The 25 Best Films of 2024 (2025)

Consequence Staff

December 3, 2024 | 8:30am ET

This lovely depiction of female friendship takes flight thanks to the performances from Dakota Johnson and Sonoya Mizuno. As Johnson's character Lucy navigates a queer awakening in her 30s, Mizuno's Jane attempts to balance her responsibilities to her friend with opportunities in her own work and romantic life. It's not a groundbreaking premise by any means, but the stellar performances, detail-packed script, and laugh-out-loud funny moments make it that much harder to shake. — Mary Siroky

What if John Wick starred a 90-year-old? That’s the cynical elevator pitch behind Thelma, a sweet and exciting action-com starring June Squibb as a grandmother on a quest to retrieve the money she was bilked out of in a phishing scam. Sure, it’s cute that Josh Margolin uses the rhythms and patterns of action cinema to turn scooter rides into high-speed chases, but Thelma’s charms lie most in Squibb’s wounded performance, and her ache to still be and feel useful, even as age robs her of her independence. — Clint Worthington

Nightbitch deserves placement on this list solely because writer/director Marielle Heller took an incredibly difficult concept to film and pulled it off without ever once feeling like parody. It's a simple enough story to start — an artist-turned-stay-at-home-mom (Amy Adams) realizes just how trapped she feels by her choices — that gets elevated by its not-so-simple twist as Mom transforms into a literal dog at night to finally find some freedom. There's a lot to balance here, but Heller's empathic filmmaking and Adams' committed performance howl at the moon, on behalf of any mother who can't find her scream. — L.S. Miller

According to a recent Rolling Stone profile, there's one moment in James Mangold's portrait of young Bob Dylan (played by Timothée Chalamet) that's completely made up — per the request of Dylan himself. Whatever moment that is, it's impossible to pick out. Between Chalamet's immersive performance and filmmaking that puts authenticity front and center with its details, A Complete Unknown might well be riddled with inaccuracies, but crackles with the truth of Dylan's ascent as an artist. — L.S. Miller

This indie drama keeps things intimate, as it explores the impact of Vegas's last remaining showgirl cabaret on the production's oldest cast member. It's a role tailor-made for Pamela Anderson as she enters a new phase of her career, and the actress brings remarkable vulnerability to the screen, earning her legitimate and well-deserved awards buzz. Yet, Gia Coppola's new film also lets its supporting cast shine, with Billie Lourd, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Dave Bautista all getting powerful moments as the filmmaking itself captures the dusty glamour of a Vegas long gone and barely remembered. — L.S. Miller

Blue Ruin and Green Room filmmaker Jeremy Saulnier has a talent for structuring ground-level thrillers in some kind of novelty, and the non-lethal action sequences in Rebel Ridge spice up a perfectly solid nut-check against the unmitigated power of small-town cops. Aaron Pierre makes for a staggering action lead, playing a kind of Jack Reacher figure whose whole gimmick is that he can take out a whole company of cops without taking a life. It stretches on a bit long, but its surface charms are well worth it. — C. Worthington

Talk about a dramatic trip to the cinema. Coralie Fargeat's bonkers piece of body horror is damn near hyper-cinema. I mean, it's got everything: Thrills? Check. Laughs? Check. Sex? Check. Gore? Check. Metatextual references? Check. Close-ups of Dennis Quaid eating shrimp in the most visually offensive way possible? Also, wildly, check. The Substance is a movie like no other in 2024, and, truthfully, it's a movie like few others, period. For that, it'll harbor both deep resentment and dedicated, cultish fandom. If we had to guess, that's exactly what Fargeat set out to do. — Jonah Krueger

While there are no shortage of real-life details packed into Jason Reitman's real-time tale about the first-ever episode of Saturday Night Live, it's best approached as a fable, not a documentary. Because where Reitman really excels with the cameo-studded piece is in capturing the dawn of a cultural moment — in this case, a cultural moment that's been going strong for 50 years now. As young Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) rushes through the halls of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, he's surrounded by naysayers and people who don't believe in his vision for the show — in part because he can't seem to explain it himself. All he can do is show us. He did it back then, and Reitman does it now. — L.S. Miller

Not to be confused with that other Joker movie or that other vaguely-autobiographical movie about transness that made this list, Vera Drew’s near-forbidden DC Comics parody had a rough road to seeing audiences. But perhaps it helps that the Joker sheen is merely, like so many DC characters, a mask under which to hide funnier, deeper realities: A comedian struggling in the NY comedy scene, bristling against her own transness, toxic queer relationships, and so on. A film about outsiders made by outsiders, which feels like outsider art. There's nothing more exciting. — C. Worthington

2024 has been the year in which Hollywood determines whether Glen Powell is a Bonafide Movie Star or not. But while Twisters made decent use of his charisma, and Anyone But You slammed him into an awkward rom-com role, Hit Man feels like his finest performance this year. Winsome and unexpected as many Richard Linklater films can be, Hit Man’s discreet charms feel more evocative of Old Hollywood than the pseudo-blockbusters Powell’s attempted so far. It’s his Out of Sight (with Adria Arjona as a stunning, slinky co-star), and boy, it’s outta sight. — C. Worthington

