Twin Cities Geek Writers’ Favorite Films of 2024

As we head into 2025, three Twin Cities Geek film reviewers—Ryan Sanderson, Ali Rydberg, and Mark McPherson—looked back on all the new releases they watched in 2024. Here, they’ve summed up their thoughts on the current movie landscape and picked their favorites of the year.

Jump to Ryan’s Picks | Jump to Ali’s Picks | Jump to Mark’s Picks

Ryan Sanderson

Ryan is a carbon-based life form in the Sol system of the Milky Way galaxy. He likes Chinese food and Coen brothers movies. (Read More)

The film industry is changing, in many ways for the worse. Just from memory I could fire off a dozen developments since 2020 that have left the 20th century’s defining art form a little weaker, a little bit tainted. A worldwide pandemic transformed humanity’s viewing habits. Historic antitrust laws were overturned. The superhero genre, long the Atlas propping up the industry’s lofty financial carapace, have plummeted like Westerns in the 1970s (a bit of a mixed bag, but I’m sure the money has been missed by cinemas). The originality crisis has never been more dire—18 of the top 20 best-selling films of 2024 were sequels, remakes, or some unholy combination thereof. Studios are disappearing whole films for tax breaks! LG stopped making Blu-ray players!

With all that said, I moved near the Main Cinema a couple years ago. It’s given me the opportunity to see tons of new work, including films from all over the world that would never play in your average AMC. It turns out that eight rows back, when the only thing that matters is what’s on screen, movies are still doing pretty well! I’ve never seen such a massive crop of talented, diverse, brilliant minds marrying all the artistic and technological breakthroughs of the last century to the desires and fascinations of modern audiences.

The money might be waning, but the talent and passion are stronger than ever. To the extent that an art form exists beyond capital, in the intangible spark created with every interaction between artist and audience, we’re still living in a golden age. I’m trying not to take it for granted.

1. Furiosa (George Miller)

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga begins, like scripture, with a question: “As the world falls around us, how must we brave its cruelties?” That’s a very intense question for a Thursday night in an air-conditioned Alamo Drafthouse, but hey, you bought a ticket to see tumorous warboys and cannibal raiders wage righteous metal war in souped-up war rigs. Intensity is kind of the appeal.

Furiosa plays a perfect Iliad to its beloved predecessor’s Odyssey, widening the scope, evoking religious and mythical comparisons more directly amid all the mayhem and fire. The first time we see Furiosa, she’s reaching for an apple like Eve in Genesis. The ending forgoes Fury Road’s crowd-pleasing fireworks for a philosophical debate that feels more like Job. Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) rides a chariot led by motorcycles like a wannabe Roman conqueror. The movie isn’t pushy about these references; they come and go, serve more as texture than text. But for those who are paying attention, writer/director George Miller would like to remind you that the action movie is an evolution of the oldest storytelling forms: the war story, the tale of the hunt, the mythological epic. The future, built from the discarded auto parts of the past and present.

But the film does not simply reference the past—it corrects it. Young Furiosa (Alyla Browne, and then Anya Taylor-Joy) plays the roles so often written out of war epics from all eras: the refugee, the orphan, the disposable soldier, the mourning daughter, lover, friend. With each chapter, she finds a new answer to the question that opens the film, while the costumed, egomaniacal warlords who drive mythology are rendered side characters in her story.

No, Furiosa does not quite deliver the immersive spectacle that made Fury Road a singular cultural event. It doesn’t try, either. It has other things on its mind. There are some chase sequences that remind the viewer just how good George Miller is at action when he wants to be, but Furiosa is even more careful about how it uses its catharsis and violence. It’s not just exploiting well-established genre conventions to sell tickets. It has something vital on its mind about the primal, ideological space we engage with when we attend action movies. It indulges its audience’s thirst for blood without judgment, but it also pokes at the possibility that there’s something fundamentally empty and, ultimately, either cynical or hopeless in the way the entertainment industry insists on repackaging power fantasies.

Miller mastered the action movie before many of today’s filmmakers were born. The whole Mad Max series, but particularly the two-part modern masterpiece that is Fury Road and Furiosa, works hard to seize the wheel of action mythology through sheer force of craft in order to steer it in a different direction, one with a little more room to grow.

2. Janet Planet (Annie Baker)

Annie Baker’s Pulitzer-winning off-Broadway hit play The Flick was met with glowing reviews, the vibe of which was “It’s three hours long! Nothing happens! I loved it!” (Some people also walked out, but they were wrong, and I feel sorry for them.) Janet Planet is Baker’s first effort to translate that voice onto the screen, and it’s an incredibly strong debut. She consistently locates the perfect framing for all the quiet emotional conflicts her mother and daughter protagonists (Julianne Nicholson and Zoe Ziegler) must navigate during one lonely, tumultuous summer. Each learns from and responds to the other, and the movie does an incredible job dropping the viewer into their all-consuming parent/child dynamic. It meanders like life meanders, picking up meaning and direction as their habits and choices accumulate consequences.

What an art form, though, where two films as fundamentally different as Furiosa and Janet Planet can gobsmack you in such opposite ways! I left Furiosa overwhelmed with feeling. I left Janet Planet more alive in my own skin.

3. Civil War (Alex Garland)

I hadn’t loved an Alex Garland film until this year. I found Ex Machina and Annihilation overly clinical, their characters’ emotions less interesting than their situations and the ideas they symbolized. That’s probably also true of Civil War, Garland’s alt-reality American war epic, but it just works so well!

A van full of reporters ventures through war-torn America from one moral/psychological quandary to another, encountering many versions of armed conflict in a world of rural gas stations and abandoned mall parking lots. The story is largely apolitical, which is something I thought might bother me, but it actually became the movie’s defining strength. Of course, there are inherently political aspects to war, and to all the reasons why the notion of civil war presently lingers in the minds of Americans. But war has many faces, most of which don’t care what you or I believe, and the characters of Civil War encounter them with increasing horror as they draw closer to the mouth of madness that is Washington, DC.

4. I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun)

When Owen (Justice Smith) says he “likes TV shows” the same way his lesbian friend, Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) likes girls, I related more than I care to say. My favorite show, like writer/director Jane Schoenbrun’s, was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The less said about that series’ creator, the better, but it made emotions I’d felt ashamed of my whole life feel like the most important, beautiful things in the universe. I Saw the TV Glow uses the romance of television to explore Schoenbrun’s own experience as an adolescent discovering their assigned gender did not fit their true identity: the refuge they felt in shows like Buffy, and the disconnect between those shows’ all-consuming romances and the struggle of someone defining their own identity in contemporary America. It’s a quietly brilliant, disturbing, deeply felt journey into the heart of a generation left to find themselves in front of a glowing screen.

Read More of Ryan’s Reviews

Ali Rydberg

Ali is a Minneapolis-based writer, animal lover, and connoisseur of mid-2000s television and movies. When she isn’t consuming media at an alarming rate, she enjoys going on hikes with her girlfriend and dog as well as being an amateur film photographer. (Read More)

Looking back on the movies I watched in 2024, one word keeps coming to mind: fun. I saw films this year that felt like I was waiting my whole life to see. Ones I could have never expected or imagined myself but, once they were in front of me it felt like—oh yes, exactly! That feeling was true for each of the films that made my list. I can’t wait to see what fun 2025 brings.

1. Anora (Sean Baker)

Sean Baker has always been something of an enigma to me. When the credits roll on one of his movies and I see his name in every top spot—writer, director, editor—I can’t fathom how one person could even attempt to do it all themselves, let alone want to. I have always been an admirer of Baker’s work for this very reason. His 2017 film, The Florida Project, is one of three films saved on my iTunes to watch at any time. So when I heard that his latest project, Anora, had won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May, I was practically buzzing to get it in front of my eyes as soon as I could. And thankfully, the wait was worth it.

Anora (Mikey Madison), or Ani, as she prefers, is a young sex worker on her usual shift at a nightclub when she meets the wealthy son of a Russian oligarch, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn). What starts as a typical work relationship for Ani soon evolves into her perfect dream of a fairy-tale whirlwind romance. Until it isn’t.

At every turn you’re sure Anora is soon to take, the film steers quickly in the opposite direction. The tale that unfolds is hilarious and heartbreaking. Madison’s performance is the standout of the year for me, and one that is guaranteed to fast-track her to absolute stardom. (For the record, I have loved her since Better Things.)

As I could feel the film winding down after a run time of more than two hours that flew by, there was real sadness knowing I’d soon have to leave this striking yet oddly familiar world that Baker had created. I didn’t want it to end. Without spoiling any specifics, the final scene between Ani and Igor (Yura Borisov) had me hanging on to every breath shared between the two. The tears were still streaming down my face as the lights came up in the theater. What can I say? Sean Baker has done it again.

2. The Substance (Carolie Fargeat)

There was no way I could leave The Substance, which I wrote about in depth when it came out, off this list. I thought the film was great when I wrote my initial review, and it has somehow only grown on me since. There is something to be said about a movie that matches your freak as intensely and specifically as the third act of this movie. I have been delighted by its second wave of viewership as it has found its way to the masses and into pop culture. (A tweet about Mitch McConnell taking the Substance and turning into JD Vance made me giggle for days. Because if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry, right?)

I have a feeling that The Substance will only become more relevant and necessary as we creep through these sure-to-be-weird next few years. And though I support everyone’s right to do whatever they please to their own body, I can only hope that as our society spirals down the dark and obsessive path that is the antiaging industry, doctors will soon prescribe one viewing of The Substance as something like a pre-procedure requirement.

3. I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun)

Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow looked directly into the depths of my brain and expertly extracted thoughts and feelings that I was positive only I had felt. There is actually nothing scarier to me than creeping down the journey of self-discovery as a young queer and/or gender-nonconforming person, and after watching this film I couldn’t believe there had never been a horror film to tackle that concept like this before. However, I suppose the universe was waiting for the right time and the right person, which is, undoubtedly, Schoenbrun.

I Saw the TV Glow is such a special movie. As a kid who understood the world first through my television set and second as a place that didn’t seem to be for me, it feels something like an autopsy of a time I’d rather wish to forget. At the same time, I think its significance is that it reminds us all just how much bravery it requires to take up space in a world that wants you to stay hidden.

4. Challengers (Luca Guadagnino)

Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers was another film whose premise was like catnip to me. Zendaya is in a possible throuple situation with two men obsessed with her, and all of them are obsessed with tennis? You had me at Zendaya.

Challengers was the most fun viewing experience I had this year. From the very first frame of the film, Zendaya has the viewer—along with Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor)—in the palm of her hand. It is a story of the unexpected, often complicated paths life can force you down, all told against the backdrop of a single tennis match. Guadagnino is such a singular filmmaker, and his vision is perfect for telling this story. His bold, bright stylization and expert camera work make the film feel like the most popular ride at the carnival, one you’d wait hours to get back on. It’s hard to imagine the impact of a film like this being confined to a single year, and I’d say its life is only just beginning.

Read More of Ali’s Reviews

Mark McPherson

Mark is a moonlighting movie critic for various websites. A video-store veteran and lover of the medium, he is up for watching just about any movie (yes, including that one). (Read More)

2024 was a year of movies that felt alive. While there was no Barbenheimer to rally behind or a long list of big-name directors strutting their stuff, there was a wealth of creativity oozing from the screen if you knew where to look. Want a wild thriller with sex and surrealism? Love Lies Bleeding has you covered. Want a documentary that will make you cry? Super/Man, about Christopher Reeve, brought me there. If you dug deep enough, there was a fire in film this year, ranging from the frenetic friction of Challengers to the gritty showdowns of Furiosa. Here are the films from the past year I felt were the loudest and the proudest.

1. Anora (Sean Baker)

Sean Baker always surprises me with how much realism he infuses into his films. Anora is no exception, and it may be my favorite picture by a director who had already impressed me with Tangerine and The Florida Project. At the film’s heart is Mikey Madison’s vibrant performance as Ani, a sex worker who always feels in control. Even when her man has run out on her and Russian gangsters target her, she never stops her attacks, be they verbal or physical. Even when she’s gagged, you can see her eyes rolling and her brows furrowing, high on energy despite being down on luck.

Anora’s direction is impressive for its whirlwind of unexpected avenues and the way Baker films with 35mm. It’s a real change of pace from when he favored phones as cameras for Tangerine, and it makes this film stand out as one of his best. The way he shoots New York City is so intoxicating for the eyes that he probably could have gotten away with setting the story in the 1970s.

The film is equal parts hilarious, intense, and sad but never settles on a simplistic tone. Ani becomes a character worth rooting for in how she takes dead aim at everybody and subverts her relationship with her enemies viciously. It’s a struggle where you share her frustrations so much that you want to holler back at the screen with the same vigor. Anora not only is Baker’s best-looking film but also has the best performance I’ll never forget.

2. Sing Sing (Greg Kwedar)

A core aspect of Sing Sing that immediately shot it up to the #2 spot on my list is its focus on male friendships. This is a prison drama that focuses on a theater program in which prisoners put on a show for rehabilitation. Through the production, men like the troubled Divine Eye struggle to prove their acting abilities while those like Divine G (Colman Domingo) struggle to maintain face amid the mounting despair for the justice system. The film never becomes fully about the play or prison, but the connections formed by men when they’re at their most vulnerable.

Part of what makes this type of drama feel so real is that it’s based on a real program and stars many nonprofessional actors who have been through the experience. The presence of these men, most of whom get their moment to shine in the spotlight, brings an air of relatability and connection that is so warm it’s worth fighting for. The scenes in which Paul Raci as the director carefully maneuvers his way into the comfort zone of these men are some of the most life-affirming of any film you’ll see from the past year.

3. The Brutalist (Brady Corbet)

The Brutalist is hard to describe on a thematic level. In the simplest of terms, it’s a film about the hardships the Hungarian Jewish immigrant László Tóth (Adrien Brody) faces as he builds his most towering architectural project in the United States. Sure, he faces the slings and arrows of antisemitism in the wake of the Holocaust, but there’s way more to it than that. He witnesses the inhumanity of capitalism, the unjust power dynamics, the corrupt nature that allows rape and sinks deep into addicting vices that feel like the only form of comfort. It’s all that and more, watching this one man fall while his ailing wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) looks on in dismay and his greedy employer Harrison (Guy Pearce) finds new ways to take advantage of him and his family.

This historical epic is as intricate and immense as the structure László builds throughout the film. While the American Dream is brutalized in many of his rants, there are also small moments of wonder, such as a mesmerizing quarry sequence. The film runs three and a half hours, but it never wastes a moment—everything feels like a progressive build as the architect struggles with everything from faith to passion. It’s such an intoxicating experience with so much thought put into every stage that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t based on a real person or historical novel.

Read More of Mark’s Reviews

What were your favorite movies of the year?