Top 2024: The best films of the year according to the Première editorial team

Top 2024: The best films of the year according to the Première editorial team

Iron Claw, Le Cercle des Neiges, Emilia Perez, City of Darkness… the editorial team was amazed by these fifteen works. And you ? What are your favorites?

This year again, First liked lots of movies (and series). Here are 15 feature films released in 2024 that we particularly liked, for various reasons.

15. phew loveby Gilles Lellouche

Love phew starts off with a bang and for 2h45, to the rhythm of an insane soundtrack (The Cure, Prince, etc.), Lellouche never presses the brake pedal. His staging, rich in camera movements, reflects an overflowing enthusiasm for staging this story, these characters, these actors. She embraces the dream, the desire of her two heroes: to escape from the social determinism which condemns them to a narrow life. Blowing the frames apart, making his heart beat so hard it could implode at any moment.

Our full review of phew love can be read here

14. Furiosaby George Miller

The real star of the film, ultimately, is this world. This Wasteland that Miller glimpsed in a panicked flash, on the long dark highways of the seventies, and that he never wants to leave. Furiosa is a masterpiece of world-building, not far fromAvatar 2 (in the promises it keeps, in the pleasure it offers), where the filmmaker has fun refining his vision, “enhancing” his universe.

Our full review of Furiosa can be read here

13. The Story of Souleymaneby Boris Lojkine

With The Story of Souleymanethis time the filmmaker depicts two decisive days in the life of a Guinean who fled his country, a bicycle deliveryman in the streets of Paris. Forty-eight hours before having an interview which will decide whether or not their asylum application will be accepted. Lojkine therefore films here one of those that we all meet in the street every day, without giving them a glance. In 93 minutes without downtime, the film conveys the permanent tension that the latter must face.

Our full review of The Story of Souleymane can be read here

12. Skywalker: A Love Storyby Jeff Zimbalist

Two Russian aerialists fall in love at the top of the tallest buildings and attempt their biggest stunt on the night of the World Cup final. If good blockbusters still existed, they would look like this crazy documentary.

11. Anoraby Sean Baker

We knew Mikey Madison’s explosive temperament since Once upon a time… in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino (another story of home invasionwhere she played one of the members of the Manson Family), but she impresses even more in this 2h20 odyssey written for her by Sean Baker, which sees her go through all the states, by turns combative and dejected, surly and disenchanted.

Our full review ofAnora can be read here

10. The Count of Monte Cristoby Alexandre de la Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte

Obviously, what immediately impresses is Pierre Niney. Crazy elegant and fluid. His gestures and words are precise, deadly. His Dantes is naive and sunny, but he plunges his Monte Cristo into intoxicating abysses of darkness. The embodiment of this duality is stunning. Great idea again: the hero here is not an actor who invents a new identity (traditional reading of the character), he is a creator of false pretenses, a builder of settings in which he will trap his prey. He is a director who deceives his people and whose play will be played in three acts. Mortals.

Our full review of The Count of Monte Cristo can be read here

9. City of Darknessby Soi Cheang

The new film from the director of Limbo is a live action arcade machine: a stunning fighting film in a Dantesque setting, where old HK legends face hungry challengers.

Our full review of City of Darkness can be read here

8. Memoryby Michel Franco

With this moving melodrama, Michel Franco cracks the armor like never before. But by gradually changing the point of view on his characters, he creates a climate of tension and instability which nip any sentimentality in the bud. What if Peter Sarsgaard won the acting prize in Venice, it is impossible to dissociate it from Jessica Chastain just as impressive as him.

Our full review of Memory can be read here

7. Emilia Perezby Jacques Audiard

It was one of the highlights of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Emilia Perez left with a double reward: a prize for collective female interpretation and the Jury prize which allowed Jacques Audiard to complete his collection of Cannes trophies after the Grand Prix ofA prophet in 2009 and the Palme d’Or of Dheepan in 2015. But his tenth feature film is not a repeat. It once again reflects a desire to never rest on one’s laurels, to confront new worlds, after the western with The Brothers Sisters and sentimental comedy with The Olympics.

Our full review ofEmilia Perez can be read here

6. Iron Clawby Sean Durkin

Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy, May Marlene) explores a family unit devoured from the inside through the tragic journey of a brotherhood of wrestlers. With its lively staging and brilliant interpretation, it already has all the makings of a classic.

Our full review ofIron Claw can be read here

5. Dune: part twoby Denis Villeneuve

Padawan by Ridley Scott (who almost made Dune in the early 1980s), Villeneuve borrowed from his master his overwhelming pubard aesthetic and his profoundly agnostic discourse. The contrast is there. Where the first Dunean exhibition and set-up film, relied above all on a perfectly hovering effect of scale (the close-up on Chalamet’s face was matched by an immense shot of brutalist spaceships), there is only one more only scale in this Part two. There is vertigo in there, of course: immense machines, colossal arenas, infinite dunes – but everything takes place in a small corner of desert from which we will only really take off at the very end, to escape from it. go and commit endless genocides.

Our full review of Dune 2 can be read here

4. Poor creaturesby Yorgos Lanthimos

Hilarious although a little repetitive, this precariously balanced quest for female emancipation owes a lot to the extraordinary and joyfully immodest performance of Emma Stone: we knew she was gifted, but we would never have believed her capable of an incarnation also big.

Our full review of Poor creatures can be read here

3. The Substance by Coralie Fargeat

Coralie Fargeat creates an enjoyable film that dynamites everything in its path. Starting with its two stars: Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley.

Our full review of The Substance can be read here

2. The Snow Circleby Juan Antonio Bayona

The Hollywoodized Spanish filmmaker returns to his mother tongue for a prodigious rereading of a news story dating from 1972, seventy days of borderline survival after a plane crash in the Andes.

Our full review of the Snow Circle can be read here

1. Civil Warby Alex Garland

If these vignettes filled with fury and chaos ring so true, it’s because Civil War was truly conceived as a sort of blockbuster for adults (its budget of 60 million makes it the most expensive object ever made by the very chic house A24) and that it reactivates a Hollywood production format with a forgotten flavor, and which we could call “middle film”. It is from this middle position, located far, far away, from fractals and insoluble equations, that Alex Garland today finds his balance and can redesign his status in the Hollywood landscape. Seen from where we are, it seems large, infinitely large even.

Our full review of Civil War can be read here

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