My 15 favorite movies of 2024
Intros for these lists are pretty unnecessary. So let’s just say that it turned out to be a solid year for movies. Fun!
Netflix
15. Daughters
Some of the girls know why their dads are in prison, and some don’t. That detail isn’t what this moving documentary pursues, though; reckoning more with the present than the past, directors Natalie Rae and Angela Patton mostly just listen and watch as four young women and their incarcerated fathers prepare for a daddy-daughter dance taking place inside the walls where they’re confined. (The program is called Date with Dad.) You might learn something — did you know many prisons don’t allow in-person visits anymore, instead offering only virtual visits for which inmates have to pay? I didn’t — and are pretty much guaranteed to feel a lot. Regret is worn more than explored, and it’s hard not to have certain questions. But “Daughters” mostly invests in humanity, in seeing the dads both as they see themselves in the context of their children and also as their kids see them, with love as a motivator but not a cure-all. “I! Love! My! Daddy!” one declares as she embraces him for the first time in a long time. Get ready to be choked up, and not once: This is the first of several movies on this list about parental absence, and reaching out.
MUBI
14. How to Have Sex
The remarkable, optimistic, faulty haze of youth and the circumstances that tilt individuals and relationships crack quietly and devastatingly in “How to Have Sex,” whose title not only ensures responsible folks won’t search for showtimes at work but also that a decent percentage of those who find it will wonder when the manual starts. Rather, those filing false advertising suits against “How to Have Sex” may be one of the prime targets of a cautionary tale that plays a bit like the other, British side of the “Spring Breakers” coin. As the liquor flows and physical goals need a person to embody them, dynamics are driven by who’s involved, whether there’s something there for now or for later too. Trust can be unpredictable, and friendships that may seem unbreakable can sour at only the slightest chance to be left out in the sun. Simply: This is an effective movie about the intertwining of closeness and discomfort.
Roadside
13. The Last Showgirl
Oscar-nominated Pamela Anderson? Maybe, maybe not, but “The Last Showgirl” gives the “Baywatch” star a part she’s never had before, and Anderson absolutely delivers. As Shelley, who’s spent the bulk of her life in a Las Vegas show that’s now about to close after 38 years (resulting in a fractured relationship with her daughter, played by Billie Lourd), the actress brings history into every scene, holding onto present moments despite an extremely fragile relationship to those past and ahead. After devoting her best years to a creative enterprise no one seems to want anymore, well, now what? It’s not the first time that question has been asked, and this affecting, memorable portrait of internal purpose and external doubt won’t be the last.
HANDOUT
12. I Like Movies
Was I predisposed to liking “I Like Movies” based on an adolescence in which pop culture felt exciting and personal? Absolutely. Did I laugh at so many points of this story that I wished I had been drinking something because of how many great spit takes would have been earned? Definitely. But you don’t have to know who Martin Scorsese’s editor is or even to recognize the “Almost Famous” reference for “I Like Movies” to resonate as a story about how slow everything feels when you haven’t found your place yet. Featuring a handful of excellent performances, writer-director Chandler Levack’s film doesn’t broadly advocate for moderation or make easy claims about how art can be a crutch or a replacement for human interaction. Rather, there’s a complicated question about what sort of reality exists on and off the screen, what questions we should be asking on both sides, and what answers one provides about the other.
Bleecker Street
11. Hard Truths
How much do we have to give? If hurt people hurt people, how do we help anyone who sometimes makes others want to run in the opposite direction? In “Hard Truths,” writer-director Mike Leigh (“Secrets & Lies,” “Vera Drake”) presents a character study that’s nearly all prickles: Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is a 24/7 argument machine, irritated and angry with everyone in her orbit for every possible reason. The scenes range from alarming to borderline absurdist comedy and back; the film’s exploration of love in the face of dislike, as well as the long-term impacts of grief and its side effects, are both warmly human and hauntingly sad. “Hard Truths” doesn’t run away from hard feelings and also knows what it looks like when people do, delivering a portrait of an extended family that’s alternately optimistic about togetherness and very honest about loneliness and limitations.
