Like a groundhog in Punxsutawney, it’s time for Steve and Andrew to poke their heads out and dish on the best movies of the year. We’ve got 18 films from 2024 to celebrate. If you’ve got some time, take a look back at our films of the year stretching back more than 10 years. Our picks hold up wonderfully.
On to the list!
The Top Two
Challengers
Andrew Johnson: Most of our favorite sports movies aren’t really about sports. They are romantic comedies or tragedies or whatever with a bunch of uniforms and a built in win-lose climax. Because Luca Guadagnino is who he is, and because Challengers leans hard in to its love triangle, it’s tempting to see this film as in league with, say, Bull Durham. It’s easy to say it’s a film about something else with tennis as a backdrop. Don’t get suckered into this line of thinking. Challengers encapsulates what it is to play and then fall in love with tennis - its allure, the maddening drive for perfection that can never be realized, the truly bizarre relationship you have with your opponent on the other side of the net. A few years ago, I picked up a racquet and became obsessed, and Challengers explains it all.
As Zendaya’s Tashi Duncan says early on in the film: “For about fifteen seconds there, we were actually playing tennis. And we understood each other completely. So did everyone watching. It's like we were in love. Or like we didn't exist. We went somewhere really beautiful together.” This is tennis: transcendent and fleeting. And this is a film that encapsulates the essence of something.
Steve Cimino: I don’t love tennis as much as Andrew, but I do love pulsating dance scores like this one from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. I love weird love triangles where arguments are like tennis matches and the music hits accordingly. I love Mike Faist confirming he’s the real deal post-West Side Story. And I love Josh O’Connor getting the juiciest material and running with it; he’s America’s crumbum sweetheart. One thing I did hate: people monitoring Challengers’ box office like it was Elon’s jet and yelling about how Zendaya can’t open a movie. It’s a tennis sex drama that made $96 million worldwide! She’s the leadingest lady of her generation and you better get used to it.
Dune: Part Two
AJ: Denis Villeneuve’s pair of films are a crowning achievement, not just on the basis of their quality, but also on the basis of the degree of difficulty. Frank Herbert’s book has a psychedelic quality. Villeneuve’s adaptation maintains these elements, but balances it with palace and political intrigue and exhilarating action. You won’t have more fun than Paul Atreides riding a worm, for example. Entertaining and awe-inducing as the spectacle is, Dune: Part Two also manages to impart the more quiet tragedy of this story - that of Paul’s helpless descent into radicalism. It’s great stuff, and proof that the major studios can still make epic, original, thrilling popcorn tales.
SC: Greig Fraser won a cinematography Oscar for Dune, and the sequel might look even better. It’s amazing that Denis stuck the landing this hard, that Chalamet brought Paul Atreides to life so well, that Austin Butler is still doing crazy accents. Javier Bardem deserves not only an Oscar nom but a win! The worst part is probably the tacked-on Brolin/Batista “showdown,” which takes about 45 seconds and doesn’t really disrupt anything. The whole thing is such an accomplishment, a textbook example of “first movie does well-ish in theaters, builds steam on streaming, second one blows the door down” and hopefully Denis’ blank check for years to come.
The Best of the Rest
Anora
AJ: The visceral experience of Sean Baker’s Anora is much like one of the nights depicted therein. It is wild and energetic in one moment, lost and meandering and long in the next. It’s possible this means the film could have been edited a little tighter, but it’s also possible that it fits its subject material perfectly. Either way, this sits nicely alongside Baker’s other works exploring the dark, seedy underbelly of American society. It gives its titular character hope - the kind glamorized in Pretty Woman, the kind that pervades our society, where we’re all on the cusp of being rich - and smashes it with a hammer in about 10 minutes. There is no fairy tale. There is only an ever-expanding chasm between the hyper-wealthy and the rest of us. It’s a lot wider than we think - its distance so great that it is hard to peer across from one side to the other and make out human forms.
The Brutalist
SC: What a Brodyquest! The journey from 2002’s The Pianist to Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist was a wild one for Adrien: From The Village and King Kong to Predators and a whole lot of Wes Anderson, there’s something for … someone? No one? It’s mostly a pile of wasted potential, but he’s back with a vengeance here. So are the deservedly-Oscar-nominated Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones and the unheralded Alessandro Nivola, who really makes the first half sparkle (with sadness). More than anything, let’s hear it for the intermission; my neighbor and I took the 15 minutes to pee, discuss what we’d just seen, and lock in for the bleak-but-riveting second half. Every movie longer than 180 minutes should be required to have one (except for The Irishman, which flies by and should be twice as long).
Civil War
AJ: Alex Garland’s latest film paints a chilling and foreboding picture of a modern-day America torn apart by, well, civil war. Its texture and features hit close to home - whether that’s the would-be despot and king holed up in the White House or the small town passed through trying its level best to pretend like none of this awfulness is happening. At its core, though, it takes aim at the notion of “the story” as conceived by the present-day media, particularly and specifically its fixation on capturing dramatic moments at the expense of, simply put, the real story. The abdication of journalistic responsibility isn’t the cause of our current predicament, but it is part of the rot.
A Complete Unknown
SC: I did not expect to include the James Mangold-directed Bob Dylan movie on my top 10 list, that’s for sure. Especially now that Walk the Line is 20 years old and has been thoroughly dismantled by Walk Hard. But apparently you can teach old dogs new tricks, and the director of Cop Land has pulled off biopic magic: elevate and deflate your subject at the same time. Dylan (Timothée Chalamet, duh) was a genius and a chameleon; he had something that the Llewyn Davises of the world did not, but he was also an asshole in a business full of assholes. The key to unlocking ACU is when Dylan asks Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook, not Joaquin) for advice; Cash tells him to go crazy and burn the place down, while being a piss-drunk mess who attempts and fails to drive away in his car. These people were brilliant disasters. We’ve had enough repetitive fawning for a lifetime; kudos to Mangold and Timothée (and Ed Norton, and Monica Barbaro, and everyone involved) for taking the path less traveled.
The Dead Don’t Hurt
AJ: The subdued but fully realized connection and intimacy between Viggo Mortensen and Vicky Krieps is what makes this little-seen Western so fantastic. Mortensen and Krieps have a charged chemistry - the kind that works with a simple glance of admiration or wince of pain and fear - and it makes the rest of the thing go. Mortensen’s character doesn’t say enough and so he ends up chasing revenge. Krieps’ character says too much, at least for this time and place, and so she ends up being the reason her husband seeks vengeance. This is a quiet, sad, affecting film that more people should see.
A Different Man
SC: Hey look, the Golden Globes did something right! Sebastian Stan gives the performance of his career (sorry, Trump movie) and wears the hell out of some heavy prosthetics. This has a lot of the dry, dark humor of Beau Is Afraid, where one put-upon man is unwittingly the subject of so many strange conversations and wild circumstances. But at its core, it’s about how we see people with disabilities and how they see themselves. Is Adam Pearson’s Oswald actually a wildly charismatic man with extreme deformities, or is he something Stan’s Edward conjured up to haunt and taunt him, a living, breathing telltale heart? We aren’t left with any real answers, just lingering uncertainties and the sense that the world Edward longed to be a part of isn’t that special after all.
Evil Does Not Exist
AJ: What happens when righteous anger has nowhere to go? We’re living in an elongated moment where, unfortunately, we’re all about to keep findingg out. Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s film Evil Does Not Exist is a warning about where this is all going. And, in a perfect encapsulation of this moment, it all starts with a seemingly banal town meeting where two middle managers sell some rich guy’s lousy idea to a bunch of people who can see right through their shoddy pitch. The social contract is being broken, and the thinnest veneer of civilization lies atop it.
I Saw the TV Glow
SC: Jane Schoenbrun loves Twin Peaks: The Return, and it shows. Their second feature produced one of my wilder in-theater experiences of the year; it’s mysterious and strange and largely unexplained. I’ve heard several people describe the story in totally different ways; beyond the clear allusions to being trans and finding your true self, I think Schoenbrun doesn’t mind audiences being confused and a little bit paralyzed. That’s how Owen (Justice Smith) carries himself the entire time, until he has a screaming fit and then quickly apologizes to everyone around him for the inconvenience. Accepting who you are requires a lot of courage, which maybe Owen isn’t ready to deploy. In that sense, TV Glow is a cautionary tale; for all the bullshit transphobia being spewed these days, the real monsters are the people who prevent others from finding their place and their happiness in the world.
Look Back
SC: A 58-minute anime on my top 10 list? If it’s good enough for Lights Camera Jackson, it’s good enough for me! This beautiful story tracks the relationship between Fujino (Yuumi Kawai) and Kyomoto (Mizuki Yoshida) over many years; the former popular and clever, the latter a talented shut-in. They aren’t equals and never pretend to be; they’re a duo that fill each other’s gaps. As they embark on a series of manga projects, both amateur and professional, they’re pulled apart and brought back together in unpredictable ways. It’s heartfelt and genuine, a true testament to the power of art and friendship. That it packs so much into such a short running time is a blessing, not a detriment.
