The Best Films of 2024

Written by Tom Augustine.

As with last year, the only films eligible for this list are ones that have screened to the public for the first time this year. This means that truly excellent films that I’ve seen but which are slated for a proper release next year (such as The Room Next Door, Maria, Misericordia) will need to wait for 2025. 

Even with an expanded list of forty films, there are of course excellent movies that missed the cut. Some honourable mentions include Wild Diamond, Occupied City, The Taste of Things, Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, Kinds of Kindness, Flow, Drive-Away Dolls, A Quiet Place: Day One, When the Light Breaks, Smile 2, To A Land Unknown, Bookworm, The Convert, All We Imagine as Light, Anora, Seed of the Sacred Fig, Alien: Romulus, Gut Instinct and, yes, Joker: Folie á Deux.

 

I don’t want to editorialise too much up top. It hasn’t necessarily been the very strongest year for film across the board, but we’ve been left with a bevy of excellent work to choose from. One trend I noted that surprised me was how many entries on this list are directed by filmmakers whose previous work has left me cold or altogether disdainful – Edward Berger, David Ayer, Denis Villeneuve, Robert Eggers, Ali Abbasi, as well as generally liking new films by Todd Phillips and Yorgos Lanthimos. Another interesting trend – the changing face of distribution. Many of the best films of the year were released in methods that deviated from the traditional cinema model, but which resisted the suffocating drabness of the established streaming model. The cinema world is, as ever, apt to surprise you. 

 

40. Nosferatu (Eggers, 2024)

It has long been Robert Eggers’ dream to remake Nosferatu, the big daddy of vampire flicks, and he finally gets to fulfil his wish here with his finest work since his debut The Witch. Eggers conjures a suffocating, crypt-like atmosphere for this story of an Eastern European bloodsucker moving to the big city, which will surely come to be defined by Lily Rose Depp’s ludicrously committed performance as Count Orlok’s long-suffering object of affection and hunger. The best thing about this very big, very serious take on Nosferatu – it’s a hell of a lot of fun, sometimes seemingly in spite of its own intentions.

 

39. Bird (Arnold, 2024)

The great British filmmaker Andrea Arnold, who redefined British social realism with her films Fish Tank and Wasp, brings a new twist to familiar ground in this odd, intriguing movie, her first narrative feature since the brilliant American Honey. At first glance, it’s another in Arnold’s line of films about fragile, working class girls scrapping for a foothold amidst the chaos of poverty. Then Franz Rogowski’s Bird appears, and the film takes on a fantastical tinge that is fascinating and repellant in equal measure. Newcomer Nykiya Adams is another of Arnold’s strokes of casting genius, while Barry Keoghan is at his most charming playing her wayward father. 

 

38. Birdeater (Wier, Clark, 2024)

One of the tensest and most frightening films of the year is this Australian debut that walks in the shadow of Wake in Fright, a nightmarish deep dive into a Buck’s Night in the outback, attended by a fragile bride-to-be, who is contending with the hooting hooliganism of her fiance and his many hideous pals. Populated by a tremendous, committed young cast, directors Jim Weir and Jack Clark toss every cinematic trick in their playbook at the screen to keep us on our toes and guessing, even as the film descends further and further into inescapable darkness.

 

37. My First Film (Anger, 2024)

Gloriously flexible and probing, Zia Anger synthesises years of pain and abortive creative projects into a moving slice of docu-fiction following the production of her first, infamously ‘lost’ film. Anger evokes the imagery and sensations of the child-rearing process in telling the story of that doomed project in ways funny, heartbreaking and illuminating, culminating in a vivid third act that collapses time, memory and the fragile tissue that separates narrative and truth. 

 

36. Menus-Plaisirs, Les Troisgros (Wiseman, 2024)

At 94, Frederick Wiseman’s iconic, much-imitated style as a documentarian, with its patience and methodical rhythm, still has the power to captivate. A portrait of the family-owned three-Michelin star French restaurant Les Troisgros and the many aspects of its operation – from growing and sourcing food, to preparation, to finance, to the overwhelmingly wealthy patrons – it’s a glowing ode to the magic and pain of careful process. It’s a lesser Wiseman, not least because of its distinct lack of investigation of the ethics of a kind of art reserved only for the richest, but even lesser Wiseman stands tall above virtually every other kind of documentary filmmaking.