IFC
10. Scrambled
In a triple-threat turn that should elevate her profile but maybe won’t, writer/director Leah McKendrick stars as Nellie, who’s happy for her friends getting married or having kids but can’t help feeling isolated, the late arrival standing on the platform as the life stage boat pulls away. Recently single and aware that 34 is knocking on the door of what would be the harshly titled “geriatric pregnancy,” Nellie decides to borrow money from her obnoxious brother and freeze her eggs, only to discover the demanding and difficult process that still is far from guaranteed even if she does everything right. “Scrambled” is remarkably attuned to the unfairness of fertility inequality, that it would seem so easy to get pregnant, and that for some it is, but for those who experience challenges the hill is infinitely steeper and sometimes with no apex in sight. That McKendrick identifies this in one of the year’s funniest movies, and without falling into political landmines or predictable obstacles is nothing short of astounding.
HANDOUT
9. Black Box Diaries
Faced with a police that refuses to investigate and a political system that seems to fight against her, journalist Shiori Ito feels left with only one option: Lead the inquiry into her rape, which she says has been covered up because the accused, a famous journalist named Yamaguchi, is longtime friends with then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Though it could use a tad cleaner storytelling, “Black Box Diaries” remains an essential documentary, bringing viewers into the legal hurdles and outdated procedural bias that turns accusations of sexual assault into a brutal undermining of the survivor and a game of hopscotch to prevent the accused from facing any possible consequences. Taking place both before and after the rise of the #MeToo movement, “Black Box Diaries” reminds us that it’s not just the U.S. where the laws and society’s approach to these issues need to change – until 2023 when it moved to 16, Japan’s age of consent was 13 – and depicts the creation of a documentary, a book, and a case that, like so many others, puts the onus on the one person who shouldn’t have to work so hard for her story to be heard and believed.
HANDOUT
8. The Order
Echoing “Heat,” “The Town” and executive producer Jeremy Saulnier’s terrifying “Green Room,” “The Order” is based on the investigation of real-life domestic terrorist Bob Mathews (a great, against-type Nicholas Hoult), who led the titular white supremacist group in the Pacific Northwest in the early ‘80s. With an excellent Jude Law as the wonderfully named FBI agent Terry Husk, key supporting turns from Tye Sheridan and Jurnee Smollett, and sturdy direction from Justin Kurzel (“Macbeth”), this is a gripping action movie with shocking contemporary relevance.
Paramount
7. September 5
Life is news, and news is people making decisions. Chronicling the unfolding hostage situation in the Olympic Village in Munich on September 5, 1972, from the perspective of the ABC sports team leading the coverage on site, “September 5” recognizes the danger of turning reality into sports while refusing to allow the film itself to fall into those traps. Featuring a tremendous supporting turn from John Magaro (“Not Fade Away”) as a director thrust into a role he’s almost entirely, but maybe not entirely, ready for, this is a riveting document of how the sausage gets made, where the recipe is always in flux and close to a billion people need to get fed. Small, innovative ideas create material; ethics demand the slowing down of an inherently rapid-fire process; impossible challenges must be met with empathy but not necessarily emotion. It’s all new and unknown, subject to countless missteps, and can feel so much different from inside a control room compared to outside your window, even if neither view of terror ever feels real.
A24
6. Sing Sing
Hypnotic and anchored by another tremendous leading turn by Colman Domingo (“Rustin”), this unexpectedly funny drama, based on the real-life theater program inside the titular maximum security prison, pursues something large about resilience and creativity while staying small among a group of men as they rehearse their latest production. It’s not just that the movie includes great performances from people who really went through the program (Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin is shockingly good). It’s that “Sing Sing” stretches across a wide spectrum of regret and injustice, of friendship and anger, in service of a sometimes-heartbreaking movie that is also very entertaining and even rewatchable. It’s very easily recommended, and demands discussion.
