Top 10 Movies of 2024
I do plan to see the Brutalist and Nosferatu, so be warned they aren't here
If you want 20-11, check here.
Before I dive in, I’m going to lay out my honorable mentions AND shoutout Tangerine, a film from Sean Baker. Baker wrote and directed Anora, which did come out this year and I found it lacking. It was okay, but Tangerine was electric. It came out in 2015 and was hilarious and heartbreaking.
I hope Baker keeps that grounded sort of storytelling, I will be seeing his next movie regardless.
Honorable Mention
Wicked - The musical adaptation of Gregory Maguire’s novel adapted for the big screen. It was good, not great. They would have a scene and then a song recapping that scene and it made the movie about a half hour too long.
10. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
If you are unfamiliar with Beetlejuice, this movie won’t be as good. It picks up 25 years later, with talk show host Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) having a child of her own. Astrid (Jenna Ortega) is struggling with having a famous mother who can “speak with the dead.” Astrid doesn’t believe her mom can see ghosts.
They return to the site of the original film after Lydia’s father is killed by a shark (this movie never stops dumping on Jeffrey Jones, which is a delight). Lydia’s Stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara) is arranging a funeral. The titular character (Michael Keaton) is still obsessed with his teenage bride Lydia and is running an afterlife exterminator company. He’s still a scumbag.
I don’t care for Tim Burton in general, but I did love the original and this was an excellent sequel. It builds on the lore and pulls us back into the world of his finest critique of commercialism and wealth. Beetlejuice is still used sparingly to great effect. Jenna Ortega continues her streak of being the Gen Z mainstream goth queen.
The c-story is a little bloated featuring BJ’s ex-wife and an actor pretending to be an afterlife cop, but Willem Dafoe is always a welcome presence. Justin Theroux also shows up as Lydia’s manager/pushy boyfriend and that story didn’t land with me either. But, the main threads are great and showcase what makes Burton work so well, pulling apart the facade of white America.
9. Saturday Night
I don’t like Saturday Night Live! I think it is a show made by a conservative to peddle conservative values under the guise of counterculture. Lorne Michaels is great at identifying talent and then milking them to make himself richer.
This is a movie about the first night of the show. It’s great. The cast is fantastic. We see these comedy legends as real people. It strips the mystique away and shows a bunch of young adults brimming with comedic genius being forced into a box to sell advertising for a network and their Republican boss.
We know the show is going to go off, but how they overcome the many hurdles is entertaining. It does highlight Lorne Michael(Gabriel LaBelle)’s ingenuity and his charisma, both of which are essential for the media empire he has built. And it shines a spotlight on Rosie Schuster (Rachel Sennot), Michael’s wife and a creative force behind SNL. Jason Reitman is a person who grew up with these icons as family friends, this is a personal movie.
I think that’s what makes it so great to me. It would have been easy to mythologize their larger than life personalities, but we see Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) as a jerk. John Belushi (Matt Wood) struggling with selling out. Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O'Brien) being an absolute freak in the best ways. Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris) dealing with the trappings of being a black man in a white man’s world. Larraine Newman (Emily Fairn) and Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt) grapple with the misogyny that runs rampant on set and in their world.
Even Milton Berle (JK Simmons) isn’t safe.
If you’re looking for a film that celebrates the legacy of SNL, this ain’t it. If you want a look at what life was like behind the curtain, this is a must see.
8. Dune 2
If you haven’t seen Dune, see it first. If you like it, this is even better. If you don’t, don’t bother. This won’t change your mind.
It’s the best sci-fi epic I’ve maybe ever seen. It plays with the novel a bit, some to the better, some to the worse. The acting, writing, direction and cinematography are top notch. It’s an all time great film. But if you didn’t like the first one, there’s nothing here for you. If you did like the first one, you’ve probably seen and loved this one.
If you didn’t because it gave a woman agency, you need to take some time and confront your misogyny.
7. Thelma
June Squibb star as Thelma, an nonagenarian who is scammed out of money by someone pretending to be her grandson Danny (Fred Hechinger). It is Squibb’s first leading role and she is fantastic. This is also the last film of Richard Roundtree’s career. Clark Gregg and Parker Posey have supporting roles as Danny’s parents
Thelma is an old woman. She is headstrong and determined to prove that she can take care of herself. When no one wants to help her after she gets scammed, she decides to take matters into her own hands. From there, we get an homage to Mission Impossible in a realistic manner for a 93-year-old woman. It’s funny, heartfelt and poignant.
The film deals with heavy issues like ageism, aging, and loneliness. The importance of care at later stages in life. The loss of freedom that comes with aging. Memory issues and mobility issues. Discrimination. Loss and so many other things that older folks deal with as a matter of day to day life. It manages to never demean or be condescending. Old people aren’t the butt of the joke, nor are they superhuman beings that are capable of cheating death.
The humanity that shines through here and the holistic approach it takes to its characters makes Thelma one of my favorite movies of the year.
6. My Old Ass
My Old Ass is the best coming of age story told this year. Maisy Stella, of TV’s Nashville fame, has a star making turn as Elliott LaBrant. Elliott is an 18-year-old girl staring down the future. She opens the movie by skipping her own birthday party to finally make the move on Chelsea, someone she’s had a crush on since the 8th grade.
Elliott then disappears into the woods with best friends Ro and Ruthie to take shrooms on a camping trip. While her friends have psychedelic trips, Elliott is bummed because nothing is happening for her. That is, until, a strange woman (Aubrey Plaza) appears and treats Elliott like an old friend. Because she is, that woman IS Elliott, from the future.
Writer-director Megan Park’s follow-up to The Fallout is less horrific, this is a story about a person learning to be themselves. Stella is outstanding, grappling with new emotions when Chad (Percy Hynes White) shows up to work on her family’s farm for the summer. Future Elliott warned her away from someone named Chad and now she has to figure out why. Especially since he seems too good to be true.
The movie does stumble at the finish line, but it does nothing to undermine how wonderful the rest of the film is. The existential dread of the future, the landmines of love and the complex dynamics of family relationships are all veins mined to great success here. It is also hysterical.
5. Smile 2
This is going to be the most controversial pick in my top 10, were I to hazard a guess. Musical horror is a genre that tends itself to camp and comedic overtones. Rocky Horror Picture Show and Little Shop of Horrors spring to mind. Even Tim Burton’s Sweeny Todd is more style than horror.
So when Parker Finn followed up Smile with a mashup of a Japanese Creature feature, All That Jazz and The Shining I was not prepared. I wasn’t prepared for some of the best cinematography in a horror film. Or for the surrealistic nightmare that was the musical set pieces, which are grounded by their presentation (a music video, a photoshoot, and a live concert all serve as backdrops).
Naomi Scott stars as Skye Riley, a pop star grappling with the trauma of her boyfriend’s death a year earlier. She is a recovering addict. She has no support network on handlers. When she makes a visit to a drug dealing high school friend (Lukas Gage), she finds him manic. Unhinged. Those of us who have seen the first film know he’s infected by the Smile Demon. To her, he is strung out and scary.
When he bludgeons himself to death in front of her, she freaks out. She can’t be seen with him, it would ruin the comeback she has worked so hard for. Now she is left fighting the influence of the demon. If you’ve seen the first film, you know what she’s in for, even if she doesn’t.
That’s one of the best parts of the film for me, it doesn’t hold your hand or stop to spell things out for you. That’s what the first movie was for, it gave us the lore and the rules of this universe. Now we get to see what the demon does with a celebrity in its grasp.
This movie also digs into the horrors of celebrity, from stalkers to parasocial relationships to exploitative family and friends to media obligations and the loss of humanity that ALL of it entails. Naomi Scott gave one of the best performances I have ever seen and it is already being shunned at award season, because of the genre.
Subtext, ambient storytelling and allegory run wild here. The songs are multifaceted, but are also exceptional pop. I thought Smile looked like a generic horror film and I was wrong. I thought Smile 2 would be a solid horror film, similar to the first and again I was wrong.
4. Robot Dreams
An animated movie with almost no dialog featuring anthropomorphic animals, Robot Dreams is surprisingly human. Dog, the protagonist of this story, lives alone in Manhattan in the 80s. A late night commercial for a robot friend inspires him to order and build his perfect companion.
And Robot is that, filling every need in Dog’s life. They bond over the summer, concluding with a day long adventure at the beach. Unfortunately, Dog has not considered the effect of ocean water on Robot’s body. Robot is trapped on the beach and Dog fails to rescue it.
Much of the movie is Dog’s angst over failing Robot and Robot dreaming of being rescued by Dog. It is one of the best stories I’ve ever seen about the importance of mutual care in a relationship. Robot has a very traumatic year, being scrapped for parts at one point and buried under ice at another. Dog keeps dwelling on what he’s done wrong, it tears apart his attempts at other relationships.
By the time the movie ends, we’ve been on emotional rollercoaster. This is not a lighthearted affair, despite what the trailer or the poster might imply. There are flights of fancy and some of the 80s touches are sublime in their application, but at its core this is a tragedy. Like many great tragedies, it strikes at the core of what it means to be human. The pains of loss and how we survive.
3. Oddity
There’s nothing better than a well told story. This is the best told story of the year.
A knock on the door, a woman alone in an isolated manor being restored by her husband checks the peephole and who does she see? One of her doctor’s clients, recently released from a mental health facility. Someone’s in the house, he says. She didn’t see them go in, he says. She has to let him in, he says.
