The Best Films Of 2024: The Ballots

After a year of big changes, The A.V. Club’s roster of film critics has added a slew of new faces and brought back some old favorites. That state of flux—a net positive to be sure—means our final voting roster of regulars is a little smaller than in years past. But we also wanted to be more selective and more informed, with all our voters having seen a representative chunk of the year’s new releases. We collected everyone’s favorites, weighed them according to how frequently they appeared on ballots along with their ranking on those ballots, and came up with our list of the best films of 2024. That we had a tight pool of voters meant that personal picks counted for more, and the rare aligning of A.V. Club tastes could signal a superlative. But the fun of year-end lists isn’t solely in the final tally, but in finding a critic whose tastes you relate to, and in pursuing the other films they recommend that you may not have checked out yet. Also, arguing! Below, you can see how each of our six writers voted, along with their choices in a handful of categories, ranging from individual outlier selections to films we thought weren’t worth the hype.

Jacob Oller

Top 15

1. Hundreds Of Beavers

2. I Saw The TV Glow

3. Close Your Eyes

4. Challengers

5. No Other Land

6. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

7. Here (not the Zemeckis)

8. Look Back

9. Nickel Boys

10. The Brutalist

11. Rebel Ridge

12. Anora

13. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

14. Nosferatu

15. The Beast

Outlier: Here (Bas Devos)

Though there’s little said in Here, Baz Devos’ film isn’t exactly quiet. Instead, the methodical film is intensely focused on establishing the sights and sounds of its environment. The noises of construction work clatter and bang out over Brussels, while rain pouring through a nearby forest and wind rushing through its leaves play just as loudly. It’s sensory poetry, poured over Grimm Vandekerckhove’s perfect frames, a Paterson-like lack of stakes, and the hypnotic patience of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. But it’s not slow cinema; at just 84 minutes, Devos’ story of an insomniac migrant worker (Stefan Gota, defined by his short shorts), local bryologist (Liyo Gong), and their lightly crossing paths moves briskly, like someone recounting the highlights of a summer. It’s an immaculate little movie, as tasty and slow-simmered as the homemade veggie soup that plays a surprisingly big role.

Most overrated: Civil War

A lumbering and aimlessly cynical misstep from Alex Garland, Civil War turns war and war reporting into disconnected abstractions. By eschewing the details of his America vs. America conflict (the California and Texas alliance is almost as dumb as “the Antifa massacre”) and those attempting to document it, Garland trades insight for shock value. Soldiers have no orders; photographers have no outlets. They all just shoot out of habit. In other hands, this shared futility might’ve been used to make some kind of deeper point. But as Kirsten Dunst’s dead-eyed photojournalist and her posse road trip through the shallow end of what feels like a watered-down zombie movie on their way to the White House, trying to get one final story, the ideological vacuum sucks away any investment one might have in the increasingly action-packed nonsense. Jesse Plemons’ single scene arrives like someone trying to defibrillate an urn of ashes.

Most underrated: Chicken For Linda!

A brightly colorblocked children’s film that has more in common with the exhilarating action movie Athena than any of the other animated films from this year, Chicken For Linda! is a bittersweet French ode to the small details of family. When a mother has to make amends with her young daughter Linda, the latter requests a particular chicken dish—the specialty of her late father. Her hapless mother accepts the task. The only problem is the ongoing general strike. With no skills, no luck, and no open stores, Linda and her mom go on a ridiculous romp trying to look out for each other—and find, kill, and cook a chicken. It’s musical, magical, deliciously French, and designed to be unlike anything else you’ve seen this year. And yes, even this kids’ film about preparing a chicken-and-pepper dinner says “fuck the riot police.”

Biggest disappointment: Queer

After being lured into the false sense of security that Luca Guadagnino was back thanks to the red-hot Challengers, Queer brought things crashing back down to earth. Though the first half paints an amusing, sweaty picture of hangdog expat queens boozing around small-town Mexico, the second’s clumsy attempt to mesh William S. Burroughs’ literal personal life with that of his autobiographical fiction (not to mention its clunky ayahuasca trip) is a swing and a miss from screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes. Also, Daniel Craig might be great here, but the object of his affection (Drew Starkey) stays just that: an object. That’s fine to make a point, but wears threadbare as the film limps through its endless endings. It’s a pretty slog, but a slog nonetheless.

