The Best Movies of 2024 (So Far)

Isn’t it great when the most anticipated blockbusters of the year mostly live up to the hype? Like Barbie and Oppenheimer last year, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune sequel is about as good as you could hope for from this notoriously tricky-to-adapt property. The film is a tremendous spectacle—packed with satisfying performances from a new generation of stars—that even manages to produce a few good laughs.

Is The Taste of Things the greatest food movie ever? If we’re judging by the sheer amount of hunger produced, the answer is a resounding oui! But Anh Hung Tran’s latest doesn’t merely succeed as a drool-inducing extended bit of French food porn. For Dodin (Benoît Magimel) and Eugenie (Juliette Binoche), cooking—and eating, too—is an art, a means of connection, and a way to savor life. Ultimately, The Taste of Things is equally great as a movie about romance and ephemerality.

Here, from Belgian director Bas Devos, follows Stefan (Stefan Gota), a Romanian construction worker living in Brussels, as he finishes a job and prepares to move back home. In his final days away, he makes a soup out of the remaining food in his fridge, and forms a connection with Shuxiu (Liyo Gong), a botanist who works part time in her aunt’s restaurant. The film is a beautiful, serene meditation on connection and the slow process of change—and an extremely justified celebration of soup.

If you follow anyone around with a camera for long enough, you’ll probably observe some interesting things. That’s true of the young French painter Apolonia Sokol, whom Danish docmaker Lea Glob spent 13 years filming. Through Glob’s lens, we see Sokol grow as an artist and as a woman, build community, navigate the art world, and process loss. Sokol’s story provides plenty to chew on—about family, art-making, and modern womanhood. And it helps that Sokol is an extraordinarily captivating screen presence.

The Promised Land, from Danish director Nikolaj Arcel, immediately ranks as one of my favorite Mads Mikkelsen performances. In the 18th century-set drama, Mikkelson plays Captain Ludvig Kahlen, a poor Danish war veteran who tries to elevate his status and ingratiate himself to the king by growing crops on the vast, forbidding Jutland Heath. In addition to the elements, Kahlen faces adversity from the current nobility, particularly a diabolical aristocrat named Frederik de Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg). Arcel makes great use of Mikkelsen’s mesmerizing visage. And the director gives The Promised Land such fine pacing that, even as he portrays great agony, watching the film is never a struggle.

Vietnamese director Pham Thien An has a gift for photographing his home country—both the city of Saigon and the vast rural land surrounding it—through wide shots that slowly pan and zoom. There’s a quiet, searching quality in the cinematography that’s echoed in the narrative. The film follows Thien (Le Phong Vu), a young man whose sister-in-law just died in a motorcycle crash, and whose brother long ago abandoned the family. Without any sense of clear direction, Thien casts about, both in the present and through past memories, for meaning, faith, God, and his brother. If his quest offers frustratingly little in the way of solid answers, it raises plenty of questions—and, better yet, leads to many potent encounters.

Totem, from The Chambermaid director Lila Avilés, is such an evocative expression of the extraordinarily specific and intense stew of feelings that comes when celebrating an end. The film is largely told from the perspective of Sol (Naíma Sentíes), a seven-year-old girl who is spending the day at her grandfather’s house, where the family is getting ready to hold a surprise party for her sick father. The build-up to the party is slow—giving Avilés the chance to paint subtly shaded portraits of the various family members—and results in a powerful climax.

This revisionist Western from Chile’s Felipe Gálvez is equally arresting visually and brutal experientially. The film follows an unlikely trio on a voyage through Patagonia, as they violently clear the Indigenous people off the land on behalf of the powerful man who owns it. In depicting the birth of his homeland, Gálvez interrogates narratives around colonialism and its ugly, often absurd realities.

There’s a danger of fetishization in a movie about a blue-collar worker whose zen approach to life makes, say, cleaning toilets, into a serene calling. And the endeavor only gets more precarious—stinky, even—when the film is funded by Japan’s controversial Nippon Foundation. But the meditative rhymes of Wim Wenders’s latest put me in an alluringly meditative trance, and ultimately felt less like propaganda for Japanese tourism than an argument for paying attention to the abundant beauty in the everyday. That, and analog rock and roll cassettes, which I now desperately want to accumulate.

Not so long ago, Recife, one of Brazil’s largest cities, was a thriving cinematic destination. It boasted several vibrant movie theaters and was an outpost for major Hollywood studios. But you wouldn’t know it from walking around the city today. There’s barely a trace of Recife’s cinematic past, as Kleber Mendonça Filho shows in this poetic film essay. A native of Recife, Mendonça Filho reflects on change, both in his own life and in his home city. Pictures of Ghosts is a testament to the power of film for recording history, but also for how it warps it—and how memories of life events blur into memories of movies.

