Top 10 Films of 2024

My Top 10 of 2024

2024 was a stacked year for cinema, and ahead of January 17’s Oscar nominee announcements for their March ceremony, here are my Top 10 films of a year where I saw an INSANE amount of movies.

1. ANORA

Sean Baker’s showstopping, heartbreaking, and exhilarating love story of a sex worker named Anora (Mikey Madison) who is whisked away on her own Cinderella story after a shotgun Vegas marriage to a Russian crimelord’s playboy son made me believe in love and, most of all, crushed my heart. This hilarious and poignant romance film is unlike any other and was anchored by unbelievable turns from lead actress Madison as well as Russian actor Yuriy Borisov who plays Igor. The film asks us to reexamine our lives in an unexpected way, making us ask about the kind of love we expect- and the kind of love we deserve.

2. DUNE : PART TWO

Denis Villeneuve’s second installment of the “Dune” franchise delivers arthouse direction with the action, adventure, and romance of a summer blockbuster painting the tragic story of hero-turned-villain Paul Atreides who goes from being a messianic figure of the desert planet Arrakis to being a despotic ruler. With a full house of powerful turns by acclaimed actors like Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, and Austin Butler, DUNE PART TWO is as close to perfection as a major studio film could ever hope to be.

3. WICKED

John M. Chu’s dazzling musical would have been an easy pick for my #1 movie of the year if not for the stiff competition- but don’t let that detract from the film. One of the best musicals ever made, WICKED defies gravity to tell the story of the Wicked Witch of the West as you’ve never seen it before. Bolstered by Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo’s jaw-dropping vocals and chemistry, WICKED is as visually enthralling as it is a toe-tapping sing-a-long infection of a film that, once you witness it, will be hard to get rid of. A film about how everyone deserve the chance to fly, WICKED has a fantastic message and is a shining beacon of hope in a world that needs more of it.

4. STRANGE DARLING

J.T. Mollner’s sleeper thriller, STRANGE DARLING, plays with audience expectations in the best way when damsel in distress “Lady” (Willa Fitzgerald) finds herself on the run from a blood-thirsty madman (genre king Kyle Gallner)... until the audience finds their heads spinning at one of the most clever twists to grace cinema screens in decades. This stylish, colorful, bloody good time is darkly comedic, nail-bitingly intense, and proof that audiences haven’t quite seen every trick in the book just yet.

5. CHALLENGERS

Luca Guadagnino’s sexually charged tennis film keeps your heart racing and your pulse quickening as the story of best friends Art and Patrick (Mike Faist and Josh O’Conner) gets interrupted by the arrival of tennis prodigy Tashi (Zendaya) which sparks a love triangle and a story of friendship, drive, inspiration, and how deep (and complicated) the love and bond between friends - especially men- can be. Guadagnino is having a banger year with the critical acclaim of his other film QUEER, but the maestro may have outdone CALL ME BY YOUR NAME with CHALLENGERS which , while not as solemn and thought-provoking, is powerful enough in its own special ways.
 
6. BABYGIRL 

Nicole Kidman's raunchy yet sweetly sincere turn as a sexually frustrated CEO who begins an illicit affair with her younger employee shocked me in an unexpected way that only Halina Reijn could have seemingly delivered. BABYGIRL comes at a specific time in an era where undersexed housewives are coming into their own sexual independence thanks to the meteoric rise of smutty "book-tok" literature, shedding the taboo that women enjoy sex as much as men do, and also questioning gender power dynamics. 

7.  NOSFERATU 

Robert Eggers gothic romance, a play on the "Dracula" story, stars Bill Skarsgard as a nefarious vampire obsessed with a young woman (Lilly-Rose Depp) and is a sick nightmare that is hard to wake up from with entrancing visuals and someone truly disgusting imagery. While NOSFERATU doesn't hold a candle to Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 DRACULA (what can?) it is an intriguing monster movie that allows star Lilly -Rose to transform into a complete beast of an actor. 

8.  I SAW THE TV GLOW 

Part trans allegory and part timely examination of how fandom can both create monsters and change our lives, I SAW THE TV GLOW is a gorgeous and deeply unsettling film about a young outcast and a girl he grows fond of becoming obsessed with 1990s TV series in their youth and watching their warped notion of it destroy the rest of their lives. I would never watch this movie again, which is how I know that I loved it deeply, because it hasn't left me since I watched it. 

9. MEGALOPOLIS 

Francis Ford Coppola's decades-in-development, self-financed, passion project  is an utterly one-of-a-kind experience that comes from a maestro's completely unrestrained vision. Some will hate it and some will love it with 0 in-between, but beneath the baffling dialogue and confounding plot lies an extremely personal story about a creator and his art as we follow architect Caesar (Adam Driver) battling political turmoil to rebuild his city after a natural disaster. This is the kind of bold, crazy, swing-for-the-fences work of art that only comes around a handful of times and should be seen and respected for that alone. 

10. CIVIL WAR 

Alex Garland's dystopian film sees a war-torn America and follows war photojournalists racing to Washington D.C. to see the tyrannical president ousted in the midst of a raging civil war. The politics of the film took center stage when the previews came out, but the film is strangely apolitical, focusing instead on the story of these journalists and asking what kind of legacy we want to leave behind, and if our passion is truly worth chasing...and for what end?