The Film Stage’s Top 50 Films of 2024
by The Film Stage · The Film StageFor our most comprehensive year-end feature, we’re providing a cumulative look at The Film Stage’s favorite films of 2024. We’ve asked contributors to compile ten-best lists with five honorable mentions––many of those personal selections will be shared in coming weeks in separate features––and from tallied votes has this top 50 been assembled.
Without further ado, check out out the best in 2024 cinema below, our ongoing year-end coverage here, and return in the coming weeks as we look towards 2025.
50. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (George Miller)
While Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga earned less than its predecessor at the box office, it was no less creatively satisfying. There should be little hesitation in calling Fury Road one of the greatest action films of all time (if not the greatest); all the more impressive that George Miller had it in him to make Furiosa even more epic. Against every odd, he succeeded in crafting a wholly original, wildly engaging new Mad Max entry. Anya Taylor-Joy’s performance is every bit the equal of Charlize Theron’s; Chris Hemsworth and Tom Burke are not far behind. Furiosa also contains at least three all-timer action sequences: the intense opening featuring Charlee Fraser as Furiosa’s badass mother; the Octoboss assault on the War Rig; and Furiosa and Praetorian Jack’s heartbreaking attack on Gastown. Admit it––you can see those sequences in your head as you read this. What an achievement! And what a journey, for the audience and Furiosa herself. – Chris S.
49. Memoir of a Snail (Adam Elliot)
With an all-star voice cast including Sarah Snook, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Eric Bana, Nick Cave, and Jacki Weaver, Adam Elliot’s stop-motion drama Memoir of a Snail is one of the most profoundly human films of the year. Snook voices Grace, a young snail born into a broken home and who’s separated from her brother Gilbert (Smit-McPhee) after the passing of her father. An altruist by nature, she flounders until meeting Pinky (Weaver), an eccentric older woman who takes her under her wing and nurses her back to health after an abusive relationship. Although a work of fiction, Elliot’s dark, moving, at-times-quite-funny film reads like an essay on trauma and healing. With a gothic, lo-fi, handmade charm, it’s an emotional roller coaster full of wisdom and wit. – John F.
48. Between the Temples (Nathan Silver)
A quarter-century after his breakout role as a boy who wrote a hit play and fell in love with Ms. Cross, Jason Schwartzman once again finds himself crushing on a much older woman, this time as Ben Gottlieb in Between the Temples. A cantor newly unable to sing, Gottlieb is on a rapid downward spiral; thankfully, force of nature Carla Kessler (Carol Kane) appears to jolt him out of his funk. Driven by the manic energy that defines Nathan Silver’s work, the film’s screwball antics never take away from Gottlieb’s crisis of faith and lingering grief over his dead wife, both of which it takes seriously. Shot on 16mm by frequent collaborator Sean Price Williams––who told me one of his greatest pleasures is making Silver smile––Between the Temples’ visuals carry an identifiably gritty NYC-indie feel, but this suggests a leveling-up for Silver, co-writer C. Mason Wells (who co-wrote 2017’s Thirst Street), and all else involved––as evidenced by Sony Pictures Classics picking up the comedy out of Sundance. – Caleb H.
47. Gift (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
It’s not every year we’re afforded two vastly different rhythmic interpretations of the same source––especially not a distillation of a feature whose construction feels predicated on the sustained collision of a formal dialogue between the semantic and thematic. Less a B-side than living remix, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi and Eiko Ishibashi’s Gift reconstitutes innately dense filmmaking through silent-film grammar (static takes, intertitles) and Ishibashi’s live refractions of her own score to reveal a purified path to the same rotted inevitability of Evil Does Not Exist. – Michael S.
46. Matt and Mara (Kazik Radwanski)
Kazik Radwanski’s misty-eyed, mostly improvised tale of friends-not-quite-lovers excels at capturing intricacies of the unspoken. There’s a warming tenderness and quiet sadness to Deragh Campbell and Matt Johnson’s restrained interactions. In the final moments, Mara places a crumpled receipt inside a book and returns it to its shelf. Sometimes that’s what a good film is: a leaf through our feelings. Matt and Mara is there on the shelf now, for when we feel like opening that book again. – Blake S.
