Best movies of 2024

I've been procrastinating posting my end-of-year movies list, but the Oscar nominations drop tomorrow morning so now's a good time! Like last year, I plan to post an updated list after the Oscars, because I still have a bunch of 2024 releases on my to-watch list.

I saw almost all of these in the theater; the ones I saw streaming online are marked with an asterisk below. (Technically I saw Majority Rules on a DVD player in the Somerville Public Library but it was a pretty crowded room so I'm calling that a "theater"!) I've separated them into buckets based on what rating I gave them on a 1-10 scale, and they're sorted from best to worst inside those buckets. I'm wondering if I need to start recording fractional ratings, because it was hard to remember enough details to fully rank the 48 movies that I rated a 7! So, take the precise relative rankings in this list with a grain of salt.

My number one favorite movie is a documentary, which I'm fairly sure has never happened before. Flipside is an unassuming doc about an unassuming run-down indie record store in New Jersey, but, much like Chris Wilcha's previous documentary The Target Shoots First (from 1999), it's also part autobiography, part sociological critique, and part psychoanalysis, with many fun tangents and surprising cameos. To quote DOC NYC, it's "the existential Gen-X movie we didn’t know we wanted."

I'm too tired to write up my other faves right now, but feel free to ask in a comment if you want me to expound on anything. Or just go stream it! I try to watch most movies without knowing anything about them (other than whatever it was that made me curious to see it: a director or actor I like, say, or its appearance on someone else's favorites list); it can lead to some fun surprises, and I recommend trying it out.

9:

1. Flipside
2. Sometimes I Think About Dying
3. Challengers

   8:

4. Hundreds of Beavers
5. Flow
6. Riddle of Fire
7. Good One
8. How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies
9. Dune: Part Two
10. Conclave
11. The Dead Don't Hurt
12. Knox Goes Away
13. Hard Truths
14. Nickel Boys
15. Heretic
16. The Fall Guy
17. Hit Man
18. Touch
19. Nosferatu
20. Thelma
    ( 21-142 )

Here's my current list of 2024 releases I plan to see in theaters soon:

The Brutalist
All We Imagine As Light
A Complete Unknown
September 5
I'm Still Here
Better Man

And a selection of other 2024 releases I hope to catch up with:
( Read more... )

Let me know what else I missed!