cinematic innovation in a way even a couple films on this list could only hope to do.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga–Essentially perfection, Fury Road’s fascinating tangential lore that stirred the imagination gets a full plunge here. So silent is Furiosa the character that the picture becomes as fully ‘cinematic’ as any drama we’ve seen this decade. Megalopolis, La Bete, TV Glow and this all can compete for the title of “most lit shit in a film,” but this wins out as the most complete, integrated, and above all, classical. 

Stephen Garrett

Anora–Live the fantasy: some stripper sex work turns into a Pretty Woman romance that becomes an up-all-night wild goose chase with a Russian twist, in this wild-eyed, genre-popping comedy-drama-misadventure social statement of fuck-the-oligarchs female empowerment.

The Brutalist–Principled postwar Eastern European exceptionalism struggles with the stubborn mediocrity and calculated compromises of mid-century America, as Holocaust survivor and master builder László Tóth fuses his personal anguish into sublime architecture. An incisive, gutting, galvanic generational portrait of trauma writ large with concrete and marble.

Dahomey–The Ghosts of Colonialism Past—personified within timeless works of African art—haunt this slender, potent documentary look at the repatriation of precious artifacts from a Paris museum back to their homeland in modern-day Benin. The film’s second-half academic debate wrestling with their return is absolutely riveting.

Dune Part Two–Bringing to an end—for now—the story of Paul Atreides’ transformation from skinny teen to prophetic Chosen One, visionary auteur Denis Villeneuve completes his wildly ambitious adaptation of Frank Herbert’s eco-action treatise on mineral resources, political brinksmanship and religious opportunism.

Emilia Perez–A musical tragedy that cross-pollinates Mexican drug cartels with trans rights? Claro que sí. Jacques Audiard continues his electrifyingly eclectic mastery of stories about unlikely fringe heroes disrupting and redefining the myopic confines of their precarious worlds.

Eno–As random and serendipitous and playful and frisky and poignant as life itself, the Brian Eno documentary Eno—uniquely AI-generated at every screening, and offering, for repeat viewers, new bits alongside the recycled ones—breathes with invention. And inspiration.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga–Anger never felt so fun, in George Miller’s exhilarating return to the post-apocalyptic hellscape—this time to inject some more defiant estrogen as counterweight to his machismo-dominated franchise. Expect baroque monikers, grandiose action pieces, and jaw-dropping stunt work, all filtered through the filmmaker’s own uniquely epic sense of madness.

His Three Daughters–Writer-director Azazel Jacobs, along with his virtuosic acting trio of Carrie Coons, Elizabeth Olsen, and Natasha Lyonne, create a grief-riddled chamber piece about the onset of a father’s death that’s as symphonic as its subject.

A Real Pain–Two estranged cousins, one an awkward introvert, the other a charismatic disaster, honor their recently deceased Polish grandmother by returning to her childhood country—concentration camp included. Descendants compare their own soft lives to a matriarch’s hard sacrifices in Jesse Eisenberg’s wise blend of fraught kinship and survivor guilt.

Queer–One is the loneliest number in Luca Guadagnino’s dreamlike adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ lovelorn confessional, featuring a ferociously committed Daniel Craig as a tortured gay expat in Mexico living at a time when homosexuality offered only pariah status. Finding love, feeling love, trusting love—everything is volatile when the real struggle is loving one’s self.

Neal Pollack

Anora–Director Sean Baker’s mainstream breakthrough, this is a modern take on the “sex worker with a heart of gold” trope. Mikey Madison gives a breakthrough, star-making performance. Anora is the rare film that reads both as a tragedy and a comedy.

The Apprentice–The film world is too infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome (and MAGA audiences too awash in hero worship) to properly recognize this brilliant, mordantly funny look at the creation of the world’s most powerful man. Sebastian Stan is extremely good as young Donald Trump, and Jeremy Strong is extraordinary as the evil but poignant Roy Cohn, the Donald’s mentor in powermongering. It’s like a classic Spy Magazine article come to life.

