Because most of the critics here are from the coastal media temples, expect an inordinate number of films denoted great simply because they are (1) foreign language; (2) female-directed; (3) LBGTQ-BiPOC-AA/PI-ABCDEFG-lamma lamma ding dong-centric; (4) seen by a grand total of three moviegoers; and/or somewhere in there must be a film featuring, for sure, Tilda Swinton; that's required by law.
Aw, geez....sorry about that, guys. Let's try it the old-fashioned cut 'n paste way. And you have my permission to either gasp at the brilliance, or throw a rock at the screen, over the title of Ava DuVernay's film about society's ultimate nobodies. Hope this helps:
The critics’ best movies of 2024 Washington Post, Updated December 12, 2024
1. All We Imagine as Light
2. Flow
3. Queer
4. Maria
5. Wicked
6. A Real Pain
7. Red One
8. Heretic
9. Anora
10. Emilia Pérez
11. Memoir of a Snail
12. Conclave
13. My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock
14. Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
15. Woman of the Hour
16. Piece by Piece
17. Saturday Night
18. The Outrun
19. Will & Harper
20. A Different Man
21. The Substance
22. Wolfs
23. Transformers One
24. His Three Daughters
25. Speak No Evil
26. Look Into My Eyes
27. The Critic
28. Between the Temples
29. Strange Darling
30. Hollywoodgate
31. Good One
32. Cuckoo
33. Daughters
34. Kneecap
35. Dìdi
36. Deadpool & Wolverine
37. Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger
38. Twisters
39. National Anthem
40. Longlegs
41. Last Summer
42. June Zero
43. A Quiet Place: Day One
44. Janet Planet
45. Kinds of Kindness
46. Thelma
47. Flipside
48. The Bikeriders
49. Bad Boys: Ride or Die
50. Backspot
51. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
52. Hit Man
53. Babes
54. Evil Does Not Exist
55. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
56. I Saw the TV Glow
57. The Fall Guy
58. The Sixth
59. The Old Oak
60. Civil War
61. Challengers
62. Wicked Little Letters
63. Sasquatch Sunset
64. Ennio
65. The People’s Joker
66. Shayda
67. La Chimera
68. Love Lies Bleeding
69. They Shot the Piano Player
70. Four Daughters
71. Perfect Days
72. Steve!
73. The Zone of Interest
74. "."
75. The Taste of Things
76. Anselm
77. How to Have Sex
78. Io Capitano
79. The Teachers’ Lounge
80. Sometimes I Think About Dying
81. The Monk and the Gun
82. Mean Girls
All We Imagine as Light The first film from India to win the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, writer-director Payal Kapadia’s fictional feature debut unveils a storytelling style that whispers rather than shouts and whose empathy for the unseen women among us is a balm to the soul. The women in question are three nurses in Mumbai, two of them roommates and the other an older co-worker who’s being forced out of her apartment by developers. “All We Imagine as Light” is the kind of movie one experiences in solitude even when sharing it with others. As with dwellers in a great metropolis, it makes strangers and accomplices of us all. (Unrated, 118 minutes) — In theaters
Flow An animated film from Latvia ,“Flow” has no talking animals making wisecracks in celebrity voices, no pop-culture references, no snark. It is dreamy, epic, perilous and very beautiful. Best of all, the animals are animals, wordless and concerned mostly with their own safety and their next meal. Yet, forced to get along, they get along and become something more than the sum of their furry, feathery parts. There’s a message here, and the great good grace of “Flow” is that it trusts us enough not to spell it out. (PG, 84 minutes) — In theaters
Queer Luca Guadagnino (“Call Me By Your Name,” “Challengers”) has referred to “Queer” as his most personal film, and certainly he has taken William S. Burroughs’s barely fictionalized novel and Guadagnin-ized it into a gorgeously horny yet terribly sad treatise on the human yearning to connect. In the bargain, he has given Daniel Craig a role worthy of a great actor’s talent and taste for risk: a self-loathing expatriate in Eisenhower-era Mexico City, drinking to excess, shooting junk and chasing young men with needy, watery-eyed despair. (R, 135 minutes) In theaters.
Maria The third installment in a trilogy of films directed by Pablo Larraín. First was “Jackie,” with Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy, then “Spencer,” starring Kristen Stewart as Diana. Now comes opera diva Maria Callas’s turn, and Angelina Jolie’s as well. The performance is, like the earlier two, brilliant and daring and sad; the movie itself is surprisingly inert. “Maria” is still worth your attention for the spectacle of a statuesque actress playing a woman who willed herself into statuary. (R, 124 minutes) — Netflix
Wicked The film version of the stage version of Gregory Maguire’s literary inversion of “The Wizard of Oz”— technically a prequel to the 1939 MGM classic — is about as good as musical adaptations get, and more lavish than most. In the center of this madly spinning circus are Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), the kind but shunned future Wicked Witch of the West, and Glinda (Ariana Grande-Butera), the self-absorbed, pop-u-lar confection destined to be known as Glinda the Good. Director Jon M. Chu knows his way around a musical — or half a musical, with Part 2 a year away. (PG, 160 minutes) — In theaters
A Real Pain Jesse Eisenberg’s second feature-length outing as a director is a comedy about the places people put their most unimaginable sorrows. It’s also a buddy movie — actually, a variant thereof, a cousin movie — and it stars Eisenberg, who also wrote the screenplay, and Kieran Culkin, who slips the shade of Roman Roy and comes into his own as a Puck for our times, damaged, defeated and somehow defiant. It’s also one of the very best movies of the year. (R, 90 minutes) — In theaters
Red One This is a cheerfully cynical action-comedy for older kids, especially the ones who asked Santa Claus for ninja stars and a Nerf gun. There’s a seriously muscle-bound Santa (J.K. Simmons) and a snowman-killing spree that the filmmakers (including director Jake Kasdan, who gave us “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story”) clearly had fun creating. Also with Dwayne Johnson & Chris Evans. (PG-13, 123 minutes) Prime Video
Heretic Mormon missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) find themselves trapped in the home of a stranger intent on testing their faith in
Heretic Why are they there? And why does the stranger look like Hugh Grant? Because this darkly humorous, suspense-filled horror outing understands that one of the only things worse than young women having to politely smile through an older man’s pedantic ramblings (even if he is Hugh Grant) is realizing there’s no escape. Written and directed by “A Quiet Place” scribes Scott Beck & Bryan Woods. (R, 110 mins) In theaters.
