It’s that time of year again! For the second year in a row, we are naming the ten best films as voted on by members in our critics group. This year we expanded into Oregon on top of now having a total of 18 members. We asked our members to name their ten favourite films of the year, and from there, we crafted this list: the Cascadia Critics Ten Best Films of 2024. Each film has an advocate of someone in our group who ranked the film highly on their list, so their admiration is genuine.
Some additional stats: a total of 79 different films received a vote with 71 of them getting more than one vote. Our list of honourable mentions (11-20th place) include Sing Sing, Megalopolis, Hit Man, Saturday Night, It’s What’s Inside, Christmas Eve at Miller’s Point, Dìdi, The Girl with the Needle, Flow and The Wild Robot. To see the full list of films that received votes check out our Letterboxd list!
You can view our nominees for our 2024 Best Cascadian Film award, with a winner to be announced later this month. Speaking of Best Cascadian Film nominees, another stat is all five films made at least one ballot for this list too!
Huge thank you to all of our members for voting and all the contributions made in this article.
Cascadia Critics Ten Best Films of 2024
10. Universal Language
Parallel universes, alternate timelines, etc. might feel like novel or nebulous concepts, but they don’t have to. Our proclivity for self reflection allows us to interface with these “B-side” realities constantly—they should feel familiar. Our past is “another lifetime,” but an undeniable part of who we are; the worlds presented to us in movies are strange, but they can feel more recognizable than our own. These are the ideas ruminated on in Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language, a splendidly absurd and poetic imagining of a B-side Winnipeg by way of Tehran, as filtered through a nostalgic lens and a collection of filmic vocabularies. It’s a Winnipeg where everyone speaks Farsi and Old Dutch ketchup chips are sold at frostbitten bazaars. If that sounds like a too-niche in-joke—the antithesis of “universal”—maybe you’re stuck on the A-side.
- Taylor Beaumont
9. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a nasty portrayal of grief and revenge. Anya Taylor-Joy is aces in the lead role as Furiosa, delivering a quiet, boiling underneath the surface badass who remains collected through the whole film. The romance between Furiosa and Praetorian Jack is beautiful and explains the rage she feels after losing so much going into Mad Max: Fury Road. I appreciate the world-building and the added lore to the character that stole the show in Fury Road. Taylor-Joy was given a near-impossible task by playing the younger version of Charlize Theron’s Furiosa, and she exceeds expectations with a high level of confidence. Chris Hemsworth’s over the top performance as Dementus is captivating, and his speech at the end brought me to tears. “”You can never balance the scales of their suffering.” Such a powerful life lesson. George Miller, I salute you.
- Adrian Charlie
8. Anora
Sean Baker’s frenetic screwball tragicomedy, Anora, won the prestigious Palme d’Or this year — and deservedly so. Shot on 35mm, it chronicles a whirlwind week in the life of Anora (Mikey Madison), a sex worker entangled in a turbulent romance with the son of a Russian oligarch (Mark Eydelshteyn). As their mismatched worlds collide, chaos ensues. Equal parts nail-biting and farcical, Baker keeps the pace unrelenting, leaving viewers breathless — until the emotional weight of it all lands like a freight train in the final moments. With the grit of Fellini’s Night of Cabiria and the visual flair of 1970s New York City, Baker crafts a story that feels both nostalgic and strikingly modern. Madison dazzles in the titular role, delivering a magnetic performance that blends confidence with raw vulnerability, cementing her place as a star on the rise. Simply put, Anora is this year’s indie triumph, brimming with emotional depth that lingers long after the credits roll.
- Marta Djordjevic
7. I Saw The TV Glow
Jane Schoenbrun’s striking sophomore feature is more than a trip down memory lane. Through an untangling of identity and nostalgia, I Saw The TV Glow navigates a liminal space between an uncertain future and the comfortable present. Centered around Owen (Justice Smith) as he wrestles with his own identity and the quiet numbness of suburbia, his world is expanded when he meets Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and finds out she’s obsessed with The Pink Opaque – a show about two teenage girls who form a psychic connection and fight off the monster-of-the-week every episode. Their bond over the show stabilizes Owen’s life, and their shared obsession begins blurring the line between fiction and reality.
Schoenbrun’s film plays host to two introspective and raw performances from its leads, both of which internalize a silent suffering as the film slowly reveals itself to be an affecting representation of gender dysphoria in an age of scanlines and static. Complemented by its finely tuned aesthetic and a haunting soundtrack of indie artists that captures the mood perfectly, few films this year convey their themes more effectively through style than I Saw The TV Glow.
