The movie industry might not be at the height of its powers in the streaming age, but it's still a vital part of our pop culture ecosystem. I mean for goodness sake, a gothic remake of a silent 1922 vampire (Nosferatu) movie raked in $11.5 million in a single day... on Christmas. There's still a joy in talking with friends about a new film you saw and loved (or hated), whether a blockbuster or indie gem.
With that in mind (and acknowledging that some of us haven't seen certain acclaimed releases like Nickel Boys and The Brutalist because they won't arrive in Spokane cinemas until early 2025), here's the diverse slate of 2024 films that the Inlander's film critics were most enthused to gush about.
NATHAN WEINBENDER
10. A Different Man
9. Rebel Ridge
8. Kneecap
7. Good One
6. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
5. Anora
4. Challengers
3. La Chimera
2. His Three Daughters
1. A Real Pain
It always comes to this: the painstaking task of narrowing everything I've seen in a year down to a mere 10 titles, (somewhat arbitrarily) ranking them, then twisting my brain into knots to find something that thematically links my choices.
But the longer I do this, the more I've learned to just go with my gut. I could intellectualize the process, but why pretend? These are the movies I've found myself thinking about the most, that I'd most like to see again, that I've most often recommended to friends who inevitably ask, "Seen anything good lately?"
I'm reflecting now on the flourishes of magical realism in La Chimera and His Three Daughters; the visual and emotional gymnastics of Challengers; the electricity of Mikey Madison's performance in Anora; the immense vision of George Miller's fifth Mad Max film, Furiosa, contrasted with the intimate focus of India Donaldson's debut Good One.
My favorite of the year is Jesse Eisenberg's A Real Pain, which I didn't expect to love so much. It starts like a bad joke. Two estranged Jewish cousins go on a trip. Then it gets serious. They're on a heritage tour of Poland, where their late grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, was born.
All the way through, A Real Pain walks a deceptively tricky tonal tightrope. It's about psychic wounds, on scales both personal and generational, but it's also, somehow, very funny. Eisenberg's and Kieran Culkin's performances find grace notes in these prickly, demanding, complicated characters. That the film breezes along so effortlessly is a testament to its modest brilliance.
JOSH BELL
10. The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
9. Red Rooms
8. His Three Daughters
7. Girls State
6. Nosferatu
5. Rebel Ridge
4. This Closeness
3. Janet Planet
2. The Young Wife
1. The Beast
In 2024, I was happy to see filmmakers I've long admired get widespread acclaim for their latest films, thanks to Netflix's vast reach. I've loved Jeremy Saulnier's work on lean, brutal thrillers since walking into his 2013 film Blue Ruin at a film festival, and Rebel Ridge takes his style to a new level, delivering a showdown that emphasizes the strategic non-lethal violence of its protagonist, played by Aaron Pierre in a breakout performance. I likewise first discovered Azazel Jacobs via festival screenings, and the writer/director's His Three Daughters is another finely observed, emotionally affecting drama about complex family relationships, featuring beautiful acting from Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen and Natasha Lyonne.
I was also disappointed in 2024 that the latest work from Tayarisha Poe and Kit Zauhar didn't bring those filmmakers that same level of attention. Poe made a striking debut with 2019's Selah and the Spades, and The Young Wife is just as creative and mesmerizing, starring a luminous Kiersey Clemons as a headstrong woman preparing for a chaotic family wedding in a near-future semi-dystopia. Zauhar's 2021 micro-budget dramedy Actual People was an equally accomplished debut, and This Closeness continues with her uncomfortably accurate and dryly funny depictions of awkward interactions among Gen Z postgrads.
My favorite movie of the year, Bertrand Bonello's The Beast, incorporates nearly every element of those other films into an epic triptych spanning centuries and continents, with Léa Seydoux and George MacKay taking on multiple roles. It's not always an easy watch, but like every movie on this list, it's more than worth the effort.
SETH SOMMERFELD
10. We Live in Time
9. Monkey Man
8. Wicked
7. 399: Queen of the Tetons
6. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
5. Dìdi
4. Conclave
3. Dune: Part Two
2. Anora
1. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
I don't like to be that guy, but 2024 was at best a pretty meh cinematic year in my books. Don't get me wrong, there were plenty of quality films... just nothing I found to be elite. It's like one of those NBA Drafts with little top-end talent that will produce a bunch of solid role players but no superstars. I've been keeping yearly lists on Letterboxd since 2014, and 2024 is the first one without any 4.5 or 5 star movies (and every year prior had at least two).
