Below are the ten most satisfying and memorable films I saw in 2024:

10. Dune Part Two A-

There's a slight irony to Dune Part Two being #10 on my top ten list for the year, given that I certainly engaged with this film far more than any other in 2024: I saw it three times in the theater, and have since seen it a fourth time streaming—I'd have seen it the fourth time in theaters too if the theatrical window were longer, but that all changed after the pandemic. Otherwise, this would have been the first film I saw four times in the theater since The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King in 2003, 21 years ago. In other words, I really love this movie, and I like it perhaps more each time I see it. Upon first viewing, I loved it then, but was not immediately overwhelmed by a love for it, thinking maybe it did not quite live up to the hype. But when it comes to Dune, the joy is in the details, the more of which get picked up on with successive viewings. Appreciation for both of these films—which I now just think of as one, five-hour and 21-minute movie—only gets deeper with repeat viewing. Denis Villeneuve has done with both films what had previously been thought impossible: adapting what is arguably the most intricately epic science fiction novel ever written, and doing so with grand success.

What I said then: The word “iconic” has been overused for decades. For this reason, I don’t ever use it. Maybe Dune Part Two is the exception that proves the rule.

9. Ghostlight A

A criminally overlooked drama that sneaks up on you with how moving it is, Ghostlight is a title that refers to the name of a community theater where construction worker Dan (Keith Kupferer) is acting in a production of Romeo and Juliet unbeknownst to his grieving wife and daughter. Dan is grieving too, and this film takes its time in revealing exactly what happened there, which is very much tied to a very stressful scenario in their present-day. Ghostlight is ultimately about the healing power of theater, both as performance and as seen by audiences, which is handled with a uniquely deft touch. This is a definite tear jerker though, so you'll want to keep tissues handy.

What I said then: Ghostlight is secretly one of the best films of the year, because it feels like a “small movie” and yet it’s so much bigger once you wade into its gentle waves of emotional resonance. It exists in a cocoon of fondness for its own characters, no matter how flawed they are, and it’s impossible not to feel warmed by it.

8. Robot Dreams A

Every bit the delight it appears to be from trailers, Robot Dreams has charms to spare, both in its overt nostalgia for 1980s New York City and in its achingly adorable animal (and robot) characters. This is a love story, but a platonic one: a wonderful movie about friendship, which ends on a surprising but totally appropriate bittersweet note. There's a lot more going on here under the veneer of its sweetness, all of it conveyed without the use of any dialogue and with a deceptively simple animation style that belies its deep sophistication.

What I said then: This is a movie that loves New York, and all of the characters in it. It loves Dog and it loves Robot, and it loves all the characters they meet along their respective journeys. It loves the art of storytelling and it loves animation in all its forms, and perhaps most of all, it loves us: the people watching the movie.

7. The Taste of Things A

Rare indeed is the film that succeeds in engaging the senses beyond sight and sound—this movie will make your mouth water, will make you vividly imagine, well, the taste of things. It also gradually reveals itself to be a romantic love story, and one of a particular sort, where expressions of love, over a span of many years, are made through both the preparation of food and the consumption of it. This is the kind of film you give yourself over to completely, so that it virtually becomes a full-body experience. There are many different kinds of hunger, and The Taste of Things engages with all of them.

What I said then: The meat based dishes—beef, veal, fish, you name it—still failed to make me salivate, in ways I am certain it will most audiences. And then Eugénie whips up this Baked Alaska dish and I nearly cried with desire: Holy fuckballs that looks amazing! And I don’t even like meringue. The men Eugénie serves this dessert to discuss the physics of how the ice cream stays frozen inside, and I was rapt. This was one dish with meringue I could imagine using as skin cream. I wanted to bathe in it.

