With the Oscars less than two weeks away, I wanted to take a moment to write a little bit about my 10 favorite films of 2024.
While I try to log all my watches on my Letterboxd, I always miss some, don’t rank others, etc. I’m not one who religiously catalogues and ranks the films of the year. I like end-of-year lists and awards because they spark conversation. The ranking itself is the least interesting part.
In that spirit, as I looked back at the films of 2024, I decided that I really have a Top 2. Those films stood head-and-shoulders above the pack in my estimation. Behind that were many films I also thought were excellent. I’ve chosen eight of those to round out what I’ll call my Top 10 Films of 2024.
#1 Nickel Boys
Having seen his transcendent Hale County This Morning, This Evening, I eagerly anticipated seeing what RaMell Ross would do with a narrative. I was stunned to see so much of his visual style from the documentary translated into Nickel Boys.
The way Ross uses the camera is truly unlike anything I have seen before. The choice to shoot everything in POV could be just a gimmick, but for Ross it’s a tool to show not just what events unfold but how these characters experience those events. At a screening I attended at the New York Film Festival, he said “we rarely look into the face of evil” when describing why his camera wanders during some of the most harrowing moments.
This is bold filmmaking that will stand the test of time.
#2 The Brutalist
While more of a throwback, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist feels very bold in its own right. This is the kind of epic, American Dream story that Hollywood used to make on the regular. Beyond just the scope of the story, there are great touches like the overture and intermission that make this feel like something from the David Lean era. That could all just be nostalgia cosplay, but the drama here lives up to its epic trappings.
The Other Nominees – Anora and The Substance
Among the heavily Oscar nominated films, Anora and The Substance were also standouts for me. Sean Baker might be my favorite working filmmaker, and while Anora didn’t quite reach the emotional crescendo of The Florida Project or Red Rocket, it was still a knockout film.
The Substance may have a few flaws, but here is a film that really goes for it. The images and ideas imprint on your brain and you cannot unsee what you have seen.
The Big Movies – Dune Part II and Furiosa
As big budget spectacle pictures go, Dune and Furiosa are about as good as it gets. Here we have two of the greatest living filmmakers creating distinct worlds, but these films also have characters and ideas at their core which make these more than just flashy set pieces.
The Other Musical – The End
I did not enjoy the other, heavily-nominated musical that was released this year. For my money, if you want an I’ve-never-seen-that-before musical, check out Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End.
Like Ross, Oppenheimer shows that he can bring the lush cinematography that was a hallmark of his documentary work (like The Act of Killing) into narrative filmmaking. Here, a cast featuring Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon play maybe some of the last people on earth, living in some kind of cave, whose world is upended when a stranger from the surface joins them.
I’ve Never Seen That Before – Hundreds of Beavers and Universal Language
Despite all the things I said about how singular Nickel Boys is, Hundreds of Beavers is still the most original film I saw in 2024. It’s like a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon, although a good bit of it is also animated. It is absurdist, slapstick, built on the logic of video games, trying at times, but ultimately transcendent. It’s also quite funny.
Universal Language is a film I’m hoping to bring to The Varsity in March. One description calls it an absurdist triptych of seemingly unconnected stories, and sure, I’ll go with that. The film is set in a hyper-stylized, almost Wes Anderson, frozen Canada. However, most everyone in this version of Canada is Iranian and the film’s dialogue is all spoken in either Persian or French. The mash-up of cultures and styles ultimately makes more resonant the understated themes about the universality of human experience. It’s also quite funny.
Two More – Challengers and Will & Harper
I was a little surprised how far and away Challengers won our favorite movie of the year amongst Varsity staff and our Letterboxd community. But it was certainly one of my favorite films of the year as well. This film is a movie-movie. The story is a perfect construct for a two-hour narrative, everyone is young and sexy, even when they’re older and busted. What a fun watch.
Will & Harper will be my begrudging Netflix streaming-only title, because it’s just so damn good. It would be a touching road movie no matter who the subjects were, but the fact a celebrity of the stratosphere of Ferrell would open himself up like this takes this to a whole other level. This might be one of the best films about friendship ever made.
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There you have it, my Top 10 (or so) films of 2024. It was our pleasure to bring so many of these to Des Moines at the Varsity Cinema. I hope you were able to enjoy them with us. Let’s do it again in 2025.