Last week, we exhaustively ranked and wrote about every TV show we watched in 2024. Today, we’re doing the same thing with movies—but not really. I spend most weeks reviewing individual films in detail, so beyond publicizing yesterday’s Top 20 list, I’m not undertaking some massive cinematic year-in-review project. Instead, this annual exercise is more designed to serve as a personal recordkeeping function, allowing me to memorialize all of the 2024 releases that I watched and to assign them relative levels of caliber—not in the form of a literal ranking, but by dividing them into qualitative tiers.
What do you get out of this? In theory, two things. First, for each movie listed, I’m including a parenthetical detailing which streaming service it’s currently available on, if any. (Obviously this information is subject to change, especially given the parsimonious whims of our studio overlords, but it’s accurate as of today.) Second, if you ever find yourself asking the age-old question, “What movie should I watch tonight?” then in theory this piece gives you a hefty bank of data, allowing you to make an informed decision rather than just surrendering to the almighty algorithm.
And with that advisement in mind, here’s the full list of all 164 new releases I watched in 2024, split into their appropriate, not-at-all-fallible tiers (N.B. hyperlinks lead to my reviews on either this site or Letterboxd):
Tier 1: The Top 20
All tiers are arranged alphabetically—except this one! (See yesterday’s write-up for a bit more detail on the best of the best.)
1. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (directed by George Miller; streaming on Netflix and Max)
2. Challengers (Luca Guadagnino; Amazon Prime)
3. Anora (Sean Baker; available to rent, coming to Hulu on March 17)
4. The Outrun (Nora Fingscheidt; available to rent)
5. Nosferatu (Robert Eggers; available to rent)
6. The Brutalist (Brady Corbet; available to buy)
7. Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood; Max, because nothing is sacred)
8. Longlegs (Osgood Perkins; Hulu)
9. Dune: Part Two (Denis Villeneuve; Netflix and Max)
10. Red Rooms (Pascal Plante; AMC+)
11. The Promised Land (Nikolaj Arcel; Hulu)
12. Inside Out 2 (Kelsey Mann; Disney+)
13. Snack Shack (Adam Rehmeier; Amazon Prime)
14. Green Border (Agnieszka Holland; Hoopla)
15. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross; available to buy)
16. The Substance (Coralie Fargeat; MUBI)
17. Trap (M. Night Shyamalan; Max)
18. Hit Man (Richard Linklater; Netflix)
19. A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg; Max)
20. Strange Darling (JT Mollner; available to rent)
Tier 2: Honorable Mention
Just because these six movies didn’t crack the top 20 doesn’t mean they aren’t awesome.
Ghostlight (directed by Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan; streaming on AMC+)
Hard Truths (Mike Leigh; available to rent)
I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun; Max)
Kinds of Kindness (Yorgos Lanthimos; Hulu)
My Old Ass (Megan Park; Amazon Prime)
Rebel Ridge (Jeremy Saulnier; Netflix)
Tier 3: Good Movies!
Movies are good, and these 12 movies are some of the goodest.
The End (directed by Joshua Oppenheimer; available to rent)
Evil Does Not Exist (Ryusuke Hamaguchi; streaming on Criterion Channel)
Good One (India Donaldson; available to rent)
Heretic (Scott Beck and Bryan Woods; available to rent, coming to Max on March 7)
Hundreds of Beavers (Mike Cheslik; Amazon Prime)
Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass; Max)
National Anthem (Luke Gilford; Hoopla)
Perfect Days (Wim Wenders; Hulu)
A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg; Hulu)
The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Mohammad Rasoulof; available to rent)
Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants; available to rent)
Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham; Netflix)
Tier 4: Pretty Good Movies
And here we enter the first of two obscenely populous tiers. I mostly like these 44 movies—with modest reservations.
About Dry Grasses (directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan; streaming on Criterion Channel)
The Beast (Bertrand Bonello; Criterion Channel)
Between the Temples (Nathan Silver; Netflix)
The Bikeriders (Jeff Nichols; Amazon Prime)
Blitz (Steve McQueen; Apple)
Carry-On (Jaume Collet-Serra; Netflix)
La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher; Hulu)
A Complete Unknown (James Mangold; in theaters)
The Dead Don’t Hurt (Viggo Mortensen; Paramount+)
Didi (Sean Wang; Amazon Prime)
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude; MUBI)
The Fall Guy (David Leitch; Amazon Prime)
Fancy Dance (Erica Tremblay; Apple)
Femme (Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping; Hulu)
The Fire Inside (Rachel Morrison; available to rent)
Flow (Gints Zilbalodis; Max)
Handling the Undead (Thea Hvistendahl; Hulu)
Here (Bas Devos; Criterion Channel)
His Three Daughters (Azazel Jacobs; Netflix)
I Used to Be Funny (Ally Pankiw; Netflix)
I’m Still Here (Walter Salles; in theaters)
Io Capitano (Matteo Garrone; available to rent)
It’s What’s Inside (Greg Jardin; Netflix)
Janet Planet (Annie Baker; Max)
Kneecap (Rich Peppiatt; Netflix)
Late Night with the Devil (Colin Cairnes and Cameron Cairnes; Hulu)
Mean Girls (Arturo Perez Jr. and Samantha Jayne; Amazon Prime)
Monkey Man (Dev Patel; Amazon Prime)
Oddity (Damian Mc Carthy; AMC+)
The Old Oak (Ken Loach; Hoopla)
The Order (Justin Kurzel; available to rent)
Problemista (Julio Torres; Max)
A Quiet Place: Day One (Michael Sarnoski; Amazon Prime)
Robot Dreams (Pablo Berger; Hulu)
Sing Sing (Greg Kwedar; available to rent)
Smile 2 (Parker Finn; Paramount+)
Sometimes I Think About Dying (Rachel Lambert; MUBI)
Thelma (Josh Margolin; Hulu)
Touch (Baltasar Kormákur; Amazon Prime)
Tuesday (Daina Oniunas–Pusić; Max)
Twisters (Lee Isaac Chung; Peacock)
Wicked (Jon M. Chu; available to buy, coming to Peacock on March 21)
The Wild Robot (Chris Sanders; Peacock)
Woman of the Hour (Anna Kendrick; Netflix)
Tier 5: Not Bad, But…
A slight step down from the prior tier (see how this works?), the 43 movies here are still worth watching, but they have their problems.
The Animal Kingdom (directed by Thomas Cailley; streaming on Hulu)
The Apprentice (Ali Abbasi; available to rent)
Babes (Pamela Adlon; Hulu)
Babygirl (Halina Reijn; available to rent)
Better Man (Michael Gracey; available to rent)
Blink Twice (Zoë Kravitz; Amazon Prime)
Civil War (Alex Garland; Max)
Cuckoo (Tilman Singer; Hulu)
Daddio (Christy Hall; Netflix)
Damsel (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo; Netflix)
Dandelion (Nicole Riegel; AMC+)
Drive-Away Dolls (Ethan Coen; Amazon Prime)
Drugstore June (Nicholaus Goossen; Hulu)
Ezra (Tony Goldwyn; Paramount+)
The Girl with the Needle (Magnus von Horn; MUBI)
Gladiator II (Ridley Scott; Paramount+)
Here (Robert Zemeckis; Netflix)
Horizon, an America Saga: Chapter 1 (Kevin Costner; Netflix and Max)
How to Have Sex (Molly Manning Walker; MUBI)
The Idea of You (Michael Showalter; Amazon Prime)
Immaculate (Michael Mohan; Hulu)
In the Land of Saints and Sinners (Robert Lorenz; Amazon Prime)
The Instigators (Doug Liman; Apple)
Joy (Ben Taylor; Netflix)
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (Wes Ball; Hulu)
The Last Showgirl (Gia Coppola; available to buy)
Lee (Ellen Kuras; Hulu)
Maria (Pablo Larraín; Netflix)
Memoir of a Snail (Adam Elliot; AMC+)
Never Let Go (Alexandre Aja; available to rent)
Nightbitch (Marielle Heller; Hulu)
Orion and the Dark (Sean Charmatz; Netflix)
The People’s Joker (Vera Drew; MUBI)
Sasquatch Sunset (David Zellner and Nathan Zellner; Paramount+)
Saturday Night (Jason Reitman; Netflix)
Self Reliance (Jake Johnson; Hulu)
September 5 (Tim Fehlbaum; available to rent)
Speak No Evil (James Watkins; Peacock)
The Wasp (Guillem Morales; MGM+)
The Watchers (Ishana Night Shyamalan; Netflix and Max)
Wicked Little Letters (Thea Sharrock; Netflix)
Young Woman and the Sea (Joachim Rønning; Disney+)
Your Monster (Caroline Lindy; Max)
Tier 6: Critics are jerks!
