TEXAS, USA — This time last year, the movies needed a hug. Between the existentialism of “Asteroid City,” the anxiety of “Beau is Afraid,” the imperative of “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” and the heartbreak of “Past Lives,” it was like the medium saw the double-strike coming and buckled down with stories where the present was undeniably present. Even “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” ended with its hero as alone as we’ve ever seen him rendered on the big screen.
This year? Not a whole lot has changed. The rule of law for movies in 2024 might be that where the sun is shining brightest – over the hills of “Dune: Part 2,” the cliffsides of “Furiosa,” the Americana of “Hit Man” – the volatility becomes even more dangerous. Maybe it’s the fact it’s an election year. Maybe it’s the slow churning of an industry still finding its footing from the aftershock of last year’s strikes. Maybe it’s that we were deprived a new Bong Joon-ho release.
Whatever the cause, it remains true that movies feel more faithful to life when they’re reflecting life back at us. And in the middle of a year where so much feels up in the air, the best and most honest ones find indelible images in the glint of light, whether it’s projected in multiplexes or streamed in living rooms. Here are the 10 standouts from the first half of 2024, and where you can watch them.
“The Beast” (dir. Bertrand Bonello)
Léa Seydoux, George MacKay and their cosmic dependance on each other is the closest thing to a through-line in this genre-fluid latest from French director Bertrand Bonello, who with “The Beast” suggests that those of us with the most to feel in an increasingly artificial world also stand to lose the most. Part of this 146-minute scream into the void – one where the darkness yields as many swoony moments as white-knuckle ones – unfolds in a chatty, Victorian setting where connection blooms like a flower; part of it unfolds in a modern LA palace where it’s forged in bloodthirsty fire. Taken altogether, it plays like a necessary shock to the system that, for all its inexplicable elements and resistance to be cleanly understood, feels like a movie created to gauge if we still have hold of our most primal human characteristics like curiosity, ambivalence, infatuation and fear. “The Beast” is difficult to describe and even harder to make sense of. Because of the moment in time it’s releasing into, that’s why it had to be included on this list.
Rent it on VOD.
“Challengers” (dir. Luca Guadagnino)
Someone notify Sabrina Carpenter: If song of the summer candidate “Espresso” purports to resemble what it sounds like to be bouncing off the walls, then “Challengers” is what it looks and feels like… and that’s before “Call Me By Your Name” and “Suspiria” director places us into the actual POV of a tennis ball being volleyed back and forth by tennis pros Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor).
No matter. The dizziness of that sequence is merely an aesthetic literalization of everything leading up to it in Guadagnino’s fantastically entertaining drama about the unexpected places we find our motivation and the unpredictable things we do with it. Guadagnino has always gotten dynamic performances out of his actors; the X factor in “Challengers,” a 35-miles-over-the-speed limit display of subjective storytelling, is that Faist, O’Connor and Zendaya (playing the woman they’re competing and losing their minds over) are constantly trying to outrace their better judgements. All’s fair in love and war, apparently even if the battles are being waged on tennis courts.
Rent it on VOD.
“Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World” (dir. Radu Jude)
Performativity, exploitation, ambivalence, and the Sisphyean effort it takes to care in a world increasingly showing it doesn’t and maybe never did–in “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World” it all swirls together into a daring manifesto that feels just about as urgent as they come, even if some of the structural etch-a-sketchiness that gives the movie its apocalyptic flavor may come off as ambivalence on the part of its director.
On a macro scale, the Romanian comedy follows an international company’s efforts to varnish its image as one that cares about worker safety. But speaking about “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World” in macro terms is playing right into Jude’s commentary about the lack of empathy we have for each in an era when screens make it possible to not have to really, truly deal with each other very much at all. Jude’s final shot alone is an absolute tour de force, and one that’ll have you watching in mounting disbelief for how it’s pulled off and for how uncomfortably familiar it feels.
Stream it on Mubi or rent it on VOD.
“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” (dir. George Miller)
In “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” the periphery-character-turned-protagonist from 2015's legendary "Fury Road" is fully center stage, albeit younger, more volatile, and still learning about how to adapt to the hazards and warlords of the Wasteland without wasting away to it. The expectations going into “Furiosa" is that we’ll be most at attention when things get loud and fast and bloody. But, surprisingly, the most absorbing moments are in what we see, or think we see, in characters’ eyes—how they widen when they see a target, how they soften when they see refuge, how they harden when their instincts shift into another gear in real time.
It can’t be overstated how much of an asset — and, given the way of the modern blockbuster, a treasure — Miller’s intentionality is. It sharpens every shot, lubricates every bit of dialogue, shines every set piece with the toughness needed to make “Furiosa” the full-bodied inhale of an experience that further enhances the primal-scream events of “Fury Road.” The saga of “Furiosa” rings loud and true – shiny and chrome – for how Miller never stops pouring kerosene on the fire that is his worldbuilding. In the meantime Furiosa continues to drive a blazing path through it, her mission given a tragic bent because of how little it might ultimately mean in a world that doesn’t save its breath for heroes. In this wasteland, the journey isn’t about the destination. It’s about the parts of ourselves we lose along the way.
Rent it on VOD or catch it in theaters.
