The best movies of 2024 to stream over Christmas

On By Littum

Despite all the endless crises in the film industry, there are still too many films to watch. What’s more, many of them are too good to miss. And then God gave us Christmas to catch up. Of course, the place to watch movies remains the cinema, where you will still find several of the year’s best. (Anora for one; some lucky ones can trace A different man.)

But many others can now be streamed. Some speak urgently to the world in which we find ourselves. A few are more escapist. The rest fall somewhere in the gray area in between. But together I hope they all fit the bill: a private festival in the festive season.

The beast

Do you remember the future? IN The beastLéa Seydoux and George MacKay work in French and English and across time. Director Bertrand Bonello takes a pinch of inspiration from Henry James’ short story The beast in the jungleand then jumps into creepy science fiction.

The film spans 1910, 2014 and a cool point two decades from now. There are lots of thematic rhymes: love and loneliness, premonitions and QR codes. But the real common thread is the pain of nostalgia – for the past and things to come which never were.

On Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and others

Flash

Steve McQueen could have made this list twice. In documentary occupied cityhe matched images of modern Amsterdam to the history of the city under Nazi control. All four remarkable hours of that film are more than worth your time, too.

But Flash is a bone-chilling London film, a panorama of the capital in flames in 1941, emanating from a single Stepney family. The visual audacity is astonishing, and yet the film also feels timeless – as moving as any landmark British war film, even if it upends the clichés of the genre.

On Apple TV+

La Chimera

Unearthing the past is a theme in more than one of the year’s best films. In the singular La Chimeraeven the look of Alice Rohrwacher’s film feels archaeological: a vintage grain just right for the setting of 1980s Tuscany.

Josh O’Connor stars, working in Italian as an English ne’er-do-well who has fallen foul of “tombaroli” (tomb raiders) to steal buried Etruscan artefacts. The atmosphere is anarchic, but overshadowed by sadness – and surprises.

On Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and others

Dahomey

La Chimera is a tale of treasure being stolen. IN Dahomeydirector Mati Diop focuses on relics that have long lived away from home – until now. At the simplest level, the documentary traces 26 African works of art that were looted by France in the 19th century but are now being returned to Benin.

Early scenes coolly see giant iroko wooden statues still in Paris being packed for their journey. Within the film, however, an explosion of ideas is beginning around the legacy of colonialism. The rest is a film of rare and restless intelligence.

On MUBI, Apple TV+ and others

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

“What the hell am I looking at?” is a good question for any film to make us ask. You may find that it comes up Furiousa wired and deliberate action blockbuster. The short answer is the origin story of the post-apocalyptic heroine of George Miller’s Last Virtuoso Mad Max film, Fury Road – one built around the otherworldly star presence of Anya Taylor-Joy.

Like Francis Ford Coppola is quickly infamous Megalopolisthe film marches to only its own tune. But while Coppola spread out, Miller and Taylor-Joy keep things tight and kinetic—their film is brutal, but a rush.

On Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and others

Hit Man

We’ve all seen too many movies about assassins, and Hit Man know it. Instead, Richard Linklater gives us a hugely enjoyable Russian doll. The promise is a true story inside, which lies a screwball lark. Inside tois, however, a cool meditation on how much of the world we (mis)understand from films.

Glen Powell stars as a New Orleans philosophy professor who has gone undercover with the police to impersonate an assassin. The comedy is quick; Powell’s chemistry with co-star Adria Arjona shows. And the sting in the tail? We even get something to think about.

On Netflix

My favorite cake

Telling the truth in a harsh regime is always heroic. My favorite cake does so in the form of a gentle comic drama. The story might not seem subversive: a wry portrait of a 70-year-old Tehran widow training her romantic gaze on a surprised elderly taxi driver.

And yet in Iran, the morality police saw the film as criminal because of scenes where women at home went without the hijab. It was enough for directors Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha to face interrogation and confiscation of their passports. But watching the film is not just a small act of solidarity – it is also a pleasure.

On Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and others

No other country

No other country is a film about a place: Masafer Yatta, a string of Palestinian villages in the West Bank whose homes and schools are often demolished by the Israeli military. But this intense and poignant documentary is also about people: the villagers, of course, and two of the four co-directors, Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham.

Adra is also from Masafer Yatta. For him, the film comes after years already spent filming tanks, bulldozers and the violence of soldiers. Meanwhile, Abraham is an Israeli journalist whose friendship with Adra gives this deeply human film even greater dimension.

On Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and others

Robot dreams

The charming animation Robot dreams is suitable for all ages. Younger kids are sure to giggle. Adults, however, may find themselves with a lump in their throat, even after first enjoying a nostalgic high from the colorful backdrop of 1980s New York.

But here the breakdancers, punks and Coney Island day-trippers are cartoon animals, like the melancholic dog at the heart of the film who buys a mail-order robot as a friend. From its simple beginnings, Pablo Berger’s film spins endless invention and emotional complexity – and all without a word of dialogue.

On Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and others

Vourdalak

Christmas Eve in Britain isn’t the same without a ghost story – but Adrien Beau’s vampire yarn Vourdalak would be a fine alternative. The story is an old one, based on an 1839 Russian novel, with a first class French courtier stranded in rural Eastern Europe with a strange local family.

What follows is a richly gay gothic horror. The relationship between creeping unease and surreal comedy is perfectly judged – just right to ensure you wake up Christmas morning still shivering.

On Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and others