The year that was 2024 in film. Gladicked wasn’t quite Barbenheimer 2.0. Scary movies ruled all (wait, is horror back?). Audiences weren’t Kraven’ superheroes – unless they were Hugh Jackman. Nicholas Hoult quietly emerged as the year’s most reliable leading man. And, like last year, originality was far more satiating. Here at the AU Review we’ve compiled 20 of the year’s best cinematic treats and treasures so you’ll know what it is exactly that you shouldn’t be missing. In alphabetical order, The AU Review’s Best Films of 2024.
Anora
Sean Baker has made something truly special with Anora. It’s masterfully tense, warm, tragic and hilarious in equal measure. It treats its sex worker subject with natural respect, and, if nothing else, it gifts us with a performance for the absolute ages in Mikey Madison’s beautiful, regarded turn.
Read our full review HERE.
Babygirl
Halina Reijn’s tongue is clearly planted firmly in her cheek regarding the world exploration of Babygirl, but as much as there’s a twisted sense of humour at bay, Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson and Antonio Banderas’ emotional vulnerability never lets the film lose sight of its tragic, heartbreaking core.
Babygirl was originally reviewed as part of our Toronto International Film Festival coverage. It is scheduled for release in Australian theatres on January 30th, 2025. Read our full review HERE.
Blink Twice
A narrative throughline present in Zoë Kravitz‘s daring debut directorial feature is that “Forgetting is a gift.” Given the trauma and suffering many of the characters are holding onto in Blink Twice, it would appear a wise coping mechanism, but Kravitz’s script – written alongside one of her High Fidelity television scribes, E.T. Feigenbaum – delves into this torturous mind-frame with wild, unnerving abandon, at once solidifying herself as a supervisorial force and opening up topical, divisive conversations in the process.
Read our full review HERE.
The Brutalist
The word monumental has been utilised with glee when describing Brady Corbet‘s The Brutalist, but there’s truly no other word that best summarises what he has achieved here. Impossibly tragic, brutally confronting, and oddly uplifting at once, Corbet’s 215 minute opus – further extended by Adrien Brody‘s soulful turn – is a dizzying example of cinema at its most masterful.
The Brutalist is scheduled for release in Australia on January 23rd, 2025. Our full review will be published in the new year.
Challengers
However you look at Challengers, it’s deliciously, meticulously made. It’s a suspenseful sports movie as much as it is an erotic love story, and whichever dynamic you respond to, there’s so much succulent meat to be chewed on across Zendaya’s puppet-mastering of Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, her push-pull momentum with them separately, the undeniable force they feel as a threesome, and the kinetic energy the men generate between each other. It all ultimately culminates in one of the most tense back-and-forths put to screen – a series of minutes that may leave audiences too breathless to recover from.
Read our full review HERE.
Daddio
Equally humorous, heartbreaking and rightfully uncomfortable at once, Christy Hall – who has given herself the unenviable task of placing her debut feature entirely in the restrictions of a New York cab – challenges how men and women relate to each other, with Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson delivering some of their finest, most natural work as a nameless passenger and the driver, Clark, who interact with one another across their trip from JFK to her residence.
Daddio was originally reviewed as part of our Sydney Film Festival coverage. It is now available for digital rental or purchase in Australia. Read our full review HERE.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Having to follow Fury Road is really the main hinderance of Furiosa‘s existence. That film was such a lighting-in-a-bottle experience, and though this lives within the same template, it manages to find its own identity, thanks in large part to Anya Taylor-Joy and the unbridled Chris Hemsworth. Whilst outside of this universe George Miller blesses us with equally fascinating material (I’ll point you towards his most recent Three Thousand Years of Longing), I can’t help but need this Mad world to continue being delved into. Valhalla is so often cited as endgame and, even if it takes close to another decade, audiences deserve that journey.
Read our full review HERE.
Heretic
Whilst there is a horrific nature to Heretic, it operates on a more psychological level, with Scott Beck and Bryan Woods voiding it of predominant jump scares (though it does have a few worthy moments) and, instead, letting the intelligence of its characters navigate the discomfort. There are sharp conversations throughout its 110 minutes, with the power dynamic between inherent disbelief and religious faith shifting often, eventually leading to a climax that plays more into the expected aesthetic of a horror picture.
Read our full review HERE.
Immaculate
Whilst the shock value of the film’s climax is what is likely to earn audience reaction, it’s Sydney Sweeney’s performance that should stay with you long after her gut-wrenching scream has echoed off the screen. She bares herself as an actress and storyteller unafraid, and, as predictable as such a turn-of-phrase may be, Immaculate is truly all the more because she dares so.
