The 25 best films of 2024

The best films of 2024 were released during a time of increasing polarization in the film industry. Tentpoles got bigger, more unwieldy, more uneven, more likely to crash and burn. On the other side of the spectrum, indie films got smaller, scrappier, more impressive that they got made at all, let alone contained such beauty. The A.V. Club’s best-of list found movies to love in both camps. There were the films that got yanked from theaters early for not meeting their corporate overlords’ expectations, and the films that almost didn’t get screened at all. (At least one of our selections still does not have U.S. distribution, but it’s so incredibly good that we made an exception.)

But amid the bag-grabbing sequels, prequels, spin-offs, and other IP-hungry hangers-on that continue to dominate the box office, there were filmmakers defying franchise expectations and veteran auteurs taking seemingly final stabs at greatness. There were up-and-comers braving cease and desist letters, baring their souls, reinventing the wheel, and murdering countless furry woodland creatures. There were good movies, if you knew where to look.

Our six ballot-filing critics fittingly found films worth championing on the international festival circuit, but also in the straight-to-VOD genre bin. They found heartbreaking anime and a new holiday classic. They found horrors tough to look at and rage impossible to ignore. The best films of 2024 are united not through a common theme or filmmaking approach, but through a shared inventiveness and a reliance on someone going out of their way to give something strange a chance. Even the most conventional-seeming film on this list defies expectations in one way or another, pushing back against a pop culture landscape smoothing out year after year.

25. All We Imagine As Light

Payal Kapadia’s narrative debut feels rooted in the nonfiction yet dreamlike sensibility she crafted in her first feature A Night Of Knowing Nothing, in which she documented the anti-nationalist protests (which she co-organized) on her college campus. Existing on a plane that teeters between the naturalistic and surreal, Kapadia’s latest explores the lives of three women residing in Mumbai and working at the same hospital. There’s Prabha (Kani Kusruti), a nurse who has felt unmoored since her now-incommunicado husband relocated to Germany for work; Anu (Divya Prabha), a younger colleague who secretly dates a Muslim man despite their religious difference; and Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), a cook on the verge of being kicked out of her longtime abode by greedy developers. Their struggles all demonstrate various injustices currently faced by diverse Indian citizens, yet Kapadia fixes her perspective on the ways that women are uniquely maligned. For how poignant this portrait of rampant inequality across gender, caste, and ethnic lines is, All We Imagine As Light never veers into blunt preachiness, allowing these dynamics to subtly and naturally rear their ugly heads. Even more impressive is cinematographer Ranabir Das’ ability to capture the electrifying essence of the city while predominantly relying on natural and preexisting light sources. But the most breathtaking sequences unfold near the end, when the three women travel to a remote beach town, with each of them renegotiating their relationships to the men in their lives—whether they happen to be tangibly present or not—through moments of pure liberation. [Natalia Keogan]

24. Longlegs

Throwbacks to decades (relatively) recently passed tend to traffic in fashion-doll nostalgia and the warming glow of recognition. What a cold jolt, then, to see Longlegs go all-in on the 1990s with such a mischievously nightmarish set of reference points: Silence Of The Lambs with a less professorial killer, a lonelier, more desolate version of The X-Files, some Seven dankness, plus an eerily toxic strain of throwback-within-a-throwback to that old-time rock ‘n’ roll. Maika Monroe moves into a more adult phase of her 10-year scream-queen career as the FBI agent investigating a mysterious, loopy, charismatic, and utterly terrifying serial killer (Nicolas Cage, the man who can do all of that in 15 seconds flat when called upon); the knock, then, is that yes, we’ve seen a determined young woman chase a rococo fiend plenty of times before. True enough that Longlegs is first and foremost a horror movie—and an extremely well-wrought one, as writer-director Oz Perkins uses slightly skewed framing and a dreamlike atmosphere to keep the audience off balance, even when it seems like they should be observing something straightforward. What lingers, though, is the precise absence of an easy-to-track metaphor, as Perkins dips into a whole passel of potential anxieties: the combined safety and unfamiliarity of returning home; the feeling of helplessness in a corrupted world; the loneliness of a woman making her way through a male-dominated field; and, hell, some traditional creeps that would fit just fine into the Conjuring universe. There’s an undercurrent of dread, attributable yet impossible to fully reach and treat, that makes the movie feel like watching a ’90s serial-killer potboiler accidentally taped onto the VHS from The Ring. [Jesse Hassenger]

