Every year, we ask the Hyperreal Film Club community to join us in the most important task of all: creating our Best Movies of the Year list. From 140 movie titles, provided by over 100 voters, lovingly described by our very talented contributors, arises our most perfect artifact: Hyperreal Film Journal’s third annual Top 10 Best Of List. As always, the results are incontrovertible, spanning genre and format, from blockbuster hits to indie darlings, all, 100%, inarguably, the best movies 2024 had to offer us.

And while you’re here, make sure you check out this year’s Honorable Mentions, available in this handy article: The Best Movies of 2024: Honorable Mentions and Editors’ Choice.

10. Kinds of Kindness

What would you do for a comfortable life? Enter an arranged marriage, kill someone, read Anna Karenina? In Yorgos Lanthimos’s Kinds of Kindness, three short tales with different storylines and characters (each played by Jesse Plemmons, Emma Stone, and Willem Dafoe) contain similar themes of toxic devotion to achieve comfort. This is a movie about abusers and the abused, cult leaders and followers, those with power and those who seek it. Lanthimos’s movies often examine power. But where Poor Things felt like a freedom narrative written to counteract the imprisonment shown in Dogtooth, Kinds of Kindness reverts to the darker sides of life.

Each section of the movie draws the viewer in with dark humor and Lanthimos’s classic absurdism. But the disquieting writing leaves a sour taste of the deeply sad lingering on the tongue. A cautionary tale, Kindness portrays the horrors of misused power across three institutions: the workplace, the home, and religion. The cast’s familiar faces and the stories' parallel themes elucidate what connects these institutions: the corruption of the individual enabling the corruption of the collective, and vice versa. With stand-out performances and humor tempering heavy themes, this return to Weird Yorgos is a must-see. If you haven’t yet, do yourself a favor and indulge in this absurd tryptic—as one of Dafoe’s characters says, “If you really don’t want to disappoint me… If you really love me, I mean.”– Mika Kelley

9. A Different Man

No film this year feels as daring and incendiary as Aaron Schimberg‘s A Different Man. Sebastian Stan stars as Edward, an actor suffering from neurofibromatosis who receives a miracle cure that gives him an entirely new face. Stan’s acting shines as he continues to play Edward with the same body language, resentment, and shyness he had before the procedure. This is an excellent juxtaposition of the world treating him as a completely different person, summoning feelings of disorientation and surrealism. Adam Pearson plays Edward’s foil Oswald with an affable, effortless charm that builds the film’s tension and contributes a meta-layer about using actors for their deformities. The film’s oppressive world is given an extra dimension thanks to an explosive score that channels notes of Terrance Blanchard or Barnard Herman. A Different Man bravely tackles taboos about identity, inner beauty vs outer beauty, and romanticizing yourself in a way that’s unique, exciting, and unlike any other film released this year. – Jason Fisher

8. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is an ambitious, visually stunning, and emotionally charged prequel that complements the chaotic brilliance of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) while successfully carving out its own identity. Rather than attempting to replicate the frantic, non-stop, action-packed style that Fury Road does so flawlessly, Director George Miller treats Furiosa as more of a saga-driven tale, rooted in melodramatic action sequences and heart-wrenching themes of loss and revenge. Furiosa, as the name implies, dives into the origins of the dynamic main character introduced in Fury Road, exploring themes of hope, resilience, and identity against the brutal backdrop of the post-apocalyptic wasteland. Powered by Anya Taylor-Joy’s fierce performance, the film captures the heroine's journey from childhood captivity to reclaiming agency and autonomy, amplified by the unexpectedly fun performance from Chris Hemsworth as an eccentric warlord villain. Miller’s choice to emphasize emotional depth in Furiosa over high-action spectacle fills out the world of Mad Max in interesting and satisfying ways, while still delivering breathtaking action in two especially standout set pieces. Furiosa isn’t just about vengeance or survival—it’s a unique, gritty, and striking coming-of-age story rooted in survival, desperation, and Furiosa’s willingness to do whatever it takes to triumph over those who have wronged her. – Monique Glickstern

7. LOVE LIES BLEEDING

Sophomore slump who? Rose Glass’s second feature, Love Lies Bleeding, maintains the thrill level from 2019’s Saint Maud but is imbued with enough dark humor and visceral style to earn the title of John Waters’s favorite movie of 2024, and enough glistening, throbbing bodies to enter the canon of Sweat Cinema. Watching LLB feels like finding the dirty paperbacks in the back of a used bookstore, but Lou and Jackie’s love affair is hotter than anything I’ve found at Half Price.