 

35. The Apprentice (Abbasi, 2024)

The Apprentice is one of the uglier films on this list, a good fit for the subject matter, taking on the early days of Donald Trump’s ascent in the real estate world under the guidance of the vampiric Roy Cohn. This one has stuck with me since my initial, tepid review, particularly because of the revelatory performances of Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong, who are utterly magnetic throughout (particularly Stan, who conjures Trump without resorting to gaudy impression). Director Ali Abbasi, bouncing back from the misfire of Holy Spider, bisects the movie using canny, era-appropriate filming methods according to decade, marking his finest work yet.

 

34. The Haka Party Incident (Wolfe, 2024)

Adapted from the stage play of the same name, Katie Wolfe’s searing investigation of the shameful actions of the University of Auckland’s Engineering Department students in the Seventies – wherein white, male students dressed in culturally appropriative depictions of Māori and ran wild in the streets of Tāmaki – is essential viewing for New Zealanders. Wolfe coaxes astonishing reflections from both protesters and Haka Party members, drawing a direct line between the protest movements of the modern era and recent Aotearoa history.

 

33. Dìdi (Wang, 2024)

Sean Wang’s charming 2000s coming of age drama is a notable addition to the teen film canon, one with a strong rewatchability factor. The story of a thirteen year old Taiwanese boy (Izaac Wang) being raised by an immigrant single mother in the suburbs of smalltown America feels like a recipe for roteness, but Wang’s deft directorial hand, some superb performances (particularly Twin Peaks’ Joan Chen) and a steady supply of wry observations about the noughties era ensure this packs a stronger punch than you may initially suspect.

 

32. Union (Story, Maing, 2024)

This documentary, released independently and only watchable online here after it was passed on by every major American studio (three guesses why), is a powerful study of the triumphant grassroots effort to unionise a Amazon fulfilment centre in Staten Island. At the heart of the story is Christopher Smalls, a flawed, nigh-on folkloric working class hero fighting for the rights of other employees even as he is fired, publicly smeared and threatened by the powers-that-be. Directors Brett Story and Stephen Maing take a refreshingly frank look at the many difficulties and limits of community organising, ultimately arriving at a place of weathered, battered determination and hope.

 

31. Dahomey (Diop, 2024)

Following her astounding feature narrative debut Atlantics, French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop has returned to the realm of documentary with this excellent, revealing story of repatriation and the scars of colonial plundering, one that fittingly stretches the form in a matter fitting of this chameleonic, stridently adventurous artist. The historic return of stolen statues to Benin becomes a meditation and debate of cultural memory and the question of reparations, narrated movingly by a disembodied voice depicting the spirit of Ghézo, a Beninese King of the Dahomey tribe, forever separated from his people. 

 

30. Rebel Ridge (Saulnier, 2024)

Jeremy Saulnier has been hovering on the fringes of muscular genre cinema for grown-ups ever since he burst onto the scene with Blue Ruin, but Rebel Ridge represents his biggest commercial and critical success, rivalling Green Room for the title of his best work. A gripping, exceptionally executed thriller, Rebel Ridge puts us on edge from its opening moments with the heightened, suggestive imagery of a black man being unknowingly pursued by a cop car. The action escalates through a series of unfortunate events triggered by the corruption of a small town police force entirely unprepared for the can of whoop-ass they’ve opened with Aaron Pierre’s former Marine Terry Richmond. The film rests on the burly shoulders and gravelly cadence of the Denzel-like Pierre, who should be one of our biggest stars, and who is utterly magnetic here. 

 

29. We Were Dangerous (Stewart-Te Whiu, 2024)

The best film to come out of Aotearoa this year is Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu’s generous, deceptively simple tale of sisterhood and resistance at an island-based reformatory school for wayward girls in the 1950s. Anchored by three robust lead performances by Erana James, Nathalie Morris and Manaia Hall, and ably assisted by the great Rima Te Wiata in a heel turn flecked with sadness, Stewart-Te Whiu’s debut (aided by a sparkling screenplay from Maddie Dai, one of the best Aotearoa produced this year) heralds the arrival of one of the country’s most promising rising talents.

 

28. Longlegs (Perkins, 2024)

One of the most successful sleeper campaigns in modern movie history led to a horror/thriller that proved more divisive than expected. Set aside the heated discussion around Longlegs and what is left is what lingers long after watching – the atmosphere, the atmosphere, the atmosphere. This year I’ve found that amidst so much sanitisation and so much blandness it is those films that conjure a sense of place and irrevocable, ambient feeling that linger. Longlegs’ story, which morphs into a dark fairy tale before our eyes, may not sit well with everyone, but the terror Perkins’ images evokes has stuck to me like a film ever since.

