The 10 best films of 2024, ranked (and where to watch them)
Cinema this year brought us tension, terror and confusion, as well as images of surreal derangement that seared themselves forever onto audiences’ psyches. But enough about the Wicked press tour. There is no such thing as a bad year for film, providing you’re prepared to watch widely enough – but 2024 was an enjoyably provocative one, full of titles that ribbed, confronted and flatly challenged viewers in all manner of fresh and daring ways. Yet for the past 12 months our number-one pick has felt all but inevitable: fantastic as its list-mates may be, it towers over every last one of them, and single-handedly proves this 120-year-old medium is still capable of breaking new ground.
10. Twisters
In a year not short on dire examples to the contrary, this was summer blockbusting done right: jaw-slackening spectacle with bottom-clenchingly human stakes. Buy/rent on Prime Video, Apple TV and other platforms
Our review
“We gotta get everyone in the movie theatre!” somebody yells, as the tornado gouges its way through a small Oklahoman town, chewing up every person, plant and structure in its path. In Twisters’ climactic set piece, it’s a cinema that helps save the day – while doubling as the stage for one of the most inspired action scenes in years. Read more
9. Queer
Daniel Craig shrugs off Bond with his finest performance to date as the anchorless expat in Luca Guadagnino’s lush and plaintive expansion of a Burroughs early cut. In cinemas
Our review
You’d have to say that Daniel Craig’s latest feature puts his James Bond to bed once and for all. And “to bed” is very much the operative phrase. In a sense, it isn’t so different from his stint as 007: he plays a mysterious man, hard-drinking and impeccably tailored, on a clandestine mission overseas. Read more
8. The Holdovers
Alexander Payne’s best film since Sideways – starring Paul Giamatti as a curmudgeonly classics master marooned in a boarding school over the festive break – deserves to become a new Christmas classic. Now TV
Our review
You might think you’ve got the measure of the crotchety Hunham (Paul Giamatti) straight away, with his wonky eye, elbow-patched jacket and pipe permanently clamped between his teeth. But Giamatti isn’t playing a type, so much as a man who has taken refuge inside one in order to armour himself against the more exposing aspects of human existence. It’s a riotous but also slyly moving performance of a performance. Read more
7. Challengers
This pro-tennis love-triangle thriller – from Luca Guadagnino – with Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, brings us on-screen desire as it should be done, and too rarely is. Prime Video
Our review
Challengers must be the most purely pleasurable film of the year so far. Like a great tennis match, it’s a clash of sleekly honed bodies and minds, and the question of who finally comes out on top is irrelevant to the fun of the struggle itself. Read more
6. A Different Man
Cinema in 2024 got no more mischievous than Aaron Schimberg’s discourse-defying black comedy about a disfigured wannabe actor – played by none other than Marvel’s Sebastian Stan – coming to terms (or not) with his new medically obtained heartthrobby visage. Buy/rent on Apple TV and other platforms
Our review
A Different Man is a bundle of gambits and tones that should be completely incompatible: part absurdist black comedy, part Kafkaesque dragon-punch to the soul, part Jekyll-and-Hyde morality tale turned inside out. Yet all of these snippets have been sewn into an addictively mad and unpredictable whole, and some of the stitching is so mischievous it made me shriek. Read more
5. All of Us Strangers
Love story meets ghost story in Andrew Haigh’s sublime romantic drama in which Andrew Scott’s taciturn gay bachelor revisits his childhood and reflects on his present. Disney+
Our review
The high rise is brand new, as if it’s just been unsheathed from shrink wrap. Near the top, a screenwriter called Adam (Andrew Scott, never more soulful) fritters away his days, surrounded by vacant flats bought as investments, and enveloped by a glittering view of London so majestic it only intensifies his aloneness in the world. Read more
4. Civil War
Alex Garland put plenty of deserving noses out of joint with this daring dystopian thriller about the mutually destructive madness of America’s current socio--political snit. Buy/rent on Prime Video, Apple TV and other platforms
Our review
It wouldn’t be fair to describe Alex Garland’s new film as Apocalypse Now for centrists – even though for some of us, that sounds like the movie of the year. But it certainly is a hotly topical heart-of-darkness journey in which the darkness’s political origins and aims are virtually beside the point. Read more
3. The Wild Robot
DreamWorks Animation marked its 30th anniversary in style with the release of the studio’s most moving, painterly and all-round finest work since 1998’s The Prince of Egypt. Buy/rent on Prime Video and other platforms
Our review
The extraordinary new film from DreamWorks Animation takes place almost entirely on a thickly forested isle, where an obliging droid, Lupita Nyong’o’s Roz, washes ashore one stormy night. The beach on which she awakes the next morning is gravelly and grey, while a wall of basalt columns stretches up behind it, like the flank of a fort. Read more
2. Anora
Sean Baker’s ravishingly profane screwball caper, about a wily stripper’s Vegas wedding to an oligarch’s feckless son, rightly pinched the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Best Picture next? In cinemas
Our review
Mikey Madison might have the best smile in the movies since Julia Roberts, but it works in more mysterious ways. In 1990’s Pretty Woman, Roberts’ grin was as uncomplicatedly gorgeous as sunshine punching through clouds. But in Sean Baker’s ripe and riotous Anora – a very modern Pretty Woman tale, which seems likely to make a star of its 25-year-old leading lady – Madison’s gnashers are harder to read. Read more
1. The Zone of Interest
Jonathan Glazer’s darkly pristine depiction of the life of an Auschwitz commandant -simply towers – -cinematically and morally – over every other film released this year. Prime Video
Our review
Meet Rudolph and Hedwig H?ss (Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller): a young, attractive, well-to-do German couple who live with their five children in a neat, spacious house in the bucolic Polish countryside. Friends and family often come to visit: their large, well-tended garden is perfect for hosting parties, and there’s a picturesque river nearby ideal for swimming and picnics. Their main reason for living here, however, is convenience, since it’s right next door to Rudolph’s work. On the far side of the unusually tall garden wall lies the Auschwitz concentration camp, where, since the age of 38, he has served as commandant. Read more
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