January 15th, 2025

Of all of my lists, this is the one that has the most weight to it for me. I ended up watching nearly thirty films that released in the US last year. There are certainly movies I haven’t seen yet that I want to see, but as of right now, here is my list of my top ten favorite movies from 2024. This is based purely on my enjoyment, not the quality of each film. If you’d like to see a full list and ranking of every movie I saw last year, check out my list on Letterboxd!

Honorable Mentions

Here are my honorable mentions that I really enjoyed but didn’t quite make it in my top ten:

Terrifier 3 – I just have to mention this because the scene with Art in the bar was one of my favorite scenes of 2024. That scene was amazing.

Wicked – This was an amazing spectacle. While there were some moments or elements that I wasn’t in love with, the scale and beauty of the production was thrilling. Cynthia Erivo really stole the show and might have given one of the best performances of 2024.

Longlegs – I was super excited for this movie pre-release, and sadly it didn’t fully live up to expectations. The opening is great, though, and it has some striking visuals and fun ideas that set it apart from more middling horror movies. The ending went in directions I wasn’t a huge fan of.

Anora – The first 40ish minutes of this drags for me, but after that, Anora changes course and becomes something that’s simultaneously hilarious and heart-breaking. It also has one of the strongest and most interesting endings of 2024.

10. Inside Out 2

Inside Out 2 shines as Pixar’s best sequel. Inherently, I feel like Inside Out has the most potential out of any Pixar franchise for sequels. Just age Riley up and explore her emotions as she grows up. Or, focus on the psyche of another person and their emotions. Inside Out 2 goes for the first approach, opting to examine Riley’s emotions as she grows up.

Unlike the first film, Inside Out 2‘s real world setting is largely the same throughout the movie. The real creativity and Pixar magic comes from the time spent in Riley’s head. There are great new characters, amazing animation style switches, and fun locations.

I’m not sure if Inside Out 2 necessarily made me as emotional as the first film, but it does cover important topics. I think anxiety is an extremely important topic, and it’s something I’ve struggled with throughout my life. The way this movie handles anxiety and examines it feels mature and the way it all concludes feels cathartic.

9. Megalopolis

I know, I know. I mean in my defense, this is my list of my favorite movies of 2024, not the movies I think are the best. With that being said, Megalopolis is one the worst movies from 2024, and honestly one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It is incredibly, delightfully bad, and despite its horrendous quality, it is one of the most entertaining films out there.

In a day and age where concerns of computers taking over creativity in all industries is very present, it’s refreshing to see a project that feels so human. I truly feel that only a group of humans could make something this wonderfully horrible, and there probably will not be anything else like this ever again. Megalopolis feels like every single person on the cast and crew had free rein to just do whatever they want. Because of that, you get eccentric performances and crazy, incomprehensible editing. Of course, around the time of this release, it came out that Francis Ford Coppola is a huge creep and bad guy. Because of that, please do not support this financially. I think this movie is a great thing to watch with friends to have a laugh, but it’s not worth supporting Mr. Coppola financially. The cast and crew have already had their payday.

8. Aggro Dr1ft

I promise I like good movies too! But Aggro Dr1ft is really awful in a different way than Megalopolis. While Megalopolis I can watch and laugh at because I know what everyone was going for and it just came off really poorly, I have no idea what they were going for with Aggro Dr1ft.

I don’t even have much to say, other than this is extremely unique… uniquely horrible, but it’s still very entertaining. I’d like to say that I’m a person that just wants to watch things that are unique or different than the status quo, and this is definitely different, so I have to give them props for that.

And with all things considered, this is actually the movie I laughed at the most out of anything in 2024. Not because it was intentionally funny, but it’s still very funny.

7. Late Night with the Devil

Have you heard of Ghostwatch? It’s a mockumentary special that aired on BBC where real world news anchors and personalities played themselves and investigated a supposedly haunted place – and eventually prove ghosts to be real. It’s awesome, and even though it’s fake, the magic was that it used real people and aired with a lot of people not knowing it was fake.

Late Night with the Devil feels like a love letter to Ghostwatch. It essentially follows a fictional talk show personality as he invites a possessed girl on his show. It goes awry, and the spirit wreaks havoc on the host and audience. I love Ghostwatch and old media in general, and this movie is at its strongest when it’s shot and presented like a lost episode of a tv show. There are also clips from “news” stories about the host and some strange events, and those all work well too. This movie is at its worst, though, when it breaks immersion, either through the use of ugly AI or breaking the style of an old talk show. I’m mostly fine with showing behind the scenes moments, they add some spooks and deliver necessary exposition, but the other style breaks are inexcusable to me.

It’s a shame, because I could see Late Night with the Devil ultimately being something much more without those interruptions. The cast is great, the practical effects are great, and the writing is incredible. This is also one of the only horror movies that really scared me this year (outside of one visual in Longlegs). It stuck with me, and I think overall its positives outweigh the negatives.

