2024 Year in Review

2024 has felt very long and very bizarre, full of great developments for me personally and professionally and continued unwelcome horror around the world. This was my first full year at Entertainment Weekly (as a contract worker for the first half of the year, then full-time with benefits for the second), and I finally moved into my own apartment… as unspeakable violence continues to plague Gaza and other areas of the Middle East, and our own American political trajectory barrels further to the right (both parties, yay). At least we have the movies?

Actually, those were kinda weird, too. Since American film production effectively shut down for several months last year as actors and writers struck for fairer wages and working conditions (and the industry continues to find its sea legs after the pandemic rocked the boat of viewing habits), 2024 ended up being a strangely spotty year for cinema. (Lots of quality work being done around the world and in independent productions, of course, but those kinds of projects remain quite difficult to access on the consumer side without attending festivals.) There’ve been a number of highlights and even more low-lights from a much smaller pool of movies than we ordinarily get over the course of a year.

Below are some highlights from my work at EW this year, and below those, my top 24 movies of 2024, once again arranged in thematic pairings. Included among the lot are interviews with Seth Rogen, Saoirse Ronan, Hugh Grant, Willem Dafoe, Anthony Hopkins, Colin Farrell, Kathy Bates, Steve McQueen, Haley Joel Osment, Adam Brody, Kathryn Hahn, David Krumholtz, Tom Selleck, Lamorne Morris, Jesse Plemons, Dylan O’Brien, Yorgos Lanthimos, James Austin Johnson, Jason Reitman, Roland Emmerich, Donnie Wahlberg, and more.

The top 24 movies of 2024

Nickel Boys/Blitz

The two most exhilarating and unshakeable viewing experiences I had this year came from these tense, emotional historical dramas. Both shed new light on bleak 20th-century events by prioritizing the perspectives of ordinary civilians experiencing hardship and prejudice.

RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys, which centers two Black teens as they face the horrors of a cruel “reform school” in 1960s Florida, is the most formally inventive movie of the decade, using unprecedented commitment to POV photography to literally place us in someone else’s shoes. It has sudden jumps between scene fragments that capture the fleeting choppiness of memories better than almost any other movie, and utilizes drawn-out moments where you’re itching to get to the next scene to essentially weaponize your impatience because you’re stuck in the same abhorrent circumstances as the characters. And almost equally impressive is the fact that the stylistic choices never feel like a gimmick because the narrative and thematic material are both so rich and multilayered. It highlights a particular corner of American racial injustice that goes disturbingly under-discussed elsewhere, but prioritizes empathy for its characters and their emotions over a more intellectual approach to delivering information.

Steve McQueen’s World War II drama commands massive wartime spectacle and magnifies its sense of danger by putting a vulnerable young kid in the middle of it all. It’s impossible not to think of Steven Spielberg while watching this — particularly Empire of the Sun and War Horse — but Blitz’s vision of war-torn London upheld by women and people of color gives it a distinct identity that makes it singular in the war movie canon, and should immediately make audiences wonder why there haven’t already been hundreds of WWII movies like this for decades. It’s got some of the most striking, powerful imagery of McQueen’s entire body of work, and five or six of the most intense, tightly crafted scenes of the year, all in service of a mother-son story that feels both intimate and immense.

(I interviewed Saoirse Ronan and Steve McQueen for this!)

Anora/Problemista

The two funniest (and, at moments, most stressful) movies of 2024 both follow refreshingly unremarkable working-class characters who struggle to keep their cool as they depend on volatile, narcissistic benefactors. 

The latest venture from Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Tangerine) follows an enigmatic sex worker (Mikey Madison) who falls into the orbit of an immature but charming young Russian billionaire (Mark Eydelshteyn). Chaos ensues. Baker has always had a knack for grounded naturalism and emotionally volatile character studies, but this is the first time he’s channeled those strengths and fixations into a piece of pure, blissful entertainment. It’s one of the funniest movies of the decade while simultaneously capturing a real sense of pain in its protagonist. And it’s hard to imagine a premise more appealing than “rom-com that abruptly turns into After Hours.”

