Ryan Coogler's Sinners arrives with the weight of expectation and somehow exceeds every bit of it. Set in 1932 rural Mississippi, the film opens with twin brothers Smoke and Stack — both played with mesmerising duality by Michael B. Jordan — returning to their hometown after years away. Their plan is simple: use the money they've saved to open a juke joint, a place of music and community for Black residents shut out of white establishments. What follows is anything but simple.

A Film About More Than Its Genre

Sinners announces itself as a horror film, and it delivers as a horror film — but Coogler is far more interested in what the horror represents than in the horror itself. The supernatural threat that arrives at the juke joint is rooted in the history of the blues, in the spiritual folklore of the Mississippi Delta, and in the long shadow of exploitation and theft that defines American music history. When the monsters appear, they feel like a logical continuation of the real-world violence that preceded them.

This is a film deeply engaged with questions about Black American culture, about who owns art, about the price paid by communities who created the music that the world would go on to call its own. Coogler embeds all of this into a genre framework that could have felt clumsy or didactic; instead, it feels inevitable.

Michael B. Jordan at His Best

Playing twin characters is an obvious showcase opportunity, and Jordan takes full advantage — but not by leaning into the novelty. Instead, he creates two distinct men who share the same face and feel nothing alike. Smoke is controlled, strategic, haunted; Stack is more open, more reckless, more willing to hope. Their dynamic gives the film its emotional core, and Jordan sustains it through scenes of great tenderness and scenes of extraordinary violence with equal conviction.

"This is the performance Jordan was always capable of, in the film that demanded it."

The Centrepiece Sequence

Without giving too much away: the film's extended centrepiece, set inside the juke joint as the night builds to its terrible crescendo, is one of the great set pieces in recent cinema. Coogler stages it with the confidence of a filmmaker who knows exactly what he's doing — the way the music builds, the way the supernatural encroaches, the way the camera moves through the space. It lasts for nearly twenty minutes and feels both too long and not long enough.

Verdict

Sinners is the kind of film that comes along a few times a decade — one that uses genre as a vehicle for something genuinely profound, that trusts its audience completely, and that announces the arrival of a filmmaker at the absolute height of their powers. Ryan Coogler has made his masterpiece. Violent, funny, heartbreaking, and spiritually alive: this is what cinema is for.

Brady Corbet's The Brutalist is not a film that arrives quietly. At three and a half hours, with an intermission, it is a deliberate provocation — a statement that some stories require space, that compression would be a betrayal. By the time it ends, you understand completely why every minute was necessary.

The Story

Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) survives the Holocaust and emigrates to the United States, eventually arriving in Pennsylvania where he finds himself employed by the wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). What begins as a professional relationship becomes something far more complex — a portrait of patronage, exploitation, and the impossible relationship between artist and patron, immigrant and establishment, creator and financier.

Adrien Brody's Career-Best

Brody won his Oscar for The Pianist and was extraordinary there. But this is something else. The László he builds is a man of profound intelligence and profound damage — someone who carries the weight of history in every movement, who finds his salvation in architecture and his damnation in the same place. There are scenes here that are almost unbearable to watch, not because they are violent (though some are) but because the emotional exposure is so complete.

"Brady Corbet has made a film about what it costs to make art, and the price is everything."

The Architecture of the Film

Corbet is not merely interested in architecture as subject matter — he is interested in it as a formal principle. The film is constructed like one of László's buildings: brutalist in its refusal of ornament, overwhelming in its scale, beautiful in ways that reveal themselves slowly. Lol Crawley's cinematography, shot on VistaVision, gives the film a grandeur that feels genuinely old-fashioned, genuinely cinematic.

Verdict

The Brutalist is the best film of 2024. It is demanding, occasionally punishing, and absolutely unforgettable. Corbet has made a film about art, immigration, trauma, and the American Dream that earns its epic length and then some. See it on the biggest screen you can find.