45. Vermiglio (Maura Delpero)
Vermigilio is a splendid exemplar of “they don’t make ‘em like they used to.” The sprawling, historical, novelistic, Visconti-esque family epic with dozens of characters has been smartly updated to modern sensibilities. Maura Delpero focuses on the working class rather than the wealthy, adopts a tight two-hour runtime rather than some indulgent length, and––most importantly––privileges the female perspective. Delpero shows gratifying ambition, curiosity, and accomplishment in just her second feature to date. – Ankit K.
44. A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg)
From one angle, A Real Pain has all the features of a classic road-trip buddy comedy. On a Jewish heritage tour through Warsaw while visiting their recently deceased grandmother’s home, cousins David (a familiarly straight-laced Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (a familiarly squirmy, glib Kieran Culkin) butt heads, break rules, and reassess their relationship across the city. From another, Eisenberg’s perceptive second feature functions as a somber meditation on family history and generational trauma––the kind that produces fractured, unfiltered conversations about purpose, grief, and death that enlighten and enrage in equal measure. “I love him. I hate him. I want to be him. I want to kill him,” David says about Benji at one point. It’s only natural for a trip like this to inspire ambivalence. The movie makes it a special gift. – Jake K-S.
43. Civil War (Alex Garland)
Civil War is not about what you think. Alex Garland’s speculative action thriller doesn’t really concern itself with U.S. politics or ideological morality, refusing to cash in on the rhetoric of the current zeitgeist. Instead it questions whether anyone, even hardened journalists, can truly be impartial observers of destruction. The film follows a group of war reporters and photographers (including Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny) on a jittery road trip across the Northeast Corridor to document the fall of a despotic U.S. President. The film is neither sanctimonious nor pure terror porn. But it is epic, particularly in the craft of its jarring sound and production design and the stomach-clenching realism of its special effects. Watch out for Jesse Plemons in a brief, haunting turn. – Robyn B.
42. Bird (Andrea Arnold)
We bet many of you also wish that a soft-spoken Franz Rogowski would tell them everything’s going to be all right. With her trademark empathetic realism, Andrea Arnold builds her first fiction feature since American Honey around 12-year-old Bailey and her unlikely companion, Bird (Rogowski). Vulnerability and defiance go hand-in-hand for Arnold, but Bird, even when meticulously lensed by the great Robbie Ryan, feels exceptionally raw. – Savina P.
41. Eureka (Lisandro Alonso)
Beginning with a trashy mock-spaghetti western viewed on a tiny TV and passing through various dimensions, species, and bodies thereafter, Eureka brought Lisandro Alonso’s fascination with isolated existences, transience, and flow to its most sweeping scale yet. Riskily but rigorously capturing Indigenous life as it endures in the Americas, he conjures a hypnotic fugue that allows centuries of private folklore and mysticism to delicately remain so, however close he allows the viewer to peep. – David K.
40. Samsara (Lois Patiño)
Lois Patino’s Samsara is a beautifully elegiac journey that stretches itself between lifetimes and existences. Its meditative take on pondering the death and existence of souls in transition is not only part of its free-flowing tranquil narrative, but rendered in direct confrontation with the audience through an extended experimental sequence that demands viewer participation. Some could take this as a gimmick, but it fits so seamlessly in the movie’s visual style and is presented with such earnestness that it feels more like a genuine artistic attempt to communicate through film that which cannot be relayed visually. It’s bold, thoughtful, and perhaps the most intimate cinematic experience of this decade thus far. – Soham G.
39. Queer (Luca Guadagnino)
Building on the strength of Justin Kuritzkes’ script, which takes bold creative leaps to map what’s left unsaid in William S. Burroughs’ feverishly enigmatic novella, Guadagnino crafted a film adaptation that not just does justice to but unlocks and expands an iconic text. By turns goofy, erotic, and transcendently sad, it’s a tonal and emotional shapeshifter that taps into the bottomless solitude of queer love. Drew Starkey gave a star-making performance while Daniel Craig disappeared into the role of a tragic everyman, cursed with an unquenchable need to connect. A hallucinatory, revelatory piece of cinema that touches on something real. – Zhuo-Ning Su
38. Trap (M. Night Shyamalan)
M. Night Shyamalan in full Fritz Lang mode makes the ultimate dad movie, gleefully meshing paternalistic affection and morbid sociopathy into an equally sugary and cynical tribute to his own daughter, Saleka Shyamalan. Its puzzle-box narrative fully indulges the howdunit form, taking pleasure in cleverness, ingenuity, and playfulness for its own sake. That it’s one of the best portraits of the Swiftie phenomenon and “toxic masculinity” feels almost circumstantial given how fun the whole thing is. Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s consistently startling cinematography is just icing on the cake, providing a level of visual sophistication rare for American cinema, let alone genre exercises. – Josh B.
37. Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes)
The best film of the year, in my book, is also one of 2024’s most playful, that rare work where it truly feels anything is possible. Miguel Gomes’ pan-Asian odyssey is a two-part journey that straddles facts and fiction, costume drama and documentary, a film that’s not powered by plot beats but instead fueled by an insatiable, contagious lust for life. Gomes’ talent for transmuting the most unassuming images into cinema is nothing short of astonishing. – Leonardo G.
36. Babygirl (Halina Reijn)
The catchiest film title of 2024 delivers on all counts: Halina Reijn (Bodies Bodies Bodies) has reinvented the erotic thriller for our times. With Nicole Kidman at the helm as a CEO submitting to a cocky intern (Harris Dickinson), Babygirl is a fun, sexy exploration of boundaries and self-acceptance set against a stifled corporate backdrop to make a case for desire as a driving force, destructive and creative at once. – Savina P.
35. Here (Bas Devos)
On the surface, Bas Devos’ Here is a simple film about a man and woman from different backgrounds who cross paths in Brussels and form a bond. But as its characters look anew at their surroundings while they explore the intricacies of growing moss at a park, Devos films Brussels’ urban environments to find beauty in the ordinary almost everywhere he looks. His direction is precise yet inviting, and with each stunning moment Here encourages viewers to be more attuned to what’s around them. – C.J. P.
34. A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sangsoo)
Isabelle Huppert plays outsiders for Hong Sangsoo, regardless of location. A Traveler’s Needs, their third collaboration, is their most melancholy and tactile––the aching feet, unknown conversations, incomplete funding, unusual relationships are all embedded in this strange, inexplicable life her Iris lives abroad. Yet strange beauty emerges around her; walls and gardens complement her clothes, her French students play music. Even Hong interrupts his embedded aesthetic to settle closely on her resting face. As she encourages her students, pick something meaningful––connection will emerge. – Scott N.
33. The Substance (Coralie Fargeat)
The futile pursuit of being hot forever is stylishly rendered in Coralie Fargeat’s wildly entertaining sophomore feature The Substance. Elisabeth Sparkle, an aging star, takes her chances on a mysterious drug that promises a return to her youthful self after she loses her long-time gig as a TV fitness personality. Demi Moore is inspired casting as Elisabeth, a star sidelined because of her age despite remaining an enviable paragon of Hollywood glamour. To Elisabeth, her radiant beauty is nothing without fame and attention that accompanies the desires of the male gaze––dictated by a hedonistically masculine ideal and embodied in caricature by Dennis Quaid in his second-most despicable role of the year. Margaret Qualley plays Sue, a garish vessel splintered from Elisabeth, with whom she shares a consciousness. Though the two must split time—or suffer the consequences––sharing a single life proves a messy indulgence. Fargeat’s dazzling allegory captures the hazards of the contemporary landscape of designer-beauty solutions––cleverly marketed and doled out by faceless wellness providers. Thankfully, she doesn’t cheap out on the body horror. – Kent W.
32. Nosferatu (Robert Eggers)
A sensual, classically gothic reimagining of both Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the 1922 silent film, Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu sees the director return to his pure horror roots and fascination with historical verisimilitude. Anchored by an assured, career-best performance from Lily-Rose Depp and Bill Skarsgård as a monstrosity that would feel repetitive if not for the gravitas he brings, Nosferatu is grand, operatic, and more than a little bit self-serious. But it also represents another big swing by a director cashing in on his creative capital to beautifully reimagine one of the most adapted texts of our time. – Christian G.
31. The Room Next Door (Pedro Almodóvar)
Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and Martha (Tilda Swinton) haven’t seen each other in a lifetime and rekindle friendship through a unique wish: will you be there the day I choose to die? Martha, a former war photographer diagnosed with cancer, and Ingrid, an author whose oeuvre ruminates on death, become dance partners swaying to the unpredictable melody of existence in Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language feature debut––as if Persona morphed into vibrant Technicolor. – Jose S.
30. Coma (Bertrand Bonello)
Bertrand Bonello’s decision to open and close Coma by speaking to his daughter Anna is both moving and faintly patronizing. Yet its mixture of real life during the pandemic, online videos, and nightmares gets at the terror of our times better than any film not made by Radu Jude or Jane Schoenbrun. Its didactic impulses are held at bay by a restless shuffling through dreams of the forest, YouTube videos, animation, and Zoom calls. – Steve E.
29. AGGRO DR1FT (Harmony Korine)
With its beautiful infrared cinematography, catchy AraabMuzik score, hilarious dialogue, video game-inspired arc, and tight 80-minute runtime, AGGRO DR1FT is a remarkably accessible art film. More Spring Breakers than Trash Humpers (although both are present), this tale of an assassin (Jordi Mollà) going through an existential crisis was mistakenly labeled nihilistic by some, but the ending, in which the assassin reaffirms the power of love and leaves behind a soul-sucking profession to spend more time with his wife and child, is anything but, and continues Korine’s knack for provocative art that is ultimately fairly conservative in its core values. While critics were divided on AGGRO DR1FT, Korine’s work has always taken time to receive its proper due. But don’t wait for that moment. – Caleb H.
28. Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola)
Coppola’s decades-in-the-making project of legend once existed only as a footnote or a whisper and was promised to be Coppola’s last Apocalypse Now-sized hurrah. Far more attention was given to its price tag, independent production, and shoestring distribution plans than the film itself when it finally arrived this year, but Megalopolis is all the bombast that’s been promised. Its positioning of New York City as the heart of New Rome strains credulity, its politics swing between Randian genius of the individual and Graeberian anti-capitalism. This is a movie that’s corny enough to affirm that only love and imagination can save us all, but it’s right to declare so in all its beautiful, alien ways. It’s a platitude to say that nothing’s ever looked like this before, so I’ll say: nothing will ever look like this again. – Z.W. L.
27. Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (Kevin Costner)
There’s a clean cinematic language spoken throughout Kevin Costner’s first entry in his Horizon saga. The elegance of the craft appears in gorgeous vistas or simple montage. It grants the film an unambiguous lens on the futility of Manifest Destiny and cyclical nature of American delusion. Costner speaks in plain terms, pouring passion, verve, and an admirable amount of hubris into a project that seemingly endeavors to be The Last Western. – Conor O.
26. Dahomey (Mati Diop)
Mati Diop’s Dahomey, which won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlinale, centers around the repatriation of 26 artifacts that were stolen from the Kingdom of Dahomey (now part of modern-day Benin) during the period of French colonial rule. Blending materialist history with an ethereal visual style, Diop creates an incisive, astonishingly elegant study of postcolonial attitudes, cultural myth-making, and legacy of Western domination in Africa, as well as one of the year’s most poignant meditations on the idea of places as processes. – Oliver W.