Kristen Stewart’s trademark mumble perfectly tempers Lou’s ravenous desire for Jackie (Katy M. O’Brian), a femme Adonis. Jackie, in turn, is ravenous for perfection: she is a bodybuilder training at the gym where Lou works. The two are drawn to each other immediately, but of course, this isn’t Love Lies Peacefully Without Harm, so complications emerge. Chiefly among them is Lou Sr. and his menacing ponytail (played by Ed Harris and a wig, respectively). Glass deftly weaves threads of fitness, violence, and horniness and keeps the viewer squirming on the edge of their seat; she has cited Hyperreal faves Showgirls and Crash as two of the film’s influences, and LLB is right at home at the intersection of Verhoeven and Cronenberg. – Kathryn Bailey

6. Sing Sing

Movies declare art’s importance to the point that saying “art changes lives” is trite. But in Sing Sing, what might otherwise be the quintessential movie-with-a-message Oscar bait for the back-patting filmgoer truly is transformational. Sing Sing shows not only how important art can be–how much it can serve as a lifeline, even in the darkest places—but how art is at the core of our humanity. Based on the real stories of John ‘Divine G’ Whitfield (Colman Domingo) and Clarence ‘Divine Eye’ Maclin (as himself), Sing Sing follows the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program at the titular correctional facility. The carceral system runs on hopelessness, and yet RTA becomes a wellspring of hope, camaraderie, and healing through the staging of an original play. Nothing about this description necessarily pulls Sing Sing out of being potentially cliche. But unlike so many other movies, Sing Sing foregrounds the dignity of each prisoner. The film itself was made through a non-hierarchical profit participant production model, allowing the many RTA alums like Divine Eye in the cast to share in the film’s equity. In a time where art can feel like a luxury, Sing Sing reminds us that art is the air we breathe. – Sarah Schuster

5. Dune: Part Two

Some movies we watch to turn off our brains. Others we go to for inspiration. And some, well, are in a different category altogether, one that grabs you and doesn’t let you go even after you leave the theatre, drive home to the film’s score, stare out the window pensively, and take stock of your existence. I still remember seeing Dune: Part Two for the first time. Bullock IMAX, opening weekend, a fully packed house. As the credits rolled and the lights came up, the theater fell silent. Speechless. In shared awe and disbelief of the cinematic experience beheld.

Whether Denis Villeneuve sold his soul to the devil or found a secret book of witchcraft, he has done something unimaginable in today’s modern, ever-changing cinematic landscape: crafted a through-and-through epic. The sweeping vistas of Arrakis. The emotional swells and philosophical musings. Hans Zimmer’s metal-tinged guitar score. The sandworms bursting through the storm. This film felt like watching history in the making. This is probably how everyone felt when they watched The Lord of the Rings for the first time twenty years ago. Dune: Part Two is nothing short of a cinematic marvel and is a prime example of what movies can be if we dare to experiment, be bold, and trust in filmmakers. – Andy Volk

4. The Substance

After seeing The Substance in theaters, opening weekend, I left with two thoughts: 1. This was the best cinema experience I’ve had in years–the audience was gleefully squirming and squealing together. 2. The only genre that can accurately tell women's stories is body horror.

Equal parts social critique and high camp, Coralie Fargeat’s second feature launched a thousand memes while shining a spotlight on how women have been trained to fear aging more than anything, even death. As someone who’s injected literal poison into her face, I saw myself everywhere in this film: panicking in the mirror before a big night, examining every inch of women’s bodies through a grotesquely-pornographic-yet-surgically-unhorny lens, and even yelling at the TV while trying to cook French food.

