The 32 greatest A24 movies
Nov. 6, 2024Sad androids, criminal bodybuilders, and forest witches galore
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Today, A24 is one of the most prolific production and distribution entities in Hollywood, with its fingerprints also in television and music. It is synonymous with originality, known for launching the careers of artistically minded new directors like Robert Eggers, Greta Gerwig, Barry Jenkins, Ari Aster, and Yorgos Lanthimos, while also giving established filmmakers like Darren Aronofsky and Sofia Coppola a whole new canvas to create.
In celebration of A24’s continuing legacy, here are 32 of the greatest A24 movies ever released.
In Ari Aster’s sun-drenched folk horror, a young woman named Dani (Florence Pugh in her breakout role) tries to grieve her way past the murder of her parents by embarking on a trip with her detached boyfriend (Jack Reynour) on a graduate study trip to a rural Swedish commune for a midsummer festival. When they are greeted with nightmarish rituals and unspeakable horrors, this research trip suddenly becomes a desperate fight to escape. Transplanting horror tropes abroad, Midsommar interrogates toxic relationships, trauma, and the allure of cults who attract the most vulnerable.
The making of the infamous cult movie The Room from writer/director Tommy Wiseau unfolds in The Disaster Artist, a biopic based on Greg Sestero’s memoir. James Franco stars as Tommy Wiseau, an eccentric immigrant dreamer who starts production of a movie that goes on to earn recognition as one of the worst movies of all time. James Franco’s brother Dave Franco co-stars in the movie as Greg Sestero, an aspiring actor who aids Wiseau in making his dreams come true. In this story about unlikely friendships and managerial chaos, The Disaster Artist amounts to more in its exploration of what actually defines art.
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A Prayer Before Dawn is what you get when sports movies like Rocky and The Karate Kid collide with The Deer Hunter. Joe Cole stars as real-life English boxer Billy Moore (whose memoir the film is based on) who is arrested in Thailand and is incarcerated in one of the country’s most notorious prisons. To survive his unforgiving new surroundings, Billy takes up the brutal sport of Muay Thai kickboxing. An unflinching knockout of a gritty sports drama, A Prayer Before Dawn packs the meanest of punches.
Peter Strickland combines vintage giallo with condemnations against Western capitalism in his underrated supernatural thriller In Fabric. Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays a lonely single woman who purchases a bewitching red dress from a London department store. Almost immediately, patterns of tragedy and misfortune follow as the dress appears to possess sinister powers. Like a cross between Dario Argento’s films and Stephen King’s Christine, Strickland’s In Fabric shows the high cost of high fashion.
Not since The Exorcist has there been a religious horror as striking quite like Saint Maud, the freshman feature from Rose Glass. The Rings of Power star Morfydd Clark plays a deeply devout Catholic nurse named Maud who is assigned to care for Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a hedonistic dance choreographer who is now terminally ill. Maud believes it’s her divine obligation to save Amanda’s soul, but perhaps Maud is lost in her own heavenly delusions to recognize earthly reality. While the jumpscares of Saint Maud are few, the movie is altogether an unholy experience that needs to be seen to be believed.
Real-life childhood friends Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails team up for The Last Black Man in San Francisco, a majestic odyssey about the search for home. In this semi-autobiographical movie, Jimmie Fails plays a version of himself who hopes to reclaim the beautiful Victorian home his grandaddy built in the heart of San Francisco. As the city around them continues to change, Jimmie aims to have just one corner of it as a way to connect with his family and community. We all want to know our place in the world, and The Last Black Man in San Francisco – a heartfelt interrogation of community, heritage, and gentrification, is about recognizing what actually makes a house a home.
Jane Schoenbrun’s sophomore film is a horror movie about millennial nostalgia, yes, but it’s also so much more. In I Saw the TV Glow, Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine play two teenage outcasts in the late 1990s who bond over a young adult television show called The Pink Opaque. (Think Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Ghostwriter.) Over time and into their own actual adulthoods, the two find that the show may be more real than they believed. An elaborate metaphor for gender identity mixed with the liminal horror present in adolescent nostalgia, I Saw the TV Glow is tremendously unnerving, both as a horror about memory and the paralyzing unfulfillment of never living your true self.
The on-the-surface absurdity of a ghost who haunts wearing a white sheet with black cut-out eyes feels like a joke, but director David Lowery weaves dimensions of depth into a comical Halloween costume. In A Ghost Story, Casey Affleck plays the ghost of a deceased man who wanders the home still occupied by his living wife (Rooney Mara). Powerless to console his wife and protect the home they shared, the man can only witness the cruel passing of time as life goes on. A Ghost Story is poetic and meditative, a moving portrait of restlessness of the soul.
