The Best 2024 Movies Already Streaming
Catch up before the rush of fall
Happy Labor Day! By this point in the holiday weekend, cinephiles are pouring over the trade reports and early breaks out of Venice and Telluride to see how some of the year’s most anticipated titles are landing. If you needed to do that more than usual in 2024, I get it — this post-strike year has been a real doozy so far.
I only feel confident that two movies released to date (you know what they are if you’ve been paying attention) are guaranteed spots on my year-end top 10 list. But that doesn’t mean 2024 has been a total wash! Sundance still turned up a lot of great titles, and I’ve had the chance to talk directly with some of the artists behind undersung gems.
Often times when I share those in the “What I Wrote” section of the newsletter, these titles are but vague abstractions if you don’t live in New York or Los Angeles. So if you’ve ever filed a mental note scanning my coverage and intended to circle back on those titles, this newsletter edition is for you! I’ve rounded up 10 of the year’s best movies that you can already stream at home — and will also encourage you to read what I’ve said about them in a more longform context elsewhere on the web.
The Beast, Criterion Channel
“The most challenging thing was not to make three films, but to make one film, and not to make three simple female and male characters but one character. That’s to say that the George or the Léa of 2044 must be the addition of the one in 1910, the one in 2014, and even some more we do not see.” — interview with filmmaker Bertrand Bonello, Slant Magazine
The Bikeriders, Peacock
“Whereas Scorsese is making a movie [in Goodfellas] about gangsters in large part because he knew them, grew up around them, they were very much a part of his milieu, Nichols is making a film about the iconography of bikeriders rather than the bike riders themselves, which makes sense because it’s based on a photojournalistic text rather than personal experiences with them. The sensation was already forming in my head that this wasn’t necessarily about the people but about their images, but then you get a very telling scene when Tom Hardy is watching The Wild One on TV and literally starts to imitate the Marlon Brando line. That’s seen as the moment in which the biker gang formulates in his head.” — podcast appearance on Truth & Movies
Evil Does Not Exist, available to rent from various digital platforms
“This film perhaps is somewhat different from the others [in terms of how I’ve worked]. In my other films, I very much prioritized capturing the people. But with this particular film, I was thinking about the effect that humans have on their environment and vice versa, and the effects that they have on each other.” — interview with filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Slant Magazine
Femme, Hulu
“In the modern sense, it feels like there’s a secondary identity that comes with the perception of who we put out on the internet or who we are over a text message. This secondary self that’s becoming so prevalent has an almost mortal quality. Therefore, thinking about it in terms of a mortal life and death is how I approached it with the characters.” — interview with actor George MacKay, Slant Magazine
Girls State, Apple TV+
“Unlike their previous film’s larger-than-life Texan stomping grounds, which practically supplies its own mythology, the value of the setting here is subtler. McBaine and Moss selected a 2022 Girls State conference in Missouri for their project, which is notable primarily for being the state’s first instance of hosting events for both sexes simultaneously on the same campus. Try as they might to keep their documentary a self-sufficient microcosm of political anxieties and a preview of America’s future, this ready-made contrast simply cannot be ignored. To the film’s benefit, the directors let the outside world intrude and jumble the format.” — review, Slant Magazine
Janet Planet, available to rent from various digital platforms
“This modest miracle of a movie captures all the pain and promise of emerging adolescence. Janet Planet lives in the tension between yearning to be one’s true self while inevitably remaining tied to a parent’s identity and choices. While millennials will get a kick out of nostalgic details like the Clarissa Explains It All theme song, Baker conjures childhood from sensory details of pre-internet boredom far more frequently than she does from obvious cultural signifiers. Baker treats Lacey’s life with all the adult seriousness it deserves but never forgets that childhood deserves to be seen and respected as its own distinct, delightful, and demanding life stage. That forthrightness is validating and vivid to behold.” — Stream It or Skip It, Decider
Longlegs, available to rent from various digital platforms
“Bringing The Silence of the Lambs in so shamelessly is just that. ‘It’s just this again, trust me.’ [Telling the audience that is] good, especially because people want to experience that movie. They want to think about The Silence of the Lambs and be adjacent to it. It’s not like I was trying to put them next to some piece of shit or some horrible thing. I was putting them next to one of the greatest movies of all time, and that was meant to be an invitation.” — interview with filmmaker Oz Perkins, Slant Magazine
Love Lies Bleeding, Max
“At first glance, Love Lies Bleeding might look like another Americana-steeped tale of lovers on the run. But a look beyond its sleek hardbodies reveals that director Rose Glass has once again made a monster movie, albeit one of a different character than the spiritual possession in her scorching debut Saint Maud. Here, Glass finds a Gothic-tinged tale of passion and pride burning brightly amidst the embers of the eighties.” — review, The Playlist
Sasquatch Sunset, Paramount+
“Sasquatch Sunset can swing between adult drama or Adult Swim at any given moment. It’s thrilling to know that a scene can go in any direction. The Zellners inspire a posture of leaning into the events rather than just passive observation of these creatures as if behind glass at the zoo. Beneath the furious grunting and frantic gesticulation lies something deeply, darkly familiar. Under thick suits of hair and makeup, Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough have the daunting task of rendering humanistic performances through a most animalistic form.” — review, The Playlist
This Closeness, MUBI
“An obvious point of comparison for This Closeness will inevitably be its lo-fi millennial forebearer, the mumblecore movement. No shots at the awkward talky subgenre that gave us Greta Gerwig, but Kit Zauhar makes naturalism feel … well, a little more natural! Her direction is remarkably clear of fussiness or preciousness as she charts the deterioration of trust among the trio. Without declaring its importance, This Closeness feels like the very film that will be studied as an embodiment of its era down the line with its unpretentious snapshots of gender, sexuality, and intimacy.” — Stream It or Skip It, Decider
Apart from all the Venice coverage (I’ll wait and compile that all at the end of this week), I also interviewed director Zia Anger and star Odessa Young for Slant Magazine about their extraordinary collaboration on the iconoclastic My First Film. This self-reflexive meta-movie is brilliant and very much worth your time when it comes to MUBI on Friday.
You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.
As we approach ten years since the Sony Pictures hack, this miniseries on The Big Picture’s feed does a fascinating retrospective on what has and hasn’t changed in Hollywood since.
I cringed and smiled my way through Nate Jones’ exhaustively argued (and substantiated) essay defining the “Obamacore” culture of 2009-2016 for Vulture. It’s worth a read!
I’ll be back in your inboxes this weekend with a little Venice recap, provided the additional travel to a wedding back stateside doesn’t completely decimate me!
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall