2024 was the black sheep of the decade in film: it failed to form an identity as solid as the nuanced, deeply critical themes that pervaded many of 2023’s major releases, and it never quite amassed the repertoire of concrete masterpieces that graced 2022 and 2021, either.
If anything, 2024 felt like the industry beginning a migration back to old habits. Attempts to revive classically successful tentpoles made a strong comeback in the year’s rare superhero-absent stretch, and familiar names filled directors’ chairs with predictability and freshness.
The year’s myriad of approaches gave audiences reliability above all else; while theaters experienced gaps between major releases, individual films released with more consistently high quality when dry spells did eventually clear up. The end-of-year crop looks strong with late contenders like “The Brutalist,” “Nickel Boys” and “Nosferatu” releasing to round out December before the buildup to awards season.
Out of the 50-plus films I saw, these 10 managed to rise above the rest and provided unquestionably unique, compelling cinematic experiences in an otherwise middling year for movies.
10. “Anora”
“Anora” is the kind of film made for awards season. With a standout, heavily-touted performance from Mikey Madison at the helm and cult-favorite writer and director Sean Baker captaining a knockout script, it’s no surprise that the film came out swinging to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May and has continued to hold a stake in Oscar conversations since its release in October.
But aside from the “wow” factor of its billing block, “Anora” is a remarkable achievement — one that bulldozes straight through genre conventions and audience expectations and stands as one of the most uniquely affecting cinematic experiences of the year.
The film’s retelling of the classic “Cinderella” tale is appropriately dreamy and broad in scope thanks to its well-utilized budget and subtly captivating cinematography from Drew Daniels, both accentuating the contrast between “Anora”’s mix of modern fantasy and cold reality. Despite the complexity it conceals, its screenplay strides confidently through its runtime; a riveting ensemble of performances from Madison, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan and Yura Borisov in the second half aids the striking, naturalistic dialogue.
These exceptional elements are highlights while watching the film (and the reason it has garnered so many accolades) but, as anyone who has seen these technical show-stoppers combine into one mesmerizing entity will tell you, getting to experience all that Baker has to offer with “Anora” is a bigger win than any hunk of metal from the Academy.
9. “Evil Does Not Exist”
Evil does not exist, nor did the opportunity to see this film — technically a 2023 release — widely in the U.S. until this May. Thankfully, springtime air is exactly how I would characterize Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s latest film: a slow, creeping drama about the humble face of corporate greed and the futility of humans’ attempts to coexist with nature.
“Evil Does Not Exist” reveals its themes slowly, like the water it shows us dripping from a melting snowdrift. The story’s conflict between a small village and a belligerent, obtrusive corporation has been thoroughly explored elsewhere before, but the film’s restrained approach denies viewers the catharsis of a clear choice and presents a further-tangling web of motivations that will confound and disquiet you right up until the film’s jaw-dropping conclusion.
Hamaguchi’s camera takes on the will of an uncanny, otherworldly spectator, daring us to question whether its vision of the story is so unnatural or whether humans themselves are the aberration. The contrast between its visual poetry and matter-of-fact dialogue is a magnificent balancing act, one that summarizes the whole of “Evil Does Not Exist” quite handily. While its formal elements might be at odds, the film’s overall effect is unexpectedly striking and relentlessly compelling — a distinct experience that steadily proves itself as one of 2024’s best.
8. “Trap”
M. Night Shyamalan is a man known for his twists.
And while the writer and director’s latest film, “Trap,” about a suburban dad-turned-serial killer trying to escape from a pop concert, promises to lean into the pure fun its premise calls for, Shyamalan pulls one of the greatest cinematic magic tricks of the year by turning a one-note thriller into a shocking and cathartic trap all its own.
“Trap” blends elements of comedy, thriller and psychological drama seamlessly — all in a script that’s about as tight as the SWAT-patrolled security outside the concert — using its limited scope and absurd story to ensnare viewers into a mesmerizing and unique deconstruction of fatherhood. The way the story snappily morphs from lighthearted to terrifying is one-of-a-kind, an effort carried by Josh Hartnett in one of the year’s most complex and entertaining performances.
Its portrayal of a modern pop concert may not be groundbreaking, but few major studio films have felt as willing to throw themselves out on a limb and run with an idea as effortlessly as Shyamalan does here, and his bold, crisp camerawork complements the arena’s amped-up energy. It may not be as typically shocking as some of his other projects, but walking out of the theater and realizing that Shyamalan’s bizarre combination of Taylor Swift and “Psycho” functions as brilliantly as it does is still one of the biggest twists of the year, in my book.
7. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”
I’ve long accepted my critical blind spot for the “Planet of the Apes” films — one so severe I could write an essay defending the ridiculously bad Tim Burton/Mark Wahlberg-helmed remake from 2001 if I really set my mind to it. Given my view through ape-tinted glasses, then, maybe it was a foregone conclusion that “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” the series’ 10th film and much-anticipated return after a seven-year hiatus, would cause me to gaslight myself into giving it a spot on this list.
