Though some high-profile duds may have given the impression that the year in film is off to a rocky start, our list of the best movies of 2024 so far reveals a wealth of worthy, (mostly) smaller fare released since January. Some are available to stream, while others are playing in theaters (or soon will be). We’ll keep updating this list all year, so be sure to check back in the coming months for more recommendations of what to watch in between Traitors seasons.
The End We Start From© Republic Pictures Corp./Everett Collection.
The End We Start From
Killing Eve breakout Jodie Comer (who recently won a Tony for her staggering solo performance in Prima Facie) further proves her talent in this somber but never lugubrious survival drama from Mahalia Belo. As floodwaters overtake London, a new mother must head north in search of safety and sustainability while a nation credibly collapses around her. Finely observed and avoidant of melodrama, The End We Start From is a thoughtful, occasionally profound manifestation of a collective anxiety, the shared feeling that the fabric of the world is rapidly fraying to a breaking point. Belo steers through all that fear and calamity and finds something like hope on the other side.
The Promised LandCourtesy of Magnolia.
The Promised Land
Nikolaj Arcel’s robust, lushly mounted film is an old-fashioned epic, a settler Western unfolding on the barren heaths of Denmark rather than the American frontier. Mads Mikkelsen is sternly magnetic as Ludvig Kahlen, a longtime soldier seeking the favor of the Danish crown by cultivating a harsh landscape long thought to be an impossible wilderness. Through that struggle, Kahlen cobbles together a ragtag crew of waifs and cast-offs, and goes to bitter battle with a preening local lord played with perfect movie-villain sliminess by Simon Bennebjerg. Neither subtle nor overstated, The Promised Land reverently restores old forms to past luster, while paying stirring tribute to the resolve and fortitude of the simple potato.
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How to Have Sex
A spring-break-esque holiday in Crete, booze-soaked and sun-baked, takes a grave turn in Molly Manning Walker’s striking debut feature. As a young woman who experiences a dire violation of consent, Mia McKenna-Bruce is a revelation, intricately mapping her character’s struggle to process, and name, what’s happened to her. Manning Walker stages a party gone to ruin with bracing realism, resisting sensationalism by leading with compassion instead of alarmism. True to its title, How to Have Sex is instructive in at least one crucial way: It yanks certain predatory behavior into the light, refusing to let it hide in supposed gray areas.