The best movies of 2024 according to The New York Times

Dargis suggested that he focused primarily on selecting “the ones that dazzle” and the work that “often goes unnoticed,” despite being “good, great, and miraculous”.

Wilkinson, for his part, chose to list the films that in his opinion are “algorithm-breakers,” that is, that “they evade easy categorization and keep us off balance”.

Below you will find the films that they chose this year.

1. The light we imagine. The film directed by Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia is described by critics of the Times as a “delicate and painfully melancholic story about empathy”, which “is an example of this quality and focuses on two nurses and a cook”, who worked in the same hospital in Mumbai.
2. Ernie Gehr: Mechanical Magic. Dargis assures that “some of the most transporting films I have seen this year were in a retrospective of Gehr's work that took place in March at the Museum of Modern Art” in the Big Apple. As he states, “your perception of the world changes when filmmakers like Gehr show it to you through their liberated lenses and frames. They are films that expand your mind and, sometimes, leave you with your mouth open.”
3. a real pain. The film written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg—and starring him and Kieran Culkin—tells the story of two cousins ​​who reunite to take a trip through Poland to honor their late grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. In the words of Dargis, “there is a lot to love in this tender, melancholy comic drama about the lasting generational aftermath of the Holocaust.”
4. Don't expect too much from the end of the world. The film by Romanian director Radu Jude is described by the expert as “a stimulating, vulgarly funny and sometimes infuriating jolt”, which “follows Angela – a charismatic Ilinca Manolache – on her journey through Bucharest”. “For much of the film, he's either behind the wheel of his beat-up car, a home away from home, or interviewing seriously injured people as potential cautionary tales for a workplace safety video commissioned by a multinational.”
5. Dahomey. The documentary film directed by Mati Diop tells the story of African works of art that were looted. In Dargis's words, the film is “as formally inventive as it is politically and philosophically rich.”
6. ghost portraits. The documentary directed by Brazilian Kleber Mendonça Filho takes viewers to the coastal city of Recife, where he was born and lived as a child. “Here, Mendonça Filho uses the apartment as the axis of an investigation that radiates in different directions—in his past and that of his mother, in old movie sets and through abandoned cinemas—but that always returns home,” he points out. the criticism of Times.
7. Furiosa: from the Mad Max saga. Directed by George Miller and with Anya Taylor Joy in the lead role, the film delves into a post-apocalyptic universe complete with action scenes. Dargis says viewers can expect “entertainment” and “pure cinema.”
8. Megalopolis. Francis Ford Coppola's latest work “centers on a utopian architect (Adam Driver) with a plan to change the world that brims with ideas and beauty, giving the story a moving self-referential undercurrent,” says the review. Times.
9. Green Border. Dargis anticipates that “the rage that boils in (Agnieska) Holland's drama about the European migrant crisis is surprising and completely deserved.” He states that it is a fiction based on real events that “comes to a shocking coda that exposes the prejudices that countries try to hide in the name of patriotism.”
10. Here, a good man. In this film by Belgian director and screenwriter Bas Devos, a construction worker and a botanist star in a story in which reflections on life based on nature stand out. The criticism of Times He says it is “a film about immanence and transcendence, and about being alive in a world in which we are all, ultimately, transients.”

1. Nickel Boys. Wilkinson says RaMell Ross's adaptation of Colson Whitehead's novel is “boldly radical, transforming the text into a first-person film that captures the spirit of the source material—a meditation on how trauma shapes one's sense of self.” of a person—taking advantage of the visual and auditory tools that cinema provides.”
2. Eno. The documentary directed by Gary Hustwit focuses on the story of music composer Brian Eno. For the criticism of Timesthe director and his team worked on the film “as a constantly evolving work of art,” which has the ability to “generate a new version every time it is projected.” He emphasizes that “I could literally watch it a billion more times.”
3. Anora. Sean Baker's most recent work is about “a Brooklyn sex worker who marries the chaotic son of a Russian tycoon.” Wilkinson anticipates that “the film mixes romance and tragedy, and features a stellar performance by Mikey Madison as the heroine.”
4. Soundtrack for a coup d'état. Johan Grimonprez directed this documentary that stands out for being “furious and brilliant,” according to Wilkinson. “At their center are the events that led to the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is said to have been orchestrated by the CIA just months after his election in May 1960.”
5. evil does not exist. In the new film by Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, “a rural community is concerned about a company that wants to build a 'glamping' in the vicinity, which will have devastating environmental consequences.
6. Planet Janet. Wilkinson writes that Annie Baker's film “is about being a misfit kid in the summer, lonely and worried about his mother.” He adds that “the titular Janet, played by Julianne Nicholson, is that mother, and she is going through a series of small crises of her own, most related to terrible men and nascent personal fulfillment.”
7. Green Border. Like Dargis, Wilkinson included Agnieszka Holland's most recent work in her listing. He assures that “it is overwhelming and heartbreaking, and it turns on its head any easy story we tell ourselves about borders to turn a blind eye to.”
8. Good One. For the criticism of the American newspaper, “the revelation of this coming-of-age drama is its protagonist, Lily Collias, who plays a teenager who goes camping with her father and his best friend.” Wilkinson emphasizes that the director, India Donaldson, stands out for her “ear for dialogue” and “eye for detail.”
9. The singular life of Ibelin. The film directed by Benjamin Ree addresses the story of Mats Steen, a young Norwegian who died of a rare disease and who found a space in a video game. He tells his case from interviews, diaries, transcripts and “a good dose of animated recreations of Steen's life within World of Warcraftwhich makes the film's simplicity even more notable.” Wilkinson emphasizes that it is “a story about what is real in an unreal time, and the places where we allow ourselves to be human.”
10. Union. For this documentary, Brett Story and Stephen Maing – the directors – “spent years with Amazon workers at the JFK8 distribution center on Staten Island, as they tried to form the company's first union.”