25. The Wild Robot (Chris Sanders)
There is so much wonder in The Wild Robot. Written and directed by Chris Sanders and based on the book by Peter Brown, this animated feature is gorgeous to look at, elegantly scored by Kris Bowers (I like the pop songs too, Maren Morris), and deeply felt. Lupita Nyong’o’s voice performance as Roz, a lost robot who becomes parent to an orphaned goose (Kit Connor) and best friends with a fox (Pedro Pascal), is the stuff of legend. On a deeply personal note: I saw this film with my oldest child and his love for it brightened my day, my week, my year. This is why we make art: to explain or understand emotions that may be hard to articulate. All of a sudden somebody makes something, as though for the first time, you see it. – Dan M.
24. Janet Planet (Annie Baker)
Janet Planet is a world bathed in sunlight, covered in trees and lush greenery. It’s a quiet, peaceful place with a layer of melancholy just below the surface. Janet (Julianne Nicholson) raises her daughter Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) the best she can as a revolving door of friends and lovers come and go. In her directorial debut, Annie Baker creates an intimate portrait of a mother and daughter trying their best to understand each other and the nature of life itself. – Jourdain S.
23. Last Summer (Catherine Breillat)
A decade removed from the grueling, semi-biographical anatomization of Abuse of Weakness, wizened enfant terrible Catherine Breillat returns with an excellent… remake? Dispensing with any sublimation of the central incestual relationship, Breillat expertly jukes through a series of power games of mutually assured destruction in this cross-section of Denmark’s forbidden-romance hit Queen of Hearts. Guided by Breillat’s exceptional scene-to-scene instincts and her skill for self-reflection, a supernaturally composed Léa Drucker and cherubic firebrand Samuel Kircher come to repeated blows until the dust clears, and this casually devastating interrogation has somehow ended with the devilish ease of the best erotic thrillers. – Michael S.
22. Chime (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
In a year of three films (here’s hoping Cloud and Serpent’s Path will be on next year’s list), the most effective Kiyoshi Kurosawa work from 2024 seems to be the one well under feature-film length. Fundamentally a story of middle-aged malaise, Chime sees Kurosawa realize the creepy undercurrents of mundane everyday life as frighteningly as his very best work. Let’s just say I haven’t taken the garbage out without thinking about this film since the spring. – Ethan V.
21. Hit Man (Richard Linklater)
“Fake it till you make it” gets taken to the extreme in Hit Man, Richard Linklater’s no-nonsense crowd-pleasing rom-com-thriller. Featuring two of the best performances of the year from Glen Powell and Adria Arjona, along with one of the best screenplays of the year by Linklater and Powell, Hit Man uses a case of mistaken identity to explore the porous nature of one’s “authentic” self––if one can become a role should they play it long enough. Its ability to explore this while never losing charm or allure is impressive enough, but Hit Man also recalibrates viewers’ moral compasses as its characters embody the parts they choose to play. By the end, you might be surprised how far your sympathies will go to ensure these people get a happy ending. – C.J. P.
20. A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
A Different Man sees Sebastian Stan giving the performance of his career as Edward, an actor with neurofibromatosis who undergoes a radical facial transformation to try enhancing his life. Only the more time we spend with the man, the more we see how this surface procedure can’t alter who he is deep down. Aaron Schimberg presents a multi-faceted look at not only disability, but identity at large, how these superficial alterations mean nothing when we don’t actualize change from within, and how much of our lives are rooted in perception––our perception of others, our perception of self, and our assumptions about how other people are perceiving us. – Mitchell B.
19. Red Rooms (Pascal Plante)
Part-subversive courtroom thriller, part-Demonlover-inspired satire on how technology has fed our most taboo addictions, all-parts irresistible, I don’t think any film will see its cult following grow in size by the end of the decade quite like Red Rooms. I was initially confused by widespread comparisons to David Fincher, beyond this being an icy take on the serial-killer genre, but in the months since my first viewing, it’s dawned on me: much like the audiences who have Mandela effect-ed themselves into believing you see Gwyneth Paltrow’s head in a box in Se7en, this is a movie which gets its power from affording the viewer space to illustrate the most gruesome images for themselves. Without a clearer view of those to anchor the story, the worldview and sympathies of Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) remain impenetrable, her every action––from a friendship with a serial-killer “groupie” to the most ill-advised fancy dress costume in history––an act of violence. Without a single drop of blood, Red Rooms still feels destined to be described as one of the most depraved thrillers in history; I haven’t been able to shake it since seeing it, and quite frankly I don’t want to. – Alistair R.
