Dynamic Top Tens of 2024

[low]

1 The Taste of Things (Tran)
2

[nicolas]

So far:

1. The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Rasoulof)
2. Nickel Boys (Ross)
3. Challengers (Guadagnino)
4. Queer (Guadagnino)
5. Anora (Baker)
6. Dune: Part Two (Villeneuve)
7. Hard Truths (Leigh)
8. A Real Pain (Eisenberg)
9. Sing Sing (Kwedar)
10. The Apprentice (Abbasi)
11. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Miller)

Still with more to come.

[RSTooley]

Anora
Civil War
Conclave
Dune: Part Two
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
His Three Daughters
Hit Man
I Saw the TV Glow
A Real Pain
The Substance

[cantinflas]

AGGRO DR1FT
Joker: Folie à Deux
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1
Look Into My Eyes
A Family Affair
The Killer
Juror #2
Here
Trap

[Altair]

1. The Brutalist
2. Anora
3. Dune: Part Two
4. Challengers
5. Bonjoue Tristesse
6. Queer
7. Caligula: the Ultimate Cut
8. Conclave
9. The Substance
10. Babygirl
...
11. A Complete Unknown
12. Nosferatu
13. Maria
14. Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat
15. Megalopolis
16. Joker: Folie à Deux
17. Alien: Romulus
18. Caught by the Tides
19. Wolfs
10. Gladiator II
21. Blitz
22. Parthenope
23. Emmanuelle

[Yakushima]

1. Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron.
2. Perfect Days.
3. Oddity.
4. Maxxxine.
5. Drive-Away Dolls.
6. The Shrouds.
7. The Taste of Things (La passion de Dodin Bouffant).
8. Furiosa.
9. Dune: Part Two.

It had its moments, but overall I found it wanting: Hit Man.

Disliked: Kinds of Kindness, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

Avoid at all cost: Alien: Romulus; Blink Twice.

(Updated 05-10-2025)

[Soy Cuba]

1. The Zone of Interest
2. All of us Strangers
3. Io capitano
4. Monster
5. La Chimera
6. Blackbird, Blackbird, Blackberry
7. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
8. Memory
9. Poor Things
10. The Teacher's Lounge

[Mr Sausage]

—Edited August 17th, 2024.

1. The Zone of Interest
2. The Devil's Bath
3. Steppenwolf
4. I Saw the TV Glow
5. Love Lies Bleeding
6. Only the River Flows
7. Handling the Undead
8. Kinds of Kindness
9. Electrophilia
10. Longlegs

[jbeall]

1. Dune, part two
2. Godzilla Minus One
3. Hit Man
4. Under Paris
5. Bottoms
6. Kneecap
7. Emilia Pérez
8. The Invisible Fight
9. Deadpool & Wolverine (by no means a great film, but I watched this two days after Election Day, and the constant stream of invective coming from Logan was exactly what I needed at the time)
10. Furiosa, I guess. I didn't particularly care for it, but it came out in 2024.

[lacritfan]

The Brutalist
Anora
Kinds of Kindness
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
La chimera
Dune: Part Two
Love Lies Bleeding
I Saw the TV Glow
Deadpool & Wolverine

[zedz]

Revised list, now fully populated:

TOP TEN

Oceans Are the Real Continents (Tomasso Santambrogio, Cuba) - Stunning and wildly ambitious debut feature the explores the idea of exile in contemporary Cuba through three intercutting stories. The film patiently elaborates the thematic harmonies between three very different sets of characters while detailing the local environment of San Antonio and dipping into various sub-narratives (Milagro's letters; Edith's marionette performance; Franck's dreams). Santambrogio's template for this gorgeous low-budget epic is clearly Lav Diaz, but that's a model more under-resourced filmmakers should be taking advantage of, and this film at every other level is fiercely personal and original.

Menus-Plaisirs: Les Troisgros (Frederick Wiseman, France) – It’s such a delicious indulgence to spend four hours with a master filmmaker at the peak of his craft. This detailed look at one family and their two restaurants has in spades both the hypnotic attention to process and the wider awareness of social issues that are Wiseman’s raison d’etre, but it’s also distinguished by a perfect fit between the scale of the subject and the scale of the film, which allows us to gain a deep understanding of the way the restaurants function, but also a deep understanding of the character dynamics of the participants (something many of Wiseman’s films don’t have the luxury of exploring). At 93, Wiseman has made one of the best films of his career.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Mohammad Rasoulof, Iran) – Is this great contemporary filmmaker finally going to get his due? This is an impossible movie to ignore. In this film, Rasoulof turns his attention from the obvious victims of the Iranian regime to the establishment, and finds characters subject to the same means of suppression and control. Set against the backdrop of the popular protests following the state murder of Mahsa Amini (the documenting of which in this film via phone footage would have been more than enough to send Rasoulof to prison), we observe the slow motion conflagration of an investigating judge’s family. As tensions escalate, the film itself transitions from genre to genre in unexpected ways.

Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes, Portugal) - Another fabulous whatsit from Gomes. Perhaps not as narratively convoluted as Arabian Nights, but it's not for lack of effort. This is a picaresque farrago of multi-lingual narration, documentary footage, Sternbergian studio-bound exotica and gleefully careless anachronism. It's deeply frivolous and deeply serious, following its twin protagonists on twin journeys of selfish self-determination throughout a patchwork simulacrum of 1910s Asia, steadily squandering audience sympathy. What emerges is a portrait of the colonialist project as one of conquest and escape, rapacity and cowardice. Plus it's really funny and amazing to look at.

Explanation for Everything (Gabor Reisz, Hungary) – A thrillingly specific and thrillingly universal drama exploring how the polarization of Hungarian society under Orban’s populism impacts on the life of a student undergoing his final exams, and how that impact in turn impinges on everybody around him. The film has the energy, empathy and observational acuity of the best of the Czech New Wave, and Reisz’s superb script gives every character (and their actors) the chance to make their own case.

Evil Does Not Exist (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Japan) - I would have been delighted if he'd carried on making unwieldy post-Rivette ensemble pieces in the vein of Happy Hour for the rest of his / my life, but it's been a thrill watching Hamaguchi develop his craft and expand his range with every feature. This is a beautifully observed portrait of a small community and its relationship to the natural environment that has one foot firmly in the demotic and practical and the other drifting somewhere out there in the supernatural. Very, very Shinto. Immaculate filmmaking, perfectly pitched.

Viet and Nam (Truong Minh Quy, Vietnam) – The third film in my top ten to be filmed in Academy ratio. Here the mine-shaft / container-door shaped frame is appropriate to the sweet, dark tale to two coal-miners in love, and their dreams of escape.

Dying (Mathias Glasner, Germany) – “Hello, my name is Tom. My father has dementia, my mother has terminal cancer, my sister is an alcoholic, and my best friend is mentally ill. The three-hour film in which I appear is called Dying, but is nevertheless not a comedy.” It’s also not a wallow in misery, but instead a meticulously observed, compelling relationship drama built around several startling set-pieces (a concert, a frank conversation between parent and child, avant-garde dentistry) that refuses to settle into tropes of reassurance. Pulling off this kind of film on this kind of scale requires uniform excellence in direction, writing and acting, and everybody here does their bit to perfection.

Flow (Gints Zilbalodis, Latvia) – Gorgeous Latvian animated feature that matches grand environmental spectacle with superbly observed animal behaviour. A feast of purely visual storytelling: watching this feels like watching a future classic.

My Favourite Cake (Maryam Moghaddam / Behtash Sanaeeha, Iran) - I went into this with low expectations of a Wrinkly Wromance (two seventy-somethings finally find lurve, and presumably bond over a delicious cake), but had the Persian rug comprehensively pulled from under me by the film's toughness, frankness and rigour. Avoid spoilers going in.

NEXT TEN

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (Johan Grimonprez, Belgium) – Daunting, encyclopaedic found-footage account of the rise and fall of Patrice Lumumba and its international repercussions, all footnoted to within an inch of its life. Grimonprez’s unlikely thesis is that this scandal has intimate ties with American jazz, but he finds enough evidence to back it up, and it means that the film has perhaps the most awesome soundtrack ever assembled.

All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia, India) – A magical meshing of city symphony, character portrait and drifting dream-play, which puts it somewhere in the vicinity of various Taiwanese New Wave classics. There’s a contrapuntal play of sustained and shifting tones that suggests Kapadia is already a master.

Sex (Dag Johan Haugerud, Norway) – You’re heard the one about the two gay coal-miners (Viet and Nam), but have you heard the one about the two not gay, no, definitely not gay, nope, nothing to see here chimney sweeps? A bone-dry comedy of manners, capturing in counter-intuitive cinemascope a series of very funny extended dialogues about, among other things, how much stock should you put in David Bowie looking at you funny in a dream. Also includes a cautionary tale about tattoo fonts. Good news: it's the first part of a proposed triloigy.

Eno (Gary Hustwit, USA) – Literally a one-of-a-kind film. I could tell you that the film I saw was the best documentary ever made and you couldn’t prove me wrong (since you’ll never see it if you weren’t there.) But I think this is safe to recommend in any version. Eno is a great talker and he’s had a fascinating life, so the chances of the AI generating a dull portrait is pretty remote.

The Beast (Bertrand Bonello, France) – Crazy, lavish science fiction thingie featuring peak Lea Seydoux.