Sean Baker's Anora begins as a screwball romantic comedy and arrives, by its final scene, somewhere altogether more complicated and more true. The journey between those two points is one of the most entertaining and emotionally destabilising experiences you'll have in a cinema this year.

The Setup

Anora — Ani to her friends — is a young sex worker in New York who meets Ivan, the son of a Russian oligarch. They fall into a spontaneous Las Vegas marriage, and what follows is a frantic, funny, eventually heartbreaking collision between Ani's genuine feelings and the cold economic reality of the world she's stepped into. When Ivan's family sends representatives to annul the marriage, the film shifts gears entirely.

Mikey Madison's Breakout

Mikey Madison gives one of the great performances of 2024 in the title role. Ani is fierce, vulnerable, funny, and finally heartbreaking — a character who demands and deserves our complete sympathy even when the film refuses to give her a happy ending. Madison plays her without sentimentality and without condescension, which is the only way this works.

"The final scene of Anora is one of the most emotionally devastating endings in recent American cinema."

Yura Borisov Steals the Film

As Igor, one of the family's representatives sent to clean up the marriage, Yura Borisov does something remarkable: he makes a man whose job is fundamentally coercive into the film's emotional heart. His scenes with Madison in the film's second half are where Anora becomes something genuinely great.

Verdict

Anora is Sean Baker's best film and one of the best films of 2024. The Palme d'Or was richly deserved. Funny, chaotic, tender, and ultimately devastating — this is exactly the kind of cinema that reminds you why the medium matters.

There is no dialogue in Flow. No explanatory captions, no character names, no exposition. Gints Zilbalodis trusts his images completely, and his images reward that trust completely. The result is one of the most purely cinematic experiences of the year — a film that could only work as a film, that uses the specific grammar of cinema to tell a story that words would only diminish.

The Story — Such As It Is

A black cat, solitary and self-sufficient, is suddenly confronted with a world being swallowed by water. The flood rises, and survival requires the cat to join an unlikely group of animal companions — a capybara, a lemur, a dog, a secretary bird — on a boat that drifts through a drowned world. That's it. That's the whole film. And somehow it's everything.

The Animation

Flow was made on a tiny budget using Blender, an open-source animation tool, by Zilbalodis and a small team. The result looks nothing like a low-budget production. The water, the light, the animal movement — all of it has a tactile, almost physical quality that puts much bigger productions to shame. This is what happens when artistic vision is more important than resources.

"Flow reminds you that animation is not a genre — it is a medium, and in the right hands it can do things no other medium can."

The Emotional Impact

The film is, at its heart, a story about a creature who has never needed anyone learning that survival requires trust. The cat's arc is simple and universal and, by the film's final sequence, absolutely devastating. You will not expect to cry at an animated Latvian film about a cat. You will cry at an animated Latvian film about a cat.

Verdict

Flow is a genuine treasure — a film made with enormous technical skill and even greater emotional intelligence. See it with the best sound system you can find and give it your complete attention. It will repay you generously.

Jesse Eisenberg's second film as writer-director is the kind of small movie that quietly devastates you. At 90 minutes, it never outstays its welcome, never reaches for false profundity, and trusts its two central performances to carry everything — which they do, effortlessly.

The Story

Benji (Kieran Culkin) and David (Jesse Eisenberg) are cousins who barely know each other anymore. They've agreed to travel to Poland together to visit the sites connected to their recently deceased grandmother — a Holocaust survivor who never discussed what she went through. The trip, conducted as part of a small tour group, is both a tribute and an overdue reckoning between two men who once were close.

Kieran Culkin

This is Culkin's film. As Benji — charismatic, irresponsible, deeply unhappy beneath all the charm — he delivers one of the performances of the year. Benji is the kind of person who makes every room he enters more alive and more uncomfortable simultaneously. Culkin makes you love him and dread him in equal measure, often within the same scene. His Oscar win was entirely deserved.

"The best double-act in cinema last year: two men who remember each other differently, discovering they were both right."

