“I am an appetite. Nothing more.” If there’s a line of dialogue from a 2024 film that encapsulates the vibe of the Letterboxd community over the past year, it’s this one from the star of our highest-rated horror, Nosferatu’s Count Orlok. He who emerges ravenous in the dark of night, craving—in our case—the flickering light of cinema. Here’s proof: You cast almost half a billion ratings, wrote 96.4 million reviews, marked 701 million films watched and made 6.8 million lists.

The year began with doom-laden predictions of post-strike hangovers, box-office gloom and cost-of-living chaos—with good reason, no doubt about it. But what we saw here, right from the jump, was a global collective of film lovers queuing up for new releases, selling out repertory screenings, collecting countless classic films and streaming underseen gems.

Anyone bemused by Inside Out 2’s $1.6 billion box-office boom need only have lurked on Letterboxd for the clues (a 3.6-average rating is a normal banger of a day around here. Tag yourself: we’re all Anxiety!). And as for mid-budget freak-shows, give us eleventy-seven more. (Yes Mr. Reed, we like blueberry pie; no Mr. Downstairs, we were not born on the 14th). 

As Canadian great Denis Villeneuve tells us, “The idea that there’s the Letterboxd community of film lovers, cinephiles, that are sharing film lists and their love and their ion—it brings me hope for the future of cinema. To know that there’s an appetite for cinema is the best reward for me.” Or, as A Real Pain’s Benji puts it, “This, people, is what fucking filmmaking is about.”

So here’s to your personal year in movies and our collective year in cinema, converging into an uplifting montage of the past twelve months in monumental screen stories. Read on for some of the themes, trends and highlights—and if you are the kind of hero who stays through the credits (thank you!), we have dropped a li’l treat at the very end.

In Dune: Part Two, we saw a leveling up of director Villeneuve’s master brushstrokes as he expands author Frank Herbert’s interplanetary realm. Member reviews praise the second installment’s deeper analysis of the gradual acquisition of power through religious commodification, as exemplified in Timothée Chalamet’s portrayal of Paul Atreides.

The Dune effect, along with her fierce turn in Challengers, crowns Zendaya as the most watched actress for her second year running (I told ya!), while Willem Dafoe gets a third year as most watched actor after typically delightful character stints in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Kinds of Kindness, Nosferatu and Saturday Night.

2024 also saw Kyle MacLachlan—the o.g. Paul Atreides in David Lynch’s Dune— Letterboxd with a list of ten films he reckons would be the messianic character’s faves. We also welcomed Wim Wenders, Michael Mann, Charli XCX among the six million new who ed our “persuasive and intellectually stimulating” global movie conversation in 2024 (thank you, The Brutalist’s Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr.).

Family, and the pains of the past, are themes embedded in our Fernanda Torres in a true tale about a missing father and a brutal political regime. Beloved both within and beyond Brazil, I’m Still Here is a perfect example of the specific translating universally—one of cinema storytelling’s greatest strengths. 

I’m Still Here and Millions are also the highest-rated features for the South America and Asia regions, respectively, in a section we introduced last year to highlight more of the best from different parts of the world, including Oceania, Africa, Europe and North America. As Boonnitipat remarked to us, “Growing up, I always liked to watch movies from smaller countries and smaller film industries. It gives the feeling that everything is so new and so fresh.” 

We also put the spotlight on Malayalam-language cinema, which had a watershed year. The ten films on our list represent a small proportion of the bumper crop out of Mollywood in 2024. (Congrats to Letterboxd member Ambareesh for their first gig as assistant cinematographer, on Dinjith Ayyathan’s mystery thriller Kishkindah Kandam.) 

A hundred years on from when a 29-year-old Buster Keaton, playing a film projectionist, dreamed himself into a movie in the 1924 scrappy, self-made, black-and-white silent comedy Sherlock Jr., wonderfully little has changed. At $150,000, the scrappy, self-made, black-and-white silent comedy Hundreds of Beavers cost just 0.07 percent of Dune: Part Two—but that was more than enough to earn it the reward of the highest-rated comedy.

Responding to the news, team Beavers made us a promise: “We solemnly swear to revive dormant comedy genres until the wheels come off.” While we wait, explore more of the Beavers’ sense of humor in director Mike Cheslik’s list of films that inspired their madcap caper.