“How to Have Sex” (dir. Molly Manning Walker)
Every now and then a movie comes along that doesn’t just purport to sympathize with the strange interpersonal dynamics of youth but also conveys them in a way that ties your stomach into knots. “How to Have Sex” is that entry for the first half of 2024. An observational drama so painfully and organically rendered you might mistake it for documentary, Molly Manning Walker’s movie follows three young British BFFs’ getaway at a resort that represents the wild wild west of teenagerdom–daytime drinking games have a master of ceremonies and nighttime raves are headlined by sexual contests that would make “Skins” blush. All the while, the close proximity to the possibility of sex becomes a force powerful enough to test even the most ride-or-die friendships, but what makes “How to Have Sex” stand out is the absence of a clear villain to pin our frustrations on. This is what being young is, after all: testing the limits of others to find where our own lie.
Stream it on Mubi or rent it on VOD.
“Hundreds of Beavers” (dir. Mike Cheslik)
If cinema is about latching onto one alluring idea – say, fur trapper declares war against an entire society of man-sized beavers – and finding every possible way to exploit that idea visually, then “Hundreds of Beavers” might be “Citizen Kane.” Scoff all you want, but this expert, antic gag-splosion that passionately modernizes a century-old aesthetic is at least within striking distance of Orson Wells in terms of pure storytelling enthusiasm.
It isn’t just that director Mike Cheslik and his team dream up an entire of universe of ways to exploit their narrative pitch; it’s how the pacing, the thorough juicing of every joke and the pure manic fever gain momentum like a rolling storm you never want to shelter from for fear it’ll dissipate in a moment’s notice. The confidence is on full, spectacular display. So what if the stakes feel silly? Most hero’s journeys are when we take a step or two back. The end result of the genius fueling “Hundreds of Beavers” is that, by the end, its world feels as lived in as Arrakis or the Wasteland.
Stream it on Fandor or rent it on VOD.
“I Saw the TV Glow” (dir. Jane Schoenbrun)
Captured through mesmerizing images of neon-lined darkness, "I Saw the TV Glow" occupies that strange in-between space where intention is the scariest thing in the world because it means potentially letting go of the comfortable and familiar. Jane Schoenbrun embraces that tension: What is most thrillingly apparent in the framework they employ – an increasingly rickety structure that makes you think you’re seeing one thing before assumptions melt away into something formless and intense – is the element of time and how the loss of it affects our identity, the way we see things presently and how that squares (or doesn't) with how we saw them before.
Reality is more or less a minefield in “I Saw the TV Glow,” and though the movie's young protagonists initially find shelter in “The Pink Opaque,” a fictional lo-fi TV show that becomes an obsession, its leaden vitality may also be the thing that proves just how terrifying the act of self-actualization can be when the real world’s walls come closing in. Hold on while you can to the ostensibly straightforward events of the opening 45 or so minutes, after which “I Saw the TV Glow” becomes an increasingly slippery, innovative and upsetting work emphasizing the power of narrative in shaping our identities—and the potential fallout of tweaking the antennas for so long that we haven’t noticed the program has ended early.
Rent it on VOD.
“Love Lies Bleeding” (dir. Rose Glass)
Rose Glass demonstrated a knack for telling stories about the fatalism of obsession in 2019’s “Saint Maud.” Her sophomore effort, following an ambitious bodybuilder (Katy M. O’Brian) falling in love with a crime lord’s daughter (Kristen Stewart) who has spent her life backed into a corner, gives her ideas a steroidal kick; amid the gnarly visuals and ticking-time-bomb frenzy of “Love Lies Bleeding” is a sneaky dissertation about how power is wielded by those who have never had it and those afraid of what they would do it they did. It’s bloody, it’s sexy, it’s fantastically go-for-broke.
Rent it on VOD.
“Seagrass” (dir. Meredith Hama-Brown)
How good is Ally Maki in “Seagrass,” in which she plays a woman haunted by personal shortcomings now widening the cracks of a crumbling marriage? So good that you can marvel at her performance, wonder where she came from, then realize she’s been a relative mainstay in film and TV for quite a while now. That Maki is cleanly able to shed her comedic persona for this horror-tinged heavyweight drama about the perils of being vulnerable perfectly fits her character of Judith, who is so beset by questions about identity, absence and capability that she may end up being a liability to those who need her most. The rest of the cast, from Luke Robert and Chris Pang to young Nyha Huang Breitkreuz, is aces as well.
Rent it on VOD.
“Spermworld” (dir. Lance Oppenheim)
It’s one thing for documentaries to explore a subject with decades of hindsight, experience and knowledge to light the way. It’s another thing entirely for a documentarian to provide a glimpse from the edges of a frontier where there’s not yet any set standards or expected consequences. How will audiences in 20, 30, 50 years take in Lance Oppenheim’s “Spermworld” and its complicated dynamics between sperm donors and their recipients? For that matter, how are supposed to watch these most intimate of transactions now? Oppenheim’s ops for an unsettling point of view, channeling his movies with a mercurial mood and hazy artistic ethos befitting someone with no expectations for how things will turn out on screen; where you might be unsettled, others might see catharsis. It’s a bold effort, to say nothing of those who agreed to be portrayed in it.
Stream it on Hulu.
