My Top 10 Films of 2024
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” blew the lid off of conventional filmmaking in 2022. In 2023, Barbenheimer reminded us why we love going to the movies. In contrast, 2024 has not been a standout year for filmmaking. “Wicked” is supposed to be a masterwork, but the whole damn thing looks airbrushed. Reports of “Megalopolis” were so outrageously negative that I do not plan on ever seeing it.
Luckily, there was no dearth of my personal bread and butter: weird little genre movies. For a film to stay with me for the entire year, it has to really stand out. “Extreme” is a word one might use to define each film on this list, whether it is supremely beautiful, a real tearjerker, or just really, really serious about tennis. However annoyed I am by our seemingly incessant appetite for cultural mediocrity, I can be grateful that there are people out there making quiet, high-quality films — as well as people willing to throw money at movies about toxic homosexuality and/or evil puppets.
Without further ado, here are my top ten — eleven, really, but shh — films of 2024.
10. Smile 2 (dir. Parker Finn)
I don’t think there is another current mainstream horror franchise that is savvier than Parker Finn’s Smile films. I was impressed by how terrifying I found “Smile,” and I was doubly impressed by “Smile 2,” which makes its predecessor look like an episode of “Sesame Street.” This is big-budget horror at its finest, and I can safely say that I felt like a trapped rat nearly every moment from its grisly opening to its murderous-meat-puppet finale. That Finn can still find new ways to make jump scares scary is beyond impressive — I nearly fell out of my seat when, after a harrowing traffic accident flashback, one character suddenly transformed into an oncoming car.
The practical effects are delicious, the script is brilliant, the cast is dazzling. (Naomi Scott, Raúl Castillo, Dylan Gelulah, AND Rosemarie DeWitt? Parker, you spoil me.) This movie only ranks so low for me because, at the end of the day, the “Smile” films are a “life-sucks-then-you-die” kinda bunch, and I’m a recovering pessimist. Call me if the final girl finally beats her trauma in “Smile 3.”
9. Suncoast (dir. Laura Chinn)
One of my first cinematic delights of the year came when I was assigned to review Laura Chinn’s debut film, “Suncoast,” out of Sundance. I thought it would be interesting to see a movie set in, as the PR copy stated, St. Petersburg, Florida, where I lived until I was nine years old. As it turns out, this coming-of-age film is actually set in Clearwater, where I spent my own adolescence. Though it’s about a difficult situation that is intensely personal to the filmmaker (her older brother’s end-of-life care), “Suncoast” still feels like a tender time capsule to girlhood writ large. That it took place in more or less the same place and time as my own formative years — right down to the Christian private school and The Pussycat Dolls’ “Don’t Cha” — is just the icing on the cake.
Add in tearjerking lead performances from Nico Parker, Laura Linney, and Woody Harrelson, and you’ve got — in my very biased opinion — a lovely little hidden gem of a film.
8. Challengers (dir. Luca Guadagnino)
A very happy Mike Faist Renaissance to you and yours! I am pleased to say that “Challengers” is one of the few movies this year that did live up to the hype. The cast is beyond excellent, Justin Kuritzkes’ debut feature script crackles with scrumptious tension, and that tennis ball CGI is proof that the art of digital visual effects is not yet dead. There is just enough horniness for those of us who do not care about tennis, and just enough tennis for those of you who do not care about horniness. It is almost a perfect movie.
Emphasis on the almost. I think that Guadagnino is an excellent filmmaker, and he made two of my favorite recent movies: “Call Me by Your Name” and “Bones and All.” I also think that someone needed to rein him in while he was making “Challengers.” I’m almost always in favor of directors trying out new techniques instead of playing it safe but sometimes you have to let the script and cast chemistry speak for themselves. Drowning everything in EDM and staging small tornadoes in south Westchester feel less like artistic flourishes and more like acts of creative insecurity.
7. The Devil’s Bath (dirs. Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala)
If you thought “The Substance” was the peak of feminist horror this year, allow me to politely, emphatically disagree, and to point you instead towards “The Devil’s Bath.” In my review for Seventh Row, I called this film “a breathtaking masterwork that will ruin your night and possibly your life,” and I stand by every word of that. This movie is achingly beautiful and also one of the most horrifying things I have ever seen. She’s got range!
For their third horror film, “Goodnight Mommy” and “The Lodge” directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala focus on the cheery, unfortunately very real topic of suicide by proxy in early modern Europe. Suicide by proxy allowed very mentally ill women to end their own lives by murdering children, an offense that unequivocally garnered the death penalty. “The Devil’s Bath” opens on one such offender and then proceeds to follow its protagonist, Agnes (the incredible Anja Plaschg) from her joyous wedding day to the depths of madness.
I fully understand if you never watch this movie. I almost wish I hadn’t! However, it is one of the most intentional, harrowing, and sharpest examinations of suffering that I have ever seen. If I ruled the Academy, it would be a serious contender for Best International Feature Film.
6. A Real Pain (dir. Jesse Eisenberg)
I’ve had a strong Jesse Eisenberg bias since I was about 16 years old, so I’m delighted that he got to make another movie after his head-scratching debut, “When You Finish Saving the World.” “A Real Pain” is more grounded and personal, and it pays off in a big way. Eisenberg has such a firm grasp on the relationship at this film’s center, as well as the two characters in it. One of them, David (played by Eisenberg), feels like a slightly heightened version of Eisenberg himself, brimming with neurotic empathy. His cousin, Benji (played divinely by another one of my teen faves, Kieran Culkin), is one of the most alive characters I’ve seen on screen this year: vibrant and sensitive and pitiable all at once. I spent the entire movie ping-ponging between identification with each of them.
This travelogue through Holocaust-affected Poland is beautifully rendered and masterfully balances dry humor and gravity. Above all, it is an excellent character study, one that I hope brings Culkin one letter closer to an EGOT.
5. Nosferatu (dir. Robert Eggers) / The Vourdalak (dir. Adrien Beau)
This entry is mainly for “Nosferatu,” but I couldn’t have enjoyed Robert Eggers’ Gothic masterpiece nearly so much if I hadn’t also seen “The Vourdalak” earlier this year. What an excellent debut by Adrien Beau! I won’t say too much about it, because it’s best to go into that film cold, but I highly recommend you watch it if you like extremely specific period pieces, an ill-equipped dandy in the place of the final girl, and/or puppets.
Beyond it being the only big holiday release this year that didn’t totally let me down, “Nosferatu” is simply excellent. Lily-Rose Depp is particularly fantastic as Ellen, a young bride plagued by erotic visions of Death, as is Bill Skarsgård, as the titular vamp. (There is little I respect more than the heir of a Swedish sexyman acting legacy going on to play, almost exclusively, weird little freaks.) Christmas used to be a spooky time, and I am so delighted that Focus Features chose to honor that by releasing this bizarre movie in one of the most sought-after slots on any film distributor’s calendar.
Do I think this is a feminist movie? No, the same way that I don’t think “Possession” is a feminist movie. Excellent female characters challenging the status quo does not a feminist movie make, especially when said excellent female characters must then [insert spoiler here]. “Nosferatu,” which draws on the eponymous silent film as well as Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” takes more or less the same narrative path as all of its predecessors. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, though — it’s worth discussing where certain gendered tropes in horror come from, and reexamining them through a modern lens.
If I were to lodge one real complaint about this movie, it would be that I wish Eggers had relied entirely on practical effects when crafting his moody, German world. I think he’s got what it takes to pull that off! Death to all vague CGI! But at least he didn’t skimp on the rat budget.
4. Love Lies Bleeding (dir. Rose Glass)
“Love Lies Bleeding” gets a little lost in the sauce at the end, but it is very nearly a perfect movie. Rose Glass proved to be my kind of director with her debut, “Saint Maud,” and her second feature feels similarly concocted with me in mind. (Local lesbian loves to see Kristen Stewart play a grubby little tomboy, more news at eleven.) Kristen Stewart is in perfect form as Lou, a wastoid with designs on self-improvement who reverts back to the toxic ways of her family when she falls in love with bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian). Stewart and O’Brian are divine together, but the supporting cast is also stacked: Dave Franco, Jena Malone, Anna Baryshnikov, and Ed Harris each give their all as various weirdos caught in Lou and Jackie’s orbit.
