Eric Kohn's Top 25 Movies of 2024

An extra one for good luck, because the new year could use it

There were few pleasures in 2024 greater than the movies. In years past, I have rounded up the best of the year with a cutoff matching the number of the year in question; this time, however, I decided to add an extra digit as a gesture of hope for the year ahead — because lord knows we all need it. (I am omitting the films I helped get made this year, at least in a direct fashion, though naturally I recommend them, too.)

Cinema is alive and more varied than ever. To that end, I have doubled down on movies that reflect the ambition and originality necessary to maintain the overall vitality of the art form. Whatever happens in the world over the next 12 months, at least the movies are well-positioned to keep us engaged.

25. Will and Harper

Not sure if this qualifies as a documentary so much as a poignant road trip comedy that inverts the bro-coded stardom of Will Ferrell by turning him into a Trojan Horse for normalizing trans issues in middle America. The fact that he doesn’t quite succeed only deepens the significance of endearing and timely work, which benefits from the global platform Netflix provides.

24. Smile 2

While the first Smile was a clever horror movie with a good central conceit, Parker Finn has outdone himself with a follow-up about a pop star losing her mind that’s actually a savvy media satire in disguise — all the way down to the jolting finale. We’re grinning our way to our graves, Finn argues, so might as well enjoy the ride while we can. Neal Postman would have loved it.

23. Nosferatu

A robust cover song variation on the 1922 original, this is pure Robert Eggers without an iota of restraint. There is nothing altogether surprising about it from a plot standpoint, but Eggers is savvy enough to realize that plot comes secondary to elegant gothic tapestries, intense, gory assaults, and the haunting implications of a woman (Lily Rose-Depp, holy wow) overtaken by a masculine spell beyond her control. Gross and silly at times, but always entrancing to watch.

22. The Seeds of the Sacred Fig Tree

Mohammad Rasolouf’s latest screed against Iranian authorities is his boldest yet, in part because it’s such a departure from the austere dramas he’s known for. I’m still partial to Evil Does Not Exist, his masterful Berlin-winning anthology featuring Iranian victims of oppression who occasionally manage to escape the boundaries of their society. But Fig Tree builds on those genre-spinning experiments with a movie that keeps defying its own terms as it goes along: First, it’s a grim family drama; then, a disturbing survival story as the family turns against itself; and finally, a shocking act of defiance that plays like The Shining meets Looney Tunes. You can’t get much more subversive than that. Bravo.

21. Maria

Rich in feeling, and even more ravishing to look at thanks to Ed Lachman’s wizardry. A subjective psychodrama about the closing days of Maria Callas in her own vivid terms. Angelina Jolie has rarely been so buried in a performance, and the greatest of Pablo Larraín’s troubled ladies trilogy scores major points for its simplicity.

20. Rap World

Connor O’Malley’s hilarious camcorder-shot look at an aspiring rap artist and his buddies is the greatest music parody since Pop Star, and a whole lot more personable. A lo-fi hangout movie with a shockingly dark punchline. Bonus points for all the unlicensed music that yielded a YouTube release.

19. Dahomey

Mati Diop’s documentary about African artifacts pilfered by colonialists and returned to their homeland unfolds as both dream and argument: First, we hear the story of the artifacts through the voice of ancestors in voiceover; then, through communal arguments about whether the restitution is enough. A potent interrogation of what it means to reconcile the dark acts of the past with a seemingly more enlightened present, and why progress is never a clean process.

18. Emilia Perez

Jacques Audiard is one of our great termite artists. He burrows inside overly familiar genres and pushes past their boundaries to find new meaning. Here, within the boundaries of a saccharine musical, he has delivered a riveting look at repressed identities, sexual and otherwise. While the representation of its trans character’s journey has generated some intriguing hot takes, mine is a bit cooler: I find the whole movie successful as a grander metaphor for the paradoxes of a society keen on embracing progress while remaining firmly grounded in its past.

17. No Other Land

There’s nothing overtly political about this tragic look at a community of Palestinian desert dwellers whose homeland is constantly leveled by Israeli forces for no good reason. The first-person footage is an infuriating indictment of militant oppression and the absence of empathy that yields unending chaos. It’s an eternal story that could take place at many times in history, and unfortunately, very much takes place in this one.

16. Rebel Ridge

Jeremy Saulnier has delivered delightful small-scale action-survival story that juggles heavy subjects with a light touch: Racism and police brutality face the unexpected threat of a martial arts vigilante keen on correcting the equation. You couldn’t ask for a more cathartic kick for exploring this subject matter. What a blast.

15. Good One

India Donaldson’s sensitive debut about a father and daughter who go camping in the woods, only for the young woman to experience a rather disturbing turns of events in the middle of the night, builds to an emotional crescendo in piecemeal. There are no fancy maneuvers in Donaldson’s screenplay, only minor-key hints of darker forces simmering beneath the surface, and they stay there the whole way through. It’s a remarkably confident achievement for a filmmaker with much potential ahead.

14. Santosh

An Indian woman inherits her late husband’s job as a policeman, then gets dragged into a murder mystery, in Sandhya Suri’s incredible social thriller. The movie pins you to your seat from start to finish thanks to Shahana Goswami’s mesmerizing performance and an understated narrative approach that builds to a powerful climax without a single word.

13. Hitman

Richard Linklater’s most robust crowdpleaser in years, a movie that delivers the charm of a first-rate screwball comedy with a criminal twist worthy of the Coens.

12. All We Imagine as Light

A beautiful, entrancing city symphony with romantic yearning at its core; a stunning ode to Mumbai that universalizes its busy energy as an encapsulation of its young woman feeling overcome by the intensity of the world around her.

11. Furiosa

Just more pure Mad Max fun through expert technician George Miller, who makes action movies as if they were slapstick comedies and never misses a beat. One of the only masters capable of navigating the studio system on his own terms. He makes every movie as if he might never get away with it again, and this time, action cinema is in a better place because he did.

10. The Brutalist

An American epic that keeps twisting and evolving as it goes, Brady Corbet’s masterful two-parter makes every moment count as he builds out the world of an immigrant’s journey with striking details throughout. The idea of an architect finding his place in a foreign land is, of course, loaded with significance — he must find new forms to define his identity — and The Brutalist shows how such a journey leads to exploitation by the very system that saves him. It’s the bitter irony of the American promise in sprawling cinematic form.

9. Flow

Latvia’s Oscar submission is a wondrous animated achievement about the plight of a cat and his fellow animal friends as they navigate a flooded world, one wide-eyed gaze at a time. One of the best animal movies ever, it meets the subjects on their own terms, and sees the sadness of an abandoned world through their own eyes. In the process, it finds home in a future defined not so much by human perseverance as the nature of survival instincts regardless of which species makes it through the eventual apocalypse. Someone will make it through another day, and maybe that’s good enough.

8. A Different Man

Sebastian Stan is a disfigured man who undergoes an experimental procedure to look like…well, Sebastian Stan, only to discover that he’s a victim of his inability to be at peace with his true self. The amazing Adam Pearson (who ought to be in the Oscar race this year) outdoes his most famous role in Under the Skin as a charismatic playboy who shows Stan’s character the beauty inside matters most. It’s a hilarious, twisty puzzle of a movie with shades of Charlie Kaufman in the way it plays with expectations and winds up in a surprisingly upbeat place with its enigmatic finale. I loved every moment.

7. A Real Pain

A buddy movie about the Holocaust? Jesse Eisenberg is up for the task in this satisfying look at two cousins on an oddball adventure to revisit their late grandmother’s experiences in Poland during WWII. Eisenberg’s script is goofy, philosophical, and profound in equal measures as it mines for meaning in third-generation trauma by making it personable — and ultimately inspiring.

6. La Chimera

One of Europe’s greatest 21^st century filmmakers, Alice Rohrwacher’s meditative look at a grave-robbing journeyman feels like the art-film answer to Indiana Jones, and it’s the greatest thing Josh O’Connell has done to date: a poetic look at mining for substance through stolen objects — and never finding pure satisfaction in the process — it would make for an excellent companion piece on a double bill with Dahomey. The journey of O’Connell’s character as he seeks his prize matters less than the way the movie embodies his profound desire to uncover the past as a means of coming to terms with himself.

5. Hundreds of Beavers

The most innovative ultra-low-budget American movie in years, Mike Cheslik’s wilderness survival saga isn’t just an homage to great slapstick; it’s a legitimate example of one, using clever green-screen resources to tell the absurdist story of a plucky survivalist battling hordes of human-sized beavers in a snowy, cartoonish landscape. Hilarious without fail, Hundreds of Beavers is also oddly touching for the way for it presents the resilience of its character in his own scrappy terms. It’s also endearing to watch this small-scale filmmaking team pull off a conceit with such masterful grassroots precision. More of that ingenuity, please.

4. Hard Truths

Never sleep on Mike Leigh — or, for that matter, Marianne Jean-Baptiste. The inverse of Happy-Go-Lucky finds a tragic middle-aged woman hurling epithets at virtually everyone she comes into contact with, and their baffled/enraged reaction shots initially play as a distended joke — until the truth settles in, so to speak, and it’s quite the bitter pill. Curb Your Enthusiasm as a tragedy, it’s Leigh’s most effective character study in years, a brilliant snapshot of alienation and anger distilled to precise filmmaking choices and a masterful performance. Not a wasted moment throughout.

3. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World

Romania’s Radu Jude is one of the most versatile filmmaker’s working today, but he does his best work when he unleashes his most vicious satiric instincts. Here he follows up the equally miraculous Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn with a dizzying look at one woman’s dual life as social media influencer and cog in the machine. The jabs come hard and fast as the movie keeps redefining its targets, forcing you to keep up as Jude speeds along. Godard would be proud.

2. Anora

Sean Baker’s latest is his most gratifying work since Prince of Broadway, a rapid-fire screwball farce that doubles as a capitalist indictment. A lot has been written about it the caliber of the filmmaking and its lead performance, but more should be said about how relentlessly amusing the movie is given that it has a sprawling and sophisticated structure that only shows its full design in the closing minutes. Next level stuff.

1. Sasquatch Sunset

Never underestimate the Zellner brothers. This marvelous, wordless vision about a family of Bigfoots journeying through the forest has all the beats of a traditional tragicomedy — sex, death, destruction — but finds new meaning in them through the sheer ingenuity of performance, makeup, and an immersive storybook landscape that feels so fragile and otherworldly that when reality sets in (alongside the environmentalism, of course), it stings in a whole new way. There was nothing quite like it on screen this year, and nothing nearly as satisfying from start to finish. A pure cinema delight.

*Special shoutouts to The People’s Joker and The Room Next Door.

*All the worthwhile books I read in 2024: The World We Make; Hits, Flops, and Other Delusions; James; Maus (reread); I Hate Fairyland; The Pearl; Snow Angels; The Cowboy Wally Show; Neverwhere; Falling Through; Democracy or Else; Ruins; Cinema Speculation, R. Crumb’s Kafka; In Love With the Movies.