Anora Here’s another Sean Baker opus looking at the tragicomedy of this country’s daily life through the lens of sex work. Ani (Mikey Madison) gives lap dances at a Manhattan club called Headquarters, where her liquid eyes and wary, rubbery smile reveal how she comes to understand both her own power and the larger powerlessness of a working woman in a world run by men and boys and money. “Anora” was top prizewinner at Cannes and a sensation on the fall festival circuit. (R, 139 minutes) — In theaters
Emilia Pérez “Emilia Pérez” is an opera. “Emilia Pérez” is a comic book. “Emilia Pérez” is a telenovela. “Emilia Pérez” is a women’s weepie. “Emilia Pérez” is a crime thriller. “Emilia Pérez” is a musical. “Emilia Pérez” is one of the damnedest things you’ll ever see, featuring bravura performances (Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, Karla Sofía Gascón) and the hollow fascination of style wrestling with the truth of human emotions until it comes out on top. That’s more than enough for a Saturday night at the movies. (R, 132 minutes) — Netflix
Memoir of a Snail The latest from Oscar-winning Australian animator Adam Elliot (“Harvie Krumpet”) is a grubby delight, a stop-motion charmer that feels like falling into a dumpster and discovering an orchid. Sarah Snook voices Grace, a dour hoarder and snail enthusiast wearing a childish hat with knitted eye stalks; her grim story is full of adult themes and Claymation nudity. “Memoir of a Snail” is finely calibrated feel-bad cinema, a movie where the characters’ circumstances are so dire, you come to love its losers for soldiering on. (R, 94 minutes) — On Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Conclave This is a big old Dad Book of a movie — weighty, intricately plotted, suspenseful — and that’s the source of its old-school pleasures, guilty or not. This stormy drama about the choosing of a new pope might as well be called “12 Angry Cardinals,” so classic and bulletproof are its characters and structure. It’s the kind of movie that some will deem important and others will find portentous. But if it gives Ralph Fiennes the Oscar he’s long deserved, who are we to kick? (PG, 120 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock A two-hour essay in movie form that has been written and is narrated by Northern Irish documentarian Mark Cousins, and the voice of Hitchcock is supplied by British comic Alistair McGowan in a fair imitation of the master’s plummy diction.
“My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock” is a glorified clip show, but the clips are as essential to the medium of movies as any in its history, and they cover the gamut of a 50-year career. (Unrated, 120 minutes) — Not yet available for streaming
Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band A documentary for the true believers, if only because faith is the central tenet of every Springsteen fan. Faith in the Boss — his decency, his groove, his dedication to a half-century of bringing it — but also faith in rock-and-roll as a generation’s holiest form of transcendence. “Road Diary” is as much a celebration of the E Street Band, its graying members and its ghosts, as of Springsteen himself. Directed by Thom Zimny and edited, at times thrillingly, by Samuel Shapiro, the film covers the band’s post-pandemic tour of 2023-2025, the group’s first live shows in six years. (Unrated, 99 minutes) — Hulu, Disney Plus
Woman of the Hour In 1978, Rodney Alcala appeared as a contestant on “The Dating Game” during a decade-long career of rape and murder. He was later found guilty of killing seven women and may have slain as many as 130. How do you make a movie about this story? Do you spin it as a thriller, a true-crime drama, a horror film, a sick pop-culture joke? Anna Kendrick, starring in her directing debut, juggles all four and then adds a fascinating fifth layer: the unceasing dread that comes from being a woman who knows men like Alcala are out there. (R, 95 mins) — Netflix
Piece by Piece f it weren’t filmed entirely using animated Lego blocks, “Piece by Piece” would be a fairly routine music documentary, in this case a profile of the protean hip-hop producer-performer Pharrell Williams. But it is filmed entirely using animated Lego blocks — absurdly, fascinatingly — so if you don’t count yourself a fan of Williams or even know who he is, your eyeballs still get a psychoactive workout. (PG, 93 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Saturday Night Jason Reitman’s movie is here to remind us what “Saturday Night Live” was like in the 90 minutes before it first aired on Oct. 11, 1975: an imminent disaster that almost no one expected to last more than an episode or two. Structured as a ticktocker, following the events on, behind and around Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center as the show gets closer to airtime, it’s as entertaining as a film can be that has no genuine point beyond nostalgia. If you were around for the first iteration of the show and weren’t too high, you’ll have a good time. (R, 109 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
The Outrun Saoirse Ronan plays a woman who has lost her youth to the bottle and awakens to realize she’s on the other side of it. Based on the 2016 memoir by the Scottish author Amy Liptrot, “The Outrun” is a recovery drama lifted above the genre’s necessary clichés by the star’s prickly, incandescent presence. It’s also boosted by the film’s setting in the stark Orkney Isles in the north of Scotland and by director Nora Fingscheidt’s poetic approach to time, place and chronology. (R, 118 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Will & Harper A road trip across the United States turns into a testament to self-acceptance and allyship in this tender, heartfelt documentary starring “Saturday Night Live” veterans Will Ferrell and Harper Steele. After Steele comes out as trans, the two friends embark on a cross-country quest in a wood-paneled Jeep to reacquaint her with the America she’s always loved and hopes will continue to love her back. (R, 114 minutes) — Netflix
A Different Man An existential black comedy delivered with flair, a steady gaze and two exceptional performances. Sebastian Stan plays a meek New Yorker afflicted with facial tumors who undergoes experimental treatment and emerges cured and handsome, and Adam Pearson, an actor with neurofibromatosis, plays his sunny, charming worst nightmare. Aaron Schimberg’s Kafkaesque fable mucks about in themes of identity and exploitation, fate and foolishness, but there’s a mystery at the center of the movie he knows better than to resolve. (R, 112 minutes) — T.B Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
The Substance The second feature written and directed by the nervy French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat (“Revenge”) is most definitely not for the faint of heart, but if you like your moral fables served up with a liberating lack of restraint, here’s your movie — a cautionary tale, starring Demi Moore, that suggests an EC horror-comic version of a “Twilight Zone” retelling of “Sunset Boulevard.” “The Substance” starts as a drama, but by the final act, it’s become a gory gonzo comedy — the logical end point of Botox Nation. (R, 140 mins) Prime Video, Mubi
Wolfs “Ocean’s” trilogy headliners George Clooney and Brad Pitt play off-the-books problem-solvers, each one strictly a solo act, who must figure out why they’ve been summoned to the same penthouse suite to get rid of the same corpse. Writer-director Jon Watts’s breezy crime caper is a pleasing, if largely predictable, lupine lark. (R, 108 minutes) Apple TV Plus
Transformers One An energetic charmer by the director Josh Cooley (“Toy Story 4”) takes the brand that’s been a trinket from Japan, a Saturday morning kids’ show and a hyper-sexualized blockbuster franchise, and whip-whomp-whoops it into a cartoon about the human soul — er, make that a sentient robot’s spark plug. With Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi, Jon Hamm and Laurence Fishburne voicing. (PG, 103 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
His Three Daughters One of the least cinematic movies of the year and also one of the best. Writer-director Azazel Jacobs’s drama unfolds in a cramped New York apartment in which three women (Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen, Natasha Lyonne) await the death of their father, who is lying unseen in a back bedroom, hooked up to machines and mostly unconscious. There’s humor here, gallows and otherwise. But there’s also an overflowing heartful of feeling, approached from three different angles by three different people who all happen to love the same parent. (R, 101 minutes) — Netflix
Speak No Evil This tale of a milquetoast American family that mutely endures an awkward vacation at the country estate of their unhinged new acquaintances is the rowdiest horror flick in ages. It’s a hilarious and venomous little nasty that cattle-prods the audience to scream everything its lead characters choke down. With James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy and Aisling Franciosi. (R, 110 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Look Into My Eyes This oddly dry and lovely documentary on New York City psychics and their clients is rigorously observational. There’s no spooky cinematography, no woo-woo technics, no pressure to believe in the afterlife. Instead, our souls are stirred less by the magic of ghosts than by the power of human connection. (Unrated, 110 minutes) — Prime Video
The Critic Ian McKellan plays a theater critic who hatches a plot to keep his job in 1930s London. At 85, McKellen doesn’t have many performances left in him, so any movie that lets the actor carve ham with such exuberant relish as “The Critic” is worth his time and ours. Anand Tucker’s British drama isn’t great art, but it is a good time, one that darkens steadily and satisfyingly as it goes. (R, 95 minutes) Apple, Prime Video
Between the Temples It’s a tricky balancing act to find humor in stereotypes while seeing the human beings behind them, but “Between the Temples” walks the tightrope with wobbly yet confident grace. It matters that the movie’s very, very funny. It matters more that Carol Kane’s in it. She plays a retired music teacher who seeks a bat mitzvah; Jason Schwartzman plays a cantor at the local temple. (R, 111 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Strange Darling Teaming up with actor-turned-cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi, writer-director JT Mollner (making his second movie after 2016’s “Outlaws and Angels”) has crafted a pseudo-surrealist serial killer tale that ensnares you in its opening moments and tightens its grip with every stylistic swing and subversive swerve. It’s unsettling and entrancing and altogether audacious. Amid a crowded summer of elevated horror, “Strange Darling” rises above. (R, 96 minutes) Apple, Prime Video
Hollywoodgate Unspooling with the slow burn of a thriller, this documentary by Ibrahim Nash’at reveals what became of the $7.12 billion worth of military hardware the United States left behind when it pulled out of Afghanistan. (Unrated, 91 minutes) — Michael O’Sullivan Not yet available for streaming.
Good One India Donaldson’s short, sharp, subtle tale of a teenager on a camping trip with her father and his best friend. The title is, of course, eye-rolling teen-speak in response to an amusingly bad dad joke. But it also speaks to the process of a young woman honing her radar on the men in her orbit to learn what — and who — might be honest, safe and true. Who’s “the good one”? And how do you tell? (R, 89 minutes) — T.B Not yet available for streaming.
Cuckoo An American teen encounters peculiar horrors at a remote German resort in Tilman Singer’s kooky sci-fi genre hybrid that crackles with offbeat turns and creature scares as it unfolds against a backdrop of deceptively serene forests and cheeky Euro-kitsch. Hunter Schafer (“Euphoria”) stars in her first lead film role. (R, 102 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Daughters Angela Patton and Natalie Rae’s compassionate documentary looks at a program that unites incarcerated men with their daughters for a dance party. It will leave you in a puddle of tears. (PG-13, 108 minutes) — Netflix
Kneecap A frenetic, funny, searingly angry film from Northern Ireland, wherein language — Irish Gaelic — serves as an active force of rebellion channeled through the beats and braggadocio of African American rap. The movie’s a rude, scruffy winner, a music bio/cash-in reconfigured as a deadly serious prank. It bears stressing that Kneecap is a genuine act, with rappers Naoise “Móglái Bap” Ó Cairealláin, Liam “Mo Chara” Óg Ó Hannaidh and JJ “DJ Próvái” Ó Dochartaigh all playing cheekily fictionalized versions of themselves. (R, 105 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Dìdi Hormonal confusion, social insecurity, failed stabs at hipness and mortification on a daily basis are universal to the 13-year-old condition. The trick to coming-of-age movies is in the details — in letting the personal bring specificity to the universal while letting the universal illuminate the personal. It’s a balancing act, and writer/director/former teen disaster Sean Wang gets it mostly right in “Dìdi,” his fictionalized memory play of being a floundering Taiwanese American skate kid in 2008 Fremont, Calif. (R, 94 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Deadpool & Wolverine With the whole superhero racket on the ropes, Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman seize the opportunity to prove the power of their own charisma. Nihilism is the dominant mood, but director Shawn Levy gets sentimental during the end credits with a stream of B-roll footage from past Marvel and X-Men flops. Once, these movies were mocked; now, they’ve taken on the warm sheen of nostalgia — this generation’s “American Graffiti,” a salute to feeling young and immortal that ends with the awareness that you either flame out too soon or limp on longer than you expected. (R, 127 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger Martin Scorsese narrates this love letter to Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, a.k.a. the Archers, whose films were among the most magical feats of celluloid ever to come out of the British Isles. Directed by David Hinton, the documentary allows Scorsese to demonstrate via film clips the lessons he applied from “The Red Shoes” to his own “Raging Bull” (1980) — “it’s dance, and you stay in the ring” — and from the Archers’ wartime epic “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” (1943) to Scorsese’s “The Age of Innocence” (1993). “Made in England” is more than a great filmmaker’s genuflection. It’s a way to connect the dots. (Unrated, 131 mins) Prime Video
Twisters The surprise of the summer is that “Twisters” checks almost every item on our blockbuster punch list, which is a lot more than a sequel that no one asked for deserves. Die-hard fans of the al 1996 “Twister” may regret that there are no poorly digitized flying cows this time around, but they may be too busy dodging airborne trucks, RVs, trolley cars and a movie screen showing the al 1931 “Frankenstein” to notice. Directed by Lee Isaac Chung, the film stars Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones. (PG-13, 122 minutes) Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
National Anthem Charlie Plummer plays a rawboned, 21-year-old day laborer living in the Rio Grande Valley who takes a job at a remote ranch where he’s introduced to a community of gender-fluid rodeo riders. 1st-time feature film director Luke Gilford’s gentle coming-of-age story is at its openhearted, poetically inclined best when observing a vision of the American West that’s no less possible for being radical (and no less radical for being possible). (R, 96 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Longlegs Nerve-jangling and devilishly bleak, “Longlegs” is easily the front-runner for scariest movie of 2024. Maika Monroe’s rookie FBI agent Lee Harker’s uncanny intuition lands her an assignment tracking an elusive serial killer dubbed Longlegs. With echoes of “Se7en,” “Zodiac” and “The Silence of the Lambs,” Oz Perkins conjures atmospheric dread and wields Nicolas Cage’s most unhinged role to date like a weapon. When he finally unleashes him to skin-crawling effect, we’re face to face with one of the best new horror villains in years. (R, 101 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Last Summer The French provocateur Catherine Breillat gets her kicks with unnerving tales of sexual coercion, but this story of a woman’s affair with her underage stepson may be her most excruciating to date. To be clear: Breillat isn’t justifying the affair or, on a larger scale, telling a story with any universal resonance. She’s exploring how this particular sinner did the unforgivable — and then committed even more sins trying to cover it up. With Léa Drucker and Samuel Kircher. (Unrated, 104 minutes) — Netflix
June Zero Jake Paltrow’s soul-searching triptych of stories about the execution of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 doesn’t preach anything as simple as pacifist nonviolence; rather, it aims only to note that the scales of justice cannot balance one man’s sins against millions of people’s need for an appropriate (and legal) punishment. Few of the Israeli characters in the film are able to come to a moral and ethical agreement, and it’s likely the audiences exiting the theater afterward won’t either. (Unrated, 105 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
A Quiet Place: Day One This startlingly good prequel finds the aliens hunting a terminal cancer patient with no delusions that she can rescue the planet. Bypassing all the usual heroic theatrics, she sets out to tiptoe up to Harlem for her favorite pizza. This quixotic trek is more about autonomy than gastronomy — a satisfying way to squish a global catastrophe into a human-size story. With Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn. (PG-13, 99 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Janet Planet A phenomenal filmmaking debut by playwright Annie Baker. Set in a bohemian enclave of Massachusetts during the summer of 1991, it’s a whisper of a movie about a people-pleasing single mother named Janet (Julianne Nicholson) and her guarded 11-year-old daughter Lacy (Zoe Ziegler), who offers tough love as her mother shifts personalities to suit lovers and friends. Ziegler shoulders us through the story without ever getting too cute, while Nicholson’s performance could finally elevate her from character actress to star. (PG-13, 113 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Kinds of Kindness The Greek writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos (“Poor Things”) clears the peanut gallery of fair-weather fans with this confident, three-hour trilogy of variations on themes of obsession, control and humiliation. His stock company includes Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau and — the movie’s secret weapon — Jesse Plemons, and while the movie qualifies as maximum audience punishment, those with strong stomachs and a stronger sense of black comic irony may appreciate it. (R, 164 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Thelma June Squibb is a delight as Thelma Post, an elderly widow who hands over $10,000 to phone scammers pretending to be her beloved grandson in distress. Once the scam is exposed, she sets out to find the criminals, along the way subverting movie clichés about little old ladies by making the character fiercely individualistic and no one’s victim. Richard Roundtree co-stars, in his final performance before his death. Writer-director Josh Margolin based Thelma on his own grandmother, but she’s so fabulous, you kind of want her to be your grandmother, too. (PG-13, 97 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Flipside Filmmaker Chris Wilcha revisits the New Jersey record store he worked at as a teen, weaving together a brilliant, discursive documentary that incorporates themes of holding on to the past and letting go. (Unrated, 96 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
The Bikeriders An immersion in the life and times of the fictional Vandals, a Chicago motorcycle gang that evolves over the course of the 1960s from a working-class racing club to a criminal outfit involved in drug-running, extortion and murder. Phenomenal performances include Tom Hardy as the club’s president and alpha dog, Austin Butler as a silent hog-riding heartthrob, and Jodie Comer as the neighborhood girl who gets swept off her feet. (R, 116 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Bad Boys: Ride or Die Will Smith seems wary of having too much fun in his apology blockbuster, but Martin Lawrence flings himself into the film’s wackiest gags and his high spirits defibrillate the franchise. Turns out the Bad Boys films needed less swagger and more dorky, goofy joy. This fourth installment isn’t reinventing the wheel — it’s just mounting shinier rims. (R, 115 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Backspot An anxious cheerleading drama by first-time director D.W. Waterson that doesn’t waste a breath before proving that rah-rah is a real sport. Starring rising talents who do their own backflips, this tense, literally hair-pulling film is as grim and obsessive as the girls. Meanwhile, their coach (Evan Rachel Wood) glowers. (Unrated, 92 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga How did a young girl in the dystopian future grow up to become Imperator Furiosa, the fierce warrior who took on the entire Wasteland in 2015’s “Mad Max: Fury Road”? In this fifth installment of the franchise, director George Miller builds an epic prequel with Anya Taylor-Joy at the wheel, but also shifts into a different gear to weave an unexpectedly elegiac tale of survival and revenge. Chris Hemsworth plays Dementus, the vainglorious dictator of a roving biker legion. (R, 148 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Hit Man A blast of pure pleasure and one of the year’s best films, with devilish comic energy and a star-making turn at its center. That star is Glen Powell, who displays wit, sex appeal and crack comic timing in his loosely factual portrayal of a nerdy college professor who moonlights as a technical adviser for police sting operations. When he’s drafted to step in for the sketchy undercover cop who usually plays the fake killer-for-hire, the mild-mannered academic reveals he has a gift for posing as an ice-cold assassin. (R, 115 minutes) — Netflix
Babes A sticky-sweet comedy about two best friends bound by an almost hive-inducing intimacy. The directorial debut of actor Pamela Adlon (“Better Things,” “Californication”), this gross-out comedy about childhood friends turned overwhelmed moms hits you with the same surge of mixed emotions as a hug from a grubby toddler. Starring Ilana Glazer, Michelle Buteau and Hasan Minhaj. (R, 104 minutes) —
Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Evil Does Not Exist Japan’s Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (“Drive My Car”) has emerged as one of the world’s finest working directors, but his movies can be frustratingly hard to encapsulate. “Evil Does Not Exist” may be his most haunting film yet. It takes place in a rural village north of Tokyo, and in its deceptively unfocused fashion, it frets about the encroachment of city life. An undercurrent of foreboding edges toward outright unease before exploding in an ending that presents a challenge to anyone who prefers stories wrapped up neatly. (Unrated, 106 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes A sturdy new entry in the revived Planet of the Apes franchise. But, like its three predecessors, it’s a fascinating case of content following form wherein CGI chimps, gorillas and orangutans are more breathtakingly hyper-real than ever and humans have become increasingly two-dimensional. Taking place 300 years after the events of the last three “Apes,” the new film centers on Noa (Owen Teague), a young simian that most audiences will be willing to follow wherever he and his primate friends want to take us. That’s good, because “Kingdom” has been announced as the first chapter in a new trilogy. (PG-13, 145 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
I Saw the TV Glow The hazy neon vibes are immaculate and the suburban horrors are existential in this latest from writer-director Jane Schoenbrun, whose 2022 breakout feature “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” skyrocketed the rising indie auteur into the queer horror canon. It’s election night 1996 when an introverted seventh-grader bonds with an older girl over a tantalizing supernatural YA series that airs after bedtime. It’s a cautionary tale against the dangers of dissociative escape and a gently loving rejoinder reaching through its own screen to those who need it. Schoenbrun blurs reality and fantasy with an intoxicating, Lynchian flair. (PG-13, 100 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
The Fall Guy Helmed by stuntman-turned-director David Leitch, this action-comedy-romance-mystery is heavy on the flipping cars, high-speed chase scenes and plummets from tall buildings. Not surprisingly, plot is the least important thing here. Surprisingly, the quieter romantic comedy scenes are the best. Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt take a clever meta-blockbuster about the behind-the-scenes making of a blockbuster and give it warmth, intimacy, idiosyncrasy and laughs. (PG-13, 126 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
The Sixth From Oscar-winning filmmakers Andrea Nix Fine and Sean Fine (“Inocente”) comes a chilling documentary that draws upon a trove of news and personal footage to immerse viewers in the sounds, sights, sensations and shock of Jan. 6, 2021. A discreetly ominous score by H. Scott Salinas rumbles beneath the sounds of chaos that culminate in the breaching of the Capitol by a mob estimated at 10,000 and the invasion of its corridors by 1,200 rioters. Civics lessons rarely come this disturbing or this convincing. (Unrated, 111 mins) Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
The Old Oak The third installment in Ken Loach’s unofficial trilogy of films set in austerity-era Northeastern England — said to be the final movie from the 87-year-old social realist filmmaker — is a fittingly poignant last act: clear-eyed, compassionate, fueled by righteous anger yet still somewhat hopeful. (Unrated, 113 minutes) Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Civil War Writer-director Alex Garland doesn’t investigate how this war started or how long it’s been going on or whether it’s worth fighting. His lean, cruel film is about the ethics of photographing violence, and those blinders make it charge forward with gusto. The film feels poetically, deeply true, even when it’s suggesting that humans are more apt to tear one another apart for petty grievances than over a sincere defense of some kind of principles. Starring Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny. (R, 109 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Challengers A slick, sexy, hugely entertaining, tennis-themed romantic triangle that offers three young performers at the top of their games under the guidance of Luca Guadagnino, a director who gives them room to swing in all senses of the word. The movie’s a paean to hard work and hedonism, and if its pleasures are mostly surface — grass, clay, emotional — it’s still been too long since we’ve had an intelligent frolic like this. Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor play rising tennis stars; Zendaya is their coach, holding down the center with her furiously knitted brow. (R, 131 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Wicked Little Letters An art-house audience pleaser, based on an actual historical incident, that slaps a veneer of tea-cozy classiness over cartoonish characters and changing social values. In a dingy English seaside town in 1920, someone has been sending anonymous poison-pen letters to church lady Edith (Olivia Colman) — written in language so obscene that it’s practically an art form — and suspicion quickly falls on the foulmouthed Rose (Jessie Buckley), a single mother freshly arrived from Ireland. The movie is good fun and surprisingly obvious — a slapstick comedy of manners that only hints at darker human urges. (R, 100 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
Sasquatch Sunset Either the silliest movie you’ll see in 2024 or one of the most unexpectedly affecting, but, like the meme says, why not both? A year in the life of a family of Bigfoots — Bigfeet? — it functions simultaneously as slow-motion slapstick, a very hairy nature documentary and a melancholy portrait of creatures not unlike us as they confront their own disappearance from the Earth. With no narration and no dialogue beside grunts, hoots and warbles, the movie effectively puts an audience on the same (big) footing as the characters. Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Riley Keough and Nathan Zellner. (R, 89 minutes) — Apple, Google Play, Prime Video
Ennio Two-time Oscar winner Ennio Morricone, who died in 202o at the age of 91, was a composer and arranger of music that helped define what it sounds like to go to the movies. Now, director Giuseppe Tornatore — who worked with Morricone for nearly all his films, including 1988’s “Cinema Paradiso” — turns an overdue spotlight on the composer behind the legendary scores of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” “The Thing” and more than 500 others. At nearly three hours, “Ennio” is a long haul, exhaustive without ever becoming exhausting. Though it could definitely survive edits, its length feels like the product of genuine ardor and care. (Unrated, 156 minutes) Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube
The People’s Joker Hollywood’s superhero blockbuster business has grown creatively stale, but Vera Drew’s irreverent renegade opus is just the antidote. Both a tough-love letter to the commodified IP it satirizes and a scathing takedown of mainstream comedy institutions, this defiantly personal low-budget marvel is also a genuinely affecting queer coming-of-age tale in which Drew stars as Joker, a closeted trans woman and aspiring comedian who leaves her Smallville hometown for a dystopian Gotham City. Her film is the cinematic coup of the year, finally delivering the boundary-obliterating antiheroine Hollywood deserves. (Unrated, 92 minutes) — Apple, Prime Video
Shayda The Iranian French actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi has the eyes of a silent film heroine and the face of a Modigliani. In repose, she can convey a sense of sorrow that feels both elegant and timeless, but in “Shayda,” that stillness is fraught with specific threat: the anguish of a woman fleeing an abusive husband. Made with a striking sensitivity to mood and moment, the film marks a strong debut for Iranian Australian writer-director Noora Niasari, who mines her own experience and her mother's for a gripping yet tender suspense drama. (PG-13, 117 mins) Prime Video
La Chimera Antiquity and the modern day sit side by side in the films of Italy’s Alice Rohrwacher, permeating each other with the timelessness of a folk tale passed around a campfire. The writer-director’s latest concerns a raffish band of working-class tombaroli — grave robbers — who dig up ancient Etruscan artifacts and sell them on the black market, but the movie’s also a meditation on the tension between romanticizing the past and profiting from it. Wise, funny and mysterious, it’s a one-of-a-kind charmer. (Unrated, 132 minutes) — Prime Video
Love Lies Bleeding Rose Glass’s gorgeously pulpy film is a grisly delirium of female rage and romance in which queerness is neither a liability nor a simple fact of life that deserves respect: It’s a (bleep) superpower. Kristen Stewart, in a skeevy mullet and a sleeveless tee, plays a gym manager who falls in crazy, scuzzy love with a bodybuilding drifter (Katy O’Brian). There are pyrotechnics and sucked toes and a jaw beaten clean off a skull. In terms of graphic gore, the head-stomping scene in “American History X” and the corpse-splitting moment in “Bone Tomahawk” need to scooch over on the podium. (R, 104 minutes) — Jessica Kiang Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, Fandango
They Shot the Piano Player Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba (“Belle Époque”) and artist/co-director Javier Mariscal celebrate the spirit of Brazilian bossa nova and the ghosts of artists who live on only in recordings and archival interviews. But this animated documentary’s central ghost remains touchingly and frustratingly unknowable: Francisco Tenório Júnior, a gifted pianist, considered by his peers as one of the best of their generation, who disappeared in 1976 while on tour in Argentina. “They Shot the Piano Player” doesn’t unravel a mystery so much as confirm a tragedy. (PG-13, 103 minutes) — Prime Video
Four Daughters Film as family therapy and family therapy as film. This gripping and format-stretching documentary by writer-director Kaouther Ben Hania brings actors into the household of a Tunisian mother named Olfa and her two youngest daughters, both teenagers. The three women play themselves alongside two professional actors filling in for the girls’ two missing siblings — what happened to them will unfurl, one twist at a time. (Unrated, 110 minutes) — Netflix
Perfect Days The premise is perfectly simple: Hirayama (Kôji Yakusho) lives in Tokyo, where he cleans bathrooms, approaching his job with the same care and detail he gives to the tree seedlings he’s nurturing in his modest, sparsely furnished apartment. The fact that writer-director Wim Wenders has called a movie about cleaning toilets “Perfect Days” might strike some viewers as the height of absurdity, even perverse humor (the film bears more than a whiff of Jim Jarmusch at his most wryly absurdist). But once they get a glimpse of Hirayama in action, the dreams behind the drudgery reveal themselves. (PG, 123 minutes) — Prime Video
Steve! Directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville (“Twenty Feet from Stardom”), this documentary take on comic Steve Martin is broken into two feature-length installments, titled “Then” (94 minutes) and “Now” (97 minutes). The first and lesser half is pretty standard stuff, covering in enjoyable but repetitive detail the period of Martin’s gradual stand-up ascendancy to selling out stadiums. The much more engaging “Now” dips in and out of Martin’s movie career, includes interviews (Jerry Seinfeld, Tina Fey, Lorne Michaels) and delivers candid moments with Martin’s bestie, Martin Short. (TV-MA, 191 minutes in two parts) Apple TV Plus
The Zone of Interest Jonathan Glazer’s quietly shattering, Oscar-winning portrait of a family living next door to Auschwitz is really two movies in one: the film that audiences see on-screen — a bucolic domestic drama, filled with children, gardens and daily rituals — and the movie we conjure in our minds, with images of emaciated bodies, shaved heads and screams barely audible above the clinking teacups and cooing babies. Adapted from Martin Amis’s novel, the film is about denial and Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil. But the mental contortions Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) go through to justify their own monstrosity go beyond obliviousness into something far more insidious and timeless. (PG-13, 106 minutes) — Max
“.” Ava DuVernay’s audacious, ambitious adaptation of the equally audacious and ambitious book “Caste,” operates on so many levels at once that the effect is often dizzyingly disorienting. But hang in there: Viewers who allow themselves to be taken on this wide-ranging, occasionally digressive journey will emerge not just edified but emotionally wrung out and, somehow, cleansed. (PG-13, 135 minutes) — Prime Video
The Taste of Things A radiant Juliette Binoche plays Eugénie, a gifted cook who for the past 20 years has been running the kitchen of a 19th-century epicurean named Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel). No one breaks a sweat in “The Taste of Things” — they glow. No one swears or yells “Corner!” or “Yes, chef!” — they whisper, or simply deliver an approving glance of gustatory satisfaction. This is the anti-“Bear,” a sensuous fantasia of gastronomical pleasure less redolent of the Beef than “Babette’s Feast.” (PG-13, 134 minutes) — Prime Video
Anselm Born two months before the Nazis surrendered, celebrated German artist Anselm Kiefer grew up amid his homeland’s rubble. Destruction still compels and even delights him, as Wim Wenders demonstrates in his epic 3D documentary. The colossal spaces Kiefer inhabits and transforms are ideal for Wenders’s approach, which conveys the physicality of the artist’s work and places the viewer virtually within the maelstrom of creation. It’s a fascinating, if somewhat unnerving, place to be. (Unrated, 93 minutes) — On demand
How to Have Sex The title of this promising writing-directing debut from Molly Manning Walker is something of a misdirect. Her startlingly intimate portrait of teenage girls in search of the endless party while on summer holiday in Greece is more accurately described as a tutorial in how not to have sex, i.e., when you’re young, inebriated, feeling pressured or vulnerable to manipulation.