I don’t want more random background lesbian couples in Star Wars movies, I want more scripts like “Love Lies Bleeding.” I want to see love absolutely tear two people apart — because that’s what they were raised to believe love is supposed to do — and I want those people to be women. In my book, “representation” doesn’t look like minorities being depicted positively 100% of the time, it looks like diverse renderings of all aspects of the human experience. And anyone deep in lesbian culture will gladly tell you: We can be toxic, too.
3. Femme (dirs. Sam H. Freeman & Ng Choon Ping)
Speaking of Bad Homosexuals, I can’t recall having more fun watching a movie in 2024 than I did when Nadine and I sat down to watch “Femme.” This thriller has a tough premise: After a feminine gay man is assaulted while in drag, he becomes obsessed with tracking down and seducing the man who beat him. But if you’re willing to take this ride, god is it good. Nathan Stewart-Jarrett is wonderful per usual as lead Jules, and George MacKay gives a career high performance as the swaggering, closeted Preston. As things heat up between the two, Jules’ deception — and his naturally feminine personality — becomes increasingly difficult to conceal.
This ambitious examination of sex and masculinity makes me beyond excited for whatever Freeman and Ping have up their sleeves next. If you want a double feature focused on neon-soaked, problematic gays, I can’t imagine a better lineup than “Love Lies Bleeding” followed by “Femme.”
2. Strange Darling (dir. JT Mollner)
Now this is what I call CINEMA! “Strange Darling” had a long journey from production to the big screen, but boy was it worth the wait. This bloody thriller tracks the relationship between an enigmatic young woman (Willa Fitzgerald) and her one-night stand (Kyle Gallner), and it does so in a clever, twisty way that will have you questioning the nature of their relationship several times over. What I liked best about “Strange Darling” — aside from Giovanni Ribisi’s sumptuous film cinematography and the outstanding performances — is that it made me rethink my own relationship to movie tropes in general. I strongly encourage you to go into this movie cold and let it surprise you.
This is another film that was, essentially, made for me in a lab: Fitzgerald, of MTV’s “Scream” fame, teamed up with Gallner, from “Jennifer’s Body” and “The Passenger”? These are two actors who I know will be remembered for their outstanding performances in genre films, and “Strange Darling” is consummate proof. Fitzgerald is given the most to work with, and as such is particularly excellent as she tap dances across the full spectrum of human emotion. Thank you, Yale!
This one really deserved to be seen in theaters, but if you didn’t hear the good word in time, streaming at home will do. Just be sure to turn your lights off for full effect.
1. Good One (dir. India Donaldson)
Even after I saw it at Sundance, way back in January, I knew “Good One” was going to be one of the best things I saw all year. This quiet, beautiful movie focuses on one teenage girl’s experience during a camping trip she takes with her dad and his longtime friend. This is a tight, well-acted character study that, much like “A Real Pain,” traps some interesting people together in a beautiful place and lets you watch their gears turn. Newcomer Lilly Collias gives an exquisitely understated performance as lead Sam, and James Le Gros and Danny McCarthy are likewise great. McCarthy in particular has the hardest job as Sam’s dad’s schlubby friend, Matt, eliciting sympathy and scorn in equal measure.
I love a flourish as much as the next guy, but “Good One” proves that some of the best art is clean, simple, and direct. Donaldson wanted to make one particular point about girlhood, and she does it with aplomb. There are no dramatic blowups, no harrowing accidents — just one simmering teenager in the verdant woods, slowly reckoning with the role she’s carved out in her own family.
I’ll finish by saying that I’m sure there are 2024 releases worthy of this list that I’ve yet to see. Movies I’m still looking forward to include “Janet Planet,” “My Old Ass,” and “Flow,” among others. If there’s something you think I absolutely need to add to that list, please comment below.
I’ve also revived my Letterboxd account so that I can keep track of all the movies I see throughout the year. Follow along, if you’d like. Wishing you a warm and lovely 2025 full of excellent people and good films!