The feature directorial debut from writer/star Julio Torres, Problemista sees an aspiring toy designer attempt to maintain his work visa by appeasing a maniacal widow (Tilda Swinton) who’s trying to pull together a posthumous show for her failed artist husband (RZA). It’s an absurd yet mundane look at the unbelievable ridiculousness of maintaining legal residence as an immigrant, full of tons of clever and gorgeous-looking surrealist flourishes that capture the chaos of contemporary American institutions. Unlike most other immigrant narratives, which often paint their central characters as brilliant saints with little complexity, this movie instead focuses on a guy who is fundamentally unimpressive and can only really get what he wants in the end by transforming into a bit of a monster. A must-see for anyone with a bad boss.

I Saw the TV Glow/The Beast

The two most haunting movies of the year both feel heavily indebted to David Lynch (particularly Twin Peaks: The Return), and capitalize on the terror of a life unfulfilled.

Jane Schoenbrun’s confounding follow-up to We’re All Going to the World’s Fair tracks two isolated high schoolers (Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine) who become consumed with a puzzling teen TV show instead of… more important personal matters. It’s a dizzying nightmare of gender dysphoria, suburban disaffection, millennial isolation, and the perils of fandom. I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie that feels this lonely or hopeless –– yet its conclusion has yielded a number of disparate readings suggesting it’s not a purely pessimistic endeavor. It’s also stylistically dazzling, with moody lighting and a neon color palette that makes a lot of the imagery look like it’s under a blacklight.

Loosely based on a Henry James Novella, Bertrand Bonello’s chilling multinarrative spans three distinct timelines in 1910, 2014, and 2044, following its two primary characters across multiple incarnations. It’s a distressing look at how the inexplicable bond that brings us together is also dooming some of us to unbreakable cycles of pain. (On first watch, it’s difficult to parse whether the film thinks those cycles are inextricably linked to gendered violence or not, but I’m leaning toward yes.) Léa Seydoux and George MacKay are both transcendent, giving multiple distinct but connected performances that yield several terrifying sequences that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. It’s one of the better attempts to capture the anxiety and apocalyptic atmosphere of life in the 2020s.

La Chimera/Longlegs

I concede that these are not particularly similar films, but they’re both about hollowed-out protagonists who have an inexplicable spiritual connection to their work, which involves finding things that others have forgotten or overlooked. And they have two of the most distinct atmospheres in recent memory.

In Alice Rohrwacher’s lovely drama, Josh O’Connor stars as a disheveled English grave robber who wanders back into an Italian village after experiencing a heartbreaking loss. I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie that successfully and thoughtfully addresses so many thematic concerns. Grief, community, morality, art, strange spirituality, the collisions of the past and the present, and the griminess of the grind — it’s all here, and none of it feels like it takes priority over the rest. And it’s all beautifully photographed and performed, with several of my favorite individual scenes of the year, including a gorgeous summer dance, a surprising confrontation on a boat, and a bittersweet underground finale.

Osgood Perkins’ serial killer horror-mystery scared me more than anything else I saw this year. Longlegs understands and cleverly subverts expectations at every possible juncture, giving just enough glimpses of the freakiest stuff so that they imprint on your consciousness without letting you absorb a clear picture of them. It has an incredibly strong atmosphere where the whole world feels oppressively evil, pulling the Texas Chainsaw Massacre trick of making every environment as nerve-wracking as possible. And on a technical and emotional level, it’s incredible, with skin-crawlingly dark cinematography, terrifying music, pitch-perfect editing, and fitting performances across the board. Looking forward to watching this many more times.

Challengers/Queer

Luca Guadagnino released two of his strongest movies to date in a single calendar year (Challengers was originally supposed to release in 2023 but got pushed due to the strikes, but still a remarkable achievement). Crucially, they represent the poles of all his films can offer: one a crowd-pleasing, propulsive, triumphant romantic drama; the other a meditative, heartbreaking period piece about loneliness. And they both have exquisite soundtracks from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross!

A love triangle set in the world of pro tennis, Challengers might not be quite as overtly sexual as its reputation suggests, but it is a very good movie about how desire, manipulation, and competition intersect and bounce off of one another to make ridiculous messes of our relationships. Guadagnino is one of our best mainstream admirers of the human body, and the sweaty contortions of a tennis match prove to be a fruitful environment for him to turn his gaze toward. Justin Kuritzkes’ brilliantly structured screenplay adds new levels of understanding and emotion every time it circles back to its central match following a series of insightful flashbacks, constantly shifting our allegiance to and sympathy for each of the three characters. Josh O’Connor is endlessly magnetic and natural as a lovable dirtbag who oozes chemistry with both of his costars, while Mike Faist expertly navigates paradoxical layers of confidence and insecurity, and Zendaya brings intensity and mystery to the single-minded competitor who drives them apart. The last 15 minutes of this are as good as movies can be.

