As much as theaters are humming right now, with “Wicked” and “Moana 2″ bringing moviegoers by the droves, it’s been a fairly bruising movie year.
In between the blockbusters, though, the challenge of not just capturing the attention of audiences but of simply getting to the screen feels more perilous than ever. The year was marked by filmmakers who wagered everything from a $120 million pile ( Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” ) to their life (the dissident Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”).
Considering the paths of the “The Apprentice” (about Donald Trump’s rise in New York) or the Israeli occupation documentary “No Other Land” (which still lacks a distributor), the question of what gets released was a common and chilling refrain.
That also made the movies that managed their way through — the ones that told urgent stories or dazzled with originality at a time of sequel stranglehold — all the more worth celebrating.
Here are The Associated Press’ Film Writers Jake Coyle and Lindsey Bahr’s picks for the best movies of 2024:
Was this a great year for movies? The consensus seems to be no, and that may be true. But it did produce some stone-cold masterpieces, none more so than Payal Kapadia’s sublime tale of three women in modern Mumbai. It’s a grittily real movie graced, in equally parts, by keen-eyed documentary and dreamy poetry. Beguilingly, “All We Imagine As Light” grows more profound as it cleaves further from reality. In theaters.
Like Kapadia, RaMell Ross started out in documentary before bringing a singular eye to narrative film. His adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, about two Black teenagers at an abusive reform school in the Jim Crow South, is shot mostly from the two boys’ first-person perspective. The result is one of the most visually inventive American films of the decade and, just as certainly, one of the richest in empathy. Opens in theaters Dec. 13.
So many of the reasons to go to the movies — to laugh at a clattering comic set piece, to witness the breakthrough of a young performer, to be devastated by something tragic — are contained within the thrillingly kitchen-sink “Anora.” It’s a concoction that only Sean Baker could conceive, let alone execute. (And, by the way, if you liked Yura Borisov’s performance alongside Mikey Madison, seek out 2021’s “Compartment No. 6.”) In theaters.
Jane Schoenbrun’s sophomore feature — a dramatic leap forward for filmmaker and a transfixing trans parable — is a chilling 1990s coming of age in which a “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”-like series called “The Pink Opaque” offers a possible portal out of drab suburban life and other suffocations. It feels chillingly, beautifully ripped out of Schoenbrun’s soul — and it’s got a killer soundtrack. Streaming on Max, available for digital rental.
The fury of Agnieszka Holland’s searing migrant drama is suitably calibrated to the crisis. Along the Poland-Belarus border, a small band of migrants from Syria and Afghanistan are sent back and forth across a wooded borderland — sometimes they’re even literally tossed — in a grim game of “not in my backyard.” It’s not an easy movie to watch, nor should it be. To keep up with the times, more uncomfortable movies like this may be needed. Streaming on Kino Film Collection, available for digital rental.
We also need more big, fun movies with Ryan Gosling. David Leitch’s affectionate ode to stunt performers manages to celebrate behind-the-scenes crew members while simultaneously being completely carried by two of our most winning movie stars in Gosling and Emily Blunt. The societal value of watching Gosling cry to Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” should not be underestimated. Streaming on Peacock, available for digital rental.
The way the Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, who was forced into exile while editing this, condenses real-life social upheaval into a family drama makes this a uniquely disquieting film. Like Kurosawa’s “Stray Dog,” Rasoulof’s movie centers around a lost handgun. The subsequent search reveals just how deeply the Iranian government‘s policies have seeped into the most intimate relationships. In theaters.
We had not one but two movies this year that captured the therapeutic properties of theater. Each, almost unbelievably, deftly eludes tipping into cliche thanks to abiding compassion and authenticity in the performances. Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan’s “Ghostlight” is about a grieving father, a construction worker (an exceptional Keith Kupferer), who reluctantly joins a local production of “Romeo and Juliet.” “Sing Sing” dramatizes a real rehabilitation prison program. Its screening at Sing Sing Correctional, where many of its performers were once incarcerated, was easily the most moving moviegoing experience of the year for me. “Ghostlight” is available for digital rental. “Sing Sing” returns to theaters Jan. 17.