In this profoundly tender and disarmingly funny drama from director Lulu Wang, a young woman (Awkwafina) learns that her beloved grandmother Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen) has terminal cancer and only a few weeks to live. With Nai Nai oblivious to her diagnosis, the family rushes to stage a fake wedding to allow everyone in the family to say goodbye. While The Farewell is underscored by its differences between Western and Eastern values, it is still a universal tale about the lengths people go to for the sake of love and family, when even lies rest on the altars of truth.
Originating from a series of stop-motionYouTubeshorts, the mockumentary Marcel the Shell with Shoes On from director Dean Fleischer Camp is both a technical marvel and a poignant comedy about innocence and belonging. Jenny Slate voices Marcel, a tiny, talking seashell with a googly eye who meets a documentary filmmaker (played by Camp). Inspired by Marcel’s wit and hope to reunite with her seashell family, Dean Camp uploads videos about Marcel to YouTube which turns the little shell into a major viral sensation. Beyond its legitimately impressive mixture of stop motion animation and vérité filmmaking, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is an all-ages celebration of never giving up hope while also accepting how to move on.
Comedian Bo Burnham gets behind the camera for Eighth Grade, his directorial debut. In this provocative and timely coming-of-age drama about the modern pitfalls of adolescence, Elsie Fisher stars as Kayla, an anxiety-ridden social media vlogger who tries to survive her final week of middle school. Brimming with alarm bells about how 21st century youth are inundated by toxic screens, Eighth Grade is relentless in its authenticity without sacrificing a sense of humor synonymous with the greatest teen movies.
Darkly named after WaltDisneyWorld’s code-name during its original planning stages, Sean Baker’s The Florida Project zeroes in on the impoverished souls who dot the margins just outside the so-called “Happiest Place on Earth.” Child actress Brolynn Prince stars as Moonee, the daughter of a former stripper (Bria Vinaite) who staves off homelessness while living in a budget Florida motel. (Willem Dafoe co-stars as the exhausted but caring motel manager.) The grit of their daily struggles are juxtaposed by nearby Walt Disney World, and Baker’s camera fixes on the children who make the most out of life in spite of harsh realities boxing them in. Empathetic and absorbing, The Florida Project is quintessential American cinema, offering an extraordinary experience no theme park would ever dream.
In this delicate picture about connections and caregiving from director Mike Mills, Joaquin Phoenix plays a radio journalist who looks after his young nephew (Woody Norman) while embarking on a cross-country road trip interviewing young people. Phoenix and Norman’s characters forge a deep bond throughout the ordeal, allowing Mills to explore themes like emotional intimacy, parenthood, and the uncertainty of the future. Although C’mon C’mon bombed at the box office, the movie won acclaim for its tender filmmaking, chemistry between its multigenerational leads, and transcendence over typical mawkish trappings.
Katy O’Brien flexes her muscles as a breakout star in Love Lies Bleeding, the sophomore effort from director Rose Glass. Kristen Stewart stars as a reclusive gym manager trying to obscure herself from her family and their criminal enterprises. She falls for Jackie (O’Brien), a bodybuilder passing through to Las Vegas for a competition. As their love affair swells, violence creeps in which forces these two lovers to fight against fate in a heart-pumping thriller where calloused hands are held tight.
Tilda Swinton checks in for double duty in the revered Gothic mystery The Eternal Daughter, written and directed by Joanna Hogg. Swinton plays both a filmmaker named Julie and her elder mother as they return to an oversized mansion that used to be a childhood home and is now a hotel. But there’s an awful lot of secrets and mysteries behind every door, and in this beguiling thriller, the whispers of memories can be deafening. Swinton is a chameleon in two separate roles where you easily forget that they’re the same person.
Writer/director Nicole Holofcener invites audiences on a deliriously funny exploration of honesty and authenticity in modern love with the help of Julia Louis-Dreyfus. In You Hurt My Feelings, a middle-age writer (Dreyfus) overhears her husband (Tobias Menzies) pan her latest novel. Her eavesdropping sends her into an emotional spiral, inspiring her to question everything about their marriage. Although we neverwantto be dishonest to our partners, You Hurt My Feelings shows how much the little white lies we tell anyway adds up to something bigger.
“This is how I win.” Adam Sandler has never been more captivating or more dangerous than in Uncut Gems, a heart-racing crime masterpiece from Josh and Benny Safdie. Sandler stars as a Jewish-American gambling addict and jeweler in New York’s Diamond District who is in a race against time to retrieve a priceless gem to pay off debts to loan sharks. Sandler is in extremely rare form as a self-destructive man on the edge, with Uncut Gems serving as a rebuke to Sandler’s popular image as a studio comedy clown.