Most welcome surprise: Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

After a lackluster Chicken Run legacy-quel, the odds that a new Wallace & Gromit film would be worth the wait seemed so low that only someone like Wallace would take the bet. But, just as one can never count out the inventor’s most idiotic ideas, Vengeance Most Fowl proved there’s still genius knocking around inside the super-silly machinations over at Aardman. The return of Feathers McGraw is jam-packed with sharp gags, skillful slapstick, and enough of a modern sensibility to keep the stop-motion duo from feeling like they’re simply repeating themselves. Come for Gromit reading Virginia Woof, stay for the hilariously escalating slow-speed boat chase.

Katie Rife

Top 15

1. Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World

2. A Different Man

3. The People's Joker

4. Red Rooms

5. Hard Truths

6. The Brutalist

7. Nickel Boys

8. Universal Language

9. Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In

10. Black Box Diaries

11. The Devil's Bath

12. No Other Land

13. Vulcanizadora

14. Juror #2

15. Sasquatch Sunset

Outlier: Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In

In recent years, I have come to conclude that Hong Kong action epics, with their sweeping scope, expert stunt choreography, and rousing sense of camaraderie, are peak cinema. Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In is no exception. Director Soi Cheang is a protege of Johnnie To, and shares his mentor’s talent for orchestrating tones and genres like a master conductor. Scrappy heroes, campy villains, honor, revenge, loyalty, violence, humor, heart—it’s an all-you-can-eat-buffet of excitement and emotion.

Most overrated: Megalopolis

Evil Does Not Exist is a cerebral work by a master filmmaker that many viewers did not fully understand. Megalopolis is what happens when baby boomers have too much money. Francis Ford Coppola’s $120M folly has its merits: Aubrey Plaza is great in it, for example. But upholding a tired “Great Man” narrative—both on and off the screen—is not the “something different” that some partisans say it is.

Most underrated: Problemista

Compared to its visionary queer sibling The People’s Joker, Problemista fell through the cracks in 2024. This probably had something to do with the long delay between the film’s premiere at SXSW 2023 and its eventual theatrical release; those who saw it in the summer of 2024 raved about it, but their numbers were few. And that’s too bad, because there’s no place quite like the inside of Julio Torres’ brain.

Matt Schimkowitz

Top 15

1. Furiosa

2. Challengers

3. Nickel Boys

4. The Substance

5. The Seed Of The Sacred Fig

6. I Saw The TV Glow

7. Hundreds Of Beavers

8. Juror #2

9. The People's Joker

10. Rebel Ridge

11. Anora 

12. The Order

13. Smile 2

14. Robot Dreams

15. The First Omen

Outlier: The Seed Of The Sacred Fig

Few thrillers are more immediate or intimate than Mohammad Rasoulof’s scorching The Seed Of The Sacred Fig. Set during the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests over the death of an Iranian woman (accused of violating hijab rules) in police custody, Sacred Fig presents an apartment divided. It opens with Iman (Missagh Zareh), a husband and father to two daughters, being promoted to investigative judge and tasked with handing out death sentences to protestors on behalf of the Iranian government. He’s given a gun for protection. Reprisals against judges are common, so his family must live in secret. Meanwhile, the protests outside grow louder as the girls in the next bedroom watch the revolution unfold on social media. Held together by their mother Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), the family's tiny apartment becomes a microcosm of the country, slowly eroding women’s rights as threats to patriarchal control increase. Made in secret for fear of government censorship, Sacred Fig has, once again, made Rasoulof a wanted man in Iran. He has since escaped the country, fleeing an eight-year prison sentence, while members of his cast remain barred from leaving. Using actual social media footage from the protests, Rasoulof crafts a thriller of unrelenting suspense and authentic pain. The Seed Of The Sacred Fig is dangerous, vital filmmaking, one that grows more captivating and unbearable with each turn of the screw. 

