The best movies of 2024 so far

Movies released during the first few months of any year have it pretty rough. They’re competing with all the prestige movies still in theaters after the end-of-year rush for awards qualifications, and they’re coming out in a season where a lot of people are still exhausted from holiday season, financially strained by it, or both. It’s easy to overlook new releases at the beginning of the year — but fortunately, it’s also easier than ever to catch up, given how many movies debut on streaming services these days and how quickly theatrical releases move to streaming.

Here at Polygon, we keep a running list of the year’s best movies, starting early and updating often, making a case for the films we think are worth your time. It’s still early in the year, but we’ve already seen a variety of 2024 movies that we heartily recommend. And we’ll keep this list going throughout the year, so you can see what we’re watching and recommending and catch up on anything you’ve missed as new movies continue to roll out.

The movies will be listed in reverse chronological order, so the newest releases will always show up first. And we have a short section at the end devoted to late 2023 releases we didn’t have the time to consider for our 2023 best movies list. Our latest update added Furiosa, Love Lies Bleeding, Hit Man, Chime, Robot Dreams, The Bikeriders, and Property.

---

The best movies of 2024 so far

The Bikeriders

Where to watch: In theaters June 21

Writer-director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Midnight Special) adapted a classic book of photojournalism about 1960s biker clubs to make this wonderfully sturdy and old-fashioned (in a good way) gang melodrama. It’s built around three proper movie-star performances from some of the hottest actors around: a stupendously handsome Austin Butler going full James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, Jodie Comer going full Lorraine Bracco in Goodfellas (with a simply extraordinary Chicago accent), and Tom Hardy going full Tom Hardy. It’s a movie of simple pleasures — thunderous Harley-Davidsons, banging Shangri-Las needle drops, gorgeous actors looking cool — that transcend cliché to enter the realm of American myth. —Oli Welsh

Robot Dreams

Where to watch: In theaters

Director Pablo Berger was so dang moved by Sara Varon’s graphic novel Robot Dreams that he started an animation studio to make it into a movie. Told entirely without dialogue, Robot Dreams is about a lonely dog who befriends a robot and the whirlwind summer they spend together before life forces them apart. The characters are evocative and the anthropomorphic world is very charming. But despite the humanized animals, this isn’t a goofy, gag-filled movie; Robot Dreams is actually an incredibly poignant and bittersweet film all about the meaningful friendships that we can’t always take with us as life goes on. The last scenes hit like a gut punch, aching in the best sort of way. —Petrana Radulovic

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Where to watch: In theaters

Where George Miller’s 2015 masterpiece Mad Max: Fury Road was a metal ballad — the kind that makes you feel like a god for all of its absurd 15-minute run time — Furiosa is the rest of the concept album.

The prequel follows Imperator Furiosa (Alyla Browne and Anya Taylor-Joy) from kidnapping to “kidnapping,” beginning with warriors stealing her away and ending where Fury Road begins. Between, we get a moody, suspenseful story of a girl who must learn how to harness enormous rage against Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus, an equally threatening and pathetic villain.

It’s absurd to say about a Mad Max movie, but Furiosa is thinky. Miller shows, but he almost never tells — a big difference from Fury Road’s scrawl of “WE ARE NOT THINGS.” But Furiosa is not Fury Road. This much you must accept for it to seem wondrous. —Susana Polo

Hit Man

Where to watch: Netflix

Subtlety is often profoundly overrated. Take for instance Hit Man, the excellent new movie from Richard Linklater, a romantic comedy that’s mostly about whether or not people have the capacity to change. Another movie might make that a quiet, unspoken metaphor or a question that lingers around the edges of its characters’ psyches, but Hit Man makes the theme an essential part of every story beat, joke, and line of dialogue, making it not just one of the funniest movies of the year, but one of the most interesting and clever, too.

Hit Man follows the mild-mannered and generally boring Gary (Glen Powell), a philosophy professor who moonlights by helping the cops catch people trying to hire hitmen. What starts as a purely technical gig, rigging cameras and setting up wires, quickly transforms into an obsession for Gary when he’s asked to stand in for the fake hitman and realizes he’s got a knack for it. Of course, he also enjoys the fact that it gives him a chance to don an entirely new face and personality. Posing as a hitman lets Gary escape Gary, even for just a few minutes, and it’s outstanding. Until, of course, he falls for a girl who only knows him as the dangerous assassin “Ron.”

Gary’s philosophy teacher day job gives the movie a rare chance to address its questions of identity head-on. The script, co-written by Powell and Linklater, cleverly has Gary work through his own issues of self through his lectures, doing things like having his class discuss whether some people deserve to die — thereby letting his would-be girlfriend off the hook for trying to have her husband killed. It’s a gimmick that would lead another movie to utter disaster, but thanks to the charm of Powell, and the presentation of Linklater, Hit Man pulls it off beautifully, making the movie equal parts silly rom-com and insightful look at how people shape their personas as they move through the world. —Austen Goslin

I Saw the TV Glow

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

I Saw the TV Glow might be one of the scariest movies ever made about the suburbs. The manicured lawns and beautiful houses of American towns have long been one of the greatest settings for horror movies, but few have ever succeeded at making them feel as alienating and empty as Jane Schoenbrun’s latest film.

The movie follows Owen (Justice Smith), a teenager who feels like a self-conscious outsider in every situation, both socially and to himself, who meets Maddy (Bridgette Lundy-Paine) who introduces him to her favorite TV show: The Pink Opaque. The two bond over the show as their lives change around it, and the show slowly starts to seep more and more into their actual reality.

I Saw the TV Glow is a movie about the ways that art changes and shapes us. The way a special TV show can come along at just the right moment to suddenly turn your life in a different direction. It’s about the times that art can show us ourselves more clearly than any mirror, and how hard it can be to understand the gaps between the two. —AG

Property

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Apple TV, Vudu

In spite of strong, positive festival reviews and a Best Picture win at 2023’s Fantastic Fest, Daniel Bandeira’s terrifying directorial debut, Property, slipped straight onto digital services in May with little fanfare. But fans of tense, smart horror-thrillers shouldn’t miss it. Malu Galli stars as Teresa, the wife of a rich Brazilian property owner who’s winding down operations on his country estate. He plans to evict all the workers who maintain the property, tear down their homes, and build a hotel. At the same time, he’s demanding they pay off the debts they’ve incurred from living at subsistence-level wages, where any minor improvement to their lives or properties is considered a loan. When the workers revolt, Teresa winds up trapped in an armored car, stuck in a standoff with desperate people who can’t afford to let her leave.

Part Panic Room, part social drama, and part eat-the-rich movie, Property is cunningly engineered to keep the audience’s sympathies shifting from scene to scene as both sides in the conflict fight for survival. Teresa’s fight to survive is simple, but her adversaries’ situation is much more complicated, and Bandeira lets the face-off unfold in layered, complicated ways while still keeping the action breathless and gripping. It’s a real stunner, and it deserves much more attention than it’s gotten. —Tasha Robinson

The Fall Guy

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

Few movies in 2024 are going to be as much fun as The Fall Guy.

Somewhere between a rom-com and an action movie, The Fall Guy is about a stuntman (Ryan Gosling) coming back from an injury, and his ex-girlfriend (Emily Blunt) who’s finally getting the chance to direct her first big feature film. But when production of the movie is threatened by the erratic movie star (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) going missing, the stunt guy has to become a real hero to save the day.

The movie is big, silly, ridiculous, and very funny, but its best attribute is the gravity shifting charisma of its two stars. Gosling and Blunt are both tremendously charming in the movie, a winning couple that the movie makes it impossible not to root for, and who you can’t help but want to be friends with.

On top of that, the entire production is a love-letter to movies, and the stunt teams who make them possible. The movie is full of excellent car chases, ridiculous falls, and hilarious fights that all bring the kind of levity we don’t get enough from blockbusters anymore. —AG

Challengers

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

Director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, Bones and All) and writer Justin Kuritzkes (yes, the “Potion Seller” guy) bring a lot of intense energy to the sports drama / threesome drama Challengers, whether Guadagnino is shooting a tennis match from the ball’s point of view or Kuritzkes is leaping back and forth in time, filling in gaps in the romantic and professional history of three former friends and tennis rivals, played by Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor. Billed as a steamy, sexy movie about three-ways, it’s something much better — a movie that packs its sexual energy into a variety of different forms of rivalry and emotion, expertly woven together for maximum impact. It’s designed to keep audiences guessing right up to the final shot, and to get deeply invested in the outcome, whether or not they care about tennis, or even about sports in general. —TR

Chime

Where to watch: Roadstead.io

Chime is a horror movie about a sound that infects people like a virus. It worms its way into their brains until they hear it constantly, louder and louder, driving them toward random acts of horrific violence. And there’s no way to know who has it. It’s creepy enough as a premise to be intriguing, but throw in the fact that it was written and directed by Japanese horror legend Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and you have the recipe for one of the eeriest movies of the year.