The Outrun (Nora Fingscheidt, UK) - Flashily directed addiction memoir that hangs together because the variegated stylistic decisions are appropriate and considered and, even if they weren't, Saoirse Ronan provides a central performance that grabs you by the throat and drags you through the narrative.

Crossing (Levan Akin, Sweden) – This is only notionally a Swedish film (it's set in Georgia and Turkey.) A curmudgeonly schoolteacher teams up with a callow youth to track down her estranged trans niece, who long ago fled to Istanbul. Crossing threatens to be a facile, modish, inspirational quest-for-understanding tale. Bonds will be formed; scales will fall from eyes; the trans lady lawyer will come to the rescue, yada yada yada. But the film keeps being better, smarter and more ambitious than you expect. There’s a dazzling plan-sequence when the characters board the ferry to Istanbul that signals that we’re going on an interesting voyage after all, and the portrait of the city’s underside that follows is detailed and persuasive. The beats don’t follow as expected and there’s a shattering outburst of emotion towards the end that comes out of nowhere.

The Teachers’ Lounge (Ilker Catak, Germany) – A strong entry in the recent spate of “school as the battleground of adults” films (see also Explanation for Everything, Armand, Dormitory).

Agent of Happiness (Arun Bhattarai / Dorotta Zurbo, Bhutan) – Two pollsters for Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index roam around the (spectacular) countryside quizzing people about their lives. Droll and charming, but with important satirical and critical moments that add weight.

The Story of Souleymane (Boris Lojkine, France) – Excellent, tense Dardennes-style portrait of an asylum seeker in Paris juggling way too many obligations. The film eschews artificial drama, because there’s more than enough in Souleymane’s everyday existence. The full significance of the title is not apparent until the end of the film, and it’s perfect.

Also Recommended:
Black Box Diaries (Shiori Ito, Japan); Black Dog (Guan Hu, China); Brief History of a Family (Lin Jianjie, China); Dahomey (Mati Diop, France); Dormitory (Nehir Tuna, Turkey); Grand Theft Hamlet (Pinny Grylls / Sam Crane, UK); Green Border (Agnieszka Holland, Poland); Janet Planet (Annie Baker, USA); Shambhala (Min Bahadur Bham, Nepal); Tatami (Guy Nattiv / Zar Amir Ebrahami, Georgia);
The Universal Theory (Timm Kroger, Germany)

[bottlesofsmoke]

1. La Chimera
2. Furiosa
3. Hit Man
4. Civil War
5. Nosferatu
6. Megalopolis
7. Challangers
8. Rebel Ridge
9. Dune: Part 2
10. Babygirl

Also Seen and Enjoyed: Chime, The Substance, I Saw the TV Glow, Love Lies Bleeding, Blink Twice, Caddo Lake, Abigail, Maxxxine, Longlegs, Monkey Man, Wicked, Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, Trap, Carry-On, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Juror #2

Also Seen: Drive Away Dolls, The Bikeriders, The Fall Guy, Alien: Romulus, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, A Quiet Place: Day One, Salem’s Lot, Wolfs, Strange Darling, Mufasa, Conclave, Twisters, Transformers: One, Nightbitch

[denti alligator]

I have never (about 20 years on the forum now, incredible!), contributed to this list, in part because I’ve always been woefully behind on the contemporary scene, rarely get a chance to go to festivals let alone an independent theater. But with the fudging of 2023 and 2024 I already see here, I can go ahead and list a few films that really impressed me:

1. Anselm (in 3D)
2. The Teacher’s Lounge
3. My Favourite Cake
4. La Chimera
5. Ripely


I have my sights on some title recommended above, so maybe I’ll update by the year’s end.

[JamesF]

Films released in UK cinemas in 2024 that I potentially like enough to put in a year-end Top 10, as of the end of September:

The Zone of Interest
Perfect Days
Dune Part Two
Immaculate
Io Capitano
Evil Does Not Exist
Abigail
Challengers
La Chimera
Furiosa
The Beast
The Dead Don’t Hurt
I Saw The TV Glow
Only The River Flows
Speak No Evil
Anora
Conclave

[Persona]

1. Furiosa
2. Ripley
3. La Chimera
4. Conclave
5. Flow
6. Rebel Ridge
7. Juror #2
8. Sonic the Hedgehog 3
9. Carry-On
10. Challengers

[beamish14]

1. Megalopolis
2. Anora
3. The Greatest Love Story Never Told
4. This is Me…Now

Nearly 30 years after collaborating on Jack, Francis Ford Coppola and Jennifer Lopez both unveiled two parallel, self-financed narratives about trying to survive in a hostile cultural landscape that seeks to denigrate and marginalize the true artists among us. Both of their respective works use mythologized versions of the New York City they sprang from, rife with legends, fairy tales, and traumas from which their art springs from.

[eerik]

1. Love Lies Bleeding
2. Dune: Part Two
3. Challengers
4. Flow
5. The Substance
6. Civil War
7. Anora
8. Immaculate
9. Furiosa

Worst of the year: Emilia Pérez (and yes, I've seen Madame Web)

[lzx]

1. All We Imagine as Light
2. Coma (Bonello)
3. Trap
4. A Different Man
5. All of Us Strangers
6. A New Old Play
7. The Other Way Around
8. I Saw the TV Glow
9. Silent Trilogy
10. The Beast (Bonello)

[yoshimori]

Posting from a list of films I first saw this year, as long as the films weren't released before 2022.

1. Don Herzfeldt, "Me" (2024)
2. Okuyama Hiroshi, Boku no ohisama [My Sunshine) (2024)
3. RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys (2024)
4. Yorgos Lanthimos, Kinds of Kindness (2024)
5. Harmony Korine, Aggro Dr1ft (2023)
6. Nakagawa Shun, Sayonara, Girls (2022)
7. Hernán Rosselli, Algo viejo, algo nuevo, algo prestado [Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed] (2024)
8. Igarashi Kohei, Super Happy Forever (2024)
9. Trương Minh Quý, Trong lòng đất [Underground, aka Viet and Nam] (2024)
10. Bertrand Bonello, Coma (2022)

11. Cyril Schäublin, Unrüh [Unrest] (2022)
12. Steve McQueen, Occupied City (2023)
13. Sean Price Williams, The Sweet East (2023)
14. Leos Carax, "C’est Pas Moi" ["It's Not Me"] (2024)
15. Godfrey Reggio, "Once within a Time" (2022)

I'll put in another plug for my favorite "film" of 2023, which I watched again this year: Zhang Dalei's mini-series Moses on the Plain [aka Why Try to Change Me Now]. The two shorts on the 4K set of the series - "All Tomorrow's Parties" (2022) and "The Day is Done" (2020) - are pretty great too.

[Balthazar]

1. Scenarios/PotToaF 'Scenario' (Godard)
2. Chime (Kurosawa)
3. Misericordia (Guiraudie)
4. All We Imagine As Light (Kapadia)
5. The Human Surge 3 (Williams)
6. The Shrouds (Cronenberg)
7. Trap (Shyamalan)
8. Showing Up (Reichardt)
9. The Other Way Around (Trueba)
10. Grand Tour (Gomes)

[BrianB]

1. The Brutalist
2. Ripley
3. A Real Pain
4. Flow
5. Nosferatu
6. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
7. I Saw the TV Glow
8. A Complete Unknown
9. The Bikeriders
10. Dunkin’: The DunKings

[nitin]

1. April
2. A Different Man
3. All We Imagine as Light
4. Black Dog
5. Grand Tour
6. Babygirl
7. I Saw the TV Glow
8. Furiosa
9. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
10. Motel Destino


Honourable Mentions: The Substance, La Cocina, Queer, Bird, Love Lies Bleeding, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Challengers, Anora, I'm Still Here, Oh Canada, Maria, A Real Pain, Small Things Like These

Others Seen: MaXXXine, Longlegs, Flow, Civil War, Nosferatu

[DeParis]

1. Nickel Boys
2. Challengers
3. Beyond Utopia
4. I Saw the TV Glow
5. The Brutalist
6. Seed of a Sacred Fig
7. Late Night with the Devil
8. The Apprentice
9. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
10. Kinds of Kindness

Also Seen: Love Lies Bleeding; Chaperone; When Morning Comes; Seven Blessings; All About the Levkoviches; The Contestant; Abigail; Sing Sing; Longlegs; Didi; The Bikeriders; Between the Temples; The Substance; Babes; The Black Sea; Saturday Night; Conclave; Maxxxine; Anora; Wicked; Femme; A Real Pain; All We Imagine As Light; The Piano Lesson; Queer; Sugarcane; Nosferatu; I'm Still Here; The Girl with the Needle; Emilia Pérez; Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl; Flow; September 5; A Complete Unknown; Hard Truths; Dune II; Babygirl; Blink Twice; A Different Man; Bird; Snack Shack; Blitz; Dahomey

[escharlotteauthor]

01 The Seed of the Sacred Fig
02 The Brutalist
03 I Saw the TV Glow
04 Caught by the Tides
05 Miséricorde
06 All We Imagine as Light
07 Love Lies Bleeding
08 Anora
09 The Substance
10 Flow
11 Dune: Part Two
12 Hit Man
13 Conclave
14 Showing Up
15 Civil War

[geoffcowgill]

1- Anora
2- Love Lies Bleeding
3- A Real Pain
4- Conclave
5- Kinds of Kindness
6- The Nickel Boys
7- I’m Still Here
8- Hard Truths
9- Friendship
10- The Brutalist