6. Babygirl A

I have a slight difficulty here, as Babygirl is a movie I saw in the final weekend of the year—how much of my love for it, and my decision to put it on this list, is just recency bias? I won't know for sure until another year or so passes, but for now, I remain impressed by this film on every level: its explorations of sex and specifically kink the likes of which we rarely, if ever, see in mainstream movies; its exploration of gender power dynamics; its exploration of power imbalance and when it can be difficult to identify which party actually has that upper hand. All of this is packaged in a film with spectacular performances, particularly by Nicole Kidman in the lead role, all of it gorgeously shot and with perhaps the best editing of the year.

What I said then: There is another key line, when Romy’s assistant (Sophie Wilde) says “I genuinely thought women with power would behave differently.” What [wrtier-director Halina] Reijn deliberately leaves unclear is the extent to which the implication there is or is not correct: is Romy behaving just like the other men in her position? We could argue about this for hours, and that, perhaps more than anything, is what makes this movie great.

5. Anora A

I never thought I would find myself comparing Anora to Dune Part Two, but there is a key point of contrast to be made, specifically regarding the hype: Dune Part Two lives up to the hype with repeat viewings; Anora lives up to the hype from its opening moments, and then never wavers throughout. Almost pointedly a 21st-century response to the 1990 romantic comedy Pretty Woman, Anora grounds the proceedings with every aspect of its production, with equal parts grit and wit. Mikey Madison is a revelation as a stripper named Ani, who falls for the seductive matrimonial promises of Ivan (an equally stellar Mark Eydelshteyn), the recklessly romantic son of a Russian oligarch. Anora has everything you could possibly want and more, with an extended sequence involving bumbling Russian goons (including an excellent Yura Borisov as the unexpectedly empathetic Igor) that is absolutely hysterical, and then the film gradually settles into startling pathos.

What I said then: It’s so rare, and so deeply satisfying, when a movie actually lives up to the hype. Anora is everything it promises to be and more.

4. Flow A

My Top Ten this year includes not one, but two animated films—which both feature no dialogue, and neither feature any human characters. A friend recently waxed poetic about all the layors of metaphor in this film, which . . . I guess I missed. Not that I didn't see depth (pardon the pun) in this; I guess the depth I saw was of a different sort. I have a tendncy to take things at face value, and that was what I did here—and still I was utterly taken with this, this tale of cyclical, Biblical flooding that has clearly extinguished human life and now finds a small group of animals sharing a boat and cooperating for survival. Most of them are wild animals, except for several roaming dogs, and the protagonist, a domestic cat. They are all voiced with recordings of the real sounds of their species, with the exception of the capybara (that sounds is actually of a baby camel), and they are animated to move just like their real-life animal counterparts do. This all makes it easy to nearly miss that they are, indeed, anthropomorphized and they are characters—it's just done with such effective subtlety, you've convinced yourself you're watching something realistic. How beautifully rendered all the animation is, with the use of the open-source software Blender, is a different conversation altogether.

What I said then: I’m not sure I can adequately explain how much I loved this movie. Flow is not just the best animated film of the year by a mile, it’s within striking distance of being the best film of the year overall. Critics love to throw around the word “triumph,” but here it legitimately applies. This is a film that transcends any cliché.

3. All of Us Strangers A

There are many criticisms of All of Us Strangers, which glides back and forth between the physical and the metaphysical, that have objective merit. None of that matters to me, as this film spoke to me on a deep, personal level, a queer love story contextualized by intergenerational relationships, the enduring impact of AIDS on the queer community, and the missed opportunities for understanding between parents and their queer children. Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal make a cracklingly sensual onscreen couple, making it much easier to buy into the idea that this is a movie to be felt as opposed to understood. Best of all, the choice of songs make for a stellar soundtrack, with perfectly chosen pop songs I will never hear the same way again.

What I said then: This is a movie I will be thinking about for a very long time, maybe for years to come. I haven’t been this in love with a mood-piece queer love story since Moonlight. Indeed, that film and All of Us Strangerswould make for a spectacular double feature. From end to end, it is beautiful and sad and cozy and charming and erotic and mysterious and bewildering. It would seem there is no end to the riches it has to offer.

