My top 10 films of 2024 — and where to watch them
There has been some chuntering in various circles that 2024 has not been a stellar year for movies.
The delayed impact of the 2023 acting and writing strikes has borne out with award watchers (a deeply weird specimen of filmgoers, if you ask me) complaining about the lack of juice in the run up to the Oscars.
Anora has been the ‘front runner’ since Cannes — hey, I loved it — but there’s been a dearth of the usual sort of bland, bedtime story movies that some fawn over (Conclave is good but it doesn’t exactly stick long in the mind).
But for those prepared to venture out of their comfort zones and dig a bit deeper into real cinematic potential (and not just the stuff that strives for awards), there have been rich pickings.
As I have written before, ranking is a stupid endeavour so I’ve decided just to list them alphabetically.
1. All of Us Strangers – Andrew Haigh
Virulent homophobia might largely be a thing of the past but that’s little help to Andrew Scott’s disaffected writer Adam in Andrew Haigh’s devastating grief-filled modern ghost story. Adam is given the chance to confront his absent parents about the trauma of his childhood and his sexuality while also reckoning with himself as a lonely gay man in London.
Between this, Weekend and 45 Years, Haigh has become one of the UK’s most delicate and devastating directors. The support work from Paul Mescal, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell is outstanding.
Where to watch? Disney+
2. All We Imagine as Light — Payal Kapadia
Don’t try and feel for a plot, there isn’t one really. There’s a story, to be sure - three women trying to navigate their lives in Mumbai, but it’s about the journey not the destination.
The real triumph of All We Imagine… is the perfect verisimilitude of the city and how Kapadia gradually draws the audience into the film, slowly piecing together these three lives through pitch-perfect moments and details.
A sublime portrait of a city that is all the better for disregarding melodrama and instead allowing the audience to find their own emotions in the imagery and feel of the movie.
Where to watch? Possibly still in cinemas, if not I think it will be a BFI Player title in the near-ish future.
3. Anora — Sean Baker
To dabble into a popular cliche, Anora is Pretty Woman for the 21st century. Far funnier, darker and more kinetic than that Richard Gere/Julia Roberts powerhouse, Anora was showered with praise (and the Palme d’Or at Cannes) with good reason.
Mikey Madison plays a hustling pole dancer in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn (a Russian-American enclave) when she’s caught up in a whirlwind romance with the free-spending, immature son of an oligarch. Will there be a honeymoon ending for the couple? Not if his daddy’s goons have much to say about it, but they have to deal with Anora “Ani” Mikheeva — who is a force of nature.
Where to watch? Still in cinemas, if you’re lucky.
4. The Brutalist — Brady Corbet
To plagiarise my own (forthcoming) review for the Standard, The Brutalist is a cinematic epic unlike any released in recent memory. It reaches for the stars and very pointedly wants to brush shoulders with the classics of old.
The story of Hungarian-born émigré Lazslo Toth may as well have been carved from marble itself such is the scale and grandeur of this paean to the experience of meatgrinder of the American dream, where immigrants have it harder than all. Do not miss this in the cinema.
Where to watch? In all good cinemas from January 24.
5. La Chimera — Alice Rohwarcher
A deeply strange, beguiling movie, La Chimera centres on the marvelous Josh O’Connor (he’s even better here than in Challengers). He plays Arthur; a British looter in Italy who, fresh out of jail, is the star of a motley group of grave robbers who steal Etruscan artifacts from beneath the ground.
But what he really wants to dig into, even if he won’t admit it, is his lost love and the emptiness that has left him with. Rohwarcher’s movie is almost a chimera itself; weird, heartbreaking, moving.
Where to watch? Currently streaming on Mubi or to purchase on Amazon for £7.99.
6. Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World — Radu Jude
Fuck yeah, Radu Jude! Sure, it’s a 163-minute Romanian black comedy about the perilous economic state of modern society told through the eyes of an overworked and underpaid ‘runner’ on a workplace safety video but Do Not Expect Too Much… is a goddamn filmmaking triumph.
It’s a hilarious and unusual sort of epic essay film (the idea of Jude flicking through internet browser tabs that interest him is appropriate when it comes to ‘ cracking’ the structure of this movie). Do Not Expect Too Much… jumps between investigating the history of Romania under dictatorship to the TikTok troll culture of 2024. The incredible final shot of the safety promotion campaign coming to fruition is the perfect tragicomedy ending.
Where to watch? Streaming on BFI Player or a digital copy is on Amazon for £4.99.
7. I Saw The TV Glow — Jane Schoenbrun
With I Saw The TV Glow, Jane Schoenbrun might have unwittingly anointed herself as the cinematic voice of a new generation (just this weekend she cheered NOT being included in Barack Obama’s ‘best movies of 2024’ list). I Saw The TV Glow is about two troubled teenagers, who only connect through a low-fi fantastical TV show called The Pink Opaque, and slowly begin to question themselves and their identities.
Wholly original in its storytelling; the strangeness of the youth experience has never been captured quite like this.
Where to watch? Available on Apple TV or Amazon for £4.99. No UK physical release yet.
8. I’m Still Here — Walter Salles
My favourite film out of the London Film Festival! Walter Salles’s long overdue return to Brazilian filmmaking tells the story of one family torn apart by the military dictatorship the country endured in the 1970s.
A sublime example of telling the story of the many through one family and one woman in particular. Fernanda Torres is a revelation as a mother thrust into an impossible situation but determined, through it all, to put on the bravest of faces.
Where to watch? In all good cinemas from February 7.
9. Rebel Ridge — Jeremy Saulnier
I wanted to include one genre film (and one that you didn’t need a non-traditional streaming service to enjoy) but Rebel Ridge would have probably made it into the top 10 on its own merits.
A steely, propulsive crime thriller set in rural America about a man just trying to get his cousin out on bail who winds up uncovering a bigger conspiracy.
Aaron Pierre rocks it as a Jason Bourne-esque cypher — albeit without the amnesia - who will stop at nothing to do the right thing.
Where to watch? Netflix
10. Red Rooms — Pascal Plante
Wake up hun, new French(-Canadian) courtroom drama just dropped. Following in the wake of Saint Omer, Anatomy of a Fall and The Goldman Case comes maybe the strongest one yet.
A fashion model becomes obsessed with the trial of Ludovic Chevalier, who has been accused of broadcasting the murder of three teenage girls in an online ‘red room’, accessible via the Dark Web.
Red Rooms is an incredibly disturbing look at modern society’s true crime obsession and the para-social relationships that that generates among blood-obsessed voyeurs. Probably the darkest film of 2024 but also a textbook example of showing and not telling.
Where to watch? BFI Player or purchase on Amazon for £3.99. No UK physical release yet.
Five honourable mentions:
- Clint Eastwood — Juror 2
- George Miller — Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
- Kelly Reichardt — Showing Up
- Mohammad Rasoulof — The Seed of the Sacred Fig
- Nuri Bilge Ceylan — About Dry Grasses