No, I'm going to call the police. Good, he says.
We are then introduced to her blind twin sister, who runs an oddities shop where every item is haunted. The husband stops in to check on his dead wife’s sister. He says she should come out sometime and meet his new girlfriend, who he met through work. It’s only been 8 months.
Next thing we know, a steamer trunk appears at the house and the twin sister shows up at the house to spend some time with them. The husband abandons his new beau and goes to work and the movie takes off from there.
What makes this movie so great is that there are no twists or turns. It tells you what is going to happen and then delivers. Maybe not the way you thought it would happen, but it never deviates from the plan. The practical effects are great, especially the wooden man. Gwilym Lee is fantastic as the twin sisters.
2. Kneecap -
I saw three musicals in theaters this year. Wicked was the only one I knew was a musical going in. In fact, I didn’t know much about Kneecap, the film or the group. I’m glad to say that has been rectified.
Kneecap tells a mythologized origin story of Irish rap group Kneecap, starring the members of the group. Michael Fassbender has a small part as Naoise "Móglaí Bap" Ó Cairealláin’s father Arlo, an IRA leader who has been in hiding since faking his own death. He has a small, but effective role and one of my favorite lines of the year.
Early in the movie, he’s talking to Móglaí Bap and Mo Chara telling them to watch American Westerns “from the point of view of the Indians.” It lets you know the ideological bent of the film and boy does it deliver.
Kneecap is part 8 Mile, part Trainspotting and part In The Name of the Father, played out in musical comedy form. The songs are Kneecap originals and are fantastic. Kneecap, more importantly, is a film about the importance of language. Set in the 2010’s and focused on the “ceasefire generation” raised in the north of Ireland, the issue of the Celtic language swirls around every facet of this film.
Teacher JJ "DJ Próvaí" Ó Dochartaigh has a chance encounter with Mo Chara after the latter is picked up at a party by the police. Mo Chara refuses to speak English and the good teacher is brought in as a translator because his girlfriend is too drunk to drive there.
Once there, DJ Próvaí realizes that Mo Chara has a notebook of great lyrics AND great drugs. DJ Próvaí covers for Mo Chara and then hunts them down later to convince the duo to record rap in their native tongue. The film chronicles their rise to celebrity and infamy, being hassled by the Radical Republicans Against Drugs and the police. It makes pointed statements about indigenous people, the music industry and the hypocrisy of people in power.
They also take a lot of drugs and have zany misadventures along the way. The movie shouldn’t work as well as it does, but all three of the group members do an amazing job portraying themselves and the supporting cast is anchored by Jessica Reynolds and Simone Kirby. I can’t say enough great things about this film, even the end credits are a highlight showing the real footage of the fictionalized events. It is currently streaming on Netflix so check it out.
1. A Real Pain
I got the feeling when I walked out of the theater that Jesse Eisenberg is as sick as I am of mining the pathos of the Holocaust. Told from the perspective of David Kaplan (Jesse Eisenberg), A Real Pain is about two cousins going to Poland for a Holocaust tour in honor of their recently deceased grandmother. His foil is Benji (Kieran Culkin), a troubled drifter who talked to their grandmother every week.
David is a successful family man who lives in NYC. Benji smokes pot and lives in his parent’s basement. David signed them up for the trip, Benji wanted to reconnect with his cousin. David wants Benji to take life more seriously. Benji wants David to take his emotions more seriously.
An odd couple travel flick with a bleak backdrop seems like a tough sell for a comedy. And yet, the jokes land in large part to Culkin’s stellar performance. He is a tour de force as a man who lights up every room and hates every minute of it.
David is embarrassed by Benji’s antics like calling out the absurdity of a Holocaust tour being in first class on a train through Poland. Or when Benji takes their tour guide to task for dehumanizing the lives lost, turning them into soundbites and statistics. Much to David’s chagrin, the group connects with Benji over his honesty. So much so that the tour guide thanks Benji for his feedback when they depart the tour and gives David a nonchalant goodbye.
What Eisenberg does so well is isolate the audience from Benji bonding with the tour group. David is jealous of Benji’s attention, making snide remarks when Benji joins him for lunch. Marcia (Jennifer Gray) is dealing with her life falling apart and has a late night conversation with Benji that David sleeps through, we only find out about it the next day. David expects Benji to be reviled and everything is filtered through that lens.
Benji chastises David for his role in their drifting apart. David assumes that Benji will want to come visit him because New York City is just better than Binghamton. Benji is hurt because he just wants to spend time with one of his best friends. This is a movie that is never content to coast, every conversation carries weight. Every barb from Benji feels pointed. If you only see one movie this year, I would say see A Real Pain.