Top 25 Films of 2024
"I'm not queer, I'm disembodied."
(Note: the criteria for this list are movies who had their official U.S. release, not counting festival or qualifying runs, in 2024.)
If 2023’s cinema landscape peered over the cliff of doom (Oppenheimer, Asteroid City, The Boy and the Heron), 2024’s says “The end has already come… now what?”
It was a year of grief, somber reflection, and outright nastiness. It was a year where innocents suffered, killers got away with it, and audiences were exposed to untold horrors (and that’s just Emilia Pérez!).
These 25 films resonated with me the most this year. You may be surprised to see what didn’t make the cut, but it was a phenomenal year at the movies, and a time to recognize that life’s too short to waste my breath lauding movies that are getting plenty of accolades and will likely disappear from our collective consciousness by this time next year.
Some of these films are quiet, methodical studies. Others are loud, cartoonish oddities. But they all have one thing in common: I like ‘em! And before we get into it, here are a few honorable mentions:
The Curse S1E10: “Green Queen” (dir. Nathan Fielder) - If it was a movie, it’d probably be #1.
Drive-Away Dykes (dir. Ethan Coen) - A solid 80-minute romp led by an impossibly sexy Margaret Qualley.
This Is Me… Now: A Love Story (dir. Dave Meyers) - Jennifer Lopez’s Megalopolis.
Stress Positions (dir. Theda Hammel) - A movie about my friend, Terry Goon.
Fancy Dance (dir. Erica Tremblay) - They let Lily Gladstone be butch in this one.
Rebel Ridge (dir. Jeremy Saulnier) - AnnaSophia Robb is back in a big way.
The Substance (dir. Coralie Fargeat) - Hypnotically French.
A Different Man (dir. Aaron Schimberg) - The Substance for the fellas.
The Apprentice (dir. Ali Abbasi) - Orange man bad.
Conclave (dir. Edward Berger) - This PG-rated drama about Vatican palace intrigue is somehow one of the year’s sexiest movies.
Blitz (dir. Steve McQueen) - McQueen’s brutal take on the children’s adventure film.
A Real Pain (dir. Jesse Eisenberg) - Kieran isn’t even a little bit Jewish but he is sexy so I’ll allow it.
The Order (dir. Justin Kurzel) - Somehow this hick Nazi who kills himself is the least pathetic character Nicholas Hoult played this year.
Queer (dir. Luca Guadagnino) - Worth the price of admission for fat gay Jason Schwartzman.
The End (dir. Joshua Oppenheimer) - Pulling off the tone of “post-apocalyptic romantic musical” is almost as much a miracle as The Act of Killing.
Babygirl (dir. Halina Reijn) - This happened to my buddy.
The Brutalist (dir. Brady Corbet) - More than anything else, a W for us Vox Lux-heads.
And now… my favorite films of 2024.
25. LISA FRANKENSTEIN (dir. Zelda Williams)
This delightful neon rom-com proves writer Diablo Cody still has her fastball, and a keen handle on what the kids are into these days (‘80s kitsch, monsterfucking, bottom surgery, etc.). What really sells this movie are the dynamic lead performances by an effortlessly charismatic Kathryn Newton and an extremely game Cole Sprouse, who gives a hilarious near-silent performance.
24. BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE (dir. Adil & Bilall)
Visionary duo Adil and Bilall, most known for their aborted Batgirl movie, have quietly resurrected Bad Boys as the most exciting franchise in Hollywood. This riotous and oddly-spiritual sequel contains some of the most inspired and insane filmmaking choices I saw all year. Martin Lawrence becomes immortal after being visited by Joe Pantoliano’s ghost. He looks down at his watch, and we see the perspective of the inside of his watch looking up at him. DJ Khaled explodes.
23. SMILE 2 (dir. Parker Finn)
I’m going to be very brave here and admit that I did not see the original Smile before catching this one. It didn’t seem to matter much—this sequel stands on its own. The story of pop star Skye Riley’s encounter with the creature I’ve been told is called “The Smile Entity” is hilariously mean-spirited and always unexpected. I hope they never stop making these.
