My Top Ten Favorite Movies of 2024

These are my personal favorite movies released in the U.S. in 2024. They are not meant to reflect the box office or award-winners for the year. I suggest that if you like four or five of the movies on the list, you might share my taste and sensibilities, and it might give some credence to you checking out the other films on the list.  Or not, because it might just be a coincidence.

My experience viewing movies in 2024 was a bit frustrating. There were quite a few "pretty good" movies in 2024, but not many that stood out and insisted to be at or near the top of my list. In most other years, a couple top movies will cause me to adjust my personal Top 200 movies list, but I don't think 2024's offerings will bump anything from past years from that list.

Joy

The true story behind the ground-breaking birth of Louise Joy Brown in 1978, the world's first 'test-tube- baby', and the tireless 10-year journey to make it possible. Told through the perspective of Jean Purdy (Thomasin MacKenzie), a young nurse and embryologist, who joined forces with scientist Robert Edwards (James Norton) and surgeon Patrick Steptoe (Bill Nighy) to unlock the puzzle of infertility by pioneering in vitro fertilization (IVF).

First, I have followed Thomasin MacKenzie's career since she first appeared on my radar in Leave No Trace; JoJo Rabbit; and Lost Girls. I've tried to see anything else she appears in.  That's what brought me to this movie. James Norton and Bill Nighy sealed the deal for me.

Dr. Steptoe: The Church, the state, the world. We will unite them all against us.
Robert Edwards: But we'll have the mothers. The mothers will back us.

It's heart-breaking how good Joanna Scanlon is as Jean's mother who sees her religion as more important than her relationship with her daughter.

Jean's mother: Jean, you're young. You don't understand. But you can't play God with this.
Jean: How do you feel about spectacles and false teeth? You'd rather people be blind or unable to eat anything but soup? That's what God wants, is it?

Even Jean herself is disturbed when she discovers that Steptoe also performs abortions. She considers quitting the project when the Matron gives her a different perspective.

Jean: I thought we were here to make babies.
Matron (Tanya Moodie): Well, you're wrong. We are here to give women choice. Every choice. That's all that matters to me, and it should be all that matters to you. So buck up.

The battle was not just to solve the puzzle of IVF, but the compounding strain on family and lack of financing.

Jean: You don't see your wife or kids. You don't see your wife or kids. I've lost my church and my mum. Then I saw those so-called scientists sitting there, passing judgment on us, and I realized, no one else is going to do this. This fight is ours. We don't have a choice.

The fight will be a decade long, filled with more failures, more losses, infighting, stops and starts, and finally breakthroughs and ultimate success. The story is told brilliantly with humanity and dignity foremost with science and politics taking a backseat. It could have been a good movie with other actors in the lead roles, but for my money, it is a very good movie because of the performances of McKenzie, Norton, Nighy, and Moodie.

White Bird



Marketed as something of a prequel to the graphic novel by R.J. Palacio and the 2017 movie, White Bird uses a character and his grandmother telling him a story from her life. Helen Mirren is the grandmother and Bryce Gheisar, the bully from the first movie a bit more grown up here. Although his Grandmother's story is pertinent to his situation, this movie is really one of a different time and place but with so much relevance to the circumstances facing the country in which the boy now lives. The story his grandmere from Paris tells him is far more than how she survived the Nazi occupation of France as a young Jewish girl.  

I have always found Marc Forster to be an amazing director adept at an impressive range of subjects and genres from Monster's Ball to Stranger Than Fiction to A Man Called Otto. He seems fearless in his choices.

Julian: If I learn anything from back then, it's to just mind my own business. Don't be mean. Don't be nice. Just be normal.
Grandmere:  And this is what you've learned? To be normal?
Julian: What's wrong with normal?
Grandmere: Nothing. And everything.


Sara's father (Ishai Golan): What I believe is that all people have a light inside them. And that light lets them see into other people's hearts. But some people have lost it. They have darkness inside them, so that's all they see in others.


When the Nazis come to take the Jewish children from the school, a crippled boy, Julien (Orlando Schwerdt), the son of the sewer inspector, helps her escape to the barn at his home where she must stay until the danger passes. Julian becomes her tutor and her only friend while she hides as days, months, years pass. In his lessons, he asks her to imagine as he imagines, places near and far, they must learn about but never experience.


Grandmere (narrating): We had in common one crucial thing. We had both seen how much hate people are capable of.  And how much courage it took to be kind.  Because when kindness can cost you your life, it becomes like a miracle. You forget many things in life.  But you never forget kindness. Like love. It stays with you forever. And I suppose that, mon cher, is the end of my story.

Julian goes back to school, but minding his own business and just being normal are not enough. He decides to make friends without considering how it will look or to whom.

Grandmère Sara (accepting her award): Hatred is not normal. Cruelty is not normal. Love is normal. Kindness is normal. But simply knowing this is not enough. It must be shared. It must be practiced. Sometimes the smallest gesture can lead to the greatest change. A very wise man, Martin Luther King, once said, 'Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only the light can do that.' ... We must, all of us, use the light within ourselves, to stop the injustices of today. For only then can we be certain that the darkness of the past will never be repeated.

The Outrun



Rona (Saoirse Ronan), following a ninety-day alcoholism treatment program, returns to her childhood home in the Orkney Islands, Scotland. She finds her separated parents offer two distinct worlds, her mother (Saskia Reeves)'s religious, socially-engaged circle and her father (Stephen Dillane)'s rural, isolated sheep farm. Both are big changes from her life in busy London.

 Rona: I miss it. I miss how good it made me feel.  I can't be happy sober.

Having been at college studying biology, she accepts a position with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), where she works on searching for evidence of the endangered corncrake, whose cry serves as a metaphor for Rona's own quest


RONA (V.O.): Britain is an island off Europe, Orkney is an island off Scotland, Westray is an island off Orkney, Papay is an island off Westray.


The story is told in in two trajectories, one a downward arrow of Rona's descent into alcoholism, the other arrow upward as she climbs out into an existence she built for herself, presented in alternating episodes spurred on by triggers that connect each.

CALUM: How long have you been sober?
RONA: 63 days.
CALUM: 14 years, 6 months and…17 days.
RONA: How is it going?
CALUM: Like they say. Minute by minute. Day by day. Year by year.
RONA: (after a moment) Does it get any easier?
CALUM: It´s not easy, but it does get less hard. The rest depends on you.


So close to the ocean, Rona begins a personal study of seaweed which she may use to continue her education.

RONA: Cows fed with seaweed produce less methane emissions. It grows much faster than onshore plants, requires no fresh water, no fertilizers and can be used as a soil fertilizer and for absorbing carbon.
Mum ANNIE: I don't really know much about seaweed.

As her time on Orkney comes to an end, Rona finds some peace and resolve and maybe it does get less hard. While heading to the ferry, she hears and glimpses a corncrake.

Rebel Ridge



I have been something of a Jeremy Saulnier fan. Blue Ruin; Green Room; and his work on "True Detective." But this movie is a step up for him in writing and directing. It's not flabby or lazy like many lower budget action flicks. It has some good character development and the subject matter is relevant.

Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre), an African American Marine Corps veteran, bicycles near the town of Shelby Springs, Louisiana to post bail for his cousin Mike Simmons (CJ LeBlanc) and buy a pickup truck so they can make an honest living. Terry is rammed and detained by police officers, Evan Marston (David Denman) and Steve Lann (Emory Cohen), who seize his $36,000 via civil forfeiture, despite the money being legitimate. $10,000 is for bail and the rest is for the truck.

Summer McBride (AnnaSophia Robb), a courthouse employee, says Civil Asset Forfeiture was a law designed to fight the cartels and the money is used by chief as discretionary funds. Summer says Terry can fight to get his money back, but it will take a year and cost twice as much.

Don Johnson has carved out some longevity as a smooth, but potentially lethal authority figure with less than strict ethical behavior. Here he is at his best as a Chief of Police protecting his struggling empire who has done his best to get Terry Richmond to accept his fate and move along.

Terry (to the Chief): The acronym you need to worry about right now is PACE. P-A-C-E. Ever heard of it? It’s a planning methodology used for comm systems, but they found it could be applied anywhere. Nursing, engineering, parachute infiltrations, posting bail. So the P is for “primary,” that’s me riding into town with my bag of money.  A is for “alternate.”  That’s the deal we apparently never made.  C is my “contingency.”  That’s the restaurant owner you put out of business this morning. 

(Chief snickers)

Terry: And there it is! Spot-on too, like you just ate shit. Anyway, you got me burning through all these letters. And after this conversation, we already on E. You know what that stands for?

