The Best Movies of 2024

Tragic romances, corrupted power fantasies, unlikely action heroes and doomed pursuits of the American Dream made up the best feature films of this past year.

As seems to be the case for as long as I’ve been doing this, every year seems to be a less-than-great year at the movies until I sit down to compile a list of favorites only to have to make a bunch of hard choices. That this year was a little more challenging in a different way is only because A) I did a miserable job catching up with foreign films and documentaries and B) I “liked but didn’t love” a slew of films that probably made many other critics’ ten-best lists. The latter isn’t exactly a problem in any other regard, “Oh no, I merely thought Janet Planet, Longlegs and Challengers were pretty good.” Still, it did make me question whether I had enough outright (personally subjective) gems to compile this year’s list.

Until that is, I sat down to compile this year’s list. Regardless of what makes money in theaters and what attracts online or real-world attention, almost every year is a wonderful year for films. There were plenty of movies that didn’t make my cut but probably made yours, so you can assume that the likes of Wicked, Nickel Boys, Exhibiting Forgiveness, My Old Ass, A Real Pain or Flow were all tied for eleventh place. As always, this is my list, not yours, and if we all matched, this wouldn’t be much fun. So, without further ado, I present to you, using my patented formula of math, science and dark magic, the nine best movies (primarily offered in cowardly alphabetical order) plus the absolute best film (a genuine miracle of a movie) of 2024.