Article by Mark Dujsik | December 30, 2024

Here are the ten best films of 2024:

10. Red Rooms
Red Rooms exists in the contradiction of human dread and curiosity, and that makes this combination of tecno-thriller, courtroom drama, and character study a uniquely chilling film. Part of writer/director Pascal Plante's film takes place in the courtroom, where Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) watches the trial of a man accused of butchering three girls.

Kelly-Anne is a puzzle—and a compelling one, at that. This woman is obsessed with the crimes, the accused, the victims, their families, and news coverage of the trial, and the rest of the film slowly picks apart that fascination and keeps us wondering what's behind it until the final moments of this story.

As much as Plante does show in terms of the trial and Kelly-Anne's private investigatory work, the film is particularly intelligent in what and how it withholds information, from keeping the killings off-screen to the foundational enigma of what Kelly-Anne is doing. The whole of the film, then, exists in the shadows, and whether the protagonist's actions are for good or ill or something in between, we can't help but be curious about and unsettled by what she does and what that reveals about her.

9. Small Things Like These
As played by Cillian Murphy, Bill Furlong is a man weary to his bones and to his soul. At the start of Small Things Like These, his physical exhaustion is apparent. Director Tim Mielants' film reveals the weariness of Bill's soul by way of the silent conflict of morality that emerges as he goes about his ordinary, day-to-day life in this specific time and place—an Irish town during the 1980s.

The impact of this story is in watching an ordinary person confront that reality and find his perception, his sense of morality, and the future of this life he has built for himself challenged. Murphy's performance here is extraordinary in how much the actor communicates with so little. On Murphy's face and in his eyes, we can see the load of a lonely childhood, as well as the uncertainty and guilt of what to do about witnessing systematic abuses, come close to crushing this man to his very being.

The weight of the film is palpable as a matter of character, morality, and history. It's a simple story, but as told by the filmmakers, it conveys layers of doubt, remorse, and mental strife.

8. Inside Out 2
Puberty strikes early in Inside Out 2, a notion that was suggested at the end of the impressively and thoroughly imaginative 2015 original. Movies rarely demand sequels, but that film, which saw life through the eyes of the emotions looking through the eyes of a pre-teen girl, certainly did. The filmmakers didn't mess up the potential.

This follow-up expands and adjusts the world of and the characters within this now-teenaged girl's mind in ways that are funny, insightful, and, appropriately, emotionally stacked. The filmmakers, led by newcomer Kelsey Mann (making his feature debut), re-introduce us to Joy (voice of Amy Poehler), who has been with 13-year-old Riley (now voiced by Kensington Tallman) since the girl first opened her eyes, and the four other basic emotions.

Four new emotions, led by Anxiety (voice of Maya Hawke), arrive with adolescence and start to take over the girl's mind. As with the original, a major key to the film's success is its sense of balance narratively—making Riley's slice-of-life story as important as the emotions' adventure—and tonally—effortlessly shifting from funny to achingly sincere. This sequel may not possess the mystery and innovation that made the original so bold and inspired, but it's a more-than-worthy continuation of that story.

7. Civil War
At some point, the politics stop, and the fighting begins. That's when, where, and why writer/director Alex Garland's Civil War exists—after political division becomes untenable, in cities and towns in ruins, to look at the cruel reality of an increasingly possible future. The haziness of this film's back story is one of its great strengths, because it forces us, not to consider the causes of this civil war, but to experience it in the moment.

Those moments are horrific, harrowing, and haunting, witnessed and captured for posterity by a group of journalists—Lee (Kirsten Dunst), Joel (Wagner Moura), Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), and upstart Jessie (Cailee Spaeny)— who know the tide of the conflict has turned. Narratively, this is mostly an excuse for a string of thoughtful conversations about the necessity, perils, and contradictions of journalism.