Steve McQueen’s Occupied City is so long (clocking in at four-plus hours) and dense (it feels even longer) that, if you see it in a theater, you’ll get a brief intermission. The break is perhaps necessary for endurance, but it’s most useful for reflection. Over images of present-day Amsterdam, narrator Melanie Hyams tells the history of each space—and the people who occupied it—during the Holocaust. You get the point—that the city bares little trace of this defining atrocity—early in McQueen’s tour. But as the film goes on, McQueen gradually fills in the picture, giving your mind plenty of time to ponder all of the implications.

What we know: Rose Glass, who you might (or might not) know as the force behind 2019’s criminally under-discussed Saint Maude, directs this 1980s-set lesbian romance-thriller starring Kristen Stewart.

Why we’re excited: Saint Maud was a big-time casualty of the pandemic, premiering just as the country was locking down. We’re eager to see how Glass follows her electrifying debut, and hoping that she fares better this go-round.

Release date: March 8

What we know: Free Time, from first-timer Ryan Martin Brown, is the story of a man (Colin Burgess) who, nearing the end of his twenties, quits his unfulfilling desk job to have his "Summer of George." He wants to embrace life, find himself, that whole rigamarole. But figuring out what to do with his time proves harder than expected.

Why we’re excited: Like Downtown 81 or Slacker, Free Time is one of those down-and-dirty ensemble movies that captures a burgeoning scene at a fertile time. In addition to Burgess, the film features a host of other Brooklyn mainstays who could soon be household names. Among them: Rajat Suresh, Jessie Pinnick, Holmes Holmes, Jeremy Levick, and a standout performance from distinguished yeller, Bardia Salimi.

Release date: March 22

What we know: Riddle of Fire, from first-timer Weston Razooli, is set in the Wyoming woodlands, and sends three mischievous kids on a minor odyssey.

Why we’re excited: Western vistas and kids on motorbikes.

Release date: March 22

What we know: The title does not lie. This is a movie about a dad (Colin Burgess), a step-dad (Anthony Oberbeck), and the hijinks that ensue during their weekend excursion with their 13-year-old son Branson (Brian Fiddyment).

Why we’re excited: Tynan Delong’s first feature is a microbudget cult classic in the making.

Release date: March 22

What we know: Autobiography meets the Gotham City universe in Vera Drew’s very buzzy new film about–I’ll just go ahead and quote the film’s synopsis here–“a painfully unfunny aspiring clown [who] grapples with her gender identity while unsuccessfully attempting to join the ranks of Gotham City’s sole comedy program in a world where comedy has been outlawed.”

Why we’re excited: For the film itself, which sounds pretty rad. But also, to see if the folks at DC have a conniption and throw their legal weight against it. (#FREETHEPEOPLESJOKER was trending after the film got pulled from TIFF after its premiere.)

Release date: April 5

What we know: Pushed from its initial 2023 release date due to the strikes, Luca Guadanigno’s latest movie stars Zendaya as a championship tennis star/coach who winds up in a love triangle with her husband and her ex at a challenger event.

Why we’re excited: Guadanigno’s bread and butter—or peach and hand, if you will—is kinky love affairs. Throw in Zendaya and competitive tennis and you’ve sold us.

Release date: April 26

What we know: Joanna Arnow directs and stars in this absurd, structurally audacious comedy about a 30-something navigating an unfulfilling casual BDSM relationship, meaningless corporate work, and the awkwardness of her family.

Why we’re excited: Arnow is a terrific filmmaker, who’s world class at building comedy out of uncomfortable situations. We’ve heard lots of great things about her first feature coming out of Cannes and New York Film Festival.

Release date: April 26

What we know: David Leitch got his start as a stuntman. More recently, he’s directed giant action smashes like John Wick and Atomic Blonde. Now, he’s returning to his roots by remaking the hit 1980s TV show about a Hollywood stuntman who earns an extra buck by fighting crime.

Why we’re excited: Besides the director being a perfect match for the material, The Fall Guy has the perfect leading man for the part of Colt Seavers: Ryan Gosling.

Release date: May 3

What we know: George Miller’s Fury Road prequel is finally here! It is set decades before the events of the previous Mad Max–and 45 years after the apocalypse–and will star Anya Taylor-Joy in the Charlize Theron role.

Why we’re excited: Fury Road set the world on fire (in both senses) and we’re ready to go as far into the godforsaken desert Miller wants to take us.

Release date: May 24