Officer Jessica Sims (Zsane Jhe) gets the wifi up and finds out Terry was a MCMAP trainer -- Marine Corps Martial Arts Program

Terry: You wanna honor that deal or do I gotta transition to E?

Terry's cousin can't get transported to prison because in a different case, he was forced to testify against a gang leader. He'll be recognized in prison and targeted for retribution.

Summer tries to help as much as she can, but has a record herself including drugs, theft, and lost her daughter in a messy divorce. She is drug-tested to keep her job at the courthouse. Terry tells her to protect herself, but she gets injected with just enough drugs to show up on a test, losing her job, and a chance to get some custody of her daughter. When she tries to steal back her sample, she finds dashcam SD cards showing Terry's cousin and other forfeiture arrests were bogus.

It also becomes clear that the chief has no real intention of letting Terry leave town.

Terry Richmond: Got me thinking about the conversation we had in the cruiser, about de-escalation? That also takes both sides, you know? So I was thinking, what if we just walk away.
Chief Sandy Burnne: Well now you're starting to talk some...
Terry Richmond: But then I was like naaah....

The Last Showgirl



First off, Pamela Anderson and Dave Bautista are quite impressive in what could have been an easily dismissed feature. Of course, as always, Jamie Lee Curtis is incredible,

Shelly Gardner (Pamela Anderson) is a 57-year-old showgirl who has performed for three decades in Le Razzle Dazzle, a classic French-style revue at a casino resort on the Las Vegas Strip. Her co-stars now include several younger women, including Mary-Anne (Brenda Song) and Jodie (Kiernan Shipka), who view Shelly as a mother figure. Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis) is a close friend, despite having been ousted from the show years before. She now works as a cocktail waitress. With no retirement or savings, Shelly worries about her future.

ANNETTE: Retire?! Like, bankers retire.Waddaya think I have a 501k? I’m gonna work and then I’m gonna work some more and then I’m gonna die. I’ll probably die in my uniform.That’s my long-term plan.

EDDIE (Dave Bautista): Le Razzle Dazzle-- it’s old, it’sthe only show left of its kind onthe strip.
SHELLY: But the fact that it’s the only one left-- that’s why it’s so special! I mean our show is a show! Come on!-- The costumes, the sets.
MARY-ANNE: It is a dinosaur, Shelly.
EDDIE: I think we’re gonna get notice tomorrow.


Shelly reaches out to her daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd) who had to live with family friends for much of her adolescence and is now a college student in Arizona. Hannah visits Shelly, but the reunion is short when Hannah sees the show and remembers being left in the parking lot with a Gameboy.

SHELLY: Oh you know, it didn’t work out-- Iwas dancing-- I was already in the show here when we met, and he didn’t like it so much-- Vegas. And then he got a job in New York, but the show here was really thriving--there was a lot of press around us--it was so exciting and I was very young-- so I stayed here.
JODIE: So what did you do?
SHELLY: We tried to make it work for a couple years but he eventually met someone there. He asked me if I’d consider trying to dance in NewYork, and I did-- I tried it. I went to an open call for the Rockettes, I went to an open call for a Broadway musical, but... I really, I just missed the thrill of the show here...

As the show winds down through its last weeks, the girls take auditions at other shows, but the vibe is raunchier and less about the dancing.

SHELLY: Vegas treated us like movie stars? The Iconic American Show Girl. The Las Vegas Showgirl. We were ambassadors, we represented elegance and grace, we had status. It was a real legacy, and it stillis! I mean, these costumes-- they make you feel like you’re stepping out of the pages of Vogue magazine. I think that’s why women come to see the show-- I think the glamour is undeniable.
MARY-ANNE (Brenda Song): I think the glamour-- I can kinda deny the glamour--

Shelly thinks she might visit her daughter in Arizona, maybe stay there. Mary-Anne considers California. Annette tries to save her money from cocktail waitressing, at least until she gambles it all away again.

The movie wraps up with the final shows which are both glorifying and tragic.

The Promised Land



In 1755, Captain Ludvig Kahlen (Mads Mikkelson), after retiring from the German Army, decides to start anew on Denmark’s Jutland moorland, aiming to cultivate the land and earn a noble title for his efforts. His arrival and ambitions quickly put him at odds with Frederik de Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg), a powerful and ruthless local magistrate who has his sights set on controlling the moorland.

