A nother year in the books means another chance to look back at how much of that year we spent sitting in front of a movie. There’s been plenty of talk about the relative quality of this year's crop but even if the highlights weren’t as high as some would’ve liked, 2024 brought us some truly surprising moments in cinema. So here are our picks for 10 of the best (and most surprising) movies of 2024. From the expected franchise installments, sequels and nostalgia plays like Twisters (which was actually a blast) to incredible documentaries about Superman actor Christopher Reeve, this year ran the gamut of film flavors as good as any in recent memory. Horror gave us folksy chills with Oddity and kitschy twists like Late Night With The Devil and In A Violent Nature while Inside Out 2 and Mufasa offered some big feelings in the animation and some new directors with familiar faces dipped their toe into directing thrillers like Blink Twice and Woman of the Hour and genre bending indie films like I Saw The TV Glow gave us something truly original. Meanwhile films like Anora and The Brutalist are making legit noise about a Best Picture Oscar. Some might say mixed bag, I say a lovely buffet. The Picks 10 - Franchise Blockbuster - Dune: Part 2 - Dir. Denis Villeneuve 9 - Non-Franchise Action - Rebel Ridge - Dir. Jeremy Saulnier 8 - Comedy - Thelma - Dir. Josh Margolin 7 - Thriller - Love Lies Bleeding - Dir. Rose Glass 6 - Documentary - Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus - Dir. Neo Sora 5 - Science Fiction - The Substance - Dir. Coralie Fargeat Honorable Mention for Animation - Flow - Dir. Gints Zilbalodis 4 - Horror - Nosferatu - Dir. Robert Eggers 3 - Indie Drama - Challengers - Dir. Luca Guadagnino 2 - Foreign - Evil Does Not Exist - Dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi 1 - “Prestige” Drama - Conclave - Dir. Edward Berger For more movie lists be sure to subscribe to CineFix and check out the rest of this tangentially related content! Robert Eggers Picks His Favorite Shots from The Witch, The Lighthouse and More - https://youtu.be/6LXqXA4__I4 From Gladiator to Napoleon, These Are The Three Things Every Ridley Scott Battle Sequence Has In Common - https://youtu.be/mHy2FzLtWh0 Night of the Living Dead, Starship Troopers and The Top 10 Political Movies of All Time - https://youtu.be/4943QzJpEbs How John Wick Saved Hollywood (But Nobody Listened) - https://youtu.be/P-oBBQKRoGE When Exactly Did Alien Stop Being About Space Truckers? - https://youtu.be/UJH1pcGBUzA The Godfather, Apocalypse Now and more | Francis Ford Coppola Picks His Favorite Shots from Throughout His Career