Very Good Movies from 2024

 by Rob DiCristino

Thoughts on a few misshapen gems that may have slipped through the cracks.

1. Oh, Canada (Dir. Paul Schrader)

A cold, obtuse, navel-gazing drama from Paul Schrader? Okay, so maybe Oh, Canada isn’t the most stunning departure for the legendary writer/director/Facebook provocateur, but that doesn’t make his reunion with American Gigolo star Richard Gere any less exciting. A loose adaptation of Russell Banks’ 2021 novel Foregone, Oh, Canada is a timeline-hopping ride through the life of ailing documentary filmmaker Leo Fife (Gere), who agrees to sit for a final profile produced by former students (Michael Imperioli and Victoria Hill) as his wife (Uma Thurman) looks on. Played as a young man by Jacob Elordi, Leo walks us through a complicated personal and professional history that Schrader shapes into a commentary on memory’s inherent fallibility and ego’s tendency to guard us from the uncomfortable and incriminating corners of our past. While not entirely successful — the scrambled narrative robs it of some dramatic bite, and its dueling co-stars are often ineffectively deployed — Oh, Canada is a fascinating elegy for an artist who has made self-examination a key motif of his entire career.

Oh, Canada is in limited U.S. theatrical release now.

2. The Beast (Dir. Bertrand Bonello)

American audiences will probably never get to know Léa Seydoux the way she deserves to be known, but that won’t stop the former Bond girl — Bond woman? Bond baby mama? — from appearing in some of the most diverse and interesting projects of any given year. Denis Villenueve snatched her up for Dune: Part II, sure, but her true 2024 vehicle is French auteur Bertrand Bonello’s psycho-sexual science fiction romance, The Beast. Set in a near future where artificial intelligence has rendered all human emotion a workplace liability, the film finds job-seekers like Gabrielle (Seydoux) undergoing a “purification” process that cleanses them of lingering emotional weakness through a probing of their past lives’ traumas. Bonello uses this aggressively-French conceit to send Gabrielle on a Cloud Atlas-style journey through time with George MacKay’s Louis, who unites the former and current Gabrielles and helps her understand why those emotions might be worth holding onto. While I wouldn't deign to call a film “Lynchian,” fans of that chimney-smoking surrealist would do well to give this one a look.

The Beast is now available in the U.S. on PVOD.

3. Memoir of a Snail (Dir. Adam Elliot)

If convention allowed critics to publish “Top Eleven Movies of the Year” lists without ridicule from readers, colleagues, and base ten advocates, then Adam Elliot’s exquisite Memoir of a Snail would easily take my #11 spot this year. Delightfully dry and gorgeously animated, it charts the existential crucible of Grace Pudel (Succession’s Sarah Snook), a young woman beset on all sides by a never-ending cavalcade of personal tragedy. As she searches for a way to reconnect with her long-lost brother (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Grace recounts her life as an orphan, snail enthusiast, muse to an adipophilic husband, friend to an elderly iconoclast (Jacki Weaver as Pinky), and, wouldn’t you know it, budding stop-motion animator. Frequent references to Plath and Kierkegaard set the film comfortably amongst its thematic influences, while Elliot’s lumpy, left-handed claymation style — “I look like a testicle,” says Pinky in an otherwise profound moment of self-actualization — gives it an unassuming charm befitting its unflappable heroine. Snail is not for everyone, but its emotional depth and disarming warmth should make it a new cult classic.

Memoir of a Snail is now available in the U.S. on PVOD.

4. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Dir. Radu Jude)

Now that you’ve come this far, could I possibly interest you in a Romanian satire that is largely plotless, 165 minutes in length, led by a woman (Ilinca Manolache) who uses an unconvincing Tik Tok filter to moonlight as a misogynistic loudmouth, intersperses random footage from an ‘80s drama about a taxi driver, and ends on one static, uninterrupted, forty-five-minute shot? No? What if I told you the film also features an extended interview with cinematic terrorist Uwe Boll and doubles as a ferocious critique of capitalism’s heartless disregard for human life? Okay, so it may not be the blockbuster event of the year, but Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is nonetheless one of 2024’s most curious and captivating experiments, a shrieking banshee of a movie every bit as angry as The Substance and every bit as damning as The Brutalist. It is, in short, Punk Rock as Hell, and while it’s another jet-black comedy that I wouldn’t recommend to everyone, anyone who’s been mistreated by their employer one too many times will find at least a few notes worth connecting with in this righteous, working-class anthem.

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is now available in the U.S. on PVOD.

5. The First Omen (Dir. Arkasha Stevenson)

I refuse to let 2024 end without making one last stand in support of Arkasha Stevenson’s terrific feature debut, The First Omen. Arguably the most conceptually potent and creatively rewarding unit of intellectual property content this year — not that Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, or Despicable Me 4 put up much in the way of competition, but still — Stevenson’s prequel to The Omen is the good version of Immaculate, a nunsploitation thriller boasting sumptuous visuals, engaging psychology, and what I’d consider to be the single gnarliest image of the year (and I’ve seen The Substance three times!). As Margaret (the awesomely-named Nell Tiger Free) acclimates herself to the Roman convent that is to be her home, she’ll become a pawn in a terrifying plot that will, you know, bring about the Antichrist. It’s a familiar story, sure, but Stevenson uses it as a springboard for a more thorough examination of a woman’s role in a male-dominated hierarchy, how a woman’s sexual agency can be weaponized against her, and how fucking cool it looks when the car gag from Signs is taken to its logical conclusion.

The First Omen is now available in the U.S. on Hulu.