The 49 Best Movies of 2024 (So Far)
1. La ChimeraIt’s not often that I exit a movie feeling utterly enraptured to the point of gratitude. But thank you, Alice Rohrwacher, because La Chimera was such an occasion. The film is centered on Arthur (a magnificent Josh O’Connor), the British leader of a band of Italian grave robbers. Recently released from prison and mourning the loss of a former lover, he stumbles back into his old vice—if you can even call it that. For Arthur, the action doesn’t seem to be the juice; it’s more a means of camaraderie and momentary escape, part of a search for something that no longer exists. Grief, longing, and lively humor course through the film, in which Rohrwacher pulls from fairy tales, history, and a wide range of Italian masters before her. Yet she creates something distinctly her own.
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2. I Saw the TV GlowI loved Jane Schoenbrun’s micro-budget debut, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. But I Saw the TV Glow is one of the greatest freshman-to-sophomore level-ups I can remember—it’s an example of what promising talents can do when you give them freedom and resources. The film, featuring a shy, TV-obsessed teenager named Owen (Justice Smith), is a coming-of-age story about the nightmarish consequences of personal repression. As brutal as it can be, I also found it incredibly inspiring. By portraying the dire costs of playing it safe, Schoenbrun convincingly makes the case that a conservative approach to life isn’t safe at all.
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3. Last SummerThere has been no shortage of films about May–December relationships over the past few years. And yet the latest entry in the genre, Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer, manages to be the most shocking. The film not only pairs a powerful middle-aged attorney with a 17-year-old, but that 17-year-old is also her stepson. And their romance is undeniably steamy, with Breillat never shying away from portraying the immense mutual pleasure involved in the taboo act. As much as there’s perversity throughout the film, though, there are also truth and trust: the truth that being young doesn’t absolve all transgression, and the trust in viewers to know what’s right and wrong and enjoy wading through all the murk.
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4. The Taste of ThingsIs The Taste of Things the greatest food movie ever? If we’re judging by the sheer amount of hunger produced, the answer is a resounding oui! But Anh Hung Tran’s latest doesn’t merely succeed as a drool-inducing extended bit of French food porn. For Dodin (Benoît Magimel) and Eugénie (Juliette Binoche), cooking—and eating, too—is an art, a means of connection, and a way to savor life. In the end, The Taste of Things is equally great as a film about romance and ephemerality.
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5. AnoraSex and money are not the same as love, but in Anora it’s easy to see how they could produce delusions. Ani (an electric Mikey Madison), a New York stripper who both knows how to please and how to fight, is no naif. She’s in the business of bringing men’s fantasies to life. But when Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), AKA Vanya, a Russian oligarch’s goofy, spend-happy young son, showers her with expensive gifts, big wads of cash, enthusiastic sex, and affection, it becomes hard for her to resist giving in to her own fantasies of true love and a lavish life. Sean Baker is one of American cinema’s great cultural observers—an expert at finding interesting people and burrowing into subcultures at the margins—so it’s no surprise that this improbable love story doesn’t have a fairytale ending. The ending it does have, though, is knotty, and far more interesting.
6. ChallengersI’ll just say it: I don’t think Challengers is as sexy as advertised. But I’m not mad about it! The film knows what it is, and that’s an incredibly catchy pop song. Beyond the palpable fun that director Luca Guadagnino and his three main players—Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist—are having, what I dig about Challengers is its unabashed goofiness. Guadagnino lets loose, with crazy camera moves, a deliriously throbbing score courtesy of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and the most on-the-nose food innuendo imaginable. The more seriously these characters take tennis—and, more so, rigidity and control—the more ridiculous the movie makes it all seem.
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7. Janet PlanetIn her debut feature, the renowned playwright Annie Baker pulls off a rare feat. Her film makes you feel as though you’ve not only traveled to a specific place (western Massachusetts) at a specific time (1991) but that you’re actually smelling the summer air and feeling the morning breeze. Every production department deserves a lot of credit for the film’s evocative and subtle specificity. Ultimately, more than being about a time or a place, Janet Planet is a movie about two people: a single mother named Janet (Julianne Nicholson) and her precocious and wonderfully idiosyncratic daughter Lacy (Zoe Ziegler). Baker captures the pair through all their mutual dependency, role reversal, and complex love, as they cross paths with a rotating cast of Janet’s free-spirited friends and lovers.
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8. HereHere, from Belgian director Bas Devos, follows Stefan (Stefan Gota), a Romanian construction worker living in Brussels, as he finishes a job and prepares to move back home. In his final days away, he makes a soup from the remaining food in his fridge and forms a bond with Shuxiu (Liyo Gong), a botanist who works part-time in her aunt’s restaurant. The film is a beautiful, serene meditation on connection and the slow process of change—and an extremely justified celebration of soup.
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9. Evil Does Not ExistWith a less nuanced and contemplative director, a title like Evil Does Not Exist might come off as a disastrously didactic, Oscar-baiting screed on the virtue inside all of us. But Ryûsuke Hamaguchi is more interested in our inherent contradictions. The movie is set in a small, rural Japanese village, where residents live in relative harmony with nature. When a cynical glamping company comes to town, that balance is threatened. The company’s arrival leads to one of the great scenes of the year—a public meeting in which townspeople interrogate its representatives—as well as a hauntingly confounding ending.
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10. A Different ManThe notion that it’s what’s on the inside that counts is an age-old cliché and one that A Different Man director Aaron Schimberg expertly twists and tangles in his darkly funny third feature. When an insecure actor named Edward (Sebastian Stan) finds a miracle cure for his facial disfigurement and winds up looking like a leading man, he does indeed enjoy the benefits of his new appearance. But Edward’s internalized notion of self never quite goes through the same transformation, leading him on an absurd, Kafkaesque nightmare that foregrounds the importance of performance. The film constantly upends viewer expectations while critiquing social ones.
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ConclaveEdward Berger’s contained new papal thriller is full of juicy twists, stellar performances, and plenty of political intrigue. The film, which takes place at the Vatican, depicts the secretive process of electing a new pope. Everyone has their own agenda—be it noble or opportunistic—and it can be tough to tell what camp each person’s motives fall into. As Cardinal Lawrence, the even-keeled leader of the conclave, Ralph Fiennes steals the show. He is quietly magnetic.
DahomeyWhen twenty-six antiquities that France took from the kingdom of Dahomey (now Benin) were repatriated in 2021, Mati Diop followed the objects back to their native land, documenting the process of the return and, even more compellingly, the reaction in Benin. In an open forum, many young citizens gather to discuss the repatriation from a variety of angles: How should they feel? Is this merely an empty political gesture? How should the objects be exhibited? There are no easy answers, but Diop—in part, by giving one of the artifacts an imposing narrative voice—captures a lingering sense of unease. Even when looted objects are returned, the evil act remains.
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Exhibiting ForgivenessTitus Kaphar’s highly personal debut feature—a standout at this past year’s New Directors/New Films festival—shows how complicated and fraught forgiveness can be. André Holland stars as Tarrell, a successful Los Angeles painter who’s haunted by the trauma he endured as a child, when his father, La’Ron (John Earl Jelks), was an abusive crack addict. La’Ron has gotten clean and is doing his best to repent. But nothing La’Ron does now can erase the pain Tarrell endured. Facing his father now only dredges up the scarring memories. Kaphar is himself an accomplished painter, and he imbues his film with a visual beauty that withstands—and perhaps protects against—all the internal suffering. It’s a film that shows great empathy even when it rejects the necessity of absolution.
Rap WorldMy favorite creative choice of the year comes from the Rap World team, who decided to set their movie in 2009 so that their characters could talk about The Dark Knight. No one in the movie ends up mentioning Christopher Nolan’s iconic Batman sequel, but you nonetheless can feel how much these three suburban hip-hop aspirants have obsessed over it. That’s testament to the grounded performances at Rap World’s center. Conner O’Malley, Eric Rahill, and Jack Bensinger each bring to life a type of guy anyone who grew up in a northeast suburb in the late aughts will recognize—townies with staggering self-confidence and a penchant for procrastination. These guys are the only ones who believe they’ll become stars, but Rap World is a compelling case that everyone in this movie should be one.
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UnionYou probably kn0w that labor-organizing is no picnic. But it’s hard to understand just how much of a thankless grind it is unless you either have done it yourself or have seen Brett Story and Stephen Maing’s new documentary, Union. A year before employees at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island voted to unionize in 2022, Story and Maing began following the movement’s organizers in what then felt like a Sisyphean task. Amazon’s quick employee churn and anti-union efforts make it near-impossible to meet the necessary requirements. And Maing and Story show how tension builds amongst the organizers. With all the Zoom meetings and petty bickering, the film can at times feel like a slog. But then, that’s the reality.
Sing SingThere probably won’t be a movie this year that affects me quite like Sing Sing did. Set at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, in Ossining, New York, the film centers on a theater group led by Divine G (a brilliant Colman Domingo), a prolific author and playwright who’s been wrongfully convicted. The group is a refuge for the men involved; it’s a rare opportunity for them to reclaim their humanity, be vulnerable, and forget themselves. There are a thousand cliché versions of this particular movie, but director Greg Kwedar largely avoids the tropes and traps of the genre, instead leading with empathy and respect for the characters. Apart from Domingo, almost all the actors actually participated in Sing Sing’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts program. Across the board, they give fantastic performances—a reminder of the talent and capacity of people too often written off.
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Rebel RidgeIf Aaron Pierre does not imminently become America’s biggest action star, Hollywood has failed. In Jeremy Saulnier’s stark, cynical thriller about the corrupt police practice of civil forfeiture, Pierre—whose piercing hazel eyes are nearly as big as his imposing six-foot-three frame—shines as Terry, a stoic former Marine. Of course, the local police made the mistake of messing with him. In spite of some impressive heroics from Pierre, the film maintains a sense of restraint and a skeptical outlook that separates it from your average action fare.
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Red RoomsThere are shades of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in Pascal Plante’s unsettling new slow-burn thriller—mainly thanks to the film’s mysterious protagonist, Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy), a dark-web savant who shows up every day at the trial of an accused serial killer. But this is no Hollywood blockbuster. Plante’s film leaves more unsaid. And it rides its dark, eerie, opaque vibe to a finale that is more beguiling than satisfying.
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His Three DaughtersAzazel Jacobs’s His Three Daughters is an actor’s dream of a movie, shot chronologically, in a single location, and full of meaty dialogue and fraught sibling relationships. The context for the movie is that Katie (Carrie Coon), Christina (Elizabeth Olsen), and Rachel’s (Natasha Lyonne) father (Jay O. Sanders) is dying, and they are all staying at his New York apartment until the moment arrives. Coon, Olsen, and Lyonne deliver magnificent performances as three wildly different sisters, fully and maddeningly bringing these three people to vivid life.
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The Front RoomWhen I saw The Front Room, the film’s marketing materials had made me think it was going to be a semi-classic horror movie, perhaps full of possessed bodies or other paranormal activity. What it is, though, is so much stranger and more fun. Directors Max and Sam Eggers—the brothers and sometimes collaborators of Robert Eggers—have created for Brandy’s Belinda an absurd mother-in-law nightmare of a movie, in which Kathryn Hunter (as said mother-in-law) fully goes for it. The Front Room is among the funniest films I’ve seen this year.
