The 25 best movies of 2024

In the prologue to Brian Raftery's 2019 book Best. Movie. Year. Ever: How 1999 Blew Up The Big Screen, Fight Club leading man Edward Norton remarked that 1999's cinema was responding to a lot of uncertainty over the future. Specifically, works from this era were about, per Norton, "that anxiety about being asked to enter a world that seemed a little bit uninviting." Raftery reaffirms this concept in his observation that, after so many political upheavals in the '90s, "by the time 1999 arrived, it felt like anything could happen."

A similar level of existential woe permeated 2024's cinema exploits. Loneliness was the common denominator across these motion pictures. Whether it was Willie S. searching for love in Queer, Megatron feeling like his whole life was a lie in Transformers One, or the individual family members in Mountains (among many other movies), 2024 films chronicled souls who felt abandoned even when they stood inside a crowd. We are so often on our own, just like so many 2024 protagonists.

However, even with this deeply relatable loneliness in 2024 cinema, not to mention too many real-world atrocities to speak of, I cannot give up on the world or people. As a wise Waymond Wang once said, "When I choose to see the good side of things, I'm not being naive. It is strategic and necessary. It's how I've learned to survive through everything."

Even in the face of all this turmoil, joy still slips through, like a beautiful flower blossoming within the concrete. Cinema brought us all so much elation in 2024, from all the delightful "holding space" memes to everyone rocking out to the Challengers score to especially memorable theatrical moviegoing experiences. Wasn't it amazing, too, to see videos of people responding so vividly to movies within a theater? In my local confines of Dallas, Texas, the Texas Theatre continued to be a beacon of light for the Dallas moviegoing scene, including with the installation of its adorable video store. Artists from around the world poured their hearts and souls into movies this year that made the challenges of day-to-day existence a little more bearable. Even the most harrowing features reminded us that we're not alone in our most isolated moments. We're not the only ones experiencing tremendous turmoil in this world.

There was so much joy to savor this year, including in the existence of high-quality movies. Cinema's outstanding power was both more apparent and necessary than ever before in 2024.

The 25 best movies of 2024 were not the only standout features of the 217 2024 new releases I saw in the last 12-ish months. But they're especially remarkable feats of filmmaking even beyond their frequently timely nature. In any year, their visual, narrative, and acting-based feats would be worth celebrating. These are especially challenging times to get through. The prospect of waking up every day and discovering further movies as good as the 25 best features of 2024, though, makes it a lot more bearable. Without further ado, let's delve into the 25 best movies of the year, starting with number 25.

25. Flow (dir. Gints Zilbalodis)

Flow is the perfect counterpoint to projects like the needlessly loud Despicable Me sequels. A silent film relying on cuddly animals and striking animation to carry the day, Flow puts a mishmash of critters (including a black kitty, lemur, and crane) into a boat during a potentially apocalyptic flood. It’s a simple premise that proves incredibly engaging. Like Gunda, Flow compels audiences to become absorbed in the plight of non-anthropomorphic animals. That mission is executed through gorgeous visuals and terrific subdued gags (like a capybara’s static disaffected expression). Obnoxiously noisy animated films were found dead in a ditch after Flow dropped.  

24. Longlegs (dir. Osgood Perkins)

Longlegs joins David Lynch's Lost Highway in the rare pantheon of movies that truly simulates what it's like to experience a nightmare. It's not just that scary things are happening, but that the entire world seems askew. Even when you're walking down a hallway in a nightmare, something is off. Director Osgood Perkins masterfully recreates that sensation in Longlegs, a frightening descent into a world where terror lurks within the walls of every suburban home. The way the camera lingers on empty shots or obtuse blocking between characters (like in Kiernan Shipka and Maika Monroe's big scene together) vividly evokes what it's like to be trapped in your own mind. The grand tonal swings (such as brief forays into dark comedy) only solidify this chilling ambiance. It's a haunting atmosphere brought to life through incredibly evocative visuals and gusto performances, particularly from Nicolas Cage. Like with Lost Highway, I couldn't shake off Longlegs when I finished watching it. The most impactful nightmares tend to linger, after all.

23. Love Lies Bleeding (dir. Rose Glass)

By now, film geeks everywhere are incredibly aware of Love Lies Bleeding's most famous virtues, including Katy O'Brian's star-making lead turn and its incredibly energetic editing. However, I haven't seen enough people talk about how well director Rose Glass handles dark comedy in this picture. Kristen Stewart's critical delivery of "yep" over the phone in the third act is dynamite, ditto her lunging over a tennis court to reach her romantic interest. Let's also not forget when Ed Harris just walks over and takes a huge chomp out of a bug he's been cradling the rest of the runtime. How can you not applaud a movie that makes the sickening crunch of toe-gnawing so memorable?

22. How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (dir. Pat Boonnitipat)

Countless "darker" American comedies like The Boss or The Wrong Missy stumble mightily in initially reveling in mean-spirited mayhem before transitioning into traditional third-act sentimentality. It takes a deft touch to balance the cynical with the sweet. Writer/director Pat Boonnitipat wields just that kind of touch with his feature How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies. The movie's starting premise concerns young adult M (Putthipong "Billkin" Assaratanakul) abruptly taking care of his ailing grandmother, Mengju (Usha "Taew" Seamkhum), to score a potentially lucrative inheritance. A grim premise yields a motion picture bountiful when it comes to humorous moments and deeply effective tearjerker sequences. Boonnitipat takes the time to render M, Menju, and their larger family as believable human beings. He also wisely roots the initial cynical starting premise in the wider world’s commodification of people (you can make money off anyone, even the elderly!).

That just makes the blossoming M/Mengju friendship extra moving. Throw in an outstanding performance from Seamkhum and I feel comfortable declaring one thing...How to Make Millions Before Grandma is a more successful creative enterprise than The Wrong Missy.

21. Nosferatu (dir. Robert Eggers)

When Pitbull sang "I'm a little freaky, baby, alright" on the unspeakably cursed remix of the country song "Drink to That All Night," he might as well have been talking about all of us. We're all freaky in our own special ways. For writer/director Robert Eggers, his freakiness manifests through ornately crafted features simultaneously rich with craftsmanship and flatulence. For his vision of Nosferatu, Eggers merges the rich costume design of a James Ivory movie and precise cinematography evocative of Łukasz Żal with psychosexual violent mayhem that wouldn’t be out of place in Frankenhooker. It’s a sumptuous unhinged good time, with blood, gyrating bodies, and upper-crust societies gradual decay everywhere. A wide shot involving Nicholas Hoult walking on a trail in the dark as snow falls alone took my breath away. The fact that it’s just one of many striking images in this feature just shows the value of tapping into that freakiness Pitbull was crooning about years ago.

20. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (dir. George Miller)

How do you make a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road? The answer turned out to be, you don't. You instead make Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, a standalone film that happens to interconnect with Fury Road. Director George Miller's latest Mad Max production had a tremendous scope fused with an aching tragic soul. Furiosa's story is one of robbed potential...who could she have been if it weren't for the fascist forces normalized by Immortan Joe and Dr. Dementus? Who could any of us be if The Wasteland didn't exist? Such existential queries survived side-by-side with extraordinary action set pieces involving paragliders and a tremendous Anya Taylor-Joy performance. If you yearn for a balm from the era of fan-service-oriented blockbuster cinema, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is here to be your savior.

19. Wicked (dir. Jon M. Chu)

The movie musical was in an unquestionable rut for so much of 2024. The long-awaited Wicked movie (the first part of this adaptation, anyway), thankfully, concluded the year on a soaring note. Those irresistible tunes from lyricist Stephen Schwartz and company are still as catchy and toe-tapping as ever. I haven't been able to get tracks like "What Is This Feeling?" or "The Wizard and I" out of my head for weeks! Better yet, though, the fresh delightful elements director Jon M. Chu and his cohorts bring to the table. They execute those ditties with unabashedly maximalist style. Colors and crisp camerawork abounded on the screen, not to mention a big embrace of grand emotions. Who can resist a rendition of "Popular" lathered in bright costumes and inescapable lesbian overtones? Pair all that glorious spectacle with unforgettable turns from Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande and it's no wonder Wicked defied expectations as well as gravity. Now, let's just make sure Elphaba and Glinda smooch in part two and we'll have an all-time banger on our hands.

18. Hard Truths (dir. Mike Leigh)

Our long international nightmare is over... Mike Leigh is back writing and directing movies. His grand return manifested in 2024 in Hard Truths, another compelling intimate look at everyday British life. This production also reunited Leigh with Secrets & Lies leading lady Marianne Jean-Baptise, here playing the fiercely anti-social Pansy Deacon. A woman with endless curt phrases on the tip of her tongue, Jean-Baptiste fully commits to this abrasive role to a marvelous degree. The most cutting words sound like poetry in her hands. Jean-Baptiste grabs your attention, but Hard Truths keeps viewers riveted through its realistically jagged depictions of complicated familial dynamics. Only Leigh could make a subdued Mother's Day lunch so transfixing. A tour de force lead performance anchors another Leigh winner uncovering quality cinema from the mundane.

17. The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel (dir. Jenny Nicholson)

The 2020s documentary film landscape is defined by surface-level celebrity profiles and generic true crime investigations as the 2000s documentary film landscape was dominated by irritating Michael Moore/Morgan Spurlock pastiches. Into this derivative domain strolls the latest Jenny Nicholson masterpiece. Released on YouTube early in 2024, The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel provides a lengthy dive into the failed hotel Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. Four hours fly right by in the hands of this insightful feature combining on-the-ground footage of Nicholson experiencing the Galactic Starcruiser and newly-shot retrospectives on her time spent in a galaxy far, far away. Corporate rot, misconceived ideas for escapism, and a treatise about a deeply ill-placed pole ensue. This in-depth breakdown of a staggeringly costly boondoggle is as hilarious as it is tragic.

The incorporation of compassion towards the working-class employees trying to make this miscalculated exercise is deftly blended with stinging condemnation of the executives who concocted something as hair-brained as the Galactic Starcruiser. Also, Nicholson's masterful comic timing remains as impeccable as ever. She's working on another level compared to most modern documentarians, let alone other YouTube video essayists.

16. How to Have Sex (dir. Molly Manning Walker)

Joy can curdle into trauma so quickly. A stroll down the street while listening to bubbly music can suddenly get interrupted by sexual harassment from some male passerby. Writer/director Molly Channing Walker infuses that reality into How to Have Sex. Initially, teenage best pals Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), Skye (Lara Peake), and Em (Enva Lewis) are all convinced their weekend trip to Malia will be one to remember. While here, Tara experiences unspeakable sexual trauma, an experience Walker's filmmaking and McKenna-Bruce's performance both vividly realize on-screen. A whip-smart script showing how survivors of sexual violence are marginalized even after their traumatic experiences just makes the production even more heartbreaking to watch. How to Have Sex is a devastating work and a remarkable showcase for Mia McKenna-Bruce as a leading lady.

15. Challengers (dir. Luca Guadagnino)

Everything is awesome? More like everything is phallic in the sweaty, sexual world of Challengers. Director Luca Guadagnino doesn't hold back in making sure the two male participants in this movie's love triangle always have a very specific type of object near or in their mouths, like bananas, churros, and more. Erotic tension permeates this delightfully ribald production while the propulsive camerawork (those low-angle shots with sweat dripping down on the lens!!) and an iconic Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross score get the blood relentlessly pumping. On top of it all is a mesmerizing Zendaya performance, which just earned her a Golden Globe nomination. The two leading Challengers men are fun, but Zendaya's really special here. If you're not left cheering when she eviscerates a cocky male tennis player in an alleyway, well, to quote Homer Simpson, "in some ways, you and I are different people."

14. The Wild Robot (dir. Chris Sanders)

Like the best animated movies, The Wild Robot is absolutely gorgeous to behold. Painted backgrounds dominate this movie's naturalistic landscapes, while hand-drawn influences seep into the character designs. It’s all as glorious to behold as the feature’s movingly sincere approach to pathos. The film’s titular robot, Roz, lacks a mouth or a super expressive face. That makes it just even more impressive that director Chris Sanders and voice-over performer Lupita Nyong’o wring so much emotional power out of this automaton. Plus, the most moving moments of wilderness unity feel extra earned when juxtaposed against The Wild Robot's willingness to go dark (like showing a decapitated animal head on-screen). In a terrific year for animated cinema, The Wild Robot was an especially remarkable and tear-inducing triumph.

