The best movies of 2024 so far

Awards season approaches, but don’t tell that to the year in movies — they’ve been on a hot streak all year long.

There have been standout genre movies, early awards contenders, crowd-pleasing blockbuster fare, and everything in between so far this year. The last stretch of the year is going to be jam-packed with even more, and if what we’ve seen from 2024 so far is any indication, we’re in for more great times at the movies.

Here at Polygon, we keep a running list of the year’s best movies, starting early and updating often, making a case for the films we think are worth your time. We’ll keep this list going throughout the year, so you can see what we’re watching and recommending and catch up on anything you’ve missed as new movies continue to roll out, before releasing our final list of the best movies of 2024 near the end of the year.

The movies will be listed in reverse chronological order, so the newest releases will always show up first. Our latest update added 100 Yards, Smile 2, Azrael, The Substance, and Perfect Days.

The best movies of 2024 so far

Where to watch: Available for digital rental/purchase on Amazon and Apple TV

One of the most beautifully shot movies of the year also happens to be a riveting martial arts period piece with stunning, crisp choreography and a colorful cast of characters. 100 Yards follows two young men (Jacky Heung and Andy On) vying for control of a powerful wushu academy whose leader (one’s father, the other’s mentor) has died. My personal No. 1 movie of the year, it is a must-watch for fans of martial arts films and historical dramas alike. —Pete Volk

Where to watch: In theaters

Smile 2 is what every movie sequel should hope to be: bigger, better, and more entertaining than the original. While the first movie took its excellent premise of a killer curse that manifests itself as a smile and kept the whole thing small-scale and localized among a community, the sequel goes big as an international pop star, played fantastically by Naomi Scott, gets inflicted with the curse. It’s the perfect logical conclusion to the original movie’s concept, right down to the fact that viewers know the curse passes itself on by having people witness gruesome deaths, a fact that hangs brilliantly over the movie until its very final moments. —Austen Goslin

A nearly wordless horror movie set long after the biblical rapture, Azrael is a wild, horrifying, and very gory thrill. While the production design is particularly impressive, Arzael’s real secret weapon is the tremendous lead performance from Samara Weaving, who excels at communicating the horrors of this world without ever saying a word. —AG

The Substance is a horror movie about external misogyny burrowing into a woman, feeding and growing on her self-hatred, and then bursting back into the world more powerful and monstrous than before. Or! It’s about age and how our older selves will inevitably foot the bill for our selfish, entitled, shortsighted younger selves. Unless! It’s about how Hollywood is a joyless and self-righteous machine fixated on stories that “say something,” but what cinema needs most is an artistic return to the styles of Frank Henenlotter and early Peter Jackson. The best (and most divisive) thing about The Substance is it’s the year’s finest Rorschach test. —Chris Plante

Jeremy Saulnier’s latest movie about people navigating startling violence has a twist that his beloved, gory thrillers Blue Ruin and Green Room and his horror debut, Murder Party, can’t match: Netflix’s Rebel Ridge is about a Black military veteran dealing with overstepping white cops in a small Southern town, which gives the whole movie a shivery suggestion that for once, a Saulnier character knows how to handle himself in a fight, and is just picking his moment. The Underground Railroad’s Aaron Pierre stars as Terry, a quiet, polite ex-Marine who’s just trying to bail his cousin out of jail when a group of corrupt local policemen (led by action vet Don Johnson at his most genially reptilian) assault him and take his money, claiming they suspect it’s the proceeds of a drug deal.

