It’s that time of the year again, and we have reached the point where I take it upon myself to rank the top 10 movies of 2024.
While only a few good movies got mainstream attention in 2024, the year was great for character-driven films, historical dramas, and Asian thrillers. If you are unfamiliar with a few of these movies, I suggest you check them out — they are worthy of your precious time.
First, let’s get some honorable mentions out of the way for best movies of 2024:
Remember Me
Boy Kills World
Unsung Hero
Sing Sing
Sweet Dreams
After sitting through 106 movies this year, from all around the world, it was all well worth it after finding some hidden gems. So, without further ado, let us all welcome 2025 with some of the best movies of 2024!
10. Your Monster
Starting off this past year’s list with our #10 film, Your Monster. Actress Melissa Barrera is the Hollywood puzzle piece that no one has been able to solve. Remove Barrera from a major studio-backed film, and you find that she has put out a very solid filmography over the last couple of years.
Your Monster is a story about a young stage actress named Laura Franco. After receiving an emotionally crippling cancer diagnosis, Laura is dumped by her playwright boyfriend, Jacob. Laura is emotionally devastated and proceeds to spend the next few weeks crying in her apartment while distancing herself from the world.
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There’s a Bible verse that says, “It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and an angry woman.” Your Monster is the perfect representation of that very problem, as the film is an emotional roller coaster of the life of a woman who can’t seem to pull it together.
The audience is taken on the ride with Laura’s character, which progresses throughout the film, and it accumulates in the audience realizing that her sense of reality is falling apart as the film progresses. Your Monster is a fun story of a young woman’s mental break that mirrors the 2022 film, Pearl. The film is arguably the best character study of the entire year.
Millennials get a bad rap for good reason. Because despite growing up, many still refuse to grow up. Karen Gillan, known for her roles in the Guardians of the Galaxy and Jumanji franchises, is one of the few actresses in Hollywood who still reaches out to do smaller films.
Late Bloomers is the story of a 30-year-old woman named Louise who has nothing going for her life at all. After a pathetic display of trying to get back with her boyfriend, she ends up breaking her hip, causing her to go to rehabilitation. Because most people who are rehabbing their hips are twice her age, she is forced to get to know a stubborn, mean, old Polish woman named Antonina.
On paper, this is a movie that shouldn’t work, but the chemistry that Gillan has with her co-star makes it work. The character of Louise is a down-on-her-luck woman whose life has spiraled out of control ever since her mother was diagnosed with dementia, which has left her nonverbal.
The film will hit audiences in the feels as it deals with difficult life situations such as loss, loneliness, and compassion. Karen Gillan gives one of the best performances of her career playing a character that most people would find annoying but has a well-written backstory that makes you sympathize with her struggles and roots for her redemption. If you are a viewer who has either a troubled or emotional relationship with your mother or grandmother, this film will hit you with more emotional weight than the average viewer.
Late Bloomers does not have a big budget or over-the-top Hollywood theatrics. It is a simple character study of a woman who needs a much-needed reality check and learns to have compassion for her fellow neighbor along the way.
The average moviegoer is so used to feeling either dread or indifference with Hollywood productions that when you get a film like this that manages to have an emotional impact, it does not go unnoticed.
Ordinary Angels is a story of a father who is dealing with the recent loss of his wife. Alan Ritchson, who plays Ed, is struggling to raise two daughters all on his own, one of whom is in desperate need of a liver transplant. As doctors project that she only may live another year, Ed runs into a woman named Sharon, played by Hilary Swank. Sharon takes a great interest in helping his family and going the extra mile beyond the means that any stranger would go.
The film deals with the topic of loss and how believers can feel loss or distance from God in times of great struggle and suffering, almost as an allegory to the Book of Job. Outside of that, the faith aspect of this movie is toned down. The movie is based on the true story that happened back in 1994 when the people of Louisville, Kentucky, rallied around a father in desperate need of saving his child’s life. The film gives a great window into the positivity of humanity and how people will come together to help those in need at their worst moments.
