2024 In Cinema: The Superlative Edition You Didn’t Know You Needed

IF our future alien overlords reanimated us and forced us to describe the year with a single word, a theme, an emotion, what would it be? Apprehension? Disillusion? Outrage? But that seems to be the case almost every year. Try as we might, identifying a coherent theme from a weird year like 2024 is nigh impossible. Summer was awash with a puke green hue after Charli XCX remixed the season into an aesthetic, an ethos, a way of life. Brat summer was followed by rat boy autumn. Baby hippos took over the newsfeed. Hybrid monstrosities took over the big screen. For every good-to-watchable movie, there were at least half a dozen bad-to-unwatchable ones that made for quite a challenge to endure through. Some movies were born bad. Some made.

Much of the chatter orbiting cinema as we reach the end of a year tends to centre on the best: the best comedies, the best horror movies, the best docs, the best scores, the best performances, etc. To wrap up an unquestionably weird year, it is only appropriate we go in a slightly weird direction. Our public service focuses on a mini-universe of niche categories covering the top to bottom of the 2024 cinematic barrel. Each category is self-explanatory.

Disclaimer: It goes without saying the categories and selections are subjective, arbitrary even.

The movie most deserving of a place in the Canon™ - The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)

The definitive BRAT summer movie - Poor Things

The horniest movie – Caligula: The Ultimate Cut

The horniest movie that isn’t Caligula: The Ultimate Cut - Love Lies Bleeding

The sweatiest movie - Challengers

The Nagisa Oshima award for making movies sweaty and horny again - Luca Guadagnino for Challengers and Queer

The sexiest movie scene without sex - Glen Powell and Adria Arjona’s Notes app interrogation in Hit Man

The funniest scene in a horror movie - Monstro Elisasue getting dressed in The Substance

The scariest scene in a (supposed) comedy movie - the end credits of Deadpool & Wolverine when you realise the Disney-Marvel machine isn’t done cannibalising itself yet.

The most intense anxiety attack in the guise of a movie - The Coffee Table

The most unabashed corporate-mandated fan-service grab bag and easter egg hunt in the guise of a movie - Deadpool & Wolverine

(Dishonourable mentions - Alien: Romulus, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire)

The movie so deeply unfunny you couldn’t believe Ryan Reynolds wasn’t in it - Red One

The movie about otherness and understanding but with the kind of fans who will tweet out threats if you said you didn’t like it - Wicked

The most tone-deaf musical biopic - Back to Black

The “be gay, do crime” movie par excellence - Misericordia

The movie battling a ghastly Ayn Rand hangover - Megalopolis

The most convincing delivery of the least convincing line - Adam Driver rhetorically asking, “You think one year of medical school entitles you to plough through the riches of my Emersonian mind?” in Megalopolis

The least convincing delivery of the most unconvincing line - Nathalie Emmanuel responding to Driver by repeating, “Entitles me?!” thrice.

The movie sure to inspire the most WTFs - Sasquatch Sunset

(Honourable mentions - Cuckoo, Kinds of Kindness, Megalopolis, Strange Darling, The Substance)

The most ravenous scenery-chewer - Chris Hemsworth in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

(Honourable mentions - Dan Stevens in Cuckoo, Dennis Quaid in The Substance, Denzel Washington in Gladiator II, Nicolas Cage in Longlegs)

The most monumentally misconceived abomination - Borderlands

(Dishonourable mentions - Lift, Madame Web, Red One, The Crow)

The movie most likely to give you brain rot - Rebel Moon (Part Two: The Scargiver)

(Dishonourable mentions - Afraid, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Poolman, Uglies)

The most unnecessary remake or sequel - Le salaire de la peur (The Wages of Fear)

(Dishonourable mentions - Despicable Me 4, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Speak No Evil, The Crow)

The Netflix movie that is most likely AI-generated slop - Irish Wish

(Dishonourable mentions - Atlas, Lift, Mother of the Bride, Trigger Warning)

***

For the normies, here’s a more straightforward list of the 25 best films of the year (ranked in order of personal preference):

1. The Beast

2. No Other Land

3. Red Rooms

4. Evil Does Not Exist

5. All We Imagine as Light

6. Black Box Diaries

7. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

8. The Boy and the Heron

9. The Devil’s Bath

10. Last Summer

11. Dune: Part Two

12. April

13. A Different Man

14. Hit Man

15. The Seed of the Sacred Fig

16. Joker: Folie à Deux

17. Oddity

18. Look Back

19. Janet Planet

20. Strange Darling

21. Good One

22. Anora

23. Rebel Ridge

24. Ghostlight

25. Juror #2

***

AND, the 25 most anticipated films of 2025 (in no particular order):

1. Nosferatu (Robert Eggers)

2. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook)

3. Die My Love (Lynne Ramsay)

4. Resurrection (Bi Gan)

5. Flowervale Street (David Robert Mitchell)

6. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

7. The Cry of the Guards (Claire Denis)

8. The Battle of Baktan Cross (Paul Thomas Anderson)

9. The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson)

10. Yes! (Nadav Lapid)

11. Alpha (Julia Ducournau)

12. Play Dirty (Shane Black)

13. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendoca Filho)

14. On Land and Sea (Hylmur Pálmason)

15. Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater)

16. The Smashing Machine (Benny Safdie)

17. Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie)

18. Eddington (Ari Aster)

19. Mother Mary (David Lowery)

20. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier)

21. Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (Christopher McQuarrie)

22. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle)

23. Flesh of the Gods (Panos Cosmatos)

24. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (Kogonada)

25. Mickey 17 (Bong Joon-ho)*

*unless its release is delayed by another year