Rebel Ridge is in part a message movie about the rank injustice of civil asset forfeiture policies, and in part a message movie about race and the growing problem of white supremacy in policing. But it’s mostly a gripping thriller in the mold of 1982’s First Blood, a consciously slow-burn, low-key action movie based in physical realism and authenticity. Saulnier and Pierre ramp up the tension to unbearable levels, then pay it all off in a supremely satisfying way. —Tasha Robinson

Where to watch: In theaters

This quirky time-travel comedy follows a teenage girl who, after doing a lot of shrooms, comes face-to-face with her adult self, who has a few choice bits of advice for her. Aubrey Plaza and Maisy Stella have a wonderful back-and-forth banter as two versions of the same person. But My Old Ass isn’t just a funny movie; it’s also a very poignant coming-of-age story, one that’s a perfect snapshot of being on the cusp of adulthood right when everything changes. —Petrana Radulovic

Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

Master director Soi Cheang (SPL 2: A Time for Consequences) returns to the martial arts genre with this outstanding drama set within the confines of Kowloon Walled City in the final stretch of the city’s existence. Twilight of the Warriors follows a refugee (Raymond Lam) on the run from a local crime boss (the legendary Sammo Hung) who flees to the Walled City and ends up embedded with another crime boss (the also legendary Louis Koo).

As you would hope from a martial arts movie set within a cramped space like Kowloon Walled City, the action design is terrific. Cheang makes the most of the space, having characters move vertically and even diagonally through the city’s tight alleyways, winding staircases, and rooftop eaves. But Twilight of the Warriors also delivers captivating, complicated character relationships and a compelling narrative that also serves as an allegory for the end of an era of Hong Kong action filmmaking. —Pete Volk

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

Trap is just about the most fun you can have with a new movie in 2024. It follows Josh Hartnett as a seemingly regular dad, valiantly taking his daughter to a mega pop star’s sold-out concert. But it turns out the whole concert has been set up as a trap to capture a serial killer the cops think will be in attendance. The twist, which we cleverly learned about in the very first trailer for the movie, is that Hartnett’s good-natured dad is that serial killer.

As with most of M. Night Shyamalan’s movies, his brand of earnestness and utter lack of cynicism and vanity won’t be for everyone. Trap is, in fact, a decidedly goofy movie at many points, and while that may sound like an insult, it’s an unambiguous compliment. Hartnett’s performance as the Butcher is wonderful, full of gleeful menace as he puts on his “regular guy” persona and plays on people’s better nature to get away with lying to their faces.

The movie’s best feature is how credibly it lets us feel in on the joke, like an inverse of Shyamalan’s signature twists. Trap takes the appeal of watching a movie with an eleventh-hour reveal, watching it over and over to see just how duplicitous the villain truly was, and stretches it out to feature length, all without losing the spark that makes that experience special. —Austen Goslin

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

Kneecap has a very simple premise that, after watching, you’re almost certain to agree with: The world doesn’t spend nearly enough time talking about Irish rap music. The movie tells a semi-fictionalized version of the origin story for the very real Irish-language hip-hop group Kneecap.

The film follows the moments that led to the group forming, with a special focus on how rarely Irish is spoken in Ireland anymore, and ways that the group’s music tries to correct that fact. The film nails the group’s frustration over Ireland’s lack of native identity and perfectly shows the ways that it bursts out into their angry brand of infectiously catchy, pro-Ireland hip-hop.

The group is made up of two high schoolers and their teacher, and the movie stars all three real-life members as their respective characters. The trio are all surprisingly great actors, given their underground musician origins, but what they really lend to the movie is a true sense of heart and energy, infusing the many musical performances with authenticity that traditional actors could never have managed. When the band hits a stage, no matter how tiny or gross the venue, the movie turns into pure electricity with the passion and rage of their performance showing through in every frame. —AG

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

It’s rare that a horror movie about a satanic serial killer is also one of the funniest movies of the year, but that’s exactly the trick Longlegs pulls off. The movie follows a young FBI agent named Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), who may or may not be psychic, as she chases down a serial killer (Nicolas Cage) who doesn’t actually seem to ever come into contact with the families he murders.