18. Dune: Part Two (Denis Villeneuve)
Rare is the sequel that can at once stand on its own but also elevate its predecessor. Dune: Part Two, with its sweeping tale of rebellion, romance, and retribution, fulfills everything that fans of the first film could have hoped for while creating a satisfyingly operatic arc all its own. Joined with impressive grand-scale aesthetics, visceral action, and wry humor, it’s no wonder that this potentially alienating sci-fi tale became a pop culture cornerstone of 2024. – Brian R.
17. The Human Surge 3 (Eduardo Williams)
There are few filmmakers who understand the hollowed-out monotony of the digital sublime better than Eduardo Williams. Shot entirely on 360-degree VR cameras and presented exclusively in 2D, The Human Surge 3 stands among the year’s most technologically and aesthetically radical works. Yet what’s most interesting is not technological gimmickry, but how Williams balances his film on the borderline between utopia and dystopia, between constant movement and perpetual stasis, between infinite diversity and endless repetition. It follows a globe-spanning panoply of young adults who inexplicably understand one another across language divides, showing up in various countries and odd natural environments for no significant reason except to hang out and kill time. There’s a distinct video-game logic to its flow, a casual irrealism akin to watching the ambient pseudo-reality (à la The Sims) that’s perfectly attuned to its data-moshed, vaporwave aesthetic. It’s pure digital poetry and hopefully a prequel trilogy won’t be far off. – Josh B.
16. Youth (Hard Times and Homecoming) (Wang Bing)
Wang Bing’s Youth trilogy intimately chronicles the lives of young textile workers in Zhili, China’s children’s-wear manufacturing hub. Hard Times delves into their struggles with more salary disputes and runaway bosses, culminating in a striking oral recounting of a mass protest and subsequent government crackdown. The final installment, Homecoming, follows the workers as they return to their rural hometowns for the Chinese New Year and weddings, only to face the relentless grind of factory life upon their return. Through this trilogy, Wang offers a profound testament of labor and resilience in contemporary China. – Frank Y.
15. It’s Not Me (Leos Carax)
I don’t know what it means for something to be a perfect movie, or if that’s even possible, but this is some of the closest any film’s brought me to a vision of such. Carax talking to us, talking to himself, talking about himself, talking to and about the “Leos Carax” character he’s played for 40 years. Ideas made so fluently and precisely it’s almost not worth thinking about them further, as if just another second deflates the pleasure of making these connections, even as certain knowledge of Carax’s life––the subject of his only POV shot, for one thing––emboldens it all. And “Modern Love” will always be his. – Nick N.
14. Here (Robert Zemeckis)
Don’t mind us praising the biggest-budget experimental film ever made. Are many hedging their bets on how unprecedented this concept plays and how brilliantly it functions because “Robert Zemeckis movie starring Tom Hanks” is something of a smokescreen? (Gump Curse, given thoughtless, ready-made dismissals of “boomer diorama.”) Are its occasional foibles or dry patches enough to act as if the rest is just “of interest”? Uncertain what compares other than Wavelength, with which it––maybe coincidence, perhaps not––also shares a Beatles cue that (ahem) here strings back to the start of Zemeckis’ career. (Here it’s the song that played as Lennon died in a hospital––remembering the end while we’re at the beginning.) Zemeckis has still never bought an album that wasn’t a greatest-hits collection, but I think this is the rare movie to understand “Moonlight Serenade” is haunted, not romantic. Which actually is the truth of the whole project. – Nick N.
13. Challengers (Luca Guadagnino)
Challengers is all about status and power. Who has it, how they wield it; who doesn’t have it, what they’ll do to acquire it. How each of these circumstances impacts a person’s soul, the way they see themselves, and the way they treat others. Sex, tennis, marriage. It’s all competition. It’s all part of the game. Accompanied by an adrenaline-pumping score from Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross and mesmerizing cinematography from this year’s DP MVP Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, Luca Guadagnino and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes push Zendaya, Mike Faist, and a best-in-show Josh O’Connor to the limit time and again, bringing them back around to the thing they love the most: competition. – Mitchell B.