Kurosawa’s masterstroke in Chime is, in part, to never overtly play the infecting tone for the audience. There are a few creepy, unidentifiable sounds, alien and distinct and always effective. But every sound in the movie is heightened, blaring while the characters stand (often completely still), constantly threatening some tragedy or new horror. It’s all horrifying in a way that feels completely unique to Chime, like Kurosawa invented a new kind of horror no one had heard before. —AG

Civil War

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

Alex Garland’s portrait of two war photographers in crisis, framed with a story about a country in crisis, has been one of the biggest conversation movies of 2024 — love it or hate it, critics and moviegoers want to talk about it. Civil War was expressly intended to get people talking about American politics and especially the importance of journalism, but on top of its sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant messages, it’s a mesmerizing character piece, anchored by a weary, emotional performance from Kirsten Dunst, and built around subtle character moments as much as immersive, intense combat sequences. It’s also one of the year’s crispest films, with a visual brightness and visual beauty that flies straight in the face of all the current conventional wisdom about dark cinematography. The movie is an experience, and the post-movie conversations are, too. —TR

Baby Assassins 2

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Amazon, YouTube

The first Baby Assassins was one of my very favorite movies of 2022, so it’s no surprise I loved the sequel. A fantastic mash-up of two unlikely genres – assassin thriller and teen girl slice-of-life – the Baby Assassins movies rely heavily on the outstanding star power of its leads (Saori Izawa and Akari Takaishi) and best-in-class fight choreography from Kensuke Sonomura.

This time, the baby assassins are struggling to pay off some surprising debts incurred through their work while also being hunted by two up-and-coming assassins who want their jobs. That leads, of course, to some classic teenage hijinks and some banger fights, including the girls brawling in mascot costumes and a banger finale that rivals the first movie’s excellent ending. I would be perfectly content with 20 more of these movies. —Pete Volk

The Beast

Where to watch: Theaters

Nocturama director Bertrand Bonello essentially makes three short films in three styles with The Beast, a heady, thrilling science fiction movie that follows two people (played by Léa Seydoux and George MacKay) through three incarnations, where they grapple with their emotions and their tentative connection in radically different ways. Loosely inspired by Henry James’ 1903 short story “The Beast in the Jungle,” Bonello turns the idea of a character living in dread, anticipating some great disaster, into his own Cloud Atlas. Pulling a gorgeous period drama, a tense Brian De Palma-style stalker-thriller, and a post-apocalyptic-future story into conversation with each other, Bonello offers up a pure science fiction experience that’s both technically impressive and emotionally absorbing. —TR

The First Omen

Where to watch: Hulu

It’s rare that any calendar year has a movie that’s as scary, viscerally upsetting, and exceptionally well made as The First Omen. It’s even more rare when that movie is technically a prequel to a five-decades old franchise, but here we are.

This prequel to The Omen follows a young nun, Margaret, who gets transferred to a beautiful and seemingly peaceful convent, until she notices some strange behavior and an orphaned girl who everyone thinks is disturbed. But as she looks into what’s wrong with the girl, Margaret finds a dark and sinister plot lurking just out of sight.

While the movie is technically a prequel to The Omen, what’s most interesting about director and co-writer Arkasha Steveson’s approach is that she seems more inspired by the tone and moody style of 70s horror movies and thrillers than she does to The Omen’s universe itself. Stevenson takes this suitably creepy set-up and folds in both supernatural horror and mystery in equal measure, twisting the whole plot into one big conspiracy where each reveal is more horrifying than the last.

The First Omen seems like a classic Hollywood misfire on paper. After all, why would we possibly need a prequel to The Omen? Who cares what Damien’s mom was up to? But if it means a movie this good and this scary, I’ll happily take a dozen more Omen prequels. —AG

Late Night with the Devil

Where to watch: Shudder, AMC Plus, digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

Late Night with the Devil is a mockumentary centered on the final broadcast of a fictional late night show from the 1970s. The show once trailed only Johnny Carson, but after personal tragedy struck host Jack Delroy, played perfectly by David Dastmalchian, his ratings started to plummet and he got more and more desperate. Finally, in a last ditch effort to regain his fans, Jack goes live on Halloween night with a daring plan: to use a supposedly possessed girl to commune with the devil, live on air.