The mystery of the movie is enticing, but it’s not the kind of movie that’s daring you to solve the crime at its center. Rather, Longlegs asks you to go along with its characters on their bizarre ride through hell. A ride, by the way, that passes through the territory of haunted dolls, possessed children, heavy metal, and quite a few appearances by Satan himself in physical form. And that’s a ride that’s well worth the price of admission.
Longlegs may not be the scariest movie of the year, but it is big, bold, and fun in a way that few horror movies these days get to be. —AG

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

Janet Planet captures the specific aching feeling of being a lonely little girl during one melancholy summer in the ’90s. 11 year-old Lacy (Zoey Ziegler) and her mother (the titular Janet, played by Julianne Nicholson) share a close but almost codependent relationship. The two of them spend a long summer together as three different people drift in and out of their lives, anchored by each other for better and for worse. —PR

Writer-director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Midnight Special) adapted a classic book of photojournalism about 1960s biker clubs to make this wonderfully sturdy and old-fashioned (in a good way) gang melodrama. It’s built around three proper movie-star performances from some of the hottest actors around: a stupendously handsome Austin Butler going full James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, Jodie Comer going full Lorraine Bracco in Goodfellas (with a simply extraordinary Chicago accent), and Tom Hardy going full Tom Hardy. It’s a movie of simple pleasures — thunderous Harley-Davidsons, banging Shangri-Las needle drops, gorgeous actors looking cool — that transcend cliché to enter the realm of American myth. —Oli Welsh

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Apple TV

Director Pablo Berger was so dang moved by Sara Varon’s graphic novel Robot Dreams that he started an animation studio to make it into a movie. Told entirely without dialogue, Robot Dreams is about a lonely dog who befriends a robot and the whirlwind summer they spend together before life forces them apart. The characters are evocative and the anthropomorphic world is very charming. But despite the humanized animals, this isn’t a goofy, gag-filled movie; Robot Dreams is actually an incredibly poignant and bittersweet film all about the meaningful friendships that we can’t always take with us as life goes on. The last scenes hit like a gut punch, aching in the best sort of way. —PR

Where George Miller’s 2015 masterpiece Mad Max: Fury Road was a metal ballad — the kind that makes you feel like a god for all of its absurd 15-minute run time — Furiosa is the rest of the concept album.

The prequel follows Imperator Furiosa (Alyla Browne and Anya Taylor-Joy) from kidnapping to “kidnapping,” beginning with warriors stealing her away and ending where Fury Road begins. Between, we get a moody, suspenseful story of a girl who must learn how to harness enormous rage against Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus, an equally threatening and pathetic villain.

It’s absurd to say about a Mad Max movie, but Furiosa is thinky. Miller shows, but he almost never tells — a big difference from Fury Road’s scrawl of “WE ARE NOT THINGS.” But Furiosa is not Fury Road. This much you must accept for it to seem wondrous. —Susana Polo

Subtlety is often profoundly overrated. Take for instance Hit Man, the excellent new movie from Richard Linklater, a romantic comedy that’s mostly about whether or not people have the capacity to change. Another movie might make that a quiet, unspoken metaphor or a question that lingers around the edges of its characters’ psyches, but Hit Man makes the theme an essential part of every story beat, joke, and line of dialogue, making it not just one of the funniest movies of the year, but one of the most interesting and clever, too.

Hit Man follows the mild-mannered and generally boring Gary (Glen Powell), a philosophy professor who moonlights by helping the cops catch people trying to hire hitmen. What starts as a purely technical gig, rigging cameras and setting up wires, quickly transforms into an obsession for Gary when he’s asked to stand in for the fake hitman and realizes he’s got a knack for it. Of course, he also enjoys the fact that it gives him a chance to don an entirely new face and personality. Posing as a hitman lets Gary escape Gary, even for just a few minutes, and it’s outstanding. Until, of course, he falls for a girl who only knows him as the dangerous assassin “Ron.”

