The 10 best films of 2024 so far (part two)
We're six months into the year and I've seen almost 100 new movies. Here are the five best of that bunch to add to your watchlists...
If you missed the first part of this list yesterday, head on over here and get yourself up to date. Now, without any further ado, let’s have a chat about my five favourite movies of the year so far, based on UK release dates…
5. The Bikeriders
On the face of it, The Bikeriders is a fairly generic crime thriller. Tom Hardy is the fearsome leader of a bike gang, with Austin Butler as the loose cannon youngster being groomed to succeed him. But in the hands of the thoughtful writer-director Jeff Nichols, the film becomes something different. It’s a deeply homoerotic tale about the decline of a particular brand of masculinity.
Nichols isn’t that interested in gang warfare, exhaust smoke, and blood splattering on to glinting switchblades. Instead, The Bikeriders is about the fragility and futility of it all — the use of masculine performance as a way to escape the tougher aspects of working class life. It’s a fascinating watch.
Read my full review of The Bikeriders.
4. Love Lies Bleeding
Rose Glass wowed me with Saint Maud — that final shot has never left me — and so Love Lies Bleeding would’ve positioned high in any list of my most highly-anticipated movies of 2024. It was every bit as good as I had hoped, sending Kristen Stewart’s aloof gym employee into a violent vortex in the wake of her romance with Katy M O'Brian’s bodybuilder. The brutality was sharp and potent and the romance suitably hot and sweaty.
There’s a roasting claustrophobia at the centre of the movie, which rattles along on a current of desire, desperation, and steroids injected into butt-cheeks. Glass is a filmmaker of effortless style, introducing lashings of magical realism into a bracingly real world. Whatever you think of its big swings in the third act, this oddball movie is totally unforgettable.
Read my full review of Love Lies Bleeding.
3. Late Night with the Devil
It has been a really solid year for horror cinema so far, with the likes of Immaculate, Abigail, and The First Omen providing scares for ever sort of genre fan. The pick of the bunch, though, is the Cairnes Brothers’ journey into shock jock 70s television with the remarkable Late Night with the Devil.1 Presented in a similar style to the classic British TV special Ghostwatch, it delves into an ill-fated telly broadcast fronted by David Dastmalchian’s scumbag presenter.
There’s a real verisimilitude to the classic TV milieu and the direction is patient enough to really let dread build. Everything eventually hits the fan in an admirable display of climactic chaos, but the genius of the Cairnes’ work is in allowing the film to get under your skin long before that.
Read my full review of Late Night with the Devil.
2. Challengers
What is there to say about Challengers? Luca Guadagnino’s tale of drop shots and desire might just be the sexiest sports film ever made. It focuses on the psychological power play between Zendaya’s injured former tennis prodigy and the two lads who have been completely infatuated with her since their youth, played by Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist.
Justin Kuritzkes’ masterful script is unafraid of being showy, with its overwrought dialogue and odd structure of nesting flashbacks. Guadagnino meets that challenge head-on, peacocking around with a camera that’s every bit as athletic as the sweaty bodies out on the court. Combine that with three young actors giving it both barrels like they have something to prove and you have the recipe for success.
Challengers is the sort of film simply made for the big screen experience. It’s star-driven spectacle that loves sex, loves the sticky emotionality around sex, and also loves… tennis. By the time the credits roll after a cacophonous final movement that recalls the unforgettable ending of Whiplash, this is cemented as one of the best films of 2024.
Read my full review of Challengers.
1. Poor Things
In Yorgos, I trust — though I think Kinds of Kindness was a misstep. I still haven’t seen anything this year that matches up to the euphoric weirdness of Poor Things. It’s a joyously untethered epic in which audiences must allow themselves to be taken by the hand, spun in a dozen circles, and then pushed dizzily into the upside-down world of Bella Baxter.
Emma Stone is nothing short of transformative as a woman discovering the world anew, largely through the malign influence of men who wish to exploit her. But Bella breezes past the trickery of these men and turns the tables with her sheer sense of freedom — a bullish determination to take on anything and everything this new world has to offer. It’s impossible not to root for her.
Lanthimos and The Favourite screenwriter Tony McNamara have constructed something special from the bones of Scottish author Alasdair Gray’s novel. It’s a work that’s completely singular and one that makes a virtue of its wilful strangeness, helped by a game cast willing to throw themselves headlong into the void. Mark Ruffalo delivers his best ever performance as a ludicrous fop caricature, while Ramy Youssef is charmingly wide-eyed.
Simply, Poor Things is unlike I’ve ever seen before and I don’t imagine I’ll ever see anything like it again. I’ve seen it three times and I’ve been entranced on each of those viewings. It’s very special indeed.
So there you have it! Those are my favourite films of 2024 so far. It’ll be fascinating to see how much this list changes between now and the end of the year. Even as I write this, there’s already one July release that has elbowed its way into the top 10.
But it’ll take a hell of a film to affect me so much that my love of Poor Things has to take a back seat. Bella Baxter is too important not to win.
Maybe you think I’m mad? Or you want to enthusiastically agree? Please do leave a comment below letting me know your favourite films of the year so far.