Evan D. Another year has come to a close and that means that it is again time to look back on the year in film. 2024 has been lamented in some corners as a relatively weaker one at the movies more broadly, with the release calendar altered significantly by the writing and acting strikes of 2023. Still, as with any other year in film, if you watch enough, 2024 brought an incredible wealth of brilliant cinema. So much so, in fact, that I have decided to expand this list to 15 films rather than the usual 10. I always try to find some connecting thread in the year’s very best — no matter how foolish that task ends up being — or at least some through-line in what spoke to me about those films. Last year was one of upheaval in the broader world. With a shameful genocide in the Middle East and an embrace of fascism here and abroad, the state of the world and its short term outlook is quite grim. At the same time the past year saw me marry the love of my life. In a time of great difficulty I found personal solace through that love. The very best movies of the year for me seem to reflect some of this dichotomy. The 15 films featured on this list and a few of the honorable mentions take place in darkness; war, plague, fascism, ecological collapse. Many of them also combat that darkness through the power of love, reparation and solidarity. The best of this year managed to internalize the pain of a world gone mad and project out of it a way forward, even in the most dire of circumstances. With that in mind, the best films of 2024: One Belated Shoutout One consistent challenge for a critic like me who doesn’t do this professionally is where to delineate the cut off for the year. For consistency, I operate my list based on Oscar eligibility, meaning that if the film got a theatrical release for at least a week in LA or NYC, it counts for that year. I am lucky to live in a market that does get most of the qualifying runs but I do not get any sort of screeners which means sometimes I miss something. Last year I missed the opportunity to catch Alice Rohwacher’s haunting fable La Chimera before publishing my list. I wrote extensively about the film here but letting it languish between two lists that would have easily featured it in the top 10 seems unfair. This year has been another wonderful one for film but not even my very favorites of the year have lingered in my mind more. A spectacular piece of art that deserves to be celebrated so here we lead the best movies of 2024 with one of the most dazzling of 2023. Some Honorable mentionsFor my money, this has been one of the deeper years for quality filmmaking and that I could have stretched this list out out to 30 or more and still not touched on some movies that really touched me. For brevity’s sake here are ten that just missed, alphabetically: Blitz The Brutalist The Fire Inside Furiosa Hit Man Megalopolis A Real Pain Sing Sing Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat The Wild Robot 15. I’m Still Here The military dictatorship that ruled over Brazil for over two decades, ending in 1985, still looms large over the country, its art and most viscerally for the people who had loved ones disappeared by the regime. With I’m Still Here, legendary Brazilian director Walter Salles first narrative feature in over a decade, we see the heart wrenching fallout of those disappearances and the conspiratorial culture fostered by the regime. Fernanda Torres shines as Eunice Paiva, a housewife forced into the role of activist after her husband is taken in for questioning and doesn’t return. Paiva’s story illuminates a very dark time in the history of Brazil but also is a brilliant meditation on the strength it takes to carry on after having your whole world shattered. As some of the worst things imaginable happen to Paiva, she holds firm for her family and takes up an uncomfortable role to preserve the wellbeing of her family. It is a startling biopic that feels incredibly universal in its specificity. I’m Still Here will release more widely in February of 2025 14. Dahomey Mati Diop is no stranger to imbuing her films with a sort of mythological quality. Her 2019 narrative feature debut Atlantics turned a Senegalese love story into an almost ghost tale. With Dahomey, director Diop applies a similar mysticism to the true life journey of 26 Beninese works from the French museum that has held them captive to their new home in their ancestral land. The treasures are given voice, haunting and guttural, speaking to what the experience might feel like to a repatriated soul. As we see these kings of Dahomey unceremoniously boxed up and shipped back home — a journey that wrenchingly echos imagery of the middle passage — we hear their musings about returning to a place that no longer resembles the one from which they were taken. Dahomey is a short but mighty documentary that probes into the complexities of repatriating artifacts that never should have been taken to begin with and in the process examines how such looting invariable alters the culture of that homeland. The way Diop anthropomorphizes the treasures journeying back home gives the film a mythological quality that drives home the complex and emotional nature of this undertaking. My Review from AFI Fest Dahomey is currently streaming on MUBI and available to buy or rent digitally 13. Kinds of Kindness After finding the biggest success of his career in Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos and his muse Emma Stone took a sharp swerve with Kinds of Kindness. The three part anthology is a throwback to the bizarre, off-kilter films Lanthimos used to make before being embraced by Hollywood and, as it turns out, Jesse Plemons is a perfect fit for that wavelength. Strange and off putting at times but also grimly funny while finding a great deal of truth in the ways kindness and generosity is exploited or weaponized. Kinds of Kindness will certainly not be everyone’s cup of tea, but those ready to embrace the absurd will find a grimly funny set of stories about the lengths people will go and the indignities they will suffer to forge connection in a hostile world. Kinds of Kindness is currently streaming on Hulu 12. I Saw the TV Glow Look, any movie whose cast includes Connor O’Malley, Phoebe Bridgers and Lindsey Jordan of Snail Mail, is going to have to get significant consideration for this critic’s year end list. I Saw the TV Glow, Jane Shoenbrun’s sophomore feature, is a whole lot of things; a sharp trans allegory, a lament for suburban dysphoria, a freak out homage to the weird and wacky television programs of the 90s and, importantly, one of the most creatively incisive films of the year. Not everything about it works, some of the more genre touches are understandably divisive but those same flourishes build into the underpinning sense of dread that makes I Saw the TV Glow stick in the corners of your brain long after it ends. For as foreboding as this film is it is also ultimately hopeful. One enduring image from this year will surely be the asphalt of some anonymous suburban street chalked over with the words “There is Still Time.” I can’t personally speak to what that message might mean to a trans person, but it does feel broadly applicable to anyone living through what feels like the world collapsing around us. Shoenbrun has already shown a unique and crucial voice and her breakthrough signals a major new artist on the scene. I Saw the TV Glow is currently streaming on Max 11. Nosferatu For the last decade or so, Robert Eggers might have been a sneaky good pick for the most stylish director working today. He won’t be flying under the radar anymore. While his previous films have not fully landed with me, one thing that always has is the craft of his work. Nosferatu continues to showcase Eggers’ brilliance for dark beauty — the film is a spectacle of the senses — but tethers it to the classic Dracula tale in a way that elevates both the story and his own style. Nosferatu deepens the original story by bringing an electric Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen into focus. In doing so the story is able to draw Eggers draws together both the creature feature elements of the story and the high concept of Nosferatu as a plague to punish the lustful sins of humanity. Without radically changing a story that has been told many times before, Nosferatu uses gothic horror to craft one of the sharpest blends of story and form this year. Nosferatu is currently playing in wide release across the US 10. Blink Twice With Blink Twice, Zoe Kravitz steps behind the camera for the first time and delivers a smartly styled horror-thriller that is bubbling with ideas under the surface. Frida (Naomi Ackie) and Jess (Alia Shawkat) are waitresses who get swept up by a playboy billionaire (Channing Tatum) and whisked off to his private island where every perfect day by the pool seems to blend together. Everything is not as it seems as the girls begin to discover something sinister at play. The mechanics are pretty familiar for the genre and some of the plot points are at times overly convenient, but by soaking her film in the aesthetics of TikTok or Instagram reels, Kravitz turns something we’ve seen before into a sneakily smart criticism of modern culture. The crisp bubbling ASMR of a freshly poured glass of champagne, the eerily immaculate estate with every beautiful person wearing perfectly pressed, matching clothes. Blink Twice uses genre trappings to brilliantly critique the way social media can trap people, men and women alike, into the pursuit of a lifestyle that simply does not exist and actively harms them. It is some of the most daring studio filmmaking of the year. Blink Twice is currently available to stream on MGM+ or to rent or buy on VOD 9. Kneecap Before this year I had never heard of Kneecap, a rap trio that sings in native Irish to press back