And here we break from the format, as both this tier and the next are less about my own opinion than my assessment relative to the critical consensus (however I’ve formulated it in my head). These 10 movies didn’t receive the greatest overall reception (despite one of them racking up 13 Oscar nominations), but I found all of them worthwhile—some of them quite so.
The American Society of Magical Negroes (directed by Kobi Libii; streaming on Amazon Prime)
Back to Black (Sam Taylor-Johnson; Amazon Prime)
Emilia Pérez (Jacques Audiard; Netflix)
Fly Me to the Moon (Greg Berlanti; Apple)
I.S.S. (Gabriela Cowperthwaite; Paramount+)
It Ends with Us (Justin Baldoni; Netflix)
Lisa Frankenstein (Zelda Williams; Amazon Prime)
Miller’s Girl (Jade Halley Bartlett; Netflix)
Sleeping Dogs (Adam Cooper; Hulu)
We Live in Time (John Crowley; Max)
Tier 7: Critics are dopes!
And here we have the flip side: movies that were admired by most critics, but which left me cold (including one that earned eight Oscar nominations). Only five in this tier this year; I must be getting soft.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die (directed by Bilall Fallah and Adil El Arbi; streaming on Netflix)
Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point (Tyler Taormina; AMC+)
Conclave (Edward Berger; Peacock)
The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow; Hulu)
Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Pham Thien An; Hoopla)
Tier 8: Could be worse
I don’t hate any of these 17 movies, but I struggle to recommend them.
Alien: Romulus (directed by Fede Álvarez; streaming on Hulu)
Argylle (Matthew Vaughn; Apple)
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Tim Burton; Max)
The Book of Clarence (Jeymes Samuel; Netflix)
Joker: Folie à Deux (Todd Phillips; Max)
Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara (Marco Bellocchio; available to rent)
LaRoy, Texas (Shane Atkinson; MGM+)
MaXXXine (Ti West; Max)
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (Guy Ritchie; Starz)
Moana 2 (Dana Ledoux Miller; available to rent)
Mothers’ Instinct (Benoît Delhomme; Hulu)
Nutcrackers (David Gordon Green; Hulu)
Queer (Luca Guadagnino; available to rent)
Road House (Doug Liman; Amazon Prime)
Venom: The Last Dance (Kelly Marcel; available to rent)
Wolfs (Jon Watts; Apple)
Y2K (Kyle Mooney; available to rent)
Tier 9: Bad!
As an amateur critic who isn’t forced to roll out for dreck, I rarely subject myself to films that are outright awful. For these seven movies, I made an exception.
The Beekeeper (directed by David Ayer; streaming on Amazon Prime)
Deadpool & Wolverine (Shawn Levy; Disney+)
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (Adam Wingard; Netflix and Max)
In a Violent Nature (Chris Nash; AMC+)
Madame Web (S.J. Clarkson; Netflix)
Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola; just pirate it)
Rebel Moon: The Scargiver (Zack Snyder; Netflix)
Jeremy Beck is the editor-in-chief of MovieManifesto. He watches more movies and television than he probably should.