Chris Reed’s Top 10 Films of 2024

This was another good year for movies, though perhaps not as good as 2023, which saw the release of Past Lives, a film I absolutely adored. As is frequently the case, the bigger-budget extravaganzas, though entertaining, did not quite rise to the level of major cinematic accomplishment for me and so are not here; that said, in my longer list, which I will soon post to my blog, there may be at least one box-office hit there.

Below you will find 10 films—5 documentaries and 5 fiction, like I usually do—taken from the longer list (of 10 and 10) I already posted over at Hammer to Nail (HtN). All have had some kind of release, whether on a streamer or in theaters, before the end of the year or, if not, then they are coming out very soon. There’s a lot I saw at festivals that I also loved but which has yet to come out for the general public, so this list leaves them off. Some of the yet-to-be-released films may also end up on the longer list on my blog.

I have already reviewed, in full, all the titles below, and therefore link to those reviews, whether on this site or at HtN. They are listed alphabetically, rather than in order of preference. Enjoy!

Christopher Llewellyn Reed

Christopher Llewellyn Reed is a film critic, filmmaker, and educator, as well as Film Festival Today's Editor. A member of both the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, Chris is, in addition, lead film critic at Hammer to Nail and the author of Film Editing: Theory and Practice.