(This article is part of our Best of 2024 series.)
Ahhhhhhhh the movies. What a year it was for the talkies, folks. We got a little bit of everything. Some romance, some action, some scares, some Venom.
We were blessed with movies from French Canadians, the Euro French, Taiwanese Americans, and Philly’s favorite son. Brits made movies about American society, A German guy made a movie about the pope, and an Italian dude made a film about my hometown.
The construction of a “Top of” list is always difficult. These aren’t my flat-out favorite movies of the year. Nor are they the films that I found to be best made. It’s often odd to admit that those two criteria don’t always entirely match up.
Instead, I’ve tried to construct a list that celebrates what I personally enjoyed most, what stood out as exceptional filmmaking, and what I believe to be representative of this great year in cinema.
10. DiDi
The pre-teen/tween coming of age drama is a tried and true sub-genre. The formula is set. We know why and how it works. Didi comfortably operates within the bounds of the genre (to great effect). It touches all of the necessary topics – friendships, family dynamics, first crushes – with emotional honesty and respect for its teenage protagonist. As someone who also came of age in the mid-aughts, I definitely gravitated to the film’s depiction of how early social media culture made all of the uncertainties and anxieties of teenage life that much more confusing to navigate.
9. Conclave
This year’s preeminent “people in rooms talking” movie. Papal politicking unfolding in Mean Girl-esque drama. There’s backstabbing, secret alliances, and vaping. Ralph Fiennes is absolutely brilliant in the lead role, and the supporting cast (John Lithgow and Stanley Tucci amongst others) also bring their A-game. Stunning cinematography captures the beauty of the Vatican and the darkness lurking within the folks who uphold the institution. Catholicism is so back! Well, maybe not. But at least interesting movies about Catholicism are.
8. Hundreds of Beavers
It could’ve been higher on my list, but because I got to it fairly late after countless people recommended it to me for months on end, I don’t feel like I can properly claim this movie. The being said, it’s a simplistically radical exercise in audio-visual storytelling. It serves as a great reminder of what can be done with the tools of cinema. Movies can still be inventive while pulling inspiration from the past (e.g. Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton) or other media (e.g. cartoons and video games). We need more movies with this level of commitment to bits and gags. I haven’t laughed so hard at a new movie in years.
7. Twisters
We will never forget the summer of Glenn Powell. Between Twisters and Hit Man, the internet was ready to anoint Powell as the next great American movie star (I still think that title will go to Chalamet, but that’s a discussion for another day). Twisters not only proves that Powell has the charisma and acting chops to anchor a great blockbuster movie, but that he has a keen eye for picking the right movies to star in and the right directors to work with. Twisters is as close to perfect as pop cinema in 2024 can be. A lot of that is thanks to having someone like Lee Isaac Chung direct. There’s a competence here that we don’t find in a lot of blockbuster filmmaking that is quite refreshing.
6. Red Rooms
Red Rooms is one of the best films about the internet and how it’s shaped us individually and as a collective. It’s an absolutely haunting journey into a rabbit hole only possible in modern internet culture. The film grabs you and drags you on said journey before you’re fully aware of where you’re being taken. Several scenes stand out as some of the most captivating of recent memory. As a thriller, it draws from both Lynch and Fincher (shoutout to the Davids, and RIP to the former) to create a uniquely chilling cinematic experience.
5. The Brutalist
It’s ambitious. It’s epic. It’s fairly monumental. Seeing it in theaters with the intermission is worth your time. The concept of the American Dream is fertile ground for exploration in cinema, especially as it relates to the immigrant experience. Everything from The Godfather to Minari examines the persistence, heartbreak, and everything in between of chasing the American Dream. The Brutalist will prove to be one of the more fascinating movies about the subject matter. It’s raw and weighty. There are more tribulations than triumph, yet both feel massive. And perhaps most curiously, it ends up becoming a bit of a meta-commentary about both artist’s and audience’s complicated relationship to art.
4. Nosferatu
Eggers doesn’t miss. His latest film, a new interpretation of Nosferatu, is exactly what it needed to be – sufficiently weird, incredibly atmospheric, and beautifully photographed. It toes the perfect line of spooky and horny; both elements lingering in great tension throughout the film. Beyond being a wonderful vampire movie, Nosferatu is also an excellent period piece. Everything from the set design to costuming contributes to a sense of period authenticity and geographic clarity. Eggers is also able to pull great performances from all of his leads, especially Bill Skarsgård fully disappearing into the monstrously creepy Count Orlok.
3. Dune: Part Two
Denis Villeneuve’s follow up to 2020’s Dune delivers on expanding and expounding on the thesis of the first film in magnificent ways. Dune: Part Two is a miraculously grand, and meticulously ambitious achievement of cinema. Villeneuve enters an exclusive group of filmmakers who are able to translate an unfilmable novel into a fully legible and accessible blockbuster. The beauty of the translation is his ability to stay true to the thematic core of the story and never water down its essence in the pursuit of accessibility. It’s a movie meant for the big screen. I’m glad I was to catch it on the biggest screen available to me. And doubly happy I was to write a full review about its majesty.
2. I Saw the TV Glow
One of the most deeply touching movies of the last few years. As film fans and fervent media consumers, we sometimes forget just how deeply personal our relationship to the texts we love can become. Many times, it can feel like they were made just for us; like they’re woven into the very fabric of who we are as individuals. I Saw the TV Glow asks viewers to grapple with how we approach that attachment and the subsequent confusion surrounding our own identities. It’s a gorgeous movie – both visually and narratively. It’s one I haven’t stopped thinking about since watching and one I can’t imagine I’d ever want to stop considering.
1. Challengers
Movies were a lot of fun this year, but for me, nothing was more fun than Challengers. I must admit that I was predisposed to like it because it takes place in my hometown (I did the Leo OUATIH pointing meme and everything). But even beyond that, the movie is a blast. The script construction is fresh and economical. The tennis scenes are shot and edited with the sweaty kinetic energy usually reserved for anime. And yes, the score is some of the most uniquely banging music ever made for a movie. Glenn Powell, Timothée Chalamet, and others might be fighting for the title of best male movie star in Hollywood, but in reality Zendaya is queen and we’re all living in her world.
2024 in cinema had it all – the human body, justice, and obsession were among the prescient issues covered by many of these great films and so many more. So much of what came out this year felt incredibly relatable to what we were feeling in the real world. At times this can feel forced and annoying, but for many of 2024’s releases the relevance felt coincidental and welcomed.
As always, the caveat should be addressed that many other worthwhile films that I greatly appreciated (Rebel Ridge, Anora, etc.) that could have easily made it to this list, and there are countless others that remain prioritized on my watchlist.
I’m gonna go watch some of those movies and rethink the entire construction of this list. In the meantime, let me know what I missed, what I shouldn’t have included, or any other notes you want to make in the comments below.
Cheers to 2024 and here’s to more awesome movies in 2025!
