With an emphasis on the low-budget, the genre-based, daring and imaginative, here’s our pick of the 31 best movies of 2024.
Imagine, gentle reader, the sound of a mournful trumpet. That’s a fanfare for all the terrific films that came out in 2024 but were technically 2023 films, and so couldn’t qualify for a spot in our final list below. All Of Us Strangers was a singularly moving romantic drama; The Holdovers was a spiky, soul-warming delight; Lorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things was… well, it was a Yorgos Lanthimos movie.
Those all deserve honourable mentions, as do some of the other corking films that came out this year but didn’t quite make the final cut: the satisfyingly tense, low-budget horror stylings of Oddity; the scruffy allure of Jeff Nichols’ crime drama, The Bikeriders, to name but two.
So with those movies addressed, you’re probably wondering: what are Film Stories’ absolute favourite releases of 2024? We’re glad you asked…
31. Timestalker
Eight years after she thrilled us with Prevenge, writer, director and all-round star Alice Lowe finally returned with the one-of-a-kind romantic comedy, Timestalker. Lowe herself is in the lead as a young woman who keeps falling in love with the same handsome stranger (Aneurin Barnard) in different time periods throughout the ages, from the 1700s via the shoulder-padded 1980s and into a dystopian future. It’s a little like Highlander, but with laughs rather than gore, and some real creative zest to its direction. We have but one request: don’t make us wait another eight years for your next feature, Alice Lowe.
30. Horizon: An American Saga
In what we can only describe as The Kevin Costner Factor, epic western Horizon: An American Saga makes a spot on this list – despite it only getting three stars from our serene leader, Simon Brew. All jesting aside, Horizon remains an ambitious, widescreen opus the likes of which we seldom see from Hollywood anymore, and Costner’s western – which he writes, directs, stars in and partly bankrolls – lays a solid foundation for more chapters to come.
29. The Beekeeper
Aside from the presence of Jason Statham himself, one of the striking things about director David Ayer’s action thriller The Beekeeper is that it keeps going long after most films of its genre would call it a day. Enraged that a group of high-tech swindlers stole a sweet old lady’s life savings, Statham’s beekeeper vows to track down those responsible. From there, events keep escalating and escalating in all sorts of wild, gleefully violent ways. Also, Statham kills someone by throwing a jar of honey at them. Give it Best Picture, already.
28. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
George Miller returns to the post-apocalyptic landscape he first dreamed up in 1979’s Mad Max with the riveting Furiosa. Anya Taylor-Joy is magnetic as the title character – a younger version of the Furiosa played by Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road – and Chris Hemsworth evidently enjoys playing the bearded, Captain Hook-like villain Dementus. A special shout-out, though, should go to Tom Burke as Furiosa’s grizzled sidekick, Praetorian Jack. Accepting that it’d result in a spin-off of a spin-off, we’d happily watch a film exploring his character in more depth.
27. My Old Ass
If you could give advice to your younger self, what would you say? Plenty of movies have explored that concept, but My Old Ass, written and directed by Megan Park, does so with wit and real heart. The standout here is Maisy Stella as teenager Elliot LaBrant, a young woman desperate to escape her Ontario cranberry farm and sample the wider world beyond. Then, while imbibing some hallucinogenic tea on her 18th birthday, an older woman materialises (Aubrey Plaza), claiming to be her older self… From that premise, Park crafts a snappily written and sincere comedy drama.
26. Gladiator II
No, Gladiator II isn’t as good as its 2000 predecessor, and there’s the sense that even Ridley Scott and his collaborators feel as though they’re working in the shadow of that earlier movie. All the same, Gladiator: The Second does have a wild charm to it, as the new avenging hero (Paul Mescal’s Lucius) engages in arena battles with everything from sharks to angry rhinos to hairless baboons. The film’s most fearsome character, though, is arguably Denzel Washington’s Macrinus. Draped in the finest clothes the Roman Empire can offer, and grinning as he connives and backstabs his way to power, Washington creates one of the year’s most watchable villains.
