Top Films of 2024
Top Films of 2024
Honorable Mentions:
Dune: Part Two - Dir. Denis Villeneuve
Denis Villeneuve's sequel to his 2021 sci-fi epic "Dune" continued the story of Paul Atreides and his ascension to become the spiritual and political leader of the natives of the planet Arrakis. The film is nothing short of visually breathtaking, as Villeneuve fills the screen with lush, engaging images. For mainstream general audiences, this is the kind of direction and cinematography that needs to continue to be cultivated. This space epic has the making to become a sci-fi classic for years to come. With its stacked cast, vast world-building, and visual lushness, "Dune: Part Two" has what it takes to be the biggest blockbuster of the year.
Furiosa - Dir. George Miller
Extending his "Mad Max" film series to the backstory of the character of Furiosa from "Mad Max: Fury Road," George Miller once again brings us back into the Wasteland. In this post-apocalyptic world of survival and chaos, a young girl seeks revenge on the man who killed her mother. "Furiosa" mirrors the aesthetics of "Fury Road," but is an entirely separate story all together. While "Fury Road" is a chase film, "Furiosa" is a revenge epic. Anya Taylor-Joy plays the young Furiosa, quietly seething with rage and resentment in a world of unimaginable horror and cruelty.
Megalopolis - Dir. Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola audacious "Megalopolis" is a film that should be on everyone's "Honorable Mention" list for the year, not because it is something of the upmost quality. Rather, the sheer daring and audacity to make something so bonkers and baffling, while also maintaining some semblance of artistic innovation. It's a film so intoxicatingly disorienting in its execution, performances, and plot that you can't help but ponder the film well after viewing. Is the film bad? Well, certainly. The film almost feels as if it is intentionally trying to be as bad as audaciously possibly while synonymously taking itself with the upmost seriousness. The tone that births forth from this concoction is something unlike anything cinema has seen before and almost certainly will never see again.
I Saw the TV Glow - Dir. Jane Schoenbrun
There's something terrifying and suffocating about Jane Schoenbrun's 2024 film "I Saw the TV Glow." Coming off her latest effort, 2021's cult hit "We're All Going to the World's Fair," Schoenbrun once again taps into the fears, anxieties, and malaise of contemporary American youth. "I Saw the TV Glow" has the visual presence of a Lynchian nightmare, while also slowly pulling the viewer into this hazy, surreal landscape of psychological despair. In the contemporary world of transgenderism, social despair, and an existential malaise stemming from the death of any future for the youth of today, the psychology of the modern coming-of-age disillusionment is more existentially terrifying than its ever been. Schoenbrun doesn't reveal any answers with "I Saw the TV Glow." Rather, she blends fantasy with realty, dreams with consciousness, and television with real life. Modern life is a messy blur that is only suffocating us further and further into an incurable despair. Its a film that more than just a symbolic reference to the discomfort being trapped in one own's body, its a film about being trapped by the hellish facade of reality itself.
Joker: Folie a Deux - Dir. Todd Phillips
Perhaps even more polarizing than Francis Ford Coppola's ambitious art piece "Megalopolis" in 2024 was Todd Phillips' follow up to his 2019 "Joker" film with "Joker: Folie a Deux." Many would write this film off as a meaningless waste of digital processing, but I would posit that the film's existence is meant to polarize, meant to antagonize, and meant to frustrate. On top of the musical elements of the film that act as a subjective viewpoint for our titular character, the film seems to uncomfortably dissect the notions of fame being attached to dangerous and unwell individuals. Our collective obsession with violence, with murder, and with disturbed minds elevates them to glorifying heights. What "Joker: Folie a Deux" does is spotlight this disturbing fixation. On top of this, the film itself seems to beat to death any glory for our hero, removes any semblance of victory for him, and utterly extinguishes the palpable delight of the first film. "Joker: Folie a Deux" intentionally ruins the legacy of its own character and its own franchise and revels in watching it burn and watching your own relationship to the character turn sour. Despite its polarization, its one of the most fascinating pieces of work this year.
RANKED:
24. Queer - Dir. Luca Guadagnino
With his second directorial release of 2024 with "Queer," Luca Guadagnino scratches the notion of what it means to be 'queer,' and not just in the context of sexual preference. To be queer is to stick out, to not fit it, to go against the grain, to be a stranger in a strange land. These notions can often be liberating, providing a individual uniqueness. However, as "Queer" notions, sometimes that can often feel more like a sense of detachment, a 'disembodiment' as the characters note. Set in the 1950s, Daniel Craig's William Lee goes searching for meaning and connection in his life, even if it means travelling into the jungles of South America to find it. Along the way, he unites with Eugene, played by newcomer Drew Starkey, as the pair spark up a sexual and romantic relationship that will test the capabilities of each.
23. Conclave - Dir. Edward Berger
2024 was an election year not just for the United States, but for a lot of the democratic world. Edward Berger's 2024 "Conclave," despite being about the election of a new pope, thematically aligns with the contemporary discussions around the topic. Power struggles, political machinations, backstabbing, moralistic compromises, and everything else that goes into campaigning and voting for a new leader can be found in the film. After the global success of his 2022 film "All Quiet on the Western Front," this Berger follow up proves that his eye for color and composition is something to be acknowledged in the world of film. On top of the visuals, the thematic resonance of the film pinpoints our current anxieties surrounding losing the plot in the constant chase for order.
22. Hard Truths - Dir. Mike Leigh
If there's one thing that 2024's "Hard Truths" proves, its that iconic British director Mike Leigh is still able to conjure something compelling at 82 years of age. Centering on an angry and depressed woman named Pansy, Leigh's rendition of a family in crisis is nothing short of engaging. "Hard Truth" seems to extend well beyond its frame, illuminating the troubled internality of modernity. The isolation by our protagonist is only worsened by her explosive behavior towards everyone around her. Her anger and expressiveness only mirror the current fury of our contemporary sentiments. The complete separation from our fellow humans only enlarges the gulf in our ability to connect, making us more angry and bitter. It is not just our protagonist that represents the current antagonism of modernity, but her disparate and quietly seething family members that echo this malaise. "Hard Truths" may be about one woman's struggle to connect to others and herself, but its emptiness is felt universally.
21. Maria - Dir. Pablo Larrain
To complete his biographical trilogy of historical women going through tumultuous periods of their life, Pablo Larrain's final subject would be Maria Callas in his 2024 film "Maria." Following the thematic through-line of 2016's "Jackie" and 2021's "Spencer," "Maria" deconstructs a woman's life and her relationship to her career, her relationships, and the lasting image of her in the public's mind. With breathtaking cinematography always employed by Larrain, the film is drenched in set pieces of elegance and 20th century modernism that encases our protagonist in a state of isolation. The modern world and its follies are a prison meant to keep the protagonist in tiny dollhouse boxes. The drama that comes into frame is that of our protagonist's own desires and sentiments that directly conflicts with the external circumstances that are meant to be an alienation. "Maria" is about more than just the biographical account of one woman, but of her dreams, her fantasies, and her pain.
20. Small Things Like These - Dir. Tim Mielants
Although it may not be a very ambitious or boisterous film, Tim Mielants' "Small Things Like These" packs its punches in its quieter moments. It stars Cillian Murphy as Bill, a coal merchant living in a small Irish town in 1985 with his wife and five daughters. Suddenly, situations arise that cause him to question the authoritative figures of the town and bring up memories of the past. The normally unconfrontational Bill must determine whether to go against the grain or do what he thinks is right. "Small Things Like These" reserves its thematic point in the moments of uncertainty, in quiet breaths of anxiety, and in sullen moments of melancholy. While the film is relatively simple and straightforward, the thematic notions at play deal with the complexity of how we make decisions morally in our current contemporary landscape.
19. The Last Showgirl - Dir. Gia Coppola
There's been a steady stream of American films lately that have centered on the last fading years of a crumbling empire. Perhaps these films evoke the general sentiment of what it feels like to be in the final throws of our fading American empire. One of this year's films that invokes this feeling is Gia Goppola's "The Last Showgirl." Starring Pamala Anderson as an aging showgirl dealing with the closure of her 30-year show on the Vegas strip, the film brings forth a tone of an oncoming finality - the end of an era. Many of the characters within the film are dealing with the uncertainty of what's the come and whether their value will decompose before them. Like many films coming out of America in this decade, "The Last Showgirl" certainly oozes with contemporary anxieties and fears.