Kahlen: Didn’t God just put man on earth to create civilization?
de Schinkel: So we’re not civilized out here? God has nothing to do with civilization. God is chaos. Life is chaos.
Kahlen: I do not agree.
de Schinkel: You fought in the Silesian Wars. Was it civilized?
Kahlen: No, war is chaos.


Kahlen’s struggle is compounded by his illegal employment of Romani Travellers and escaped serfs, Johannes Eriksen (Morten Hee Andersen) and his wife Ann Barbara (Amanda Collin), who seek refuge from de Schinkel’s harsh rule. Amidst these tensions, Kahlen forms a bond with Edel Helene (Kristine Kujath Thorp), de Schinkel’s unwilling betrothed, who sees in Kahlen a chance to avoid marriage to her cousin if he can secure a noble status.


Kahlen: Why am I here?
de Schinkel: You are here because you have built on my land without permission.
Kahlen: Your land?  The heath belongs to the king. All uncultivated land belongs to the king.


Schinkel reveals he recaptured Johannes while he was on his way to the coast to acquire clay for Kahlen. The escaped serf is tortured to death with boiling water in front of appalled party guests. Kahlen takes Johannes' body back to his wife Ann, seeing the body of their fellow worker, Travellers leave Kahlen's employment, though Anmai stays behind.


Kahlen: When the king hears…
Ann: Stop talking about the king. You’ve never met him. You’ll never get to that. He doesn’t even know you exist.


Despite multiple challenges during a brutal winter, with Ann's and Anmai's help, Kahlen plants potatoes brought from Germany and harvest 80 sacks.

Kahlen gets his colonists and his title, but at great cost as he must send Anmai to an orphanage to keep his workers appeased, He loses Ann and never uses his title to marry Schinkel's cousin, Edel. Though she and Ann get their revenge on de Schinkel. After compromising so much to achieve his success, Kahlen abandons it all to free Ann before she can be sold into slavery.

Fast Charlie



Present at the opening:

Charlie (V.O.): I always thought my life would end like this, in some godforsaken place, from a bullet I didn’t see coming. I just never thought I’d care.

Charlie Swift (Pierce Brosnan) is a retired Marine Officer living in Biloxi, Mississippi. For twenty years, Charlie been a fixer and hitman for a mob boss named Stan Mullen (James Caan). Stan wants Charlie to do a job and deliver the dead body to a New Orleans mob boss ((Gbenge Akinnagbe). There are quite a few things which can go wrong with this operation, but the first is pairing Charile with Blade (Brennan Keel Cook), a known screw-up in Stan's crew. From there, not much goes right until Charlie asks the dead man's ex-wife, Marcie (Morena Baccarin) for help. Then, a few things begin to go right, but only a few.

Charlie: I’m not an enforcer.
Marcie: Muscle, then.
Charlie: Lot of guys with more muscle than me.
Marcie: All right. [laugh] A trigger man, button guy.
Charlie: I’m more like a, um, concierge. A fixer. Problem solver.
Marcie: Mm. Like…I got a body with no head that needs identifying.
Charlie: Exactly.


The convoluted plot is relayed between present and past and back to present again. It's all handled with some aplomb by director Philip Noyce who has done this sort of thing before with a couple Jack Ryan movies and a couple Angelina Jolie actioners.

Charlie: Look, you got something you gotta do… and a lot can happen between then and now. Let’s just leave it here, okay?
Marcie: Don’t you be in love with me, Charlie Swift.
Charlie: Too Late.
Marcie: I know where your thing is. Beggar’s bar. Rollo used to manage it. Last thing he said to me was it’s right under their noses.

There's a few more twists before the end, but it wraps up nicely.

Charlie:I was thinking about the houses, the fixer-uppers in Italy. Why I didn’t pull the trigger on one. I was waiting for someone to come with me. You know, didn’t see the point in… living that kind of dream all alone.

Flow

A wordless Latvian animated film about a black cat, a capybara, a lemur, a dog, and a bird travel together on a boat after a massive flood submerges their world. Where they are going is very much dictated by the flowing waters. How they survive and what they do when they get there is the culmination of a reflective and instructive journey.