What’s so surprising about “Kingdom,” though, is not just how well director Wes Ball shoulders the weight of the franchise’s history. The film’s feat is even more rare: a pure distillation of blockbuster moviemaking that appreciates the gift of its meaty budget and allows the audience to hang in that magical space of crisp digital effects and achingly cinematic sensibilities.
Despite the thousands of frames of technical wizardry used to create it, the film has no tricks up its sleeve: just a remarkably earnest interpretation of the “Planet of the Apes” mythology that it translates into uncompromisingly epic, screen-filling emotion. In a year entirely dominated by franchise sequels, “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is a reminder that such a movie can and should be a sincere, truly groundbreaking extension of film language, even as it sates the whims of a popcorn-munching multiplex — myself included — eager for more ape action.
6. “Juror #2”
Until you hear Clint Eastwood’s name attached to “Juror #2,” you might not think much of the small, straightforward legal drama. Certainly, the premise of an everyday juror in small-town Georgia forced to choose between cheating the justice system and revealing himself as the unwitting true culprit to a high-profile murder doesn’t seem to lend itself to the prestige of a veteran director like Eastwood, much less for what could be his final film.
Where “Juror #2” shines, though, is in the brute-force intentionality with which Eastwood frames its character’s dilemma. Creaking under the pressure from his soon-to-be-born child, guilt from his alcoholism and shaky moral quandaries about justice, Nicholas Hoult’s character is a straight-to-the-heart, damning portrayal of the American family man — a central conflict that proves as narratively ambiguous as it is angrily straightforward.
The real fun of “Juror #2” comes from seeing such a textbook trial film simultaneously executed to comfortable perfection while also turned entirely on its head. The story’s orchestration of many different interlocking ideas about justice and the American social consciousness are not necessarily ironclad, but the film’s thrilling achievement is not in emphatically resolving such themes — those come second to its telling of the gripping character drama at its forefront. But by dredging them up in the context of this smart, powerful little story — which does, in fact, have a stingingly emphatic resolution — Eastwood crafts a brilliant, pulpy thought-provoker that’s uniquely rejuvenating, both among films this year and from courtroom dramas across the decades.
5. “Challengers”
It may have done far from “Wicked” numbers at the box office, and it will undoubtedly suffer some of the most egregious awards season snubs in recent memory, but “Challengers” is my personal choice for the biggest movie of the year.
Director Luca Guadagnino’s high-octane sports drama is a gorgeous exercise in wish fulfillment: cathartic back-and-forth tennis action is filmed with grace and energy and carried out to perfection by a now-iconic trio of incredibly attractive actors, the romantic tension between whom is so thick it could be cut with a knife (though you’d need one almost as sharp as Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor’s jawlines).
Guadagnino and writer Justin Kuritzkes take a premise outlandish enough to be a Disney Channel sitcom and unapologetically present it as high art. The film blends an exploration of queer romance and a story of ambition within professional athletics into an effortlessly smooth experience that elevates the genre conventions of both. What makes “Challengers” feel so immense is that its masterful storytelling doesn’t manifest only as formal nuance — at its best, it allows you to fight through its web of tangled, interesting character drama as you simultaneously fight the urge to jump out of your seat with cinematic fervor.
“Challengers” is a direct fulfillment of Nicole Kidman’s infamous AMC monologue; it is an expressed guarantee that you will laugh, cry, care and walk out of the theater having had an experience you could get nowhere else. Though, on the other hand, that experience can at least be slightly replicated thanks to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ best-of-the-year score — one whose placement on my Spotify Wrapped may or may not have rivaled the film’s placement on this list.
4. “She Is Conann”
Let’s be honest: anti-wokeness ain’t what it used to be. Sure, we had some minor moments this year — complaints about a female character leading an entry into a long-running franchise (see the list’s #2 spot) and the typical vitriol over a person of color daring to have been cast in a “Star Wars” project, to name a few — but one can’t help but sense that 2024 was still missing its major anti-woke punch.
If only there had released some big, loud, gender-bent retelling of a classically male story, packed to the brim with queerness and anticapitalist themes to arouse the masses and restore the anti-woke passions of angry social media users and Joe Rogan wannabes to their former glory.
Enter: “She Is Conann,” a spin on the classic barbarian fantasy that contains the most interesting take on the original story to date, following a young Conann on a mesmerizing journey to kill her past through six wildly different lives in the underworld abyss.
Director Bertrand Mandico’s film is a strange story, told strangely. What can’t be denied about his latest work, though, is the breadth of feeling that the film achieves, even across six different eras and portrayals by six different actresses. “She Is Conann” never fails to wrap its viewers in the haunting nostalgia of its hellish wasteland: glittering ash flits through every frame, and the thoroughly eye-popping editing is able to disguise its thin budget and transform it into a thing of unearthly elegance. These unifying elements come and go throughout Conann’s various, brief lifetimes, but if anything, the variety of storytelling the film achieves only further accentuates the intimacy and heightened emotion of this barbaric tragedy and makes it well worth investing in — unless it’s still not quite woke enough for you, that is.