22. FRANKIE FREAKO (dir. Steven Kostanski)
This Canadian romp comes from the director of 2020’s Psycho Goreman, and if you’re familiar with that film, you know exactly what kind of cheesy midnight-movie treat you’re getting into here. The narrative centers on the Freakos, a group of “little gremlin guys who like to party” that upend the life of typical ‘80s desk jockey Conor. Fans of Ghoulies and Garbage Pail Kids will get a real kick out of this one.
21. BETTER MAN (dir. Michael Gracey)
Everything you’ve heard is true: this CGI monkey biopic of Robbie Williams rules. The history of music biopics, as lampooned in Walk Hard, is built on massive egos. Williams, in typical cheeky fashion, takes himself down a peg from the film’s first frame. As far as this movie’s concerned, Robbie Williams was never a boy from a small town with a beautiful gift. He was a craven opportunist who got into the industry for all the wrong reasons and was rewarded for it. He used to be a piece of shit—slicked back hair, white Ferrari, sloppy steaks at Truffoni’s—but people can change.
20. NICKEL BOYS (dir. RaMell Ross)
While Nickel Boys is great, it’s no surprise to me at all that it’s failed to find an audience in theaters. A film about horrific abuses at a segregated juvenile detention center is always going to be a tough sell, even without an all-first-person POV. But that’s the magic of this film: what could easily have felt like a distracting gimmick instead renders the film immersive, raw in a way that few other films like this achieve. RaMell Ross strikes a delicate balance by focusing on composition first, letting the “rules” of the first person bend as needed to find the most meaningful form of every shot.
19. KNEECAP (dir. Rich Peppiatt)
What’s better than a drug-fueled music biopic about an English hooligan? How about a drug-fueled music biopic about three Irish hooligans? I love this movie’s energy, but I was most taken aback by how well the Kneecap boys held their own as actors while playing themselves, particularly the charming DJ Próvaí. But what really sets it apart is its genuinely radical core, something only a rare few music biopics can claim.
18. PROBLEMISTA (dir. Julio Torres)
I love when a filmmaker can’t not be themselves. People whose films strike such a unique tonal and visual balance that it’s impossible to mistake them for anyone else. As such, I’m quickly falling in love with Julio Torres, who stood out this year with both his show Fantasmas and this wonderful little film. The cast is stacked with treasures (as usual, it was a great year to be Tilda Swinton), but the real standout is Greta Lee’s unbelievable one-scene wonder performance.
17. JUROR #2 (dir. Clint Eastwood)
Juror #2 is an unqualified great movie, but it’s also just a great idea for a movie. “Juror realizes he did it”? Pure gold. Ever since seeing this movie, I can’t hear about a single crime or trial without imagining the camera panning over to Nicholas Hoult on the jury, staring coldly as he enters a rain-soaked flashback. Toni Collette is deliciously evil as the D.A..
16. DUNE: PART TWO (dir. Denis Villeneuve)
Dune: Part One was impressive. Dune: Part Two is extraordinary. Wild, silly, horny, operatic, massive in scope and always challenging. Timothée Chalamet unlocks new action hero powers as Paul Atreides ascends to throne of Arrakis. Austin Butler plays a bald, uncle-kissing lunatic with a Stellan Skarsgård accent and he’s only the third-best supporting performance in the movie.
15. BETWEEN THE TEMPLES (dir. Nathan Silver)
Just what the doctor ordered: The Holdovers for Jews. Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane’s chemistry is off the charts in this unconventional rom-com that’s lacking in easy answers and weirder than it has any right to be. While it deals with weighty and at-times spiritual themes, it also stands out as one of the year’s funniest movies, leading up to the most unbearably awkward climax this side of Shiva Baby.