23. Look Back

The best animated film of the year, and the shortest film by far on this list, the hour-long Look Back is also the film most likely to make you break down in sobs. Influenced by the horrific massacre of animators in a 2019 Kyoto arson, Tatsuki Fujimoto’s heartfelt manga about the sacrifices of creation finds a perfect partner in filmmaker Kiyotaka Oshiyama. Studio Durian employs a deceptively simple style to carry its elliptical story’s time jumps and tonal shifts, all roughly sketched characters and chunky movement. It’s fitting for a story of two skilled school-age girls, who find each other through their love of drawing and grow together (and apart) around that same passion. Montages of still frames play like we’re flipping through a scrapbook, warm and reminiscent. But in the nuances of the frame, in the lush backgrounds and intense detailing, the hallmarks of AAA animation subtly engulf us in its world. A simple scene of running in the rain, splashing in the puddles, is an explosion of raw emotion, while a late leap into magical realism offers one of the year’s most compelling shifts in perspective. The invisible strings that tie Look Back’s leads together, the desire to convey beauty and humor and truth in their art (even in a silly shonen comic called Shark Kick) become tighter and tougher than any more tangible connection. More than a tribute, Look Back celebrates those who create, and everyone—inspirations, collaborators, audiences, and/or rivals—who they create for. [Jacob Oller]

22. Good One

Writer-director India Donaldson came hot out of the gate with her debut Good One, a deceptively brutal coming-of-age takedown packed neatly inside a relatively low-key backpacking trip. A three-hander between 17-year-old Sam (Lily Collias), her REI-pilled dad Chris (James Le Gros), and his mega-divorced old pal Matt (Danny McCarthy), Good One would have been much more comfortable as a four-hander had all gone according to plan. But Matt’s Sam-aged son ditches the campers at the last minute, which means the teen girl is stuck in the boys’ club as dad jokes devolve in nuanced ways into more prickly ways of conversing. Donaldson frames the Catskills hike perfectly, her camera catching exactly what it needs to amid the lush greenery, but it’s her ear for dialogue and her control of her excellent ensemble that sells this short story of a film. Collias is as skilled at coming across sharp as her older companions are at playing foolish, all realistic enough to sell the small yet compelling shifts in tone and atmosphere that Donaldson’s insightful film navigates. [Jacob Oller]

21. The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed

Rich in a type of urban ennui specific to the summertime, Joanna Arnow’s portrait of city life and mid-30s adulthood is a refreshingly stagnant interpretation of living in New York. The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed plays like the cut scenes from an otherwise familiar, fast-paced film idealizing NYC, instead exploring how self-actualization can be very boring and unsexy. Arnow’s “City That Never Sleeps” is actually extremely sleepy. Despite a loose narrative partly centered on Ann (Arnow) meeting the needs of her submissive sexual interests, first with a dom known to her for many years before venturing out to other partners, The Feeling dwells on unexciting moments like idling for a delayed F train, sluggish work meetings, folding laundry, and heating up microwave dinner. Yet the film is no less rich for choosing to focus on these humdrum activities in Ann’s life. These doings craft a humorous tapestry of an ordinary woman trying to get from one day to the next. But there is also a daunting nature to Ann’s life, a feeling of dissatisfaction in situations that just won’t improve. It’s to the extent that when she finally attains a steady romance, it’s nerve-wracking to wonder how, or when, it might fall apart. Arnow’s film observes with grace and patience how moments of inertia are some of our most grueling. [Brianna Zigler]

