2024 was a strange year, in film especially. I walked out of so many movies this year wishing they had been just a little bit better. I’ll delve into this more later, but horror had a humungous third act problem this year. None of the highest grossing films of the year, outside of Dune Part Two really did anything for me at all and I was glad for independent and non-blockbuster filmmaking throughout the year. 2024 was one of those years where the higher the budget of the film, the more chance it had to disappoint.

Perhaps my least favorite trend of the year was the ever increasing length of studio logos. Late Night with the Devil, Emilia Pérez, and Flow all nearly crossed the two minute mark before the credits began. I get that it takes a lot of companies to get these things made these days, but we really need to put a limit on how many studios get to show their logo prior to the film.

In terms of films I didn’t see prior to doing my list, there were only a few I missed, most notably September 5, Nickel Boys, and The Room Next Door. In terms of acclaimed films that I saw but are noticeably absent from my list, you’ve got The Brutalist, Emilia Pérez, Babygirl, and A Real Pain. As far as films I didn’t see because I knew I wouldn’t like them, you’ve got Wicked and A Complete Unknown.

I no longer do a Worst of the Year list, but my least favorite films of the year include Megalopolis, The Apprentice, and the ill-advised Road House remake, while the only film I cut from my list, and would therefore be considered an honorable mention for the year, is—and no, I’m not joking—The Beekeeper.

Without any further adieu, here are my ten best films of 2024…

10 They Called Him Mostly Harmless

Including this HBO MAX original documentary on my list might be seen as heresy to some since it never played in a theater, but it was a feature length film and arguably the best non-fiction film released in 2024. The film chronicles the two years worth of attempts by amateur sleuths on the internet to identify the remains of a hiker found dead in the woods. As more and more people get involved in the case and those people ascribe more and more imaginary attributes to this unidentified person, the film reveals its true motive. Can you really know someone you only spent a few hours with or have never met outside of the internet? This film provides a rather brutally poignant “no” to those who might still think the answer is “yes.” Truly fascinating stuff.
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9 Flow

A gorgeously animated film without a single word of dialogue spoken, the Latvian film Flow is a marvel to watch for its economy of storytelling and incredible watercolor-esque visuals. Following the adventures of a group of animals—mainly focused on a black cat—as they deal with rising water in a world seemingly abandoned by humankind. I was substantially more emotionally invested in the plight of these animated animals over the course of 85 minutes than I was in the combined eight hours I spent watching The Brutalist, Emilia Pérez, and Babygirl (sorry Awards season tastemakers). While perhaps not for the very young, this is a wonderful film that can be enjoyed equally by everyone the world over, which is just not something that can be said of many films.
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8 Heretic

Horror had a really big Third Act problem this year: In a Violent Nature, Longlegs, Cuckoo, Trap, The Watchers, Never Let Go, Speak No Evil, and Oddity were all varying degrees of fun until the wheels came off in the third act. And while I would not even classify Heretic as pure horror, it definitely stuck the landing. A never-better Hugh Grant is having the time of his life as a mild-mannered Hugh Grant type chatting up some young Mormon missionaries who have come to his house. Never, ever losing his calm exterior, Grant taps into primal evil in this flick that features worthwhile, smartly written debates about the nature and origins of religion. It’s also just one hell of a fun time at the movies.
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7 Sing Sing

Talk about a movie more people needed to see. The benefits of arts therapy, in particular theatre, for prisoners has been well documented, but comes to vivid life in this true story of a theatre troupe at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York. The value in immersing oneself in a character can be an invaluable tool to elicit empathy for others, and the rough road to redemption through theater is examined here with a cast made up mostly of the guys in the real program. Colman Domingo is sensational here, as is Clarence “Divine Eye” Macklin playing himself, but the pathos that Domingo elicits with his big saucer eyes gives this character instant credibility and depth. It’s hard to look like a criminal when you’re surrounded by actual criminals, but there’s not a false note in Domingo’s performance, easily one of the best of this year.
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6 Conclave

What does the Catholic Church’s process of selecting a new Pope have in common with the reality shows RuPaul’s Drag Race or Big Brother? You’d likely say, “nothing,” but then you haven’t seen Conclave, the most nail-biting dialogue-driven film in years. As the Cardinals meet at the Vatican, decked out in all their finery like the contestants on Drag Race, they begin a series of backdoor dealings and negotiations that frankly wouldn’t be out of place on Big Brother. No one plays a decent man burdened by the weight of the world quite as well as Ralph Fiennes, and here he gives another masterclass in less is more as the man chosen by the deceased Pope to lead this whole ordeal. The supporting cast is similarly outstanding, and with enough reality TV-esque intrigue to keep anyone hooked, Conclave might be the most unsuspecting film with four-quadrant appeal in a very long time.
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5 The Last Showgirl

