2024 saw its fair share of unremarkable biopics, legacy sequels, weirdly trauma-centric kids movies, and probably a bunch of superhero stuff and Star Wars things and other multi-part IP hail-marys we missed—in other words, it would’ve been another typical year at the movies if it wasn’t for a certain body-horror epic tailspinning for over two hours into a gruesome bloodbath, or for a certain queer body-builder romantic crime-thriller dipping into the realm of low fantasy.
We can live with the fact that most of what hits theaters these days feels like blatant cash-grab opportunism relying a little too heavily on familiar genres and characters if it means that even just 10 movies like those listed below get shuffled into the deck—films that study those same aesthetic reference points and dream up alluring methods of subverting them by presenting them from (sometimes literal) new points of view. While there’s nothing wrong with the occasional nostalgia project, we’d frankly prefer it also work in pressingly relevant themes like, say, the role of bygone media in helping us escape the trappings of prescribed gender identity.
Here are our picks for the 10 most innovative movies of the year.
10. Between the Temples
Nathan Silver’s Between the Temples is a tender, intricately composed meditation on faith, grief, and the inescapable pull of tradition. Jason Schwartzman’s Ben Gottlieb, a cantor whose once-commanding voice has been silenced by the weight of his wife’s death, drifts through a muted existence, caught between duty and despair. His inertia is disrupted by the reappearance of Carla (Carol Kane, in a performance as idiosyncratic as it is devastating), a former music teacher seeking his reluctant guidance for her belated bat mitzvah. Their unlikely partnership becomes the film’s emotional core, unraveling with both absurdity and aching humanity. Sean Price Williams’ cinematography elevates this touching undercurrent, imbuing the film’s visual language with warmth and imperfection. The grainy textures and naturalistic lighting evoke the tactile immediacy of 1970s American independent cinema, anchoring the film in a visual world that feels both familiar and intimate.
Meanwhile Silver’s direction resists contrivance, allowing each moment to unfold organically with a deceptively casual rhythm that mirrors the unpredictability of life. The film is quietly audacious in its exploration of how rituals—often viewed as rigid and immutable—can instead become deeply personal tools for healing and reinvention. Silver examines these themes with remarkable restraint, eschewing easy sentimentality for something more ambiguous, more human. Between the Temples hums with the melancholy of lives half-lived yet still reaching for meaning, offering a narrative as resonant as it is unassuming. It lingers in the mind like a memory half-formed, a haunting and deeply felt piece of cinema that affirms Silver’s place as one of the most quietly daring voices in contemporary film. — Patrick Devitt
9. Janet Planet
For anyone whose parents made up their whole adolescent world, Annie Baker’s film debut is a quietly devastating masterwork unlike any other. Over the course of three fragmented vignettes taking place in the summer of 1991, Janet Planet follows 11-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler in a disarmingly naturalistic first performance) and her maladaptive attachment to her mother, Janet (Julianne Nicholson), and all the fraught dynamics which this attachment brings to those who enter Janet's life. What distinguishes the film's singular emotional register is the confident grasp shown by Baker—whose previous work in playwriting includes the Pulitzer-winning The Flick—of the cinematic language of subjectivity, deliberately playing into Lacy's limited scope and impassioned temperament.
Our glimpses into Janet’s life and all the passions, bonds, and heartbreaks that entails are often kept at the fringes, but rendered no less complexly through shrewd shot-reverse-shot constructions and Nicholson’s subtle expressions of unspoken internal tension. Baker wisely knows, though, when her own visual grammar must be broken, stepping beyond Lacy’s eyes and the grounded reality of the film to breathtaking effect in a late sequence that speaks to Janet’s own means of processing her daughter’s perspective. In moments like these, Janet Planet is the rare pivot to film where the artist possesses an uncanny knack for this mode of storytelling, revealing a discerning image-maker whose selective eye and measured direction always seeks to strike to the heartrending core in as few moves possible. — Natalie Marlin
8. Red Rooms
Whereas ’90s cyberthrillers mostly turned the excitement and anxieties bubbling up at the onset of the internet era into fantasies of salvageable dystopias—brilliant technological innovation, as is always the case in science fiction, finding itself in the wrong hands—Red Rooms is the stark reality we face at the tail end of the great WWW experiment. Filmed with none of the flashiness and spectacle of The Matrix or Johnny Mnemonic, Pascal Plante’s film foregoes tech-fetishism in favor of clinical interiors drawing parallels between drab courtrooms and an individual’s home desktop setup where we watch her soullessly engage in her online routines, ultimately bidding on what is essentially an NFT of the most horrific content one could possibly create—all while AI performs an unemotive standup routine in the background.