A film that makes you wish Hollywood would go back to making movies like this rather than the sea of nihilism it produces weekly. Ordinary Angels is the ultimate comfort movie.
7. September 5
The 1972 Summer Olympics was one of the biggest displays of political incompetence the world has ever seen. For those who aren’t old enough to remember the real-life story as it happened: During the stages of the summer games, a group of Palestinian terrorists kidnapped the Israeli Olympic team and demanded a path of escape while threatening to kill the hostages.
After several failed attempts at trying to rescue the Israeli team, the incident ended on the tarmac of an airport involving all of the hostages tragically passing away. On top of that, you also had the incompetence of the news media who incorrectly reported that all of the hostages had survived, only to have to correct that story with the worst possible news hours later.
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September 5 is a film that is not about good guys or bad guys, but rather retelling the events that unfolded in a manner that is as objective as it can be. The film shows a lot of similarities to a 2004 film entitled Live from Baghdad, which was a story about journalists in Iraq in the early nineties during the first Gulf War invasion.
Because it’s been over 50 years since this event took place, the film does a brilliant job of sourcing the eyewitness accounts and videos from that time to trace an accurate story about what happened in that horrific period. September 5 is one of the strongest films of the year and is one that is deserving of its award-season recognition.
Sons of Anarchy has been off the air for several years; however, the infatuation of outlaw motorcycle gangs has not subsided. The Bikeriders is the story of the rise of the outlaw motorcycle club, the Vandals. A club that started as a group of racers looking to kill time on the weekends turned into one of the most notorious 1% clubs in the entire country.
The film is a time warp back to American culture in the Midwest during the ’60s and ’70s, and the cinematography of the movie does a great job of making the setting look like another world when compared to today. Tom Hardy plays Johnny, the president and founder of the club, who got the idea from watching the old ’50s television show of creating a biker gang of his own.
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The early portion of the movie shows the group being very tight-knit like a family and didn’t involve itself in as many illegal activities in its early days. When the group wasn’t able to police its own from an inner circle, the ideology of the club began to spread uncontrollably, and more violent members began to take prominent positions, leading to the club becoming what we know it as today.
The strongest aspect of this film is the acting with strong performances from Butler, Hardy, and Comer. The film also provides you with many notable cameos along the way. When it’s all said and done, The Bikeriders will be at the top of many best-of lists for 2024.
5. Hijack 1971
There’s no beef more generational than the beef between North Korea and South Korea.
Whether it is the hardcore commies of the North or the brand-happy capitalists of the South, you can always suspect that whenever there is a film from the Korean region about the opposite nation, a lot of unresolved issues are going to come to light.
Set in 1971, Tae-in is the first officer of a civilian airliner who has worked his way up to co-pilot, just a couple of years after being on the opposite end of a North Korean hijack. Hijack 1971 is a film that is based on true events. The central theme of this movie revolves around the consequences of actions and being haunted by making both the right and wrong decisions.
For Western audiences, it’s always intriguing to see an international conflict from nations not involving the United States. As the film considers itself to be a disaster movie, the way it hooks audiences into the story is by giving a brief introduction of several characters who are on the plane to relay the severity of the situation at hand. The film is a shining window into the actions of heroism and villainy, despite understanding the antagonist’s plight with his nation, his actions are clear.
Hijack 1971 is a bold and brilliant film that showcases the tension of a dire situation that is done in a far better fashion than movies in the horror genre that look to achieve the same effect.
4. Kill
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India has given us a few films over the last few year that have Americans questioning the filmmaking coming from our own domestic industry. Here we have another Indian film entitled Kill that hopes to continue the slew of movies that raise the cinematic bar that can be found outside of the big five Hollywood studios.
When it comes to the action genre over the last several years, we have seen a multitude of John Wick clones emerge to the point of oversaturating the market. The movie doesn’t present the audience with a multitude of cannon fodder who are stabbed and shot without an ounce of regard for who they were or what they represent.