Melodrama is among the most impossible genres to pull off because it risks tipping over into a parody of itself at any moment. Thankfully third generation director Gia Coppola can manage the balance and does so masterfully with her third film The Last Showgirl. A film with an emotional heart worn brazenly on its sleeve, The Last Showgirl doesn’t traffic in subtlety, allowing its emotions to be writ large and giving Pamela Anderson a chance to flex her acting muscles in ways never before seen—she wasn’t afforded a ton of opportunities to demonstrate range in her heyday. But as a Vegas showgirl whose thirty-plus year job is coming to an end, Anderson turns in spectacular work, ably supported by an incredibly subtle Dave Bautista and an incredibly unsubtle but equally great Jamie Lee Curtis. In a year of emotionally clenched jaws and sharp intakes of breath, this one comes in like a wrecking ball and hits in all the right ways.
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4 Anora

As someone who actively disliked Sean Baker’s two previous films—The Florida Project and Red Rocket—I didn’t go into Anora with high hopes. However, where I found the protagonists of those films off-putting to the point of ruining the film, here he struck gold with Mikey Madison, who is brilliant beyond words in the title role. Baker’s deliriously wild film is, undoubtedly, the funniest film I saw in a theater this year and it wasn’t even a true comedy—the film’s pitch black gut punch of a final scene makes sure of that. Still, with outstanding supporting performances from Yuriy Borisov, Mark Eydelshteyn, and especially Baker regular Karren Karagulian, who gives my favorite performance of the entire year, the film is one hell of a fun ride that holds up on second viewing. I may have finally gotten the Sean Baker hype.
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3 Ghostlight

I know, I know, another film about the healing power of theatre, boy am I an easy mark. Like Sing Sing, Ghostlight looks at the power of understanding others through inhabiting a character, but in supreme microcosm. Gruff construction worker Dan (Keith Kupferer) is masking personal pain with anger, often taking it out on his wife and daughter, played by Kupferer’s real life wife and daughter Tara Mallen and the sensational Katherine Mallen Kupferer. Thanks to the keen eye of a community theatre director played by Triangle of Sadness breakout star Dolly De Leon, Dan is invited to join their production of Romeo & Juliet, with the classic tragedy running parallel to incidents in Dan’s recent past. Anyone who has spent any time in and around the theatre can tell you how invaluable that community is, and few—if any—films have presented that idea as well as Ghostlight.
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2 Tuesday

While not singular by any means, the experience of being a parent is often a difficult one to convey to anyone who’s not a parent. The strange but incredibly moving film Tuesday manages to brilliantly convey the absurd lengths parents will go to in order to spare their children from hardship in a way that will resonate with a lot of people. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is heartbreaking as a mother to the titular sick teenager—the lovely young actor Lola Petticrew—and when visited by the angel of death in the form of a talking macaw, they each do something wholly unexpected. When that macaw, hauntingly voiced by Nigerian-born British actor Arinzé Kene, takes a hiatus from its duties as death, the film goes to even more unexpected places that show the lengths humans—and by extension parents—will go to in order to avoid their problems. And with perhaps the best explanation of the term “Afterlife” I’ve ever heard on film, Tuesday is a film with some big ideas about some big problems. And don’t be surprised if it reduces you to a blubbering mess, even on a rewatch.
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1 The Substance

Wow! Few films I’ve seen in my life have left me as gobsmacked as Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance. This scathing indictment of the entertainment industry’s impossible standards for women felt like a primal, guttural scream at anyone still not paying attention to the gender double standard going on in Hollywood. A never-better Demi Moore delivers a delirious performance that affords her the room to show sides of herself never before seen over a forty-plus year career. She shines here as Elisabeth Sparkle, a Jane Fonda-esque actress turned aerobics instructor who celebrates her 50th birthday by getting the boot from her TV hosting job. Desperate for a comeback, she gets invited to try a radical new “substance” that will create a younger, more vibrant version of herself, played by Margaret Qualley—finally channeling all of that misplaced rage she has on screen into her best performance. There is a symbiosis between the two women that must be respected, and the fun of the film begins when one half of that equation stops respecting that boundary. The Substance touches on nearly every genre, but at its heart is still a pitch black comedy with a truly sado-masochistic bent. The Substance was the best time I had in a movie theater last year and it’s a film I will never forget.
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