The top 50 films of 2024 - Part II, with trailers
Our film critic, Mark Walsh, concludes his review of the best films of 2024, from 25 to 1. How many have you seen?
You can see part I of his list, from numbers 50-26, here.
25 The Outrun
Saoirse Ronan offers this year’s entry into her acting roll of honour as a woman struggling with alcoholism who retreats to the Orkneys to find herself again. Director Nora Fingscheidt uses a non-linear story structure and episodes of animation with great effect to put the story in its Scottish context.
24 Civil War
Alex Garland’s almost too-on-the-nose drama has a what-if scenario that imagines a president not too dissimilar to the 47th (and played by Nick Offernan) creating a schism in the States, and Kirsten Dunst leading a team of photojournalists to track him down. One of the year’s best soundtracks.
23 Perfect Days
Wim Wenders’ story of a toilet cleaner (Koji Yakusho) going about his business in Tokyo contained some of the greater moments of quiet beauty in 2024, while a cassette-based soundtrack in his car of The Animals, The Rolling Stones and Lou Reed supplemented the mood perfectly.
22 A Quiet Place: Day One
Prequels have no real right to be as good as this, but A Quiet Place continues to deliver by offering up another variation on the experience of keeping quiet to avoid alien terror. Here it’s Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn who find themselves finding solace among the carnage in the story of the aliens’ arrival.
21 Evil Does Not Exist
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s follow up to Drive My Car proves that he can do in-car conversations better than almost anyone. A glamping development threatens the environment of a rural village; one of the film’s unlikely highlights is the town meeting following a Powerpoint presentation.
20 The Wild Robot
Lupita Nyong’o has the chance to put her voice to the robot attempting to teach an orphaned goose to fly. This Dreamworks animation evokes greats of hand-drawn animation but also finds its own style. Director Chris Sanders gave us Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon, but this is his best yet.
19 The Substance
The latest actor to experience a late career renaissance is Demi Moore, giving a fearless performance as a woman who injects a substance to create a second, younger version of herself (Margaret Qualley) with rules and consequences. The body horror of Cronenberg meets the lurid satire of Verhoeven to brilliantly gory effect.
18 Kneecap
Bear with me: they’re a real Irish hip-hop band but this is a made-up origin story with Michael Fassbender playing the fictional father of one of the group. The music keeps Rich Peppiatt’s film moving at a breakneck pace, with a threatening undercurrent balanced out by the band’s comedic rise to fame.
17 La Chimera
Italian director Alice Rohrwacher brings a dreamlike quality to the story of Josh O’Conner as a British archaeologist turned looter pulling at the threads of his former life. It’s a drifting, wistful concoction which fondly hankers after times past and refuses to bow to conventions.
16 Anora
Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Red Rocket) melds bits of Pretty Woman and Green Card into this reverse-Cinderella story of a dancer (Mikey Madison) who marries the son of an oligarch in Vegas before her new in-laws try to intervene. Among the frills and the farce there’s a tender, beating heart.
15 Longlegs
Nicolas Cage is still one of the most fascinating actors working today and he’s gone full Cage (as well as producing) in this procedural horror with Silence of the Lambs vibes. Osgood Perkins (son of Psycho’s Anthony) creates an atmosphere of unease that’s almost claustrophobic by the final scenes.
14 Challengers
Another good year for Luca Guadagnino; the Call Me By Your Name director delivered both Daniel Craig in Queer and this competitive tennis love triangle which positively sizzles. Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist are the ex and the husband fighting for Zendaya’s attentions on and off the tennis court.
13 Our Body
Claire Simon’s documentary about a French gynaecological ward is a frank, revealing cross-section of life in all its forms that takes on a more personal turn for its director as the film progresses. A remarkable testament both to the resilience of humanity and the compassion of the healing professions.
12 Io Capitano
Using moments of magical realism to offset the hardship of refugees attempting to negotiate the tragic pitfalls of crossing half of Africa, hoping against hope to reach the perceived safety of southern Europe, could be jarring, but Gomorrah director Matteo Garrone gets the most out his flecks of escapist beauty while capturing the unrelenting turmoil of the journey.
11 Dune: Part Two
Denis Villeneuve managed to deliver the concluding half of his magnum opus adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel to the same level of quality as the opening. Cast additions Florence Pugh, Austin Butler and Christopher Walken add spice (pardon the pun) to an already heady mix, and Timothée Chalamet seizes the chance to create a more layered, complex protagonist.