18. Emilia Perez - Dir. Jacques Audiard
"Emilia Perez," a film that centers on a Mexican cartel leader who decides to restart her life with a gender-affirming operation, is more than meets the eye. Because of its gender-blending subject matter, the film decides to parallel this with a genre-bending output. The film is a domestic drama, a straight-up thriller, and even a surprising musical. The carousel of blending doesn't stop there, as the film is a French-produced, Spanish speaking, American actor filled, Mexican focused film. The complete disregard for order and structure is center to the film's existence, especially its thematic plot devices that wants to take down the established order that exists in our current world full of violence and oppression. The array of what this film could be and what it is completely undermines the expectations for film structure and film cohesion and for that, it becomes all the more engaging and notable.
17. The Apprentice - Dir. Ali Abbasi
If you reflect back on the year 2024 in the United States, one of the most prominent things you might reflect on is the re-rise of Donald Trump and his re-ascension to the United States Presidency. It might make one ponderous how the country ended up in this state. Well, if you watch Ali Abbasi's 2024 biographical film, "The Apprentice," you'll not only see a manifestation of one man's drive and determination to ascend, but you'll also see the inextricable link between this one man's ascension and that of America itself. Regardless of your opinions on the man, one can't deny that Trump has completely woven himself into the tapestry of the American dynasty inextricably. If you care to dig deeper into the domino effect of how the current status quo came to be, you must also follow the journey of this single man's relationship to his country, to his friends and family, and to himself. Only there will you find the true heart of America and the political environment, the capitalism, and the cultural tone that fermented its very soul.
16. Nosferatu - Dir. Robert Eggers
In adapting the F.W. Murnau 1922 German film "Nosferatu," American filmmaker Robert Eggers gets to expand his typical aesthetic and try his hand at traditional German gothic expressionism. The result is 2024's "Nosferatu," taking the iconic vampire Count Orlok and reimaging him for modern audiences. It is a film that centers on a newlywed couple in the 1830s as they navigate the arrival of a mysterious plague, along with the equally mysterious vampire. The iconic vampire, however, perhaps is simply a representation of death and our personification of the elusive concept. The concept becomes psychologically realized through the 19th century cultish conception and given a name and a face. If we could give death, plague, pestilence, melancholy, and terror a face, perhaps it would be that of a vampiric blood-sucker. Or better yet, the film even ponders the connection between sex and death, life and illness, terror and desire, and how our fear and our lusts become so intertwined that it becomes impossible to differentiate between them.
15. A Complete Unknown - Dir. James Mangold
Just like the central character and spotlight of the film, there is more to "A Complete Unknown" than meets the eye. Centering on the legendary early years of American song and dance man Bob Dylan, the film takes us through the folk scene that was burgeoning in the early 1960s. At the heart of the film lies our enigmatic 'Bobby,' a wisp and lonely traveler who punches his ticket to success, as various people around him attempt to define and categorize him. Many even attempt to ride his coattails and turn him into a symbol or idea for their own purposes. What emerges is a man who rebels against it all: against the establishment, against the moral purists, against the whole idea of categorization and definition. In contemporary times, we could use a little pushback to many of the ideologs and false prophets, even those claiming moral virtuosity. It's a film steeped in a time and place, but its ideas and themes are ever-present. Even more so, its central character and his eagerness to defy categorization should be something to strive for and look up to, even if it means rubbing everyone the wrong way.
14. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl - Dir. Rungano Nyoni
13. The Substance - Dir. Coralie Fargeat
When one thinks about the subjective experience of being a modern woman, what's the one film genre that comes to mind that would best encapsulate that? If you said 'body horror,' then "The Substance" is the film for you. The film centers on an aging fitness star who attempts to become 'young again' with the help of the mysterious substance. One week, she is her current aging self. The next, she is a young woman again. Problems begin to emerge, however, when the two sides of herself begin to take advantage of one another. "The Substance" is full of grotesque and nightmarish imagery that seems to encapsulate many aspects of the female experience and all the horrors and anxieties that come with it. It is a horrifying, grotesque nightmare to be a woman, especially with the current beauty standards aided and abetted by Hollywood, advertisements, and more damagingly, social media. With "The Substance," French director Coralie Fargeat is able to demonstrate how subjectively damaging these notions are and how it deforms and abuses the psychology of women everywhere.
