31. In a Violent Nature – If Terrence Malick directed Friday the 13th, you might get a movie sort of like this, where we spend all of our time with the killer, following him as he leisurely strolls through the forest, hunting the hapless victims he comes to dispatch with ingenious brutality.

30. Trap – The glue that holds together M. Night Shyamalan’s delightfully absurd DePalma riff is Josh Hartnett’s perfectly attuned performance.

29. Woman of the Hour – Anna Kendrick impressively directs (and stars in) this creepy, 70s-set true story about a serial killer who goes on The Dating Game.

28. Thelma – June Squibb stars in this super enjoyable geriatric revenge flick about a 93-year-old woman who fights back against the cyber scammers who duped her.

27. My Old Ass – An 18-year-old girl encounters her older self (thanks to some magic mushrooms) in this funny, touching, low-key, quasi-fantasy.

26. A Real Pain – I didn’t have to like, or want to spend any time with in real life, this film’s two main characters (played by Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg, the latter also wrote and directed) to be moved by this story about a couple of estranged cousins who take a Holocaust tour of Poland.

25. How to Have Sex – Nothing I watched this year made me more anxious or disturbed me more than this French coming-of-age film about a group of teen girls who go to Greece for something akin to spring break.

24. Juror #2 – Clint Eastwood’s (purportedly) final film as director is a very watchable morality tale about a man who finds himself on the jury for an incident with which he’s unknowingly connected.

23. Mayhem! (aka, Farang) – I love me some ultra-violent, tear-it-all-down vengeance, and this French, mostly Thailand-set actioner satiated my cinematic blood lust.

22. Hit Man – Star/co-writer Glen Powell and director/co-writer Richard Linklater bring moral complexity to this fun and sexy (somewhat) true story about a professor/police consultant who goes undercover as a fake hitman (fake, because the people who’re trying to hire him think he’s a real assassin).

21. Sasquatch Sunset – So, there’s no dialogue, the unrecognizable actors, who are all wearing full Bigfoot suits and Bigfoot makeup, grunt and eat and defecate and fornicate and meander aimlessly through the forest over the course of a year, and that’s the movie? … Yeah, that’s the movie. To the best of my knowledge, there’s never been anything quite like Sasquatch Sunset before, and, I feel fairly confident in predicting, there’ll never be anything quite like it in the future.

20. Beettlejuice Beetlejuice – “The ghost with the most is back,” as the tagline states, and so, too, is Tim Burton, who, with this sequel, has made his most Tim Burtony (in a good way) movie in decades.

19. River – One winter’s day, in a traditional Japanese mountain inn, something … happens. To say more would ruin the experience of having this wonderful cinematic concoction reveal itself to you. Don’t read the synopsis, don’t watch the trailer, just watch the movie. Trust me.

18. Limbo – A stark, desolate, moody, stripped down, highly effective, black and white Australian neo-noir.

17. Didi – Set in Fremont, California, in the summer of 2008, this coming-of-age story about a 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy’s heartbreaking struggles to fit in is courageously raw and authentic.

16. Strange Darling – Yes, the conceit of playing the chapters of this movie out of order is something of a cheat, because it purposefully and blatantly withholds crucial information from the audience at key moments in order to generate what could rightly be called unearned suspense through unavoidable misunderstanding, but I’ll allow it, because the bravura filmmaking and superb performances are just that good.

15. Rap World – This mockumentary about a group of guys trying to record a rap album in one night proves, once again, that the singular Conner O’Malley (who stars, as well as co-directs and co-writes with Danny Scharar) is a comedic force of nature.

14. Red Rooms – This Quebecoise film, about an inscrutable woman who attends the trial of a man accused of torturing and killing three teenage girls for the entertainment of others on the dark web, gave me some intense, to say the least, dreams/nightmares. Is this a good thing? I don’t really know. But I cannot deny this film’s mesmerizing power.

13. Here – Using cutting-edge cinematic technology that, for the first time in a long while, perfectly synthesizes with its subject matter, Robert Zemeckis adapts Richard McGuire’s comic-turned-graphic novel that depicts life over millions of years (mostly focusing on the last few hundred) from a single, locked-off camera position.

12. The Outrun – Saoirse Ronan, one of the most consistently compelling screen presences working today, stars in this life affirming recovery drama about a woman whose attempts to get clean prompt her to move back home to the remote Orkney Islands in Scotland.

11. Napoleon: Director’s Cut – I haven’t seen the theatrical cut, so I don’t know how it compares, nor am I all that familiar with the actual historical facts, so I’m not overly bothered by any exaggerations or inaccuracies. My opinion is based solely upon what I felt while watching this, and Ridley Scott’s extended cut of his second-latest historical epic hooked me from minute one and kept me fascinated through to minute 205.

10. The Beekeeper – This enormously entertaining, absolutely ridiculous action flick starts out as a variation on John Wick then, in its third act, morphs into something like V for Vendetta on HGH. I suspect that of all the movies on my list of 2024 favourites, this is the one I’ll re-watch most often.

9. The Substance – I love it when a filmmaker fully commits to the bit, as writer/director Coralie Fargeat does here. I love it even more when they then go way beyond the bit into something as completely bonkers as where The Substance dares to tread.

8. The Promised Land – Mads Mikkelsen tries to tame Denmark’s wild Jutland in this mid-18th century-set, man-against-nature/man-against-despicable-aristocrat historical drama.

7. Good One – This remarkable, keenly observed drama about a 17-year-old girl who accompanies her father and her father’s recently divorced friend on a weekend hike/camping trip aptly demonstrates that it only takes the smallest of moments for one’s life to irrevocably shift.

6. Challengers – This movie is a sweaty, sexy, propulsive, Luca Guadagnino/Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross-fueled mood/beat/vibe.

5. Rebel Ridge – Writer/director Jeremy Saulnier is a micro filmmaker of the highest order, by this I mean, he’s all about the details, about making sure that every character beat, story point, and camera move is justified and exactly what it needs to be. Rebel Ridge, perfectly described by Saulnier as First Blood meets Michael Clayton, is one of the most immensely watchable movies I’ve seen in a long time.

4. Dune: Part 2 – With so many of our big-budget filmmakers (Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Martin Scorsese, George Miller, Ridley Scott) hitting, having passed, or approaching the eight-decade mark (at 70, Cameron’s the youngest of this bunch), I’ve been getting a little worried that the era of bold, big-screen filmmaking might be coming to an end. Thankfully, director Denis Villeneuve has proven that he’s more than capable of taking up this mantle, and, more importantly, he’s successful enough that studios seem willing to fund his epic, wide-screen visions. This is a wonderful thing, because it takes the best of Hollywood’s resources to craft something as grand as Dune: Part Two.

3. Civil War – Alex Garland’s almost (possibly/preferably not) of-the-moment Civil War is the kind of cinematic experience I’m hoping to have every time I enter the theatre, meaning I yearn to be instantly engaged from the opening frame, then subsequently transported and provoked and surprised, then walloped (in a good way) by an ending that takes my breath away and leaves me feeling invigorated.

2. Origin – Why isn’t Ava Duvernay’s fantastic adaptation of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent/biography of Caste-writer Isabel Wilkerson a much bigger deal? I finally caught up with it on Amazon Prime, and I was completely blown away by it, because it’s so incredibly compelling and the filmmaking is so good, and because Wilkerson’s thesis/investigation and Duvernay’s presentation of said thesis/investigation seems to hold the key to everything, to, well, the source of our collective discontent, and, by extension, a possible remedy to this discontent, or, at least, an understanding that could maybe lead to something better than what presently exists.

1. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga – With this fifth Mad Max installment, George Miller delivers what I believe to be the best movie in what is arguably cinema’s most consistently great franchise. This isn’t to take anything away from any of the entries that have come before, because I love them all dearly, but, for me, Furiosa – which essentially gives us five Mad Max movies in one – tops them all.