Since 2023 was a great movie year, it’s no surprise that 2024 felt like a bit of a letdown. There are no outright classics like Oppenheimer or Anatomy of a Fall and no films that capture the zeitgeist like Barbie. But it wasn’t a bad movie year either, and if 2024 is to be remembered at all, it should be for the sheer variety and pure entertainment value of the very, very good movies it produced.
Just look at what didn’t make the list: Rose Glass’s thrilling, idiosyncratic love story Love Lies Bleeding; the surprisingly artful horror prequel The First Omen; the beguiling Charlie Kaufman-penned animated movie Orion and the Dark; and many more. And that was just in the first four months of the year! Undoubtedly, 2024 had its pleasures, and these 10 movies created moments in time I won’t soon forget.
Interested in more of Digital Trends’ 2024 entertainment coverage? Then check out the 8 best horror movies of 2024, ranked, the 10 best TV shows of 2024, the 7 best sci-fi movies of 2024, the 7 best action movies of 2024, and the 7 worst movies of 2024, ranked.
10. I Saw the TV Glow
Nostalgia kills, or at least cripples, those who cling to the past too hard. Jane Schoenbrun’s haunting ode to an analog 1990s youth culture first cast its spell at Sundance in February, and its warm embrace by critics and audiences since then promises it a long life as a cult movie. In telling the story of Owen (Justice Smith), an awkward teen outsider who finds temporary solace by befriending the slightly older Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and joining her obsession with the Buffy-esque supernatural show The Pink Opaque, Schoenbrun crafted a movie for all the freaks and geeks who still pine for a time when fandom wasn’t a dirty word and the internet hadn’t yet invaded our brains.
She also created an urgent trans allegory that, deniers be damned, feels at once very specific and very universal at the same time. I Saw the TV Glow‘s final shot of a distraught Owen screaming, still stuck in a prison of flesh and bone and capitalism he never had a chance of escaping, is the stuff nightmares are made of — and how overwhelming and unsettling a great movie can be.
9. The Substance
Speaking of nightmares, Caroline Fargeat’s 141-minute mind-bender was the surprise breakout of 2024 and the one movie that united audiences everywhere with the same conclusive thought: What did I just watch? This masterpiece of body horror tackled the subject of female aging and body dysmorphia head-on, making subtext text and discarding any sense of subtlety, decency, and good taste. Good. The Substance‘s exaggerated Day-Glo visuals and liberal use of blood and gore accurately conveyed the primal scream of its protagonist, Elisabeth Sparkle, who is betrayed not so much by nature as she is by a male society that decides they can’t profit off her well-toned body any longer.
As Elisabeth, Demi Moore gave the performance of her career and the year, throwing herself fully into a role that calls for her to face all the insecurities of physical beauty everyone shares and hides deep down. She’s also very funny, and what makes The Substance work so well is that it never loses its dark sense of humor even as Elisabeth — and later, Sue (Margaret Qualley) — destroy themselves to please their hungry and unforgiving audience. In the film’s unforgettable finale, which I won’t dare spoil here, Fargeat achieves a madcap beauty that’s both transcendent and nauseating. The movie is a beautiful nightmare, one that we’re all welcome to join whether we watch it again or simply look in the mirror and grimace at our own imperfections.
8. Furiosa: A Mad Max Tale
The world didn’t need a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, but it got one anyway, and we’re all the better for it. George Miller’s follow-up to his massively successful 2015 action epic ditches Max and puts its title heroine front and center. That’s a bold move, but Miller doesn’t stop there. He deprives his main character of a lot of dialogue (Furiosa only speaks around 30 lines throughout its 141-minute runtime), opts for digital cinematography to film his burnt orange Wasteland, and makes his villain, Chris Hemsworth’s sad and demented Dr. Dementus, its most captivating character. Perhaps the biggest sin of all? Miller takes his damn time and isn’t concerned with topping himself by staging one elaborate action set piece after another à la Fury Road.
Maybe that’s why audiences (and most critics, who should know better) rejected it. They wanted Fury Road 2.0, and what they got instead was a bit of a downer, an action movie that paused to ponder just how violence affects its characters. Yes, Fury Road did that too, briefly, but it masked its message in breathless chases across the desert and War Boys spraying shiny chrome across their teeth. Furiosa isn’t concerned with that, and instead of placating a mass audience of film bros thirsty for showy violence and meme-ready lines, what Miller created instead was one of the best action movies ever made. Yes, even better than Fury Road.
