Opinion: The top ten movies of 2024

Welcome to my top ten list of movies for 2024. It's pretty self explanatory, and I've explained "the rules" plenty of times in the past, but I think I should explain one qualification for what constitutes a "2024" movie for my list, as it applies to one movie this year and has caused confusion in the past. Basically, I'm going by theatrical release, not festival premiere, like IMDB does.

Other than that, just a reminder that this isn't supposed to be a specifically furry list, even if this is a furry site, but I will award a Best Furry Movie, with this year going to The Wild Robot. At the start of the decade, this had a pretty high correlation with the Ursa Major Award for Best Anthropomorphic Motion Picture, with victories for Wolfwalkers and Raya and the Last Dragon, but in the last two years, I seem to have lost my short status as furry middlebrow tastemaker, as Turning Red lost to Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 lost to Nimona. All four of my picks for Best Furry Movie also ended up being my number one pick those four years, as well (spoilers for this year's list?). I also, just for fun, as a fox fan, give out a Cutest Vixen Award, and this year that goes to Zhen from Kung Fu Panda 4. In less furry accolades, I do sometimes list a movie from the previous year that might have made the list if I'd seen it before publication (not that this is a correction) and for 2023 I'll say The Holdovers was pretty good.

Okay, now on to the actual list! Please note that the titles and posters listed here link back to either a Flayrah review when applicable, or an IMDB page at the very least, so if you are unfamiliar with a movie, and my short blurb doesn't entirely fill you in, you can check them out that way. (Also, fun fact, but two of my picks this year feature a character carrying a symbolically important peach pit around with them before planting it, allowing it to sprout in the final shot. Have fun guessing which two!)

10. Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1

Directed by: Kevin Costner
This one comes with a pretty big caveat, in that it is a part one, and it very much feels like a part one. At this point, various plot threads feel unconnected with each other. Most of the movie takes place in the American Southwest, but then suddenly we're in a new scene in the much farther north Montana. So I guess we're in Montana, now?

But this movie is a big sprawling Western, so I can forgive it if it sprawls a little. The ending may seem a little abrupt (and literally a trailer for a forthcoming Chapter 2), and the story also literally all over the place, but the individual scenes are great. Hopefully we just get more context later on.

9. Deadpool & Wolverine

Directed by: Shawn Levy
I've always felt, in movie franchises, that, yes, the bad ones count, too. Which means I appreciated this movie's loving tribute to the 20th Century Fox Marvel comic adaptations, despite the fact that the only two I like were, appropriately enough, one Deadpool movie and one Wolverine movie. What a loving tribute to cinematic mediocrity!

Anyway, speaking of loving tributes to cinematic mediocrity, welcome to my annual top ten list's number nine spot, which has featured, among others, Suicide Squad, Cats and Space Jam: A New Legacy. I'm not apologizing (and Deadpool & Wolverine is easily better than those three), but a direct address to the audience pointing out the absurdity of the situation is sometimes fun.

8. Kung Fu Panda 4

Directed by: Mike Mitchell
The Kung Fu Panda franchise is easily the most consistently high quality furry movie series out there. Not that there are a lot of those with the fully anthropomorphic world setting out there to begin with, mind you. From humble beginnings, it's become something much bigger and better than anyone could have guessed from something called, well, Kung Fu Panda.

Of course, on a personal level, it was a major furry franchise without an important fox character. Oh, wait, they finally added a fox to the franchise for this entry? And she's voiced by Awkwafina, who I've liked ever since she voiced the second titular character in Raya and the Last Dragon? Well, sign me up!

7. In a Violent Nature

Directed by: Chris Nash
There is a tendency in film criticism and histories to point out, during the sixties and seventies the "Movie Brat" directors of the "New Hollywood" took formerly "b movie" genres like gangster movies, creature features and science fiction they had grown up with and treated them with the respect and craft usually reserved for more staid dramas. This still happens, with In a Violent Nature being a mash up of the disreputable slasher with arthouse slow cinema.

