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MovieJawn's Best of 2024 roundup

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by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

Here at MovieJawn, we love movies, and we love celebrating movies. It is that time of year, so here is the roundup look back at all of our best of lists!

Spacewoman

Jill Vranken

Due to a variety of Big Life Things happening, I didn't get to see as many new releases as I had aimed for this year. Nevertheless, I have a top ten, which is a mix of horror, humane stories, weirder stuff and one great big blockbuster that absolutely was needed for me. If you know me, you'll know what my number one is but if you don't....

  1. The Substance

  2. Late Night With the Devil

  3. Fréwaka

  4. Reinas

  5. The Holdovers

  6. Spacewoman

  7. Twisters (would have been higher if they let Glen Powell JUST KISS)

  8. The First Omen

  9. Immaculate

  10. Kinds of Kindness

The Substance

Melissa Strong

We’ve been together a while, MovieJawn, but we never run out of fun things to do, like making this end-of-year list. In the past, I talked myself out of participating, worried that I hadn’t seen enough new releases or types of films to list the year’s best. Or that I hate too many popular movies to judge. Or that Top Ten lists aren’t compatible with my preference for a slanted approach. Maybe I was holding myself back. After all, I have so very many ideas and opinions about movies, and I trust you with them at this stage in our relationship. So here are my top 10 movies of the year in no particular order. That’s right, I am not picking a #1, and I’m adding a few categories: Best Short Film with Feature Potential and Best Movie to Pair with a Song of the Year. In the first category, Mr. Static offers a great premise and heart-pounding thrills that left me wanting more. For the second category, now is the perfect time to revisit The Short History of the Long Road, a movie starring Sabrina “That’s that me espresso” Carpenter in a role opposite her pop music persona. Bonus points for rereading my 2020 review, but no worries if you don’t: as Carpenter sings, “my give-a-fucks are on vacation.” Cheers to another great year, MovieJawn!

  • I Saw the TV Glow

  • The Substance

  • Good One

  • Love Lies Bleeding

  • Between the Temples

  • A Different Man

  • Red Rooms

  • Tie: Oddity & Late Night with the Devil

Best flicks seen in 2024 that MovieJawn put on my radar: Hatching and The Boy

Love Lies Bleeding

Clayton Hayes

As has often been the case for me, I haven't been able to watch as many new films this year as I would've liked, so I've ended up with a top 5 rather than a top 10. Though I have to include Heavier Trip as my favorite new film I reviewed for MovieJawn. But hey, what a year for women in satanic peril! A lot of 2024 fit into that category though: if you're asking me, the best of them are Longlegs and The First Omen. But women didn't just have Satan to worry about! The delightful Lisa Frankenstein and Cukoo offered some fun takes on the creature feature, with Cukoo being especially impressive. It's Rose Glass' second feature, Love Lies Bleeding, which was far and away my favorite of 2024. I was lucky enough to catch it in theaters back in March, and nothing else I saw came close to unseating it.

  1. Love Lies Bleeding

  2. Cuckoo

  3. Longlegs

  4. The First Omen

  5. Lisa Frankenstein

  6. Heavier Trip

Sing Sing

Megan Bailey

I've been able to see a lot of films this year (shout out AMC A-List), and I'm happy with where everything stands, even though I've yet to see a few films that may make the list by the end of the year (Babygirl and The Brutalist, notably). Some of these films stayed high in my estimation all year long (like Challengers and Monkey Man), but some I watched this month and shot right up onto the list (Nickel Boys and The Piano Lesson).

  1. Nickel Boys

  2. Challengers

  3. I Saw the TV Glow

  4. Sing Sing

  5. My Old Ass

  6. Queer

  7. Longlegs

  8. Trap

  9. Monkey Man

  10. The Piano Lesson

The Wild Robot

Tessa Swehla

See my 2024 Best of Sci-fi list for more!

  1. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

  2. The Wild Robot

  3. Your Monster

  4. I Saw the TV Glow

  5. ME

  6. Challengers

  7. Anora

  8. Love Lies Bleeding

  9. Lisa Frankenstein

  10. Mars Express

Honorable Mentions: Twisters (release the kiss cut!), Kneecap, Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, Babygirl, Cuckoo, and Rebel Ridge!

La Chimera

Carmen Paddock

2024 was a great year for the movies! There were few fallow periods where no good or interesting films came out–from Love Lies Bleeding and Challengers early in the year, The Substance and Megalopolis in the late summer, and now into the awards push, there was always something on at the cinema worth seeing and talking about. Is this a sign or result of the collapse of the studio franchise tentpole? Let's hope so.

  1. Nickel Boys

  2. La Chimera

  3. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

  4. Hundreds of Beavers

  5. A Different Man

  6. Sing Sing

  7. Love Lies Bleeding

  8. Challengers

  9. Sometimes I Think About Dying

  10. Hit Man

Honorable Mentions: The Substance, Conclave, Maria, Grand Theft Hamlet

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

Fiona Underhill

There's plenty to celebrate in the cinema of 2024, and, as always, I'd encourage everyone to explore the diverse range of international cinema, as well as documentaries, animated films (shout out to Flow!), and so much more. It's been another strong year for women behind the camera, as well as a banner year for trans cinema, in my humble opinion. It's also been a great year for women over 50 having some interesting, complex leading roles, which is definitely worthy of celebration (my favorite is Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl). There's always good films out there just waiting to be discovered!