Gary’s philosophy teacher day job gives the movie a rare chance to address its questions of identity head-on. The script, co-written by Powell and Linklater, cleverly has Gary work through his own issues of self through his lectures, doing things like having his class discuss whether some people deserve to die — thereby letting his would-be girlfriend off the hook for trying to have her husband killed. It’s a gimmick that would lead another movie to utter disaster, but thanks to the charm of Powell, and the presentation of Linklater, Hit Man pulls it off beautifully, making the movie equal parts silly rom-com and insightful look at how people shape their personas as they move through the world. —AG

Where to watch: Max, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

I Saw the TV Glow might be one of the scariest movies ever made about the suburbs. The manicured lawns and beautiful houses of American towns have long been one of the greatest settings for horror movies, but few have ever succeeded at making them feel as alienating and empty as Jane Schoenbrun’s latest film.

The movie follows Owen (Justice Smith), a teenager who feels like a self-conscious outsider in every situation, both socially and to himself, who meets Maddy (Bridgette Lundy-Paine) who introduces him to her favorite TV show: The Pink Opaque. The two bond over the show as their lives change around it, and the show slowly starts to seep more and more into their actual reality.

I Saw the TV Glow is a movie about the ways that art changes and shapes us. The way a special TV show can come along at just the right moment to suddenly turn your life in a different direction. It’s about the times that art can show us ourselves more clearly than any mirror, and how hard it can be to understand the gaps between the two. —AG

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Apple TV, Vudu

In spite of strong, positive festival reviews and a Best Picture win at 2023’s Fantastic Fest, Daniel Bandeira’s terrifying directorial debut, Property, slipped straight onto digital services in May with little fanfare. But fans of tense, smart horror-thrillers shouldn’t miss it. Malu Galli stars as Teresa, the wife of a rich Brazilian property owner who’s winding down operations on his country estate. He plans to evict all the workers who maintain the property, tear down their homes, and build a hotel. At the same time, he’s demanding they pay off the debts they’ve incurred from living at subsistence-level wages, where any minor improvement to their lives or properties is considered a loan. When the workers revolt, Teresa winds up trapped in an armored car, stuck in a standoff with desperate people who can’t afford to let her leave.

Part Panic Room, part social drama, and part eat-the-rich movie, Property is cunningly engineered to keep the audience’s sympathies shifting from scene to scene as both sides in the conflict fight for survival. Teresa’s fight to survive is simple, but her adversaries’ situation is much more complicated, and Bandeira lets the face-off unfold in layered, complicated ways while still keeping the action breathless and gripping. It’s a real stunner, and it deserves much more attention than it’s gotten. —TR

Few movies in 2024 are going to be as much fun as The Fall Guy.

Somewhere between a rom-com and an action movie, The Fall Guy is about a stuntman (Ryan Gosling) coming back from an injury, and his ex-girlfriend (Emily Blunt) who’s finally getting the chance to direct her first big feature film. But when production of the movie is threatened by the erratic movie star (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) going missing, the stunt guy has to become a real hero to save the day.

The movie is big, silly, ridiculous, and very funny, but its best attribute is the gravity shifting charisma of its two stars. Gosling and Blunt are both tremendously charming in the movie, a winning couple that the movie makes it impossible not to root for, and who you can’t help but want to be friends with.

On top of that, the entire production is a love-letter to movies, and the stunt teams who make them possible. The movie is full of excellent car chases, ridiculous falls, and hilarious fights that all bring the kind of levity we don’t get enough from blockbusters anymore. —AG

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

Jérémie Périn’s directorial feature debut is one of this year’s best animated movies: a neo-noir sci-fi mystery set in an extraplanetary society where humanity lives side by side with robots who serve at their every beck and call. Besides the film’s beautiful anime-inspired animation, Mars Express offers a tantalizing glimpse of a fully realized universe populated with complicated, tragic, and endlessly fascinating characters whose personal dramas are organically interwoven into the fabric of its futuristic storytelling and presentation. It’s an animated film for and by adults; it’s mature in every sense of the word, and a visionary work from an eminently talented director. —Toussaint Egan

