2024 has come to a close, so it’s time to rank my favorite films of the year. Before we begin, I must note that like every year, I have not seen every movie released in 2024 (e.g. “The Wild Robot”), so this list is not quite comprehensive.
Honorable Mentions: A Different Man, Gladiator II, Juror #2, Kinds of Kindness, Love Lies Bleeding, Small Things Like These
10. The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Fearless auteur Mohammad Rasoulof was forced to flee his country of Iran in danger of incarceration for making this uncompromising condemnation of the totalitarian Iranian government. “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” was made in secret (an astounding accomplishment), and follows the daughters and wife of a government official put in charge of ordering death sentences for civilian dissenters. Over the course of the film, we see both fictional representations of Iranian atrocities and real footage of the government’s crimes against humanity, much of which literally took my breath away out of sheer horror. There is one scene in the middle of the film in particular that’s my pick for the best scene of 2024: an unbroken long take of a young woman having buckshot extracted from her bloodied, shattered face. Rasoulof captures a plethora of shocking images meant to stick with you long after you’ve seen the film, and this is one I’ll remember forever.
Rasoulof is also a tremendous scribe of dialogue. The first two hours of this nearly three hour motion picture take place almost entirely in a single apartment, so it’s heavily reliant on conversations between characters, and luckily Rasoulof maintains a constant sense of tension, danger, and dread just through what’s said — and what’s not said. Now, this film dramatically falters in its third act, which devolves into an out of place slasher-esque campfest that disrupts the grounded tone and makes the film end on a soft and generic note. If the final 45 minutes were as phenomenal as the first two hours, this would easily be in the top five films on my list. Overall though, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” is a tremendously harrowing film which should be seen by all Western audiences. This is the most devastating movie I’ve seen in quite some time, despite its sloppy and disappointing third act.
9. Dìdi
I’ve always been a sucker for coming-of-age movies, and “Dìdi” is a great one. The film follows 13-year-old Chris Wang in the 2000s, and is a love letter to this era of AOL and YouTube’s early emergence. I love how the movie portrays Chris as a deeply flawed, almost unlikable person without judging him, contextualizing his selfishness as a result of aimlessness and peer pressure. Chris is one of 2024’s greatest characters, someone full of insecurities and uncertainties who self-isolates from those who truly love him in efforts to find his place in the world. Joan Chen gives one of the year’s best performances, providing a deeply sympathetic and warm portrayal of Chris’s struggling mother. “Dìdi” is a beautiful and universally relatable story about how impossible it feels to be a teenager, especially in the Internet era.
8. The Apprentice
Yep, the Trump movie is on this list. I’m surprised as you probably are, but this is a really solid film and I’ll staunchly defend it as one of 2024’s best films. To those apprehensive toward the movie, I recommend you approach it as if Donald Trump and Roy Cohn are just fictional characters rather than real people. “The Apprentice” is an entertaining and accessible story about corruption, greed, and the excesses of capitalism which I feel anyone can enjoy if they have the right mindset. While there are some historical liberties taken (one of which is understandably blasphemous to fans of Trump), this is a surprisingly nuanced and largely faithful portrayal. The first half deeply humanizes young Donald before it shows him devolving into a morally bankrupt 1980s businessman, to an astounding degree. He’s initially presented as a struggling entrepreneur with a verbally abusive father and a genuine desire to construct gorgeous buildings for the city, only to turn into a sex-crazed manipulator when he’s corrupted by Roy Cohn’s teachings. This is not a hit piece nor a puff piece; it is exactly what it should be, which is a captivating and balanced look at this complicated man’s rise to power under the tutelage of Roy Cohn.
Ali Abbasi was the perfect choice to direct the film, as he isn’t an American and thus lacks political bias, and also because he brings a wonderfully frenetic energy to the film that otherwise isn’t there in the screenplay. The performances in “The Apprentice” are what truly make it pop. Sebastian Stan is perfect. He completely nails all of Trump’s mannerisms but brilliantly chooses not to mimic the future president’s voice, instead using his own voice but with a New York accent. That way, he feels exactly like a young Trump without falling into irritating SNL caricature. Jeremy Strong is likewise outstanding as Roy Cohn, with zombie-like body movements and a snapping turtle facial posture. Strong especially wowed me toward the end of the film playing the broken AIDS-stricken Cohn, coming to terms with his inevitable demise and isolation.