Much more viscerally, it leads to imagery and sequences of cognitive dissonance, as almost every imaginable notion of the American landscape—cities, small-town main streets, interstates, stretches of strip mall, the suburbs, a country club, etc.—has become rubble or is engulfed in flames or is readying for a battle to come, and pure horror. It leaves us shaken by how both questions and answers become irrelevant in the face of chaos, despair, and death.

6. The Beast
A tale of anxiety and dread, The Beast is certainly a horror story, but it's not one in the way of so many modern horror movies. Co-writer/director Bertrand Bonello's film has an old-fashioned feel, even though it is also very much of the now and beyond that.

The story follows Gabrielle Monnier (Léa Seydoux), the protagonist, in variations or reincarnations of the character across three different time periods. It's rather impressive how Bonello creates isolated stories for each period, each one working in a mode that suits the era—a romantic melodrama in 1910 Paris, a psychological thriller about the extremes of isolation in 2014 Los Angeles, a cerebral consideration of what makes us human in 2044. The premise is grounded in emotional and psychological fear about the world and its most advanced inhabitants, and with that idea and mood firmly established, the filmmakers allow themselves the freedom to explore it across time and through significant changes to the world.

The horror here is the sense that we're trapped in a cycle of devastation, violence, and desensitization to every terrible thing that has happened and could or will happen in the future. That all-encompassing sense of anxiety elevates the film and its decades-spanning narrative. Everything about the material points to the dread, embraces it, and makes us feel it within the story and beyond.

5. Hundreds of Beavers
Co-writer/director Mike Cheslik's Hundreds of Beavers proudly announces itself and its intentions right at the start. Here is an attempt at a live-action cartoon, brought to life by way of the aesthetic and style of a silent-era comedy. This is clearly a labor of love on the part of the filmmakers, and the attitude on display through these techniques is that they will get it done by any means, no matter how limited and on-a-budget, necessary.

One has to admire the gumption of Cheslik's approach, but more importantly, one has to respect how well the director makes all of the material's disparate elements into a cohesive whole. The story revolves around Jean Kayak (co-writer Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) trying to survive in the frozen wilderness, but nature and wacky physics aren't going to make it easy. There are rabbits, raccoons, dogs, wolves, and, yes, beavers in the woods, and all of the animals are just actors wearing costumes. It all works, because the film so instantly prepares us for as much silliness as possible and the digital cinematography is its own convincing illusion.

With all of this technique in place, Cheslik simply fills the basic structure of the tale with as many jokes as possible. The levels of enthusiasm, affection for craft (both of the stylistic and do-it-yourself varieties), and giddy humor are downright infectious here. This film is a lot of smart and very, very silly fun.

4. Challengers
Tennis is the backdrop of Challengers, and a love triangle makes up the foundation of the plot. Writer Justin Kuritzkes and director Luca Guadagnino's film, though, isn't actually about tennis, and as for the concept of a love triangle in this specific case, there's a much bigger question at hand. Are any of these characters capable of loving anything other than the game?

Once the answer to that question becomes apparent, the film opens up in unexpected and much deeper ways. Here's a sports film that's far more concerned with its characters than the game. The fast-paced and grueling tennis sequences start to look like acts of wordless conversations, and it's daring enough to look at those characters with plain and sometimes unsettling honesty.

Tashi (Zendaya), Art (Mike Faist), and Patrick (Josh O'Connor) are athletes who are, were, or could be at or near the top of their chosen sport. They know this and behave with that knowledge. These three are obsessed with chasing the apex of what they can do and what accomplishments they can achieve. That makes it fascinating, funny, and highly dramatic, thanks to three great, lived-in performances from the leads.

The narrative spans more than a decade, watching as the characters' careers rise and fall and—perhaps worst of all for any of them—settle into a comfortable rhythm. It's an excellent piece of character-focused entertainment that's about more than tennis, and because of the complete confidence of the filmmakers and the actors, it never relents in gripping us.

