The 26 Best Movies of 2024 (So Far)
Hit ManIf you go into Hit Man expecting a movie about a ruthless hired gun, you’ll be sorely disappointed—though perhaps not as disappointed as one of the poor saps who tried to hire a hit man and instead met an undercover agent posing as one. In his adaptation of Skip Hollandsworth’s 2001 Texas Monthly story about a college professor named Gary Johnson who moonlighted as a fake hit man, Richard Linklater mixes screwball comedy with a meditation on how people change. There may not be much in the way of slick kills, but there is a lot of breezy fun.
Gasoline RainbowFew movies are as in touch with what it feels like to be a teenager as the Ross brothers’ latest, which is so real and raw it might fool you into thinking it’s a documentary. The film follows a small group of young, rowdy teens from modest means on a road trip across Oregon, out to the coast. As inevitable troubles arise and plans are thwarted, it’s the unexpected encounters that prove most meaningful. In other hands, that all might make for an unbearably clichéd story, but the Rosses dig deep and tap into the vibrant fringes.
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Evil Does Not ExistWith a less nuanced and contemplative director, a title like Evil Does Not Exist might have come off as a disastrously didactic, Oscar-baiting screed on the virtue inside all of us. But Ryusuke 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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Furiosa: A Mad Max SagaIt’s impossible not to think of Mad Max: Fury Road while watching that film’s new prequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. But if you put aside all the hype, what you’re left with is one of the very best big-budget action movies since…well, Fury Road. George Miller’s latest installment in the Mad Max franchise is a high-octane, pedal-to-the-metal dystopian thrill ride in its own right, featuring a couple unbelievable set pieces, a barrage of dizzying cuts, and one scene-stealing schnoz.
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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The BeastBertrand Bonello’s latest was loosely inspired by Henry James’s 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle. But while the author, were he alive today, might recognize some similar themes (loneliness, fear, self-destructive fatalism), The Beast takes the source material in directions James never could’ve anticipated. The film intertwines three separate narratives, in which star-crossed souls (played wonderfully by Léa Seydoux and George MacKay) meet in various time periods: 1910, 2014, and 2044. Whereas the first is a fairly Jamesian Parisian costume drama, the latter two timelines find Bonello exploring thoroughly modern fears: incels and artificial intelligence. Altogether, The Beast is as uneven and indulgent as it is audacious, full of experiments in genre and laced with wry, sometimes melodramatic humor. Since seeing it at last year’s New York Film Festival, I’ve debated whether it’s amazing or horrible, but it’s undoubtedly memorable.
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I Saw the TV GlowI loved Jane Schoenbrun’s microbudget 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.
The People’s JokerVera Drew’s satirical DIY spin on superherodom’s most exhausted characters is so visually and referentially chaotic—mixing forms, switching names, and gleefully messing with the powers that be—that it can be easy to overlook what an affectingly personal work it is. At the heart of this future-set, no-rules, community-woven collage is Drew’s story of gender transition and comedy evolution. It takes issue with improv’s first rule of “Yes, and…” and proves there’s a lot of gold to be mined from “No, but…”
SpermworldIn his follow-up to Some Kind of Heaven, director Lance Oppenheim proves once again to be among modern documentary’s great humanists. He has a knack for finding colorful characters within eccentric subcultures and capturing them in a way that is curious and nuanced. In Spermworld, the subculture in question is black-market sperm donors. By spending time with a few serial donors, we learn about their various motivations and how what they do breeds both connection and conflict in their lives.
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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 of 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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Dad & Step-DadTynan DeLong has compared his feature debut, Dad & Step-Dad, to a nature documentary. Indeed, it borrows the form’s slow, serene pacing and meditative music. But in observing a thirteen-year-old named Branson (Brian Fiddyment), his dad (Colin Burgess), and his stepdad (Anthony Oberbeck) on a woodsy weekend getaway, DeLong shows that the human male is much stranger than any manatee or muskrat. Despite heavily spoofing the awkwardness and toxicity of modern masculinity, this is a film that has a lot of love for its imperfect subjects.
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Ryuichi Sakamoto: OpusI had some issues with this Neo Sora–directed concert film—it felt like it ended several times before it actually did, and though it’s gorgeous aesthetically, the crisp black-and-white cinematography calls to mind an Apple commercial. Ultimately, these are minor quibbles. The bottom line here is that Sora brings the viewer into intimate contact with Ryuichi Sakamoto as he performs a profoundly touching swan song.
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Dune: Part Two Isn’t it great when the most anticipated blockbusters of the year mostly live up to the hype? Like Barbie and Oppenheimer last year, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune sequel is about as good as you could hope for from this notoriously tricky-to-adapt property. Packed with satisfying performances from a new generation of stars, the film is a tremendous spectacle that even manages to produce a few good laughs.
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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 Eugenie (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 movie about romance and ephemerality.
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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 out of 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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Free TimeIn Free Time, Ryan Martin Brown subverts your traditional movie structure by giving his hero what he wants right off the bat. During a meeting with his supervisor, Drew (played by Colin Burgess) surprises himself by quitting his job in an effort to savor what’s left of his youth. But lacking direction—and fellow unemployed friends—he is quickly burdened by his newfound freedom. This is a comedy (and a very funny one at that), but if you’re among those who can relate, its discomfort might just verge on horror.
Apolonia, ApoloniaIf you trail anyone with a camera for long enough, you’ll probably observe some interesting things. That’s true of the young French painter Apolonia Sokol, whom Danish doc maker Lea Glob spent thirteen years filming. Through Glob’s lens, we see Sokol grow as an artist and as a woman, build community, navigate the art world, and process loss. Sokol’s story provides plenty to chew on—about family, art making, and modern womanhood. And it helps that she’s an extraordinarily captivating screen presence.
The Promised LandMads Mikkelsen’s performance in The Promised Land, from Danish director Nikolaj Arcel, immediately ranks as one of my favorites from him. In the eighteenth-century-set drama, he plays Captain Ludvig Kahlen, a poor Danish war veteran who tries to elevate his status and ingratiate himself with the king by growing crops on the vast, forbidding Jutland Heath. In addition to the elements, Kahlen faces adversity from the current nobility, particularly a diabolical aristocrat named Frederik de Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg). Arcel makes great use of Mikkelsen’s mesmerizing visage. And the director gives The Promised Land such fine pacing that, even as he portrays great agony, watching the film is never a struggle.
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Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell Vietnamese director Pham Thien An has a gift for photographing his home country—both the city of Saigon and the vast rural land surrounding it—through wide shots that slowly pan and zoom. There’s a quiet, searching quality in the cinematography that’s echoed in the narrative. Thien (Le Phong Vu) is a young man whose sister-in-law has just died in a motorcycle crash and whose brother long ago abandoned the family. Without any sense of clear direction, Thien casts about, both in the present and through memories, for meaning, faith, God, and his brother. If his quest offers frustratingly little in the way of solid answers, it raises plenty of questions—and better yet, it leads to many potent encounters.
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Totem Totem, from The Chambermaid director Lila AvilĂ©s, is such an evocative expression of the extraordinarily specific and intense stew of feelings associated with celebrating an end. The film is largely told from the perspective of Sol (NaĂma SentĂes), a seven-year-old girl who is spending the day at her grandfather’s house, where the family is getting ready to hold a surprise party for her sick father. The buildup to the party is slow—giving AvilĂ©s the chance to paint subtly shaded portraits of the various family members—and results in a powerful climax.