Guadagnino’s adaptation of an unfinished William S. Burroughs novel follows a middle-aged heroin-addicted gay man (Daniel Craig) wandering the streets of Mexico City as he struggles to connect with a younger man (Drew Starkey). Queer excels because it contains a multitude of arresting imagery and haunting, dreamlike sequences, even if it’s not immediately clear how they might coalesce into a coherent narrative. There’s so much pain in this film’s depiction of loneliness, where self-loathing and isolation are caught in a perpetual cycle and desire cannot ever be fully satiated. Its central character is trapped with an unquenchable yearning for a kind of connection and intimacy that doesn’t seem possible outside of a few sublime moments and a constant stream of fantasizing — and it eventually appears to cause harm outside the echo chamber of his own head. Sayombhu Mukdeeprom once again proves himself as one of our finest cinematographers, combining the painterly summery haze and vivid nightlife lighting of Call Me By Your Name with the hypnotic, semi-spiritual nature photography of his Apichatpong Weerasethakul collaborations.

Furiosa/Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

The two best blockbusters of the year both present stunning visions of a colorful, dangerous world where unrecognizable new cultures have developed as humanity nears an unceremonious end. In a year that generally lacked big-scale spectacle, these two delivered some of the grandest imagery you’ll see this decade.

Mad Max: Fury Road, for all its merits, is fairly one note. This prequel to it is a full-blown symphony. A breathtaking piece of cinematic mythmaking that feels like all the best qualities of oral tradition, silent cinema, circus spectacle, and video games rolled into one. The action sequences here are among the best in any Hollywood movie this century, with longer takes and greater clarity than those in its predecessor without sacrificing any of the emphasis on motion that made it so exciting. The movie explores the nitty-gritty details of George Miller’s bonkers world without becoming annoyingly expository or overly complicated, and the combination of striking compositions, over-the-top dialogue, fixation on primal vengeance, and fittingly intense performances yield a monumental blockbuster experience that truly feels — and I say this without a shred of irony — epic.

One of the great movie-watching highlights of the year was marathoning the recent trilogy of Planet of the Apes movies –– Rise/Dawn, and War, all starring Andy Serkis’ Caesar. I’d previously watched the original five from the ‘60s and ‘70s last year, and their consistently excellent quality and social/political resonance leads me to think that this is the strongest American movie franchise ever. Kingdom is the first Apes to invite a sense of wonder toward its stunningly detailed and immaculately rendered world. I can’t remember the last time I felt this sucked into a sci-fi setting. The narrative might be fairly simple and familiar, but that’s more than welcome when the world in which it takes place is so beautiful to spend time in. And it’s a fascinating exploration of myth-making and tradition.

Oh, Canada/A Real Pain

Both of these short (and decidedly not-sweet) dramas interrogate immensely difficult people –– one from the perspective of a man on his deathbed who reflects on a lifetime of mistakes, the other from an outsider’s perspective as he grapples with a relative who’s in the midst of really, truly sucking.

The latest effort from Paul Schrader (First Reformed) sees a dying documentary filmmaker (Richard Gere) reminisce about life, love, and legacy, with Jacob Elordi playing the young version of the protagonist in his muddled memory. Gere and Elordi playing two sides of the same man give one of the best split performances I’ve ever seen, both fully embodying the breadth of the character without doing impersonations of each other. The film is a moving meditation on legacy and regret at the very end of a life, beautifully and thrillingly confused by the central figure not being able to fully remember the sequence of details or recall exactly how big of an asshole he was. 

Jesse Eisenberg directs himself and Kieran Culkin as cousins on a tense Holocaust tourism trip throughout Europe after the death of their grandmother. It’s an empathetic examination of a profoundly annoying person and his insecure companion, both of whom are immensely complicated. Eisenberg isn’t a flashy director, but he’s adept at quickly and effectively establishing a strong sense of place, which is perfect for a movie about traveling. He also gives one of the most vulnerable, complex performances of his career, and is perfectly in sync with Kieran Culkin, who excels as a weirdly sensitive asshole with a heart of gold — or a careless sweetie-pie with a heart of garbage? The supporting cast is also great, especially Will Sharpe, who’s so intensely serious that he quietly becomes the funniest person in the movie.