6. A Real Pain

A Real Pain is a movie that I was excited for basically as soon as I heard about the cast, as I adore Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg. It ended up being a lot more to me than just a funny movie with two actors I like, though. While it is funny, A Real Pain hit a lot of emotional beats and themes that really resonated with me.

This is a character study of two characters who handle grief (and more broadly, life) in different ways. Of course, the star of the show here is Kieran Culkin, who recently won an award for his portrayal of Benji.

Benji is one of the most interesting characters I’ve seen in anything recently, and this is credit to both Eisenberg’s writing and Culkin’s performance. He’s funny, pathetic, challenging, and inspiring all at the same time. This contrasts nicely with Eisenberg’s David, who is basically the character Eisenberg plays every time. This awkward straight-man character contrasts against Benji in great ways, though, and really brings out emotional extremes in both of them.

Not a lot of movies in 2024 really made me feel emotional, but A Real Pain does. These characters felt real and their experiences felt mundane yet monumental, which captivated me. And the ending leads these characters to a conclusion that left me in my thoughts for some time afterwards.

5. The Substance

The Substance stuck with me for days after watching it. The visuals, the story, and the themes are all fantastic, disturbing, and thought-provoking. It’s incredibly creative, and works incredibly well as both a body-horror film and a satire of Hollywood. I went in relatively blind, and as such I was drawn in and shocked by some of what this presents.

I’ve seen some criticisms about the tone and writing, but I can’t help but disagree. The Substance isn’t perfect, but I think its tone actually helps make everything a lot more coherent. Something that is especially strong about its writing is that it feels like it explores every avenue of the eponymous substance. A lesser movie would reserve those elements for sequels and speculation, but The Substance explores it all in close, disgusting detail.

I don’t want to get too specific because I think this is at its best when going in blind, but it is not for the faint of heart.

4. Heretic

Heretic surprised me. I wasn’t expecting to love this as much as I did, but this thriller really impressed me. Every actor in its relatively small cast gives it their all, with Hugh Grant especially nailing his role as basically the Reddit atheist gone killer. It presents a lot of interesting ideas and works well at setting things up just to challenge them later. Some may find Grant’s ideas offensive or disturbing, but that’s kind of the point. He contrasts our leads well, and Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East’s characters ended up being extremely memorable heroes.

Somewhere between a thriller, horror, and religious debate, Heretic ended up being an excellent addition to A24’s catalog, and is a movie I am very interested in watching again.

3. Piece by Piece

Please, let studios take the right lesson from this. I am not a biopic guy, I generally find them pretty boring. I’d generally rather just watch a documentary or something like that to learn more about a subject if I was so inclined. But, this is an extremely entertaining way to examine someone’s life. The visuals and pacing of Piece by Piece are captivating. Even if you aren’t a Pharrell Williams or Lego fan, I feel like you’d still enjoy this. Both because Pharrell has actually had his hands in a ton of popular songs over the years, and because the Lego visuals are so fun that it elevates this material significantly.

This movie just made me smile, and was the best animated feature to come out of the US in my opinion.

2. Alien: Romulus

Alien: Romulus is amazing. There are many horrible horror sequels and soft-reboots, hell there are horrible horror sequels and soft-reboots in the Alien franchise already. But this is something different. I kind of went in knowing I’d like it, as I adore Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead, but I was blown away at how much I ended up enjoying about it.

The effects are awesome, the characters are compelling, and the scares are there. I saw people saying that this is basically a modern version of Alien and Aliens together, and I mostly agree. If that doesn’t sound compelling to you, you probably wouldn’t like it. But, I love both of those classics, and seeing elements from those movies refreshed with some new ideas and modern practical effects thrown in is right up my alley.

The absolute best thing about Alien: Romulus is David Jonsson’s Andy. Andy is such a great character, and the way he interacts with Cailee Spaeny’s Rain and the rest of the crew was very compelling and entertaining.

I’m very excited to see what Fede Alvarez tackles next, as every horror franchise he has his hands in is better off for it. And if we get that supposed Alien Vs. Predator remake with the director of Prey, well, let’s just say I have open space on my top ten list for that year already.

1. Look Back

Look Back is lightning in a bottle. I am a huge fan of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s work, as I’ve made reference to before. While the Look Back manga isn’t my favorite one-shot by Fujimoto, I still really enjoy it. The film adaptation, though, elevates the material significantly. This is in no small part to Kiyotaka Oshiyama’s superb directing and the dedication the crew had to hand drawing and spending their time with working on it.

Look Back is simply stunning visually, and those visuals pay homage to Fujimoto’s art while creating its own distinct style. I love this story and these themes and I will be watching this over and over again. Last year really grew my fears of AI and the death of human creativity, but this movie is an inspiring rejection of those ideas. It’s a statement on how the soul of art is the human touch and shows how we can connect over creating and consuming media. Like many people who have praised this movie online, I was genuinely inspired to create more after watching this, and I’m so happy that this came out at the time it did. It really shows that people will always continue creating beautiful, inspiring art for as long as we’re around.