Although Juliette Gariépy’s Kelly-Anne isn’t the monster awaiting her verdict with an equal level of stoicism throughout the trial central to the film, the viewer is still judging her more intently than this criminal archetype already familiar to us from countless graphic serial-killer podcasts and docuseries we’ve regularly been consuming as entertainment for over a decade now. The machine-like poker faces shared by Kelly-Anne and the killer help to solidify Plante’s observations about this moment in history when it’s ironically become impossible to read people—both on- and offline—despite the fact that all of our personal information is more exposed than it’s ever been, whether it’s encrypted as concerningly accessible data or it’s on full display in the fishbowl-like living spaces that are becoming increasingly familiar to urban living. By the end of the film, the red-font-on-black-background end credits bring the New French Extremity movement to mind, in doing so proving that all of that gruesome violence was never necessary to show. — Mike LeSuer
Read our review of Red Rooms here.
7. Love Lies Bleeding
Love Lies Bleeding, director Rose Glass’ sophomore feature film following 2019’s Saint Maud, is a gritty, visceral joyride through the delightfully dangerous allure of obsession. This neo-noir centers on a steroid-fueled fever dream romance between AFAB fuckboy Lou, a local gym manager (Kristen Stewart), and muscle mama Jackie, a bisexual bodybuilding drifter (Katy O’Brian). The relationship becomes, shall we say, fraught relatively quickly. Set against the backdrop of a small desert town in New Mexico circa 1989, the lovebirds become increasingly entangled in a web of violence and deceit due in large part to Lou’s abusive brother-in-law and estranged crime-boss father. The irreverence, dark humor, and doses of surrealism with which Love Lies Bleeding approaches its subject matter breathe exciting new life into a genre filled with increasingly stale Tarantino disciples.
Frankly, it’s also just refreshing to watch women fully inhabit the role of violent dumbass. From Hall of Fame character actor Ed Harris to leading indie mainstay Jena Malone, the film’s small cast even beyond its leads is densely packed with stellar performances. I was impressed by the acting chops of rising newcomer and nepo-ballerina Anna Baryshnikov as Daisy, Lou’s dentally challenged side piece. Bonus points to this movie for its killer synth-laden soundtrack that somehow sounds the way neon looks; extra bonus points for its tight pace and cool 104-minute run time. “I fucking love you, you idiot,” says Lou to Jackie at one of the film’s climactic moments. After sitting with Love Lies Bleeding for nearly nine months after seeing it in March, I am compelled to echo Lou’s sentiments. I really do love this movie. — Melanie Robinson
6. Anora
The American dream doesn’t work on Russians. Mikey Madison gives a star-making performance as Ani, a resourceful stripper and sex worker (this is a Sean Baker film, after all) whose life appears to be changing when her wealthy new party-boy client puts a ring on it. Enter Armenian thugs and Rusky oligarchs. I hesitate to reveal much about the plot, which is not full of twists so much as delightful surprises, but suffice it to say that the action—played out against a Brighton Beach winter—is funny and fast-paced, tinged with danger but never hard to watch. If Eyes Wide Shut is a wealthy man who finds himself tumbling through New York City after dark at Christmastime after crossing the threshold into the world of sex, then Anora is the inverse; the club is Ani’s territory, but the power of money, real money, is a foreign force that turns her plans upside-down and reveals her bag of tricks to be impotent against anyone she can’t seduce.