7. Nosferatu
Robert Eggers’ 2024 “Nosferatu” remake is a one-of-a-kind horror spectacle. Despite being based on the 1922 film of the same name and being a product of hundreds of predecessor vampire flicks, Eggers made this Nosferatu take entirely his own thanks to his visceral gothic style that I’ve always found highly engrossing. Eggers creates these deeply disturbing, fantastical experiences that pushes the art form forward. Lily-Rose Depp gives one of 2024’s best performances as the lead character Ellen Hutter, a woman haunted by the lust of a generally terrifying Count Orlok/Nosferatu in Bill Skarsgård (he would be scarier without the Lorax mustache Eggers’ team confoundingly put on him). While not as accomplished as Eggers’ previous two films “The Lighthouse” and “The Northman,” “Nosferatu” certainly gets the job done, with a plethora of chills and skin-crawling images that make for a fantastic horror movie.
6. A Real Pain
“A Real Pain” is one of the most easily lovable films of 2024, a classic dramedy akin to Alexander Payne’s works. It follows two mismatched cousins David and Benji Kaplan who reunite for a Holocaust tour in Poland to honor their recently deceased grandmother, a survivor of Hitler’s genocide. While this is certainly a dour backdrop, Jesse Eisenberg’s immaculate screenplay (potentially the year’s best) impeccably flows between drama and comedy, providing some of the biggest laughs and tear-jerking moments of 2024 cinema. Eisenberg (who also stars and directs) gives his best performance since “The Social Network” as David, a man who prides himself on having his act together while being deeply insecure. Kieran Culkin is also great as Benji, the unstable and humorous depressive. Although Culkin is being wildly overpraised by awards circles, there’s no denying he gives a damn good performance. Best of all, the film is a glorious 90 minutes. You’re in and out quickly, but when you leave, the characters, themes, and clever-as-hell title stay with you for weeks on end.
5. The Brutalist
Writer/director Brady Corbet’s three-and-a-half-hour historical epic about a Hungarian architect immigrating to America in the mid-20th century is a sumptuous cinematic experience. “The Brutalist” harks back to the lengthy American epics of Old Hollywood while aiming even higher, taking massive swings with its grand twist-and-turn narrative that almost entirely worked for me. I loved how unpredictable the film was. It features an outstanding cast, with a heartbreaking Adrien Brody as the protagonist László Tóth, featured in almost every scene. Brody bears all here and is tasked with carrying the entire film on his shoulders, and he never takes a false step. I also adored Felicity Jones’ vulnerable performance as László’s equally broken wife Erzsébet.
The film is all about the painful journey of the artist toward accomplishing their goal and whether or not said journey is worth it, painting this subject on the backdrop of the American Dream and dissecting this capitalist staple as a potential myth. “The Brutalist” is a deeply moving film which somehow flies by and feels an hour shorter than its actual length, and I cannot recommend this elite motion picture enough.
4. The Substance
This indie body horror mind-boggler took pop culture by storm, and for good reason. Coralie Fargeat’s gloriously maximalist filmmaking features some of the most exciting cinematic flourishes of the decade. That head-bopping score, grotesque makeup, obscenely colorful cinematography, and breakneck editing all mesh perfectly to create an experience like no other. Fargeat has immediately established herself as a unique visionary here, someone who merges the accessible genre flick with the thematic arthouse film. Nothing about “The Substance” is subtle, and while usually that’s a cinematic crime, the hit-you-over-the-head nature of the film works to its credit here, converging toward a thrilling horror masterwork full of originality in style and story. The titular Substance is a brilliant on-the-nose metaphor for the quick-fix beauty schemes pushed on women by Hollywood, and watching Demi Moore’s Elizabeth Sparkle (stellar character name, by the way) spiral out of control as her body morphs into a self-imposed monstrosity is simultaneously exciting and heartbreaking. This film may not be for everybody, but it certainly appealed to me. I had an absolute blast both times I experienced “The Substance.”
3. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
George Miller proves once again that he can make it epic. “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” is one of the best prequels of all time: a gas-guzzling powerhouse of a movie with immaculate worldbuilding and action set pieces that very few directors can pull off. Miller had a lot to live up to after “Mad Max: Fury Road,” and I honestly believe this latest entry into the “Mad Max” franchise is the best one yet. The film grabs hold of you and doesn’t let go for two-and-a-half hours, with the pacing and vibrancy of the many great engines on the fury road. This is easily the best written film of the franchise, with a fleshed out screenplay giving proper context to the world introduced in the previous movie while always maintaining strict focus on the core narrative of Anya Taylor-Joy’s Furiosa exacting her vengeance on Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus. Speaking of the latter, Hemsworth deserves an Oscar nomination for his work here. It’s certainly a loud performance, but it works perfectly. He has never been so unhinged and dangerous on screen. Dementus steals the show in every one of his scenes, especially in the shockingly dialogue-centric finale, and he may be 2024’s most memorable villain. It is an absolute tragedy that this film bombed at the box office, given just how rich and precise in detail it is on every level from the worldbuilding to the masterful direction to the layered performances. Plus, it has some of the best camerawork in the history of cinema. This film floored me.
2. Dune: Part Two
Denis Villeneuve is my favorite director working today and flat out one of the best filmmakers of all time in my eyes, so given my adoration for both him and the first film, I entered “Dune: Part Two” with stratospheric expectations. Yet I had faith it would live up to them, and alas, it did. This is a spectacular film, a true cinematic event which demonstrates the power of The Movies. As with the first film, “Dune: Part Two” is a technical wonder. The sound design, editing, visual effects, and cinematography — my God, that mind-blowing Greig Fraser cinematography —is top of the line, all the best of 2024. In fact, it’s pretty safe to say at this point that Villeneuve’s “Dune” series may be the most technically accomplished films in the history of cinema, or at least prominent in the conversation. His direction is out of this world (literally), bestowing audiences with unforgettable goose-bumping sequences such as the worm ride and Paul’s show-stopping speech to the Fremen.
“Dune: Part Two” isn’t just an audio-visual wonder, however; it has immense thematic and emotional substance, which is what makes it so powerful. It brilliantly flips the hero’s journey on its head, presenting a hero who may actually be the villain in the long run. Paul Atreides exploits a struggling people through religious prophecy to attain great power, at the eventual detriment of millions of soon-to-be lost souls. Villeneuve demystifies and warns of messianic figures with his “Dune” saga, making for a grand sci-fi epic with real depth.
1. Anora
Although this is supposed to be a more joyful and positive article, as a critic I must acknowledge that 2024 was a dark chapter for cinema. So many mediocre and terrible films have supplanted this as potentially the worst year for motion pictures in my lifetime. But “Anora” restored my hope for the art form. As soon as I left the New York City screening in October, I knew this was something extraordinarily special. No film this year has been more riveting, more hilarious, more emotionally devastating than writer/director Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner about a sex worker’s Cinderella story gone-wrong set in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.
Everything about this film is at or near perfection: the frenetic editing, the luscious cinematography, the ambitious screenplay, the adrenalized direction, and the best ensemble of the past decade. Mikey Madison gives the greatest lead performance of the year as the lovably feisty title character, and Yura Borisov gives the greatest supporting performance of the year as the socially awkward Russian henchman Igor. The film is a gloriously thrilling roller coaster ride in the pacing and the tonal shifts between screwball comedy and dour neorealism. Not a second is wasted. All of the film is thoroughly engrossing, through the lightning-fast first act, heightened and hysterical second act, and overwhelmingly tragic third act.
“Anora” is a masterpiece. The next great cinematic landmark. The best film of 2024.