2024 has been a strange year for movies.
Between Hollywood labor strikes, reconfigured streaming strategies and box office anomalies, the film industry has never seemed less predictable or more inconsistent. Yet despite all the challenges (or “Challengers”) movies faced this year, there were a few fantastic films too.
Read a list of the best below.
10. “Hundreds of Beavers” / “Sasquatch Sunset”
Number 10 is a double-hander between the two strangest comedies of the year.
“Hundreds of Beavers” is a silent, black-and-white slapstick film about a fur trapper named Jean Kayak waging war against hundreds of beavers, who appear to the audience as guys dressed in beaver mascot suits. It’s deeply bizarre and genuinely hilarious, but most of all, “Hundreds of Beavers” is wildly impressive: the film was made for only $150,000 by a six person crew. It must be seen to be believed, and it is best beheld in a room full of friends. Beaver costumes optional.
“Sasquatch Sunset” is another ostensibly wordless feature, though it’s filled with so many sasquatch grunts, shouts, pants and other bodily excretions that you would hardly notice. The nature documentary-style film follows a small family of sasquatches, played by actors in full sasquatch makeup and prosthetics, spending a year in their lives experiencing the slow encroachment of man into their hitherto untouched wilderness.
The entire exercise is preposterous, especially considering two of the actors behind the makeup are Elvis Presley’s granddaughter and Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network,” but that’s what makes it so effective. The film is wholeheartedly committed to itself. Throw a few macabre twists in the plot and gorgeous cinematography into the mix, and the sun is only now rising on the “Sasquatch Sunset” empire.
9. “Flow”
The animated movie of the year is “Flow,” another film on this list without human language but more emotion than a handful of talky people dramas put together.
“Flow” follows a group of animals coming together on a raft to survive a flood that appears unexpectedly in their mystic-feeling jungle habitat. The movie is gorgeously animated with a cell-shaded style that stands out as unique against the slate of other animated entries in 2024.
The film’s star may be a small black cat, but don’t feel unlucky. It’s fortunate we live in a time to see works of art like it.
READ MORE ABOUT “FLOW” IN OUR REVIEW HERE.
The sci-fi epic of a generation has arrived with “Dune: Part Two,” director Denis Villeneuve’s second installment in his Oscar-winning science-fiction saga. “Dune: Part Two” is grand in every sense of the word, from its magnificent, intergalactic visuals to its larger-than-life performances. The film may be led by a gripping Timothée Chalamet, but its supporting cast are what give “Dune” its spice: Zendaya, Florence Pugh, Javier Bardem, Rebecca Ferguson, Austin Butler and Lea Séydoux are just a few of the talents transporting viewers to Arrakis.
Of course, the sandworms are the real star of the show. On a list of the best movie memorabilia of the year, their popcorn bucket likeness would come out #1.
7. “Conclave”
A movie about a few Catholics talking in dark rooms may not sound like the most thrilling film of the year, but “Conclave” makes a strong bid for the title. Thanks to electric performances by Ralph Fiennes, Carlos Diehz and Sergio Castellitto, the Pope intrigue drama plays out like “Mean Girls” in The Vatican. It’s wholly holy fun, but Edward Berger’s imposing direction and the production design make the film that much richer.
In a year that has seen hatred, fascism, warfare and brutality on the rise, “Conclave” puts its name forward as an emissary for love and a messenger for peace. Its conclusion is a stirring testimony for the power of goodness amid hate.
“No Other Land” is a documentary made in a joint effort by Palestinian and Israeli journalists to document the eviction and occupation of the West Bank by IDF forces between 2019 and 2023. The film is comprised almost solely of footage shot by the journalists, one of whom, Basel Adra, lived in the film’s area of focus, Masafer Yatta. at the time.
The region of the West Bank captured by their cameras transforms from a country of community to a crumbling land with nowhere but caves for its ousted inhabitants to flee to.
The movie is a frustrated shout into the media ether and a plea from its subjects for the world to listen. It’s essential viewing in the same vein of “20 Days in Mariupol” and “Navalny,” yet unlike those films, nearly impossible to see: “No Other Land” has no distributor in the United States.
5. “Anora”
What’s not to love about a Cinderella story? Sean Baker’s take on the classic rags-to-riches, girl-meets-prince tale begins as a hilarious, if hedonistic, New York City romp. Ani, a fiercely funny Mikey Madison, becomes swept up with the son of a Russian oligarch after he hires her as his escort for a week.