That said, I had my fair share of great times hitting up the AMC or Magic Lantern. Writer/director/star Dev Patel did the over-the-top John Wick action formula better than the actual John Wick films with Monkey Man. 399: Queen of the Tetons might be one of the best documentaries about modern celebrity culture despite being a movie about a grizzly bear. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice brought Tim Burton's sense of macabre fun back from the grave. Dìdi so accurately captured millennial teen angst that people in my theater were laughing and yelling "No!" in horror at the coming-of-age story's depictions of AOL Instant Messenger alone. Conclave was a thrilling exercise in restrained drama. Dune: Part Two further cemented Denis Villeneuve as the modern king of sci-fi blockbusters. And filmmaker Sean Baker crafted his finest work yet with the dark stripper Cinderella tale that is Anora, thanks in large part to Mikey Madison's star turn — perhaps the best performance ever that absolutely gave me a headache (complimentary).
But while it doesn't reach the all-time highs of Mad Max: Fury Road, nothing this year topped Furiosa. George Miller continues to use the big screen as a canvas for his own mad genius, and nothing else matched the thrilling high-octane action scenes of the ambush at the Bullet Farm. The counterbalance of Chris Hemsworth's cartoonish antagonist gusto as Dr. Dementus and Anya Taylor-Joy's reserved stoicism properly captured the extremes of the post-acalyptic hellscape, adding another worthy chapter to one of cinema's best franchises.
MARYANN JOHANSON
10. Nickel Boys
9. Memoir of a Snail
8. Flow
7. Conclave
6. The Seed of the Sacred Fig
5. The Brutalist
4. The End
3. Sasquatch Sunset
2. The People's Joker
1. Kinds of Kindness
Uncertainty, both political and personal. Societal chaos and corruption. Actual apocalypse. My movies of the year all reflect the uncomfortable vibe of 2024: Nothing is working, all our institutions are broken, and collapse feels imminent.
Civil unrest infects family life in The Seed of the Sacred Fig while, conversely, a family struggles to maintain a pretense of normality after literally all is lost in The End. An anguished need to come to terms with the aftermath of unimaginable horrors fuels The Brutalist. The destruction of the natural world is viewed through the lenses of nonhuman beings who had no part in it in Sasquatch Sunset and Flow. Organizations and collective structures we designed to care for us are rife with villainy in Conclave and Nickel Boys. A grappling with one's own identity when nonconformity invites cruelty informs the gentle plea for acceptance that is Memoir of a Snail and the angry-funny culture jamming of The People's Joker.
No film better captures the insanity of this moment than the mad monstrosity that is Yorgos Lanthimos's Kinds of Kindness. The thousand-yard stare of 21st century existential ennui takes narrative form in three thematically connected, genre-defying tales exploring matters of control and coercion, twisted cultish devotion, and desperation for love and connection amidst it all. The aspect perhaps most in tune with the current moment is how the film does not try to wring any sense from our collective psychological mayhem — it merely attempts to capture how insane the world feels right now. We are all living in this absurd, perverse, grotesque world, and scrambling for whatever belonging we can find in whatever hellscape we're wandering.
CHASE HUTCHINSON
10. Longlegs
9. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
8. A Real Pain
7. Fancy Dance
6. Janet Planet
5. Evil Does Not Exist
4. Good One
3. Anora
2. The Brutalist
1. I Saw the TV Glow
Osgood Perkins spun a sinister yarn with the meticulous and macabre PNW horror Longlegs. George Miller built a brilliant epic worth witnessing in all its glory in Furiosa. Kieran Culkin gave a performance for the ages in Jesse Eisenberg's thoughtful A Real Pain. Erica Tremblay made a fantastic narrative feature debut with the Lily Gladstone-starring Fancy Dance, as did Annie Baker with the joyously bittersweet and poetic meditation Janet Planet. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi crafted yet another essential film with the evocative Evil Does Not Exist. India Donaldson immersed us in an incisive, understated portrait of growing up in Good One. Sean Baker launched us into his best film yet with the astounding Mikey Madison-led Anora. Brady Corbet excavated the rot at the core of the great American experiment with The Brutalist.
While all these films were great, it is Jane Schoenbrun's exciting and uncompromising I Saw the TV Glow that already feels like it will be the most enduring work from 2024. Their stellar second feature after the also wondrous We're All Going to the World's Fair sees the filmmaker painting on a far larger canvas while bringing the same intimate, illuminating attention to detail. It's a film that never once holds back, taking us deep into the psyche of its central character just as it creates mesmerizingly surreal visuals that burrow their way into your very subconscious. It's a true gift of cinema without compare as its poetic, profound power grabs hold of the soul itself. ♦