25. The First Omen
As great as Immaculate was, thematically-similar The First Omen edges in terms of sheer, horrifying power – which is quite impressive, given that this is on paper just another studio-backed tie-in to an existing franchise. Far from a cash-in trading on nostalgia for 1976 shocker The Omen, though, director and co-writer Arkasha Stevenson’s film is instead a timely horror about motherhood and bodily autonomy. Nell Tiger Free is superb as the young nun who gets more than she bargains for when she goes to work at an orphanage in Rome; Ralph Ineson, Bill Nighy and Charles Dance are among the supporting stars. As directorial debuts go, this is strong – and in one scene boundary-pushing – stuff.
24. The Fall Guy
John Wick co-director David Leitch channels his knowledge and passion for stunts into one of 2024’s most entertaining summer films – The Fall Guy. He and screenwriter Drew Pearce take the basic premise of the old Lee Majors TV series of the same name and use it as a jumping-off point for an adventure-romance packed with filmmaking references and in-jokes. Ryan Gosling plays stuntman Colt Seavers, while Emily Blunt co-stars as his estranged lover and movie director, Jody Moreno. It’s on the set of the latter’s latest film that a spoiled, doltish action star (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) vanishes, triggering a wild ride that takes in Jackie Chan-inspired action and even the odd unicorn hallucination. It’s all thoroughly good fun.
23. Strange Darling
It’s difficult to make a truly unpredictable thriller these days, but Strange Darling, written and directed by JT Mollner, is unusually good at constantly shifting our perspective of – and feelings towards – its central characters. Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner play an unnamed pair who head to a remote motel to hook up one night. To say that things spiral wildly out of control would be an understatement. Fitzgerald and Gallner are both superb; Mollner’s direction is stylish and economical, and the way he sequences his story gives Strange Darling the absorbing quality of a good pulp novel.
22. Rebel Ridge
Netflix can sink hundreds of millions of dollars into entirely forgettable action thrillers, yet Jeremy Saulnier’s mid-budget genre piece Rebel Ridge manages to stand out as one of the streaming giant’s best 2024 offerings. Then again, we’d expect nothing less from the director of such indie gems as Blue Ruin and Green Room. Aaron Pierre stars as the ice-cool Terry, an ex-soldier who rides into a small American town to drop off the bail money that will get his cousin out of jail. But then a bunch of crooked cops steal the bag of cash, and Terry, peacefully at first, sets about trying to get it back. Taking inspiration from Ted Kotcheff’s 1981 classic First Blood, Saulnier lets his thriller simmer until its explosive climax.
21. Longlegs
Some canny marketing made Longlegs one of the most talked-about films of the year, at least for a few months. But beneath the hype there’s a genuinely good shocker; Maika Monroe is as magnetic as she always is as an FBI agent on the trail of a serial killer in the early 1990s. Writer-director Osgood Perkins, although drawing on such things as Silence Of The Lambs and Seven, brings a nightmarish atmosphere to his story, and while your mileage may vary when it comes to Nicolas Cage’s performance as the villain, the film has a disturbing power that’s difficult to shake.
20. Anora
A New York stripper falls for a Russian oligarch’s son in writer-director Sean Baker’s blackly comic drama, Anora. Filming on a low budget, Baker (Tangerine, The Florida Project) scares up an urgently-told, explicit yet compassionate story that takes some unpredictable swerves across its 140-ish minute duration. Mikey Madison is terrific as the spirited Ani, as is Mark Eydelshteyn as the unfeasibly rich, childlike Vanya.
19. Love Lies Bleeding
Saint Maud director Rose Glass set off for the United States for her second feature film. And while the result is thematically a world away from that earlier dark character study, Love Lies Bleeding is no less stylish – and no less fascinated with the bleaker side of human nature. A pulpy neo-noir, Glass’s film sees Kristen Stewart’s gym manager Lou fall in love with Jackie (Katy O’Brian), a bodybuilder training for a big competition in Las Vegas. As a relationship blossoms between the two, outside forces – not least Ed Harris as Lou’s sleazy father – threaten to pull them apart again. Glass takes a big swing with her third act, which appears to have divided opinion somewhat, but nevertheless, Love Lies Bleeding marks her out as one of the UK’s most talented new filmmakers.
