The best 15 films of 2024, from A Real Pain to Wallace & Gromit (2025)

Jesse Eisenberg gets it. He gets how hard it can be to love somebody who you don’t understand, whose actions inspire and embarrass you in one fell swoop. A Real Pain is about a fraught bond between cousins on a sojourn into the past, both quite literally in the form of a trip to Poland and figuratively in a two-handed unpacking of trauma. Eisenberg never lets the room get overly stuffy or the emotions get too implausible. His second feature is fleet on its feet and wise beyond its years, knowing exactly when to dig in its heels and when to cut and run. Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin both understand each other so deeply as performers, which makes the themes take deep root in your mind. These are fictional characters, yes, but they’re real. You know them; you feel their pain, too.

Sean Baker is one of my favorite filmmakers working, and this feels like his post-COVID “we’re all just so tired, man” gut punch. This is an excellent film, boundless in its energy and pragmatically grounded to the reality of its characters. Mikey Madison is a movie star and owns the screen, but the entire cast is without flaw. Red Rocket is Baker’s masterpiece, but Anora is as great of a pivot as any director has made recently. We really are the sum of how we survive and how we help each other get by along theway.

Review here.

Babygirl, Halina Reijn’s trapeze act of an erotic thriller, bills itself as the heir apparent to Basic Instinct and Eyes Wide Shut. However, Reijn is far too clever to ignore the body politic of where that genre lives in 2024. She weaponizes corporate power and personal dissolution to document an appetite for destruction without robbing said appetite of its ethical ramifications. Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson radiate together on the screen, dancing in each other’s worst impulses as if they’re in love with the room burning around them. Antonio Banderas’ devastating third-act turn knocks all the blocks down to seal the deal. It’s hard to pull a film like this off and really nail the mood while refusing to absolve the danger, and Reijn does so with unbelievable skill and care.

Brady Corbet’s searing epic about art and assimilation has garnered a lot of attention for its size. It’s about three-and-a-half hours with an intermission. The imagery is grand and unforgettable, particularly on an IMAX screen. The ideas are vast, about the toll of immigration in a land that may not welcome you, about the never-ending battle between creation and commerce. The performances are big and expressive, none more so than Adrien Brody’s spellbinding breath of life into László Tóth. However, it’s in the small details where Corbet solidifies his masterpiece.

The Brutalist is not a hard movie to wrap your head around. The first act’s American dream dissolves into the second’s American reality, and Corbet never loses the momentum built during that astounding hike to the top of the mountain reached by intermission. The Brutalist is a remarkably intimate film for its ambition in both craft and story.

If I had to pick a favorite for 2024, it’s this.

Luca Guadagnino revived the modern sports movie with Challengers, a bracing love triangle set against the enthralling balance of tennis. It’s hard to really describe what a titanic force this film is when you get Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ strobe-light score pulsing through your veins and see Guadagnino tossing about Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connell in the winds of fierce, unforgiving competition. Seeing this in a loud theater, basking in the electricity of the final act and watching everyone quite literally crash into each other with reckless abandon … it’s why we love the movies, folks.

Review here.

It’s hard to say A24’s blockbuster effortCivil Waris anything but a statement, even with its shrewd avoidance to blatantly point specific fingers in specific directions. The British Alex Garland is clearly disturbed by what’s happening stateside as an outsider as much as he’s seemingly skeptical that hisApocalypse Now-tinted, truly breathtaking war journalist road trip movie through a dystopian America is all that far-fetched. His is a brilliant, complicated film, one that puts us into a nonsensical power grab battleground where you’re never sure who your enemy is (or decided who you want to fight against long ago).

Review here.

Denis Villeneuve knew he had to go as big and bold as possible to widen the spectacle and stakes of his adaptation for the second part, but he someone managed to both outdo himself and deliver one of the definitive tentpole experiences of the decade so far withDune: Part Two. It’s a vital experience in a theater and a rigorous moral maze for the mind, one that interrogates power and freedom in the vacuum of the messiah complex. It’s also got giant sandworm battles and blistering combats that rival the sheer scope and cosmic shock of Peter Jackson’sLord of the Ringsmovies

Review here.

