Top Ten Films of 2024: A Retrospective

I like to leave it a few months before taking a look back at the previous year’s releases and picking my Top Ten films of the year – partly because it gives me some extra time to catch up with films I missed, but mainly because often the real test of a film is how well it ages in the months after you first see it.

With that in mind, it’s now time for my retrospective Top Ten review of 2024 – although as usual, there were a lot films that I really loved that still narrowly missed out on a spot in my Top Ten.  So in no particular order, I did want to give “Honourable Mentions” to the films that made up numbers 11-20 in my overall Top 20:

A Quiet Place: Day One – a touching character study more than a horror/thriller, this showed the potential for telling different kinds of stories within the same connected universe.

Hit Man – this darkly comic romantic-thriller is the kind of film that rarely gets made these days, but I loved it.  If you haven’t seen it, I can’t recommend it enough – probably the best “overlooked” film of 2024.

Moana 2 – the first Moana is perhaps my all-time favourite Disney animation, so this was never going to live up to my sky-high expectations – but it came close!

Road House (2024) – a total “guilty pleasure”, but Jake Gyllenhaal’s sardonic sense of humour and Doug Liman’s kinetically directed action sequences made this so much fun.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire – it is flawed, and it is over-stuffed with too many characters that have too little to do … but it’s still Ghostbusters, and I still love it!

Monkey Man – I didn’t know what I was expecting from Dev Patel’s directorial debut, but it certainly wasn’t this surprisingly brutal and pulpy tale of revenge and redemption.  Dev Patel blew me away both as a fight-performer and as an action director.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die – as a lifelong fan of this series, I love that it’s having an unexpected renaissance with 2020’s Bad Boys for Life and now this fourth chapter.  These films are so much fun, and (surprisingly) they’re not simply churning out more of the same.

Carry-On – yes, it’s another ‘Die-Hard-with-a-twist' concept, but it’s a piece of very well-written, well-directed and well-acted popcorn entertainment.  Like (the also very good) Twisters, these are old-school blockbusters, I had a blast with them both.

Gladiator II – it didn’t match the heights of the original, but it was also far better than I was expecting.  I enjoyed some plot developments that I didn’t see coming, and the monkey was hilarious!  A return to form for Ridley Scott after I was so disappointed by Napoleon.

Wicked (Part One) – not having seen the stage musical, I was impressed with the film’s emotional gut-punches, well-choreographed ensemble set-pieces, impressively performed songs, and interesting plot developments.  It arguably only missed out on a Top Ten spot because it’s only half the story…

But without further ado, here’s my (totally subjective and personal) Top Ten of 2024 (with links to my full, spoiler-free, reviews):

10) Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes: As a huge fan of the Andy-Serkis-headlined trilogy, I was worried that this continuation of the concept would lose its depth and edge … but this was actually a very worthy successor which continued to explore interesting moral dilemmas and has set up some intriguing plot threads for the “next generation” of characters to explore.

9) Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga: It’s fair to say that Mad Max: Fury Road was one of the most impressive action films of the last couple of decades, but I think many people may have been expecting Furiosa to be more of the same.  Instead, it’s a weird, excentric, decades-spanning character-driven thriller – some chapters (like the War Rig section near the middle) do recapture the spectacle of Fury Road, but other chapters are their own, dark creations.  I loved that this swung for the fences and was unlike any other film out there, and it’s also a prequel that deepens any rewatch of Fury Road in the future.

8) Inside Out 2: I was not expecting too much from this belated sequel, but if anything, this resonated with me more than the first film did.  I’m not saying that it’s a better film than the beloved original, but the themes probably struck more of a chord for me – this was as much therapy to work through my issues as it was a family-friendly animated fantasy movie.

7) Alien: Romulus: I know that objectively, some people accuse this film of being a “greatest hits” of the first two films in the series … but given that Alien and Aliens are two of my all-time favourite films, you can’t blame me for having such a great time with this one.  Also, David Jonsson and Cailee Spaeny give phenomenal performances in this movie, and both have great careers ahead of them.