12. Parthenope - Dir. Paolo Sorrentino
Perhaps one of the more divisive films to come out of 2024 was Paolo Sorrentino's "Parthenope." The most common complaint from critics was that the film is all style and no substance - looks beautiful, but simply surface-level and full of hot air. However, this very notion is explored within film itself, particularly its fixation on surface-level beauty. Our protagonist, Parthenope, possesses such divine beauty that it seems to warp the fabric of the story. As Gary Oldman's character notes, her beauty is a destructive force. As she moves through life, she becomes more of an observer of this phenomenon, watching how others respond to her beauty and the varying ways people interact with beauty in general. The entire visual format of the film is centered on beauty; every frame is gorgeous to look at. With a touch of Fellini-esque surrealism, Sorrentino muses on the nature of our relationship to beauty, art, and one another. We all want to reach out and touch the beautiful - but why? Perhaps it's to distract ourselves from life's tragedies, or maybe it's to seek out something we feel we lack. Either way, beauty is only skin deep. The central point seems to be that our wants, our lusts, and our desires are ultimately elusive. Do we truly care about the complexity that lies just beneath the surface of beauty? Or are we content with its superficiality, uninterested in looking deeper? "Parthenope," while providing no answers, invites the viewer to ask these questions all the same.
11. Challengers - Dir. Luca Guadagnino
Centering on a love triangle between three insanely talented tennis competitors, one begins to wonder whether the characters are discussing tennis or romance in Luca Guadagnino's sports romance "Challengers." The balance between attraction and competition runs rampant in this film, as the viewer bounces between the affections of its characters, between varying timelines, and between who you root for and sympathize with. It's a tale of passion and drive, all encircling around the lives of young people trying to find out what to make of their lives and how the sport they're playing fulfills them. Starring the young, hot performers Mike Faist, Josh O'Connor, and the new superstar in the film world, Zendaya, "Challengers" is an utterly captivating romance and sports film that managers to pull you into its web of affections and overall competitive spirit.
10. Grand Tour - Dir. Miguel Gomes
What's so endearing about Miguel Gomes's "Grand Tour" isn't hidden in the confines of the film's plot. Rather, the film takes you on a boundless journey through a narrative involving a man fleeing his fiancé through exotic countries during the first World War. All the while, its narrative shifts and shapes, expressing itself in varying ways. The viewer is taken along through various locations, narrators, time periods, and sentiments. So, what's the point? This is the larger question I asked during the film. However, the lack of answers and the frustration of not getting what you want is always surrounded by boundless beauty, beckoning you to obliterate the expectations you cling to and abandon all in search of something more. "Grand Tour" is a film that confounds me. Which is precisely why I year for more.
9. I'm Still Here - Dir. Walter Salles
Despite taking 12 years off in between films, Walter Salles proves he still can craft an emotional and tactile experience with 2024's "I'm Still Here." Starring Fernanda Torres as a wife and mother who deal with the disappearance of her husband during Brazil's dictatorship in 1970, "I'm Still Here" emotionally transmits its thematic point through the gut punch of a loving, happy family being fractured in two. What the film is able to do so well is illustrate just how these dictatorships can hit domestic life so intimately. Most film that deal with the subject of dictatorships, authoritarianism, or political corruption would illustrate its point through marches, protests, political machinations, or large-scale violence. "I'm Still Here" demonstrates its point through the somber yet devastating void left by the family patriarchy. No protests, no political thrills, no conspiracy. Just a loving family having a complete absence to content with. The father's absence is stark and reverberates through the whole picture, making the quiet oppression of authoritarian government felt on an intimate, domestic level.
8. The Girl with the Needle - Dir. Magnus von Horn
Taking place in 1919 Copenhagen, Magnus von Horn's 2024 film "The Girl with the Needle" centers on a young woman in dire straits. As the woman goes through one unfortunate circumstance after another, the brutality and perverse nature of the world reveals itself. The film is without a doubt a disturbing watch, as its lowly cast of characters are bent and twisted by their unrelenting economic disparity. The visual layout of the black-and-white cinematography Michal Dymek echoes its utter bleakness. Through the film's endless tragedies, it becomes clear that there is no light at the end of the tunnel, that circumstances cannot and will not ever change, and that we must all conform to the terror inflicted on us day in and day out. "The Girl with the Needle," through its unnerving twists and turns, will leave you as disturbed and devastated by its traumatized characters simply trying to survive.