 

27. Grand Theft Hamlet (Grylls, Crane, 2024)

One of the finest comedies of the year, which also happens to be one of the best documentaries of the year, Grand Theft Hamlet is a film that seems like it shouldn’t work on paper. Set almost entirely in the world of Grand Theft Auto, the story of a group of pandemic-stricken theatre makers putting on a Shakespeare play in the world of online gaming is possibly the finest evocation of the peculiarities of the COVID period put to screen. It helps that it’s genuinely hilarious – the juxtaposition of the general batshittery of the GTA universe held up against the mundanities of pandemic life generating some of the most absurdly funny moments of the year.

 

26. Conclave (Berger, 2024)

In terms of pure enjoyment in a cinema space, you’d  be hard-pressed to find an experience more rewarding than watching Conclave with a full crowd, particularly one comprised of older viewers. This is prime cinema for the boomer crowd (a truth I discovered at my packed Capitol Cinema screening, which was at least 95% that age bracket), but that doesn’t make its twists and turns any less enjoyable for the younger generations, as typified by the fact it has become something of a meme mine since its release. Directed by Edward Berger, bouncing back from making one of the worst films of the 2020s in last year’s All Quiet On The Western Front remake, it is closed-doors Catholic shenanigans reimagined as Gossip Girl-style backstabbing and gossip. The mean girls this time round are a squadron of bitter, uppity cardinals, led by Ralph Fiennes in one of his finest performances in years. Berger’s direction is handsome if generally unremarkable, but the strength of script and performance ensures pure, catty entertainment.

 

25. Good One (Donaldson, 2024)

Kiwi expat India Donaldson (daughter of the great Roger Donaldson) debuts with this excellent, Reichardt-influenced three-hander, which places a teen girl (a superb Lily Collias) alongside her father and his sadsack best friend on a hiking trip that ends up fundamentally twisting the way they see each other forever. Like Reichardt, Donaldson’s film thrives on subtlety and minute shifts in gesture and tone to convey whole worlds of emotion. Collias is ably supported by James LeGros and Danny McCarthy, who wring empathy and odiousness in equal measure through their interplay and interactions with Collias. A quiet, simmering work that promises great things from a new Kiwi voice.

 

24. The Beekeeper (Ayer, 2024)

As 2024 winds to a close with the world in thrall to the actions of United Healthcare CEO assassin Luigi Mangione, David Ayer’s summer actioner The Beekeeper feels more and more apt as a statement of modern working class vengeance. A deeply silly but entirely satisfying hunk of retributive punishment, it’s by far the best thing director David Ayer (Suicide Squad, Bright and other lumps of coal) has ever made, telling the story of a taciturn warrior of a secret organisation known as Beekeepers, who step in to even the scales when the powerful step out of line. Jason Statham, the most pound-for-pound reliable action star on the planet right now, is a hoot distributing timely justice to the powers-that-be, whether they’re predatory scammers, Presidential children, the uber-rich or police and secret agents. The scene in which Statham unleashes hell on a scam-calling office is among the best moments in cinema this year. The result is a more radical and on-the-pulse response to the current climate than innumerable films of higher pedigree. We need ten more, please.

 

23. Hit Man (Linklater, 2024)

Richard Linklater continues to prove his ability to wrest inquisitive, incisive philosophical ideas from the structures of crowd-pleasers, immediately cementing the star power of his two leads Glen Powell and Adria Arjona in the process. With its shifting identities, delightfully sexy romantic antics and a healthy dash of that classic Linklater cool, Hit Man is one of the most satisfying American releases of the year, despite suffering the indignity of a streaming-only release (as with Rebel Ridge and other entries higher on this list). 

 

22. The Substance (Fargeat, 2024)

In my review of The Substance, I said that it may just be the definitive film of 2024, and I stand by that. Not the best, but the one that may be closest in mind when we recall this lurid, foul year of excess and violence. Fargeat does away with subtlety and nuance for a sledgehammer of a B-movie body horror that revels in slapstick, ickiness and gratuitous violence. It’s not a film to pore and puzzle over, it’s one to experience – to feel prickling beneath your skin and churning in your bowels. A howl of fury in a year that called for it.