In its frankness and often frightening candor, it’s of a piece with coming-of-age dramas like “Thirteen” and “The Diary of a Teenage Girl,” with a dash of “Spring Breakers.” (Unrated, 90 minutes) — Prime Video
Io Capitano Matteo Garrone’s Oscar-nominated, migrant-themed drama fashions a hero’s journey that feels utterly of the moment: inspired by the true stories of African immigrants, but told in a way that features episodes of both harrowing verisimilitude and hallucinatory magic realism. It’s a film that is gorgeous at times yet also tough to watch. (Unrated, 121 minutes) — On demand
The Teachers’ Lounge Despite the title of Germany’s Oscar submission, the primary setting is a sixth-grade classroom, where things have gone missing lately. As school officials attempt to get to the bottom of the thefts, that classroom becomes a mirror of the outside world, with all its diversity, divisions and discontents. Far more than a conventional whodunit, though it does build a nice head of suspense as it grapples with themes of justice, doubt and bias. Its larger message is also one worth hearing, if not exactly news: In an age of cancel culture, the classroom is a battlefield. (PG-13, 98 minutes) — On demand
Sometimes I Think About Dying As subdued in tone and emotion as the neutral beige and brown ensembles favored by its mousy, office-worker protagonist (Daisy Ridley), this film offers an unconventional love story: one less about the thrill of romance than about the terror — and ultimate release — of connection. Director Rachel Lambert delivers its story with a reserve that is made up for by a genuinely affecting tenderness for its flawed yet searching characters. It’s kind of a downer, yes, but also stimulating as hell. (PG-13, 91 minutes) — Prime Video
The Monk and the Gun This sweet, off-kilter comedy offers a sly satire of today’s polarized world. Written and directed by Pawo Choyning Dorji, and focusing on Bhutan’s preparations for the democratic elections first held in 2008, it shares the same wry spirit and gentle tension between tradition and modernity that characterized the filmmaker’s heartwarming Oscar-nominated 2019 film, “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” but with some added bite. (PG-13, 112 minutes) — Prime Video
Mean Girls This rebooted hybrid of the hit 2004 movie “Mean Girls” and the Broadway stage musical it spawned wisely doesn’t try to simply adapt for the screen something that worked onstage and wouldn’t translate to film. Yes, it’s got songs (by Jeff Richmond and Nell Benjamin), but they feel abridged and ever so slightly diminished, delivered more in the context of the al narrative of viral shaming, which has been tweaked for our TikTok times. The remake is sharp, well-acted and funny, and there are a few surprises for “Mean Girls” cultists. (PG-13, 105 minutes) — Paramount Plus
Of those, I've only seen, unfortunately, a small sample :
Heretic 2,5
Conclave 3.5
Zone Of Interest 4.0
Civil War 3.0
IO Capitano 4.0
The Teacher's Lounge 3.0 (which I found, for some reason, excruciating to watch)
But that list helps - more than a few compelling films within I plan to see. I can sort of go along w/ PF's take on the seeming (to some of us) current over-representation of a politically-engaged queer/feminist/what-have-you minority community, but they are also over-represented in the artistic/film-making community anyway. Which was ever thus, even through the decades/centuries when they had to speak in code.
In defense of that list, and in defiance of PF's dismissive take, these are films what were made just in the last year, most of which did not make it to general release, and only some of which even to streaming channels. Therefore, without this compilation, how is a discerning audience even to know what's out there ?
I depend upon best of lists to learn what is available to see, what strikes my interest. Which, far more often than not, will have limited commercial potential. But, danke gott, still are made - often, with public/state support, grants.
3dender wrote: ↑18 Dec 2024 08:00 am
So I'm to understand that Dune 2 was not one of the 81 best films of 2024?
Is this a bit? Or just the biggest cinematic gaslighting attempt since Crash won Best Picture?
"Red One" at #7? I can literally feel myself turning into the Joker (and not the stupid singing one... the murdering one)
Came to say the same thing. On what planet are 'Twisters' and 'The Fall Guy' better films than 'Dune 2'? If the Washington Post had any credibility, it is gone after the release of this list.
Also, 'Zone of Interest' and 'The Teacher's Lounge', while great films, were released in 2023 and nominated for Oscars at the 2024 ceremony (nominations were announced in early January).
Guessing this is some lazy use of AI to generate a year-end list.
3dender wrote: ↑18 Dec 2024 08:00 am
So I'm to understand that Dune 2 was not one of the 81 best films of 2024?
Is this a bit? Or just the biggest cinematic gaslighting attempt since Crash won Best Picture?
"Red One" at #7? I can literally feel myself turning into the Joker (and not the stupid singing one... the murdering one)
Came to say the same thing. On what planet are 'Twisters' and 'The Fall Guy' better films than 'Dune 2'? If the Washington Post had any credibility, it is gone after the release of this list.
Also, 'Zone of Interest' and 'The Teacher's Lounge', while great films, were released in 2023 and nominated for Oscars at the 2024 ceremony (nominations were announced in early January).
Guessing this is some lazy use of AI to generate a year-end list.
This combined with the AV Club list is evidence that people have just totally memory-holed Dune 2... I mean I get there's going to inevitably be some backlash to a massive blockbuster that received a ton of praise at the time, but it's literally like people just forgot it came out this year.
And it was visually and sonically one of the most impressive cinematic experiences of this decade for chrissakes. People can think it's silly all they want, but they can't deny it's very fundamental accomplishments on a cinematographic, action sequence and score level.
3dender wrote: ↑18 Dec 2024 08:00 am
So I'm to understand that Dune 2 was not one of the 81 best films of 2024?
Is this a bit? Or just the biggest cinematic gaslighting attempt since Crash won Best Picture?
"Red One" at #7? I can literally feel myself turning into the Joker (and not the stupid singing one... the murdering one)
Please do not speak of that Crash debacle.
I went into the thread thinking I didn’t know anything about 2024 films. But then after skimming the list, I have seen a couple of them on streaming services. “Woman of the hour “was OK.
I have seen “daughters “and “his three daughters “promoted on streaming services, but I haven’t watched either one of them.
“Will and Harper “was something I had to watch, somewhat for the Iowa City, IA connection, and it was OK but sad. Somehow these middle-aged men “transitioning” seem more sad than not, and I mean their mental state, not my view of them.
GelatinousEndive wrote: ↑05 Jan 2025 14:52 pm
Please do not speak of that Crash debacle.
One must ask "Which 'Crash' debacle?". The Don Cheadle/Matt Dillon one that somehow was voted Best Picture?
Or the James Spader/Holly Hunter Cronenberg kink-fest about (ahem) auto-erotica through car wrecks? Just imagine being a fly on the wall during that pitch meeting.
simply because they are (1) foreign language; (2) female-directed; (3) LBGTQ-BiPOC-AA/PI-ABCDEFG-lamma lamma ding dong-centric; (4) seen by a grand total of three moviegoers; and/or somewhere in there must be a film featuring, for sure, Tilda Swinton; that's required by law.