7. Kinds of Kindness - Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos
After his most commercially viable film, last year's "Poor Things," Yorgos Lanthimos goes right back to his typical style of audience-alienating absurdism with "Kinds of Kindness." Bringing back some of his usual players like Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, and Margaret Qualley, Lanthimos also enlists Jesse Plemons, Joe Alwyn, Hong Chau, and Mamoudou Athie. "Kinds of Kindness" is three episodic stories of people trying desperately to prove their love or demand love in return. However, all of the behaviors of the characters only ever seem to stem from selfishness based on delusional and warped perceptions. Filled with Lanthimosian absurdist logic and structure, the film is like a Rorschach test for the viewer to project how their own personal relationships to others parallels to the relationships found in the film. Lanthimos sets these absurd scenarios in present day and makes this notion ever-present, which only points more to how our contemporary landscape reflects these cold and hollow characters desperate to find connection to someone or something. All the while, nothing they do is ever for anyone else's benefit. Rather, it is to satiate their own restless need to feel safe and secure in their own warped reality. It's a film that won't leave you soon after watching and will continue to rattle around in the corners of your mind.
6. Nickel Boys - Dir. RaMell Ross
RaMell Ross's 2024 film "Nickel Boys" wasn't exactly a festival darling, an awards contender, or a commercial firecracker. However, it doesn't seem hyperbolic to say that, perhaps 10 years from now, it will be considered a work that changed the landscape of contemporary cinema. The central story revolving a teenage boy sent to a racially oppressive juvenile delinquent center already has the thematic bones of an emotionally rich and socially textured work. What makes the piece even more radically inventive is Ross's decision to shoot most of the story from the first person perspective of hit protagonist, along with occasionally venturing into the first-person perspective of other characters and even disconnected images he renders. The effect is something extraordinary: a film that is completely lived-in. All of the trials and tribulations of our protagonist are rendered imminently personalized. His hopes and dreams made real through the subjective viewpoint that the audience now occupies. A man's life is made intimate, even all the little moments of time passing. "Nickel Boys" doesn't just make you an observer of a story, it forces you to live life as someone else has lived it. Through this subjective lens, we come out on the other side with a piece of him with us forever.
5. Anora - Dir. Sean Baker
With the 2024 entry into his filmography, Sean Baker takes his typical neo-realist style of documenting a fiction narrative around the lower class echelon of American society, and pushes his style to newer, greater heights with "Anora." Centering on a young exotic dancer who gets swept away by romance with the 21-year-old son of a rich and powerful Russian oligarch, the film details the bitter halt to the aspirations of its characters. The film revolves around themes of authenticity, and more specifically, the truth about one's self and one's circumstances. The array of characters that come into our protagonist's life, including the protagonist herself, all try to be a version of themselves that they are not. They posture, they have expectations, and they want better circumstances for themselves. However, there is a difference between the person you project to be and the authentic person you really are. There is a difference between your desired destination and the circumstances you find yourself in. In the current model of society, economics, and politics, we find ourselves trapped by our situations in contemporary life, dreaming and aspiring for more, both for our circumstances and who we are as human beings. Baker's film takes the format of a neo-realist screwball comedy and injects a sense of tragedy into its story that sweeps you off your feet only to hit a brick wall by the end.
4. The Seed of the Sacred Fig - Dir. Mohammad Rasoulof
Mohammad Rasoulof's 2024 film "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" primarily centers on political upheaval taking place in contemporary Iran. However, one could argue that its structural criticisms could be about authoritarian regimes and laws taking place on a global scale. The film centers around a family dealing with the 2022 Iranian protests after the non-fictional death of Mahsa Amini, who died suspiciously after refusing to wear her hijab. The authoritarian police state that ensues fractures the family, causing a split between the two daughters and their government-employed father. The film demonstrates the lengths the government will go to protect itself and the lengths with those loyal to the government will go to protect themselves, even if it means turning on your own family. The patriarchal oppression by authoritative structures in the film instill in the women a desire for true freedom. The crackdowns and violence only add fire to the burning flames of liberation. Thus, the 'seed' from the film's title references the current youthful generation that is rising against the current global forms of authority and corruption. "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" is not just a snapshot of contemporary abuses of power in Iran, but everywhere.