7. Red Rooms
The marketing for Red Rooms compared it to David Fincher’s best movies, name-checking his serial killer movies Se7en and Zodiac to snag as many eyeballs as possible. That turned out to be not entirely accurate; Red Rooms is unlike anything you’ve ever seen, and that’s what makes it so effective. Pascal Plante’s movie, which isn’t exactly a thriller and not quite a horror film, follows Montreal fashion model Kelly-Anne as she attends the trial of Ludovic Chevalier, who has been accused of murdering three young girls, recording their deaths, and uploading the videos to a “Red Room,” a virtual chat room on the dark web. She meets another fan of Ludovic’s, the homely and homeless Clémentine (Laurie Babin), befriends her, and soon, the two women feed their mutual obsession for a man who may or may not be a serial killer.
If you think you know where this is going, you’re in for a surprise, as Plante has other ideas on his mind. Red Rooms is the type of movie that holds its cards close to its vest; you’re not quite sure what it’s up to, even after it’s over. It’s aided by a bravura performance by Juliette Gariépy, who, as the stone-faced Kelly-Anne, suggests a lot by doing very little. Sphinx-like, with a penetrating gaze that seems to look through people, including the audience, Gariépy’s killer groupie is impossible to figure out, and just one of the reasons why I keep thinking about Red Rooms again and again.
6. Meanwhile on Earth
A surprisingly warm and mellow update of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Meanwhile on Earth barely got noticed when it came out last fall and seems to have been forgotten about. That should be a crime, as this touching sci-fi movie is a treat for the eyes and heart, a rare genre picture that’s both intellectually challenging and emotionally involving. After her astronaut brother goes missing on a space mission, Elsa hears his voice through an earpiece she finds on the ground. (It makes sense when you watch the film.) He’s being held captive by mysterious creatures who offer Elsa a deal: Find five human bodies for them to inhabit on Earth, and she can have her brother back. If she can’t do this in three days, she’ll lose her brother forever.
The concept is out there, but it never feels silly or contrived. That’s due to its writer/director, Jérémy Clapin, who made the wonderful animated film I Lost My Body in 2019 and incorporates similar animated sequences to illustrate Elsa’s space-flung dreams and strong bond with her brother.
Like all great sci-fi movies, Meanwhile on Earth asks complicated questions. (Who gets to decide when another person’s life is over? How far would you go to save the life of a loved one?). But it never loses sight of its characters, who, whether they are human and onscreen or alien and a disembodied voice, come through in vivid detail. Elsa has to make impossible choices throughout the film, but because Clapin allows you to get to know her and her family, you understand those are the only ones she can make.
5. Hard Truths
Pansy is angry: at her husband for not taking off his shoes when he walks into the house, at her son for not doing much with his life, at her dentist for asking stupid questions, and at the entire world for not meeting her exacting standards. She hurls insults and diatribes like a pro, and she makes almost everyone around her miserable. The only person who tolerates her, just barely, is her sister, a bubbly hairdresser who is raising her two grown daughters in a cramped apartment and who welcomes life with an open smile and a generous heart.
Hard Truths is directed by Mike Leigh, and it continues his astonishing five-decade-long career of chronicling the daily lives of the British lower middle class, who are rich enough to enjoy some luxuries but too poor to escape the monotony of suburban living. The movie, which is constructed like a short story with a James Joyceian-like epiphany at the end, is carried by its two lead actresses, longtime collaborators Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Michele Austin.
As siblings Pansy and Chantelle, the two actresses create a portrait of two sisters who don’t really like each other but are the only ones who understand each other. Not much changes in Hard Truths plot-wise, but by the end, you still feel a monumental shift. Something has broken, and Leigh leaves it to us to pick up the pieces.
4. Last Summer
Anne, an attractive French lawyer, is slightly bored with her sex life with her bourgeois husband and begins an affair with her teenage stepson, Théo. And maybe 20 years ago, Catherine Breillat, the director of such sexually explicit movies as Romance, Fat Girl, and Anatomy of Hell, would’ve handled this material differently, but in Last Summer, she’s restrained, and all the better for it.
The sex part of Last Summer pulls you in, and the lead actors, Léa Drucker and Samuel Kircher, are attractive in a way that only the French can be. But it’s the other part, the mind games Anne and Théo play with one another as their relationship grows deeper and more complicated, that sets the movie apart from similar fare like Babygirl. That movie, more slick and far less interesting, doesn’t have the courage to follow through on what a relationship between an older woman and a younger man, one that is disproportionate in age and power, can really look like.
