From large-scale blockbusters such as “Dune: Part Two” to small-scale indies like “Anora,” cinema in 2024 proved to be alive and well, despite Hollywood’s slow emergence from the Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) strikes that halted the industry in 2023.
With the start of 2025, Aaron Barrow and Will Jones, The Daily Mississippian Arts and Culture Desk’s in-house film aficionados, offer their own carefully curated list of the best films released last year.
#10. “Hit Man”
Who knew Richard Linklater, the director behind such talky classics as “Before Sunset” and “Dazed and Confused,” would be the perfect fit for an assassin movie? However, this assassin movie is unlike any other, combining screwball comedy and heart-wrenching noir (and supercharged by an estimable Glen Powell performance) to deliver a tricky examination of the philosophy of violence and the wish fulfillment it engenders. — WJ
#9. “A Real Pain”
The most deft achievement in Jesse Eisenberg’s second directorial feature is not the film itself but the feeling it conjures once the credits roll. The film initially presents itself as, and appropriately indulges in being, a buddy comedy via a road trip farce. However, the dramatic subtext of this breezy movie unveils itself in unexpected ways, offering stirring and stimulating questions on the values of pain and empathy. — WJ
#8. “The Substance”
On the surface, it is somewhat humorous that Coralie Fargeat’s sophomore feature, “The Substance,” was the winner of the best screenplay award at the 2024 Cannes Film festival. However, in for all of its grotesqueries and inherent insanity, the film’s rich, although simplistic, thematic ideas garnered a following. Fargeat is not one for subtlety, and the film soars as a result. Simplicity is the film’s greatest strength, and the straight forward approach paired with some of the year’s most shocking special effects makes for both an absolute thrill ride and an exploration of female beauty standards. — AB
#7. “Dune: Part Two”
While its predecessor failed to operate on any level higher than a technically stunning world-building assignment, “Dune: Part Two” reinforces the timelessness and overall richness of the text it adapts. The film never falters as a technical masterwork of filmmaking, but it also never becomes self-indulgent. The scale informs the themes and vice versa. All of which results in one of the most stunning achievements of blockbuster filmmaking in recent memory. —AB
#6. “Nickel Boys”
RaMell Ross’s “Nickel Boys,” based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, follows two boys navigating the treachery of a Florida reform school in the Jim Crow South. What could easily present as a needlessly punishing tale is met with an equally playful and insightful formal approach; the movie is almost entirely shot in a first-person point-of-view format, breaking open the cinematic rulebook. This thematically rich and technologically complex approach reminded me of the simple reasons why I fell in love with the film medium: for its elasticity, its generosity, its mirror-like qualities, how your gaze is reflected back at you and often through you. — WJ
#5. “Trap”
One would be hard pressed to find someone who had a bigger smile throughout this film than I did. M. Night Shyamalan’s “Trap” is an absolute blast from frame one until its crowd-pleasing mid-credits tag. The film is a “Tom and Jerry” level game of cat and mouse between Cooper, an at-large serial killer portrayed brilliantly by Josh Hartnett, and the multitude of authorities and other threats in his path, as ridiculous as many of them may seem. While the film is entertaining as a thriller/dark comedy in its own right, the inclusion of said killer’s young daughter makes for an exciting foil to both the lead and the typical genre trappings. “Trap” is a film about a man that must balance the responsibilities of his evil nature with the responsibilities of those he holds dear. “Never let the two lives touch,” utters Cooper in the film’s final act. The film’s exploration of how these “worlds” intersect in real time made for one of the most riveting theater experiences of the year. — AB
#4. “I Saw the TV Glow”
Jane Schoennburn’s sophomore effort is a deeply affecting tale of one individual’s quest for identity. Every emotion is distilled into the trials and tribulations of a seemingly peculiar obsession with a childhood television show. It is a film that never fully had me in its grasp until the moments after the credits rolled, when everything seemed to crystalize, and the vision, however imperfect its execution may have been, suffocated me. “I Saw the TV Glow,” more than any other film this year, insists on the importance of cinema as a medium. There is no other way to tell this story than with film. And with each passing day, I am more and more grateful that it was told in this way. —AB
#3. “Anora”
Mikey Madison gives the best performance of the year in Sean Baker’s hilarious and heartbreaking film, winner of the Palme D’or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Her expressive face and overall chameleonic transformation serve as the emotional canvas on which “Anora” paints a vivid portrait of not only class inequality in America but also how the American Dream becomes weaponized against the very people holding its fabric together. Baker subtly ties all these emotional and sociopolitical threads into a final scene that rivals the best of any movie ending this century. — WJ
#2. “Janet Planet”
The poet William Blake once said, “The world can be seen in a grain of sand.” Perhaps no movie has better realized this idea of specificity adjoining universality than “Janet Planet,” the debut feature from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker. This plucky mother/daughter memoir gently unspools with a profound level of intimacy, capturing its 1991 rural Massachusetts milieu with superlative textural precision. The film’s pace, as well as its nostalgic cinematography, evokes the slow disintegration of a flashbulb photograph. As it progresses, we watch Lacy, the 11-year-old daughter, slowly become less enamored by her mother’s figurative orbit. We are not only asked to question the pliability of these specific women but also confronted with our own questions and sense memories regarding the heartbreaking, yet necessary intersection between individuality and conformity. – WJ
#1. “Challengers”
I challenge anyone to find a film from 2024 that is more confident in its presentation than Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers.” Guadagnino breaks all the rules and, in many ways, sets a new standard for how a story like this can be told. The film is precise in its chaos. Every seemingly jarring choice reveals itself as uniquely motivated. Not a second goes to waste as the film and its characters barrel through their world at breakneck speeds accompanied by a high-octane musical score that never lets the audience breathe or feel like they are missing out on the action. Guadagnino never spoon feeds the film’s general ideas. In fact, the film is more invested in muddying the waters than it is in providing an all-encompassing thesis statement on which to hang its hat. “Challengers” is ultimately a fresh exploration of the pros and cons of the sensibilities that an overtly obsessive nature instills within us, yet it refuses to elaborate which of its central characters should be the recipient of our adulation or grief. No interpretation is an easy pill to swallow. And for that, as well as a multitude of other reasons, I commend this film. No one is making movies like Luca Guadagnino. And I really do not want to see them try. —AB
Editor’s note: This article was written on Dec. 2, 2024, so the authors’ rankings did not include films released after that date.