2. Sing Sing A

People are not talking about Sing Sing enough, even though both Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin, who are both incredible, are likely to be nominated for Oscars. Limited release schedules often have a tendency to be bewildering, because this film could have gained a lot more traction in the cultural consciousness had it just been marketed differently. I'm just immensely grateful that I had a chance to see this film in its initial theatrical run in my local market in August, when I was deeply impressed by its gorgeous cinematography—shocking to see in a movie set in a prison—and its standout performances. Far more importantly and significantly, Sing Sing is a singularly towering achievement, blending fact and fiction by casting nonprofessional actors from the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program that this film depicts. (Maclin is one of them.) This film is both a testament to the success of such programs, and a deeply moving portrait of prisoners with a level of humanity far too often denied them.

What I said then: Sing Sing absolutely nails every part of everything it sets out to do, from showcasing talent to telling a perfectly calibrated story that could have been corny or maudlin in lesser hands.

1. National Anthem A

Here is a queer film that takes the culture and iconography of rural America, and claims it for its own—all without violence, without any overt queer trauma, all just a celebration of queerness, with a notable and unusual dose of gender variance and diversity. Just as there are many sides of mainstream America, so too are there many sides to minority communities, whose cultures also vary regionally. All of that is merely the backdrop of this wonderful story, about a young man of unspecified sexuality tentatively (Charlie Plummer) exploring gender expression as he finds himself welcomed by the rural queer commune where he's been hired to do construction work. There is just something about the warm tone and vibe of this film, with its ensemble cast of characters both learning and teaching new and different ways of loving each other and building community. This is the kind of movie I just want to wrap myself up in like a heated blanket.

What I said then: I’m not sure I have fallen so hard so quickly for a film like this since Moonlight (2016). And while that film distinguished itself by showcasing queer Black characters, I would say the distinction with National Anthem, while centered on mostly White characters, is its beautifully shot showcasing of gender diversity. I will admit, there’s a lot here that is very personal to me. It would take me a while to think of the last film that so directly and deeply spoke to me.

Five Worst -- or the worst of those I saw

5. Your Monster C

If you want perhaps the greatest example in 2024 of cinematic mediocrity, Your Monster easily fits the bill. It's doubly disappointing when a film with so much potential almost seems to be actively resisting its realization. A quirky story about a young woman who discovers a humanoid monster is actually living in her closet seems like it could be a kick in the pants—until you actually watch it, and discover it apparently has no idea what story it's actually telling or what it has to say.

What I said then: Your Monster wants to be a quirky riff on the Beauty and the Beast story, and instead flounders as it becomes less and less clear exactly what writer-director Caroline Lindy, here making her first feature film, is going for. I found myself losing patience with its fuzzy plotting long before I had a chance to consider what the point of any of it was.

4. IF C+

The first of multiple would-be blockbusters on my worst-of list this year, IF had a budget of $110 million, earned $111 million domestically, and $190 million worldwide. I guess that makes it a success? Barely. It certainly did not meet the expectations of the studio, which clearly did not understand that they had an utterly baffling movie on their hands. Writer-director John Krasinski apparently felt that having several creative and/or funny Imaginary Friends ("IFs") is enough of a concept to coast on its own. I assure you, it is not—especially when the story establishes rules that it then does not bother to follow. If your response is "What?" more often than it is laughter, then you have a problem.

What I said then: The fundamental problem with IF is the evident blank check Krasinski was given after his previous success, where no one else bothered to step in with some guard rails outside his own passion. This movie clearly means something to him, and presumably it made sense in his head. It has some fairly imaginative ideas in it, to be fair, but it also feels like it came from the imagination of someone who recently had a lobotomy.

3. Fly Me to the Moon C-

Fly Me to the Moon was the first of three movies I saw this year that were bad enough to make me angry. The fact that this one has actors in it who are at least charismatic is of little consequence. The way this film plays with the utterly stupid idea of faking the Moon Landing, however tongue-in-cheek it thinks it's being about it, is both exasperating and reckless. It was all I could think about, the budding romance between the two leads (Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum) holding little interest from the start and waning from there.