Read our full review HERE.
Juror #2
Don’t let the undignified release sway you, Juror #2 is a classic case of solid, adult substance winning out over any flashy additives; it’s the type of intelligent storytelling that deserves to be embraced. Clint Eastwood has a lock on proceedings from the very beginning and Nicholas Hoult consistently leads with conviction, resulting in Juror #2 emerging as one of 2024’s finest thrillers.
Read our full review HERE.
Longlegs
A film that’s best left to be discovered and digested – I can’t stress enough that knowing any of the film’s eventual reveals prior will taint the viewing experience – Longlegs indulges in its rejection of mainstream pandering. It’s consciously structured to build anxiety with those that surrender to its nightmarish, passive mentality.
Read our full review HERE.
Love Lies Bleeding
A disgusting, sexy movie – meant as the highest of compliments – Love Lies Bleeding won’t prove digestible to the masses (general audiences shouldn’t be fooled by the film’s poster, which suggests a more accessibly erotic picture, given it’s Katy O’Brian’s toned fame brandishing a handgun), but for those that are prepared to literally see this through Rose Glass’s coloured glasses, Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian’s dysfunctional spree will continually command your attention.
Read our full review HERE.
Memoir of a Snail
Adam Elliot’s wondrous, delightfully grim meditation on anguish caters to a distinct palate, but its themes prove universal. Utterly surreal, yet no less honest, like Elliot’s previous work, Memoir of a Snail is desolatingly beautiful in how it honours our existence and champions the stillness that so many of us avoid.
Read our full review HERE.
Nosferatu
A stunningly haunting reimagining of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent expressionist vampire film Nosferatu, itself an unauthorised adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula”, Robert Eggers‘ gothic tale (ironically) breathes fresh life into Henrik Galeen‘s original, weaving human obsession and pain in a macabre manner that results in the genre filmmaker delivering possibly his finest craft yet.
Nosferatu is scheduled for release in Australia on New Year’s Day, January 1st, 2025. Read our full review HERE.
The Order
A meaningful action film that echoes today’s divisive identity, bolstered by a hardened Jude Law, a magnetic Nicholas Hoult, and an emotionally anchored Tye Sheridan, The Order is a chilling fable of the past that can’t help but have audiences question how many steps forward have truly been taken.
The Order was originally reviewed as part of our Toronto International Film Festival coverage. It is scheduled for release via Prime Video in 2025. Read our full review HERE.
The Outrun
The Outrun believes in the quieter, more intimate cadences of how life actually unfolds. Nora Fingscheidt isn’t reinventing the dramatic wheel, but she steers it with an honesty, treating its subject of recovery with a soulfulness that people battling such should find nourishing.
The Outrun was originally reviewed as part of our Sydney Film Festival coverage. It is expected to be released in Australia in 2025. Read our full review HERE.
A Real Pain
Whilst A Real Pain is likely to resonate more with audiences of certain heritages and religious beliefs, Jesse Eisenberg’s story is still universal in how it looks at trauma, mental health, and the complexities of familial relationships. Oh, and it’s funny. Like, really, really uncomfortably, yet organically funny.
Read our full review HERE.
Strange Darling
A cat-and-mouse thriller, but not as we expect, JT Mollner‘s non-linear serial killer chiller is sleek and fittingly electric. A genre piece that’s unlikely to be matched, the brutal one-two punch of Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner‘s committed performances ground the surreality of Strange Darling – arguably this year’s most overlooked treat.
The Substance
The idea of wanting to be younger and create a more perfect aesthetic version of one’s self is a thought many (if not all) of us have conjured at one point or another. And so often do the two go hand-in-hand, despite the fact that being younger and looking better aren’t always reliant on the other. They are two separate entities, and in Coralie Fargeat‘s deliciously vile The Substance, each take on a life of their own, resulting in a bombastic body horror black comedy-cum-cautionary tale that takes the most wicked of pleasure in submitting to its exaggerated nature.
Read our full review HERE.
Wicked
A thoroughly enjoyable, crowd-pleasing extravaganza that finds its universal throughline in the topical narrative that diminishing anyone off the basis of their difference will ultimately only punish the “greater good.” We hear that “The best way to bring folks together is to give them a good enemy”, and, adversary or not, the wickedness at the centre of this charming, bombastic musical proves enough for the masses to agree that this is a partnership worth celebrating.
Read our full review HERE.
