This Week: Fall Movie Preview 2024 🍂 🎥

October is a great month to be a movie fan, with buzz from fall festivals, rumblings of next year’s Oscar race, and plenty of time to enjoy some spooky favorites 🎃

So, join us as we recap our favorite movies of the year so far, what we’re looking forward to most and some early thoughts on awards season

THE BEST MOVIES OF THE YEAR SO FAR 🏆

We’re three-quarters into the year, and even though there are plenty of films we still need to catch up on (like Kinds of Kindness, Kneecap, Wolfs, Didi, His Three Daughters and The Substance), we wanted to recap the best of what we’ve seen so far by ranking our 24 Favorite Films of 2024 🎾

Our two favorites of the year so far—Dune: Part Two and Challengers—are defined by their stellar performances, with rising star Zendaya playing a key role in both films. A trio of A24 movies with very different vibes (ranging from heartwarming drama to quirky comedy to psychological horror) round out our Top 5.

It’s also been an uncharacteristically strong year for mainstream blockbusters, with movies like Twisters, Furiosa, The First Omen, A Quiet Place: Day One, Alien Romulus, and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes making our list.

Some other exciting films we wanted to call out:
- Best comedy? Problemista and Babes
- Best horror movie? Longlegs or The First Omen or In A Violent Nature or even MaXXXine (it’s been such a great year for horror!)
- Best on-screen couple? Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell
- Best on-screen throuple? Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Conner
- An underrated performance? June Squibb in Thelma
- Most underrated blockbuster? Bob Marley: One Love
- Best bad movie? Madame Web
- Something unapologetically queer? I Saw The TV Glow or The People’s Joker
- Something fun and goofy? Hundreds of Beavers or Ricky Stanicky
- Need a “WTF did I just watch?” Try Sasquatch Sunset

MOVIES TO LOOK OUT FOR 🧛

We combed through the fall fest line-ups and upcoming release schedule to see what the rest of the year had to offer, and while there is so much to be excited for, these are our 24 Most Anticipated Films of 2024 🔭

Sean Baker’s Anora, is currently our most anticipated film of 2024 after receiving rave reviews out of Cannes and Telluride, followed by fellow Best Picture contenders Emilia Perez (the unconventional crime-musical from director Jacques Audiard), and The Brutalist. There are also a handful of highly touted animated films to watch out for, like Flow and Memoir of a Snail, as well as some international films like The Seed of the Sacred Fig and All We Imagine As Light that could crack into the Oscar race.

Some other films from big-name directors to watch out for—Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, and Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu—as well as some highly anticipated performances, such as Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci in Conclave, Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton in The Room Next Door, Kieran Culkin in A Real Pain, Angelina Jolie in Maria, Saorise Ronan in Blitz, and Sebastian Stan in The Apprentice and A Different Man.

(WAY TOO) EARLY OSCAR PREDICTIONS🤔

With around five months to go until the 97th Academy Awards, we thought we’d once again try our hand at predicting the winning films in all the major categories!

Last year we correctly predicted the winners in 10 out of the 20 categories, so we’re aiming for more than a 50% success rate this time around!

Let’s kick things off with an incredibly risky prediction—we have A24’s inspiring prison drama, Sing Sing, taking home four statuettes for Best Picture, Actor, Supporting Actor, and Adapted Screenplay.

This might sound like an absolute pipe dream for a little indie that barely made a dent at the box office, but it’s giving us flashbacks to CODA winning Best Picture in 2021 with only a Best Supporting Actor and Adapted Screenplay win. We think Sing Sing could follow that same trajectory, allowing voters to rally behind a feel-good story in Best Picture while a few prestigious juggernauts dominate the tech categories.

The Brutalist is the next most likely contender to win Best Picture and Best Actor (Adrien Brody), but right now we are predicting it for three wins in Best Director, Cinematography, and Editing. It’s a 3.5 hour historical epic that has been hailed as one of the most audacious films of the year, and we could see it performing well audiences, critics groups, and the Oscars precursors.

We are basically predicting that Dune: Part Two mimics its Oscar scorecard from 2021, with six wins overall. While we don’t expect Denis Villeneuve to be shut out of the Best Director nominations like he did in 2021, we think he has an uphill battle securing the win against the likes of Brady Corbet (The Brutalist), Sean Baker (Anora), and Jacques Audiard (Emilia Perez).

Emilia Perez is likely to be Netflix’s big awards horse this year, and we think it will rack up a lot of nominations. That being said, we are only predicting two potential wins for the film, outside of the International Feature category, where it feels like the odds-on favorite right now.

Anora is certainly in the hunt for Best Picture and Director, but we only have it winning two statuettes in our current predictions—Best Actress and Best Original Screenplay.

And we round out our picks with The Wild Robot taking home Best Animated Feature and the Netflix movie Daughters taking home Best Documentary Feature.

🚨 BONUS LIST ALERT 🚨

…and that’s all folks!