But ultimately, the plot itself isn’t titillating or shocking past the surface, but rather a fantastic vehicle for character studies. It’s no coincidence that in addition to Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn (her rich-kid lover) has broken out (he booked the lead on the next season of Mr. and Mrs. Smith), and Yura Borisov (enforcer Igor), who’s already a star in Russia, has a career waiting for him Stateside, if he wants it (also, he’s so hot). The ending has gotten wildly different reactions from different audiences, and that alone is enough to tune in. Don’t you want to have a smart opinion, too? — Lizzie Logan
5. A Real Pain
In writer/director Jesse Eisenberg’s sophomore feature, tonal shifts quickly become the norm. Pairing Eisenberg as straight-laced David with Kieran Culkin as free-spirited, distressed Benji, A Real Pain finds two cousins traveling through Poland, reconnecting with one another as well as to their Jewish heritage. To honor their late grandmother, David and Benji join a tour with a smattering of others, representing archetypal characters that Eisenberg writes with resonance (audiences might be David or Benji themselves, though there are certainly people in their lives who fit both molds). His writing is sharp and concise in its ability to convey the entirety of a person into a single line. In turn, the dramedy finds both emotional clarity and emotional heft, with plain moments that become profound—sitting at a group dinner, smoking a joint, hugging someone in the airport, loving and hating your family at the same time.
Culkin embodies Benji naturally, seemingly playing a version of himself, a version of a character he’s played throughout his adult career. His performance is abrupt, empathetic, and completely mesmerizing. He lights up every scene, though one never knows what his character will do next. A two-hander with actors fully in control, A Real Pain aims to explore the depths of pain in relation to family, history, and illness. It wants its audience to laugh out loud and then shed a tear within minutes. Eisenberg understands these people and their tics, their contradictions, their tenuous relationship. The fact that A Real Pain tonally works should be considered a small miracle, as is surviving any lengthy trip with extended family members. It’s one of the best-written films of the year, a gut punch that comes from laughter or sadness. Or, as Eisenberg hopes, from both. — Michael Frank
Read our review of A Real Pain here.
4. The Substance
At a time when terror on the big screen is glossily filmed for maximum financial impact, The Substance has its own momentum, DIY vibe, and free-for-all everything else. French writer/director Coralie Fargeat is a 21st century Herschell Gordon Lewis with all the satirical glee of a Paddy Chayefsky in her second feature film as she folds all trope-y notions of youth, fading and quick-rising celebrity, misogyny, anti-aging drugs, and rapt human expectation into a blender, only to spout it all out viciously and grimily by the close of this chintzy-looking body horror film. Fargeat’s epic-length, $17.5 million flick with surprisingly little dialogue follows an award-winning actress-turned-TV-aerobics-instructor who, in her quest for eternal youth, turns to the black market for a mysterious green oozing drug that turns her into a vigorously refreshed version of herself, but with some unexpected (and literally explosive) side effects.
Dennis Quaid plays the cartoonish asshole TV producer to the hilt, and Margaret Qualley is a doe-eyed but doggedly determined version of the actress’ younger self. But Demi Moore as the aging beauty Elisabeth Sparkle? At 62, the real-life Moore is as amazing-looking as the half-her-age Qualley—which makes her physical and mental disintegration all the more horrifically palpable. And as far as scene chewing goes, Moore takes the cake, blood, bile, and anything else that could spew out of a body ripping itself into shreds in a way viewers have never before witnessed. In a year where female Oscar choices come down to a neurotic opera singer and a green witch, I say that no one put their heart (and lungs and liver) into her role nearly as much as Demi. — A.D. Amorosi
3. Nickel Boys
Nickel Boys is a film with opinions, with decisions to make, with an unknown director in RaMell Ross making his directorial narrative debut. With one documentary under his belt (the undeniable Hale County This Morning, This Evening), Ross directs a film that’s more memorable than anything else in 2024. An adaption of Colson Whitehead’s 2019 bestseller, the film follows two Black teenagers, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson), at the abusive Nickel Academy, finding moments of rare solace among constant pain. Shot by cinematographer Jomo Fray, Nickel Boys takes on a first-person point-of-view. It’s an incredible choice by Ross and Fray, who put the camera in places of beauty and violence, though always familiar within the stark reality of America.