Breillat doesn’t need her heroine to lick milk from a saucer on her hands and knees to shock people; she understands that even in 2024, there’s nothing more radical or daring than a close-up of an older woman experiencing pleasure and not giving a damn what anyone else thinks.
3. Challengers/Queer
Luca Guadagnino has always been an eroticist, but with these two films in 2024, he cements his status as our preeminent chronicler of desire — for flesh, for love, and for the glory of winning a competition, a game, or the heart of an obscure object of desire. In Challengers, the director creates one of the sexiest movies ever made while showing absolutely no sex act whatsoever. In showing us the years-long love triangle that pulls Tashi, Patrick, and Art together, apart, and together again, he understands that the best sex exists everywhere — on the tennis court, in the locker room, or in somebody’s head — but the bedroom.
In Queer, an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ 1985 novel, he goes further in showing how love is often fueled by a compulsion to possess another. Fiftysomething Lee can’t help but be drawn to twentysomething Eugene, but it isn’t just his youth he desires — it’s him. Everything about him — the face, the clothes, the way he sees the world, the way he sees him — makes Lee want to possess him, first by seduction, then by telepathy. (Yes, really.) But Guadagnino isn’t concerned with telling yet another gay love story that ends in tears and heartbreak; by the end, these lovers are reunited, but not in the way you expect.
By shooting the Mexico- and South America-set film entirely in Rome’s famous Cinecittà Studios, Guadagnino deliberately stripped away the grime and rough edges present in Burroughs’ prose and instead made a colorful, deliberately artificial fever dream of desire requited, denied, and finally accepted on its own terms. Guadagnino’s 2024 movies argue that for love, all the pain and misery are worth it … but just barely.
2. Anora
Sex work is work, but Anora is something else; it’s a workplace comedy and a mystery (What happened to Ivan?), a love story and a sad fable, and an accurate portrait of Brooklyn off the B/Q line. In other words, Anora is a bit much, but it’s also never enough, and Sean Baker, that deeply empathetic storyteller of the disenfranchised, is a filmmaker more concerned with how money and class really work in America than making the next Marvel movie.
It would be all for naught, however, if the film didn’t have the right actress playing the lead character. As Ani, Mikey Madison achieves that rare thing in film when the performer and the role are immediately and forever intertwined with one another. Her stripper Cinderella stands alongside Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly and Julia Roberts’ Vivian Ward as sex worker cinematic icons we can’t help but fall in love with. Ani isn’t in a rom-com, though, and as she navigates a dream come true that slowly slips from her grasp, Anora becomes something more meaningful: an American tragedy of crushed hopes and diminished aspirations. If this is the best American cinema can produce, we’re in a good place.
1. Flow
There are some movies that are great because the filmmaking and the artistry behind their creation are undeniable. Other times, great movies can be challenging, forcing you to look at the world in a different way or question the meaning behind its message. And then there are the rare movies that overwhelm you emotionally; these are the hardest to describe since your reaction to them is often indescribable and irrational.
Flow is one of those movies. An animated movie from Latvia, it follows a stray black cat as it struggles to survive a great flood that forces it on a boat with a lonely and curious capybara. Soon, they are joined by a lemur, a golden retriever, and a secretarybird as they seek suitable dry land to find a new home on. And … that’s it. The film also has no dialogue and no names for its characters. There are no peppy songs penned by Lin-Manuel Miranda to distract you and no audience-pandering moments to clarify what’s going on and what the point of all of this is. It’s the rare animated movie that dazzles the eyes and challenges the brain without sacrificing any of its integrity to sell tie-in merchandise.
Flow is a metaphysical animated movie, but its deeper meanings remain a secret to me even now. That’s what’s so great about Flow; it suggests reservoirs of mysteries that you want to unlock, but you don’t want to for fear of ruining the strange, punch-drunk spell it casts over you. The film is a technical marvel; the director, Gints Zilbalodis, used Blender, a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software program, to create its breathtaking visuals, and it beats anything Disney has done in decades. But it’s the characters it introduces us to, and the lush, alien world it places them in, that makes the film an all-timer and yet another testament, after last year’s The Boy and the Heron and this year’s The Wild Robot, to the renaissance that animation is currently undergoing. Flow is the best movie of 2024 and one of the greatest animated films ever made.
The best of the rest
Here are the other movies that stuck out in 2024 that barely missed the top-10 cut: The Order, Orion and the Dark, The Wild Robot, Scoop, Between the Temples, Carry-On, In the Land of Saints and Sinners, La Chimera, Rebel Ridge, Love Lies Bleeding, Hit Man, The Bikeriders, Oddity, and A Complete Unknown.
