Movies & TV / Columns
The Top 30 Films of 2024 (#20 – 11)
Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Welcome, one and all, to the start of my Movies Year in Review for 2024! I’m your host Jeremy Thomas, and today we’re moving to the next 10 in my top films of the past 12 months in order to examine the best. Keep in mind that this list is meant to be my personal opinion and not a definitive list. You’re free to disagree; you can even say my list is wrong but stating that an opinion is “wrong” is just silly. With that in mind, let’s get right into it!
Earlier this week I kicked off my Top 30 Films of 2024 list with numbers 30 through 21, which had a lot of action and a bit of horror. We’re now onto the middle portion of the list where we’ll be diving into some more of the same, but also adding drama, comedy and a little music to the mix. No need to keep teasing; it’s just get into it.
Caveat: My criteria for a film qualifying for this list is simple: if a narrative film had its domestic release this past year, either theatrically or on VOD or a major streaming service, then it was eligible. The only other caveat is that I have tried, but have not seen everything that was released in 2024, especially factoring in streaming services. The films that I missed that could have likely qualified based on reputation were The Last Showgirl, Emilia Perez, Nickel Boys, September 5, A Different Man, Better Man, and All We Imagine as Light. Other than that, I feel reasonably confident I would have seen just about every movie that would have likely made the list. For those curious, I saw a total of 233 films that were released in 2024 (up from last year’s 218), 192 of which were narrative films.
Just Missing The Cut
• The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
• Abigail
• Longlegs
• Restore Point
• Conclave
The First Ten
30: The Order
29: Blink Twice
28: Boy Kills World
27: Late Night with the Devil
26: Kill
25: Strange Darling
24: MadS
23: Civil War
22: Deadpool & Wolverine
21: Immaculate
#20: Azrael
Samara Weaving has become one of the go-to stars when you need a horror actress in recent years, and she proves her genre credentials again with Azrael. E.L. Katz’ survival religious horror film is a challenging piece in some ways; set in a post-Rapture world among a cult that has ritually muted themselves, the film is almost 100% dialogue-free. It’s a gimmick that doesn’t always work; just look at John Woo’s Silent Night for an example of a great director who couldn’t get the storytelling worked out without speaking. But here, it works. A huge part of that is Simon Barrett’s script, which does nothing in terms of handholding but effectively lays out the world in its quick opening scrawl. If you know Christian lore and understand that this is a post-Rapture world, it’s not hard to pick up the hints of what is being laid down.
The simplicity of the setup allows Weaving’s Azrael to sell the story as she and her lover (an underused but fantastic Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) try to escape the cult and avoid the burned demonic creatures now haunting the world. Katz avoids exposition and instead immerses us in the world — specifically Azrael’s quest to survive. Weaving carries it all with a brilliant physical performance and Katz puts her through Evil Dead levels of torment for some nail-biting scenes of tension. The forest setting is gorgeously terrifying, the cultists provide a formidable group of antagonists for Weaving, and the character’s journey to ruthless badass is fully believable and top-notch action horror to boot. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but this is one of my favorites of the year without question.
#19: Love Lies Bleeding
Speaking of films that may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Rose Glass gave us one of the more divisive horror films of 2021 with Saint Maud, which I loved. If the polarizing reaction to that film gave Glass any urge to tone it down, she doesn’t show it in Love Lies Bleeding. A lesbian neo-noir crime thriller with surreal elements, Bleeding sees Glass truly swing for the fences and score thanks to her starkly beautiful visuals, a very solid story and knockout performances by Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, and Ed Harris. Stewart and O’Brian make a glorious set of star-crossed lovers and Harris gives a menacing turn as the mob boss father of Stewart’s gym manager Lou. It’s a trifecta of wonderful genre performances as good as anything neo-noir has given us as of late.
Glass’ story goes in some unreal directions, with some dreamlike elements embedded late in the game. Admittedly, it doesn’t all work perfectly. But Glass is so good at establishing the vibes of her films that any small execution missteps are easily forgiven — especially when, and there’s not really another way to say it, this movie fucks so hard. Glass conjures an eroticism that we haven’t seen in a neo-noir on this level since Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly melted the screen in Bound back in 1996. The sex and psychological suspense elements are complemented by the ’80s mood, punctuations of shocking violence and a final “WTF” moment that may make or break the movie for you but is at least admirable in its audacity. I was already on board the Rose Glass train after Saint Maud, but Love Lies Bleeding made me an official ride or die fan.