FollowingMad Max: Fury Roadwas never going to be easy, but George Miller veered into full-fledged Biblical epic territory withFuriosa: A Mad Max Saga. It’s a spectacular sequel, adding a new layer of sweeping emotion and vengeful venom as it spans years of Furiosa’s journey from a green oasis to the Fury Road. Miller wisely avoids trying to recreate a masterpiece and still manages to scrape the same ceiling that made its predecessor such a groundbreaking moment in cinema. Some of the war rig and motorbike sequences in this rival the best scenes inMad Max: Fury Road, while the more methodical world-building and deepened dramatic stakes added meaning to the series.

Review here.

This was absolute gold. The best of what independent cinema can produce. It’s wild somethingso zany and handcrafted can manage to have such integrity and ingenuity. You really can’t sell this one enough. It’s a firecracker. You just cannot wait to see what these guys do next. Jay Ward and the Happy Tree Friends would be so, so proud. Meshing that vibe together is just beautiful. If you’re looking for the surprise of the year, it’s Hundreds of Beavers.

Review here.

Inviting you in with the late-night discomfort and allure of 1990s Snick-era young adult television and stunning you with the still-shock of David Lynch, David Cronenberg and Ari Aster, Jane Schoenbrun’s triumphant coming-of-age horror fantasy will serve as a life-changer for some and a fierce call for empathy for others. It’s a monument of trans cinema and a breathtaking leap for Schoenbrun into auteur status. This film is a major work of the decade so far, and the closer it draws you in to its glow, the more you’re likely to avoid the perils that await staying still.

Review here.

An impressive, affecting expansion ofInside Out‘s emotionally resonant themes,Inside Out 2proves that Pixar knows exactly how to create a sequel that both compliments and matures what came before. While you’re not quite going to get the headrush of concept again, the new film more than makes up for it with a striking examination of how the rampant anxiety of your teenage years can throw your entire equilibrium out of whack.

Review here.

At times gleefully crass and indulgent, at times disorienting to the point of slight vertigo, at times so genuine that it hurts. Megalopolisfeels like the culmination of a fever dream for a filmmaker finally getting one last chance to challenge us, as the vox populi and as the moviegoer, to want more for ourselves. In an era where studio movies have become so homogenized and serialized, it’s downright whiplash to go from comfort food to a seven-course tasting menu whipped up by a stark-raving mad genius chef.

Review here.

“Cinema as immersion” has never been as palpable as it is in Nickel Boys, which really might be the singular filmmaking achievement of the decade so far. RaMell Ross’ instant classic adapts Colson Whitehead’s novel with innovation, putting viewers right behind the camera by taking a first-person view through the entire film between its two main characters. We see what they see as if it’s happening right in front of us. The way Nickel Boys is made makes it impossible not to feel the warmth of childhood and shudder at the the terror of oppression. You’re right there because that’s how Ross intends his film to play. There is no screen; merely a window.

American films are rarely this bold. Ross’ decision to have us see the horrors of Nickel Academy right through the eyes of those suffering makes their pain internalize within you. Cinematographer Jomo Fray gives us our vision, crystal-clear cinematic glasses we slip on as the film pours into our heart. This film is impossible to shake because of how it completely transports you. You leave this film feeling as if you’ve been given the memories of others, as if the ghosts in the empathy machine of cinema need you to remember them forever. That’s filmmaking in the highest order.

M. Night Shyamalan, take a bow. His latest film has the plot line of the year, for starters: a serial killer father stuck in a pop megastar concert labyrinth with his daughter meant to ensnare him for his dastardly deeds. Somehow, the film is even more irresistible than it sounds, anchored by one of the best leading performances of the year in Josh Hartnett’s goofy dad vibes slowly eroding into something more sinister (and right back to pop-pop mode) at the drop of a hat.

Review here.

Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl plays the hits, but that still makes it better than most of the other movies that came out in 2024. That’s how potent the brand still is all these years later. Aardman’s cheese-loving inventor and fiercely loyal dog diving into a salient satire of A.I. convenience culture was delightful enough as it was, not to mention forging this as the grand revenge of Feathers McGraw. Since Gromit is basically animation’s Indiana Jones: The Wrong Trousers is Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Vengeance Most Fowl is The Last Crusade.

• Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point
• Conclave
• Deadpool & Wolverine
• Dìdi(弟弟)
• Evil Does Not Exist
• Good One
• Hit Man
• Juror No. 2
• Memoir of a Snail
• Oh, Canada
• Piece By Piece
• Rap World
• Sing Sing
• Snack Shack
• Thelma

Many others from 2024 earn my love. For a full picture, find them on my Letterboxd page.