THE BEST MOVIES OF THE YEAR

PEOPLE LOVED Megalopolis, hated it, puzzled over it, clipped it into memes, and tried to astroturf it into a camp classic, but, most important, they cared about it even though it featured none of the qualities you'd expect of a breakthrough work in these noisy times.

- ALISON WILLMORE'S AND BILGE EBIRI'S

ALISON WILLMORE'S TOP TEN

Audiences have been craving ambition, which is something that movies-caught forever between art and commerce-haven't been in a place to deliver. There are big entertainments and small personal films, but to grapple with weighty ideas on a large canvas? You have to do what Francis Ford Coppola did and pony up $120 million of your own money (something I wouldn't advise, personally). Or what Brady Corbet did with The Brutalist, creating something grand and sweeping on about $10 million. The Brutalist wasn't one of my favorites, but I admired the hell out of what Corbet set out to do with his film, which coincidentally is also about an architect trying to achieve his vision in a landscape of callous capitalism-an idea that seems to be very 2024.

1. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World

Radu Jude's exuberant comedy is savage and insightful, a film about how we live today that's also about how nothing really changes for the average worker.

2. Hard Truths

Mike Leigh's portrait of a compulsively angry Londoner (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is shockingly resonant as a depiction of how pain can build up within you and then burst outward, strafing anyone unlucky enough to be nearby.

3. Challengers

I love that Challengers commits so thoroughly to the idea of all its romantic shenanigans being extensions of the game of tennis that it pulls off that ludicrous, perfect ending of dripping sweat, slow motion, secret grins of satisfaction, and the camera taking the POV of the goddamned ball.

4. Nickel Boys

The first-person perspective RaMell Ross employs for Nickel Boys isn't a gimmick or a self-imposed challenge but a way of cracking open a portrait of institutional abuse and survivor's guilt like nothing else.

5. The Substance