Trap/Juror #2

Both of these gripping thrillers are concerned with guilt and morality, telling familiar stories from the unfamiliar perspective of the wrongdoer and exploring how family can complicate our views of ourselves and others.

A character in this movie tells the serial killer protagonist’s daughter, “It’s not about ‘being good,’ it’s about goofin’ around.” That philosophy seems to be guiding this “comeback” chapter of M. Night Shyamalan’s career, as it feels like he’s learned to take himself far less seriously since The Visit (and especially so with this particular movie): the dialogue is hilariously bizarre, the premise asks a lot of the audience, and it all seems reverse-engineered from an attempt to make his daughter a pop star. It’s all very, very silly, and it absolutely knows it — this might be the closest thing to a comedy he’s ever made — yet simultaneously still quite thrilling and thematically fascinating, meditating on work-life balance and the performative nature of parenting. Josh Hartnett is exquisite in giving his unusual character several fascinating layers that brilliantly contradict one another, and the structure and perspective of the narrative are unflashily transgressive, taking a page out of Psycho’s protagonist-handoff strategy book without ever outright copying it. May Shyamalan continue goofin’ around.

94-year-old Clint Eastwood remains as sharp as ever in the director’s chair, here helming a chilling courtroom drama that turns the 12 Angry Men setup on its head. There’s one lone juror (Nicholas Hoult) trying to convince his 11 colleagues that a murder suspect might be innocent –– but here, he’s the guilty party, as the protagonist realizes that he’s inadvertently responsible for the victim’s death. The film is elegantly simple in its craft and construction but endlessly complex in its questions of ethics, justice, and responsibility. It’s the best Hoult and J.K. Simmons have been in years, and everyone else is strong, too.

Nosferatu/The First Omen

Two of the scariest movies of the year are both riffing on the classics (Dracula/Nosferatu and The Omen/Rosemary’s Baby, respectively), but are anchored by excellent cinematography and committed, wide-ranging performances from lead actresses that both seem inspired by Isabelle Adjani in Possession.

Robert Eggers’ take on cinema’s most iconic vampire story doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it absolutely maximizes the potential of a tale that’s already been successfully told a dozen times. The filmmaker uses gargantuan wide shots and constant camera swiveling create a dreamlike atmosphere that rapidly descends into a waking nightmare. There’s a segment near the beginning of the movie where a character journeys to (and eventual escapes from) the vampire’s castle that’s easily the strongest stretch of filmmaking the director has ever achieved. The rest of the movie never quite lives up to that promise, but all of the performances are so great (especially Lily-Rose Depp going absolutely bugnuts) that it’s never a problem. 

Is it heresy to say that The First Omen is better than the original Omen? Yes, it’s a pretty overt Rosemary’s Baby knockoff on its face, but it’s also a thoughtful reflection on the tension between faith and doubt as well as institutional corruption. The atmosphere is thrillingly rancid, the script is full of satisfying misdirection, and Nell Tiger Free delivers a stunning lead performance — vulnerable, shaky, and natural before going some insanely creepy, over-the-top places that still totally fit within the tone of the overall movie. In a year with a ton of pregnancy-based horror (see also: Immaculate, Apartment 7A, Alien: Romulus, and that one episode of The Bear), this stands above the rest.

The Wild Robot/Dìdi (弟弟)

Two of the most emotionally resonant movies of the year both hinge on a maternal figure who nearly destroys herself in her commitment to parenting.

In 2024’s strongest animated movie, Lupita Nyong’o voices a confused but lovely robot stranded on an island who takes it upon herself to care for all of the forest’s wayward critters. At this point, we should stop being surprised if a movie from Chris Sanders (Lilo and Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon) makes us cry. It’s rare to find a kids’ movie that has this affecting of a thematic through-line, and rarer still to find one with two (parenting and environmental responsibility). It’s also full of stunning imagery, dynamic animated action, and visual gags that suggest immense care and thoughtfulness went into every frame of this thing.

Sean Wang’s directorial debut charts the skin-crawlingly awkward coming-of-age of a Taiwanese American eighth grader trying to convert crappy YouTube videos into social capital. It’s the first movie I’ve seen that romanticizes and unpacks the anxiety of the early YouTube generation, which makes it one of the most painfully relatable films I’ve ever watched. The film is a frequently funny look at how the internet transforms the adolescent experience and can shape identity for both good and ill. And all of Joan Chen’s scenes as the protagonist’s quiet, heartbroken mother are incredibly moving.