Where to watch: Prime Video, MGM Plus, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

Director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, Bones and All) and writer Justin Kuritzkes (yes, the “Potion Seller” guy) bring a lot of intense energy to the sports drama / threesome drama Challengers, whether Guadagnino is shooting a tennis match from the ball’s point of view or Kuritzkes is leaping back and forth in time, filling in gaps in the romantic and professional history of three former friends and tennis rivals, played by Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor. Billed as a steamy, sexy movie about three-ways, it’s something much better — a movie that packs its sexual energy into a variety of different forms of rivalry and emotion, expertly woven together for maximum impact. It’s designed to keep audiences guessing right up to the final shot, and to get deeply invested in the outcome, whether or not they care about tennis, or even about sports in general. —TR

Where to watch: Roadstead.io

Chime is a horror movie about a sound that infects people like a virus. It worms its way into their brains until they hear it constantly, louder and louder, driving them toward random acts of horrific violence. And there’s no way to know who has it. It’s creepy enough as a premise to be intriguing, but throw in the fact that it was written and directed by Japanese horror legend Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and you have the recipe for one of the eeriest movies of the year.

Kurosawa’s masterstroke in Chime is, in part, to never overtly play the infecting tone for the audience. There are a few creepy, unidentifiable sounds, alien and distinct and always effective. But every sound in the movie is heightened, blaring while the characters stand (often completely still), constantly threatening some tragedy or new horror. It’s all horrifying in a way that feels completely unique to Chime, like Kurosawa invented a new kind of horror no one had heard before. —AG

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, Max on Sept. 13

Alex Garland’s portrait of two war photographers in crisis, framed with a story about a country in crisis, has been one of the biggest conversation movies of 2024 — love it or hate it, critics and moviegoers want to talk about it. Civil War was expressly intended to get people talking about American politics and especially the importance of journalism, but on top of its sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant messages, it’s a mesmerizing character piece, anchored by a weary, emotional performance from Kirsten Dunst, and built around subtle character moments as much as immersive, intense combat sequences. It’s also one of the year’s crispest films, with a visual brightness and visual beauty that flies straight in the face of all the current conventional wisdom about dark cinematography. The movie is an experience, and the post-movie conversations are, too. —TR

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Amazon, YouTube

The first Baby Assassins was one of my very favorite movies of 2022, so it’s no surprise I loved the sequel. A fantastic mash-up of two unlikely genres – assassin thriller and teen girl slice-of-life – the Baby Assassins movies rely heavily on the outstanding star power of its leads (Saori Izawa and Akari Takaishi) and best-in-class fight choreography from Kensuke Sonomura.

This time, the baby assassins are struggling to pay off some surprising debts incurred through their work while also being hunted by two up-and-coming assassins who want their jobs. That leads, of course, to some classic teenage hijinks and some banger fights, including the girls brawling in mascot costumes and a banger finale that rivals the first movie’s excellent ending. I would be perfectly content with 20 more of these movies. —PV

Where to watch: Criterion Channel

Nocturama director Bertrand Bonello essentially makes three short films in three styles with The Beast, a heady, thrilling science fiction movie that follows two people (played by Léa Seydoux and George MacKay) through three incarnations, where they grapple with their emotions and their tentative connection in radically different ways. Loosely inspired by Henry James’ 1903 short story “The Beast in the Jungle,” Bonello turns the idea of a character living in dread, anticipating some great disaster, into his own Cloud Atlas. Pulling a gorgeous period drama, a tense Brian De Palma-style stalker-thriller, and a post-apocalyptic-future story into conversation with each other, Bonello offers up a pure science fiction experience that’s both technically impressive and emotionally absorbing. —TR

It’s rare that any calendar year has a movie that’s as scary, viscerally upsetting, and exceptionally well made as The First Omen. It’s even more rare when that movie is technically a prequel to a five-decades old franchise, but here we are.

