The 19 best movies of 2024

Writer-director Sean Baker’s dramedy, Anora, which won the Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, stars Mikey Madison as a sex worker living in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, who ends up falling for one of her clients, Vanya—the son of a Russian oligarch. Anora, who speaks some Russian, is dazzled by Vanya’s lifestyle, and the two grow closer, with Vanya ultimately proposing to Anora. But other forces at play conspire to drive them apart.

The highly-anticipated directorial debut from Zoë Kravitz follows a cocktail waitress (Naomi Ackie) who meets a tech billionaire (Kravitz’s real-life fiancé, Channing Tatum) at a fundraising gala and is invited to join him and a colourful cast of characters on his private island. Things, though, are not what they seem, and she begins to question whether she’ll make it out alive.

Filmmaker Robert Eggers (The Northman, The Witch) is known for films that pay meticulous attention to detail, digging into both history and folklore to create immersive worlds. Nosferatu, a gothic remake of the 1922 silent film (adapted from Bram Stoker’s Dracula) about a woman who is terrorized by a vampire, is no exception—early buzz is terrific, with the movie premiering to the public on December 25. Bill Skarsgård, Lily-Rose Depp, Emma Corrin, and Nicholas Hoult star.

This adaptation of an ’80s TV series wasn't one of the most talked-about movies of the year, but it might have been one of the most fun. Ryan Gosling plays Colt Seavers, a former stuntman who gets cast in a mega-movie. Emily Blunt stars as Jody Moreno, the director of said movie, and soon enough, literal and figurative sparks are flying.

This musical crime thriller follows a brilliant lawyer named Rita Moro Castro (Zoe Saldana) who, after winning a contentious case, receives an anonymous call offering a lucrative opportunity: A cartel leader wants her help obtaining gender-affirming surgery in order to live as a woman and leave the drug trade behind.

Out on December 25, this erotic thriller, written, directed, and co-produced by Halina Reijn, explores the nature of sex and power through a dangerous office liaison. When a prominent CEO (Nicole Kidman) who seems to have it all begins a heated affair with a much younger intern (Harris Dickinson), she risks both her family and career; in other words, everything.

The third instalment of writer-director Ti West’s X horror film series (rounded out by X and Pearl) sees Mia Goth reprise her role as Maxine Minx, an adult film performer who has big dreams of becoming a Hollywood star in 1980s Los Angeles. Just as she gets her big break, a serial killer known as the Night Stalker begins to target young starlets, and Minx must fight not only for her career, but for her life. The cast is rounded out by a shiny roster including Lily Collins, Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Halsey, and Kevin Bacon, among others.

This giant-hearted coming-of-age comedy stars Maisy Stella (of Nashville fame) as a free-spirited teenager determined to make the most of her last summer on her family’s cranberry farm before leaving for college. On her 18th birthday, she does magic mushrooms with some friends and is visited by her future self (Aubrey Plaza), who cautions her to avoid a specific boy. She promises to heed the warning—until she meets him.

Starring Colman Domingo and a brilliant cast of actors impacted by incarceration, this A24 drama tells the real-life story of how a theatre troupe in New York’s Sing Sing facility found healing and rehabilitation through art. Directed by Greg Kwedar, it follows a handful of men who come together to write a play, Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code, which they will ultimately perform for the rest of the prison. Acting and storytelling give the men a new sense of purpose—but above all, it gives them agency, community, and permission to tap into their vulnerability and strength.

Perhaps one of the buzziest, most inflammatory films to come out of Cannes this year, Coralie Fargeat’s satirical body horror film is a searing critique of ageism and unrealistic beauty standards. Demi Moore shines as Elisabeth, a once-celebrated Hollywood actor, who is fired from her long-running gig as the host of an aerobics show. Desperate to regain the spotlight, she turns to a black-market serum called The Substance, which promises to create a “younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of her—at a cost. Margaret Qualley also stars.

Riley—owner of the colour-saturated emotions who made us laugh, cry, and wig out in 2015’s original Inside Out—is entering her formative years, when the journey to self-discovery is at its rockiest; we’re talking teenhood, Disgust, and the introduction of Anxiety. Amy Poehler and friends returned, with Maya Hawke and Liza Lapira joining the range of emotions. Fun fact: This was Beyoncé's favourite movie of the year.

Based on Robert Harris’s 2016 thriller of the same title, Conclave follows a group of the Catholic Church’s most powerful leaders as they gather in Vatican City from all over the world to select the new Pope. As five men cattily vie for the most powerful position in the church, Cardinal-Dean Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), who was tasked with leading the selection process by the former Pope prior to his untimely death, discovers a series of riveting secrets that if unearthed could derail the papal inauguration—or worse.