14. RAP WORLD (dir. Conner O’Malley & Danny Scharar)
No place better. Ready for whatever. Very few filmmakers are in touch with how internet culture affects our psyches as comedian Conner O’Malley. Rap World, his first feature, is a touchingly-precise portrait of early-Obama-era suburban white boy culture. Set in Tobyhanna, PA, it follows three guys bein’ dudes as they attempt to record an album together. Not since the Jackass series has a work reveled as much in intimacy between men.
13. SHE IS CONANN (dir. Bertrand Mandico)
This movie’s pitch—a kinky, surrealist, lesbian take on Conan the Barbarian—will make you go, “Why isn’t everyone talking about this?” And then after you watch it, you’ll say, “Oh, that’s why.” This movie’s tone, pacing, and lack of clear answers are typical of Mandico’s work and precisely what make him an enduring cult filmmaker, but they’re certainly not for the faint of heart. Still, it rewards you with some of the year’s most enduring images, including a cannibalism sequence I’ll probably never forget.
12. LOVE LIES BLEEDING (dir. Rose Glass)
No actor today is better at playing a little rat guy than Kristen Stewart (save for her Twilight co-star). In Love Lies Bleeding, she’s slimy, she’s pathetic, she’s horny. But the real surprise of the film isn’t Stewart’s always-great work, or the starmaking debut of bodybuilder Katy O’Brian. It’s the surreal touches, the crime caper plot, the robust supporting gallery of freaks (shoutout to the transcendently-annoying Anna Baryshnikov, this movie’s other big breakout). People knew they were getting a horny lesbian movie. But it’s nice that it also had like, themes and shit.
11. CHALLENGERS (dir. Luca Guadagnino)
Even with what felt like a full year of anticipation leading up to it, I couldn’t have predicted how much of a stone-cold, enduring delight this movie would be. Everything is somehow the perfect version of itself: director Guadagnino and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom are in rare form. The three leads have brilliant chemistry. Reznor and Ross provide maybe their best soundtrack to date, and that’s really saying something. Zendaya finally gets a role with some fucking meat on its bones! An incredibly sexy, fun, energetic romance.
10. FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA (dir. George Miller)
Nearly a decade out from Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller pulled off another miracle: they let him make another one. To be clear, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment if you go into Furiosa expecting it to be Fury Road. Like all the previous Mad Max films, this movie has a tempo all its own, a fableish, unreal atmosphere that contrasts at-times jarringly with Fury Road’s startlingly-crisp visuals. Yes, the effects aren’t as practical. Yes, the story is much looser. Yes, it’s still a masterpiece.
9. MEGALOPOLIS (dir. Francis Ford Coppola)
Is it possible for a movie to be about everything and nothing? To be radical and complacent? To be brazenly misogynistic while incisively commenting on misogyny? Can a movie envision a better future with no political imagination? Maybe. Maybe not. But a movie can make you ask these questions, and as the patrician architect Cesar Catilina would say, “When we ask these questions, when there’s a dialogue about them, that basically is a utopia.”
8. THE PEOPLE’S JOKER (dir. Vera Drew)
I first saw The People’s Joker in not-quite-finished form at a secret screening in 2023. Word had gotten out and the massive theater was packed to the gills. I started crying before the movie even started. The second time I saw The People’s Joker, it was with my buddy Cody at a much smaller, less-crowded venue, and it was in the movie’s official release. What I want people to understand about this movie, particularly those who haven’t seen it yet, is that the praise for it is not just a gesture of goodwill in Vera Drew’s good fight against Warner Bros. It’s a hysterically funny, wildly experimental, mixed-media romp with a devastatingly real emotional core. It really is that good.
7. TRAP (dir. M. Night Shyamalan)
In a lot of ways, Trap and Juror #2 are two sides of the same coin. They’re both movies about innocent-seeming killers that bring us to the edge of our seats wondering how they’ll get away with it. But where Juror #2 is a surprisingly-nimble work by an old master, Trap is the work of an artist at the height of his powers. M. Night Shyamalan’s latest deals with themes that have become pervasive in his recent work: surveillance, the belief that we have control over our reality, and trying to be a parent in a frighteningly uncertain world. The initial setup is pitch-perfect fun-and-games filmmaking, but the third-act pivot is where things get really juicy.