Most overrated: Longlegs

It’s not a great sign when the best part of a movie is the opening credits. Sadly, Longlegs never does much with its frame-expanding opening, beautifully soundtracked by T. Rex’s hard-charging acoustic freakout “Jewel.” Director Oz Perkins has an eye for unsettling shots and spaces, but his script is as grating as star Nicolas Cage’s performance, with its unending parade of explanations and nonsensical diversions. It also muddies Perkins’ talents. He has a knack for setting a mood and fracking a toxic atmosphere from the depths of the world’s most cursed places. Yet, he spends the last hour of Longlegs teasing out the opening scene's blasé mystery and laying out the org chart for a direct-to-consumer life-size doll company. Longlegs never goes anywhere with its myriad references to better movies; even worse, it does nothing with all those T. Rex tracks. It’s a collection of delicious ingredients that taste terrible together. Afterward, I was still starving. 

Most underrated: Babes

Babes was not set up to succeed. With a stiff, thrown-together marketing campaign, Neon seemed to sentence the comedy to streaming long before the movie hit theaters. It’s a shame, because Babes is an earnest, surprising, and, most importantly, funny coming-of-age comedy. Babes starts from a familiar place. Eden (Ilana Glazer) decides to follow through with a pregnancy from a magical one-night stand, forcing her to face the woman-child she’s been for too long. It’s a perfect Apatowian setup that knows it’s a perfect Apatowian set-up. Directed by Better Things’ Pamela Adlon, working from a script by Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz, Babes knows what you think the movie will be and teases out ways to make that part of the joke. It also features some of the best running bits, recurring characters (John Carroll Lynch making the most of his screen time), and sharpest comedic performances in some time. More people should have seen Babes. If they had, maybe we'd get more theatrically released, R-rated comedies that don't star Deadpool.

Biggest disappointment: The Fall Guy

The saddest part of The Fall Guy’s failure is how pure the whole thing feels. Director and former stunt performer David Leitch cares deeply for the subject matter, and he shows off his commitment to his community with such pride. It also looked like a perfect post-Barbie vehicle for Ryan Gosling, who plays Colt Seavers, a goofy and lovable stunt double forced into a rom-com when he’s asked to sign onto his filmmaker ex-girlfriend Jody Moreno’s (Emily Blunt) first directorial effort. It’s a shame that much of the screen time is devoted to the double-crossing antics of the conspirators behind a plot to kidnap Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), the star of Blunt’s movie. Even that would be enough, but this movie needed to hit two hours, so Ryder is also in on his own little mini-movie to frame his stunt double for…whatever. The Fall Guy was pitched as an action rom-com about a delightfully dumb stuntman who wants to win back his charming ex. Why the hell is it allowing the plot to get in its way?

Most welcome surprise: Smile 2

Smile 2 opens with a bang. Breaking free of its predecessor’s stilted, half-empty world, writer-director Parker Finn unclips his camera from the tripod and unhinges Smile from its influences. Taking advantage of Finn’s vague rules, Smile 2 exposes show business to Smile Disease, providing the loose metaphor with a perfect host. After all, where will you find more conniving smirks and false promises than backstage at a pop concert? It’s a silly premise brought to life by Naomi Scott, whose boundless Ariana Grande-surrogate Skye Riley balances a theater kid’s poise with unrestrained terror. Finn turns her perpetually shaky profession into a house of mirrors, playing with Riley’s sobriety and talents while supercharging scares with thematically textured sequences that challenge Skye and the audience. Smile was a pale imitation of better movies. Smile 2 shows off its pearly whites. Nine out of 10 dentists agree: It’s a good time.

Jesse Hassenger

Top 15

1. Challengers

2. Furiosa

3. Rebel Ridge

4. Anora

5. Love Lies Bleeding

6. The Brutalist

7. Nickel Boys

8. Longlegs

9. Sing Sing

10. Nosferatu

11. The Substance

12. A Real Pain

13. Here (very much the Zemeckis)

14. The Bikeriders

15. Trap

Outlier: Here (Robert Zemeckis)

Most critics dismissed it as corny, stagy, strange, and/or obviously computer-augmented. To quote an old film professor of mine addressing the movie Showgirls: So what?! In one of the most blatantly experimental studio movies in ages, Robert Zemeckis plants a camera on a single spot and observes life, be it Indigenous, colonial, contemporary, or dinosaur.  Much of the movie focuses on a living room and the family that occupies it for several decades, featuring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in what often feels like an unlikely hybrid of a stage play, an anthology series, and animation. (It’s based on a graphic novel.) I was dreading a Baby Boomer victory lap; instead, I found something technically challenging and sometimes bleakly fatalistic about the inevitable passage of time. 

