2024 has already proved a bumper year for big-screen releases, with a flurry of long-delayed blockbusters—as well as some hotly anticipated sequels and new offerings from Oscar-winning auteurs—finally hitting theaters. Here are the films we’ve loved so far—and the ones still to come that we don’t think you should miss.
Out of Darkness (February 9)
Out of Darkness is a prehistoric survival tale: Six Paleolithic characters against a dark force hunting them when the sun goes down. And, like any good late-night film, it takes no time to get moving. Be advised that the characters speak an invented language, Tola, devised with the help of an academic advisor and translated via subtitles. But the movie is a stylish, breathless wonder, shot in the stunning Scottish Highlands in spectral natural light and set to a percussive, thumping score. It’s more thriller than horror film, though there are bouts of visceral violence, and when the group plunges into a old-growth forest, the Blair Witch vibes fully descend. —Taylor Antrim
Dune: Part Two (March 1)
Director Denis Villeneuve’s desert planet blockbuster was so hyped—with the press tour to end all press tours—that it was almost a surprise that the actual movie, starring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Florence Pugh, Austin Butler, and more, was actually really great. This is a sci-fi epic, mythic and self-serious, but somehow crisply paced and cool instead of ridiculous; extremely long but never boring; and packed with enough action set pieces and charismatic movie stars that you kind of can’t believe your luck. —TA
Love Lies Bleeding (March 8)
Rose Glass’s follow-up to her mesmerizing horror debut, Saint Maud, is this heady, headlong queer romance set in 1989 New Mexico about a gym manager (played by Kristen Stewart) and an amateur body builder (Katy O’Brien, committed and excellent) who fall into a steamy, steroids-fueled affair, and cause all sorts of mayhem along the way. There are ideas about self-actualization and power here, but also a lot of neon-lit body horror. The result is potent and possibly a bit divisive. A conversation piece. —TA
La Chimera (March 29)
Writer-director Alice Rohrwacher’s mystical-tinged drama—the final part of her trilogy on Italian identity—examines the persistent ties between the living and the dead, the past and the present, the seen and the unseen. Josh O’Connor learned Italian to play Arthur, an English graverobber in 1980s Tuscany running with a crew of fellow tombaroli who finds himself haunted by a deceased love. Yet descriptions can’t do it proper justice—trust that it’s a strange, wondrous, lovely riddle of a film that lingers far after the final, heartbreaking scene. —Lisa Wong Macabasco
Challengers (April 26)
Has any movie this year captured the internet’s attention quite like Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers? Starring a triad of extremely appealing young stars—Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist, and a career-best Zendaya—it’s a sexy and kinetic delight, propelled by satisfying performances, a thumping score by Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor, and VFX tricks so wonderfully wacky it’s easy to miss just how technically impressive they are. A flat-out wonderful time at the movies. —Marley Marius
Civil War (April 26)
Civil War is an ultra-poised modern war movie, balanced between beauty and horror. Writer-director Alex Garland’s vision of a near-future America in battle with itself has ravishing moments, an incredible central performance from Kirsten Dunst, and a heart-stopping pace. But this is a movie built around a moral center, and it is as excruciating as any you’re likely to see this year. There are stunningly beautiful passages (tracer fire in the night sky, a drive through a forest fire) that will stick with you and needle drops (Suicide and De La Soul) that leave marks. Civil War is unconvinced of many things: that journalism will save us, that democracy will endure, that the left or the right has any purchase on rectitude. All it knows for sure is that when we turn on each other, no one wins. —TA
I Saw the TV Glow (May 17)
A surrealist story of two suburban teenagers obsessed with a cult 1990s TV show, I Saw The TV Glow is eerie, yearning, and piercingly nostalgic: a vivid account of youthful alienation full of luridly beautiful, and sometimes extremely alarming, images. It is 1996, and seventh-grader Owen lives his life in a state of pained dissociation—typically in the radiance of his family TV. When he notices a ninth-grade girl named Maddy reading a paperback episode guide to a TV show called The Pink Opaque, something cracks ever-so-slightly open within him. Maddy invites Owen to her house to watch an episode together, and a fixation develops, as well as a strange bond between the two. As the film moves through decades, it builds and works on your nerves, and the ending sequence, with an adult Owen beset by disappointment and a bottled sense of self, is scary and explosive. —TA
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (May 24)
Could the Mad Max prequel, Furiosa, possibly measure up to George Miller’s 2015 beloved Fury Road? The answer is a surprised and delighted yes. Longer, richer in character work, and twice as dark in its storytelling, this origin story with Anya Taylor-Joy is operatic and grand and gleefully demented in its set pieces. This is a revenge story, as classical in its arc as True Grit or Kill Bill, and Taylor-Joy holds the film’s rage and bloodlust in her tiny frame and stoic face. Like Charlize Theron in Fury Road, this heroine barely speaks, but her performance is a marvel of grace and physicality. Furiosa is populated by muscle-bound thugs who could probably bench-press 12 Furiosas, but Taylor-Joy plausibly defeats all of them. —TA
Hit Man (June 7)
In Richard Linklater’s winning action-comedy, Glen Powell plays a dweeby, jorts-wearing undercover Houston cop posing as a suave and sexy hit man. Things start to go sideways when sparks fly with a woman he’s hired to kill (Adria Arjona). Even more improbable than Powell being a nerd? The whole story is indeed based on real events. It’s so much fun, you won’t be able to stop yourself smiling. One much-discussed scene has left audiences applauding mid film—avoid spoilers at all costs. —LWM
Federer: Twelve Final Days (June 14)
Tennis obsessives were glued to their socials in September 2022, as Roger Federer wound down his historic career with a final appearance at the Laver Cup in London alongside his dear friend Rafael Nadal, the two of them holding hands and in tears in those final moments. As luck would have it, though, there was a camera filming (almost) everything during that last stretch—and while Federer originally intended for this footage to be viewed only by himself and his family, we’re blessed with it now. Directed by Joe Sabia and Asif Kapadia, Twelve Final Days is more than just a sendoff for the modern master of the game: it’s a poignant and almost impossibly emotional reflection on achievement, mortality, aging, grace—and, yes, goodbyes. —Corey Seymour
Janet Planet (June 21)
Playwright Annie Baker’s first film is an intensely personal, hyper-specific wonder about a young girl growing up in the shadow and protective shade of her single mother in the hippie wilds of northwestern Massachusetts. The mother, Janet—played by the wonderful actor Julianne Nicholson—is an acupuncturist and iconoclast who lives in a cabin in the woods with her daughter, Lacy (Zoe Ziegler). The pacing is slow and the plot isn’t much–a series of adults that gain Janet’s attention disrupt Lacy’s small world—but the film holds you in its delicate grip all the way through. —TA
The Devil’s Bath (June 28)
In the hands of the filmmakers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala (Goodnight Mommy, The Lodge), rural 18th-century Austria looks like an extremely difficult place to be a woman. Based on historical accounts and filmed in gorgeous woodland light, this patient and unsettling film follows the spiraling mindset of Agnes, a young bride who finds herself isolated by chores and drudgery and sinking deeper and deeper into depression. In her small and deeply Catholic community, suicide is an unpardonable sin, so a horrible crime lures her with the promise of escape. Anchored by the no-holds-barred debut performance of Anja Plaschg as Agnes, The Devil’s Bath is nerve-straining and memorable. Stream it on the horror specialist, Shudder. —TA
Maxxxine (July 5)
The concluding film in Ty West’s X trilogy, Maxxxine stars Mia Goth as Maxine, an adult-film actress breaking into mainstream Hollywood in 1985 amid the Richard Ramirez “Night Stalker” killing spree. West’s films have been steadily gaining a following, and this one has an ensemble cast—Elizabeth Debicki, Bobby Cannavale, Halsey, Kevin Bacon, and more—to die for. —TA
Longlegs (July 12)
The extremely evocative trailers will tell you if you can handle this serial-killer horror film from Ozgood Perkins (who has made two great indie frighteners: 2015’s The Blackcoat’s Daughter and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House from 2016). It stars Maika Monroe as an FBI agent on the trail of someone (or something) called Longlegs, and Nicolas Cage in a role that will give you nightmares. For those who like to be scared, Longlegs is one to look forward to. —TA
Dìdi (July 26)
A hilarious crowd-pleaser out of Sundance, this first feature from the talented young director Sean Wang is a coming-of-age story about a 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy growing up in early ’00s Fremont, California. The pleasures of Dìdi are in the specifics—skate culture, Myspace, pop punk—and in the agonizing experience of flirting, making and losing friends, and fighting with your family, all out of a young boy’s desperate need to belong. —TA
Good One (August 9)
Good One was a Sundance breakout: a quiet, patient debut feature from filmmaker India Donaldson about a teenage girl, played by the astonishingly good young actor Lily Collias, on a camping trip in the Catskills with her divorced father and his best friend. Collias is the gravity in this intimate film, shot mostly in the woods; a girl growing up and out of her father’s world and shaping one of her own. —TA
Alien: Romulus (August 16)
Another Alien movie! This is either the seventh or the 10th in the series (if you count the crossover films), and it could be for fans only. On the other hand, the franchise has the reputation of casting great actresses as leads, and this one stars Cailee Spaeny, who has been making excellent choices in her young career. (She was last seen in Priscilla and Civil War.) Hitting right in the dog days of August, Alien: Romulus looks to be solidly in its horror-genre category—and like a lot of scary fun. —TA
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (September 6)
Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, and Michael Keaton are reprising their roles in Tim Burton’s 1988 classic for the beloved auteur’s long-awaited sequel, which will see them joined by an all-star supporting cast including Jenna Ortega, Monica Bellucci, and Willem Dafoe. —RS
The Substance (September 20)
It’s hard to remember when I last saw a film that went as hard as Coralie Fargeat’s fearless follow-up to the candy-colored action thriller Revenge—the mind-bending tale of an actor (a career-best Demi Moore) deemed to be past her prime, who injects her body with a mysterious substance that promises to release a more perfect version of herself. Cue her collapsing onto her bathroom floor, her spine splitting open, and a younger alter-ego (a sweet and then devilish Margaret Qualley) emerging from inside her. What happens next inspired gasps, cheers, laughter and shrieks of horror in equal measure at the film’s recent Cannes premiere—and it, deservedly, left the festival with the best-screenplay prize. Expect it to be the talking point of the autumn when it finally hits theaters. —RS
Joker: Folie à Deux (October 4)
Since Joker made over $1 billion and earned its barnstorming lead a best-actor Oscar, anticipation has been sky-high for Todd Phillips’s follow-up to that disturbing psychological thriller, a—wait for it—musical that stars Lady Gaga as the eccentric Harley Quinn alongside Phoenix’s beleaguered Joker. Yes, really. —RS
We Live in Time (October 11)
Under the direction of John Crowley (Brooklyn), Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield lead what Variety has described as a “decade-spanning, deeply moving romance” in which an “up-and-coming chef finds her life forever changed by a chance encounter with a recent divorcée.” Weird title inside, we are so onboard. —MM
A Real Pain (October 18)
The headline deal to come out of Sundance was a $10 million sale to Searchlight for this highly watchable road-trip comedy about two Jewish cousins, played by Jesse Eisenberg (who wrote and directed) and Kieran Culkin, taking a kind of Holocaust tour through Poland to get in touch with their heritage. It would all be an amusing odyssey of squabbling and jokery—with some serious moments, too—if not for Culkin, who achieves lift-off just as he did on Succession, and adds a dose of tragedy to the proceedings. —TA
Anora (October 18)
Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning crowdpleaser—a fleet-footed romp which follows the titular exotic dancer (a glorious Mikey Madison) who meets the goofy son of a Russian oligarch (newcomer Mark Eydelshteyn, already being dubbed “the Russian Timothée Chalamet”) and embarks on a madcap romance—seems to have secured its spot in the 2025 awards race. As with the beloved director’s previous work (Tangerine, The Florida Project, Red Rocket), this is a funny, charming, and visually dazzling delight, which goes on to surprise you with its warmth and touching vulnerability—and an ending that’ll leave you utterly devastated. —RS
Gladiator II (November 22)
Hot on the heels of Napoleon comes another soaring historical blockbuster from Ridley Scott: the tale of Lucius Verus (Paul Mescal)—the nephew of Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus, who was seen as a child in 2000’s Gladiator—as he reaches adulthood. With a stellar ensemble that also features Pedro Pascal, Denzel Washington, and Stranger Things’s Joseph Quinn, it should be a swords-and-sandals epic like no other. —RS
Wicked: Part 1 (November 27)
Due to be released in two parts—with the second film following in 2025—this big-screen rendering of the wildly successful stage musical is helmed by Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians, In the Heights), and sees Ariana Grande play Glinda the Good Witch, with Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West; Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero; Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible; and Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard himself. —RS
Nosferatu (December 25)
For this atmospheric retelling of F. W. Murnau’s 1922 gothic horror, Robert Eggers has assembled a formidable line-up: Bill Skarsgård takes the lead as the vampiric Count Orlok, while Lily-Rose Depp, Emma Corrin, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Willem Dafoe, and Nicholas Hoult star as those whose lives are upturned by his arrival in a sleepy German town in the early 19th century. —RS
Presence (release TBA)
I caught Steven Soderbergh’s sly and fast-moving haunted-house indie at Sundance, and was pinned to my seat for 90 minutes. As a director Soderbergh is never conventional, and here the camera is the ghost, swooping around a suburban house where a family with secrets has just moved in. Two girls have recently died of apparent overdoses, and the excellent newcomer Callina Liang, as the family’s teenage daughter, is in mourning—and noticing that not all is as it should be in her home. —TA