6. EVIL DOES NOT EXIST (dir. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi)
Now that I’m doing this, I feel a little more comfortable admitting that I was not that wild about Drive My Car. Where Hamaguchi’s big U.S. breakout was a lengthy, twisted tale, Evil Does Not Exist is a quiet, simple fable of the struggle between the old ways and the new ways. A peaceful mountain village is threatened by the prospect of a new glamping site, being built hastily to make use of pandemic subsidies. It’s funny, it’s meditative, it’s harrowing, and it really hits close to home, in no small part because of its phenomenal cast of non-actors.
5. AGGRO DR1FT (dir. Harmony Korine)
It doesn’t have much in common with Evil Does Not Exist, but in a way, Aggro Dr1ft is also meditative. It’s a slow, atmospheric piece, light on plot and heavy on visuals with a moody score by araabMUZIK. The difference is that it happens to take place in cyber-hell. At a time where filmmakers and studios are trying to downplay their use of generative AI as a cheap labor replacement, Harmony Korine uses it to do what it’s best at: adding a deeply-upsetting, shapeless veneer that makes you sick to your stomach. There is no comfort or stability to be found in Aggro Dr1ft’s world of demon cartels, but if you’re in a place to let it wash over you, it’ll somehow lull you into the zone.
4. RED ROOMS (dir. Pascal Plante)
Red Rooms lies at the crossroads of many of the internet age’s major issues: isolation, desensitization, radicalization, the dark web, true crime obsession. I saw it almost on a lark after seeing someone on Twitter recommend it, and while it resonated with me at the time, its enduring rattle is what really earns its place on this list. Juliette Gariépy is uniquely terrifying—her character Kelly-Anne is a sort of Travis Bickle for the terminally-online. Without giving too much away, there’s a scene where she wears a costume that is some of the freakiest shit I’ve ever seen. There’s only one place scarier than the internet: Montreal.
3. THE BEAST (dir. Bertrand Bonello)
Dolls were the precursor to AI. The music of Roy Orbison transcends time. Tech will turn us all into Elliot Rodger. These are just some of the many themes explored in The Beast. The titular “beast” is a reference to Henry James’ The Beast in the Jungle, in which the fatalistic protagonist worries that a catastrophic event lies in wait for him. Over the course of a sprawling, mind-bending two-and-a-half-hour sci-fi, Bonello ponders what humanity will give up to outrun its own beast in the jungle. Sadly, this is another huge bright spot in Dasha Nekrasova’s filmography.
2. DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD (dir. Radu Jude)
A few short years ago, I gave the #1 spot on my list to Radu Jude’s previous film, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is similar in some ways: a biting, contemporary satire with long stretches of mundane silence and a healthy dose of absurdity. But where Bad Luck Banging takes various leaps outside its own narrative, Do Not Expect Too Much stays firmly planted in the soul-sucking trudgery of modern work, from the two hours we spend with Angela (Ilinca Manolache) casting this corrupt safety video to the hilariously tedious sequence of the video’s actual shoot. Jude is brilliant in many ways, but few other filmmakers know exactly the right way to waste your damn time.
1. I SAW THE TV GLOW (dir. Jane Schoenbrun)
From what I hear, this film helped a lot of people realize they were trans. With respect to those people (as someone who realized she was trans a decade ago, I also had a deeply emotional response to this film), I don’t think that’s 100% what it’s about. It’s about abuse, and trauma, and escape, and all the things that cause a TV show to become so much more than a TV show. For the theory-minded audiences out there, it does leave you with plenty to speculate on about whether or not The Pink Opaque is “real”. But it’s not really about how The Pink Opaque is real. It’s about how The Pink Opaque is them. The world they lost isn’t the TV show, it’s their shared experience watching it, and all the significance they put on it. Also, Fred Durst is quietly amazing in this?
Thank you to everyone who’s supported me this past year and read this far. Up next, it’s the 2024 Pulpy Movie Awards.