Heretic/Conclave

Religious thrillers! Religious thrillers!

Two Mormon missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) visit the home of a mysterious recluse (Hugh Grant) and engage in a fascinating conversation about faith, prayer, theology, and religious history that eventually descends into tests of violence and cruelty. It finally gives Grant the chance to shine as a full-blown villain, weaponizing his self-effacing rom-com charm to create a charismatic monster who’s more transfixing and more evil than his similar but less-fleshed-out antagonists in projects like Cloud Atlas, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, and Paddington 2. 

(I interviewed Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East, and writer/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods to discuss the movie’s twists and turns, as well as its ambiguous ending.)

Ralph Fiennes oversees the selection of the next pope in this twisty power play, which features excellent supporting turns from Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini, John Lithgow, Sergio Castellitto, Carlos Diehz, and Lucian Msamati. It’s refreshing to see a piece of middlebrow entertainment that considers its lofty theological and political ideas with such seriousness, while also simultaneously maintaining a sense of humor and solid visuals.. (If you’ve seen this and have thoughts on the ending, please talk to me about it. I cannot make sense of how it should be taken.)

Rebel Ridge/Monkey Man

These two thrillers deliver strong action setpieces as part of thoughtful stories that revolve around social inequity and the drive for revenge.

After his cousin’s bail funds are unlawfully seized by corrupt police officers, an outsider with a very particular set of skills (Aaron Pierre) unravels the total institutional rot of a small Southern town with the help of an upstanding courthouse clerk (AnnaSophia Robb). The two lead actors are both fantastic in ways I haven’t seen from them before — intense, commanding, and honest –– and Don Johnson is appropriately reprehensible as the town’s domineering chief. There isn’t a ton of action, but those few scenes are beautifully choreographed and thrillingly edited. It’s far, far better than you’d expect from it sitting in the middle of Netflix’s “Originals” tab.

Dev Patel absolutely freaks it with his directorial debut. Though its lengthiness results in some off-kilter pacing, Monkey Man’s roughness around the edges is part of the charm. Patel makes the case for himself as both a bonafide action star and an exhilarating director of fight scenes, shooting all of the action with breathless intensity, visual clarity, and dizzying camerawork that frequently spins the camera on axes that we don’t normally see on the big screen. There are some ridiculous kills and action beats that would feel right at home in an Evil Dead-esque wacky horror movie, and the protagonist’s quest for vengeance has admirable political overtones that make his journey thrilling and emotional on both an individual and a societal level.

Honorable mentions: Megalopolis/This is Me Now

I cannot fully vouch for either of these immensely personal, garish behemoths as genuinely great works of art, but they have bizarrely similar spirits, full of complex self-reflection and otherworldly sci-fi visuals unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed oddity is a fascinating expression of his own internal debate about artistry, legacy, and philosophy. The visuals are consistently staggering, constantly vacillating between genuinely beautiful innovation and gaudy excess (sometimes within the same shot or frame), which fittingly parallels the whiplash between earnest expression and satirical goofiness of the tone. Adam Driver makes even the most outlandish dialogue sound downright poetic, further cementing him as the strongest American leading man to emerge in the last 15 years. That being said, nearly every negative critique you could throw at this is valid, and I have a number myself (which you can read more about here if you’re so inclined). It’s the ultimate cinematic iteration of an old man yelling at a cloud, but what an unusual old man he is, and what strange, earnest optimism he wants to impart onto that cloud. More people should spend $100 million of their own money to make an immortal creative object that expresses everything they want to say about the world as they navigate their twilight years.

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Other movies I enjoyed this year that didn’t quite make the cut: Carry-On, Civil War, The Beekeeper, We Live In Time, Hit Man, Drive-Away Dolls, It’s What’s Inside, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Wicked, Gladiator II, Kinds of Kindness, Exhibiting Forgiveness, The Order, That Christmas, A Quiet Place: Day One, Thelma, The Brutalist, Saturday Night, A Complete Unknown, Immaculate, Tótem, Blink Twice, Do Not Expect Much From the End of the World, and Dune Part Two.

I still have yet to see: Sing Sing, All We Imagine as Light, Hundreds of Beavers, The People’s Joker, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Flow, Red Rooms, Small Things Like These, Kneecap, Dahomey, Will and Harper, No Other Land, and a whole lot more.