6) Civil War: Speaking of Cailee Spaeny, this was a breakthrough year for her, with two films in my Top Ten.  Civil War is a film that has stuck with me since I first saw it over a year ago, so it has real staying power.  I think when I first saw it, I thought it was great but I maybe needed time to digest just how great it was (I’m kinda regretting only giving it a 4-star review originally!) – it really is firing on all cylinders and not only keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout, but also gives you a lot to think about afterwards.

And now, on to my Top Five...

5) Argylle: This film got a bit of a critical mauling, but I think that maybe had more to do with some critics’ issues with director Matthew Vaughn than it did with the movie itself.  I had a great time with this movie – it’s cheesy and tongue-in-cheek, while also being playful and genuinely funny, with a surprisingly emotional and romantic core.  All that, and it also had an amusingly out-there and far-fetched, twisty-turning spy thriller mystery of a plot that propelled everything along.  Yes, it was another film that tried to run before it could walk (talks of sequels, prequels and a film version of the fictional novel in the movie all look very premature now), but even if nothing else is ever made in the Argylle “universe”, it won’t take away from how enjoyably this movie is.

4) Abigail: You could call this a guilty pleasure if you want, but as a big fan of vampire movies (and as someone who loves From Dusk Til Dawn’s mash-up of the crime and vampire genres), this was like catnip for me.  So dark, so violent, and so funny, I loved every minute of this film and enjoyed all of its over-the-top, darkly comedic gore.  When the directors of Ready or Not, Scream 5 and Scream VI say that they used more fake blood in this film that any of their previous movies, know that they weren’t exaggerating!

Which brings us to my Top Three...

3) The Fall Guy: I’ll be honest with you … on a different day, I could easily list my Top Three in a different order, as there’s only a hair’s breadth between them.  I’m a sucker for private detective films, and that’s essentially what The Fall Guy is – except it’s also so much more than that.  This had comedy that made me laugh from beginning to end, stunts that blew my mind, and a touching rom-com at its heart.  I love this film unreservedly, and although I’ve seen it about four times already, it never fails to put a smile on my face.

2) Deadpool & Wolverine: I loved the first two Deadpool films, but this took the series to a whole new level.  More comedy, more OTT violence and creative swearing – but also more heart, more plot, and more poignancy.  It takes a special kind of film to have me laughing at a pegging gag one minute, and welling up at a character moment the next, but this film expertly balances those tonal shifts.  Ryan Reynolds has arguably never been better, but this also gives Hugh Jackman a chance to give his character a second send-off, on a more upbeat note, without lessening the impact of Logan.  And the end credits BTS montage confirms that this film is as much a love letter to the OG superhero films that paved the way for the MCU as it is just a film about Deadpool and Wolverine.

Film of the Year 2024 – Dune: Part Two: While I had a big grin on my face during all of The Fall Guy and Deadpool & Wolverine, watching Dune: Part Two was a very different experience.  The Fall Guy and Deadpool & Wolverine were the most “entertaining” films of 2024, but Dune: Part Two was an epic masterpiece of cinematic sci-fi drama.  Visually, it was like nothing else I’ve ever seen (just thinking of the sandworm-riding scene, or the infrared black & white of the Harkonnen arena, for example), but it was so much more than just visual spectacle.  In particular, the poignancy of Zendeya’s journey in the second film was fantastically realised, and I can’t remember the last time I saw a morally complex character arc performed as well as Timothée Chalamet did across these two films.  The emotional gut punch at the end of this film left me almost breathless, and I cannot wait to see the final chapter now that Dune: Messiah has been officially greenlit.

For more recommendations, you can also check out the earlier rundown of my Cinematic Highlights of 2024, which includes my nominations for categories such as “Villain of the Year”, “Most Divisive Film of 2023” and “Person of the Year”.