Grab your popcorn: Here are the 10 best films of 2024

This year was supposed to be a transitional year for movies. The aftermath of the pandemic, and the Hollywood labor strikes in 2023 that shut down production for months, promised a thin crop. And yet, as someone who sat through upward of 200 movies, I can attest that the year was anything but skimpy. Which is not to say there was a plethora of masterpieces, especially from the studios. But if you knew where to look – often in the independent, animation, documentary, and foreign-language realms – there were bounties to be had.

First, to answer the obvious question: No, there was no “Barbenheimer” phenomenon this year. The closest box office equivalent was the simultaneous release of “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” – dubbed “Glicked.” The good news is that, overall, theatrical movie attendance, though still lagging from prepandemic levels, ticked slightly upward. But it will take more than “event” movies to bring big-screen audiences back in droves. Right now the thinking in Hollywood – flush from the success of films like “Wicked,” “Inside Out 2,” “The Wild Robot,” and “Moana 2” – is that family-friendly entertainments are the way to go. Expect more of that next year. 

Also expect more sequels. In 2024, we witnessed the further exploits of apes, Jokers, bad boys, Beverly Hills cops, Beetlejuices, pandas, road warriors, transformers, and minions – not to mention twisters, dunes, and quiet places. I have nothing against sequels per se – “The Godfather Part II” and “Toy Story 3,” to cite two, are masterpieces. But the pile-on here underscores Hollywood’s pervasive lack of risk-taking.

Risk-taking often showed up, quite literally, with such on-the-ground documentaries as “No Other Land,” made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective, about the forced expulsion of Palestinians in the West Bank, and “Porcelain War,” one of many documentaries filmed inside war-torn Ukraine. Mohammad Rasoulof’s intense family drama “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” not a documentary, centers on Iranian judicial corruption. It was shot in secret, and the director is now escaping prison in exile.

Not all movies that broke away from the pack succeeded. And so, before we get to the Top 10 goodies, a few contrarian cavils. RaMell Ross’ acclaimed “Nickel Boys,” adapted from the Colson Whitehead novel about an abusive reform school for Black youths in Florida, struck me as a powerful subject done in by artsy overkill. Steve McQueen’s “Blitz,” set in London during the World War II bombing, was, especially for him, confoundingly conventional. Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist,” about a visionary Hungarian architect in post-WWII America, features a powerful performance from Adrien Brody but, at 3 1/2 hours, is at least 45 minutes too long.

As for Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed passion project “Megalopolis,” I admired the passion more than the project. And except for Ralph Fiennes, the stellar cast of the papal melodrama “Conclave” gorged the scenery.

Then there were the inevitable biopics: James Mangold’s “A Complete Unknown,” starring Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, and Pablo Larraín’s “Maria,” starring Angelina Jolie as opera diva Maria Callas. These films mainly motivated me to watch the real deal.

And now, in alphabetical order, my Top 10 list, taken from movies that first opened, in theaters and/or online, in 2024:

A Real Pain – A road movie about two bickering cousins on a Holocaust history tour in Poland may not sound promising, but writer-director Jesse Eisenberg and his co-star, Kieran Culkin, transform what might have been a jokey jaunt into something resoundingly affecting. (Rated R)

All We Imagine as Light – Three women in Mumbai are observed with extraordinary empathy by writer-director Payal Kapadia. The prohibitions of Indian society are central to the narrative, but the film is so deeply felt that it never comes across like a political tract. Kapadia and her actors, most prominently Kani Kusruti, possess a rare gift for depicting the quotidian dailyness of life with surpassing grace. (Not rated; multiple languages with English subtitles)

Anora – Sean Baker’s sexually explicit, upside-down Cinderella story about an exotic dancer and the scion of a Russian oligarch runs the full emotional gamut from madcap to tragic without skipping a beat. The most sheerly entertaining movie of the year and the winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, that festival’s highest honor. (R; multiple languages with English subtitles)

Crossing – A retired schoolteacher, marvelously played by Mzia Arabuli, crosses into Istanbul from her village near the Black Sea in order to track down the transgender niece rejected by her family. Writer-director Levan Akin brings us into the byways of the marginalized without a trace of exploitation. (Not rated; multiple languages with English subtitles)

Flow – No animated movie was more imaginative or immersive than this wonder from Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis. Featuring a disparate crew of birds and animals and set in a wordless, postapocalyptic world without humans, it should enthrall adults every bit as much as children. (PG)

Green Border – Set in 2021 in the swampy, forested exclusion zone between Belarus and Poland, Agnieszka Holland’s film is charged with both a documentary-style immediacy and the richness of drama. The plight of refugees from the Middle East and Africa seeking asylum is brought home with unsparing force. (Not rated; multiple languages with English subtitles)

Hard Truths – Marianne Jean-Baptiste is reunited with her “Secrets & Lies” director Mike Leigh, and is both uproarious and lacerating as a deeply sad London housewife looking for succor. Michele Austin, as the consoling sister, matches her performance, in a very different key. It’s Leigh’s best film in years. (R)

I’m Still Here – Set in Brazil during a military dictatorship, Walter Salles’ slow-burn drama is based on the real-life story of a family whose patriarch is “disappeared” by the government in the 1970s. It’s a film about the necessity of challenging corruption, and showcases Fernanda Torres, in one of the year’s finest performances, as the wife who became an icon of resistance. (PG-13; Portuguese with English subtitles)

Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara – The great Italian director Marco Bellocchio has been making marvels since the late 1960s, and this film is among his best. It’s based on the true story of a Jewish child in 1850s Italy who was secretly baptized by a chambermaid and then abducted by the papal police and raised Catholic. A transcendent film about belief and identity. (Not rated; Italian and Hebrew with English subtitles)

We Grown Now – Writer-director Minhal Baig, a first-generation Pakistani American, sets her sights on the friendship of two boys living in a dangerous Chicago housing project in 1992. The performances are superlative, and, despite the grimness of the setting, the film is awash with the wonderment of childhood. (PG)

Others very much worth tracking down include “Sugarcane,” “Sing Sing,” “Daughters,” “Dahomey,” “Saturday Night,” “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found,” “Emilia Pérez,” “Daddio,” “Nightbitch,” “Io Capitano,” “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl,” “The Critic,” “Farewell Mr. Haffmann,” “Bad Faith,” “The Order, “September 5,” and “Memoir of a Snail.”