In Azazel Jacobs’ funny, tender and raw family drama, a flawless cast of Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen and Natasha Lyonne play three sisters caring for their dying father. In close quarters and with death looming, it all comes out. Streaming on Netflix.
In between large, lengthy epics, Martin Scorsese has made some his most interesting and personal films. In this, Scorsese narrates for director David Hinton his lifetime journey with the films of Powell and Pressburger, the great filmmakers of “The Red Shoes,” “I Know Where I’m Going!” and “Black Narcissus.” As an expression of movie love — of the power of film to transfix you, to change your life, to live alongside you as you grow older — “Made in England” could hardly be more effusive. Such insightful, passionate testimonies are an increasingly necessary lifeblood in a film culture where algorithms are typically blind to the treasures of cinema’s past. Streaming on WatchTCM and available for digital rental.
Also: “Grand Tour,” “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found,”“No Other Land,”“Rebel Ridge,”“The Brutalist,”“Between the Temples,”“Evil Does Not Exist,” “Universal Language,” “Daughters”
Steve McQueen tells a different kind of World War II story in “Blitz,” a powerful and clear-eyed odyssey through London during the German bombing raid. Structured around a 9-year-old boy (Elliott Heffernan) trying to make his way back to his mother (Saoirse Ronan), it is a sneakily revolutionary glimpse into and poignant elegy for worlds unexplored and stories untold. Streaming on Apple TV+.
Poetic and transportive, Kapadia’s Mumbai-set film explores the vibrations of a thrilling but brutally impersonal metropolis, the lives of three women in different stages and predicaments (forbidden love, loneliness, eviction) and delicacy of female friendships.
Josh Margolin’s debut feature about a 90-something (played by the incomparable June Squibb ) on a mission to get $10,000 back from a scammer is so modest in scope and effortlessly enjoyable that it’s easy to undervalue. This independent film feels as sharp and put-together as a yesteryear studio comedy. It’s pure joy and one of those movies you could recommend to anyone. Streaming on Hulu.
It takes a special kind of movie to transcend the echo chamber of arthouse cinephelia and become a cultural moment, but Baker’s “Anora” did it. A classic in waiting, Baker and his star Mikey Madison, who lifts the streetwise stripper trope, take audiences on an unforgettable ride in this fairy tale that falls apart in spectacular fashion.
Ross transforms Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel about the abuses and generational trauma of a reform school in the Jim Crow South for the screen by employing first-person point-of-view. It’s a bold choice that pays off, transporting you into the heartbreaking reality of Elwood and Turner, two characters you won’t soon forget.
Decades of dreaming about a film does not always seem to benefit said film, but Denis Villeneuve was able to translate his passion for Frank Herbert’s opus into pure cinematic spectacle, and doom, about the rise of a leader. It’s a grand and thrilling adventure that could make sci-fi nerds out of us all. Streaming on MAX.
Jesse Eisenberg grapples with modern and historical trauma in the disarmingly entertaining road trip film “A Real Pain,” which he wrote, directed and stars in alongside Kieran Culkin as cousins on a Holocaust tour in Poland. In theaters.
Saoirse Ronan delivered one of the year’s absolute best performances as an alcoholic who goes further and further into seclusion in the Orkney Islands in an attempt to start life anew. Films about addiction are hardly novel, and yet Nora Fingscheidt captures the wild highs, lows and in-betweens of the human condition with unapologetic honesty. Available for digital rental.
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s follow-up to “Drive My Car” takes us to a small mountain village in Japan, where residents are hesitant to welcome a big city company with plans to set up a glamping site. It’s a slow-burn kind of experience, with community debates about mountain streams and septic tanks that might not sound terribly exciting and yet it’s one of the year’s most haunting and effective. Streaming on Criterion Channel, available for digital rental.
It was a great year for first-time directors, including India Donaldson whose quietly brilliant character study of a teenage girl on a camping trip with her dad and his friend resonates even a year later. Streaming on Apple TV+
Also: “The Taste of Things”; “Green Border”; “Challengers”; ”Beetlejuice Beetlejuice ”; “La Cocina”; “Will & Harper”; ”Conclave”; “Maria”; “Young Woman and the Sea”; “Tuesday”; “Lee”.