18. Stuntman
Coincidentally released the same year as The Fall Guy, Hong Kong drama Stuntman pays its own homage to the people that risk their lives to make action movies. But where The Fall Guy was a playful romantic adventure, Stuntman, directed by Albert and Herbert Leung, is rather more introspective, balancing nostalgia for the 70s, 80s and 90s era of classic Hong Kong films with the often dangerous extremes stunt performers often went to in order to make them. Protagonist Sam (Stephen Tung) is a former stunt choreographer who turned his back on the industry after a sequence went grimly wrong some 30 years earlier. Convinced to oversee the action in a modern martial arts flick, Sam’s forced to reckon with his past – and the obsessive quality he still brings to his movie-making. Made by actors and filmmakers who actually worked on the movies it references, Stuntman is one of those under-the-radar 2024 films that’s well worth tracking down.
17. Challengers
Director Luca Guadagnino seems to view love as some kind of debilitating, potentially deadly illness rather than a natural part of life, but that’s one of the things that makes his films so absorbing. In Challengers, the maker of Call Me By Your Name and A Bigger Splash turns to the world of tennis, with a romantic triangle between two would-be champions and the former star who trains them. Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist are excellent as the leads; Guadagnino directs with brio, both on and off the court, while Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross provide an unspeakably cool soundtrack.
16. Civil War
A team of journalists journey into the heart of a USA tearing itself apart in Alex Garland’s fearsome thriller. Filled with hellish imagery and sparky, likeable characters – Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny and Stephen McKinley are all superb – Civil War offers a disquieting portrait of what the collapse of a democratic superpower might look like. Garland is vague about the political detail of how his fictional America got into this mess, focusing instead on the resulting bloodshed and his characters’ responses to it. All the same, the strength of the filmmaking is hard to deny; if anything, Civil War looks more urgent and disturbing now than it did when it came out in April 2024.
15. Dìdi
With the 2023 Hollywood strikes throwing the big-budget end of the industry into disarray, little gaps have been left open for smaller, personal films like Dìdi to find an appreciative audience. Written and directed by Sean Wang, its story is steeped in his own experiences as a Taiwanese-American teenager growing up in the 2000s. It’s a coming-of-age story, sure, but loaded with so much unmistakably individual detail – the era’s technology, the racial micro-aggressions that Wang experienced as a youth – that it could have only come from the person that made it. Izaac Wang is superb as the young lead, and the film as a whole is one of 2024’s funniest and most joyful.
14. Thelma
Ninety-something actor June Squib is the hub around which this charming comedy-thriller turns. A kind of thematic companion piece to David Ayer’s more aggressive The Beekeeper, Thelma sees its titular grandma head out to find the hoodlums who swindled her out of $10,000. That she does so on her mobility scooter, and with the help of her old friend Ben ( the late Richard Roundtree) only makes the resulting adventure more captivating. One of this year’s most pleasant film surprises? Undoubtedly.
13. Young Woman And The Sea
Ordinarily, uplifting real-life stories bankrolled by Disney have us running for the hills, but Young Woman And The Sea is anything but sickly sweet. Based on the true story of Gertrude Ederle and her 1926 attempt to swim the English channel, it’s directed with real conviction by Joaquim Rønning, previously best known for his work on another watery Disney flick, Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Largely shot in real open water, Young Woman And The Sea has genuine dramatic stakes, helped no end by a effervescent leading turn from Daisy Ridley as Ederle, and support from such talent as Stephen Graham and Christopher Eccleston. We’d recommend you give this one a watch on Disney+ if you haven’t already.
12. Dune: Part Two
If Dune: Part One laid the foundations, then Denis Villenueve faced an even trickier challenge with its follow-up – provide a satisfying pay-off to his 2021 sci-fi fantasy epic. The result is arguably one of the most bold, bleak and flat-out unusual blockbusters we’ve seen emerge from Hollywood in a while. Timothee Chalamet’s Paul Atreides continues to follow his destiny on the desert planet Arrakis, and while its indigenous population think he’s the messianic figure who’ll free them from the tyranny of the evil Harkonnens, there’s a glint in Paul’s eye that suggests he might not be the benevolent figurehead they’re expecting. Villeneuve directs a film packed with exquisite detail and ingeniously-conceived special effects; Dune: Part Two’s budget may have been around the $190m, yet he still somehow makes the whole thing as intelligently and as intimately as his earlier independent work. Oh, and someone should give Rebecca Ferguson an Oscar for her film-stealing work here as Lady Jessica.
11. Your Fat Friend
One of the year’s flat-out finest documentaries, filmmaker Jeanie Finlay’s profile of activist Aubrey Gordon is a humane and intelligent study of our cultural obsession with weight. Taking place over a span of six years, it follows Gordon’s bravely honest writing and podcasting on the subject of obesity – “just say fat,” she memorably says near the start of the film – and the dreadful bullying she had to endure in the process. Given how judgmental and image-led we are in our always-online society, Your Fat Friend emerges as a timely and insightful film about how we talk and think about body weight.
10. Sing Sing
Based on a real life rehabilitation programme at the titular prison in New York, Sing Sing was rightly acclaimed when it emerged earlier this year. Colman Domingo stars as an inmate at the facility who finds purpose and friendship in a theatre group. If all that sounds a little worthy, then rest assured that director Greg Kwedar (who co-wrote the script with Clint Bentley) brings a light, playful quality to his storytelling as well as glimpses of harshness. The use of 16mm film gives the drama a stark texture, and Sing Sing as a whole is about finding moments of levity in bleak situations – something Domingo brings out in his wonderful performance. Although it wasn’t a huge box office success on its cinema release , we suspect that Sing Sing is one of those movies that will be rewatched and enjoyed for years to come.
9. Black Box Diaries
A Japanese journalist confronts her own rapist in what might be one of the bravest documentaries ever made. Brave because its subject, Shiori Itō, is also the director, writer and co-producer, but also brave because the perpetrator also happened to be one of the most powerful men in Japanese media. As James Harvey wrote in his review, “Part legal drama, part love-letter to the act (if not the industry) of journalism, this is a remarkably assured cinematic debut, and an undeniably powerful crowd-pleaser all at once.” We wouldn’t be surprised to see Black Box Diaries figure heavily in next year’s Best Documentary awards categories.
8. Better Man
There are a number of things that shouldn’t work in this music biopic about Robbie Williams – the most obvious being that Williams is portrayed throughout as an anthropomorphised chimpanzee. In practice, though, the visual metaphor works superbly when it’s about a musician and entertainer who, no matter how much success he found, never felt like he fit in with the rest of the human race. The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey keeps the story of Williams’ youth and rise to success skipping along like a catchy pop record, while the strength of Wētā’s VFX means that the sight of a chimp performing with the rest of 90s boy band Take That soon looks strangely normal. Given how staid biopics like this can be, it’s refreshing to see one that is so soul-baringly honest.
7. The Substance
In the weeks and months after its release, word emerged of just how difficult a time writer, director and co-producer Coralie Fargeat had while making her blackly comic body horror. Universal Pictures, which was originally its distributor, disliked The Substance so much that executives tried to get Fergeat to change it. When she refused (quite reasonably, given she had final cut), Universal flogged the film to indie streaming platform, Mubi. We can only imagine the meetings those Universal execs had when The Substance went on to win a prize at Cannes, make decent money at the box office, and received widespread acclaim from critics. As for the film itself… we’ll leave its delights for you to uncover if you haven’t seen it yet. Broadly put: Demi Moore plays a 50 year-old TV star who goes to ill-advised lengths to regain her youthful looks; Margaret Qualley plays her younger self. A particularly dark, feminist remake of The Nutty Professor, it’s one of 2024’s boldest and wildest films.
6. Small Things Like These
Having bested the challenge of playing a world-changing theoretical physicist in Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy rolls his sleeves up and takes on the role of a coalman. Based on the Claire Keegan novel of the same name, Small Things Like These is an absorbing 1980s-set drama about a seemingly idyllic Irish community that holds some particularly dark – and sad – secrets. Directed by Tim Mielants and with an adapted screenplay by Enda Walsh, it’s a quietly poignant film, full of restrained yet powerful performances (Murphy’s joined by the likes of Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairly and Emily Watson). It’s a difficult but rewarding watch.
5. Kneecap
There’s a certain go-for-broke quality to Kneecap, the semi-fictionalised story of the titular rap outfit from West Belfast. Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin and JJ Ó Dochartaigh all play themselves as a scruffy trio whose music about their post-ceasfirelives gets them into all sorts of trouble with the authorities. Part comedy, part music biopic, Kneecap is also about how the policing of the Irish language has long been used as a form of oppression, and how the shadow of the Troubles still hangs affects younger generations, even years after the Good Friday Agreement was signed. In short, this profane, febrile and seemingly goofy film is also one of the year’s smartest. With vibrant photography from Ryan Kernaghan, it’s also one of the best-looking.
4. Hundreds Of Beavers
Once again, a low-budget, independent film comes out and shows the rest of the industry how it’s done. A slapstick comedy that also draws inspiration from silent cinema, videogames and the action stylings of Jackie Chan, Hundreds Of Beavers was made for just $150,000 – and yet manages to be as creative and funny as any film that cost a hundred times that investment. About a 19th century applejack maker whose livelihood is destroyed by those pesky beavers, director Mike Cheslik film is part survival adventure, part Lynchian comedy – a kind of Eraserhead for the YouTube generation. Admittedly, the film was actually made two years ago, but its success on its streaming release (and via self-distribution) has turned Hundreds Of Beavers into one of 2024’s biggest cult success stories.
3. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
In a world threatening to become more cynical with each passing day, it’s refreshing to think that Aardman Animations is still turning out movies as handcrafted and charming as Vengeance Most Fowl. Its eccentric inventor and canine sidekick duo hardly need an introduction, though it’s worth noting that their latest adventure has a dash of contemporary angst written into it. This time, Wallace (voiced by Ben Whitehead) has invented Norbot (Reece Shearsmith), a device which is part Alexa-like smart gadget and part mischievous gnome. It is, of course, all thoroughly disarming, and Aardman’s stop motion work is once again superb. It may have been 16 years since Wallace & Gromit’s last adventure, 2008’s A Matter Of Loaf And Death, but at least it’s been worth the wait.
2. Conclave
A bunch of jowly old cardinals mulling over who to make the next Pope might not sound like the stuff of cinematic gold, but director Edward Berger works some real magic with Conclave. It helps that he’s working from a cracking script by Peter Straughan, adapted from Robert Harris’s novel of the same name, and has a similarly storming cast – Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow and Isabella Rossellini to name a few. It’s a detective thriller, of sorts, with Fiennes’ quietly-spoken Cardinal Lawrence piecing together the final moments of the late Pope, while at the same time figuring out who’s a suitable replacement and who’s simply after power for its own sake. Berger, along with cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine and production Suzie Davies, create a film that is fascinating in its details: the Eternal City’s curious mix of the ancient and modern; the way each cardinal wears a cross specific to their own region; the entire Sistine Chapel set, which incredibly, they managed to build in just 10 days. What a movie.
Special mention: Red Rooms
Technically, Red Rooms came out in 2023 (and appeared in UK cinemas this year) so doesn’t officially qualify for this list. All the same, we wanted to give it a nod because it’s far too good to slip between the cracks. Directed by Pascal Plante, it’s about a young, successful Montreal woman who becomes enthralled by an unfolding court case. A middle-aged man stands accused of kidnapping three school children, murdering them, and broadcasting the atrocities on the dark web. It’s all as disturbing as it sounds, but written and made with restraint and real style; it’s all anchored by Juliette Gariépy’s central performance as Kelly-Anne – a woman who disappears down a distinctly modern kind of rabbit hole.
1. I Saw The TV Glow
Writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s film is so incomparably wonderful not just because it’s a thought-provoking and deeply poignant drama (though it assuredly is that). It’s also because it captures the almost indescribable feeling of being young, awkward, overwhelmed by the looming spectre of adulthood, and seeking solace in friendship and bits of pop culture. In the case of I Saw The TV Glow, 90s teens Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) bond over their mutual love of a Buffy-like television show called The Pink Opaque. That fandom becomes the springboard for a deeper story about the passing of time, the trans experience, and the terror of missed opportunities. Disturbing, tender and impeccably observed, I Saw The TV Glow is one of most individual, original genre films not just of 2024, but of the past few years.
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