The set up is tremendously fun, but the movie’s execution is even more impressive. Late Night with the Devil is a masterpiece of spooky moods and 70s vibes. Everything from the fictional late night set, to the dialog, to the performances, feels impeccably crafted to feel like a not-quite-right version of a show from 1977. The movie expertly rides the line between campy and creepy, pulling in just the right number of jokes to make its horrifying moments even scarier. —AG

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

Where to watch: Mubi, digital purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

Radu Jude’s first full feature since 2021’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn will certainly try some viewers’ patience: It’s 163 minutes of watching a harried, foul-mouthed production assistant, Angela (Ilinca Manolache) drive around Bucharest, alternating interviews for a factory’s safety PSA with making sexist, sneering Andrew Tate-inspired TikToks. Jude alternates her story with scenes from the 1982 Romanian film Angela Goes On, about a cab driver also making the rounds in Bucharest for work. The connection between the two Angelas and modern-Angela’s online alter ego “Bobita” takes some time to surface, as the film approaches its point elliptically from several directions at once, including through cameos from the original stars of Angela Goes On.

But it all comes together in a long-take finale that plays out as what seems likely to be the year’s funniest, most brutal takedown of corporate malfeasance, the gig economy, and capitalism as a whole. The contrast between a film made at a corporation’s behest, to serve its criminal agenda, and Angela’s freeform parodies of an influencer she hates is vivid and sly. And there’s a rebellious, subversive joy in the way she and the PSA’s subjects both try to tell their own truths in an oppressive environment where moneyed interests hold most of the cards. It’s a difficult film compared to the slick corporate IP that dominates multiplexes, but that just makes it endlessly unpackable and discussable — and more memorable than you’d expect for such a slow-burn story. —TR

The Animal Kingdom

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Amazon/Apple TV

As a mutation that turns people into human-animal hybrids starts to spread, a father and son search for the missing mother of the family, who has begun to transform herself.

Featuring realistic creature designs that blend practical and digital effects, a rich father-son relationship anchored by strong leading performances, and a compelling overarching narrative metaphor welcoming all sorts of interpretations, The Animal Kingdom stands out in modern sci-fi. It fires on all cylinders to create one of the more powerful movies of the year, evoking a rich world populated by fascinating people.

Part of the brilliance of The Animal Kingdom is the continued mundanity of human existence. Yes, everything we thought we knew about our species is being thrown into chaos, but there’s still work to do and school to attend and new love and enduring love and all the other shades of the human (or human-animal hybrid) experience. It’s in those moments that the true heart of the movie lies. —PV

Love Lies Bleeding

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

An adrenaline rush from start to finish, Love Lies Bleeding grabs you by the throat and never quite lets go. It follows Lou (Kristen Stewart), a reclusive gym manager with ties to the criminal underworld, who falls for aspiring bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian). While they share a few blissful weeks of peace and happiness, eventually Lou’s toxic family pulls them into a dark web, which spirals into some disastrous consequences. Stewart and O’Brian have an electric chemistry (not to mention some super steamy scenes), which makes their intense relationship simmer. It’s a wild ride, but Lou and Jackie hold fast and strong together, even when pushed to their limits. —PR

Dune: Part Two

Where to watch: Max

In 2021, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune felt like a promise. Whether you liked the movie or not, it came with an assurance that it was all in service of something better, more profound, and more epic to come. That kind of hype is hard to live up to, but with Dune: Part Two, Villeneuve exceeded even the wildest expectations.

While the movie is an astoundingly beautiful action blockbuster in the vein of epics like The Lord of the Rings, its most important feature might be how adeptly it handles its source material’s most complicated themes. Far from just being the standard chosen-one hero, the Paul Atreides of Dune: Part Two is tortured by the burden of prophecy and both dead-set on revenge and terrified of what it might cost to achieve it.

It’s a difficult line for a blockbuster to walk, but one Dune: Part Two pulls off with the perfect alchemy of terrific performances from movie stars and delicate direction by one of the best filmmakers working right now. —AG

How to Have Sex

Where to watch: Mubi, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon/Apple TV

The title sounds raucous, but How to Have Sex is in fact a tender, heartfelt, and searchingly honest coming-of-age tale about Tara, a brassy, secretly self-conscious 16-year-old virgin on a wild party holiday with her friends. It’s a quietly devastating movie about bad formative experiences, but also beautiful in its empathy and kindness, and funny, too.

If you liked Aftersun, this is a must-see — director Molly Manning Walker is part of an emerging, hugely talented generation of female British filmmakers that also includes Aftersun’s Charlotte Wells. —OW

The Promised Land

Where to watch: Hulu, free with a library card on Hoopla, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple, Vudu

The Promised Land is a sturdy historical drama anchored by a powerful performance by the ever reliable Mads Mikkelsen.

Mikkelsen plays the determined Ludvig Kahlen, a retired officer of the German army who has taken his pension to try and establish a homestead on a barren moor. When Kahlen starts to set up shop, he draws the attention of a powerful local landlord and magistrate, who sets out to ruin Kahlen’s efforts at any cost.

When two hardheaded men clash, sparks fly and people die. And that makes for some stellar Scandinavian cinema. —PV

The Greatest Night in Pop

Where to watch: Netflix

The Greatest Night in Pop is, to some extent, a documentary that’s great just by existing. The doc chronicles the one-night recording of “We Are the World,” a benefit song whose proceeds went to fight famine in Africa.

The whole premise of the song is that it gathered some of the most famous singers in America to all record the same song, so it’s a given that the documentary does the same. The Greatest Night in Pop’s most admirable feature is its willingness to stand aside and simply let us be a fly on the wall to see the brief, awkward, kind, hilarious, and heartwarming moments between stars like Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Bruce Springsteen, Kenny Loggins, Tina Turner, Billy Joel, Steve Perry, Quincy Jones, and Cyndi Lauper, just to name a few. —AG

Hundreds of Beavers

Where to watch: Fandor, free with a library card on Hoopla, or digital rental/purchase on Amazon and Apple TV

I can sell a film nerd on Hundreds of Beavers with a seven-word elevator pitch: Looney Tunes by way of Guy Maddin.

However, if you’re a film viewer who doesn’t traffic in Canadian arthouse obscurities, the pitch will take a bit more effort. Hundreds of Beavers garnered attention for reviving the slapstick silent film, if only for its 108 minute run time. But the black-and-white action comedy has gradually earned its reputation as a budding midnight movie thanks to its more modern flourishes.

The story — a trapper must collect enough pelts to survive, build, and eventually win love — parodies video game quests. Its small cast would float comfortably in Adult Swim’s pool of lovable oddballs. And what writer/director Mike Cheslik does with a comparably cheap camera, some trashy beaver costumes, and a true talent with homespun special effects would make even the most ambitious YouTube editor’s jaw hit the floor.

Unlike its modern cult contemporaries, like The Room and the films of Neil Breen, there’s no irony here. Cheslik has made something genuinely special, an excellent film that reminds us just how funny early cinema could be — and proves slapstick can still feel fresh a century later with a few timely tweaks. —Chris Plante

Mayhem!

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple, Vudu

The hardest-hitting action movie of the year saw Gangs of London veterans Xavier Gens and Jude Poyer combine forces for the explosive revenge thriller Mayhem! (also known by its original title, Farang).

Some people were mixed on this version of the revenge story (I loved it quite a bit), but everyone I’ve talked to agrees the brutal and gory action is among the best of any movie this year, with motivated camera movements to punctuate the blows and fluid choreography executed terrifically by former national champion kickboxer Nassim Lyes. And it all culminates in one of the best elevator fight scenes in action movie history. —PV

The best December 2023 movie we couldn’t consider last year

All of Us Strangers

Where to watch: Hulu

You can’t really call it a good, old-fashioned weepie — it’s far too dreamlike and strange for that — but Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers has unlocked the communal release of crying your eyes out in a movie theater like no other film in years (as well as that other communal activity of discussing a controversial ending).

A modern ghost story about a writer “visiting” his mother and father, who died when he was a boy, it will touch a deep nerve with anybody who has ever had parents, which is to say absolutely everyone. Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal are both superb, but Jamie Bell is the standout as an astonishingly convincing ’80s dad. —OW