2024 was a complicated year for film. The aftershocks of the industry strikes were deeply felt, shifting countless productions and leaving gaps in the release calendar, just as the rise of concerns over things like A.I. really took hold. It felt like a transition year in many places. A marker between past and future with the present was anything but certain. The MCU, for instance, released only one film whereas the SSU dropped three, before dropping dead entirely. Yet, even amidst industry turbulence, a number of nothing short of remarkable films emerged—entries that will no doubt remain in rotation on the queue for years to come. It was a year of resilience and creativity, with filmmakers continuing to push boundaries, challenge conventions, and deliver unforgettable stories on the silver screen, despite the myriad challenges to the art form.

As is customary, before we dive into the year’s winners’ circle, I want to take a moment to recognize many of the incredible films that, for one reason or another, didn’t quite make the final cut for this year’s top ten.

We will start with It’s What’s Inside, a twisty, sci-fi/horror midnight movie whodunit that premiered at Sundance, and was one of the festival’s great discoveries. Also from Sundance, How to Have Sex and Didi stood out as character-driven coming-of-age dramas, the former chronicling a young woman’s eye-opening girl’s trip party vaca  experience, the latter capturing an Asian-American teen’s struggle to find his footing as he navigates the brutal pecking order of high school, girls, and the skating world. Another festival standout was Bob Trevino Likes It, a poignant story of a young woman with a fraught relationship with her father who unexpectedly finds solace by forming a bond with a surrogate father figure. While this heartbreakingly heartfelt film deeply affected me, its major release is set for next year, so I’ve decided to exclude it from this list.

Big studio entries impressed as well. A Complete Unknown, an original, freewheeling Bob Dylan biopic, dazzled with its musically impressive lead performance from Timothee Chalamet and emboldened sense of identity. Rebel Ridge and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga delivered impeccably constructed, utterly enthralling tentpole thrills. Meanwhile, Blink Twice, starring a ne’er-do-well Channing Tatum, surprised with its topsy-turvy, charged social-horror/, while The Devil’s Bath, a German-language period horror about the vilification of depression in the religious Middle Ages, left an indelible impression and featured one of the year’s most impressive but unrecognized lead performances from Anja Plaschg.

Yorgos Lanthimos’s Kinds of Kindness offered a collection of demented and wildly inventive WTF chapters, each as wildly weird and formally wackadoo as the last. Ghostlight and Sing Sing were amongst the year’s most deeply affecting dramas, each featuring one of the year’s best male lead performances in Keith Kupferer and Colman Domingo, alongside stunning ensemble casts. And finally, Daughters, a documentary about incarcerated dads participating in a father-daughter dance, left me utterly devastated. As a parent—and as a human being with a capacity for empathy—it’s one of the most moving and impactful films I’ve seen all year.

These honorable mentions could easily have found a place in my top ten – and many did at various points in time – so I wouldn’t argue with anyone who ranks them in and amongst the year’s finest. But after a full year of deliberation (and more than a little anguish), I painstakingly have narrowed my list down to the ten films that delivered the most memorable, thrilling, and thought-provoking cinematic experiences of 2024. This is all subject of course to change entirely as early as tomorrow.

My last bit of preamble before getting into the damn thing: I’d like to quickly address methodology. Although my ratio tends to change a bit every year, I think it’s worth discussing what goes into the calculations for this list. Essentially, there are a handful of movies that truly took my breath away—films I would recommend without hesitation and will watch time and time again. Some years, that’s three films; some years, it’s seven. This year, it was closer to five.

I also like to include films so masterful in their execution—so formally and technically stunning—that to ignore them would be to dismiss their impact on me, even if they’re not movies I’ll necessarily seek out to watch again. And finally, no Silver Screen Riot top ten list is complete without the wild cards. If there aren’t at least a couple of movies here you haven’t heard of, then I’ve failed in my mission to expand your movie watching scope, dear reader.

10. STRANGE DARLING

Shot in the PNW, Strange Darling evokes the kind of movie born out of the indie film gold rush of the ’90s, the type that would have rocketed its creators to overnight fame. Instead, the production faced unhinged levels of producer interference, with financiers demanding recuts and even the removal of its lead actress. That Strange Darling saw the light of day as originally intended is nothing short of a miracle. The fact that it’s also a shotgun blast of genre creativity, brimming with crafty (and nonlinear) cat-and-mouse play that toys with our expectations, earns it a spot on this list. It’s movies like this—heralding new voices, taking risks, being playful, and delivering a damn fun watch—that remind us there’s still plenty of joy to be found in independent cinema. Willa Fitzgerald is the breakout star of the year, delivering eye-popping work here despite nearly being fired.

9. THE COFFEE TABLE (LA MESITA DEL COMEDOR)

No film in 2024 is as shocking as Caye Casas’ The Coffee Table, a pitch-black horror-comedy about a family enduring the roughest of rough patches. By the time you grasp why this film’s unusual title is what it is, you’ll be so utterly shocked and horrified that the rest of the runtime becomes a futile attempt to untraumatize yourself. What follows is a deeply unholy exploration of the lengths we go to obscure impossible truths from ourselves and the vortex of self-oblivion, all fastened to what is undoubtedly the most abjectly horrifying twist of the year. It’s a movie that’s nearly impossible to recommend, yet it’s been irretrievably lodged in my brain since I first saw it. Kudos for achieving maximum disturbance.

8. THE BRUTALIST

The Brutalist may very well be the most self-important, capital-F Film of the year—complete with a built-in intermission and zero pretense about its lofty awards aspirations. Yet, Brady Corbet’s arch drama about the intersection of art and commerce earns its indulgent runtime and the critical fanfare that’s followed it. Perhaps the most fundamentally American movie of the year, Corbet’s film examines the myriad injustices humans inflict on one another and how their insatiable appetites—for art, love, appreciation, identity—inevitably curdle into corrupting forces. The power dynamic between the principal characters—a wealthy businessman and an immigrant architect—lays bare the realities of living in an era defined by staggering inequality and the mercurial whims of the rich and powerful. [Full review here]

7. CONCLAVE

One of the year’s most unexpected delights, this proper papal procedural is a gripping conspiratorial thriller—essentially a starched-collar riff on Succession. Ralph Fiennes delivers a high-wire act as a conniving Dean, deftly navigating the political quagmire of the Pope’s death and the ensuing battle for succession. His performance elevates Edward Berger’s political thriller into a visionary screed on ambition, power, and loyalty within one of the world’s most cloistered religious sects. Dialogue-driven and morally complex, Conclave strategically reaches for the heavens while unflinchingly probing the earthly flaws and moral frailties of those steering the Church. [Full review here]

6. ANORA

Sean Baker has built a career crafting films about working-class sex workers, and with Anora, he distills his thematic interests and storytelling prowess into their purest form. Anora is a firecracker of a breakout and the talk of the arthouse town—for good reason. With Mikey Madison’s star-making turn as the eponymous stripper, Baker’s bruising, breakneck screenplay, and the deeply comic yet heartbreaking elements of this upside-down Cinderella story, Anora stands out as one of the year’s most original and pioneering discoveries. Sure, it may not be Baker’s best or funniest work (those honors go to The Florida Project and Red Rocket, respectively), but whenever the New Jersey native shares a gem of a story with the world, it deserves to be anticipated and cherished like few others. [Full review here]

5. DUNE: PART TWO

Denis Villeneuve wisely chose to split Frank Herbert’s seminal Dune novel into two parts, and while some bristled at this division, the director’s masterful command of the material comes into even sharper focus with Dune: Part Two. A triumphant achievement on every conceivable level, this continuation of Paul Atreides’ saga was easily the standout blockbuster of 2024. It proves that a tentpole movie can look and sound spectacular while being told with a care and artistry too often reserved for the arthouse. Anchoring this spectacle to a cautionary tale about religious fervor and messianic figures makes it all the more poignant in 2024. Pound for pound, Dune: Part Two also boasts the most impressive cast of the year. [Full review here]

4. CHALLENGERS

Part-tennis sports thriller, part-love triangle dark romance, and all sexed-up, power-play cinematic acrobatics, Challengers stands out as one of 2024’s most intoxicating and engrossing major releases. Set to an absolutely banging four-to-the-floor dance club soundtrack by Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor, this is Luca Guadagnino’s most accessible and entertaining film yet. Here, the tennis is sex, the sex is tennis, and it’s all a fever-dream competition where power dynamics cement both on and off the court—and in and out of the bedroom. Josh O’Connor delivers one of the year’s best performances as Patrick Zweig, the consummate weaselly adversary. [Full review here]

3. THE SUBSTANCE

The only thing worse than irrelevance is the complete sublimation of self in Coralie Fargeat’s body horror satire, The Substance. If The Substance were merely an ironic statement on the horrors aging women inflict upon themselves to cling to a sliver of youthfulness, it would still have teeth. But Fargeat takes that concept and dials it up to 11 on the grotesquerie scale, delivering one of the boldest and most shell-shocking body horror films of the century. Demi Moore is remarkable in the pole position, while Margaret Qualley impresses as her sinister younger doppelgänger. [Full review here]

2. NOSFERATU

Robert Eggers’ sicko gothic horror reimagining channels as much energy into its horrifyingly gorgeous production elements—cinematography among the year’s finest, a score that bubbles and pops, and costumes, hair, and makeup that exude period magnificence—as it does into making this redux an absolutely essential addition to both the horror genre and vampire mythology. Bill Skarsgård’s unexpected turn as the titular villain haunts the entire story, which explores the fraught relationship between a woman’s forbidden pleasure and puritanical society. Destined to be a horror mainstay for decades. Succumb hard. [Full review here]

1. THE BEAST

As philosophically engaging as it is sensorily overwhelming, Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast is a heady triptych about a poisoned, evergreen love that spans centuries. Léa Seydoux and George MacKay deliver mesmerizing performances as star-crossed lovers, juggling the high romance, sleazy thrills, and sly satire of Bonello’s miasmatic creation—a film that keeps you perpetually off-balance, forcing you to decipher what’s really going on behind the curtains. There’s no film in 2024 quite as singular and haunting—one that essentially demands multiple rewatches and rewards viewers for their emotional and intellectual investment as much as this. Breathtaking and brilliant in every way.

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