3. “I Saw the TV Glow”
To call “I Saw the TV Glow” the feel-bad film of the year would be true — by a country mile, no less. Above all else, though, the film feels important both in its contributions to the horror genre and in its expressions about transgender experience.
But where it avoids expressly labeling its themes, it’s obvious that the film requires no such verbiage to communicate its direct, bitter truths. “TV Glow” is the scariest film of the year: not because we fear for the characters’ lives or watch expectant of incoming scares, but because director Jane Schoenbrun immerses viewers into the dread and gnawing hopelessness of a life lived incorrectly — where the main character Owen’s inability to pursue his deepest desires is a ticking clock that feels louder and more omnipresent than the doomsday countdown in a “Mission: Impossible” movie.
Schoenbrun’s achievement is that the film captures their experiences and transmits them as a cryptic dream, unsettling and provoking you without ever providing an answer to satisfy its tickling unease. The film leads viewers down a deep, dark pit and chooses to bury them there, crushed in the atmosphere of its suffocating sound design and frozen in its horrifyingly stagnant camerawork. Justice Smith’s leading performance gives us the perfect protagonist with whom to identify, though even the shaky foundations of his character’s reality begin to deteriorate before too long.
“I Saw the TV Glow,” then, is a movie of necessity: it’s horrifying because it has to be. In creating this nightmarish, topsy-turvy cinematic language, Schoenbrun opens our eyes to the nightmare that we wake up to experience even once the film is done, and their work is sure to stand as a masterful achievement in both horror filmmaking and queer storytelling for years to come.
2. “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”
“Furiosa” is, without a doubt in my mind, the kind of movie that movies were made for.
Writer and director George Miller returns to the world of “Mad Max” after he shook Hollywood with 2015’s “Fury Road,” an effort he immediately blows out of the grimy, radiation-infused water with a prequel that fulfills the ethos of the entire series — not to mention Miller’s decades of filmmaking experience.
The story’s post-apocalyptic Wasteland is presented in its purest form to date and makes for a rich cinematic playground. Against the muddy yellow dirt of “Furiosa”’s sprawling desert void, everything from dialogue to gunshots and shredded guitar riffs is heightened and used to tell an even wider-reaching story of epic survival. The film isn’t concerned that its effects may look sloppy or that it jumps through large swathes of time in moments — all that matters is the uncompromisingly powerful experience that it maintains for all 149 minutes.
Anya Taylor-Joy shines at the center of the beautifully composed carnage, though Chris Hemsworth responds accordingly with a tragically electric villainous turn as Dementus, which remains my favorite supporting performance of the year. The characters’ decade-long conflict crescendos in high-octane action just as much as it does in pitiful apathy; seeing the backdrop to “Fury Road” played out with such intense grandiosity does an excellent job of highlighting the story’s inherent futility, and the very idea of a modern action blockbuster taking nods from classical literature is enough to make my blood pump, robot arms and shotguns be damned.
1. “Perfect Days”
You’d be hard-pressed to find “Perfect Days” at the top of anyone else’s end-of-year ranking, and that’s not just because I’m such an interesting guy with incredibly diverse taste.
Wim Wenders’ latest work is ostensibly a 2023 release — it was nominated and summarily snubbed for Best International Feature at this year’s Oscars. Still, the fact of the matter is that U.S. moviegoers couldn’t watch the film outside of festivals until this February; and the fact of the matter is that “Perfect Days” is also one of the best films this particular U.S. moviegoer has ever seen.
Wenders’ vision of contemporary Japan is quietly beautiful. Our view through the eyes of humble, aging public toilet cleaner Hirayama inundates us with the lonely beauties and quiet joys of post-pandemic life with soft soundscapes and editing that ground the story without ever holding for a moment too long. This, along with Koji Yakusho’s often-silent but no less brilliant performance, gives the film the confidence to pause in quiet moments so that Wenders can imperceptibly whisper the secrets of the universe to us through a bittersweet facial expression or brief rustlings of the leaves.
“Perfect Days” is, in some senses, a nature documentary about humanity; the film presents the human experience, which is magnified and uncompromised for your viewing pleasure. In watching, we interrogate whether Hirayama’s mundane existence — the life of a man whose job we would literally never want to have — is just as beautiful, hopeful and worthwhile as our own, if not more so. We’re asked to blur the lines between the film, its text and reality, and the result is a resoundingly impactful expression of self-reflection just as much as it is one of the most gorgeously realized pieces of art this decade. “Perfect Days” may not make even a single appearance during this year’s awards season, but give it a chance, and it’s sure to make a dent in your soul forever.
Kevin Lynch can be reached at lync1832@stthomas.edu.