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The 97th Academy Awards was, as the Oscars always are, a celebration of movies as a whole, in addition to some very specific movies in particular. This year, it was Anora and The Brutalist that got much of the attention of the Academy, with other features — including Netflix’s Emilia Peréz — heavily featured in nominations. But… what about the movies that didn’t get nods at any point in the process? Surely those weren’t the only good movies of 2024? Of course not… and so we offer up, for your consideration, three overlooked classics that made 2024 such a good year for film.

This is For Your Consideration, in which we try to come to terms with the inescapable fact that, honestly, there’s too much out there to have time to watch, read, or hear everything — by making some suggestions about things that you might have overlooked but would enjoy, anyway. Think of it as recommendations from a well-meaning friend.

Hundreds of Beavers

Technically a 2022 release — it debuted at Fantastic Fest back in September of that year — 2024 was nonetheless the year that the world discovered Hundreds of Beavers thanks to a long-overdue wide release via video-on-demand. (A stretch? Okay, maybe, but I stand by it!) A tribute to slapstick comedy movies of yore, as well as the cartoon logic of Chuck Jones and Tex Avery and more than a little bit of Super Mario Bros. and other video games, too, Hundreds of Beavers is a fever dream of a movie that’s part-love story, part-exposé on just how terrible beavers really are. It’s ridiculous, it’s hilarious, and most importantly, it’s endlessly inventive, creative, and unlike any other movie that you’ve seen in the past few years. This, friends, is cinema.

Available on: Prime Video

Kneecap

If the idea of a fictionalized origin story for a rap group that performs predominantly in the Irish language, starring the band playing themselves and focusing in large part on a systematic attack on the Irish national identity by the authorities after years of societal conflict in Northern Ireland, doesn’t exactly sound like your idea of a good time, guess what: you’re wrong, because Kneecap — named after and starring the band of the same name — is easily one of the finest, and most fun, movies of 2024. It helps that all three of the band are natural performers — with JJ Ó Dochartaigh being genuinely amazing onscreen — but the entire movie has a restless, anarchistic momentum that is undeniable almost from the first minute. It’s not just easily one of the best musical biographies we’ve seen in a long time, it’s surprisingly one of the most honest and affecting movies of the entire year.

Available on: Netflix

The Outrun

Adapted from Amy Liptrot’s 2016 memoir of the same name (Liptrot herself co-wrote the screenplay with director Nora Fingscheidt), The Outrun is a movie that stands and falls based around its central performance. Thankfully, Saoirse Ronan is seemingly effortlessly perfect as Rona, a woman who flees her life in London to return to the remote Orkney Islands she was raised in, in an attempt to recover from her alcoholism and maintain her sobriety. Told non-chronologically, we get to see Rona in recovery at the same time as we see her life fall apart in London, in addition to scenes from her childhood that left scars and made her into the adult she is today. It’s not an easy watch, as that description might suggest, but it’s an ultimately uplifting and life-affirming one that chooses to celebrate small victories and the very human connections that maintain our hope when all otherwise seems lost.

Available on: Netflix

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