I’m a Demi Moore stan and Margaret Qualley hater, but this movie knew how to make the most of these actresses and I’m happy to see both getting the recognition they deserve. I’d be remiss if I didn’t shout out Dennis Quaid eating 4.5 lbs of shrimp for that scene. The Substance is a movie out of time, both old-fashioned and futuristic, filling every inch of the screen, and is absolutely unrelenting right through the final moments. Somehow, I still can’t get enough. – Cindy Popp

3. I Saw The TV Glow

Some movies make you cry in the theater; some movies you get through fine and then eight hours later start feeling like you're taking poison damage before you fall into the emotional equivalent of the Ringu well for three straight days. Jane Schoebrun’s exemplary I Saw The TV Glow is one such experience; playing like the depressive dysphoria hoodie to The People’s Joker’s fishnetted mania. Although it would be simple to reduce TV Glow to a magenta-smeared parable on a suffocated transgender existence, its examination of escapism and identification through media places it in more confrontational and complex territory previously explored by We’re All Going To The World’s Fair. It's all good to see yourself on the other side of the screen, but what happens when nostalgia and comfort are no longer sufficient modes of interacting with the world? What happens when you can't move beyond?

In any case, I Saw The TV Glow is a heartbreaking and complicated work from one of mainstream filmmaking’s most interesting voices; hitting as close to the bone on ghoulish emotions of closeted malaise as possible. For myself—and I assume for others—the film felt like opening the door to a house you know to be haunted and inviting a hundred, a thousand ghosts to recall the sensation of living as someone already deceased; an empty, unrecognizable corpse you thought you left behind many moons ago. But as the film famously informs, you're not really dead until you're dead—there is still time. – Morgan Hyde

2. Challengers

Do you remember where you were when you first saw that jaw-dropping trailer for Challengers? It seriously looked like a sports romance anime brought to life and a two-hour-long Chanel ad set to Rihanna’s S&M. I still revisit that trailer occasionally just to get a little dopamine rush. After finding out that the entire film score is just thumping electro-clash by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, I knew instantly this would be one of those films that, whether it was good or bad, I’d be making my entire personality about once I saw it.

When the time finally came, I went into the theater thinking it would be a movie about sex pretending to be about tennis, but it turned out that it was a movie about tennis pretending to be about sex. Either way, what a fever dream! Luca Guadagnino brings some of his most gorgeous visuals to date with the help of some tricky VFX shots that occasionally gives the audience an opportunity to experience life as a tennis ball. Tennis, as it turns out, is a relationship. As Zendaya’s character Tashi Duncan would likely tell you, there’s nothing more pleasurable in the world than good tennis—even sex. – Jessica Buie

1. Anora

Anora serves as perhaps the most poignant cinematic love letter to service industry employees and sex workers I’ve ever seen. A love letter to the kinds of jobs with a publicly funded salary, a salary that sits precariously on the whims of those they serve. Removed from any sense of judgment, Sean Baker takes us on a ridiculous ride through this world, featuring an eccentric and lively cast that brings to life what might be both the funniest and most heartfelt film of the year. Like the titular character, you are at once swept up in an overwhelming concoction of glitz, glamour, and lust; a too-good-to-be-true promise of no longer relying on the whims of others to live. But, all good things must end, and as the sobering realization of where this is all going begins to settle in, you can’t help but feel your heart break.

Anora is more than just a love letter, it’s a cinematic wellspring of compassion to those of us who wear our hearts on our sleeves and dare to dream of a better life for ourselves, as blind as they may be to the circumstances surrounding it. When it comes to these matters of the heart, people like Ani may not always win, but those who try to take advantage of them will always lose. – Will Carroll

If you enjoyed this, be sure to check out our Honorable Mentions & Editors’ Choice Lists!

The Best Movies of 2024: Top 10