AARP’s Favorite Movies of 2024 (So Far)

Ezra

Audiences adore Ezra, even if the critics were more skeptical. The contemporary family dramedy is the story of an autistic boy, Ezra (newcomer William A. Fitzgerald). He’s surrounded by love — from his devoted stand-up comedian father Max (a memorable Bobby Cannavale, 54), his irascible grandfather, Stan (an affecting Robert DeNiro, 80) and his divorced mother, Jenna (Rose Byrne). Caring for Ezra takes a village and a lot of patience, often forcing his family members out of their comfort zones as they navigate the challenges and pleasures of raising a neurodivergent child. If anything, it’s a coming of age for Max, an arrested development case who faces his own challenging relationship with his father and his split from his wife, while accepting his roles of advocate and adult-in-the-room for his son — and trying to achieve a comedy comeback. The well-made, well-acted, heartfelt movie is one that has the audience laughing and crying, sometimes simultaneously. Rated R.

Tótem

The Mexican entry for Best International Feature Film and festival favorite is one of those movies that allows audiences to experience an entire lifetime in one sitting. Over the course of a single day, a large, extended family prepares for a birthday party for the beloved eldest son, Tonatiuh (Mateo Garcia). As his father crabs, his sisters fuss, and his daughter runs in and out of the family villa with excitement, we gradually learn that the young and handsome artist has terminal cancer. This may be his last birthday, and while this heavy emotion overlays the fiesta and its preparation, the well-drawn characters come together to fete his short life while he can still enjoy the celebration. Few movies capture the joy, the sorrow and the short sweetness of life with the warm-hearted wisdom of Tótem. Rated NR.

The Promised Land

Overlooked by last year’s Best Foreign Language Film nominations, the sweeping Danish period drama is a showcase for actor Mads Mikkelsen, 58. Resembling an American Western with a strong silent hero in the Gary Cooper mold, it follows Mikkelsen’s low-born war veteran Ludvig Kahlen as he tries to claim and cultivate his veteran’s land grant, his promised land, during peacetime. However, there’s another war on the horizon: that with a local aristocrat and land baron who’d rather grind von Kahlen down than let him flourish. It’s a story that’s both rugged and romantic, with a peak Mikkelsen performance, about how sometimes we’re better off not chasing our dreams when unexpected opportunities present themselves. Rated R.

The Taste of Things

Juliette Binoche, 60, is having a moment. The chic international star (currently also playing designing woman Coco Chanel on TV’s The New Look) is absolutely delicious as Eugénie , a sensual cook preparing exquisite food and sleeping with the gourmet chef Dodin (Benoît Magimel, 50, the actress’s ex). Eugénie’s every movement in the kitchen is graceful and assured, and she cooks in the bedroom, too, in a no-strings-attached long-term liaison. This culinary movie that moves at its own pleasurable pace — no rushed dinner this — rivals the famous Babette’s Feast. Here, the joy of cooking meets the pleasure of intimacy in a mouth-watering, at times melancholy, celebration of French food preparation and consumption. Rated PG-13.

Remembering Gene Wilder

If you loved early Mel Brooks movies like Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles and The Producers — or the 1971 version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory — then possibly the late Gene Wilder was your idea of the ideal offbeat leading man. In this entertaining clip-filled and intimate biography, the curly-haired, blue-eyed star’s marriage to SNL breakout Gilda Radner also gets screen time. The affectionate documentary avoids a warts-and-all approach, sticking to the actor’s incredible, often original, comic achievements over a four-decade career. Rated NR.

We Grown Now

The tale of two African American boys, Malik and Eric (Blake Cameron James, Gian Knight Ramirez) growing up in Chicago’s infamous Cabrini-Green Housing Projects is at times joyful, at others devastating. When a young neighborhood child is shot and killed in a 1992 act of gang violence, the event ripples through the lives of the best friends since birth. When one leaves Chicago with his family, the other stays behind — and there’s an underlying sorrow that this kind of close, years-in-the-making friendship cannot be replicated or replaced. With humor, playfulness and a deep understanding of the power of childhood companionship, the Midwestern coming-of-age adventure is a Black boyhood story as iconic as Stand By Me. Rated PG.

Hard Miles

Matthew Modine, 65, pulls out all the stops in this starring role as a juvenile prison social worker who retains his passion for helping and rehabilitating his teen miscreants. In a last-ditch effort to heal and protect, he leads a 1,000-mile bike ride to the Grand Canyon. It’s no surprise that along the way, both the guide and his charges find focus, compassion and forgiveness on the long uphill climbs and exhilarating downhill descents. Even if the pieces tend toward the formulaic, the winning Hard Miles has heart, integrity and a strong narrative drive. Rated PG-13.