Here are (some of) the best films we saw for the first time in 2024, as chosen by ScreenHub staff, in no particular order. Many others we saw and loved can be found in this year’s top reviews. The best of the year’s new releases is coming soon, so keep an eye out. Enjoy!
Best films of 2024
Paul’s best films of 2024
Poor Things (2023; 2024 in Australia)
I’ve long been a fan of Alasdair Gray, the late Scottish author and visual artist who wrote the novel Poor Things (1992) on which the Yorgos Lanthimos film was based.
In Scotland, until last year at least, Gray’s most famous work was Lanark: A Life in Four Books, which blends realism with a surreal labyrinthine take on a dystopian Glasgow.
The setting of Poor Things the film, unlike the book, isn’t Scotland, but the alluring gothic barminess of the tale survives unscathed thanks to Robbie Ryan’s cinematography, Australian writer Tony McNamara’s excellent script and jaw-dropping performances by Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe.
It’s the proverbial feast for the senses, and was rewarded as such at this year’s Oscars. Not every film needs to be enjoyed on the big screen but for this one, in my view, the bigger the screen the better (although it’s also streaming on Disney+ so you should watch it there if you haven’t already seen it).
I’d also highly recommend the book, which has a twist or two not tackled (for sound cinematic reasons) in the film.
ScreenHub: Poor Things review: a fabulous feminist odyssey
Rumours (2024)
How to present a comedy satire about the world and the parlous state it’s in with a tight and talented ensemble cast? Well, you could do worse than casting Cate Blanchett, Charles Dance, Roy Dupies, Nikki Amuka-Bird and others as G7 state representatives and have them meet for a summit in a German forest where they’ll soon find themselves isolated from everyone and everything that customarily supports them.
And then, if you must, add a giant living brain and undead bog people to make things even more interesting.
The success of this one rests entirely on the performances, and on our willingness as viewers to simply go with the bat-shit flow. I thought it was great, and it’s in cinemas now!
ScreenHub: Rumours: Cate Blanchett and a really big brain
Silvi’s best films
Flow (2024)
Flow is an apt name for a movie that had me sobbing uncontrollably for almost its entire runtime. Maybe it’s the fact that I saw it near the end of MIFF and needed a good lie down, or maybe it’s because my cat got stuck in a drawer that morning, but this completely silent story about a displaced cat and his various animal friends trying to survive a post-apocalyptic world got me so emotional that my husband was a little worried about my mental state afterwards.
Animated by a Latvian studio, Flow is a knockout example of the best the modern animation industry has to offer. It looks incredible, and the expressions on the animals are just anthropomorphic enough to tug at the heart strings without being infantalising to its audience. It’s no wonder it’s up for a bunch of awards.
Flow is not yet available to stream.
The Taste of Things (2023; 2024 in Australia)
2024 served up so many good film food moments: the nun-made ravioli in Conclave. The scrumptious applejack in Hundreds of Beavers. The grilled squid in Ghost Cat Anzu. But none of them can hold a candle to the gastronomic delights of The Taste of Things.
Set in 1889 France, this film follows the lives of two live-in chefs who delicately court each other while cooking up some of the tastiest meals ever shown on the silver screen. The cinematography is exquisite, not only highlighting every detail of the food but framing and lighting each scene so that even the set looks good enough to eat. As it is in cooking, the slow burn makes it all the more tender.
The Taste of Things is available to rent or buy on Prime Video or Apple TV.
Inu-Oh (2021; 2023 in Australia)
Animation fans will definitely recognised the name Masaaki Yuasa, the founder of studio Science SARU and the director of acclaimed absurd films like Mindgame and Night is Short, Walk On Girl. In Inu-Oh, Yuasa uses his signature magnetic style to tell the story of a cursed dancer who hides his deformity with a mask, and a blind musician who becomes his music partner in 14th-century Japan. And it’s a rock opera!
Weird, epic, and absolutely unforgettable, Inu-Oh is one for the ages. More’s the pity then that it’s not available to stream anywhere in the country. Perhaps a blu-ray purchase is in order.
Inu-Oh is not yet available to watch in Australia.
Rochelle’s best films
Housekeeping for Beginners (2023)
Shot in Macedonia, Australian writer-director Goran Stolevski’s found-family drama centres on a capable no-nonsense woman who never wanted to be a mother, but finds herself saddled with her girlfriend’s two daughters: a tiny troublemaker and a rebellious teen. This unlikely family must fight to stay together in a society where being an unmarried parent, let alone queer, is still very much a problem.
It took me a while to find my feet and make sense of who was who in the initial chaos of this film, but Stolevski’s verité style – overlapping dialogue, hand-held camerawork and a shallow depth of field – is quickly revealed as a genius choice to evoke the intensity and noise of evolving family life.
Housekeeping for Beginners won the Queer Lion when it premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in 2023 and was the Macedonian entry for Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards. It showed as part of the 2023 Adelaide Film Festival (who also invested in it) and released in Australian cinemas in May 2024.
Housekeeping for Beginners is available to stream in Australia now on YouTube and Google TV and Apple TV Store and Prime Video Store.
ScreenHub: Housekeeping for Beginners review: A luminous tribute to found family
Memoir of a Snail (2024)
Melbourne animator Adam Elliott’s gorgeously handmade feature Memoir of a Snail opened this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival and was one of my outstanding highlights. (I reviewed it here at the time.)
Memoir of a Snail is the tragi-comic life story of Grace Pudel (rhymes with ‘muddle’), born in Melbourne in the 1970s and voiced by Sarah Snook. An eccentric misfit obsessed with snails of every kind, Grace herself is a kind of snail, imprisoned in a shell of hoarding, loneliness and grief. We soon understand why as she flashes back to the beginning.
The impressive voice cast includes Jacki Weaver, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Paul Capsis, just to name a few. Every frame of this extraordinary and ultimately uplifting film bears the wonky human thumbprints of its lengthy and intense local production process, and that in itself makes it precious.
Memoir of a Snail is still in cinemas at the time of writing.
ScreenHub: Memoir of a Snail review: triumph of the human thumb-print
The Holdovers (2023)
Set in 1970, The Holdovers follows a curmudgeonly history teacher (Paul Giamatti) at a New England boarding school who is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. He forms a bond with a brainy troublemaker (Dominic Sessa), and with the school’s head cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) whose son has recently died in Vietnam.
Directed by Alexander Payne (Sideways, Election) and meticulously shot by cinematographer Eigil Bryld to give a real 1970s film look and feel, The Holdovers is quirky, intelligent drama with a genuine indie vibe. It felt old-fashioned to me, in the best sense.
The Holdovers is available to stream on Netflix and Binge now.
For all the films we reviewed this year, see here.
For the best new Australian releases of 2024, see here.
For more great films we didn’t review this year, see here instead.