Most overrated: Babygirl

There are few working actors more adept at balancing movie-star charisma with genuine chops than Nicole Kidman, and credit to Babygirl for requiring both from her at once. The movie itself, though, is surprisingly anodyne, an intriguing sexual awakening that quickly turns into a tedious drama of infidelity and vague empowerment. (Finally, a chance for a wealthy CEO to achieve satisfaction!) I kept waiting for the delicious fun to kick in, as promised; true to its corporate setting, all it can offer is a few passed apps. 

Most underrated: Lisa Frankenstein

How did this happen again? Diablo Cody wrote a terrific hybrid of monster movie and coming-of-age comedy with Jennifer’s Body; critics shrugged, audiences stayed away, and years later tons of people realized how good it is. Lisa Frankenstein is a wonderful companion piece, even more steeped in the dynamics of classic Universal monsters, similarly funny and knotty in equal measure, and visually distinctive in the hands of first-time feature director Zelda Williams. (Admittedly not as surehanded as Karyn Kusama, but still!) You know what happened next: critics shrugged, audiences stayed away, and now begins the waiting for the rest of the world to catch up with Lisa Frankenstein’s truly offbeat charm. In the meantime, Cody should take the ambivalence that her poppy, quippy, complicated monster movies inspire as a badge of honor. 

Biggest disappointment: Nightbitch

If Marielle Heller could make something as unpalatable as a fiction-movie remake of a successful documentary into a movie as unexpectedly strong as A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood, surely Amy Adams playing a mom who channels her frustration into a werewolf-like transformation would be an easy layup! Perhaps even more disappointing, a lot of Nightbitch is typically well-directed, well-acted stuff, especially in its first half-hour or so. But it turns the actual body horror material into a woo-woo shrug, and winds up stumbling through some too-easy non-answers to the gratifyingly impossible dilemma at its center. Nightbitches everywhere deserved better!

Most welcome surprise: Drugstore June

There should be a fringe benefit to studio comedies falling by the wayside in the streaming era: No more cheesy, premature showcases attempting to translate comic phenoms like Bert Kreischer into big-screen stars. But in some kind of topsy-turvy switch-up, the best traditionally broad (if not actually big-studio) comedy I saw all year was exactly that sort of indulgence, a vehicle for stand-up comedian Esther Povitsky. She plays June, a narcissistically sheltered Gen-Z girl attempting to solve a robbery, and Drugstore June gives the character a satirical yet affectionate clarity that enhances the whole ramshackle townie-noir affair. What’s a better surprise than repeatedly laughing out loud at a movie you only heard of the day before you saw it?

Natalia Keogan

Top 15

1. The Beast

2. Janet Planet

3. No Other Land

4. The Brutalist

5. Christmas Eve In Miller's Point

6. All We Imagine As Light

7. Green Border

8. Last Summer

9. Hard Truths

10. The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed

11. A Different Man

12. Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World

13. Red Rooms

14. The People's Joker

15. Free Time

Outlier: Coma 

I first saw Bertrand Bonello’s transfixing response to COVID-era teenage ennui at a New York Film Festival screening over two years ago. However, the film only received a proper U.S. theatrical release from Film Movement this past spring. Although The Beast, also released this year, is arguably the filmmaker’s greatest achievement to date, Coma is a poignant distillation of many of his recurring thematic fascinations: adolescent angst, societal cynicism, and the infinite potential of dolls all congeal into a Lynchian examination of an increasingly bleak social and political landscape for those currently coming of age. If The Beast proves that Bonello is capable of executing big swings, Coma is a stunning example of how big ideas are sometimes best pulled off by drastically paring down production. 