  1. Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

  2. The Beast

  3. Nickel Boys

  4. I Saw the TV Glow

  5. Megalopolis

  6. Ghostlight

  7. Queer

  8. The Order

  9. My First Film

  10. Monkey Man

Honorable Mentions: Kneecap, Love Lies Bleeding, Trap, The People's Joker, Dahomey, Furiosa, The End, The Last Showgirl

A Missing Part

Katharine Mussellam

According to my Letterboxd diary, this year has been a record one for my film viewing. And yet when I sat down to work on this list, I realized that so many of the movies I watched this year were not 2024 releases (over 60 of them, thanks to Turner Classic Movies, which I’m not complaining about). When I looked at the movies I did watch that came out this year–either streaming or theatrical releases or at film festivals–I struggled to single out a full ten films that I thought should be highlighted as the Best™. I did see a lot of new movies that I liked, whole or in part, but I already know I’ll be seeing more over the holidays that may have merited a spot on this list. I still really enjoyed all of these, though and think they deserve more attention beyond the contexts in which I saw them. I don’t know what the future is for a lot of these films in terms of availability in your territory, but keep an eye out for them!

  1. A Missing Part

  2. Love in the Big City

  3. Daughter’s Daughter

  4. The Queen of My Dreams

  5. Matt & Mara

  6. Curl Power

  7. Inside Out 2

  8. Beatles ’64

  9. Adrianne & The Castle

  10. Landscapes of Home

Honorable mentions: The Glassworker, Front Row, Made in England: the Films of Powell and Pressburger, Home Free, Fortescue, Universal Language

Lisa Frankenstein

Allie Lembo

Oops, All Horror! It's the only genre that still gets me off my couch to pay an arm and a leg at the theater; the killer's footsteps coming from behind are meant to be experienced in surround sound. From low budget to high, critically panned to lauded, 2024's roster of horror films is cheeky, doomed, self-aware, and beautifully gory. Here are the films that got me or that I'm itching to return to.

  1. The Substance

  2. Lisa Frankenstein

  3. I Saw the TV Glow

  4. Alien: Romulus

  5. Loves Lies Bleeding

  6. Oddity

  7. Cuckoo

  8. Longlegs

  9. The First Omen

  10. Terrifier 3

Wicked

Darian Davis

It’s tricky logging my favorite movies of the year when less than one fourth of my watchlist for 2024 has still gone unseen. That said, four of my most anticipated movies of the year made the list. I still feel like Hollywood is righting itself from the height of the pandemic and trade union strikes, especially considering that Dune: Part Two was supposed to take 2023 by storm, so I can’t say for sure whether this has been a particularly strong or good year in film. I do think this year offered some great big swings with Oz Perkins’s Longlegs and Jan Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow. Both flicks are full of ‘90s nostalgia that pull you along for wild mysteries with flairs of the absurd: qualities I can’t resist as a David Lynch devotee. A few of my favorite films this year have and will certainly continue to receive many nods and accolades as the awards season ramps up, but if I were to die on any hill, I would do so extolling Clarence Maclin’s virtuoso performance in Sing Sing, one of my absolute favorites of the year. Give that man the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor!

  1. I Saw the TV Glow

  2. My Old Ass

  3. Conclave

  4. Sing Sing

  5. Wicked

  6. Anora

  7. Longlegs

  8. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

  9. The Wild Robot

  10. Dune: Part 2

Honorable Mentions: Challengers, Megalopolis, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Thelma

Shayna Davis

2024: the year movies became FUN and SEXY again. That's what I based this Top 10 list on- whether or not I had a blast watching it. If it got a big reaction from me then it was a Smash Hit in my book. Disclaimer: The following list is presented in order of which I saw each film rather than any kind of serious ranking because I hate to pit a bunch of queens against each other like that. That's the Academy of Motion Pictures' job, not mine. Any questions/comments/concerns can be directed to @shayna_marie_ on Instagram.

  • Lisa Frankenstein

  • Love Lies Bleeding

  • The Idea of You

  • Challengers

  • Longlegs

  • Thelma

  • Cuckoo

  • A Different Man

  • Anora

  • Conclave

Honorable mention goes to my favorite Comedy Special of 2024 (it was 1hr 20min; therefore, it counts as a movie): Jacqueline Novak's Get on Your Knees

Anora

Previously published best of lists:

Longlegs

Here are the 15 movies we at MovieJawn loved most, ranked by the frequency they appeared on our best of lists:

1. I Saw the TV Glow
2. Longlegs
3. Challengers/Love Lies Bleeding (tie)
5. Anora/Lisa Frankenstein (tie)
7. A Different Man/Monkey Man/Nickel Boys/Queer/The People’s Joker/The Substance (tie)
13. Conclave/Sing Sing/The First Omen (tie)

Challengers

Other Best of 2024 articles:

The Brutalist

Other great feature articles we published this year:

See you in 2025!