Empathy is the key word defining writer/director/star Jesse Eisenberg's two-hander about American cousins traveling to see where their grandmother grew up in Poland: empathy for strangers, empathy for the past, and empathy for those we love even when they frustrate us. A Real Pain features remarkable focus on its core characters, while also capturing a very specific kind of relationship in a very universal way. Kieran Culkin has rarely been more powerful and also hilarious as Benji, whose messy existence comes in direct contrast to Eisenberg's more straight-laced David, and the complicated bond between them proves to be rich and fascinating. — L.S. Miller

Films told "in the first person" (movies filmed as if the camera is the eyes of the protagonist) don't come around too often, as it's an exceptionally challenging way to tell a story for 90 minutes or more. For his adaptation of the Colson Whitehead novel, though, RaMell Ross figured out a way to make it work, in a way that actually enhances the power of this story. Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson star as two young men sent to a brutal 1960s reform school, one that threatens to break their spirits thanks to systemic abuse; as ugly as many moments can be, Ross sees so much beauty through the eyes of his characters as well. — L.S. Miller

Wicked certainly arrived with high expectations: It's a beloved musical with an empowering story, memorable characters, and music that bursts with passion. Luckily, part one of the new film adaptation retains and honors its source material while also painting with a much bigger brush. Led by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, who both look like there's literally nothing else that they'd rather be doing, Wicked boasts the kind of imaginative, big budget magic that few movie musicals can pull off. — Paolo Ragusa

Our brains sure are crazy! It's as simple and complicated as that in Inside Out 2, the long-anticipated sequel to Pixar's 2015 original. Now zeroing on the high stakes, high drama period that is middle school, the follow-up features a much deeper examination of anxiety, embarrassment, envy, and shame. It attempts to physicalize those moments of adolescence when you say things you don't mean or lie to seem cool, the times where you push people away even though you know they love you. And though the OG emotion crew doesn't hog the spotlight this time, the new characters help Inside Out 2 shine particularly bright. — P. Ragusa

Saint Maud director Rose Glass electrified Sundance with her exuberant love story, one featuring some of the year's wildest twists and turns — so many that Ed Harris's mullet doesn't even qualify. Kristen Stewart delivers one of her most grounded performances to date as a small-town gym employee whose new connection with an aspiring bodybuilder (Katy O'Brian) sets off a chain of violence. Filled with bold imagery, dark humor, and O'Brian's often scene-stealing work, Love Lies Bleeding captures everything wonderful and terrifying about falling in love, and the unexpected magic that can result. — L.S. Miller

For those fascinated by the particulars of our long-lost analog world, September 5 is must-see viewing, an intense, detail-rich look at one of the 20th century's most horrifying incidents. When the 1972 Munich Olympics terrorist attack begins on the titular day, the ABC Sports team, based in a studio near the Olympic Village, takes on the challenge of keeping the world updated live, thanks to recent innovations like satellite broadcasting. If nothing else, September 5 emerges as the perfect double-feature pairing with Steven Spielberg's Munich (though it should definitely be watched first), although it also stands out as a portrait of television evolving into the way we would come to know what's happening in the world. — L.S. Miller

From the moment Colman Domingo appears onscreen in the first scenes of Sing Sing, he's utterly captivating. The award-winning actor is the anchor of this deeply moving story centered on Domingo's wrongfully accused inmate who serves as the pillar of a prison theater troupe at the titular penal institution. He's one of just a few professional actors in the movie's core cast; the ensemble is rounded out by men who served time in Sing Sing and participated in the program in their real lives. This approach grounds the film in a way that can't be replicated, and the lovely cinematography and central friendship collide to create one of the best movies of the year — and certainly one of the most moving. — M. Siroky

It’s tempting to write off Furiosa as an also-ran: the one true prequel to the fable-like Mad Max saga, following a side character, released a decade after the prior film’s sell-by date. But give it another look, ignoring the plasticine sheen of its obvious CG detailing, and you see a Dickensian saga of a young girl (Aylya Browne as a child, Anya Taylor-Joy as an adult) stolen from Paradise, and forged into a raging avatar of revenge. Ditto Chris Hemsworth, finally let off the Thor leash to swing his stick shift around as a doltish dictator who knows exactly how far he’s fallen from grace. — C. Worthington

Sometimes a found family is an oddball gosling, a lonely fox, and a robot working to understand what it means to be human — and we should normalize that! Dreamworks' moving meditation on community and motherhood The Wild Robot isn't just an emotional journey; it's also one of the most visually stunning animated movies in recent memory. The movie features genuinely excellent voice work from Lupita Nyong'o in the titular role, with a cast rounded out by the likes of Pedro Pascal, Mark Hamill, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, and Matt Berry (who, unsurprisingly, just about steals the show more than once). The transcendent score from Kris Bowers is the bow on top of this particularly lovely present. — M. Siroky

An exotic dancer's whirlwind marriage to the son of a Russian oligarch isn't obvious awards bait, until you consider writer/director Sean Baker's remarkable talent for understanding the inner core of his characters. Mikey Madison's future stardom feels like a lock, as Anora soars thanks to its nuanced performances as well as the way it explores the entanglement of sex, money, and power. It's also just a cracking good yarn, moving through each unexpected development with whirling energy and wit. — L.S. Miller