20. Close Your Eyes

Spanish filmmaker Víctor Erice (El Sur, The Spirit Of The Beehive), at 82 years old, arrives with his first feature in 30 years and his fourth total. Contained within it are the celluloid-trapped mystery of an actor who disappeared without a trace mid-production, the cinema-driven reflections of the director who left that life behind after their film fell apart, and a growing bonfire of rekindled connections as the latter is spurred to resume his search for the former decades after the fact. Led by Manolo Solo’s sturdy yet mellow performance, Close Your Eyes links movies and mortality as it shifts from mystery to elegy to séance. Fittingly, its climax takes place in a movie theater. A little light, a little electricity, and the dead walk among us again. But this isn’t a cheap, dewy-eyed ode to film—it was made by someone bearing more than a little resentment towards filmmaking. Instead, it’s a more honest reckoning with how we age and change, and how the things we make and the marks we leave will never be total strangers to us. There’s beauty and hard-earned contentment in every frame, as Erice returns to directing on a quest, seemingly, to confront his own time spent making films. [Jacob Oller]

19. Juror #2

In another year beset by reboots, Frankensequels, and legacy sequels of varying quality and complication, one 94-year-old director dared to go back to basics. Clint Eastwood’s best in years (making its tossed-off release all the more depressing), Juror #2 is an example of “movies they don’t make anymore.” A would-be potboiler in another’s hands, Eastwood takes Juror #2‘s paperback thrills seriously, leaning into the ludicrous premise of an expecting father (Nicholas Hoult) serving on a jury for a crime he may have committed. With his sober direction, Eastwood ensnares the audience in the kind of ethical dilemma he has explored his entire career. This is less of a “Will he be caught?” thriller; it’s a “Will he turn himself in?” thriller, putting the pressure on Hoult to uncover his own guilt or innocence. Giving the most repressed performance of his busy year, Hoult has rarely been better than as the parent-to-be, torn between what’s best for his young family and the right thing to do. Supported by a phenomenal cast, including Toni Collette, J.K. Simmons, Chris Messina, Kiefer Sutherland, Cedric Yarbrough, and Zoey Deutch, the film navigates impossible waters buoyed by suspense and complexity. Junky yet nourishing, pulpy yet profound, they don’t make ’em like this anymore. [Matt Schimkowitz]

18. Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point

Like a smattering of ornaments that adorn a family’s Christmas tree, Tyler Taormina’s third feature is an eclectic showcase of the small yet significant details that define a Long Island family’s holiday traditions. There isn’t exactly a conventional plot—much like how our family gatherings are often amorphously structured—but being in the presence of the Balsano clan on Christmas Eve is compelling enough to hold our attention nonetheless. Uncles whip up their own weird takes on charcuterie, in-laws awkwardly try to integrate into tight-knit dynamics, and, of course, teenagers sneak out and make their own fun. The cinematography by Carson Lund (whose stunning feature debut, Eephus, will release sometime in the spring) channels a sense of warmly-lit nostalgia and the ethereal nature of creating a memory that will last long after midnight snowfall is melted by the morning sun. The ensemble cast, which consists of Michael Cera, Gregg Turkington, Francesca Scorsese, Elsie Fisher, and Sawyer Spielberg is calibrated so that no one takes the spotlight or becomes the primary focus, though the perspective of teenage Emily (Matilda Fleming) is loosely relied upon. The end result is, remarkably, never unfocused, but rather masterfully captures the unbridled spirit of a season that signals satisfaction and strife for this specific family. [Natalia Keogan]

17. Hard Truths

Few performances this year will top Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s as Pansy, a British wife and mother who has developed an intense misanthropy that threatens to poison her closest relationships. More likely than not, her embittered attitude emerged as a product of the pandemic, which demonstrated how easy it is for people to prioritize selfishness and paranoia for their own self-preservation. Pansy has completely smothered any remaining affection felt toward her by husband Curtley (David Webber) and 20-something son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett)—she has transformed their home into a cold, sterile environment, goes on dinnertime tirades about her daily interactions, and audibly insults others while they’re in earshot. The only one who tries to penetrate Pansy’s sour exterior is her sister Chantelle (Michelle Austin), who understands that she is lashing out, in part, due to lingering grief from their controlling mother’s death. The whip-smart dialogue delivered with hilarious vitriol from Jean-Baptiste (whose previous collaboration with writer-director Mike Leigh, Secrets And Lies, had her playing a sweet, soft-spoken young woman) emphasizes her range as well as Leigh’s, who continues to establish himself as one of the best narrative realists in the game. [Natalia Keogan]

16. Universal Language

An Iranian cinema-inspired odyssey, Universal Language sees director Matthew Rankin imagine a timeless and placeless version of Winnipeg where Farsi and French seamlessly comingle. Universal Language overlaps multiple different characters’ storylines: two children finding money frozen in a block of ice and setting on an absurd quest to retrieve it; a man (played by Rankin himself) traveling home after leaving his aimless job in Quebec; and tour guide Massoud (Pirouz Nemati) guiding a group of tourists through the comically banal history of Winnipeg. A collaborative project between friends and featuring a largely non-professional cast, Rankin’s surreal vision of Winnipeg is barren and brutalist, interspersed with shops selling birthday cakes and live turkeys, where Tim Hortons are reimagined as Iranian tea shops and cemeteries share real estate with freeway overpasses. Rankin envisions a Winnipeg that never emerged aesthetically from the ‘80s yet also took more from the Iranian diaspora than Western, Anglo influence. And amidst the incredible sparsity of Rankin’s home city, people traverse infinite banks of snow to find small, intimate moments of connection. Universal Language articulates an unspoken closeness between its diversity of characters through the blurring of cultural differences, to create a film about how we are all, in a way, each other. [Brianna Zigler]

15. Nosferatu

Why bother remaking the classic 1922 silent film Nosferatu, a variation on the constantly remade Dracula that itself has already been re-envisioned by Werner Herzog? To some extent, Robert Eggers seems to be, like Francis Ford Coppola before him, in it for the love of the game—the glory of ghoulish image-making that extends and distends familiar sights into new nightmares, not unlike the shadowy hand seen reaching across the poor, unsuspecting town in this version of the vampire tale, only visible from the audience’s vantage. If that was all the 2024 version of Nosferatu had to offer, that would be more than good enough for a night out at the pictures. But Eggers, blessed old horror geek that he is, uses the committed physical performance of Lily-Rose Depp to suggest our collective fascination with the macabre and the monstrous. These images, when vivid enough, can feel like a form of possession, inching closer to oblivion in order to better understand and possibly destroy the evil that can appear to be pervasive. In other words, despite Nosferatu’s stately-goth fastidiousness, it’s nonetheless one for the sickos. [Jesse Hassenger]

14. The People’s Joker

It makes perfect sense that first-time director Vera Drew cut her teeth as an editor for episodic comedies like On Cinema, I Think You Should Leave and Comedy Bang! Bang!. While her feature debut co-opts the character of the Joker in order to tell a semi-autobiographical tale of her transition, it is also a ruthless lampoon of the current state of comedy in Hollywood. She takes shots at Lorne Michaels, UCB stand-up, and the rampant embrace of offensive jokes by privileged comedians who feel threatened by an increased interest in marginalized voices. Drew plays a version of herself who eventually transforms into Harlequin, an aspiring comedian who must grapple with what success means in the industry compared to in her own heart. Cameos from comedy greats like Tim Heidecker, Maria Bamford, Bob Odenkirk, and Scott Aukerman may flex Vera’s connections, but her brash condemnation of an increasingly volatile storytelling landscape—reflected by Warner Bros’ attempts to intimidate Drew to stay away from their IP—prove perfectly prescient. [Natalia Keogan]