#18: Rebel Ridge
Netflix had a tough 2024 when it comes to films, with far more misses (and wide ones) than hits. But if nothing else, it can say it had the best action thriller of the year with Rebel Ridge. An absolute star-making turn from Aaron Pierre centers Jeremy Saulnier’s most accessible film to date. Pierre plays Terry, a former Marine who arrives in a small town to pay his cousin’s bail when he has a run-in with the corrupt local police. That sets off a chain of events that puts Terry head-to-head with the police chief (Don Johnson), who quickly realizes his department isn’t prepared for what they’re up against.
Saulnier has plenty of experience looking at small-town tension and while Rebel Ridge doesn’t quite have the razor’s edge of his neo-Nazi siege thriller Green Room, it finds its own groove through Pierre’s magnetic lead performance and his pairing opposite Johnson. The First Blood feel is strong here, though it’s not just copying that iconic action-thriller. Saulnier paces the film so well that you don’t realize that it goes well over two hours; you’re too wrapped up in Terry’s quest to free his cousin, and then his working with courthouse clerk Summer (a delightful AnnaSophia Robb) to uncover the corruption rampant in the community. With some great action scenes and great work from the top to the bottom of the cast, Rebel Ridge was one of 2024’s most unexpected cinematic joys.
#17: A Complete Unknown
I’ve been a massive Bob Dylan fan for years, so it will surprise no one that I was looking forward to A Complete Unknown. And I’m happy to say that James Mangold didn’t let me down. The director captures the formative era of the legendary singer-songwriter’s career in a way that is far more mainstream than the interpretive 2007 anthology biopic I’m Not There, but he still finds an interesting way to tell Dylan’s road from unassuming folk singer to his decision to “go electric” at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. James Mangold and Jay Cocks lean into Dylan’s famed tendency to just make up his life to present Dylan as a bit of a cipher to the people around him, from his mentor Pete Seeger to his partners in Sylvie Russo (based on the real Suze Rotolo) and Joan Baez.
That narrative decision is a risky one; if your main character is unknowable, the film can come out as a mess. Fortunately, Mangold has Timothée Chalamet to capture Dylan’s essence. Chalamet navigates Dylan’s need to stay distant from everyone around him with a real sense of who his Dylan is. It’s a clever and nuanced performance, amplified by his ability to nail Dylan’s unique vocal stylings. Mangold does fantastic work with the period elements and gets wonderful supporting turns from Edward Norton, Elle Fanning and particularly Monica Barbaro, an absolute standout as Joan Baez. It’s easy for music biopics to fall into an unfortunate formula that makes them seem rote and by the numbers. A Complete Unknown knows the formula and while it colors generally within the lines, it uses genre’s M.O. to its benefit for one of the better such films to come along in quite some time.
#16: A Real Pain
Honestly, A Real Pain isn’t a film that I had on my “must-see” radar even after it came out. I like Jesse Eisenberg well enough and Kieran Culkin is great, but I wouldn’t say that a Holocaust tour dramedy starring the two of them was something that hugely appealed, especially as I thought Eisenberg’s first directorial effort When You Finish Saving the World was merely okay. I’m glad I gave it a chance, because this ended up being better than I possibly could have expected. And in retrospect, it feels like a no-brainer. Of course Eisenberg and Culkin would work together beautifully; of course this is a film that falls right in Eisenberg’s talents as a director. Sure, it hits on a few moments of the awkward humor for which Eisenberg is known, but it works thanks to the performers and he never lets it become too much.
Instead, A Real Pain walks a very tricky set of tightropes. It balances not only between its funny and tragic tones, but also between the personal and cultural. Eisenberg’s pragmatic David has every reason to be frustrated with Culkin’s free-spirited Benji, but Eisenberg also finds the admiration in David for his cousin as well. And the same can be said for how Benji views David. It’s a poignant character study of these two men and how life has shaped them, all told in the shadow of the most horrifying events that mankind has ever known. The supporting cast of characters have their moments, but this is all about Eisenberg and Culkin who give career best performances in a film that is more affecting than I ever would have thought before seeing it.