Most overrated: Longlegs 

I didn’t initially hate Longlegs, Oz Perkins’ scattershot Silence Of The Lambs pastiche. But as more people began praising its central performances, narrative trajectory, and intrinsic sense of evil, I couldn’t help but position myself more staunchly against it. Maika Monroe’s turn as Detective Lee Harker is dreadfully dull, and Nic Cage’s personification of the serial killer she hunts down is clownish as opposed to genuinely chilling. There are several threads left completely unexplored (what the hell was up with those metal orbs in the dolls, anyway?) and none of the film’s scares ever successfully got under my skin. If Perkins had ditched the supernatural elements, I may have vibed with it more, but the Satanic slant felt shoehorned and, quite frankly, kind of stupid. 

Most underrated: Free Time 

Writer-director Ryan Martin Brown’s feature debut, a takedown of poisonous corporate culture, is as hilarious as it is clever. Colin Burgess plays Drew, a 20-something Brooklynite who impulsively quits his unfulfilling office job. It doesn’t take him long to regret this decision, and as we spend more time with Drew, it becomes clear that he doesn’t have the chops to actually make the most of his newfound, if anxiety-inducing, freedom. It’s hard to sympathize with the protagonist for this reason, which fortunately makes it easier to chuckle at his mounting misfortune. But Brown also imbues Drew with a painful relatability that also allows him to be seen as a cautionary tale. If you could quit your shitty job tomorrow, you’d still have to wake up every day and live for something.

Biggest disappointment: The Substance 

Speaking of stupid, I absolutely despise Coralie Fargeat’s supposed “satire” about the social pressures of aging for women. After hearing a fair amount of buzz after its Cannes premiere, I was stoked to see the French director’s sophomore feature, especially because I adore her neon-and-blood-drenched 2017 debut, Revenge. My eventual conclusion was that Revenge—which subverts longtime tropes in the rape-revenge horror subgenre—simply happened to come out at a time when Fargeat’s observations felt incisive. Contrarily, The Substance comes off as utterly didactic. It attempts to implicate the audience in our culture’s misogynistic obsession with beauty, yet Fargeat’s direction intentionally exploits the supple sex appeal of Sue (Margaret Qualley) whenever possible; meanwhile, Elizabeth’s (a formidable Demi Moore) social capital immediately plummets on her 50th birthday, leading her to try the titular pharmaceutical and birth Sue from a gaping gash in her back. For a film and filmmaker that claim to be feminist, the women are one-note and the critique of patriarchal power dynamics is frustratingly maladroit (Elizabeth’s sleazy Hollywood boss, played by Dennis Quaid, is literally named Harvey). My intelligence has never been so insulted. 

Most welcome surprise: Conclave 

Before Conclave, the last film I saw in theaters with my family was, in all honesty, probably The Social Network. Rave reviews from relatives and our shared Catholic heritage (read: trauma) brought us back to our hometown AMC before the Thanksgiving holiday, and boy were we not disappointed. My detail-oriented brother raved about the cinematography, my drama-obsessed sister couldn’t get enough of the catty dialogue, and my Mexican mother was blown away by newcomer Carlos Diehz’s performance (as well as his character’s insane plot line). My family’s shared appreciation of the film bolstered my own, though I was personally in the bag from the moment that Cardinal Tedesco first hit his cherry red vape. While I have my own critiques about the film’s overly optimistic view of the church’s future trajectory (as did my father), it was beyond refreshing to actually have a film to collectively discuss over turkey this year. 

Brianna Zigler

Top 15

1. The Beast

2. Challengers

3. Rap World 

4. Anora

5. Hard Truths

6. Universal Language

7. Hundreds Of Beavers

8. Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World

9. The First Omen

10. Megalopolis

11. Christmas Eve In Miller's Point

12. The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed

13. Furiosa

14. Juror #2

15. Oddity

Outlier: Rap World

The funniest film of the year is 55 minutes long, free on YouTube, and unofficially released due the lack of copyright for any of the soundtrack and the filmmakers’ steadfast insistence on its artistic importance in the film (tracks include “Viva La Vida” and “Feel Good Inc.”). Conner O’Malley and frequent collaborator Danny Scharar’s Rap World takes us back to 2009, because they wanted to set their film in a time where they could talk about The Dark Knight despite there being zero references to Nolan’s film in the final product. Yet the film manages to capture the atmosphere of an era when The Dark Knight was young white men’s Quran. Rap World follows a group of adult teenagers in Tobyhanna, PA documenting their quest to record a full rap album—about being from Tobyhanna, PA—in a single night. But they end up doing anything and everything except record music, like hanging out in parking lots, playing Wii, eating McDonald’s, and talking about how great the album is going to be. Rap World is perhaps the best film ever made about the youth culture of the 2000s, the fledgling social media landscape and its users’ naiveté in how to navigate it, and a specific type of guy bred in dreary suburbia whose oversized ambitions can’t escape his hometown.