13. Red Rooms

The online “Red Rooms” that give this Québécois techno-thriller its name are stained with warm blood and frenzied depravity, but writer-director Pascal Plante’s approach to these spaces is chilly and controlled. This isn’t just a stylistic technique, although the effect sizzles like plunging a freshly forged blade into an icy snowbank. It’s also an elegant way of expressing the film’s themes through form as well as content. The subjects of this film—namely, sadistic sexual murderers and the hybristophiliacs who love them—are as prurient as they come. Many people are fascinated by these extremes of human psychology, while also being a little ashamed of their interest in them. This is the tension Plante exploits in Red Rooms, slowly turning the screws on the audience through inscrutable hacker Kelly-Anne’s (Juliette Gariépy) escalating acts of obsession with accused serial killer Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos). Plante and Gariépy keep Kelly-Anne’s motivations obscure until the very end of the movie, a game of chicken that climaxes with one of the most jaw-dropping scenes of the decade as Kelly-Anne proclaims her “love” in shockingly tasteless fashion in court. All the while, Gariépy’s placid face serves as a mirror for the audience’s own morbid fascination, forcing us to confront our own basest natures in the process. It’s edgy, but purposefully so, which puts it miles above films that deal in provocation for its own sake. [Katie Rife]

12. Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World

Angela (Ilinca Manolache) is exhausted, as so many of us are these days. A production assistant for a Romanian company specializing in industrial videos, she spends 18-20 hours a day stuck in traffic, loud music blaring on the radio. The lyrics are crude; the sound quality is bad. Sometimes she nods her head while blowing bubbles with her ever-present mouthful of gum, but neither indicates enjoyment. She needs those moments of motion just to stay awake. And, as her bosses are always ready to remind her, she’s one of the lucky ones. To say that filmmaker Radu Jude’s films “revel” in vulgarity and absurdity isn’t quite correct; it’s more accurate to say that they identify these conditions as endemic to 21st-century life. Here, the title of this hybrid workplace satire/essay film refers to the water-drip torture of small indignities and reluctant compromises that characterize life under late capitalism: The hours are getting longer, but the pay stays the same. There are fewer chips in every bag, and the lights get a little dimmer every time you turn them on. Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World runs a sprawling 163 minutes, but small moments hit hard. If it sometimes feels like a diagnosis without a treatment plan, that’s because Jude isn’t sure how we’re going to get out of this one, either. [Katie Rife]

11. Rebel Ridge

Just to issue a spoiler-by-elimination upfront: Rebel Ridge does not end in a cathartic explosion of blood and guts, with Terry (Aaron Pierre) taking fatal revenge on his tormenters, a group of southern cops who finance certain departmental expenditures via the crooked process of civil forfeiture. Some would describe Terry’s insistence on non-lethal forms of fighting back, so uncharacteristic of writer-director Jeremy Saulnier, as the other kind of cop-out, through its insistence on following certain systematic rules in a hybrid of two systems (the real-life justice system and cathartic revenge movies) where that doesn’t seem to work very often. But the constraints placed on Terry line up perfectly with the character’s stubborn precision: He’s too exacting to assume he’s the automatic hero of this story, even though he knows in his bones that he’s in the right. That, in turn, is what makes Pierre’s performance such a locked-in triumph: He spends most of Rebel Ridge riding the line between offense and defense, never free of the mental calculations he must perform as a Black man taking on corrupt police. The movie rides right alongside him, keeping the tension tight even if you know that gallons of blood may not flow, all while Saulnier confirms his status as the master of thrillers about surviving a very American form of decay. [Jesse Hassenger]

10. A Different Man

Piercingly intelligent takes on difference and acceptance are Aaron Schimberg’s specialty. His third feature, A Different Man, builds on the themes of his 2018 film Chained For Life, a backstage dramedy about an actress struggling to connect with her disfigured co-star (Adam Pearson) on the set of an European art film. A Different Man also uses the stage as a platform to explore the construction of identity and the “masks” we wear in life, adding layers to the concept through the story of an actor (Sebastian Stan) born with a facial disfigurement whose most self-loathing fantasies are realized when he undergoes an experimental procedure to make him “normal.” (If you can call looking like Sebastian Stan “normal.”) Stan makes for a game punching bag as Schimberg runs him through a gauntlet of tragicomic humiliation, contrasting his insecurity and resentment against co-star Pearson’s swaggering charisma. There’s a moral lesson here about self-acceptance and looks not being everything, but Schimberg’s writing is too smart—and too cynical—to fall into saccharine clichés about how if you just love yourself, everything will be fine. It won’t, but you have to get up in the morning anyway. A sense of humor helps, and A Different Man’s is charmingly self-deprecating, occasionally theatrical, and dry as a papercut. [Katie Rife]

