100 Best 2024 Movies You Should Watch Right Now

Going to sleep is something we do every day, though, when we were kids, it certainly wasn’t easy. With family-friendly source material and a new (and adorable!) sleepytime ensemble, Orion and the Dark plays with this fact of childhood, but screenwriter Charlie Kaufman transforms it into something more as the title characters journey into literal midnight dreams, tell stories-within-stories, and return back home with a poetic repetition. It still has some of his existential despair– after all, the overly imaginative Orion literally contemplates the possibility of death through his many, many anxieties– but it doesn’t just play with the classic childhood fear. Kaufman transforms the bedtime story, and the act of storytelling itself, as co-creation and connection between generations of filmmakers and viewers, with this film’s surprisingly layered writing.

Giannis Antetokounmpo’s rags-to-riches life story is the stuff of movies, and indeed it’s been told many times on print and screen. But this is the first time he and his family are telling it themselves, which is a big deal since Antetokounmpo, as it turns out, is inseparable from his family. Their revealing interviews about how they struggled as undocumented immigrants from Nigeria in Greece add a new, moving depth to a well-known journey, which Director Kristen Lappas wisely divides into chapters named after Greek ideals Antetokounmpo represents. Despite Lappas’ background (she is Greek-American), she makes sure to balance Antetokounmpo’s heroic moments with the Greek government’s at-times unfair treatment of the athlete and other immigrants in the country. She also puts a spotlight on the pressures Antetokounmpo is going through as one of the youngest champs in NBA history. After all, at just 29 years old, he’s already a two-time MVP and playoff winner. This doc proves that the story of how he got there is no less remarkable.

After the La Manada rape case in 2016, it was necessary to document this event, especially since the widespread national outrage and demonstrations managed to move the country to change the way Spain defines consent. You Are Not Alone: Fighting the Wolf Pack documents this arduous journey. While it’s done through the familiar Netflix true crime approach, there’s some respect given to the victim that hasn’t been given previously by the media. The film sticks to the actual verbatim words used by the victim, albeit edited for clarity, but they ensured that their words were not accompanied with photos or similar looking actors, keeping the truth of their words without risking their safety. While the documentary’s direction isn’t new, the outrage is still felt, as well as the genuine hope of a country that came together to ensure justice.

We’ve already seen the coming-of-age conflict presented in Música in other films– namely, where parents, society, and loved ones expect things from a male protagonist, but he has a passion for his creative endeavors, only awakened by a gorgeous girl that recognizes his talent. It’s a cliché storyline, even for a musical, but we’ve never heard it this way before, the way Rudy Mancuso takes in the day-to-day noise of his Brazilian neighborhood in Newark and turns it into a musical soundscape paired with rhythmic dancing, theatrical set pieces, and a metanarrative portrayed by his puppets that he says is unfortunately real. There’s something special in the way Mancuso’s directorial debut unfolds, so visually and sonically creative, with a lot of heart that we’ve been missing.

For people having difficulty bearing a child, artificial insemination is one way to go for parenthood, but going to sperm banks can be expensive, shrouded with too much anonymity, and have had many incidents of malpractice. Some people would rather take things into their own hands. Spermworld explores the journeys of three different internet sperm donors, who meet with hopeful parents. It can be awkward, even when the donors are fairly ordinary guys with fairly decent motives, but the way director Lance Oppenheim approaches the community is disarmingly human, acknowledging the strange quirks that come with the donation, but also the interesting parental desires human beings do have.

In 1966, Elizabeth Taylor and her friends recorded themselves talking about the ups and downs of her life. These candid conversations are the basis of The Lost Tapes, a revealing tell-all that allows Taylor to set the record straight in her own words. Here, you get to see and hear the many parts of Taylor–her romanticism, activism, and passion, as well as her fun banter with the journalists, friends, and lovers who alternately interview her. Of course, the downside to having Taylor and her loved ones narrate a biography is you only get one side of the story, while the thornier parts of her life are skated over. Things like child labor and having to play a married-24-year-old at 16 years old, or being physically abused and suffering a miscarriage, these are things Taylor, and therefore the documentary, shy away from expounding. But while it may not be the definitive documentary on Taylor, it certainly is the most personal and intimate. It also serves as a reminder of how we’d all like to be remembered—in our own and our cherished friends’ words.

When modern systems like law enforcement and forensics fail to come up with definite answers to a murder, loved ones of the victim usually have no recourse, which is the fear at the heart of Irish horror film Oddity. To lose someone you care about, forever, hurts. So when Darcy takes more strange and esoteric means of investigation, and when writer-director Damian Mc Carthy slowly reveals through personal effects, psychic images, and an excellent pace, the hurt and the pain intensifies the murder mystery and the hope that she would receive justice for her loss. Oddity feels genuinely unsettling, because Mc Carthy understands what’s truly scary about losing a loved one.

At first, you wonder, couldn’t this behind-the-scenes look at the making of The Boy and The Heron just be a DVD special? But a few minutes in, it becomes clear how rich the material is. It’s not just about Miyazaki and the making of a movie, it’s about him grappling with grief and transforming it into art. A surprising chunk of this documentary is about death. Miyazaki’s friends and colleagues are passing away, it seems, every month, and the only way Miyazaki can mourn and honor them is through his (their) art. The Boy and The Heron itself is a fulfillment of a promise Miyazaki made to his closest friend, Isao Takahata, or Pak-san, as Miyazaki lovingly calls him. It’s Pak-san whom he mourns the most in the movie, but almost everyone who’s passed makes an appearance both in the documentary and the film. The lines between the two are often blurred by Miyazaki, in his failing memory, and by documentary director Kaku Arakawa. Arakawa’s editing is chaotic, if not experimental. He cuts between reality and fiction—documentary footage and Ghibli clips—faster than you can make sense of it all. “I opened my brain way too far for this project,” Miyazaki claims, and you can feel the exhilaration and fear in every second of this brilliant film.

It’s What Inside can seem like another obnoxious movie about adults acting like teens, edited with enough neon glare and social media cuts to make it palatable to a younger crowd. But the horror comedy is more than just streaming fodder; it’s fun, funny, and clever, unfolding like a game night gone terribly wrong. There are romantic entanglements, identity crises, steamy role play, and welcome jabs at our generation’s increasing tendency to replace personality with social media presence. Its critique may not be as sharp as other horror comedies that have come before it (most recently, Bodies Bodies Bodies and The Blackening), so it can feel a bit dated. But it’s still an enjoyable watch, one best seen with friends who you haven’t seen in a long while and who have maybe, once or twice, made you feel painfully, irrationally, (murderously?) jealous.

For better or for worse, every romantic relationship anyone will ever have will end. This isn’t a bitter statement single or heartbroken people declare, it’s just that we have to keep in mind that time with our loved ones is limited. Romcom drama We Live in Time is titled as such for a reason– mentioning this could be a bit of a spoiler here– but fittingly, the film plays with time, taking a non-linear narrative that jumps back and forth within the timeline Tobias and Almut share together, comparing and contrasting between these moments as if in memory. Certain moments might feel a bit derivative, but We Live in Time ultimately works with the excellent chemistry shared by Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield.