The 10 best films of 2024 so far (part one)
We've just passed the halfway point of the year, so now is the best possible time to round up the best new movies I've seen so far.
Something a little different for this bonus edition of the newsletter. We’re at the halfway point of the year, so I’m taking stock of the year in movies. Based on UK release dates, here are the 10 films that I have most enjoyed between January and the end of June…
Dishonourable Mentions: The worst movies of 2024
I don’t like to wallow too much in “worst of the year”, but I think some big bombs are worth mentioning. Despite the stranglehold the phrase “I hope the spiders were worth it, mom” has had on me for much of this year, Madame Web barely makes my bottom five. It has its charms, unlike the tedious horror slop pairing of Night Swim and Tarot. There aren’t many movies as confounding in their terribleness as Argylle, but my least favourite movie experience of 2024 so far has been The Garfield Movie. Cast Chris Pratt, write a script that sounds a bit like a family comedy despite the lack of jokes, let the cash roll in.
Madame Web
Night Swim
Tarot
Argylle
The Garfield Movie
Now that guff is out of the way, let’s talk about the fun movies! I think this is an interesting mix of arty and mainstream, silly and serious. Hopefully you agree…
10. The Teachers’ Lounge
İlker Çatak’s paranoid thriller The Teachers’ Lounge is like Uncut Gems transplanted into the world of classroom politics. But that would somewhat undersell the unique way this intelligent, strange movie skewers the shifting power dynamics of a school, using them as a microcosm for the wider world.
Leonie Benesch is fantastic as the idealistic young teacher at the centre of some truly absurd controversy. Of all the films nominated for Best International Feature at the Oscars this year, it’s this one I’ve thought about the most.
Read my full review of The Teachers’ Lounge.
9. The Beast
Bertrand Bonello’s epic sci-fi romance is the sort of film that spends a lot of time being confounding and irritating, only to unearth real depth as its story goes on. Over the course of three time periods, it follows Léa Seydoux’s character as she attempts to cleanse her past lives in an attempt to find work in an AI-powered world that sees human emotion as a weakness.
Seydoux wows with three totally distinct performances, while George MacKay also recurs across time periods — sometimes charming, sometimes the spectre of a very real kind of evil. It’s like the strange love child of Cronenberg and Celine Song’s Past Lives — and if that doesn’t sell it to you, then nothing will.
Read my full review of The Beast.
8. Inside Out 2
The first billion-dollar movie of 2024 is absolutely deserving of its success, turning around Pixar’s box office fortunes. It took guts to make a sequel to arguably Pixar’s best ever original concept, but Inside Out 2 delivers enough innovation and complexity to match up to the legacy of its predecessor. By adding some carefully-chosen new emotions and dealing with the next phase of Riley’s life, it finds fun, heart, and sophistication.
Maya Hawke’s manic performance as Anxiety is, of course, the headline-grabber — a very different kind of animated movie “villain” — but Amy Poehler also deserves a lot of credit for playing Joy as a force of pure optimism dealing with being well out of their depth. There were tears and lots of laughs in my screening room. It turns out that when it comes to Pixar, they can still make ‘em like they used to.
Read my full review of Inside Out 2.
7. American Fiction
One of the most beautiful things about Cord Jefferson’s perfectly-formed American Fiction — a very deserved screenplay winner at the Oscars — is in how it manages to communicate its very serious ideas while also being incisively hilarious. It tells the story of Jeffrey Wright’s academic as he accidentally becomes a bestselling author by writing a stereotypically “Black” book in a fit of anger.
Wright is tremendous in the lead role, dealing in righteous anger and weary sarcasm in equal measure. There’s real heart in the supporting roles too, with Isa Rae, Sterling K Brown, and Erika Alexander all standing out amid the ensemble. If it’s possible for a film to be heavy and frothy at the same time, American Fiction pulls it off.
6. Priscilla
I didn’t much care for Baz Luhrmann’s noisy, mythologised Elvis Presley biopic, though I do think Austin Butler was tremendous as the man behind the over-active hips. Sofia Coppola’s sinister Priscilla fixed many of the problems with how Luhrmann’s Elvis depicted Presley’s unusual romantic life. The film portrays Cailee Spaney’s Priscilla as a wide-eyed innocent plucked by Elvis and placed into his funhouse mirror world.
Coppola’s movie falls short of outright condemnation, but Jacob Elordi’s Elvis is shown to be an unpredictable man who moves and speaks like someone wearing uncomfortable fancy dress. Spaeny is magnetic in showing the way existing in Elvis’s shadow twists and transforms Priscilla, giving that idea more complexity than you’d expect from a “gilded cage” story like this.
In the battle of the Elvis movies, there’s only one winner. And it isn’t really an Elvis movie at all. The only way to truly and critically examine one of music’s greatest icons is from the outside.
That’s the first part of my best movies of 2024 list. Come back tomorrow for the top five… And if you’ve enjoyed my takes so far, please do subscribe to the newsletter for weekly reviews and occasional op-eds. It’s free!