9. I Saw The TV Glow

Filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun makes a massive leap forward after the immersive, lonesome bad dream of We’re All Going To The World’s Fair to construct an all-consuming dysphoric nightmare with I Saw The TV Glow. Using pop cultural obsession as the language to describe a fringe-occupying feeling of alienation—one both inherently trans and broadly applicable—Schoenbrun’s glowing screens and eternal night stand in for a larger sense of something being very wrong in this reality. At least some things make sense in The Pink Opaque, the Buffy-like TV show that bonds Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Owen (Justice Smith). As those two loners find (or fail to find) themselves using this series, I Saw The TV Glow weighs down their lives with judgmental parents, ex-friend cheerleaders, shitty bosses. Homework and bills. The external sucks, but the internal is terrifying. That’s why Owen has such a hard time looking there, despite Maddy’s relentless pushing and every wall closing in at suffocating lightspeed. The film’s claustrophobic aesthetic, alternatingly surreal and too real, is a black hole—a worst-case scenario filled with memories of all the chances you had for escape. Filled with knockout performances, unforgettable images, imaginative horrors, and a banger soundtrack, I Saw The TV Glow is as haunting and urgent as its final, guttural yell. [Jacob Oller]

8. Anora

In exploring the common ground between Sean Baker’s films (empathy for sex workers, attention to various economic strata), one possibly underexplored signature is his keen sense of place. Tangerine, The Florida Project, Red Rocket, and now Anora are set in a quartet of vastly different but populous states, and he captures oft-unseen corners of all four. Anora returns to the more urban environment (and, eventually, the pursuit-driven plot) of Tangerine, and in a few short shots following Ani (Mikey Madison) from her midtown Manhattan strip-club gig to her home on Brighton Beach, there’s a whole world of commuter weariness. No wonder that, despite her savviness about the business she’s in, Ani eventually allows herself to believe that she’s in some kind of fairy-tale love story with the immature son of Russian oligarchs who proposes marriage after a whirlwind week of paid companionship. As Ani, played with unstoppable vivacity by Madison, swerves from slice-of-life drama to woozy intoxication to farce with a coastal chill in the air, Baker always keeps eyes and ears on her environment: the gleam of a borrowed Mill Basin mansion, the whipping of the Coney Island wind, the squeak of windshield wipers in the snow. These details emphasize the immediacy of Ani’s present; outside of her marriage (“A frawd marriage?!” as she memorably intones), no matter how good she is at her job, she’s living uncomfortably moment-to-moment. Anora isn’t Baker’s funniest or most emotionally devastating movie. But it might, in its collapsed fairy-tale weariness, be his most strangely relatable. [Jesse Hassenger]

7. The Beast

Bertrand Bonello’s loose adaptation of Henry James’ The Beast In The Jungle imagines a future overrun by AI, where one must purify their DNA by unlocking their past lives in order to suppress emotions in a world that no longer needs them. So unfolds the time-spanning connection between Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) and Louis (George MacKay). Across three time periods, Gabrielle and Louis are continuously drawn to one another in their reincarnated bodies, ultimately unable to fulfill their inexplicable pull and meeting a series of violent ends. But instead of this process doing away with Gabrielle’s emotions, she finds them strengthened in this bond shared with a complete stranger—one that nonetheless fills each of her incarnations with an inescapable sensation of dread. It leads to a conclusion evocative of Laura Palmer’s chilling wail in the final episode of Twin Peaks: The Return, and, similar to the third installment of Lynch’s series, Bonello captures an impression of fear and foreboding that cannot be neatly articulated. Unrealized romance intermingles with loneliness and alienation, which intermingles with co-dependency on tech to simplify the most basic of human behaviors, all set in a dull yet overtly ecologically ravaged world that is dystopic yet perhaps not so removed from reality. The Beast is an unnerving, inscrutable arthouse genre hybrid—horror, sci-fi, melodrama—that questions how far humans will go in denying their own humanity, and if love can endure that or tear us apart. [Brianna Zigler]