 

21. Megalopolis (Coppola, 2024)

Another work that’s a contender for the defining film of 2024, Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestating opus is too full of visionary, astonishing images to dismiss, too laden with cringeworthy nonsense to embrace entirely. A vision of the future in deep conversation with the past, Coppola synthesises decades of philosophical musing into a film entirely muddled and yet quite unforgettable, populated by performances both exquisite (Aubrey Plaza and Giancarlo Esposito, icons both) and howlingly awful (Jon Voight, Nathalie Emmanuel). Whether this will go on to be embraced as so many Coppolas that were initially dismissed did, it is hard to say. What can be said is that there was nothing else in the same stratosphere as Megalopolis in 2024, and isn’t that a wonderful thing?

 

20. Janet Planet (Baker, 2023)

In a just world, playwright-turned-auteur Annie Baker’s Janet Planet would win all the awards known to man for its astonishing sound design, which roots the viewer within her summery, humid childhood world with such skill that it entirely eclipses other soundscapes of more extreme bombast. An evocation of a childhood spent with a mother she could never quite get a handle on, it’s a gently observed but aching portrait of coming of age, rendered with a poet’s simplicity.

 

19. Dune: Part Two (Villeneuve, 2024)

Villeneuve makes good on the promise of Dune: Part One with this exceptional, expansive and troubling sequel, a sweeping epic that doubles as a Lawrence of Arabia-esque indictment of the insidious creep of colonialism and the way it can be co-opted to destructive ends. One imagines Frank Herbert looking on with approval. A broad and committed cast is led by Timothee Chalamet, shouldering the demands of a Messiah role with ease. The film belongs to the Fremen though – Zendaya’s heartbroken paramour Chani and Javier Bardem’s heartbreaking hype-man Stilgar. Also excellent is Austin Butler’s psychotic Feyd-Rautha, a commanding presence. Villeneuve may have produced his finest blockbuster here. Bring on Part Three.

 

18. The Beast (Bonello, 2023)

One of the most persistently fascinating of the new French auteurs, Bertrand Bonello adapts a Henry James short story as only he could, expanding and remixing the material into a generations-spanning triptych intimately concerned with the horror and transcendence we bestow upon each other. It is all anchored by an astonishing performance from Léa Seydoux, who must surely join the likes of Juliette Binoche and Isabelle Huppert in the annals of French film actresses of genuine significance.  

 

17. A Different Man (Schimberg, 2024)

Aaron Schimberg’s brilliant, Kafka-esque dramedy is one of the most idiosyncratic and hard-to-shake American releases of the year. Part of a year of reemergence for longtime pretty-boy actor Sebastian Stan – who between this and The Apprentice had one of the strongest twelve months of any performer – it’s a thorny, fascinating work, a tragicomic cautionary tale of how the desire to fit in can destroy you as entirely as whatever it is that sets you apart. Of a piece with The Substance, it is a moment of arrival for Schimberg, too, who makes his mark as a unique American voice.

 

16. A Real Pain (Eisenberg, 2024)

Jesse Eisenberg’s remarkably assured sophomore feature is a drama of sneaky, shattering power. Thrumming off the energy provided by two top-of-their-game performances from Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin, who emerges fully-formed as an honest-to-god movie star, it’s a film that parallels personal and historical damage with care and simplicity. What is most remarkable about A Real Pain is the frankness with which it confronts the limits of our ability to save each other. 

 

15. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (Friedkin, 2023)

Arriving sans fanfare on Neon earlier this year, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial has the peculiar honour of being the final film of the master William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist). An adaptation of a stage play that concerns the trial of a pair of mutineers on an American naval ship, it is a singularly stagey work, one that feels as though it shouldn’t work even as it casts its spell on you. Shot with a soap opera level of economy (critic Olivia Craighead remarked that it feels like it was made ‘for $5 and a dream’), Friedkin’s mastery of the architecture of cinema is nevertheless on full display, wringing pressure and heartbreak from the simplest of the filmmaking tools – the close-up and the cut. Features the finest closing moment of the year. 

 

14. Challengers (Guadagnino, 2024)

A blast of pure adrenaline, Luca Guadagnino’s three-way tennis love affair is his strongest work since Call Me By Your Name. Featuring volcanic turns from its central trio – Zendaya, Mike Faist and particularly Josh O’Connor – it is a film that traces the shifting balances of sexual power with lurid, sweaty fascination and typically assured direction from the Italian auteur. Landing with confidence and energy in a lackluster first quarter of 2024, it was a breath of fresh air – a mature yet cheeky, wholly satisfying romantic thriller that offered a glimpse of what could be if we were to embrace original storytelling at the highest levels of movie-making.

