David Chen's Top 10 Films of 2024

A look back at a great year in movies.

As I mentioned last week in my dubious movie awards dispatch: 2024 was a stellar year for movies. I could have made this Top 10 list twice over and still felt great about every recommendation. So while we are all concerned about the state of the industry, I couldn’t be happier to lift up the work of the filmmakers who worked on these amazing stories.

10. Anora

Sean Baker’s followup to The Florida Project is a tragicomedy about a stripper who falls in love with an oligarch’s kid. It’s both infectiously optimistic and a sobering reflection on how class and circumstance entrap us. Actor Mikey Madison delivers an effortless, incandescent performance, bringing soul to a character who could have been a punchline. But as with all Sean Baker films, it’s the ensemble that really sells it, with characters in the background coming into the foreground in ways that are unexpected and profound. (VOD)

9. Hundreds of Beavers

It’s in black and white, it has virtually no dialogue, and it was one of my favorite theatrical experiences of 2024. The movie starts with a bold idea — a trapper on the frontier battles the elements, Looney Tunes-style — and then continues that premise for so long that the commitment to the bit becomes part of the bit. Hundreds of Beavers is an act for pure exuberance. The fact that it exists, despite its limited commercial viability, feels like a miracle. (Prime Video)

8. Ghostlight

One of two great 2024 movies about the transformative power of Shakespeare (the other is Sing Sing), Ghostlight tells the story of a construction worker who finds himself involved with a local theater group, with Shakespeare becoming a way to exorcise demons in his life. This film is about the power of art to bridge centuries and help us understand our own humanity. I watched more than two dozen movies at Sundance in early 2024; this was in my top 3, and I’m glad to report it stayed with me despite the passage of time. (AMC+)

7. It’s What’s Inside

Director Greg Jardin has asked people not to share plot details aside from the premise, so I will just say that It’s What’s Inside is a genre-bending horror comedy about a group of friends who gather for a wedding party. It is hard to believe that this is Jardin’s first feature; the movie is electrifying and fulfills an incredibly challenging high-concept premise. Jardin has emptied the technical toolbox to tell a wildly inventive story in ways you’ve never seen before. Watching this movie felt like witnessing a bold new creative voice emerge. I suspect this won’t be Jardin’s last time on this annual list. (Netflix)

6. Skywalkers: A Love Story

Skywalkers documents the story of two daredevil acrobats who pull off incredible stunts at the tops of tall buildings and objects at obvious and extreme risk to themselves. The cinematography is stunning, the stunts literally take your breath away, and the movie raises questions of how far people will go to create social media magic. What impresses me most is that the film is structured like a heist movie, which is inherently difficult in a documentary. Watch it on the biggest screen you can. (Netflix)

5. The Order

Justin Kurzel’s latest was released without much fanfare in December, but it felt like the perfect time for an unflinching look at white supremacy in America — how it draws people in and the dangers it poses. Jude Law plays a grizzled FBI agent trying to track a group of violent robbers in the 1980s. The Order is a police procedural with some of the best robbery/action scenes in recent memory. The clear streams and lush forests of the Pacific Northwest provide haunting visual respites to remind us that the fight is always about control — in this case, over land and resources whose beauty feels sacred. (VOD)

4. Red Rooms

Red Rooms is a courtroom thriller about an accused serial killer, but it’s our own obsession with true crime that is on trial. At the heart of the plot, a person stands accused of torturing people for money in a livestream on the dark web. Director Pascal Plante spends less time on the shock and gore of the alleged crimes than on the obsessives who orbit the proceedings. The main character, a former model named Kelly-Anne, remains inscrutable even as she attends the trial day after day. Plante weaves an unforgettable and shocking tale, holding up a jagged mirror to how technology is warping our darker instincts. (VOD)

3. Dune: Part Two

Dune: Part One was tough enough to bring to film — an epic tale about centuries of intergalactic politics, warring families, and planted Messiah prophecies set amid oceans of sand. Dune: Part Two expands on the story in ways that stretch our ability to comprehend scale; people become pinpoints next to desert creatures and war machines, emphasizing the desperate futility of any individual action. But the fraught connection between Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and Chani (Zendaya) gives this adaptation the heart it needs to keep from being simply a sequence of stunning visuals. (Max)

2. Challengers

Challengers probably had my favorite script of the year. The story follows the entangled lives of three tennis players, at multiple points revealing new information that recontextualizes everything you’ve seen so far. As an extra layer of meta goodness, all three actors are in various stages of becoming mega stars, mirroring dynamics in the film itself. The climactic scene (you’ll know it when you get there) is both a searing crescendo and an enigma. As Zendaya’s character Tashi says, tennis is not a game but a relationship — even if it may be twisted and unwinnable. (Prime Video)

1. The Brutalist

I look forward to discussing The Brutalist further once it finally hits wide release. For those on the fence about a nearly 4-hour film (with one very welcome intermission): I did not feel my attention wander once, despite the runtime. The Brutalist unfolds over decades, as a refugee architect comes to the United States to make a life for himself and his family. This is a movie about the people who built America, in the same way that There Will Be Blood and the early works of Francis Ford Coppola illustrate the sheer force of will required to build anything that lasts even a generation. It’s about the joys, terrors and contradictions of the American immigrant experience — and how art can be one of the final safe spaces for those seeking to express themselves. This has stayed with me long after the final frame, and I can’t wait for more people to see it. (In theaters this month)

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Other Stuff I’ve Made

• Over on The Filmcast, we all counted down our top 10 films of the year.

• On Decoding TV, we discussed Squid Game season 2, which I loved and my co-host Patrick Klepek was not as big of a fan of. Listen here.

• [PAID ONLY] On my personal Patreon page, @joyofnapping and I reflected on the highlights of 2024. Plus: more Squid Game talk! Listen here.