This prequel to The Omen follows a young nun, Margaret, who gets transferred to a beautiful and seemingly peaceful convent, until she notices some strange behavior and an orphaned girl who everyone thinks is disturbed. But as she looks into what’s wrong with the girl, Margaret finds a dark and sinister plot lurking just out of sight.

While the movie is technically a prequel to The Omen, what’s most interesting about director and co-writer Arkasha Steveson’s approach is that she seems more inspired by the tone and moody style of 70s horror movies and thrillers than she does to The Omen’s universe itself. Stevenson takes this suitably creepy set-up and folds in both supernatural horror and mystery in equal measure, twisting the whole plot into one big conspiracy where each reveal is more horrifying than the last.

The First Omen seems like a classic Hollywood misfire on paper. After all, why would we possibly need a prequel to The Omen? Who cares what Damien’s mom was up to? But if it means a movie this good and this scary, I’ll happily take a dozen more Omen prequels. —AG

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

Where to watch: Mubi, digital purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

Radu Jude’s first full feature since 2021’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn will certainly try some viewers’ patience: It’s 163 minutes of watching a harried, foul-mouthed production assistant, Angela (Ilinca Manolache) drive around Bucharest, alternating interviews for a factory’s safety PSA with making sexist, sneering Andrew Tate-inspired TikToks. Jude alternates her story with scenes from the 1982 Romanian film Angela Goes On, about a cab driver also making the rounds in Bucharest for work. The connection between the two Angelas and modern-Angela’s online alter ego “Bobita” takes some time to surface, as the film approaches its point elliptically from several directions at once, including through cameos from the original stars of Angela Goes On.

But it all comes together in a long-take finale that plays out as what seems likely to be the year’s funniest, most brutal takedown of corporate malfeasance, the gig economy, and capitalism as a whole. The contrast between a film made at a corporation’s behest, to serve its criminal agenda, and Angela’s freeform parodies of an influencer she hates is vivid and sly. And there’s a rebellious, subversive joy in the way she and the PSA’s subjects both try to tell their own truths in an oppressive environment where moneyed interests hold most of the cards. It’s a difficult film compared to the slick corporate IP that dominates multiplexes, but that just makes it endlessly unpackable and discussable — and more memorable than you’d expect for such a slow-burn story. —TR

Where to watch: Hulu, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon/Apple TV

As a mutation that turns people into human-animal hybrids starts to spread, a father and son search for the missing mother of the family, who has begun to transform herself.

Featuring realistic creature designs that blend practical and digital effects, a rich father-son relationship anchored by strong leading performances, and a compelling overarching narrative metaphor welcoming all sorts of interpretations, The Animal Kingdom stands out in modern sci-fi. It fires on all cylinders to create one of the more powerful movies of the year, evoking a rich world populated by fascinating people.

Part of the brilliance of The Animal Kingdom is the continued mundanity of human existence. Yes, everything we thought we knew about our species is being thrown into chaos, but there’s still work to do and school to attend and new love and enduring love and all the other shades of the human (or human-animal hybrid) experience. It’s in those moments that the true heart of the movie lies. —PV

Where to watch: Max, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

An adrenaline rush from start to finish, Love Lies Bleeding grabs you by the throat and never quite lets go. It follows Lou (Kristen Stewart), a reclusive gym manager with ties to the criminal underworld, who falls for aspiring bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian). While they share a few blissful weeks of peace and happiness, eventually Lou’s toxic family pulls them into a dark web, which spirals into some disastrous consequences. Stewart and O’Brian have an electric chemistry (not to mention some super steamy scenes), which makes their intense relationship simmer. It’s a wild ride, but Lou and Jackie hold fast and strong together, even when pushed to their limits. —PR

In 2021, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune felt like a promise. Whether you liked the movie or not, it came with an assurance that it was all in service of something better, more profound, and more epic to come. That kind of hype is hard to live up to, but with Dune: Part Two, Villeneuve exceeded even the wildest expectations.