Madison and Baker craft a story about sex work, infatuation, empty promises and wealth inequality with one of the freshest scripts of the year.
There is a chaotic turn a third of the way through “Anora” that send the story reeling out of the Cinderella framework, but never out of Madison and Baker’s deft hands. What begins as a love story ends somewhere else, but what the poster says rings true: it’s a “love story from Sean Baker” through and through.
READ MORE ABOUT “ANORA” IN OUR REVIEW HERE.
4. “Sing Sing”
Due to an odd approach to its distribution by A24, “Sing Sing,” one of the best movies of the year, was only released in a smattering of theaters over the summer before it was pulled from the calendar altogether.
This January, however, “Sing Sing” will be back on the big screen, making it the first absolute must-see of 2025.
Colman Domingo leads a cast of previously-incarcerated performers playing themselves in the story of Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts program. The Sing Sing men find an outlet from their confinement in performing theater. The works of Shakespeare and Divine G, Domingo, playing a version of the real-life John “Divine G” Whitfield, become a tunnel out of the prison and into another world.
Domingo is lights-out extraordinary in the film, but the spotlight should go to Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, one of the Sing Sing men reprising a role as himself. The combative chemistry between the two men makes “Sing Sing” sing. I challenge anyone to walk out of the theater without a standing ovation or tears in their eyes.
3. “Civil War”
“Civil War” is more of a road movie than a war movie, following a band of photojournalists as they traverse a near-future United States torn apart by a modern civil war. The movie is filled with snapshots of moments like a developed roll of film from Kirsten Dunst or Cailee Spaeney’s characters. The vignettes range from beautiful glimmers of humanity to gut-wrenching glimpses of a war without it.
The film is less about exploring the broader conflict in its title than asking what drives journalists to photograph horrors: objective quests for truth or the thrill ride along the way?
While Dunst, Spaeney and companions Wagner Moura and Stephen McKinley Henderson shine, a red-sunglassed Jesse Plemons steals the film with the scene of the year.
2. “Nosferatu”
To excerpt 828newsNOW’s recent review of “Nosferatu,” Robert Eggers’ terrifying Gothic vision of the classic vampire tale, “‘Nosferatu’ is beautifully made. Every sequence contains indelible imagery and frequently remarkable staging. Lily-Rose Depp, the signature star of the film, is the focal point of many of the best scenes. Depp exhibits such a vast array of emotions and bodily contortions that particularly transported viewers may not even realize she’s often doing it all inside of an “oner,” a shot in a film without any cuts.”
The real oner of the film is its atmosphere, an unbroken stream of unbearable tension and hypnotic camerawork worth seeing on the biggest screen possible.
READ MORE ABOUT “NOSFERATU” IN OUR REVIEW HERE.
The movie of the year is Coralie Fargeat’s audacious, salacious, sensational “The Substance.”
Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, an “aged” Hollywood star-turned-fitness TV host fired from her job on her 50th birthday. The studio, embodied by a cartoonishly grotesque Dennis Quaid, wants someone younger.
Enter the titular Substance.
Moore is offered an opportunity to participate in a program that will allow her to become a “younger, more beautiful, more perfect” version of herself. After injecting the neon green liquid, Margaret Qualley comes crawling out of Moore. Literally.
The film is a bold, angry satire of the entertainment industry’s beauty standards, and Moore is the avatar of beautiful, talented women convinced by a deceiving Hollywood they’re far less than that. The body horror in the film might be gnarly and its version of Los Angeles a heightened parody, but there’s a terrifying truth injected into Fargeat’s film, writhing, neon and green.
28 honorable mentions, in alphabetical order:
1. A Different Man
2. A Real Pain
3. Alien: Romulus
4. Babygirl
5. The Brutalist
6. Challengers
7. Chime
8. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
9. Hit Man
10. Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person
11. I Saw the TV Glow
12. Janet Planet
13. Kinds of Kindness
14. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
15. Last Summer
16. Longlegs
17. MadS
18. ME
19. My Old Ass
20. Nickel Boys
21. The Piano Lesson
22. Queer
23. Rumours
24. Smile 2
25. Spermworld
26. We Live in Time
27. Wicked
28. Will & Harper