#15: Dune: Part Two
I will admit that it took me two watches to truly appreciate Dune: Part Two for what it is. In the interests of full disclosure, I will acknowledge that I’m not a fan of the source material but I was blown away with how Denis Villeneuve brought the first film to life. That gave me some heavy anticipation for the sequel and when it came around the first time, I quite liked it but wasn’t quite grabbed as much as I expected to be. It was a matter (once again) of never having been hooked by Paul Atreides as I was everything around him — and it’s not Timothée Chalamet’s fault. He’s just the fantasy epic protagonist and that role has never interested me as much as others.
On the second watch though, I fell fully in love with this film series again as I felt the connection between the characters I do like — Zendaya’s fiery Chani and Rebecca Ferguson’s Lady Jessica, absolutely serving in every scene — and our hero. Villeneuve brings the story home with an epic sci-fi war tale that soars as a spectacle and carries plenty of thematic weight under the hood. The star-filled cast deliver on all fronts, most notably Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha and Florence Pugh as Irulan, both standouts in the supporting cast. Villeneuve gives us what we want out of a movie like this: big action, sweeping emotion, and Shakespearean camp from the right people. I may never count myself as a fan of Frank Herbert’s landmark science fiction books, but this series of films has been an undeniably resounding success.
#14: Nosferatu
Robert Eggers may shoot for the stars, but he doesn’t miss. Eggers has become a unicorn of genre filmmaking, continually making films that probably shouldn’t work whether it’s a period horror tale with 17th century language, a surreal slow-burn psychological horror thriller about lighthouse keepers or a wildly audacious historical action-fantasy Viking epic. Still, as ambitious as those films were, remaking Nosferatu had the potential to be his biggest risk. The iconic vampire film has been successfully made twice already and, given that it’s just a Dracula rip-off at its core, has already had its story told innumerable times. Even with Eggers’ impeccable attention to production and unique touch, one had to wonder if there was anything new he could bring to the oft-told tale.
And this film is just another is why we don’t doubt the man. Sure, Nosferatu does tell the same story as its predecessors. But it does so in a fresh way, not only through the sumptuous attention to detail but also through a few permutations to Ellen, played by Lily-Rose Depp as a latent psychic. This supernatural addition adds a bit of extra resonance to her story and, most notably, gives Depp more to do than the previous versions of the character. Bill Skarsgård is unsurprisingly fantastic as Count Orlock and Nicholas Hoult continued his great year with a layered performance as Thomas Hutter (the Harker character), but Depp is the best surprise as she gives a fantastic performance. Eggers mixes a touch of the eroticism from 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula into the story to great effect and devotes his usual attention to giving the film an oppressive, sicky feel that echoes Orlock’s plague as he arrives in London. The horror sequences are top-notch work and we get a few of the most grotesquely striking images of 2024 (a high bar) in how our titular vampire is portrayed, particularly in the climax. Nosferatu came in with a high bar of expectation against it and still cleared it with ease to be one of 2024’s best horror films.
#13: Oddity
While there were a lot of great horror films in 2024, one wears the crown of the most terrifying jump scare. That champion is Oddity. Damian McCarthy’s latest film contains, without question, the most effective jump scare that I have seen in recent years, which takes place early in the film. But if that was all it had, Oddity wouldn’t be ranking as one of the best horror movies of the year. Oddity also has supernatural mood to spare, as it takes what worked from the writer-director’s 2021 Caveat and refines it into a more focused story. Carolyn Bracken shines in double roles as the murdered wife of a doctor and the twin, blind spiritualist sister who believes there’s more to her twin’s death than meets the eye. Bracken holds the film together as the blind Darcy shows up at the home where Dani died and bringing a creepy mannequin who will help her get to the truth.