While the movie is an astoundingly beautiful action blockbuster in the vein of epics like The Lord of the Rings, its most important feature might be how adeptly it handles its source material’s most complicated themes. Far from just being the standard chosen-one hero, the Paul Atreides of Dune: Part Two is tortured by the burden of prophecy and both dead-set on revenge and terrified of what it might cost to achieve it.

It’s a difficult line for a blockbuster to walk, but one Dune: Part Two pulls off with the perfect alchemy of terrific performances from movie stars and delicate direction by one of the best filmmakers working right now. —AG

Where to watch: Mubi, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon/Apple TV

The title sounds raucous, but How to Have Sex is in fact a tender, heartfelt, and searchingly honest coming-of-age tale about Tara, a brassy, secretly self-conscious 16-year-old virgin on a wild party holiday with her friends. It’s a quietly devastating movie about bad formative experiences, but also beautiful in its empathy and kindness, and funny, too.

If you liked Aftersun, this is a must-see — director Molly Manning Walker is part of an emerging, hugely talented generation of female British filmmakers that also includes Aftersun’s Charlotte Wells. —OW

As Japan came out of COVID-19 lockdown, the billionaire founder of the parent company of Uniqlo invited New German Cinema icon Wim Wenders to Tokyo to look at the city’s public toilets that blend public service with public art. Inspired, Wenders made Perfect Days, a gentle poem of a film about one of the city’s janitors. Come for the killer soundtrack; stay for the year’s best final shot. —CP

Where to watch: Hulu, free with a library card on Hoopla, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple, Vudu

The Promised Land is a sturdy historical drama anchored by a powerful performance by the ever reliable Mads Mikkelsen.

Mikkelsen plays the determined Ludvig Kahlen, a retired officer of the German army who has taken his pension to try and establish a homestead on a barren moor. When Kahlen starts to set up shop, he draws the attention of a powerful local landlord and magistrate, who sets out to ruin Kahlen’s efforts at any cost.

When two hardheaded men clash, sparks fly and people die. And that makes for some stellar Scandinavian cinema. —PV

Where to watch: Fandor, free with ads on Tubi, and Pluto TV, free with a library card on Hoopla, or digital rental/purchase on Amazon and Apple TV

I can sell a film nerd on Hundreds of Beavers with a seven-word elevator pitch: Looney Tunes by way of Guy Maddin.

However, if you’re a film viewer who doesn’t traffic in Canadian arthouse obscurities, the pitch will take a bit more effort. Hundreds of Beavers garnered attention for reviving the slapstick silent film, if only for its 108 minute run time. But the black-and-white action comedy has gradually earned its reputation as a budding midnight movie thanks to its more modern flourishes.

The story — a trapper must collect enough pelts to survive, build, and eventually win love — parodies video game quests. Its small cast would float comfortably in Adult Swim’s pool of lovable oddballs. And what writer/director Mike Cheslik does with a comparably cheap camera, some trashy beaver costumes, and a true talent with homespun special effects would make even the most ambitious YouTube editor’s jaw hit the floor.

Unlike its modern cult contemporaries, like The Room and the films of Neil Breen, there’s no irony here. Cheslik has made something genuinely special, an excellent film that reminds us just how funny early cinema could be — and proves slapstick can still feel fresh a century later with a few timely tweaks. —Chris Plante

Where to watch: AMC Plus, Digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple, Vudu

The hardest-hitting action movie of the year saw Gangs of London veterans Xavier Gens and Jude Poyer combine forces for the explosive revenge thriller Mayhem! (also known by its original title, Farang).

Some people were mixed on this version of the revenge story (I loved it quite a bit), but everyone I’ve talked to agrees the brutal and gory action is among the best of any movie this year, with motivated camera movements to punctuate the blows and fluid choreography executed terrifically by former national champion kickboxer Nassim Lyes. And it all culminates in one of the best elevator fight scenes in action movie history. —PV