against the anglicization of the north of Ireland. Great cinema can introduce whole new worlds. This semi-fictionalized biopic sees the band members play themselves in a film as radically devised as the music that inspired it. Kneecap is full of some of the most creative cinematic flourishes and shot designs that push the boundaries of the traditional music biopic. Just like the titular group’s music, Kneecap really gets at how counter-culture and revolution can get co-opted into another arm of state oppression. It is another film that identifies the oppression of the modern world but sets out to change it rather than wallow in the misery. Kneecap is currently streaming on Netflix 8. No Other Land Of all the films from this year, No Other Land was far and away the most difficult to place for me. Unquestionably it is the year’s most essential film, albeit one constrained by the circumstance of its creation. At once riveting, devastating and even sometimes casual in its quieter moments, No Other Land was willed into existence by the persistence of Palestinian activist Basel Adra and a collective of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers dedicated to justice for the Palestinian people. The devastation and indignity wrought on the West Bank and dutifully depicted here is already shockingly brutal before you even consider that every horror in this film took place before October 7 2023 and the massive ensuing escalation in violence of the Israeli occupation. Wherever it lacks in technical brilliance, No Other Land more than makes up for in courage and clarity. No Other Land is currently seeking US distribution 7. The Seed of the Sacred Fig After shooting in secret, The Seed of the Sacred Fig director Mohammad Rasoulof was forced to flee his native Iran for fear of retribution from the regime. In a way, within the story of its creation is the same fire that burns at the center of Rasoulof’s powder keg of a film. Following the plight of Iman, an investigating judge for the Iranian government and his family in Tehran, The Seed of the Sacred Fig shows the ways in which dictatorial corruption can seep its way into the very foundation of a family and a society. The regime cracks down on Iman for not toeing their line and Iman in turn begins to rule over his family with an iron fist. As this vice begins to strangle the bonds holding his family together, paranoia and chaos ensues. Radical in its concept and creation, brave in its convictions, the film is easily one of the best, most entertaining thrillers in recent memory. The Seed of the Sacred Fig is currently playing in theaters in limited release 6. The End To a surprising extent, this year has been a big one for movie musicals. We got a Joker sequel that startled audiences with its music, two Disney animated musicals in Moana 2 and Mufasa, hell Wicked might just win best picture. For my money there was really only one musical this year truly worth a damn and that was Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End. Trapped in a lavish doomsday bunker after the climate apocalypse they helped cause, an oil executive and his family pass the days singing of their solitude. There is so much grim truth in watching the catalysts of mass death pat themselves on the back and write their own hagiography as the world burns outside their pristine sanctuary. Hard to watch but even harder to look away, The End is brutal but scintillating cinema. The End is currently playing in theaters in limited release 5. Anora Longtime readers of the blog will know that we are big fans of Sean Baker’s filmmaking. Red Rocket landed on my top 25 list for 2021 and Florida Project is, in my estimation, one of the defining films of this century to date. With Anora, Baker continues to examine the lives of sex workers in the United States, this time in his most frenetic and uproariously funny film yet. Ani’s journey through romance, marriage and that the chaos of New York City is riotous but along the way Baker unfurls this biting portrait of class and the way the rich can weaponize it to manipulate the struggling classes. Baker deftly explores the way that Ani’s clients view her as a commodity and how that sinister view invades her own psyche. For as clever as she is, Ani too views her sexuality as a tool, at times her only tool to escaper her station. Anora is as smart a film as you’ll see on class solidarity while simultaneously being one of the most fun of the year. Anora is currently playing in theaters 4. Evil Does Not Exist It has been well over a year since I saw Evil Does Not Exist at AFI Fest in 2023 but its quiet rage has stayed with me across that time. Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s follow-up to Drive My Car (my #3 movie of 2021) tracks the fallout in a small village in rural Japan after a big corporation decides to set up a glamping site upriver. Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) and his fellow townsfolk are understandably concerned about the way this may destabilize their home and endanger the environment they depend on day to day and so they begin to push back. Powerful in his subtlety, Hamaguchi refrains from painting his characters as purely just or evil, rather each is a well intentioned person on opposing sides of a zero sum proposition. As with his previous works Hamaguchi takes the time to let his viewers soak in beauty and lyricism of the Japanese countryside. The swaying trees and peeks of sunbeams through them are given as much space as the human characters. A captivating ecological tale gorgeously made with a provocative ending, Evil Does Not Exist is another masterwork from one of the most compelling filmmakers working today. Evil Does Not Exist is available to buy or rent on VOD 3. Daughters Never once during Daughters is it mentioned what the incarcerated men at its center did to end up in jail. Following as these men get ready for a father-daughter dance in the gymnasium of the jail, the focus of directors Natalie Rae and Angela Patton never wavers from the humanity of the fathers and what this opportunity means to their daughters. Gorgeously shot and devastatingly emotional, Daughters finds an unshakable empathy permeating every moment. At a time when scapegoating, othering and fear-mongering are in vogue, it is powerful to see a film that tackles the injustice and inhumanity of the American carceral system and highlights people who are working against the stream to bring some of that justice and humanity back. For all Daughters represents and has to say, it is also a damn good piece of filmmaking. Traditional documentary interviews are forgone for slice of life moments with the kids who are so excited — or in some cases decidedly are not — to see their fathers again. Rae and Patton build so much trust and time with the men and their daughters that by the time you get to the climactic dance it packs a gut punch of conflicting emotions. In a year of quietly devastating films, Daughters stands in a tier of its own. Daughters is currently streaming on Netflix 2. The Beast A time skipping oddity, Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast finds Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) in a distant future where employment is dependent on cleansing yourself of the trauma of your past lives. As Gabrielle hops through past iterations of herself in Victorian France and modern day Los Angeles we see her eternal, doomed entanglement with a young man named Louis (George MacKay.) The Beast is messy and it’s funny, it so sharply realizes the way that love and yearning binds the soul across time. This connection is the only force strong enough to hold us together as it mercilessly rips us apart. Both Seydoux and MacKay are incandescent across three distinct roles in the film. The future depicted is not entirely dystopian but it does depict a sort of callousness that echos to what we are experiencing today. Oddly enough the doomed romance between Gabrielle and Louis has wedged inside my brain as a perversely hopeful message about love being worth the pain endured to find it. The Beast is currently available to buy or rent on VOD 1. Nickel Boys It can be difficult to find the proper words of praise and admiration for a film that so boldly and defiantly redefines cinematic language in the way that Nickel Boys does. The film follows two promising Black teenagers who find themselves, through the mechanics of a racist system, in a reform school that acts as a posh rehabilitation center for young white boys and effectively a prison labor camp for their Black classmates. Adapted from a Colson Whitehead novel based on real experiences at reform schools all across the south, Nickel Boys tells a type of story we’ve seen a heartbreaking number of times in a revelatory new way. Director RaMell Ross (Hale County This Morning, This Evening) tells the stories of Elwood and Turner in first person, alternating between the perspectives of the two boys. This effect is jarring at first but it draws the audience into the heads these two kids and begins to blend their experience closer together as their bond on screen grows tighter. For all the horror and injustice they see, Ross is deliberate in depicting the escapism and moments of unbridled joy and beauty these teenage boys find in the most dire of circumstances. An absolutely staggering film, one of the most beautifully realized and impactful of the year. Nickel Boys is currently playing in theaters in limited release There you have it, the best films of a tumultuous year in cinema and beyond. Thank you to everyone who has read this blog this year, it is my hope to get more reviews up and more podcasts out in the coming year. I’d love to hear your thoughts about the films of 2024 below, on Bluesky @evand26.bsky.social or on Letterboxd @EvanD26
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