Jenna’s Top Ten Movies of 2024

I watched 351 movies last year, of which roughly 47 of those were new releases of 2024 – including the films technically premiered in 2023 but released in the US in 2024 (a handful of which you’ll find in my top ten).

You might wonder where some bigger names are in my list and unfortunately it’s likely because I found them middling to disappointing. I was pretty miffed at Anora, an almost bafflingly popular film I found rang insincere and frustrating. I wasn’t won over by A Complete Unknown, though I might be a bit too close to the source material – I am glad if it’s inspired anybody to dig into the real Dylan’s music and life. I’m not exactly a Mad Max fan and Furiosa didn’t change my mind, though I enjoyed parts of it. I was impressed with the acting and epic-scale on a small budgetness of The Brutalist though ultimately it left me wanting more. Similarly, Dune II was a lovely spectacle but failed to move me. I was confused but amused by Babygirl, and Challengers was similarly not my kink. I haven’t seen Wicked (mostly because I resent it being split into two films) and I’m actively avoiding Emilia Perez. All of this to say – a lot of the popular darlings did not do it for me.

But with all the negativity out of the way, there were some extreme highs this year! And mostly from foreign releases and female directors. So let’s get going – I also have some

1. La Chimera (2023, dir. Alice Rohrwacher)

I’ve been meaning to write a real article on this movie for ages so for now I’ll just say I found La Chimera to be deeply moving as a musing on how death influences our movement through the present. The film follows a crew of tomboli, or tomb raiders, who kick around Naples lead by a British ex-pat named Arthur (Josh O’Connor), who is renowned for his ability to find buried ruins with just a few clues and a dowsing rod. It’s almost frustratingly open-ended in all of the places you want answers, while surprisingly blunt where one might expect more room for interpretation. In a larger sense, the film speaks directly to the looming presence of antiquity over modern Italian society – a parallel to Arthur’s own grief and feelings of listlessness. Director Alice Rohrwacher relies heavily on her audience to see themselves reflected in its magical realist logic and visuals, while still funneling you towards a clear purpose. But what that purpose is defies simple explanation.

Beautifully shot, mysterious, sad, and at times genuinely breathtaking – I highly recommend you seek this one out.

2. The Substance (2024, dir. Coralie Fargeat)

The Substance isn’t going to tell you anything you don’t already know. But this movie isn’t really trying to tell you anything as much as it’s just holding up a mirror to your own self hatred. The way you hyper focus on details of your face or body that nobody else actually gives a shit about. The way one shitty comment from one random innocent or malicious place will rattle around in your head for years. Honestly, I can’t think of a single woman I know who doesn’t have some sort of body dysmorphia, whether they’re wanting more or less of themselves. It’s sad! And it’s an everyday fact of our lives… so who needs nuance?

The film is flawed – I certainly don’t blame folks for getting angry at this for furthering stereotypes about the ‘disgustingness’ of older bodies or that it’s fairly reptitive after a while. But I appreciated the fact that this movie wasn’t trying to reinvent the wheel as much as it was just holding up a mirror. Qualley being more of a petite girls-girl than a sexpot makes this all the richer — tapping into the way women pick each other apart and hold themselves to impossible standards, while still trying to appeal to and attract each other. The film isn’t interested in what men think, which it makes very clear with multiple close ups on Denise Quaid’s nostrils. And when it does finally heighten… oh what a glorious sight: self hatred and neuroses on parade! My Evil Dead loving soul had a blast. Turns out the way to get me to “smile more” is to pour blood all over somebody indulging in a cathartic murder on a nice art directed set.

Listen to our podcast on it for an in depth discussion!

3. Megalopolis (2024, dir. Francis Ford Coppola)

Can we get off off our irony-poisoned thrones for a hot minute and just appreciate the fact that a beloved filmmaker poured 40+ years of his life and millions of his own wine money into getting this film made and distributed? The ultimate indie film just came and went and nobody seemed to care. Yes, it’s weird and it’s stagey and it’s sincere and it exists in its own world with its own logic and… that’s exactly what you’re signing up for when you step foot in a theater to see a concept film like this. Again, I repeat, this is a broad concept film that has more in common with a Greek play than a modern action flick; it’s super stylized, every character represents an archetype, everything is symbolic in one way or another, and the message is super straight forward. Realism need not apply, across the board for character, dialogue, visuals and plot. Stop boxing yourself in, try and engage with what’s in front of you. Or go back to the clubbbb and get out of my face.

Okay, now I’ll get off my soap box. But look, even though I don’t necessarily agree with every part of Coppola’s message – there’s a male-centric libertarian strain to parts of this film that doesn’t thrill me, but shouldn’t surprise anybody who’s watched the rest of the man’s ouvre – Megalopolis still managed to move me deeply when it speaks to the importance of art. Or rather, when it pleads desperately to the audience to give a shit about the necessity of art. Reject the constrictions of the past and dream up a future without boundaries – our path towards a utopian future is revealed when we learn to live and breathe art without cynicism or expectation.

Y’know, exactly what everybody rejected the film for even before they saw it.

4. The Master and Margarita (2023, dir. Michael Lockshin)

I’m a huge fan of this book, read it many times, seen it as a play, an opera, the works, yada yada, so when I heard there was a new movie – and one that was unsurprisingly pissing off the current Russian government – you know I ran to find a way to watch it. Thankfully it didn’t disappoint!

The Master and Margarita tells several stories in parallel: the devil coming to soviet Moscow and wreaking havoc on a city that does not believe in God, the story of Pontius Pilate and Jesus in Judaea, the modern man who’s writing a book about it all despite governmental oppression and the woman who loves him so much she’d sell her soul to said devil to save him. In this most recent adaptation, instead of focusing on the devil, or Jesus, director Michael Lockshin hones in on our titular couple. Putting a hard emphasis on what original author Mikhail Bulgakov himself had to dance around: the real and tragic struggle of the artist against brutal government censorship. Though this change comes at the cost of disrupting the flow of the other stories — and pacing of the movie itself to a degree — the fact that it managed to pissed off modern conservatives enough to call for its censorship again shows just how successful Lockshin’s adaptation is. (Not to mention how impactful and shrewd the original text is still to this day.)

The casting is fairly brilliant here, August Diehl as Woland is inspired, I appreciated the effort to at least get a real cat for (some) of Behemoth’s scenes and I loved the Walpurgisnacht ball. In general the film seems to struggle with balancing the magical aspects with the reality (it dips a little too far into Harry Potter-esque art direction and CGI at times), but it manages to stay grounded enough to feel enchanting, epic and moving.

5. Vermiglio (2024, dir. Maura Delpero)

Gorgeous, slow, moving, nuanced, humanist. It’s hard to describe Vermiglio without sounding almost whimsical, but there’s really nothing twee about it. It’s the same brutal slice of rural wartime life that we’ve seen dozens of times before, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it told with a lens this empathetic to both the female point of view and the children’s point of view. There’s a pervasive child-like bluntness throughout that never shies away from pain — inner thoughts expressed plainly, judgments doled out freely, sinning when you think nobody’s looking — but also is never trying to be cruel or judgmental itself. It’s just a portrait of a time and place, a matter-of-fact way of life, looked on with profound empathy but never rosy nostalgia.

Director Maura Delpero’s deep interest in human nature and her rejection of absolutes also shines through. A celebration of life with all of its fleeting moments of happiness and long periods of disappointment.

6. Nickel Boys (2024, dir. RaMell Ross)

I’ve never seen a story so violent and upsetting shot so gently. Adapted from Colson Whitehead’s book, Nickel Boys revolves around two boys in a segregated 1960s Florida reform school. Shot entirely from a first person POV, I wasn’t too sure how to feel about it at first honestly — you’re never not extremely aware of its consciously arthouse style. It’s not only almost always point of view, but it’s all about little details and minute observations even when dialogue and story are moving forward. It’s got a restlessness that I found slightly grating honestly. Impressive, stylistic but at times a little too poetic to serve its own scenes. Thankfully it’s visual choices are explained and justified by the end of the film but with its 2.5 hour runtime it might be a bit of an ask to stick around and find out.

But despite the fact that I never truly settled into its style, as the movie went on I did still find myself getting emotional in the right places — almost in spite of my hang ups. Or really it was the performance by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor that absolutely broke my heart. Her outpouring of empathy and frustration and sorrow was just outstanding acting. Where I found it hard to connect with other characters on a truly emotional because they felt drowned out in the visual style, she managed to cut through all of it and just pull me in wholly and completely.

7. The Bikeriders (2023, dir. Jeff Nichols)

The Bikeriders offers a thoughtful meditation on authenticity — its power to both make and break everything from a man to an entire movement. What makes a biker a real biker? What does it mean to live on the fringes of society? Is the man who watches a movie, sees himself reflected in it and then decides to project that inner part of himself on his exterior any less authentic than the kid who grew up on such a narrow path that he’s had no choice other than to be an outsider?

The main push and pull at the heart of this film is this Tom Hardy’s dreamer versus Toby Wallace’s reality, with Austin Butler directly at the center as a sort of unconscious middle. I’m not sure I buy that there’s a real ‘love triangle’ in this movie as much as I see this dynamic of yearning for something we already have and yet cannot accept. Whether that’s Kathy desiring more from the man she already bought wholesale, Johnny’s desire to lose control while in a position of absolute power, Benny’s desire to create stability and meaning through impulsive living, or The Kid’s desperate desire to be loved.

For such a flimsy premise there are some great concepts at play here, and overall I appreciate this films sense of humor and its almost overly empathetic tone.

8. Saturday Night (2024, dir. Jason Reitman)

Finally, a vibe movie I can gel with! I hesitated so long to see Saturday Night because I dreaded a parade of corny impersonations and self-serious prestige docustyle schlock. But instead I got a genuinely solid, tightly edited, controlled-chaos ensemble of corny impersonations. And you know what? It works. It works really well. Not because it focuses on whether or not the show will go to air (duh, we know it does) but because it focuses on everybody’s insecurities and anxieties. Aka, the comedian special. And I’m not even gonna bitch about how this never made me laugh out loud despite being about a comedy show that’s dear to me (oh how the mighty have fallen tho damn) because it was so consistently amusing and light-hearted that it just fucking pulled it off.

It’s an energy movie. It’s what they mean by ‘lightning in a bottle.’ It’s Sisyphus on day 1000. It’s a sort of Fuck You to the man in the face of overwhelming self doubt paired with your own ‘Fuck It’ mentality. It’s that’s last minute of manic, passionate denial you get just before you sink into the despondence of overwhelming failure. I dunno man, I live and breathe that kinda shit — two hours distilling a very New York brand of delusional pessimistic optimism I know so well.

9. The Count of Monte Cristo (2024, dir. Alexandre de La Patellière, Matthieu Delaporte)

I miss these sort of epics! I mean, The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the OG superhero stories anyhow, imagine a world where we got more epic character movies about love and revenge, where the money is poured into sets, costumes and locations, and the CGI is used sparingly to plus it all up. The three hour runtime of this adapation at least it’s a problem of plenty and not of boredom – there was certainly enough material to warrant it though I admit I found myself thinking ‘damn I wish we hadn’t spent so much time up front when this later half dynamic is way cooler.’

But all of that to say: this is good! It’s fun! The sets rule! It’s cathartic in its anger and honest about the trappings and human cost of vengeful thinking! It’s a nice adaptation! Lead actor Pierre Niney does a nice job, he has a good brood going on and has a nice flare for the dramatic. The supporting cast were all great as well, if not a little under utilized. Makes me wanna finally read the book…. Maybe… one day…. (Look it’s not a ‘reading’ issue it’s a time issue. It’s movies or epic literature, I only got so many hours in the day.)

10. Nightbitch (2024, dir. Marielle Heller)

I have no idea why reviews are disappointed this isn’t some revolutionary feminist whatever the heck. Nightbitch is a smart, self critical meditation on the deep love and deep frustration of parenthood, not to mention a rebuke of the insidious tradwife horseshit propaganda that’s absolutely everywhere nowadays. I would love to see more movies like this, about one person wrestling with confusing and conflicting feelings. Not everything needs to revolutionize the way you think, sometimes it’s just amazing to look in the mirror and see everything you already know is there again.

Shout out to Joanna Newsom and dog-centric childhoods.

Honorable Mentions:
A Different Man
I Saw The TV Glow
Juror #2
Heretic
Nosferatu
Hit Man
A Real Pain
Trap