I'll admit that I have way more familiarity with the former rather than the latter, but I appreciate that, despite its slow, thoughtful pace, In a Violent Nature still works as a goofy, overly violent slasher, with dumb young adult characters, over the top deaths and a nice acknowledgement of the whole "if he died as a kid, how is he an adult undead killer?" thing. It manages to frame its killer as arbitrary and unsympathetic, but still fascinating and worth observing, much like the woodlands he stalks.

6. Conclave

Directed by: Edward Berger
Conclave is a glimpse behind closed doors. Literally. The selection of a new pope is a process that is occurs in locked building, sealed off from the outside world. The cardinals voting don't know what's going on outside, and the outside world doesn't know what's going on inside the building. It's not a very transparent process.

Despite that, Conclave shows us the twists and turns of this election process. It is politics at play, pure and simple, and though the players may nominally put the game in God's hands, realistically, players are going to play the game. In the end, despite all the drama, a choice is made, and it feels like a good, hopeful choice to me. Wish I could say that about the results of all elections held in 2024.

5. Hundreds of Beavers

Directed by: Mike Cheslik
This was easily the funniest comedy I watched this year. There may have been funnier individual jokes in other movies, but this movie had me laughing the most consistently throughout. The way in which it was shot and filmed in and of itself is just funny. The story of a hapless trapper trying to survive in the wilderness is actually a very dramatic premise, but you film it so all the animals are just more actors in cheap costumes, and it quickly becomes a comedy.

It could also quickly become just dumb, which, to be fair, this movie is also. But it is dumb in a good way, not dumb in a bad way. Having a character gallop to the rescue on the back of his obviously pantomime horse is one of the best sight gags I've seen in a movie. It takes a certain kind of courage to be that deliberately silly for a laugh.

4. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Directed by: George Miller
I don't really like prequels, as a group, though if done well, they can be great. Though, to be fair to myself, Furiosa's strengths come from details that have nothing whatsoever to do with its status as a prequel. I really didn't need to know the titular character's backstory, other than what we were able to glean from Mad Max: Fury Road, but at least it wasn't bad, now that we have more of it.

In fact, it was quite a fair distance away from bad. Once again, this is an amazingly fun action series, with some jaw-dropping set pieces. It is also an amazing movie to look at, and it does have a little bit more going on under the hood than just the purring of the engines. Though, of course, in this franchise, engines don't purr. They roar.

3. Dune: Part 2

Directed by: Denis Villeneuve
I said in my 2021 list that "The thing holding it at this low spot is that it's only half the book's story, meaning technically it's not finished. Part two, whenever that comes, will effect how I feel about part one." I think this second part more than adequately held up its end of the bargain, finishing the first Dune book's story well. Hopefully, Horizon Chapter 2 has a similar trajectory.

The movie does have its departures from the text of the book, obviously. And in those departures, I feel like it does a better job of making some of the thematic elements even clearer. In streamlining and condensing the narrative, there is less of an excuse for some of Paul Atreides' final decisions. This may make the messaging a bit blunter, but I feel like we live in a world where sometimes blunter messaging is needed.

2. Flow

Directed by: Gints Zilbalodis
Flow is a hard movie to explain. The premise is actually pretty simple, almost high concept. There are some animals stuck together on a boat during a flood. It's almost biblical. But its the execution that gets hard. In its own way, it's an odd companion piece to In a Violent Nature. The camera follows behind our speechless protagonist, and we can wonder what's going on inside their heads, but we can never really know.

Events occur in the movie, almost always without explanation. You just have to go with it, get carried away by it, let it surround you and take you wherever its going. In other words, Flow is a pretty appropriate name for this movie.

1. The Wild Robot

Directed by: Chris Sanders
Let's go into the wilderness once more. And once again, we're back in the woods, with an apparently emotionless protagonist. Sure, Roz the robot, despite her blank, unchanging face, does manage to convey more emotion than, say, a masked revenant or a meowing cat. She can actually speak (and shout out to Lupita N'yongo's amazing vocal work; she ends up playing dual roles as Roz evolves just as much as she did in Us), but her inner processes are still a mystery.

The world is a strange, mysterious place, and sometimes, it's downright dangerous. But that doesn't mean it should be avoided. Or that we can't try and help make it a better place. Sometimes, that means making movies about robots in a forest, to help remind us.