In Jeremy Saulnier’s white knuckle horror-thriller Green Room, a penniless punk rock band reluctantly accepts a gig playing at a remote neo-Nazi bar. When they bear witness to a murder backstage, the band fights to survive from the bar’s owner and skinhead gang leader (played by Patrick Stewart). With muscular direction from Saulnier, an against-type performance from Stewart, and one of the last onscreen performances by the late Anton Yelchin, Green Room utterly and completely shreds.
Celine Song’s acclaimed romantic drama Past Lives isn’t about the happily ever afters, but instead, it’s about the what-could-have-beens. The movie stars Greta Lee and Teo Yoon as childhood friends who grow up in Korea and, over 20 some odd years, weave in and out of each other’s lives before a decisive meeting in New York City. Shattering but moving, Past Lives occupies itself with romantic possibilities that have long passed by but still haunt us deep down. It’s one of A24’s romantic movies ever made, not because the romance is a storybook but because it feels like real life.
From celebrated director Kelly Reichardt, First Cow is a tender portrait of friendship and the destructive chase for the American dream. Set in 1820 Oregon, two unlikely friends – a quiet chef (John Magaro) and a Chinese immigrant on the lam (Orion Lee) – hatch a plan to milk a cow owned by a wealthy trader without permission. Using the cow’s milk, the men bake and sell delicious biscuits. But success comes at a cost, and soon enough the jig is up and the men are left running for their lives. First Cow is precious and bitterly sweet, a movie where nothing really happens but still says so much about who we are by nature.
Wouldst thou like to live deliciously? In Robert Eggers' acclaimed folk horror The Witch, a Puritan family in 1630s New England move to a secluded farm. Though they believe they are alone, a witch resides in the forests nearby, and soon the family falls victim to her witchcraft. An impeccable folk horror characterized by its close attention to period detail, The Witch put both Eggers and its young star Anya Taylor-Joy (as lead protagonist Thomasin) on the map. Spend one dark and stormy night with it and you’ll understand why.
In Charlotte Wells' debut feature Aftersun, a semi-autobiographical drama, a young woman named Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) reflects back on memories of a precious vacation she spent with her father (Paul Mescal in an Oscar-nominated performance) at age 11; Frankie Corio stars as a younger version of Sophie. Through careful study of the vacation – partially captured through a handheld video camera – Sophie reckons with her childhood happiness juxtaposed with her father’s visible signs of depression. Aftersun is a gorgeous, emotionally transcendent picture about the difficulties in fostering childhood happiness.
Lee Isaac Chung’s powerful multilingual drama follows a Korean-American family – headed by patriarch Jacob, played by Steven Yuen – move to rural Arkansas to start a farm. The adorable Alan S. Kim stars as young David, whose youthful perspective and wide eyes invite audiences to see the ups and downs of family, belonging, and home. The American dream is inclusive but by no means easy to achieve, and Chung’s sweeping semi-autobiographical picture captures the universal challenges of planting roots.
Its Oscars mishap notwithstanding, Moonlight was and remains one of A24’s finest films ever made. Written and directed by Barry Jenkins and based on Tarell Alvin McCraney’s unpublished play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, Moonlight follows a young man named Chiron who figures out his identity amid crack epidemic Florida. Chiron is portrayed by three different men at different stages in his life: Alex R. Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante Rhodes. Mahershala Ali co-stars as Juan, a dealer who ends up becoming a father figure to Chiron. Moonlight is a moving film about Black male masculinity, queer sexuality, and the lasting bruises of abuse. Its numerous accolades may be blinding, but Moonlight is as breathtaking as the stars at dusk.
At a time when the multiverse felt like the exclusive domain of Marvel, directing duo The Daniels unleashed a sci-fi odyssey unlike any other. Everything Everywhere All at Once follows a middle-aged immigrant woman, mother, and laundromat owner (Michelle Yeoh) who is suddenly thrust into the role of a multi-dimensional hero to save the multiverse from a malevolent force. In this elaborate metaphor for family, love, and understanding in a chaotic world, writer/directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert tap into science fiction metaphysics, classic Shaw Brothers bangers, and filthy potty humor to serve up a true 21st century classic – in this universe and any other.
Eric Francisco is a freelance entertainment journalist and graduate of Rutgers University. If a movie or TV show has superheroes, spaceships, kung fu, or John Cena, he’s your guy to make sense of it. A former senior writer at Inverse, his byline has also appeared at Vulture, The Daily Beast, Observer, and The Mary Sue. You can find him screaming at Devils hockey games or dodging enemy fire in Call of Duty: Warzone.
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