Challengers–Luca Guadagnino is mostly getting props for Queer, his excellent adaptation of a William S. Burroughs novella, but I preferred his sexy tennis melodrama, starring Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor at their sweatiest and most sultry. For once, a non-linear narrative works fairly well. The tennis scenes are great, the sex scenes are great, and the climax, so to speak, feels well-earned. A different, polymorphous take on the sports movie.

La Chimera–Speaking of Josh O’Connor, he gives another star turn in Alice Rohrwacher’s movie about an odd savant wearing a dirty suit who becomes the leader of a sleazy group of antiquities thieves in Italy. This is essentially a quirky indie film about grave robbing, and features the second-best Isabella Rossellini performance of the year.

Conclave–Speaking of Isabella Rossellini, she will probably win Best Supporting Actress for a truly supporting performance as a nun influencing the selection of the next Pope. This is a ridiculous crowd-pleasing melodrama about Papal selection that has inspired a thousand memes.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga–It’s hard to look past Chris Hemsworth’s supporting turn as the movie’s villain, Dementus. You heard me, Dementus! It’s not quite as revelatory as Fury Road, but it’s close enough, a fully-realized post-apocalyptic world, with tons of great action.

Gladiator 2–Does this belong on the list? Maybe not. But I don’t care, it had a baboon fight, a legendary supporting performance from Denzel Washington, and, most importantly, a monkey wearing a diaper.

A Real Pain–I liked Between the Temples, but Jesse Eisenberg’s funny, touching script about a couple of mismatched cousins on a Holocaust tour to pay respect to their late bubbe is more of a crowd-pleaser. Plus Kieran Culkin’s performance is an all-timer, showcasing an actor at the peak of his powers.

Sara Stewart

Dune Part Two–Denis Villeneuve’s second chapter of the epic Dune saga just squeaked by Furiosa for the honor of being the most movie of the year. My ears might still be ringing, in the best way, from Hans Zimmer’s gut-rumbling score. Watching dubious messiah Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) learn to ride a sandworm is a high point, as is the gladiatorial birthday massacre for Austin Butler’s psychopathic, hairless Feyd-Rautha, but honestly, this long-ass middle installment delivered a banger of a scene nearly every scene and earned Villeneuve the right to carp about how people should see movies on the big screen.

Between the Temples–This shaggy, intimate dark comedy from director Nathan Silver features the inspired pairing of national treasure Carol Kane and a winningly weary Jason Schwartzman. He’s a suicidal widower cantor; she’s his long-ago music teacher, who wants him to train her to have a very belated bat mitzvah. Let the Harold and Maude overtones roll. Also, best-ever supporting performance from a shriekingly rusty door hinge. 

The Substance–For really satisfying gender trope-stomping, give me a French female director every time. Like Catherine Breillat and Celine Sciamma, Coralie Fargeat brings special Gallic-feminist relish to this satirical body horror thriller starring Demi Moore as an aging L.A. star who finds a very off-brand fountain of youth. The catch? Oh, just Margaret Qualley being birthed out of her spinal column for a 50/50 existential time share. The climax of this brazen, gore-soaked flick will have you giggling in sheer disbelief, if you’re not too busy covering your eyes.

Will and Harper–“I love this country so much. I just don’t know if it loves me back right now,” says Harper Steele, the newly transitioned woman at the center of this agonizingly timely Netflix doc. Say what you will about celebrity grandstanding, but I defy you not to be moved by this travelogue of Steele, a retired Saturday Night Live head writer, and her buddy Will Ferrell. Their road trip, aimed at reacquainting the two pals as well as reconnecting Steele with the dirtbag bro-haunts she loved in her former life, veers between goofy, endearing and, looking down the barrel of 2025, pretty damn emotional.

Monkey Man–Dev Patel’s furious directorial debut is the perfect movie for our time. It’s John Wick mashed up with the mythology of the Hindu god Hanuman, a martial arts-fueled howl of rage at billionaire corruption, religious hypocrisy and transphobia. Patel also stars as The Kid, our nameless hero on a single-minded revenge mission, who trains in an underground boxing circuit and stealths his way up the wait-staff ladder at an elite urban brothel. With a pulsing soundtrack and an admirable preference for martial arts over guns, it dishes up one spectacular melee after another. Does it hurt that long-ago Slumdog Millionaire boy wonder Patel is now chiseled from marble? Viewer, it does not.