McCarthy makes fantastic use of the space he’s working with and conjures up a number of suspenseful moments, punctuated with those high voltage scares. The production design in the film is fantastic and the violence is sparing but striking. There are themes of loss and morality at play in the film, but the real fun is in how McCarthy subverts genre conventions and notions about evil. He plays with elements of folk horror, haunted houses and more and while the mystery behind Dani’s death may not be particularly hard to solve, getting to the truth of the matter is a ton of fun. Oddity was one of those films that came out of nowhere to blow me away, a creepy experience that says with you well after the adrenaline has worn off.
#12: Wicked
I’m a huge fan of musicals, but to be completely honest I had somewhat modest expectations for Wicked. Don’t get me wrong; I was looking forward to it to some degree. You can’t be a musical theater nerd and not get swept up in some of the standout songs from the Broadway musical. But other than that, Wicked has never been a strong favorite of mine and I generally viewed it as perfectly okay. Add in the fact that Universal Pictures felt the need to spread it out to two films and I just wasn’t sure if this was going to grip me the way some of the all-time greats have.
So yeah, as it turns out the doubts were unfounded. John M. Chu found the secret sauce to make the movie version as grandiose and sweeping as it needed to be. Obviously, a huge part of that goes to the cast. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are perfectly cast as Elphaba and Galinda; Erivo embodies everything that fans have love about this iteration of the Wicked Witch of the West and Grande understands the assignment of her character, throwing herself into the entitled mean (but not too mean) girl role with panache. They’re wonderfully matched and surrounded with a top-notch supporting cast that delivers the goods. The music is impeccable; if you don’t feel something when Erivo hits those high notes of “Defying Gravity” in the climax, I wonder about you. But it’s also Chu and his team’s production work that brings his world of Oz to life. Everything in Wicked shines; even Jeff Goldblum, who I love but could have stood out due to his particular persona, is able to fold seamlessly into the world. This film made me a bigger fan of the musical, but it also stands on its own curly-toed feet as the greatest popcorn movie of 2024. At this point, bring on Wicked: For Good because I’ll be there with bells on.
#11: Heretic
A24 may have found new competition as the hot indie horror company in 2024 with NEON, but that doesn’t mean it has ceded the crown just yet. Case in point: Heretic. It’s a film that is probably gonna make at least a few people pretty angry at it because when you mix religion and horror, someone’s going to get upset. But honestly, whether you find it provocative or not this intricate and talky film from Scott Beck and Bryan Woods is a just a stellar piece of filmmaking on any level. Woods and Beck know exactly what they’re doing in this film, which sets up a spiritual and mental battle between its three leads and gives them all the room they need to shine. Hugh Grant plays with the nervously polite British charm that we expect of him, giving it a sinister edge that makes his makes Mr. Reed even more terrifying. Meanwhile, Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East rise to the challenge, making us care about their Mormon missionaries while also making them resourceful and full of depths we might not fully expect.
I fully get if people take some issue with the first couple acts. It’s easy to go at both sides of the argument that Mr. Reed and the Sisters represent about religion generally, and Mormonism specifically. But I don’t think that Beck and Woods are trying to prove one point over the other. The authorial statement is less in the specific points of view and we don’t need to understand religion through Mr. Reed or Sisters Barnes or Paxton; we just need to understand the characters because it’s how they relate to the themes. They’re all searching for answers and are certain at the start of the film that they’ve found it. Heretic is a film about questioning your faith. Do you come out of the questions stronger, or more dangerous (or both)? Do you go through the door of Belief or of Disbelief? One of the characters may say it doesn’t matter, but I tend to believe that it does.
All that is to say that the directors do a fantastic amount of plotting in the dialogue-heavy scenes and that allows the film to soar even when things get a bit more heavy-handed in the final act. Once our characters have talked themselves out and it’s time for the more traditional horror conventions to make their presence known, the production work takes over and Grant, Thatcher, and East keep the whole thing sailing smooth. It’s an incredibly clever film that manages to be intense and exciting, even when it’s just three people talking in a room. When it’s all said and done, Heretic feels like a film that will stand the test of time in the way that some other horror films this year won’t.
And that will do it for part one! Join me once again later this week as we conclude the Year in Review with the top ten. Until later this week, don’t forget to read the many other great columns, news articles and more here at 411mania.com! JT out.