Beavers’ win typifies a year in which delightful DIY caught our attention, with Year in Review success for tonally absurd, grounded and personal films by the likes of Conner O’Malley (Coreys, Rap World, Stand Up Solutions) and Vera Drew (The People’s Joker). Those looking for the stars of tomorrow, just follow the Letterboxd crumbs and you’ll find generational talent outside the studio system, paving their own way while learning from each other on YouTube film school.

The other phenomenon that captured our fancies: familiar faces letting their freak flags fly in unfamiliar settings. In Will & Harper, comedian Will Ferrell upended celebrity expectations as he played second fiddle to his favorite writer and best friend Harper Steele, while Pharrell Williams and Robbie Williams (no relation) chose abstract forms of their famous faces for their memoirs.

Meanwhile, we had Golden Globe winner Demi Moore lurking in a diner waiting on a Substance drop, Josh Hartnett getting trapped by pop music and Pamela Anderson showing a different side of the girl we know. These and other stars—Hugh Grant, you maniac—had us sprinting to cinemas thanks to smart marketing campaigns around mid-budget movies. May this trend thrive in 2025.

In any case, the themes in the films of 2024 have a life-improving impact. We saw people take to the stage to find connection and release in theater (Janet Planet, Sing Sing, Aattam, Ghostlight, A Different Man). We journeyed with artists struggling with their ion (Nightbitch, Malu, Look Back, A Complete Unknown, Problemista, Dìdi). We watched strong women smash balls, pump iron and take to the mat, as others (Sue, Anora, the Laapataa Ladies) fumbled their way to happiness—and got there in the end.

We walked alongside activists, journalists and ordinary citizens as they documented the falling-apart of their lives (Waves, No Other Land, I’m Still Here, Civil War) and what it takes to knit it all back together (The Village Next to Paradise, Souleymane’s Story, We Were Dangerous). And from Roz the robot, a snail named Sylvia Plath, and a small cat in a small boat, we realized how much we need to let others in. Who knew the animated animals would teach us the most about being human in 2024?

Much like Wallace tinkering with his friendly, helpful Norbots, humans engineered this Letterboxd Year in Review. We’re a typically humble lot, but this is the annual moment when we let the credits roll a little longer in order to heap praise on the movie lovers that keep Letterboxd alive year-round (yes, there’s still a post-credits treat on the way, you animals). 

Most of all to Ella for the needle-drops and copy edits.

Marcie for fantastic content input and Mihir Nanda for expert analysis.

To Rochelle for keeping the home fires burning.

Another thing that’s made us proud: we were featured in numerous news stories about the uptick in repertory screenings, with sold-out screenings at arthouse cinemas, alongside rising film club hips, physical media consumption and other signs of a healthy movie society.

Stories also explored Letterboxd’s impact on indie movie marketing, our community’s hunger for original storytelling, and the joys of our platform as a hyper-specific social haven. “It’s non-stop dopamine for film lovers.” And if you ever wanted to learn the origins of our Four Favorites, IndieWire has you covered. (Plus, we were chuffed to make appearances on screen, in shows like True Detective: Night Country and The Franchise. To quote Maxine Minx, I’m a fucking star!) 

And you, our community. In essence, it’s all you. Your stars, your hearts, your reviews, your lists, blended into this beautiful recap of another remarkable year in cinema. In Villeneuve’s words, “Frankly what I love about [Dune: Part Two’s success] is it’s coming from people who don’t give a shit about me. They’re just talking about the movie, you know? Thank you everybody. It goes straight to my heart.”  

For those keen to understand how a small team of Wisconsin artists wearing giant animal suits managed to bag the highest-rated comedy crown over the likes of Anora or A Real Pain or A Different Man, it’s pure math. The Year in Review is calculated from the Letterboxd community’s combined ratings as of January 1, 2025.

Eligible films are those that had a first national release in any country between January 1 and December 31 2024, and received a minimum of 2,000 ratings following release (minimum ratings requirements differ in some categories with lower overall viewership numbers).

Films that had direct-to-streaming releases, TV movies, and films with limited theatrical releases are included, while films with film festival screenings but no national release yet are not (they are included in the Year in Review relevant to the year in which they receive a national release).

We exclude short films, TV shows and specials, filmed concerts, visual albums and stage shows from the main narrative and documentary categories; where appropriate, we give those their own categories.

As on the platform, Letterboxd differentiates between popular films (a measure of the activity a film receives regardless of rating) and highly rated films (computed from a weighted average of all ratings cast by during the period).

And that’s all, folks! As promised, a treat for those who stayed: our 2024 Cinematic Needle Drops playlist (and the Letterboxd list of films they feature in). Bye bye bye.