HANDOUT
5. Nowhere Special
It might seem like peak manipulation, focusing on a dying man (James Norton, wonderful) interviewing potential adoptive parents to watch his young son (Daniel Lamont) when he’s gone. Yet this Irish drama is what happens when little movies get it right – respecting the situation instead of exploiting it, and exploring a difficult choice instead of suggesting that the built-in emotion of the challenge is all that’s needed. Writer-director Uberto Pasolini’s “Nowhere Special” is full of heartbreaking elements, from terminal illness to people who want to conceive but can’t to people who want to adopt and must compete to be chosen. But it’s threaded with love, some beautiful visual metaphors, and a sincere, non-hokey interest in the preciousness of time.
Searchlight
4. A Complete Unknown
Biopics usually tend to pursue information about their subject. “A Complete Unknown,” on the other hand, is that uncommon presentation of a real person which seems, at least based on the depiction contained within, that the icon being captured would approve, of both essence and edges. Standoffish yet engaged, charismatic and snotty, driven but elusive, Bob Dylan (Timothee Chamalet, singing too!) rises from an anonymous folk singer to an original voice as music and politics and fame exist in conversation with each other in the ‘60s. Chalamet’s awesome and the supporting cast (including Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Monica Barabaro as Joan Baez, and Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash) matches him, while director/co-writer James Mangold (“Walk the Line”), adapting Elijah Wald’s book “Dylan Goes Electric!,” declines a Wikipedia telling in favor of texture, without sacrificing accessibility. (“I’m Not There,” this is not; “Inside Llewyn Davis,” it recalls.) Art can spark love and foster change, this simultaneously restrained and confrontational movie says, but not in a vacuum, and maybe not for long or at all. What a pleasure to hear a song, or think of a time, or see a person, differently.
A24
3. The Brutalist
When people talk about a major movie, it’s work like this: director/co-writer Brady Corbet’s ambitious, 195-minute epic of a Hungarian Jewish man (Adrien Brody) arriving in the U.S. and eventually working alongside a Pennsylvania millionaire (Guy Pearce) who finds him intellectually stimulating, along with other feelings that aren’t as supportive. Made with a ton of confidence and more clarity than Corbet’s great “Vox Lux” but no less force, this is a story of immigration and opportunity, the American dream and exploitation and antisemitism, secrecy and loyalty and hurt. It’s remarkably rare to construct a film of this size where no development is shocking and yet you never have any sure sense of where anything will go. Approaching mid-20th century history with the scope of “There Will Be Blood,” “The Brutalist,” and its remarkable performances, direction and score, nearly overwhelm as a story of the world impacting an individual, and how that individual shapes it back.
Apple TV+
2. Fly Me to the Moon
By far the year’s most overlooked and underrated movie, this immensely likable and deceptively substantial rom-com should have been a massive word-of-mouth hit. Instead you get to discover a great premise – what if the moon landing was real and faked – while seeing two terrific movie star performances from Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson as a NASA launch director and an ad whiz who have legitimate compatibility as well as significant elements pushing them apart. Full of memorable scenes, laugh-out-loud lines and a clever blending of fact and fiction, “Fly Me to the Moon” considers the ease of deception, the supposed justification for transforming an event into a narrative, and convincingly, hilariously, movingly lands on the side of integrity and skill. High degree of difficulty, and entertainment.
Searchlight
1. A Real Pain
Forget the usual year-end onslaught of 140-minute indulgences; writer/director/star Jesse Eisenberg needs just 82 minutes to deliver 2024’s best movie, an astonishingly well written and executed exploration of complicated feelings and how history informs the present, whether through deliberate awareness, fierce avoidance, or somewhere in between. Eisenberg and an incredible Kieran Culkin are hilarious counterpoints as cousins, one uptight and the other laid-back, one with a lot and the other not, one who bottles emotions and the other who seems to bellow every thought for maximum impact. Neither knows how to process any number of heartaches; yet as these two join a group tour in Poland that includes significant locations from the Holocaust, this pair, an anxious apologist and a charming bulldozer, contribute to a really funny movie about sadness, and a very talkable study of conflict between family, between acquaintances, between ourselves and where we come from. Fantastic.
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