Love Lies Bleeding
AJ: You won’t get a better Hulk movie than this, no matter how many shades of color Marvel tries. This is a mood film, and it works because it commits so wholeheartedly to creating a certain vibe. Love Lies Bleeding is sweaty, grimy and dark. Was the sun ever out in this film? It has maybe the finest collection of bad haircuts ever put on celluloid, and it is filled with moments of dread and danger. It’s a remarkable story with top-notch performances from Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, and, especially, Ed Harris and Dave Franco.
My Old Ass
AJ: My Old Ass is a film about middle age masquerading as one about coming of age. Maisy Stella’s Elliott’s drug-induced conjuring of an older version of herself (played by Aubrey Plaza) ends up playing opposite to expectation. It’s a silly-seeming, powerful, affecting lesson about regret and grief, and what’s most striking of all is that it is the younger Elliott who ends up having something to teach her older self, and not the other way around. We aren’t who we are without all the good and bad we’ve gone through. Regret is a part of being human, but, as the younger Elliott says to the older, we should think of it more comprehensively. It’s not about single moments, but instead about the sum total of our relationships with those with whom we are close.
Nickel Boys
SC: It takes a few minutes to warm up to Nickel Boys’ style; RaMell Ross’ decision to shoot everything from the first-person perspective seems like a gimmick that might not hold up for two hours. But soon it becomes thrilling, and sometimes chilling, to see everything from someone else’s eyes. And when we suddenly switch perspectives, or when the point-of-view character looks in a mirror, you almost want to pump your fist with delight at what Ross is pulling off. Of course, the tale of two black teenagers at reform school in Florida is probably not going to end in joy. That’s why Nickel Boys matters; it’s a reminder that—despite love, and often because of it—some wounds never heal. We are still paying for the sins of the past.
Nosferatu
AJ: Robert Eggers is an absolute master, at this point, of putting you in a time and a place and taking that time and place quite literally. He did this in The VVitch to thrilling effect, and here he does it again, just as effectively. Despite most recent depictions, there’s nothing actually sexy about vampires, if you think about it. But there is plenty that is horny, and that is what Nosferatu seems to grasp, where so many other vampire films do not.
Rebel Ridge
AJ: Director Jeremy Saulnier is like the Wes Anderson of action thrillers where everything always gets screwed up, which ends up putting his protagonists into progressively worse situations. It might be all he does, but who cares when this is the kind of thing he produces? I’m not sure any of his subjects has had it worse than Aaron Pierre’s Terry Richmond, or that I’ve rooted harder for someone to succeed and to deliver comeuppance to the arrogant baddies, led by the corrupt police chief played by Don Johnson. It’s a nice bonus that anyone who sees this movie will get an education in the outrageous practice of civil forfeiture. It’s entertaining, and you’ll learn something.
Red Rooms
SC: The internet is bad. I make my living on websites and you’re reading this on a website—and hopefully listening to our latest podcast—and I would blow it all up in a second if that was possible. If you’ve been living under a rock and still think “but gee whiz, the web is harmless,” enjoy Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms. It’s about a young woman (Juliette Gariépy) who is very online and becomes obsessed with an accused serial killer on trial for the murder of three girls. She’s not alone in that obsession, and her ability to access everything—information, money, depraved shit—at the click of a button sends her deeper down a rabbit hole of self-destruction. It’s a very real-feeling horror story about what can happen when you give lost souls the key to their own corruption.
The Substance
SC: This was 10th on my list, and I’ve been wondering for months if it should make the cut; the unexpected praise it’s received from the unimpeachable Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has raised even more red flags. But at the end of the day, I had a blast with The Substance, and the Demi Moore/Margaret Qualley/(sigh) Dennis Quaid trio is probably the best threesome of the year, non-Challengers edition. Qualley in particular has been underpraised; the Moore ‘comeback’ narrative is fun but Qualley does so much of the heavy lifting. She’s clearly a star waiting for the right solo vehicle. Yes, it’s unsubtle as heck, long as hell, and stars the motherfucker from Reagan, but sometimes it’s refreshing to be bashed over the head with how fucking awful Hollywood, society, and culture really are.