Most overrated: The Brutalist

I was not nearly as taken with The Brutalist as most other people seemed to be, because in my mind, There Will Be Blood already exists, is better, shorter, and I could just watch that instead. Brady Corbet’s aesthetically magnificent and sweeping portrait of post-Holocaust migration and assimilation of Eastern European Jews into America is a bit too commonplace story-wise for it to truly blow me away. Maybe that’s unfair, but the way the discourse shaped following the film’s premiere at Venice Film Festival, it seemed like The Brutalist was set to be something larger than life—like the concrete behemoth constructed by Adrien Brody’s László Toth on behalf the WASP industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). In the end, I was disappointed by just how ordinary the story of László was in terms of its Great American Epic structure, something I’d seen before in better films with better protagonists, and I was left wanting more even as the film brims with big ideas.

Most underrated: Oddity

Too much talk about Heretic and The Substance and not enough about Oddity, a quiet, slow-burn Irish horror film about a murdered woman and her psychic twin sister’s quest to reveal the truth about her death. I am usually disappointed by horror films made in the West and instead find far more satisfaction in horror films that come out of the East, but I was pleasantly surprised by the quiet, patient dread of Oddity (it may be a film from the Western world, but it is crucially not American). Directed by Damian McCarthy in his sophomore effort, the film finds strength in some truly terrifying images. Lingering jump scares and a constant focus on negative space leaves his characters, and his audience, constantly vulnerable, and Carolyn Bracken’s performance as Darcy is as chilling as the life-size mannequin she uses to perform black magic.

Biggest disappointment: Alien: Romulus

Apprehension towards the nu-Alien franchise’s departure from Ridley Scott’s “David” prequels was initially assuaged upon seeing that Fede Álvarez—who helmed his remake of The Evil Dead with surprising aplomb—was set to direct. Taking place at some point in between Alien and Aliens, Romulus follows a group of young colonizers on a mining planet seeking a better life elsewhere, who expectedly get caught up in a ship snafu with our old pal the Xenomorph. Unfortunately, Alien: Romulus ends up as a masturbatory nostalgia-bait spectacle complete with dialogue callbacks, shot re-creations, and the ghoulish CGI resurrection of a deceased actor central to the first film. A gory alien birth scene at the climax, arguably the film’s strongest stretch, can’t help but recall better character design in Alien: Resurrection in a creature that seems to share some stylistic blood with Scott’s Engineers from Prometheus. Coupled with Alien: Covenant, Scott’s two Alien prequels were flawed, ambitious swings that attempted to take his source material into new philosophical directions. On the other hand, Alien: Romulus merely wants us to consider how epic it was when Ripley said, “Get away from her, you bitch.” 

Most welcome surprise: Late Night With The Devil

Following the unfortunate reveal that the creators of Late Night With The Devil utilized AI in producing some intertitle illustrations for its fictional late-night show, I held off on watching the film out of spite. Eventually, boring weekday nights, curiosity, and eagerness to watch a “dumb horror movie” got the best of me and I thought, “Oh, what the hell. It’s on Shudder. Why not?” I came away genuinely taken aback by how much I enjoyed Late Night With The Devil despite the aforementioned AI and the fact that the film completely falls apart in the final five minutes. But the unhurried build-up to the film’s climactic televised possession of a little girl inhabited by a malevolent force is incredibly effective, as is the possession itself and the connection between Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian), host of Night Owls With Jack Delroy, and this demon. Amid a familiar glut of poor American horror films, Late Night With The Devil stands apart as being fun, original, and consistently surprising, even if it’s not particularly scary.