The Weight of History

Eisenberg is not making a film about the Holocaust, exactly — he is making a film about what it means to be the grandchildren of survivors, to carry the knowledge of enormous suffering while living ordinary, comfortable lives. The tour group sequences, set in the actual sites of Jewish life and death in Poland, handle this material with a lightness of touch that never trivialises and never lectures.

Verdict

A Real Pain is one of the year's best films and one of its most accessible. If you have 90 minutes and want to see something that will stay with you for days, this is your film. Seek it out.

Edward Berger follows up All Quiet on the Western Front with something entirely different and entirely impressive: a tightly coiled thriller set entirely within the Vatican, during the election of a new Pope. Where All Quiet was vast and elemental, Conclave is claustrophobic and cerebral — a film of whispers, corridors, and carefully concealed ambition.

The Setup

Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is charged with overseeing the conclave following the sudden death of the Pope. As the cardinals gather to elect a successor, secrets begin to emerge — about the candidates, about the Church, and about Lawrence himself. Berger keeps the procedural mechanics clear and engaging while building toward a revelation that the film earns completely.

Ralph Fiennes

Fiennes is one of the greatest living actors and he is at the top of his game here. Lawrence is a man whose faith is genuine and genuinely complicated — a man who loves the Church and sees its failures clearly. Fiennes plays the internal conflict without ever making it external, which is exactly right for a film about men trained to conceal their thoughts.

"Conclave is exactly as good as its cast deserves. Which is to say: very good indeed."

The Twist

The film's final revelation has divided audiences and critics. Some find it gratuitous; others find it the film's most radical and compassionate gesture. We are firmly in the latter camp. Without spoiling it: Berger and screenwriter Peter Straughan have thought seriously about what the twist means and what it says about faith, identity, and the institution of the Church. It is not a cheap trick.

Verdict

Conclave is intelligent, beautifully acted, and more daring than it first appears. It is the rare prestige thriller that actually has something to say. Seek it out.

Coralie Fargeat's second feature is an assault — on the eyes, on the stomach, and on a culture that demands women be perpetually young, beautiful, and available. It is also extremely funny, which is not something you can say about many films that end as this one ends.

The Premise

Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is a celebrity fitness instructor whose show is cancelled on her fiftieth birthday because she is deemed too old. She discovers a mysterious substance that allows her to create a younger version of herself — Sue (Margaret Qualley) — who takes over her career. The rules are simple: Elisabeth and Sue must share time, alternating weekly. Breaking the rules has consequences.

Demi Moore

Moore has been brave in interviews about what it meant to make this film — about her own history with Hollywood's ageism, about the courage it required to play these scenes. That courage is visible in every frame. This is the most exposed, vulnerable, and powerful work of her career. The scenes that require it most are the hardest to watch and the most necessary.

"Fargeat takes the premise to its absolute logical conclusion, and the conclusion is horrifying in all the right ways."

The Third Act

Without giving details: the film's final act is one of the most extreme things to appear in mainstream cinema in years. Fargeat commits completely, and the film is better for it. Some will find it excessive. We would argue that excess is precisely the point — that the film is showing us, in grotesque exaggeration, something that is already grotesque.

Verdict

The Substance is exactly what it needs to be: too much, on purpose, making a point that couldn't be made any other way. Approach with an empty stomach and an open mind.

Nobody needed a Gladiator sequel. The original ended definitively; Maximus died; the story was complete. Twenty-four years later, Ridley Scott has made one anyway, and the result is exactly what you would expect from a sequel nobody needed: technically impressive, occasionally thrilling, emotionally hollow, and redeemed entirely by one extraordinary performance that has absolutely no business being in this film.

The Story

Lucius (Paul Mescal), the grandson of Marcus Aurelius, is captured and forced into gladiatorial combat. He finds himself caught between the machinations of the Roman political class and the ambitions of Macrinus (Denzel Washington), a formerly enslaved man who has risen to enormous power. The plot is functional at best — a series of escalating arena sequences connected by political intrigue that never quite convinces.

Paul Mescal

Mescal is a genuinely great actor — his work in Aftersun and All of Us Strangers makes that clear — but he is miscast here, or rather the film is miscast around him. He gives it everything he has physically and emotionally, and there are individual scenes where you see what the film wanted to be. But the script gives him little to work with emotionally, and the film never finds his equivalent of Crowe's "Are you not entertained?"

"Denzel Washington plays Macrinus as though he is in a completely different and considerably better film. The good news is that he brings that film with him."

Denzel Washington

The performance that saves this film and elevates it above mere competence. Washington plays Macrinus as a creature of pure theatrical villainy — every gesture calibrated, every line reading a small performance in itself. He appears to be having the time of his life, and the film comes alive completely whenever he's on screen.

Verdict

Gladiator II is the cinematic equivalent of a lavish meal that doesn't quite satisfy. Technically impressive, frequently entertaining, and ultimately disposable. See it for Denzel. See the original again afterwards.

RaMell Ross's Nickel Boys is not a conventional adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, and it is all the better for it. Ross — whose debut documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening remains one of the great American films of the 2010s — brings a radical formal approach to material that might have been made into something merely important. Instead, he has made something genuinely extraordinary.

The Formal Approach

The film is shot almost entirely in first-person perspective — we see the world through the eyes of its protagonists, Elwood and Turner, two young Black men who end up at a brutal reform school in 1960s Florida. This approach sounds like a gimmick and is instead a revelation. By making us inhabit these bodies, Ross makes the injustice inflicted on them personal in a way that no conventional dramatic filming could achieve.

The Performances

Because of the film's formal choices, the performances work differently than in conventional films. Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson have to convey character through voice, movement, the way their characters hold themselves — and both are exceptional. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, as Elwood's grandmother, has less screen time than either lead and is somehow the film's emotional centre.

"Ross does not let you be a spectator. He puts you inside the injustice, and the effect is permanently uncomfortable in exactly the right way."

The Novel vs The Film

Readers of Whitehead's novel will find that Ross takes significant liberties — compressing, restructuring, and finding cinematic equivalents for literary effects that could not otherwise be translated. All of these choices are correct. This is adaptation as transformation, not transcription.

Verdict

Nickel Boys is among the best films of 2024 and one of the most formally innovative American films in years. See it, discuss it, and read the novel it is based on. Both reward the time completely.

Denis Villeneuve's completion of his Dune adaptation is a genuine achievement — a mainstream studio epic that refuses to provide the emotional satisfactions the mainstream typically demands, and that is the better and more honest for it. Paul Atreides is not a hero. Villeneuve knows this, Frank Herbert knew this, and the film trusts you to know it too.

The Visual Achievement

Whatever reservations one might have about the film's emotional temperature, Dune: Part Two is an extraordinary piece of visual cinema. Greig Fraser's cinematography, particularly the sequences filmed in monochrome for the Harkonnen homeworld, is among the best work in contemporary blockbuster filmmaking. The sandworm sequences are simply magnificent — among the most awe-inspiring images in recent science fiction cinema.

The Cast

Chalamet has grown into the role considerably since Part One — there is a coldness creeping into his Paul that the film requires, and he navigates the character's messianic arc with intelligence. Zendaya has more to do here than in the first film and rises to it. Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha steals every scene he's in — his black-and-white introduction sequence is one of the year's best individual scenes.

"Villeneuve understands that Dune is a story about the danger of chosen ones — and refuses to pretend otherwise."

The Ending

Dune: Part Two ends on a note of deliberate discomfort. Paul has won — and his victory is a catastrophe. Villeneuve commits to this reading completely, and it is the film's bravest decision. Some audiences have found it unsatisfying. It is, in fact, the only honest ending available.

Verdict

Dune: Part Two is one of the great science fiction epics of the modern era, even if it lacks the intimate emotional charge of the very best films of 2024. See it on the largest screen available and give it your full attention.