Not sure exactly why this movie made the list except it affected me deeply, and although I am still unsure what the movie was supposed to convey, it connected with me in a way that allowed me to settle on my own interpretation.

It is an animated movie with no human characters. Though the viewer must place their own emotions and motivations into the animal characters, it's clear the filmmakers were making an effort not to anthropomorphize them. However, it's equally clear some of the animals exuded the traits of certain human types and philosophies. All for the better in my view.

Though there are no human characters, there are numerous examples that humans had been there before the story unfolds in the movie, and may possibly exist elsewhere. Again, a viewer could deduce that humans had an impact on the story and it's setting.

I won't pretend to understand all of it, and many parts were frustrating, but I sense that it accomplished what it set out to do, and that's a good feeling for any work.

Limbo



In a small Australian outback town named Limbo, police detective Travis Hurley (Simon Baker) arrives to investigate a 20-year-old unsolved homicide of a young Aboriginal woman, Charlotte Hayes. Hurley is a heroin addict, but manages it, dating back to his time as a drug detective and a suspect he killed.

Hurley tries to interview Charlotte's brother, Charlie (Rob Collins), who collects surface rocks looking for opals, and sister, Emma (Natasha Wanganeen), a waitress at a local café.

Charlie: We needed fresh eyes on the case twenty years ago.
Hurley: Fair Enough.

The director Ivan Sen has made some fascinating and successful Australian films. I particularly liked Goldstone. His movie Mystery Road was not quite as good, but was turned into a Television series.

Charlie: Until two weeks later, cops decided to get off their ass. Not to look for Charlotte, but to start investigating all the black fellas in town Brought child welfare out here. Us three kids all got different fathers. Tried to blame Mum. Said she was a bad mother. That's when they came after me.


Stark, but beautiful black and white cinematography...it could be a moonscape except for the power lines and carved out holes and mine shafts. Sometimes, it almost looks like snow or packed chalk,  It's one of those wide screen films that if you don't see it in wide screen, you'll miss at least one character in the frame.

Travis Hurley: Yeah, I killed someone once.
Zac: Why'd you do it?
Travis: I was on the drug squad at the time. Things just...got out of hand. When you hang out with crazy people, sooner or later, crazy things will happen.
Zac: Did you take drugs, too?
Travis: Yeah, I took drugs. Still am.

In the end, there is no clash of good vs. evil. There was no redemption for Travis Hurley or for Charlotte's family, but he achieved what healing could be accomplished by his investigation for the family and for himself..The catharsis is muted, but the result may be more powerful.
 

Anora



Anora "Ani" Mikheeva (Mikey Madison), a young stripper living in Brighton Beach, is the only Russian-speaking dancer at an upscale Manhattan strip club, She is introduced by her boss to Ivan "Vanya" Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), spoiled and reckless son of wealthy Russian oligarch Nikolai Zakharov (Aleksey Serebryakov). Ostensibly in the U.S. to study, Vanya spends most of his time partying and playing video games in his family's Brooklyn mansion.

IVAN: So how do you know Russian then?
ANI: My grandmother never learned English so... But enough about me.

Vanya hires Ani for sexual encounters, becomes infatuated with her. He offers $15,000 to stay with him for a week and pose as his girlfriend, a whirlwind romance culminates in a trip to Las Vegas, where Vanya impulsively proposes. Ani agrees, convinced by Vanya's declarations of love.

ANI: Just wait until Ivan sees what you did to me.
IGOR: The Ivan that just left you?
ANI: He didn't leave me. He went for help.
IGOR: I don't think so.

Toros (Karren Karagulian), Ivan's babysitter, has sent  Garnik (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov) to start fixing the problem. Soon, he arrives to finish the fixing.

ANI: Look. Your guy fucking attacked me. Both of them did. They forced their way in, fought with Ivan and then physically attacked me. What is going on?
TOROS: I'm sorry it went down that way but it looks like they're the ones who were physically attacked. Now let's call Ivan and tell him to get back here.

The movie is saved from being a trite re-hash of a rich boy-poor girl disappointed rich parents story by the subtle Igor - Ani friendship that is developing even as she does all she can to resist it.

IGOR: I like Anora.
Ani looks at him with a "WTF" face.
IGOR (CONT'D): The name. Anora. (beat) The name. More than Ani.

Honorable Mention:

Janet Planet

A Complete Unknown

Conclave

The Room Next Door