 

13. Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter One (Costner, 2024)

Honestly, thank God Kevin Costner left behind the hyper-masculine wasteland of Yellowstone to pursue this white whale of a Western series, which remains in limbo following the lamentable flop of the opening chapter. Largely self-financed, Costner’s Chapter One is entirely dedicated to setting the stage for future events, which we may never see. And yet – this unabashedly traditional, misty-eyed Western is wholly satisfying as a piece of American mythmaking, the kind of old-fashioned cinematic sweep that seemingly just doesn’t put bums in seats these days. What a shame – it’s one of the best films of the year.

 

12. Green Border (Holland, 2023)

Perhaps the most wholly devastating work of fiction to release this year, Polish filmmaker Agniezska Holland’s remarkable, urgent Green Border captures the repugnant moral crisis unfolding in Europe following the influx of immigrants from war torn areas around the world. Holland depicts the perspectives of a range of people involved in the so-called ‘Green Border’, the stretch of forest that separates Belarus and Poland, where asylum-seekers and immigrants are cruelly, violently tossed back-and-forth between nations at will by fascistic enforcers. Holland’s unsparing commitment to unvarnished truth results in one of the finest works of political cinema to emerge in 2024.

 

11. Rap World and the Works of Conner O’Malley (O’Malley, Scharar et al., 2024)

You’d be hard-pressed to find a comedian who had a better, more consistent year than the daring, experimental Conner O’Malley, who between his feature Rap World, his short Coreys and his hour-long stand-up special Stand Up Solutions announced his arrival to a wider audience with the same resolute commitment to capturing the bizarre and ugly parts of our modern, hyper-masculine consumerist society with that same unhinged sense of humour intact. Rap World is the funniest film of the year, a devastatingly accurate and wholly succinct work about three schlubby nobodies in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania in the late-2000s who decide to record a rap album over the course of a single night. Coming in at under an hour and released for free on Youtube, it is a moment of genuine ascension for a truly one-of-a-kind comedic artist.

 

10. Priscilla (Coppola, 2023)

Arriving early in 2024 for New Zealanders, Sofia Coppola’s gorgeous biopic captures the inner life of the girl-next-door who married the world’s biggest rock star, imbuing her story with generosity and nuance. It’s a star-making moment for Cailee Spaeny, who between this, Civil War and Alien: Romulus had a massive 2024, here capturing the shifting sands of Priscilla Presley’s identity as she grows older and yearns ever more to be free of the suffocating walls that come with loving Elvis (Jacob Elordi). The mythos of Elvis is almost wholly subverted here, and yet there is an underlying gentleness and kindness in the depiction of their love that is truly moving. 

 

9. Trap (Shyamalan, 2024)

Long live the Shyamalaissance. Trap represents M. Night’s best, slipperiest work in years, trading in the market of DePalma and bounding upward from the dual successes of Old and Knock at the Cabin to even higher highs. American filmmaking at this scale rarely moves the way this film does, with Shyamalan’s typical capability for finding the most fascinating angle, the goofiest aside, the strangest one-liner possible on full, muscular display. At the heart is a superlative turn from Josh Hartnett, who curdles his youthful pretty-boy image to play a monster-daddy with go-for-broke wackiness and menace. Where’s his Best Actor nomination?

 

8. Chime (Kurosawa, 2024)

Currently, the only way to watch Japanese master Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest, the scariest film of the year, is via this bizarre, NFT-adjacent website (don’t worry, it’s legit). The oddness of its distribution method is fitting for this sub-60-minute nightmare, which follows in the footsteps of Kurosawa’s J-horror classics Cure and Pulse in its evocation spine-tingling dread linked to the banalities of modern life. The less said about the plot, the better. All there is to know is that the funk of foreboding descends immediately upon the opening shot and never lets up. Features the single most terrifying moment of sound design I’ve experienced in years.

 

7. Evil Does Not Exist (Hamaguchi, 2023)

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s first film since dropping dual masterpieces in Drive My Car and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy in 2021 is this deeply mysterious and enthralling thriller. An extra, extra slow burn, what started as a visual accompaniment for composer Eiko Ishibashi’s unforgettable soundscape was expanded into a full feature, depicting the clash between small-town folk and the imposition of a gang of capitalists trying to build a glamping site in their area. Concerns of climate change and consumerism abound, rendered in stark, wintery imagery and culminating in one of the most buzzed-about denouements of the year.

 

6. I Saw the TV Glow (Schoenbrun, 2024)

A while back, I named Jane Schoenbrun’s debut We’re All Going to The World’s Fair as one of the five best releases of that year. That this film sits outside of the top five, just, is testament to the strength of the other films, rather than a ding on this one, a successful expansion outward for Schoenbrun and their particular brand of devastating, harrowing existential horror. Too intricate to be categorised as simply a story about the trans experience, this exploration of two teens who bond over an obscure ‘90s TV series is fully alive, uncomfortably honest and frequently pulsing with a deep, aching sadness. 

 

5. Hard Truths (Leigh, 2024)

A few years ago, it felt like we may never see another Mike Leigh movie, following the commercial flop that was Peterloo (despite the fact that it’s yet another Leigh masterpiece). That one of the greatest living filmmakers couldn’t get funding to practice his unique approach to telling stories is a grand indictment of the entire cinema system – but thankfully, we’ve received Hard Truths, a blistering and typically profound work from the great master. Marianne Jean-Baptiste, returning to the fold after Secrets & Lies, is totally brilliant as a woman drowning in her own misery and pessimism following the pandemic. She is ably assisted by a brilliant cast, particularly Michele Austin as her cheerful sister. We need more Leighs, while we still can get them.

 

4. No Other Land (Szor, Ballal, Abraham, Adra, 2024)

Though No Other Land depicts the West Bank of Palestine in the months before October 7, the knowledge of the horrors that would come after adds yet another layer of tragedy to this, the best documentary of the year. No Other Land is the work of an Israeli-Palestinian collective, who tell the story of two of the makers, Palestinian Basel Adra and Israeli Yuval Abraham, whose futures are entirely different due to the shackles of apartheid. The hollowing, devastating claws of hopelessness are held back only by the knowledge of the resilience of the Palestinians depicted, who shine with humanity even as cruelty is dealt upon them at a furious clip. Totally essential.

 

3. The Holdovers (Payne, 2023)

Due to the oddities of the New Zealand release calendar, the best Christmas movie in years wasn’t released here until we were deep into 2024 summer. It didn’t stop the magic of the 70s-set The Holdovers from utterly enrapturing me. It’s a film unfairly classified as a warm hug, when really it is more of a hug followed by a kick in the shins (followed by another hug). Paul Giamatti turns in what may well be his best-ever work as a curmudgeonly history professor at a preppy New England school where the kids who have no one to go back to over Christmas are forced to stay over the holidays. He is ably matched by Dominic Sessa, in a revelatory debut, and the Oscar-winning Da’Vine Joy Randolph as the school matron struggling to go on after the death of her son. A new holiday staple, directed by Alexander Payne, who quite simply hasn’t been this good in years.

 

2. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (Jude, 2024)

The great Romanian auteur Radu Jude follows up 2020’s Bad Luck Banging (Or Loony Porn) with this alternately uproarious and deeply disturbing maelstrom of late-capitalist inhumanity. Illinca Manolache plays an overworked assistant for a commercial production, who spends a long, monotonous day trying to dupe the sufferers of workplace safety mishaps into selling their souls for the big company she represents. Along the way she tries to get famous, pumping out videos behind a filter as an Instagram-famous Andrew Tate-like misogynist goon. Jude, one of the most inventive and unpredictable living filmmakers, zags whenever you think he’ll zig, including intercutting the film with scenes from a Romanian classic from the 1980s and ending with a single, virtuoso half-hour one-take sequence that redefines what has come before. 

 

1. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Miller, 2024)

Truly grand, ferocious, uncompromising cinema at the highest level. Furiosa may have been a commercial flop, greeted with something like confusion by an audience primed for another Mad Max: Fury Road, but set aside expectations and you’ll be greeted with a film of greater depth, fearlessness and evocative storytelling than what came before. At the heart of Furiosa are two performances of genuine brilliance – Anya Taylor Joy and Chris Hemsworth. Both are megawatt stars who were at risk of sinking into schtick. Both are reborn here. Joy captures and evokes the physicality of Charlize Theron’s magnificent Fury Road work, yet adds a subtle hint of youthful tremulousness that will soon be stripped away. Hemsworth, meanwhile, is the dark, tortured heart of the story, a villain with a soul, which disfigures him into a tragic monster. It’s my favourite performance of the year. At 86, George Miller has made a masterpiece that should sit alongside Fury Road. Where that film was sleek, brutal speed, this has the sprawling complexity of a grand myth, which the framing of the story explicitly evokes. Along the way, Miller’s eye for rampaging action is entirely undiluted, as is his capacity for world-building practically unparalleled in modern cinema. Miller should be allowed to play in this sandbox forever. If the lack of success Furiosa has brought signals the end of the Mad Max saga, we can at least be thankful it ended with this, the best movie of 2024.