The best movies of the first half of 2024
'Hit Man' leads the halftime top ten
Today is July 1, meaning that we’re now past the halfway point of 2024.
Movie-wise, it’s been a decent-enough year so far if you know where to look. For all the talk of the strikes pushing back key releases, the overall weakness of the box office in general, and the common belief that There Are Never Any Good Movies Anymore, it’s been a decent movie year so far.
My favorite films of the first six months of 2024:
Hit Man. Richard Linklater’s film, which I first saw at the New York Film Festival last fall, further establishes Glen Powell as a movie star while also balancing romance, humor, and a smart crime plot. It deserved a bit more theatrical push than it got, but you can still watch it on Netflix.
Drive Away Dolls. Ethan Coen’s solo feature directorial debut, written with his wife Tricia Cooke, felt a lot like an old-fashioned Coen Brothers movie, except that it had the type of queer sensibility almost entirely absent from their work. With fantastic work from leads Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan, you can catch up with this on Peacock.
Dune Part Two. The second installment of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation builds on the original while finally finding a way to crack this novel series that was long thought unfilmable. It’s now streaming on Max.
I Saw the TV Glow. Director Jane Schoenbrun’s second film is both an allegory about trans identity and an homage to the television and pop culture of the 1990s. At the same time, it’s the year’s most visually inventive movie, with wall-to-wall great music. It’s now available for VOD rental.
Kinds of Kindness. Six months after winning a bunch of Oscars for the comparatively accessible Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos returned to the weird with this three-part anthology featuring Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, and other actors in multiple roles. This isn’t for everyone, but I laughed quite a lot. It’s in theaters now.
Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World. Romanian auteur Radu Jude, back in 2022, made Bad Luck Banging, Or: Loony Porn, one of my favorite pieces of international cinema in recent memory and the only great pandemic movie. Now he’s back, with another ambitious take, this time on labor, commerce, and (as usual) Romanian history. Now streaming on Mubi.
Problemista. Delayed from last fall due to the strike, this is the directorial debut of former SNL writer Julio Torres, who also stars. It’s a plot that sounds saccharine and political but isn’t really either; it sports a wild performance from Tilda Swinton. The film is streaming on Max.
The People’s Joker. Vera Drew’s sharp, absurdist parody of the Batman/Joker mythology finally got a real release this spring after it was pulled from the Toronto Film Festival in 2022 and only got a few scattered screenings last year. It’s not, however, available to stream.
A Storm Foretold. The year has had quite a few political documentaries, but this was the best one, examining cartoon-villain political adviser Roger Stone in the final months of the Trump Administration. This one has everything, from Stone fighting with the filmmaker to a backseat-of-a-car rant against Ivanka (“your abortionist bitch daughter”) on Trump’s final day in office.
Snack Shack. Adam Rehmeier’s follow-up to Dinner in America is my favorite obscure indie of the year. Set in Nebraska in the early ‘90s, a pair of teenage boys (Conor Sherry and Gabriel LaBelle) take control of the snack shack at the pool one summer- and end up bedazzled by the same girl (Mika Abdalla.) This one isn’t available to stream, but once it is… it’s worth seeking out.
Honorable mention: Inside Out 2, The Fall Guy, Challengers, God Save Texas: Hometown Prison, Lisa Frankenstein, Racist Trees, The Greatest Night in Pop, The Beekeeper, Last Stop in Yuma County and Rolling Along.
I found Drive Away Dolls so grating and uninteresting that I almost thought that was the point - I suggested to my fiancee that it perhaps a performance art take on The Producers, where they designed an intentionally-odious film so they can invite criticism then accuse it of homophobia.