10 Sing Sing
Prison inmates putting on a musical would feel like an enormous cliché if it wasn’t based on the real-life rehabilitation programme of the titular maximum security prison. Actors Colman Domingo and Paul Raci lead a cast of former Sing Sing inmates where the prisoners acquit themselves equally in the acting stakes with their professional counterparts. Joyously empowering.
9 Monster
If you had to put money on one director appearing in my top 50 – even my top 10 – then Shoplifters director Hirokazu Kore-eda, so gifted in exploring the permutations of family life, should be your annual tip. Here he uses the differing perspectives of a mother, her son and his teacher to gradually reveal the truth of their relationships and situations.
8 Conclave
Edward Berger’s follow-up to All Quiet on the Western Front has a cast list to die for: Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow and Isabella Rossellini are among those gathered for the process of selecting a new Pope in this adaptation of Robert Harris’ novel that critiques the state of the church while delivering gripping drama and unexpected hope.
7 Close Your Eyes
When Victor Erice makes a film, it’s worth paying attention. After giving us The Spirit of the Beehive and El Sur, the Spanish director returns after a three-decade gap with a film that’s as in love with cinema as Cinema Paradiso and offers a beguiling mystery in the form of a TV show reopening an investigation into the disappearance of an actor two decades earlier.
6 The Zone of Interest
The achievement of Jonathan Glazer’s film, which takes Martin Amis’ novel as its starting point, is to explore the horror of the Holocaust through the mundanity of the everyday life of its perpetrators. The reality of the terrors being enacted are set in sharper relief by their consignment to the periphery of the attempts of Rudolf Höss and his wife (Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller) to carve out a normal life amid the atrocities.
5 Wicked
I will admit to no small nervousness that a musical which I liked but didn’t love on stage, extended to more than twice its length and divided into two parts, could be any form of success, but it’s perfectly paced, gloriously colourful and in its leads, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, has two powerhouses who deliver impeccable performances as the witchy university colleagues in this Wizard of Oz prequel. Jon M Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) guides the songs to gravity-defying heights.
4 The Holdovers
Inexplicably releasing an utterly heartwarming Christmas film in January might be a solid tactic for awards season, but it means that this is the first nativity season where we can actually enjoy Paul Giamatti’s gradually thawing curmudgeon and Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s award-winning performance as the cafeteria manager who chips away at his frostiness when they’re confined to a boarding school for the holidays.
3 Poor Things
I am a Yorgos Lanthimos fanboy, ever since Dogtooth, and the director of The Favourite reunites with one of its stars Emma Stone for this adaptation of Alasdair Grey’s novel with hints of Frankenstein and large dollops of Lanthimos’ weirdness. Mark Ruffalo’s raffish Romeo, Robbie Ryan’s rich cinematography and Jerskin Fendrix’s jagged score help to create a singular vision that’s frank, funny and fearless.
2 The Taste of Things
Tran Anh Hung’s romantic drama opens with a 38-minute sequence where cook Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) prepares a comprehensive meal for her partner in food, gourment Dodin (Benoît Magimel). It’s an absorbing love letter to food, friendship and attention to detail that’s ravishing and luxurious. If this doesn’t sound utterly transcendent – because it is – then maybe we shouldn’t be friends, because it’s just the start of a banquet of cinematic delight that I simply adored.
1 All of Us Strangers
Andrew Haigh broke me. It’s as simple as that. Half an hour after the end of Haigh’s achingly beautiful story of family, reconciliation and regret I was still sobbing into my sleeve. Andrew Scott visits his childhood home, only to find his long-deceased parents Jamie Bell and Claire Foy seemingly alive and captured in time. While there, he has the chance to discuss his sexuality with them, contrasted with his tentative new relationship with Paul Mescal. Deeply profound, it means I’ll never be able to listen to Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s The Power of Love again without disintegrating. Halfway into the decade, it’s my favourite film so far.
Look out for Mark’s previous guides to the top movies of 2023 (part I and part II), 2022 (part I and part II), 2021 (part I and part II), 2020 (part I and part II), 2019 (part I and part II) and 2018 (part I and part II), plus a guide of the best movies of the first 20 years of this century (part I and part II).