13. Kneecap (dir. Rich Peppiatt)

One of the year's rowdiest movies, Kneecap was also one of 2024's most enthralling accomplishments. All other non-Better Man music biopics, get out of the way, this tale of a bunch of Irish rappers put them all to shame. The story of the Kneecap rap group was told with such fervently energetic filmmaking, that the camerawork and editing were as alive as the three lead characters. Best of all, it's a movie that deftly combines the ribald with the heartfelt. This is a tremendously moving yarn about being proud of your language and culture...that's also got giddily profane lyrics to spare. Kneecap was a cinematic party you just couldn't miss out on.

12. Green Border (dir. Agnieszka Holland)

I've thought about Green Border character Leila (Behi Djanati Atai) a lot since I watched this Agnieszka Holland directorial effort earlier this year. She is one of several immigrant characters in Green Border trying to enter the European Union and secure a stable life. Unlike her compatriots, Leila fully believes that, thanks to her brother's prior cooperation with the U.S. military, there is justice in this new land. No matter what horrors are perpetrated against herself and her loved ones, surely powerful people will eventually right these wrongs. That outcome never arrives. There is a staggering heartbreaking gulf between Leila's perception of the world and how it actually functions.

Holland's harrowing filmmaking realizes a realm that holds a mirror up to reality: the dehumanization of "the other" is celebrated, not chastised. Stripping immigrants of their humanity is the norm, not some barbaric exception. The only salvation comes from working-class people working together. Green Border is a masterfully crafted exploration of modern-day horrors demonstrating Holland at the pinnacle of her prowess. No wonder a character like Leila has stuck with me.

11. The Brutalist (dir. Brady Corbet)

Remember how at the dawn of the 2020s, so many of us, masks firmly on our faces and seated far apart, sat for a showing of Bloodshoot in mid-March 2020 and thought, "Is this it?" Will theatrical cinema end with this Vin Diesel schlock? Thankfully, the 2020s have produced a series of sprawling epics functioning as spry refutations of the idea that cinema is going anywhere. Godland, Babylon, Killers of the Flower Moon, and now The Brutalist are all sprawling productions with scope to spare and power that really hits when experienced on the big screen.

For The Brutalist, Brady Corbet's third directorial effort utilizes meticulously detailed filmmaking to tell a parable about the American immigrant struggle. It's an inevitably tragic yarn, as protagonist László Tóth (Adrien Brody) struggles to realize his grandest ambitions (that the building he designs as an architect can inspire people and change) against the unstoppable current of capitalism and American contempt for immigrants. It's a staggering tale worthy of entering the canon of great epic cinema. It's just extra sweeter that exists in a post-Bloodshot world!

10. Sing Sing (dir. Greg Kwedar)

Sing Sing has many intricate qualities that make it one of 2024's crowning cinematic achievements. However, some of its greatest flourishes are also simple. For one thing, the film looks fantastic shot on 16mm film. There's such an innately lived-in quality to every image in Sing Sing that perfectly fits its deeply experienced primary characters. Clarence Maclin's supporting performance, meanwhile, is instantly striking, he grabs your attention and never lets go from the moment he walks into frame. Moving sequences like a montage of actors auditioning for roles in a play or a former Sing Sing inmate returning to talk to his friends effortlessly wrung tears out of my eyes. This is a tremendously absorbing feature emotionally anchored with such mastery by Colman Domingo. You could totally write a doctoral thesis about why Sing Sing is great. Also, just watch any scene where Maclin and Domingo's characters talk to each other and you'll immediately get this movie's power.

9. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (dir. Radu Jade)

The latest pitch-black comedy from director Radu Jade unwaveringly examines the modern world as a bizarre dystopia. In an age of unbelievable technological innovations, capitalism and the grasp of gigantic corporations is inescapable, even if you're in a graveyard. Following beleaguered assistant Angela (Ilinca Manolache) as she navigates a typical day in her toxic workspace paints a searing portrait of 2024 existence. This is especially true in terrific sequences bleakly depicting her employers wanting to highlight disabled workers...but only the "right kind" of disabled workers and so long as these workers don't condemn the employers responsible for their lost limbs. Inclusive language co-opted to save the bourgeoise, how Amazon of them!

From its fascinating use of footage from Lucian Bratu's film Angela merge mai departe to its impressively executed lengthy closing single-take sequence, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World exquisitely portrays a dystopia unfolding in real-time.

8. Aattam (dir. Anand Ekarshi)

Beyond the concept of loneliness, there's also a fascinating recurring motif in 2024 cinema of showing the only solidarity in this world occurring between people on lower tiers of the societal totem pole. Anora and The Brutalist, for instance, show working-class unity in narratives about how rich people don't care about normal folks. The excellent drama Aattam features one such unforgettable sequence in which Anjali (Zarin Shihab), the only woman in an otherwise all-male acting troupe, defers her bed to Shajitha (Nandini Gopalakrishnan) and her daughter at a party. After this, the two cozily embrace and Anjali expresses gratitude that there's another lady at this shindig. It's a sweet moment on its own, but it's especially touching given that the ensuing story involves Anjali's male co-workers all debating what to do when they realize a member of the group has groped her. Aattam chronicles the endless ways even "nice guys" contribute to the dehumanization of marginalized genders and sexual trauma survivors. It does so with such sharp writing and a murderer's row of fantastic performances, not to mention one of the greatest gut-punch endings of the year.

This incredible exploration just makes that brief connection between Anjali and Shajitha so extra vital. In a movie about people dehumanizing Anjali, Aattam emphasizes women's solidarity. It's a terrific detail in a transfixing movie rife with such thoughtful embellishments.

7. The People's Joker (dir. Vera Drew)

"Send in the clowns...especially if they come from the imagination of Vera Drew!" After being stuck in legal purgatory for ages, The People's Joker finally sprung into theaters this year like an anarchic lightning bolt. Emotionally vulnerable and bursting with visual imagination (the Bat-Cave rendered like a Minecraft level/late 90s PC game is ingenious), this satirical feature took comic book characters dominating pop culture and made them feel brand new. 2024 was a year where so many comic book adaptations looked backward, scraping up the bottom of the nostalgia barrel. Drew, meanwhile, excitingly pondered how a story set in Gotham could look like nothing else on the planet.

In between ribald jokes and visual dexterity was an emotionally raw narrative that truly touched the soul. It's not easy to alternate from carefree anarchy to pathos, but Drew assuredly found a way. The People's Joker was a hysterical jab at societal norms and standard filmmaking techniques that we didn't deserve... but desperately needed!

6. No Other Land (dir. Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor)

The documentary form was popularized in the 1920s through Nanook of the North, a movie postulating insulting portraits of Indigenous lives as "reality." No Other Land subverts documentary cinema's origins to instead deliver a searing record of all too real atrocities. Homes obliterated. An elementary school was eradicated. Water wells filled to the brim with cement. No Other Land bears unflinching witness to these atrocities, creating one of the most harrowing documentaries of all time. Scenes of director and central on-screen subject Basel Adra being chased by Israel Defense Force (IDF) soldiers while filming their crimes alone are astonishing to behold. Meanwhile, quiet scenes of Palestinians trying to exist or protest under extraordinary circumstances are similarly absorbing. No Other Land is a masterful subversion of the documentary form that's also just immersive, emotionally urgent filmmaking on its own merits.

5. All We Imagine as Light (dir. Payal Kapadia)

All We Imagine as Light had me glued to the screen from the get-go with its incredible opening sequence balancing expansive visuals with deeply intimate voice-over testimony from a variety of Mumbai residents. Instantly, writer/director Payal Kapadia reassures viewers she hasn't lost an ounce of her creative juices from A Night of Knowing Nothing in her narrative feature film debut. From there, the quiet, low-key story of two Malayali nurses just trying to make it another day in Mumbai rivets the eyes and souls.

Even within a subdued atmosphere, rich emotions guide All We Imagine as Light's story, like Anu's (Divya Prabha) shopping for garbs as part of a plan to sneak into the house of her lover, Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon). Equally powerful images, like lead character Prabha (Kani Kusruti) curling up at night with a rice cooker or the film's final unforgettable image, also dominate the screen within All We Imagine as Light. Above all else, Light cemented Kusruti as one of my favorite actors working today, she's utterly unrecognizable between this and fellow 2024 gem Girls Will be Girls. How glorious that such a mesmerizing artist should headline an instant classic like All We Imagine as Light.

4. The Seed of the Sacred Fig (dir. Mohammad Rasoulof)

We are all connected. The strife of the outside world can never be fully divorced from our everyday lives, no matter how much some may want that. The Seed of the Sacred Fig is a miracle of a movie that vividly captures this reality through a domestic drama chronicling a family slowly falling apart against the backdrop of widespread protests in Tehran. Confined to largely just the principal family's house, Sacred Fig is a propulsive and enthralling production that makes 167 minutes fly by in the blink of an eye.

Writer/director Mohammad Rasoulof's craftsmanship in perfectly executed suspense-driven sequences is truly wondrous to behold. The incorporation of real archival footage of Iranian protestors being brutalized and the four lead performances are similarly outstanding. Like Madchen in Uniform, For Sama, and Salt of the Earth, the very existence of The Seed of the Sacred Fig is a marvel. To sweeten the pot, it's also a motion picture as timely as it is mesmerizing.

3. Anora (dir. Sean Baker)

I'll never forget watching Anora for the first time and spending the entirety of the film's second half leaning forward in my chair, desperately thinking in my brain, "Ok, this is where Ani is going to pull out some reverse Uno card and gain the upper-hand in this situation." Surely she won't lose her marriage, surely there's an outcome here where she's victorious. Writer/director Sean Baker's screenplay got me so profoundly wrapped up in Ani's plight, that I would've followed her to the ends of the Earth... which just makes the ultimately devastating ending all the more crushing to witness.

2024 was the year of loneliness-driven cinema and Anora's bleak depiction of upward mobility in modern America being a myth encapsulated that beautifully. In addition to being such a perfectly mournful look at 2024 existence, Anora also flourished as a comedy (the gag with Igor tossing around the metal bat outside left me in stitches) and a showcase for an unforgettable firecracker performance from Mikey Madison. How could I not get tremendously immersed in the latest winner from the Tangerine/Starlet/Florida Project mastermind?

2. Nickel Boys (dir. RaMell Ross)

Nickel Boys rewired my brain. After I saw this RaMell Ross directorial effort, which is shot entirely from various first-person perspectives, I briefly couldn’t watch movies like I had before. My brain was suddenly preoccupied with the underlying meaning behind every camera angle in a given movie, whether I was absorbing a trashy horror movie or an artsy drama! Ross and cinematographer Jomo Fray’s subversive camerawork is simply that astonishing, as are so many other parts of this idiosyncratic production. The sound design, for one, makes the simplest things like marbles bouncing down a staircase incredibly striking. Full-on commitment to a compelling non-linear story structure also exudes a level of artistic confidence that’s impossible to resist. Even conceptually simple things, like the way natural light looks so gorgeous in Fray’s cinematography, immediately burrowed themselves into my memories forever.

Nickel Boys is a one-of-a-kind movie that inspires awe and tears with equal levels of effortlessness. Oh, and it just might make it hard for you to return to watching standard cinematic camerawork techniques!

1. Hundreds of Beavers (dir. Mike Cheslik)

Man vs. wilderness. It’s one of the oldest molds for narratives in existence. Everyone from Jack London to Larisa Shepitko (among many others) explored this terrain. Yet nobody’s quite done a man vs. wilderness story like Hundreds of Beavers. A zany homage to classic silent comedies and Looney Tunes cartoons, Beavers should not prove so relentlessly hysterical for its 110-minute runtime. But it does. Oh, good gravy, does it ever endure as hilarious. Writer/director Mike Cheslik (who penned the script with leading man Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) just makes this fictional universe excitingly escalate in absurdity, with each new gag building on top of each to create a Russian nesting doll of winter-coated lunacy. As a wise Smash Mout might say, "The yuks start coming and they don't stop coming. " So many jokes, no matter how preposterous, keep coming back into play into the plot in such imaginative ways.

All these jokes are told through such inspired homemade visuals, including humans draped in delightfully ordinary animal costumes to represent rabbits, raccoons, and, of course, beavers. These lo-fi touches perfectly nestle Beavers within its silent cinema influences, while performances from Tews and Olivia Graves are also a gift. Best of all, Hundreds of Beavers keeps the laughs coming, whether it’s through a running gag involving doggies playing poker, a puppet frog screaming, or the best joke involving gay rabbits I’ve ever seen in a movie. Hundreds of Beavers excitingly eschews all the rules for how modern comedies “should” operate, right down to when it decides to drop its title card. In the process, it creates an endearing slice of comedy cinema that can’t be missed. Just the extended sequence where the protagonist of Beavers follows a pair of rabbit footprints alone cements this feature as 2024’s greatest cinematic eschew-accomplishment!