6. Nickel Boys

From its elliptical opening scenes through the childhood memories of Elwood (Ethan Herisse), to its late turn to the third-person, hinting at a trauma that forced him outside himself, Nickel Boys‘ unique first-person perspective is just one aspect of director RaMell Ross’ masterful fiction debut. Based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winner, Nickel Boys follows Elwood’s life at Florida’s Nickel Academy reform school, where a cruel twist of fate lands the once-promising student. Like other Black Americans, Elwood’s life is essentially outside of his control, ruled by the whims of the white ruling class. Seeing the world through his eyes, we feel every crushing blow he absorbs with every inequity forced upon him. Elwood is at a philosophical fork in the road: Fight the system through the incremental wins of the Civil Rights movement or try to avoid the landmines littered across campus by keeping his head down and serving his time. These viewpoints, represented through Elwood’s friend Turner (Brandon Wilson)—whose head we also occasionally inhabit—and his grandma Hattie (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), color the ways Elwood sees the world and how Ross shoots it, making every shot a rich text of metaphor and meaning. Of these images, perhaps none are more loaded than a pamphlet for the Black college Elwood is meant to attend sliding down from the refrigerator as his future unravels. Nickel Boys doesn’t waste a frame, placing us in Elwood’s head as few films could and guiding us through an expertly choreographed coming-of-age unlike any we’ve seen before. [Matt Schimkowitz]

5. No Other Land

The year’s best documentary boils your blood for 95 minutes until you’re not sure there’s any left. Co-directed by two Palestinians (Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal) and two Israelis (Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor), No Other Land is a furious first-hand account of the criminal demolitions and displacements enforcing the apartheid state of its Masafer Yatta setting. Chronicling years of resistance and oppression, framed using the burgeoning bittersweet friendship between longtime activist Adra and journalist Abraham, the film’s amazing assemblage of footage makes its eye-level case undeniable. Physical violence is omnipresent; the final sequence, captured in October 2023, depicts an Israeli settler shoving Adra’s cousin, then shooting him point-blank in the stomach with a rifle. But even more daunting is the mounting, inescapable desperation. With its harrowing images and tight narrative construction, No Other Land doesn’t need to be shocking, nor does it need to be a dry history lesson. Everything it’s trying to convey is plain to see, as bright and blunt as a bulldozer. As the story of a single village unfolds, so too does a Palestinian lifetime, a lifetime of repetition and rebuilding and struggle. These stories aren’t hard to find—each day we spend scrolling past atrocities reminds us how numbed our present has become. In the face of this, No Other Land is potent, vital reinnervation. That it’s being all but hidden from American audiences is bald-faced cowardice from our film industry. [Jacob Oller]

4. The Brutalist

The rowdy, sea-tossed opening of Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, with its Ellis Island arrivals thrown topsy-turvy around the ship until an inverted Statue of Liberty comes into view, is so simple as to have its boldness dismissed. Turning the Statue Of Liberty upside down? Hardcore! Take that, America! It’s a testament to Corbet’s relentless, dense, bleakly shot immigration drama that this image overcomes that initial reaction, pushing a punishing truth about what awaits Hungarian superstar architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody, never better) in his new home. A concentration camp survivor separated from his family (including an excellent Felicity Jones as his wife Erzsébet), Tóth is chewed up and spit out by the larger forces of America—bigotry, unemployment, homelessness, drug addiction—before being pulled up like sidewalk gum by the shoe of an asshole industrialist (Guy Pearce). Over three-and-a-half hours, Corbet’s epic is as wide-spanning as its VistaVision cinematography, covering three decades, one definitive construction project, and the repeated crashing of a metaphorical wrecking ball into one man’s American Dream. Tóth’s resistance to it, to being shaped by it, to compromising for it, propels the film like a piston. Hard, clean, and imposing, The Brutalist is a construction worthy of admiration. [Jacob Oller]

3. Hundreds Of Beavers

Sometimes as a film critic, writes Sam Adams, “even a minor twist on a worn-out formula feels like a life raft in a sea of sameness.” Through this lens, Hundreds Of Beavers is a lost continent of comedy, rediscovered after decades spent adrift. Rather than tweaking an exhausted trend, the feature debut of writer-director-editor-FX-wizard Mike Cheslik is an immaculately silly example of timeless cinematic hilarity, unearthed and remixed into something entirely new. A multimedia extravaganza of frozen idiocy, Hundreds Of Beavers is a slapstick tour de force—and its roster of ridiculous, man-sized, mascot-suited wildlife is only the tip of the iceberg. The true stars of the show are its mime-comic trapper Jean Kayak (co-writer/star Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) and the film’s endless lo-fi VFX. As the hapless hunter traipses through a dialogue-free, black-and-white comedy influenced in part by The Legend Of Zelda, Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, JibJabs, Terry Gilliam animation, Guy Maddin, and Jackass, the physical humor approaches juvenile transcendence. Structured using a perfectly pure cartoon logic that makes the gags better as they repeat and iterate, Hundreds Of Beavers boasts more laughs than beavers—and that’s saying something. From its bar brawl to its courtroom drama to its “dogs playing cards” bit, it’s as funny, inventive, and impressive a comedy as we’ve had in years. [Jacob Oller]

2. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Supposedly one of the year’s most anticipated sequels, Furiosa was one of several high-profile bombs. But unlike Joker 2 and Megalopolis, Furiosa delivered the unrestrained talents of its creator in a wholly satisfying form, albeit one different from what audiences expected. Furiosa was decidedly not Mad Max: Fury Road. Instead of a feature-length chase sequence, director George Miller orchestrated a five-part tour of the Wasteland with a stowaway bildungsroman following Furiosa (Alyla Browne as a child, then Anya Taylor-Joy) through a thrilling odyssey. Each chapter is its own Mad Max movie, sporting a distinct and expertly choreographed setpiece that would amount to showing off if Miller weren’t so good at hooking his viewers with creativity and ambition. Miller finds moments of deep resonance in shared gestures between Furiosa and Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) and the passage of time via a sprouting tree. Those fragments of hope don’t come easy. Furiosa must fend off the deranged charisma of Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) and the endless War Boys willing to go kamikaze to catch Immortan Joe’s (Lachy Hulme) attention. Miller unearths the depths of his fantasy world and our own, turning Furiosa into a myth from the near future, a legend of classical story beats and ancient wisdom, elegance, and horror. In 2024, with its scorching cinematography and analogs to the carnival-barking death-cult leaders that rule our overheating wasteland, Furiosa can feel like staring into the sun, burning with immense power and ferocity. But rest assured, Miller had it in him to make it epic. [Matt Schimkowitz]

1. Challengers

Earlier this month, Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua said he was “a little horny” as he ran his route, “ready to get the ball.” If this quote—an admittedly silly collision of sex drive and high-level athletic competitiveness—was volleyed out between thrumming electronic tracks blasted all the way from Berghain, it would reflect the experience of watching Challengers. The tale of a toxic tennis throuple, bounced back and forth through time by Justin Kuritzkes’ script, is a riveting and energetic deconstruction of what we hunger for. Is achievement what tennis studs Patrick (Josh O’Connor), Art (Mike Faist), and Tashi (Zendaya) are truly after? Wealth? Sexual fulfillment? Or is it just about power? As director Luca Guadagnino and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom keep our heads turning through clever shot constructions and dizzyingly aerobic maneuvers, Challengers finds the beauty in competition slowly morphing into something closer to collaboration. We don’t all need the same things, but we’re all happier when we’re slotted into the right roles. As dirtbag Patrick and feeble Art’s long relationship evolves, as their desire for tough-as-nails Tashi shifts, and as Tashi finally looks her own needs in the eye, the film’s sexual and professional dynamics reflect and refract before settling into a sweaty, sublime embrace. It’s a riveting, rollicking, thigh-centric race to psychosexual completion between three actors reveling in the layers. [Jacob Oller]