The thing about the films generating awards buzz right now – Anora, The Brutalist, Wicked, Conclave, Nickel Boys, etc. – is that you probably know about them already. Again and again, they turned up in critics' lists of the best films of 2024.
But 2024 was also a solid year for movies that didn't have big names, big studios and big marketing departments behind them. They're smaller, and they had shorter runs in theaters, if they had any at all. But they're all available to stream right now, on various platforms, because we live in the future, you and me. So check out the big Oscar contenders all you want, but make room for these eight underseen, offbeat, off-the-beaten-path movies.
National Anthem
This modern-day Western is more modern than Western. It stars Charlie Plummer as a young man who gets a job at a homestead for queer rodeo performers. It's kind of a coming-of-age movie, so you know he's gonna discover certain things about himself. What I admire most about this film is how it lets questions about finding yourself and your sexuality sort of … float in the air, and remain complicated. Instead of reaching for tidy answers, the film reaches for the heart – there's joy, there's pain, there's resentment, there's regret. The whole entering-adulthood package, really.
The Last Stop in Yuma County
It's the '70s. Guy pulls up to a gas station on a deserted highway, learns that the station is out of gas, and has to wait in the diner next door until the fuel truck arrives. While he waits, the diner starts to fill up with people in his same predicament, including a couple of dirtbags who just robbed a bank and are desperate to get away. Let's just take a moment to admire the clean simplicity of that premise, the pure, crystalline perfection of it. From that setup, things just get worse and worse, funnier and funnier, darker and darker. This nasty little indie gem was made for about a million bucks in 20 days, but hoo boy, it delivers.
Good One
This is another coming-of-age movie, of sorts. It's about a teenage girl who goes on a camping trip with her father and his best friend. It's quiet, it's moody and it's centered squarely on an understated performance by Lily Collias, as her character is forced to navigate the two men's not-so-friendly rivalry. Something happens during the trip – something that only at first seems small. As its repercussions linger, the film becomes about what happens to a child's sense of safety and comfort when they're disappointed by the ones who love them. It's about crossing a threshold, and entering the adult world.
Starve Acre
In this slow-burn folk horror film, a couple played by Morfydd Clark and Matt Smith inherit an isolated cottage in the north of England. They're both dealing with grief, and as strange things start happening, that grief draws them towards the land's pagan history. Be warned: This film takes its time, and it's really more about a growing sense of dread and despair than it is about jump scares, but it delivers some seriously creepy vibes and some gorgeously desolate landscapes.
Red Rooms
Fashion model Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) becomes obsessed with a man on trial for the brutal murders of young women. The precise nature of her obsession is mysterious but no less compelling, as she's driven to extremes to sate her curiosity about the heinous acts he's accused of, and whether or not he's really the monster prosecutors claim he is. Despite the gruesome subject, the horror on display here is purely psychological – we never see the killings, but we watch Kelly-Anne watch recordings of them. Red Rooms is a cold, discomfiting watch – but it's one that stays with you.
The People's Joker
This shoestring-budget, wildly unauthorized film purports to tell the origin story of the Joker, if the Joker were a trans woman with some weirdly strong opinions about the state of stand-up comedy in America right now. Filmmaker Vera Drew uses a lot of characters from the Batman universe to tell the story of her own trans journey — Warner Bros. lawyers were reportedly not too pleased about that. But honestly the fact that it made a giant global corporate behemoth nervous only adds to what makes this film so much fun: its transgressive, underground, anti-capitalist rage.
Hundreds of Beavers
This silent, black-and-white, slapstick, ultra-low budget comedy (it was made for about $150,000) is as close as its possible to get to a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon. It's about a 19th-century fur trapper trying to survive the winter, and the beavers who stand in his way. It combines real actors with animation and puppets — and all the wildlife in it, including those beavers, are just dudes in mascot costumes. It's hilarious, it's inventive, it's very silly.
I Saw the TV Glow
Yeah, look, I know I keep banging the drum for this film, but I'm gonna keep banging away until more people see it. Justice Smith stars as a kid who comes to realize that the cheesy, Buffy-esque television show they love is something more than just a TV show – and that the reality they occupy, including the body that they live in, is not their own. It's a vibe, this movie – and as a trans allegory, it's incisive but never heavy handed. Plus it has the courage to end on a truly harrowing note – but one that contains within it elements of real, hard-won hope.
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