3. A Complete Unknown
The Bob Dylan of A Complete Unknown isn't so much a character as he is an idea, an ideal, and a mystery to everyone around him. Co-writer/director James Mangold's film starts as a biography of the man's early career, but soon enough, the filmmaker lets us know that he has bigger things in mind than just recounting the first years of Dylan's fast rise to stardom and his controversial decision to go electric.

The film's Dylan, played by Timothée Chalamet, isn't nearly as complicated or enigmatic as the character presents himself, and that's what makes the film such a rich and tricky piece to dissect. Part of Dylan's appeal was that he did seem to come out of nowhere and into the folk music revival of the 1960s. What's really fascinating about the portrayal of Bob here, then, is how he exists as a contradiction even within the film's own estimation of him.

On the one hand, he's the man who revolutionizes and comes to personify the best qualities of the period's folk revival, but the other side of Bob takes over the story's second half. The narrative itself is so entrenched in the hope and the potential for social good coming out of the folk movement that it gradually turns Bob into a sort of villain for the very scene that made him.

This is no mere, straightforward biography. It's a melancholy ode to an era filled with strife, a movement filled with optimism, and a man who defined the music, only to upturn it all.

2. His Three Daughters
Writer/director Azazel Jacobs' film is an exceptional study of three sisters and their frayed relationships, strained for assorted reasons before all of them have to keep watch over their dying father. Jacobs' screenplay for His Three Daughters is particularly noteworthy for how much it communicates about these siblings and their bonds in such short order.

In just one scene, Jacobs lays out the stakes of the drama, the fundamentals of these characters, and the simmering conflicts that will boil over time and again as the three sisters navigate this task. It doesn't require much from them, because their father's cancer and his deteriorating body will run their course, but it also requires everything in terms of being there for him, as well as actually letting go of him in a very real way, and each other.

At the forefront are these three women, played with conviction and unexpected subtlety by Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, and Elizabeth Olsen. They make this a thoroughly compelling examination of encroaching grief, three specifically developed characters, and the intricacies of how these assorted relationships are fraught and might—or might not—be healed.

The story is also about dying and death, of course, in ways that are frank and free of any false hope or phony sentimentalization While it may feature only three main characters and be set primarily in a single location, the film is rich in details, ideas, and, yes, drama. It's complex, thoughtful, and focused on an equal degree of sympathy for all three sisters, and when it finally breaks the rule of not showing the father, the moment is as real as it gets.

1. Nosferatu
Writer/director Robert Eggers' Nosferatu, the best film of 2024, is a triumph of exacting design, old-fashioned technique, and straightforward but rich storytelling merging together to form a singular, horrific whole. This is a grand horror tale, told by way of shadows, blood, rotting flesh, nightmares of both the sleeping and waking varieties, and rats—oh-so many rats.

In adapting F.W. Murnau's century-old classic, the filmmaker seems especially attuned to the necessities and possibilities of the material. Here, Eggers pushes his skills to create a unified whole of ever-more unsettling tone. Everything about the film whispers dread and occasionally screams pure terror.

This particular tale has been told and re-imagined so many times that matters of plot don't really matter. Eggers understands that and allows his style to serve as the main foundation of the film. The lighting, for example, regularly recalls the intentional tinting of the silent era, and the effect potently gives everyone and everything in the film the sense of being caught between two worlds. Our fated protagonist Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) becomes the personification of that split, drawn to marital bliss with her husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) and the pull of the uniquely unholy vampire Count Orlock (Bill Skarsgård).

Since we know this story from its original telling in literature and its seemingly countless adaptations, Eggers has the freedom to simply let it unfold, while making the striking sights, disturbing sounds, forceful momentum, and all-encompassing atmosphere of the piece define, not only its storytelling, but also its very nature. The film does its archetypical story, as well as its notable forebears, justice and transcends familiarity, as well as expectations, by the sheer ingenuity, imagination, and skillfulness of its filmmaking.

Honorable Mention: