Screen Slate has once again invited Nicolas Rapold of The Last Thing I Saw to guest edit its fourth annual Best Movies of the Year poll, as voted on by our own contributors along with filmmakers, critics, performers, programmers, cinema workers, and other friends.
This selection comes with the caveat that, as with all aggregated lists, it’s a reflection of what participants were able to see in a given year, subject to the courses of their own filmgoing lives and the vagaries of distribution, release dates, and access. While some argue that end-of-year lists shouldn’t be assembled until after the year concludes, the truth is that it takes even longer to discover, absorb, and assess all that came out in a year—so this reflective moment midway through the final month of the year seems as good a time as any. That said, I’m pretty happy with the #1 choice.
Further to discovery, be sure to check out the individual ballots and favorite “First Viewings and Discoveries,” including responses from many of the filmmakers below.
And if you’d like to celebrate with us, become a member on Patreon and join our contributor & member party Saturday, December 14—details here.
—Jon Dieringer, Founder & Editor-in-Chief
1. A Different Man
"Schimberg is concerned with what’s lost and gained in translation as we mine experience for expression and glory. Amid howlingly funny dialogue and several left turns too good to spoil here, he provokes our anxiety at the impossibility of the coherent self, and the further impossibility of recreating these selves. We’re stuck with ourselves, which is to say we’re stuck with a series of unanswerable questions." -Write-up by Patrick Dahl
Aaron Schimberg on the Screen Slate podcast
Aaron Schimberg's favorite first viewings of 2024, plus: 2023, 2022, and 2020
2. The Beast
"Arguably The Beast is an edgier Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a plea for painful, necessary human connection, newly irony-pilled, climate-anxious, and galaxy-brained for 2023. But that’s only appropriate. In many of his films, Bonello wallows in the modern even as he probes the limits of the expression it mediates. ... In its hyperlinked consciousness, in its wild swings across tones, eras, and ideas, it is unmistakably a savage and singular product of late 2023, of Web 2.0 going supernova. The Beast is the blood drawn by the cutting edge, still wet on the screen." -Write-up by Mark Asch
Bertrand Bonello interviewed in 2024 by Nick Newman
Bertrand Bonello's favorite first viewing of 2024 and 2023
3. Janet Planet
"Baker’s images denote a muggy solitude that is neither cloying nor piteous: a tick burning at the hot end of a match; girls tucked in the corner of a shopping mall reading romance novels; cultish outdoor theater; clay baking; henna shampoo and jars of infused oils. Lacy is maternal with her trinkets, adorning them with chocolate wrappers for hats, pleated paper for blankets, spoonfuls of dirt for dinner—a tenderness certainly borrowed from Janet, though not belabored upon." -Saffron Maeve
Annie Baker interviewed in 2024 by Saffron Maeve
4. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World
"Jude has never conceived a small film, only dense repositories for bedded connotations—or, big films made up of small ones. With Do Not Expect, his jabs at the gig economy and brawny, bootless conglomerates ricochet like projectiles, taking out the producer, the product, and the viewer all at once." -Write-up by Saffron Maeve
Radu Jude interviewed in 2024 by George Macbeth
Radu Jude's favorite first viewings of 2024, plus: 2023 and 2021
5. Anora
"Mikey Madison [is dazzling] in Sean Baker’s Palme D’Or winner Anora, which is Pretty Woman with ass, and much, much more. Madison’s Anora is a stripper from a working-class Brighton Beach Russian family who mistakenly believes she’s found her Prince Charming in the form of the callow, drunken, 20-year-old son of a Russian oligarch. He is definitely no Richard Gere." -Amy Taubin
Sean Baker's favorite first viewings of 2024 and 2023
6. La Chimera
7. Last Summer
"Last Summer ... is marked at times by an uncanny tenderness and the golden nostalgia suggested by its title. Elegantly transcending its salacious premise—a middle-aged woman shtupping her husband’s 17-year-old son—the film offers a slippery study of desire and transgression, the line between which is both a permeable boundary and a treacherous descent." -Write-up by Elissa Suh
Catherine Breillat interviewed in 2024 by Grace Byron
8. Nickel Boys
"Nickel Boys is a haunting, horrifying adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel of nearly the same name, that shares the same lyrical, impressionist imagery, and bracing disregard for narrative conventions that made Ross’s 2018 documentary Hale County, This Morning, This Evening an arresting debut." -Amy Taubin
9. Evil Does Not Exist
"A minor though not insignificant work, it is less an intentional spurning of the audience than a wandering artistic exercise, the success of which depends greatly on whether you find the film’s closing moments of piercing obliquity enriching or diminishing. The longer you dwell on them, the less meaning you uncover, which in its own way becomes a sort of liberation from the film." -Write-up by Elissa Suh
Composer Eiko Ishibashi interviewed by Max Levin
10. No Other Land
"Before the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, one was able to hope, however despairingly, that photographing war crimes could produce critique and that one’s assailant would want to keep their crimes hidden. What sorts of images are needed, then, when one’s oppressor takes and distributes images of their crimes themselves, feeling no remorse for their actions? How many hours of footage have Israeli soldiers uploaded of themselves brutalizing Palestinians and ransacking their homes, without fear of penalty or reprimand? How much of the aesthetic theory of modernity, from Francisco Goya to Jacob Riis to Alain Resnais and Abu Ghraib, depends upon a mutually recognized sense of shame? What do images, made politically, look like when they can no longer provoke it? These are the questions I’m left with after seeing No Other Land." -Write-up by Jonathan Mackris
11. Dahomey
12. Megalopolis
"A more eventful movie you will not see this year. Megalopolis is, in fact, amazing. What’s more, after Coppola’s years of planning and struggle to make it, it’s amazing it even exists." -A.S. Hamrah
Francis Ford Coppola interviewed in 2024 by A.S. Hamrah
13. Between the Temples
Nathan Silver and screenwriter C. Mason Wells on the Screen Slate Podcast
Nathan Silver's best movies and favorite first viewings of 2024 and 2023
C. Mason Wells's best movies and favorite first viewings of 2024, plus: 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2020
14. Juror #2
Screen Slate's Juror #2 U.S. Tour T-shirt (sold out, don't bother clicking)
15. Rap World
"From within the contested space of prestige dramedies, anti-woke podcasters, and Unfrosted (2024), debut co-directors O’Malley and Danny Scharar have delivered the rare modern comedy that’s actually funny. Rap World also provokes a culture saturated with microplastic levels of nostalgia to consider that the past was just as incoherent, meaningless, and stupid as the present." -Ryan Meehan
Conner O’Malley & Danny Scharar interviewed by Ryan Meehan
Danny Scharar's best movies and favorite first viewings of 2024
16. The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
Joanna Arnow on the Screen Slate Pod
17. Hard Truths
"Pansy is often funny despite her rage. Jean-Baptiste’s line delivery is quippy, with twitches of theatricality that disarm rather than alienate the viewer. Leigh’s penchant for hammed up reality allows Jean-Baptiste to really lean into the insults. Their collaboration, like the film, is not geared toward naturalism." -Write-up by Clara Cuccaro
18. All We Imagine as Light
"All We Imagine as Light by Payal Kapadia ... evokes the sensory allure of Mumbai through the experiences of three women of different ages who work in a hospital and find a measure of liberation only by leaving the city that had seduced them but offered only a diminished future. Kapadia’s fiction film debut showed late in the festival and its ocean ending, replete with a beach-front bar strung with fairy lights, where people dance to wonderful music, proved irresistible." -Amy Taubin
Payal Kapadia's favorite first viewings of 2024
19. I Saw the TV Glow
20. Challengers
Screen Slate's Top 20 Movies of 2024
- A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
- The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)
- Janet Planet (Annie Baker)
- Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (Radu Jude)
- Anora (Sean Baker)
- La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)
- Last Summer (Catherine Breillat)
- Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)
- Evil Does Not Exist (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
- No Other Land (Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor)
- Dahomey (Mati Diop)
- Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola)
- Between the Temples (Nathan Silver)
- Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood)
- Rap World (Danny Scharar, Conner O'Malley)
- The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow)
- Hard Truths (Mike Leigh)
- All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia)
- I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun)
- Challengers (Luca Guadagnino)