- Christopher Cross
6. Conclave
The Pope has died and it is time to elect a new one. Cardinal Lawrence, played with superb quiet intensity by Ralph Finnes, is in charge of organizing the next conclave. Except he has been experiencing doubts in his faith and doesn’t feel up to the task. All he knows is that he can’t let the wrong man become Pope. This political thriller set at the Vatican, directed by All Quiet on the Western Front’s Edward Berger, is a masterclass of tension and intrigue. We get a stacked cast of supporting characters, all vying for the papacy, each with their own skeletons just waiting to be found. Every shot will leave you in awe as the gorgeous cinematography is equaled by another great Volker Bertelmann score. This film deals with the political climate the Catholic church currently faces and how in a perfect world, it might deal with their own history.
- Dakota Arsenault
5. The Beast
Bertrand Bonello’s triumphant sci-fi melodrama, The Beast, traces the death of human expression, slowly whittled away by the ruthless dehumanization of socioeconomic optimizations. Uncannily phasing between three associative nightmares, each chronicling the same doomed romance across various historical flashpoints, Bonello sublimates ideas into his resplendent surfaces, physically transmitting his despair by conspiratorially charting the evolution of sonic and visual textures.
Simultaneously dissociative and panicked, The Beast is singularly adept at exorcising a contemporary dread. How can we maintain our personhood when the people, spaces, and sounds around us are suppressed by the weight of traumatic history? How do we assert ourselves against an imposed passivity, when a Trump-ian, post-COVID world seems intent on submitting us to isolation and apathy? Bonello doesn’t offer solutions, but the catharsis of his film is a refusal in itself.
- Eric Zhu
4. Civil War
Civil War offers an unflinching portrayal of human nature in a fractured America in which survival trumps politics and morality. Set after the collapse of American democracy, the film follows war photographer Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and journalist Joel (Wagner Moura) as they document the chaos and violence of a nation at war with itself. Rookie photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) finds herself petrified in their company as they navigate dangerous, divided factions en-route to D.C. Director Alex Garland’s timely film critiques political polarization, showcasing humanity’s worst impulses that transcend political affiliation. The tense, immersive narrative explores the emotional toll on journalists in war zones, revealing the cost of truth-telling in a collapsing and untrusting society. Exceptional performances deepen its haunting message about survival and moral decay. Civil War is an uncomfortable, challenging watch that doesn’t offer easy answers, urging viewers to reflect on the dangers of division and importance of unity.
- Nick Tiffany
3. The Substance
In what may be her best performance since Ghost in 1990, Demi Moore is stellar as Elizabeth in The Substance. Margaret Qualley also shines as Sue, the younger, perkier and fearless version of Elizabeth. This film pushes the boundaries of body horror and plays to the modern day obsession with youth, beauty and fame in a truly brilliant and grotesque way. How far would you go to achieve or maintain your dream of being famous and are you ready to pay the price? Ultimately, horror fans will eat this film up and not leave a crumb behind. It’s going to get under your skin and give you the ick in the best way. The Substance is downright superb and Demi Moore deserves an Oscar nomination for her incredible performance.
- Leanne McLaren
2. Dune: Part Two
Sequels often struggle to live up to their predecessor. Dune: Part Two, however, is not a sequel per se. The abrupt and unsatisfying end to Dune: Part One renders the film unthinkably incomplete – but now, not only does Part Two validate the narrative choices made, it has elevated this saga into being one of the greatest sci-fi adaptations ever.
Bolstered by exceptional performances from the entire ensemble cast, striking visual prowess, and the level of staggering cinematic scale that we rarely witness accomplished competently, Dune: Part Two makes the most of all talent involved to deliver the kind of entertainment most summer blockbusters can’t even dream of becoming.
We already revere director Denis Villeneuve for his work. Dune: Part Two, in conjunction with Part One, once again reinforces his status as an absolute master of mainstream sci-fi filmmaking.
- Thomas Stoneham-Judge
1. Challengers
Sex — the sweat, the sounds, the sinew — Challengers is brimming with it. And yet, it happens almost entirely outside of the bedroom. Instead, Luca Guadagnino’s bisexual ménage à trois plays out almost entirely on tennis courts. Luca, a perennially sensual filmmaker, understands the sexual inherency of sport’s physicality, and uses that imagery, that narrative inherency, to propel his most energetic work yet. Even when sex, I mean tennis, isn’t on screen, it’s felt in the eardrums by a fast, rhythmic, elating score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Meanwhile, what’s on screen is a masterclass from a triad of special, sultry performances from Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist, and Zendaya. Challengers doesn’t always stay inside the lines, but after it climaxes, all of its grime and guilt just feels so good. It has a special, almost carnal, afterglow, begging for more. One more game, baby. Wipe the score. Love all.
- Todd Pengelly