What I said then: Let’s skip straight ahead to the moon landing, a pivotal event in this story. This was a real, historic event, a watershed moment, something everyone who lived to witness it never forgot. This was an unforgettable moment for everyone on the planet, but especially for Americans—something that seared itself into memories in a way that was on par with the assassination of President Kennedy, or the attack on Pearl Harbor, or 9/11. The key difference is that this event filled people with awe, gave them hope, and opened their minds to the idea of unlimited possibility. Has such an event ever happened again? Well, I can tell you this: Fly Me to the Moon takes something with massive historic import, and reduces it to a cheap Hollywood plot contrivance.

2. Borderlands C-

If Borderlands managed to impress in any way whatsoever, it was how it manages to showcase a bad performance by Cate Blanchett, who plays the lead in this abysmal, ugly, unfunny, downright uninteresting video game adaptation, a blight on the resumes of the four genuine stars in its ensemble cast (which also includes Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Jack Black). Jack Black plays the only even remotely amusing character, and he's a robot named Claptrap—a name that would have been better used as the title for this movie.

What I said then: The most frustrating thing about Borderlands is that it actually could have been good. Being silly doesn't inherently mean bad, but it needs just the right calibration. It’s not just that Borderlands is all spectacle and no substance. It’s that overall it rings hollow. The characters have all the dimension of video game characters left dormant, with no one even playing them—even while they move and speak. There’s nothing driving this story but going through the motions. At one point Lilith walks past an abandoned park merry-go-round and I wished I could have just spent two hours riding that instead. It would have been objectively more rewarding.

1. Red One D+

Of the few movies I saw this year that left me feeling active contempt for it, Red One absolutely takes the cake—getting the worst grade I have given a film in seven years (shoutout to 2017's Geostorm). The fact that I know multiple people who enjoyed this garbage movie only makes it worse. What is happening to people? There's a phrase my mother used to love to say: "There's no accounting for taste." I guess not. I guess some people are perfectly pacified into being entertained by every cheap visual effect, random CGI character, and incoherent action sequence imaginable just being thrown willy-nilly onto the screen all at once. This movie had so much going on, it deadened the senses, leaving only one logical reaction: utter boredom. God, I hated this movie.

What I said then: Red One is what happens when feeling dead inside becomes a feature film. I have never seen a movie with so much magic onscreen be so lacking in actual movie magic. I went into this thinking I was fully prepared, but ready to have a good time in spite of the poor reviews and lackluster response. Sometimes bad movies are fun! If only. Instead, Red One is so busy just being busy, it dulls the senses, and becomes a snooze fest. Believe me when I say that literally. I nodded off multiple times. During the periods I managed to stay awake, one of the five other people in the theater let out a loud snore. We’re all in this together, I guess.

Complete 2024 film review log:

1. 1/7 American Fiction A-
2. 1/8 Society of the Snow B+ *
3. 1/9 All of Us Strangers A
4. 1/12 The Book of Clarence C+
5. 1/13 Mean Girls B
6. 1/16 Poor Things A- (2nd viewing)
7. 1/19 Orlando: A Political Biography B
8. 1/21 The Zone of Interest A-
9. 1/22 Safety Last! A- **
10. 1/23 American Fiction A- (2nd viewing)
11. 1/25 The Beekeeper B
12. 1/26 The Color Purple B *
13. 1/28 Origin A-
14. 1/31 I.S.S. C+
15. 2/12 Lisa Frankenstein B-
16. 2/16 The Taste of Things A
17. 2/19 Perfect Days B+
18. 2/22 Drive-Away Dolls C+
19. 2/29 Dune Part Two A-
20. 3/3 Dune Part Two A- (2nd viewing)
21. 3/8 Anselm B-
22. 3/12 Dune Part Two A- (3rd viewing)
23. 3/14 The American Socity of Magical Negroes B-
24. 3/16 Bad River B
25. 3/17 Arthur the King B+
26. 3/18 One Life B+
27. 3/19 Love Lies Bleeding B+
28. 3/28 Problemista B
29. 4/9 Monkey Man C+
30. 4/10 Wicked Little Letters B+
31. 4/16 Civil War B
32. 4/19 Housekeeping for Beginners A-
33. 4/20 Abigail B
34. 4/21 Sasquatch Sunset B
35. 4/29 Challengers A-
36. 5/7 The Fall Guy B
37. 5/10 The Queen of My Dreams B ***
38. 5/12 Stress Positions B+ ***
39. 5/13 Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes B+
40. 5/14 The Ride Ahead A- ***
41. 5/16 Merchant Ivory B ***
42. 5/17 I Saw the TV Glow B-
43. 5/18 Sebastian B ***
44. 5/19 The Summer with Carmen B ***
45. 5/21 Back to Black C+
46. 5/24 Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga B
47. 5/27 Babes B+
48. 5/28 IF C
49. 6/2 Evil Does Not Exist B-
50. 6/5 In a Violent Nature B
51. 6/7 Hit Man B+ *
52. 6/17 Inside Out 2 B+
53. 6/19 Tuesday B+
54. 6/20 Thelma A-
55. 6/25 Ghostlight A
56. 6/27 The Bikeriders B
57. 7/2 A Quiet Place: Day One B
58. 7/6 Kinds of Kindness B-
59. 7/8 MaXXXine B
60. 7/12 Robot Dreams A
61. 7/16 Fly Me to the Moon C-
62. 7/18 Twisters B
63. 7/21 National Anthem A+
64. 7/23 48-Hour Film Festival ****
65. 7/26 Deadpool & Wolverine B-
66. 8/1 Trap B-
67. 8/5 Kneecap B+
68. 8/9 Dìdi A-
69. 8/11 Sing Sing A
70. 8/13 Borderlands C-
71. 8/15 Alien: Romulus B+
72. 8/23 Blink Twice B-
73. 8/27 His Three Daughters B
74. 8/28 Between the Temples B
75. 9/2 Good One B+
76. 9/6 Beetlejuice Beetlejuice B-
77. 9/8 Longlegs C+
78. 9/9 Rebel Ridge A- *
79. 9/17 The Killer's Game C+
80. 9/24 The Substance B+
81. 9/26 Megalopolis C+
82. 9/28 The Wild Robot B+
83. 9/28 Will & Harper B *
84. 10/1 My Old Ass A-
85. 10/8 The Outrun A-
86. 10/9 A Different Man B+
87. 10/13 Saturday Night B
88. 10/14 Piece by Piece B
89. 10/17 Wakhri [One of a Kind] B+ *****
90. 10/19 We Live in Time B+
91. 10/19 Katlaa Curry [Fish Curry] B *****
92. 10/22 Goodrich B
93. 10/24 Your Monster C
94. 10/29 Conclave B+
95. 11/1 Godzilla Minus One B+ (2nd viewing)
96. 11/3 Emliia Pérez B+
97. 11/7 Anora A
98. 11/8 Blitz B
99. 11/9 Small Things Like These B+
100. 11/15 A Real Pain A-
101. 11/17 The Piano Lesson B+
102. 11/19 Red One D+
103. 11/21 Wicked: Part I B+
104. 11/23 Gladiator II B-
105. 12/1 Maria B
106. 12/3 All We Imagine as Light B
107. 12/6 Queer B+
108. 12/8 Flow A
109. 12/10 Y2K C+
110. 12/14 Nightbitch B
111. 12/15 The End B-
112. 12/27 Babygirl A
113. 12/28 Nosferatu B+
114. 1/29 A Complete Unknown B+

* Viewed streaming at home
** Re-issue (no new review, or no full review)
*** SIFF Advanced screening
**** 48-Hour Film Festival, Shobhit participating (no review)
***** Tasveer South Asian Film Festival