We see the world first through Elwood’s eyes, and then Turner’s, and back-and-forth. We see a stick pushing into our chests, a mirror reflecting, an orange laying in our hands with the trees swaying above, a moment before suffering erupts, a world that seemingly doesn’t want or care about these people—at a minimum, a world that’s forgotten about the eyes we’re looking through. It’s a film about the history of this country, yes, but one centering the Black experience, especially that of young Black men, inflexible in its necessity to exist. It should be shown to every American; it has that level of importance. And still, Ross finds humanity, small instants of laughter, reasons to keep living. — Michael Frank
2. I Saw the TV Glow
Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the Glow not only explores the role of TV in our lives (and the nostalgia it produces, which sinks deep into our subconscious), but also serves as a dissection of gender identity and suppression of self. Following 2021’s equally resonant We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, which explored similar themes, Schoenbrun’s latest couldn’t have arrived at a more relevant time. In an era flooded with anti-trans legislation and online vitriol, I Saw the TV Glow captures a cold and brutal reality where repression leads individuals to suffer in silence, their fears consuming them whole well into adulthood. Throughout the story, Owen (Justice Smith) struggles to understand himself, failing to muster up the courage to come out. From visual manifestations of his hidden identity (early on, a trans-flag-colored parachute frames him in one of the film’s most majestic shots) to the climactic scene where he screams in a crowded room, oblivious to the source of his pain, the story rings eerily true to many LGBTQIA+ youth today.
With his closest friend Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), the pair bond over the fictional TV show The Pink Opaque, which depicts a magical land where two teens use their psychic powers to defeat a supervillain named Mr. Melancholy. The YA program digs its claws into their chests as they witness themselves mirrored in the screen’s silver light for the first time. The show, which loses its impact once they enter adulthood, resembles Owen’s inner turmoil: Part of him wants desperately to let go and live freely, yet another is too scared to take that first leap. Sometimes life doesn’t work out the way one hopes—this film may be tragic in its depiction of what that might look like, but it’s also stunningly real. — Bee Delores
Read our essay on I Saw the TV Glow here.
1. Challengers
List reading is not often a multimedia experience, but if you could please take a second to hit “play” on Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ original score for this, our #1 film of the year, it might improve the experience. OK, now I think you might be in a better headspace. When I wrote about Challengers for this site back in May, I tried to put into context just how impressive it was that director Luca Guadagnino and company were able to take a movie about tennis, young love, and sweaty thighs and turn it into one of the more propulsive and sexy thrillers of the year. Seven months later and nothing has managed to top the hedonistic and scintillating love triangle that is Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), lovers and would-be lovers who enact their foreplay between forehand winners.
I would argue that this is also the movie-star film of the year (even more so than Zendaya’s other massive hit and its ensemble A-list cast), relying heavily as it does on the magnetic presence and general allure of its three main players. This is especially true of Zendaya and O’Connor, whose sordid, toxic chemistry brings out the worst in each character and some of the best out of the respective performers. The old adage that “Everything is about sex except sex, which is about power” is extremely apt here, and to watch how Tashi, Patrick, and, to a lesser extent, Art leverage their gifts to exert their might is never anything less than dazzling. It’s a film where every act—from eating churros, to smoking cigarettes, to having a schvitz—is dripping with desire both acknowledged and unspoken.
It’s here, too, where Reznor and Ross’ score acts as the film’s secret sauce, heightening mere conversation to the level of club-banger ecstasy and never allowing the audience a moment to catch their breath. One of Guadagnino and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes’ slickest tricks is the way the film’s structure, which zips between three distinct timelines, further muddles the allegiances of its three main characters, making their respective chemistry sensual, lustful, and a little pathetic all at the same time. In the end, none of them can really ever get out of their own way enough to reach or even really recognize their true goals. The film’s final embrace is the closest we get, but even that is just a tangled mess of limbs and bodily fluids, nothing more than good sex and “good fuckin’ tennis.” — Sean Fennell
Read our review of Challengers here.