12. Evil Does Not Exist (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
For all the discussion of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s reinforcement of his idiosyncratic cinema after the shocking international success of Drive My Car, it’s even more remarkable how completely assured Evil Does Not Exist remains. At once cri de coeur and tone poem, its refusal to settle for a single perspective draws us ever further into an atmosphere of disquietude, which Eiko Ishibashi’s haunting score brings forth with inexorable force. – Ryan S.
11. Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood)
Dumped by Warner Bros. into a handful of theaters, Juror #2 is one of Clint Eastwood’s most confident works. In a testament to the filmmaking style of his mentor Don Siegel, Eastwood presents a story with no flab or fat, nothing but narrative anchored by no-nonsense performances. Its insoluble moral conundrum––what if all the choices you have are bad ones?––places it among the year’s most complex releases. – Daniel E.
10. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude)
Radu Jude is done being polite. His uproarious, angry screed of a movie launches a Molotov cocktail of derision at the establishment. The Romanian director’s biting satire skewers hungry corporations out to exploit the little guy, the bourgeois elite trading in empty platitudes, and everyone in-between. A hectic couple of days in the life of an overworked PA (Ilinca Manolache) becomes an odyssey through modern Romania and urban discontent. As a bonus, he mercilessly drags Andrew Tate through the mud. – Ankit K.
9. Hard Truths (Mike Leigh)
The legendary Mike Leigh’s latest stars Marianne Jean-Baptiste as a woman whose intense anger––at her family, the people she sees during her errands, the world itself––is both hysterically funny and devastatingly sad. Hard Truths might be the first truly great film to deal with the lingering impact of COVID on our collective consciousness. While the pandemic is only mentioned in passing, the air of malaise, discontent, and simmering rage many felt (and still feel) is evident in every frame of Hard Truths. Leigh’s filmography is so strong and so full of masterpieces (Life Is Sweet, Naked, Secrets & Lies, Topsy-Turvy) that ranking Truths is tricky. But that can be pondered down the road. For now, Hard Truths can be acknowledged as one of 2024’s greatest, most-impactful films. – Chris S.
8. No Other Land (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor)
Despite the horrors shown throughout No Other Land (all prior to October 7), it’s the Israeli bulldozers calmly retreating post-demolitions that I cannot shake. Beyond the secret document proving that “converting” Palestinian villages like Masafer Yatta into army training grounds was to drive inhabitants out, or an Israeli courtroom––devoid of jurisdiction as illegal settlers––ruling to reject Arab permit requests while evicting families with roots going back almost two centuries, all that’s necessary to understand the terrorism at play are those trucks blindly destroying private property before rolling away. Because it’s not about these occupiers “needing the land” or “enforcing the law.” It’s about control. About laughing at Israeli Yuval Abraham and Palestinian Basel Adra, knowing their only recourse is creating devastatingly crucial documents like this. So prove it’s enough by watching, absorbing, and refusing to remain silent––once a distributor finds the courage to let you. – Jared M.
7. All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia)
This unconventional fairy tale begins in Mumbai and ends in a coastal village, surrounded by nature. The protagonists aren’t princesses or noblewomen, but young nurses (played by Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha) and a retired hospital cook (Chhaya Kadam). The city sets the rhythm for their seemingly anonymous lives, as do the voices of migrants we never see. Kapadia crafts a poetic portrait of female longing and rediscovery, leaving a door open for something as simple and elusive as happiness in the banality of everyday life. – Lucia S.
6. Close Your Eyes (Víctor Erice)
Eríce’s latest is the ultimate cinephile catnip: the triumphant return of a director known to only make masterpieces, a film filled with in-group references and nods to cinema history (including a lengthy performance of a song from a Howard Hawks film), and an ending that hinges on the literal power of cinema itself. Thankfully, these qualities are hardly gimmicks; there’s real pathos in this story of a missing director that’s aided by these loving reminders of what makes the seventh art so important to so many. Close Your Eyes commands a secular, cynical audience to remember that art was born out of religion and miracles can still happen if one believes. – Z.W. L.
5. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)
RaMell Ross––the Brown University film professor and writer-director behind 2018’s stunning impressionist portrait of rural Alabama life, Hale County This Morning, This Evening––made a splash with his second film and fiction debut Nickel Boys. This adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel is a tender, enchanting movie that quickly develops a mood-defining dread stemming from America’s ugly history with abusive juvenile centers for Black boys. Innovatively shot in first-person to gripping effect, it follows Elwood Curtis, a young man wrongly detained at the Nickel Academy, as he develops a life-changing friendship and navigates the nightmares of Nickel, where the unmarked graves of rule-breaking children haunt the kids who still have to walk its grounds. Bouncing back and forth between Elwood’s days at Nickel and his adult life researching its crimes, Ross submerges us in what feels like a lifetime of beauty and trauma. – Luke H.
4. Anora (Sean Baker)
Sean Baker’s Anora expands his filmmaking vision, pushing the writer-director-editor’s fifth consecutive story on sex workers into a higher plane of awards and commercial success. It’s a romantic comedy, a madcap dash around New York City, a movie ruminating on loss, love, and class disparity. Baker aims to put audiences through a ringer of emotional swings, ending with a desolation that’s been building in the background, easier to spot once the tinsel’s shimmer fades. With a true star-making performance from Mikey Madison and a deep bench of supporting actors, Anora whirls until suddenly it doesn’t, and all that’s left is earned, resonant silence from both its characters and audience. – Michael F.
3. The Brutalist (Brady Corbet)
Brady Corbet’s long-gestating architecture epic looks and feels as painstakingly crafted as its lead character’s intricate architectonics. For as barren and minimalist as László Tóth’s (a terrific Adrien Brody) designs are, they pack a beautiful, mysterious, occasionally revelatory punch, much like Corbet’s winding three-and-a-half-hour (complete with built-in intermission!) story about a Hungarian architect who immigrated to New York after WWII only to be mentally and emotionally sucked in by the tide of a momentous decades-long project initiated by a ruthless Pennsylvania business tycoon. Its scope is enormous––almost impossible not to get wrapped up in. A sense of impending gravity gives this film the weight of the real, as if we’re witnessing history. Cinematographer Lol Crawley captures sprawling green hillsides, gleaming Italian marble mines, immovable caves, and towering opuses in a dark, richly textured VistaVision that’s like a magnet for your eyes, and composer Daniel Blumberg, in his second score ever, locks you in with galvanizing refrains that keep The Brutalist chugging along at a mean rate, radiant floating pianos disarming you to characters’ sympathies. – Luke H.
2. The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)
Bertrand Bonello’s cinema has never lacked for ambition, and The Beast is perhaps his grandest statement yet, an interpretation of Henry James’ novella that acts as a conduit for various ills of the world while operating as a dazzling showcase for his, Léa Seydoux’s, and George MacKay’s protean talents. Across its doomed triptych, the vividness of its evocation of terror and romance coalesces into complete devastation. – Ryan S.
1. I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun)
In synchronicity with the all-consuming loneliness and unnerving terror of this list’s preceding entry, Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow is both an encapsulation of our age of dread and a deeply personal excavation of gender dysphoria, being trapped in a body you don’t desire and having no words to properly express the feeling. Conveyed with encumbered artistic vision, this is an anti-coming-of-age film that has much on its mind: the emotionally transportive power of music, identity-forming bonds with media, the soul-sucking nature of suburbia, the heartache of broken friendships, curdled nostalgia, the horrors of self-denial––those are just scratching the surface. With a decades-jumping finale that digs under the skin and shows the emotional, physical, and mental decay of perpetually lying to one’s self, this is a masterpiece that has reverberated long since its Sundance premiere at the year’s start and will only gain further resonance as new audiences uncover its power in decades to come. – Jordan R.