In this movie, you feel the emotional gravity of every single person who was killed, which makes every act of violence heart-wrenching for the viewers. While the roles of Good and Evil are clearly defined, that doesn’t mean that the human emotions coming from our bad guys aren’t felt just as hard as they are from our heroes.
The brutality of modern action movies is alive and well. The kills this film gives are so much more meaningful than in previous attempts. Indian star Lakshya’s star presence cannot be denied in this 2 vs. 41 battle royale — which, believe it or not — is the first film of his young career, and certainly will not be the last after this performance.
3. Juror #2
Everybody hates jury duty, but imagine being part of a trial for a crime that you committed. Nicholas Hoult plays Justin Kemp, a recovering alcoholic who just got called in for jury duty. The case is about a woman who got into a public altercation with her boyfriend at a bar and afterward was found murdered and left in a ditch near a bridge where the altercation took place.
The film didn’t receive as much publicity as it probably should have. And it’s pretty disgraceful to think that after the long-standing relationship between Clint Eastwood and Warner Bros., Warner Bros. would not do more to market and hype what is supposed to be the final film that Clint Eastwood directs in his career.
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Most of the jury views it as an open-and-shut case against the ex-boyfriend, until Justin realizes that he was responsible for the woman’s death a year ago. He tries to convince the jury that the ex-boyfriend is innocent without revealing that he was the one responsible for her death.
The film creates an incredible moral dilemma, and Justin tries to work around being the one voice of innocence for a man on trial for murder. The problem is, Justin cannot prove why he is innocent while revealing the fact that Justin was the one responsible for the woman’s death. Juror #2 is one of the most intense films of the year from a storytelling aspect. Hoult excels in one of the best performances of his career in a year that will define and elevate his status as an actor.
Without question, Clint Eastwood’s final directing performance is worthy of the year’s cinematic awards.
A karate champion decides to make a difference in his community by joining the police force and becoming a probation officer who hunts down and kicks the ever-loving crap out of child predators in his area.
When it comes to the genre of black comedy, the way that Hollywood presents the genre is by making light of horrific situations such as death and sexual assault. In Hollywood’s eyes, comedy comes from making light of serious situations to the point where it feels like they are going out of their way to either belittle them or reveal their evil nature.
Officer Black Belt is the story of a young man named Lee Jung-do who helps a probation officer named Kim Sun-min capture a violent sex offender in the neighborhood, and Kim decides to recommend Lee for a job within the force. Officer Black Belt is a brilliant film that is part buddy cop comedy movie with the laughs being at the expense of the perverted members of the city. On the flip side, the film excels at being a gripping drama without stepping on the toes of either genre.
The film has a strong sense of humanity that many dark comedies remove from their films. The film also doesn’t belittle our protagonist for being a gamer, nor does it mock his friends who show off their usefulness in tough scenarios later in the movie. Officer Black Belt is a highly entertaining film that doesn’t lose pace while addressing serious matters like sexual crimes against children and the abuse of women.
1. Harbin
The #1 movie of 2024 was very much a buzzer beater on the cinematic calendar. A Korean film released four days before the new year is one of the best biographical dramas of the decade. Set in the year 1909, a reeling nation of Korea is dealing with the reality that in the wake of the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1905, Japan is on the cusp of turning the once proud nation into a Japanese colony.
A group of resistance fighters led by Korean independence activist Ahn Jung-geun struggles across the frozen Tumen River, with the understanding that the only way Korea will be freed from the clutches of Japanese rule is to target and kill former Prime Minister and politician Itō Hirobumi, who wants Japan to rule the region.
Harbin is one of the most intense political thrillers in the last decade. Korea has been the hub for political spy thrillers that have defined the history of their nation. Harbin recreates the hardcore nationalism of Korea vs. Japan in a Russian backdrop. The film highlights the brutality of pre-WWI-age guerilla warfare and the chess game of espionage that comes with twists and turns throughout.
The second half of the film straps audiences to their seat with the culmination of a silent war that has the fate of a nation dependent on its outcome. Harbin is the best cinematic history lesson when compared to Oppenheimer (for those in the States) and The Spy Gone North (for those in the region of South Korea).
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