Photo-Illustration: Mia Angioy. Source: MGM/Everett Collection, Universal Pictures, Film Movement, MUBI, Niko Tavernise/MGM/Everett Collection, Bleecker Street Media/Everett Collection
People loved Megalopolis, hated it, puzzled over it, clipped it into memes, and tried to astroturf it into a camp classic, but, most importantly, they cared about it even though it featured none of the qualities you’d expect of a breakthrough work in these noisy times. What that meant, to me, is that audiences have been craving ambition, which is something that movies, caught forever between art and commerce, haven’t been in a place to deliver. There are big entertainments and small personal films, but to grapple with weighty ideas on a large canvas? You have to do what Coppola did and pony up $150 million of your own money (something I wouldn’t advise, personally). Or what Brady Corbet did with The Brutalist, making something grand and sweeping on $10 million by going abroad, making ethical compromises, and burning yourself out. The Brutalist also wasn’t one of my favorites, but I admired the hell out of what Corbet set out to do with his film, which in a coincidence is also about an architect trying to achieve his vision in a landscape of callous capitalism — an idea that seems to be very 2024. — Alison Willmore
Photo-Illustration: Mia Angioy. Source: A24 (Lol Crawley), Everett Collection (Felix Dickinson/Neon, Bleecker Street Media, A24)
For a person who loves movies, there are few things more satisfying than a performance that really takes you by surprise. Maybe it’s an actor or actress you’d previously dismissed, surpassing what had once seemed like their limitations. Maybe it’s a veteran movie star rediscovering their fastball. Maybe it’s someone completely new to you announcing their presence in spectacular fashion. The movie industry spent this year shaking off the dust of the 2023 strikes, grappling with existential threats like AI, and trying to figure out just what audiences even want out of movies anymore. But there’s still no substitute for the experience of watching an actor crawl into the skin of another person and take them out for a spin. — Joe Reid
Photo: Anna Kooris/A24/Everett Collection
The movie business as I knew it is now over. Except in New York City, where feel-bad, risk-taking, ratings-defying art flicks still play and I pay to see them in theaters. Thank you, distributors, from the bottom of my damaged little cinematic heart, for getting these films out there to the perverted public, who still demand to be startled and soothed by troublemaking directors from all over the world. Here they are — my ten best. See them and suffer … joyously. — John Waters
Photo-Illustration: Mia Angioy; Photos: Everett Collection (Spencer Pazer/A24, Focus Features, Utopia, Magnet Releasing, MUBI)
More than any other genre, horror has the distinct power to reflect our collective anxieties, using its heightened parameters to drive these fears home (with a little lag time for writing, filming, and postproduction). It’s no surprise, then, that one of the most prevalent themes of horror movies released in 2024, two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, is forced birth, with films like The First Omen, Immaculate, Apartment 7A, and Alien: Romulus depicting women losing and — in most cases — reclaiming agency over their bodily autonomy. Even Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, more fantasy comedy than horror, has a harrowing birth scene. — Louis Peitzman