I've found an interesting thing happening as I've put together "Best of 2024" lists for year-end awards, critics' aggregation lists and this publication: Where some years, I lock the order of my list pretty definitively, this year I keep slightly shifting things around as I consider different moments, ideas and performances. So maybe it makes sense to organize things a bit differently, and offer a non-ranked list.

Honorable Mentions (alphabetical): Hit Man; Rumours; Small Things Like These; The Wild Robot; and Will & Harper.

Places 6-10, alphabetically:
Black Box Diaries: Japanese journalist Shiori Itô turns an "issue documentary" into a fascinating character study by chronicling her long battle for justice after accusing a successful, politically-connected journalist of drugging and raping her in 2015. As a filmmaker, Itô's quite savvy, but she also understands how to keep her own journey at the center. As much as the narrative arc might be building to a legal verdict, this is a tale of devastating human moments, like the emotions inspired by one person choosing to act in Itô's best interest, and against his own, simply because it's the right thing to do.

The Brutalist: Director Brady Corbet and his co-writer Mona Fastvold justify their 215-minute story through a single photo featured during a 15-minute intermission, capturing the pre-World War II happiness of architect and Hungarian-born Jew László Tóth (Adrien Brody) that he will never find again. The narrative deals with Tóth's post-war life in America, on a commission from a wealthy benefactor (a fantastic Guy Pearce), but the real focus is the idea of assimilation, and how those who don't fit the dominant paradigm are allowed to express who they are—or, indeed, who they once were.

Evil Does Not Exist: You don't necessarily need to "solve" the enigmatic ending of Ryusuke Hamaguchi's follow-up to his Oscar-winning Drive My Car to find it wondrous. Set in a rural Japanese community where a corporation plans to open a "glamping" site, it feels for a hot minute like an art-house version of Doc Hollywood, with big-city folks learning lessons from the salt-of-the-earth locals. But there's a more unsettling notion at work here regarding the way people who don't really grasp the reality of "nature" can tend to fetishize it, all set to Eiko Ishibashi's remarkable score.

I Saw the TV Glow: Jane Schoenbrun (We're All Going to the World's Fair) continues to carve out a fascinating creative space exploring the way people use media to compensate for not being otherwise seen for who they truly are. Following two young people (Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine) who develop a passionate connection to a supernatural-themed 1990s TV series, it captures through haunting performances how the fandoms for certain stories are intense precisely because they speak to things that the fans themselves may not even fully understand about themselves.

Rebel Ridge: Right from the opening scene—with retired soldier Terry (Aaron Pierre) stopped by local cops who confiscate the cash Terry needs to post bail for his cousin—writer/director Jeremy Saulnier shows his gifts for ratcheting up tension to almost unbearable levels. Terry ultimately stumbles onto a massive corruption scheme led by the police chief (a perfectly oily Don Johnson), but that scheme is ultimately a MacGuffin serving to drive the slow burn towards justice, and the even slower burn of Pierre's dynamic lead performance as a uniquely powerful kind of action hero.

The top 5, also alphabetical:
Anora: Writer/director Sean Baker imagines a spin on Pretty Woman that's both exponentially funnier and more genuinely heartbreaking in his story of Ani (Mikey Madison, in a knockout performance), a Russian-American sex worker who impulsively marries the 21-year-old do-nothing son of a Russian oligarch. What follows next might have been a broad slapstick comedy as employees of Ani's unhappy new in-laws attempt to secure an annulment, and indeed the ensuing frantic 24-hour sequence is full of expertly-staged humor. But it's also a sneaky kind of character study about this tough young woman's shifting understanding of whether she's actually lucked into a Prince Charming.

Challengers: Tennis turns out to be the ideal backdrop for this combination of sports movie and romantic drama—about the complicated decade-long relationship between three high-level players (Zendaya, Josh O'Connor and Mike Faist)—since it's a sport where there are many different gender permutations for competition. Director Luca Guadagnino and writer Justin Kuritzkes tell the high-energy story without judgment, conveying how there's always something off in the dynamic between any two of these people in a configuration that omits the third, allowing for the possibility that their happily-ever-after might involve a mixed throuple.

His Three Daughters: Visual style, thematic heft and great performances coalesce in writer/director Azazel Jacobs' tale of three sisters (Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen) gathering in the New York apartment where they all grew up for what are likely the last days of their terminally-ill dad. All three leads are phenomenal, capturing unique personalities reacting to the complex dynamics of their relationships with one another, their respective childhoods and confronting the finality of death. Most impressively, Jacobs takes what easily could have been a stage play and makes it wonderfully cinematic.

Hundreds of Beavers: Co-writer/director Mike Cheslik's rollicking comedy demonstrates the power of committing to building a gag. At its most basic level, this movie set in the 19th-century Canadian wilderness finds a down-on-his-luck guy (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, Cheslik's co-writer) pivoting to working as a fur trapper to survive. What ensues in the black-and-white, super-low-budget production is an inspired mix of Road Runner-vs.-Coyote anarchy, old-school video-game plot mechanics and retro silent-film aesthetics. Movies like this shouldn't be able to sustain comedic momentum for nearly two hours, but that's what you get with one of the biggest barrels of laughs in years.

Red Rooms: So many thorny ideas of being "extremely online" are tied up in writer/director Pascal Plante's psychological thriller—about Montreal-based model Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) and her fascination with the trial of a serial killer—even as it provides one of the year's most unsettling visceral experiences. The story's effectiveness is anchored in the magnificent performances of Gariépy and Laurie Babin (as another trial groupie Kelly-Anne befriends), and it lingers because Plante is willing to dig into the most uncomfortable places about what our obsessions can do to us as we pursue the rush of ever-more-dangerous highs.