3. The Brutalist - Dir. Brady Corbet
Amongst the innumerable films that center on America or 'The American Dream,' Brady Corbet's 2024 epic "The Brutalist" ranks among the few that deconstructs 'America' from the ground-up. Clocking in at 3 and a half hours, Corbet's monumental film centers on Laszlo Toth, a Jewish-Hungarian holocaust survivor who arrives in the United States seeking refuge and work. It becomes clear to Laszlo that he is not welcomed by any American, rather he is tolerated and used. The 'brutalist' architecture of his oeuvre are a rebellion against the fascist and authoritarian powers that he left behind in Europe and against the capitalist oligarchs of the new, post-war America. As stated in the film, decadence is power. The lack of decadence and the intentional erecting of monuments that lack any sort of frivolity and decadence make enormous statements that illustrate the brutality of life. The unrelenting suffering of the film's characters are transformed through their artwork. Like the brutalist pieces Laszlo constructs, "The Brutalist" as a film itself mirrors its subjects' philosophies: it is an epic statement, a blunt and and unfrivolous monument to the pain and displacement of the perpetual immigrants. Above all, it is a film about the unflinching resilience of artists, laborers, minorities, and the working class as they attempt to erect America from the ground up for a group of power-hungry elitists. In doing so, the monuments they leave behind are not for these powerful men, but for themselves.
2. All We Imagine as Light - Dir. Payal Kapadia
Beauty breathes in every frame, every line spoken, and every moment of Payal Kapadia's "All We Imagine as Light." Centering on a group of women living their lives in working-class Dubai, "All We Imagine as Light" takes the neo-realist approach to cinema while all the way infusing it with a dream-like visual poetry. The colors are saturated, the plot is wistful, and the scenes float in a cloud of paradoxical melancholy and beauty. Being in line with the typical neo-realist approach, the characters being studied are on the low end of the economic totem poll, surrounded by a great city of wealth, power, and corrupted bureaucracy and are desperate to attain a certain comfort in their life, with themselves, or with the relationships they have. However, the ambiance constructed by Kapadia turns this realism into something far more elevated. Their lives and their frustrations are universal and human, meanwhile we observe them through a lens of a soft haze, full to the brim with angelic, dream-like visual observation. It's not very often that a film can have you fall in love, but "All We Imagine as Light" has somehow reignited my love for life, as I venture forth looking at the complications and struggles now through a new lens of melancholic beauty. The pain of being human and all its sorrow, its loneliness, and even its quiet moments of divine connection are all magical, all special, and all spiritual. Kapadia reminds me of the spiritual experience of being alive, despite its melancholy and its sorrows.
1. Caught by the Tides - Dir. Jia Zhangke
Sometimes, there are films that push the vocabulary and structure of the film language forward. Jia Zhangke manages to do that with his 2024 masterpiece "Caught by the Tides." This quietly powerful work centers on a woman who goes out in search of her partner after he heads for greener pastures. Zhangke uses footage from the past 20 years of filmmaking to construct a narrative that's as elusive as its thematic points. Through the spiritual journey the film takes, it deconstructs the passage of time through our protagonist, who given the modern equivalent of a silent film performance with her wordless portrayal. The sheer amount of thematic layering by Zhangki boggles the mind, as he philosophizes about the ways in which people are continuously left behind in their lives, whether by loved ones, economic abandonment, or left behind by the sheer headlong passage of existence. In doing so, we witness the 20 year change China has been through since the start of the millennium and Zhangke beautifully parallels this to plot points involving abandoned masses left behind by economic advancement, technological overpowering, and the social and political climbing of others. In addition, Zhangke illustrates these changes through the language of cinema and how it has changed and evolved in its visual style and languages in this century. "Caught by the Tides" is a film about having to reconcile yourself with change, coming to terms with your own inability to get ahead, and the passage of time that turns all of our worlds completely upside down.
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