Music at the cinema: the best of 2024

2024 was a year full of musical releases, which this list only partially reflects, given that the usual Christmas programming prior to the announcement of the Oscar nominations postponed many titles that would have appeared here at the beginning of January 2025. Films such as the musical biopic on Callas Maria, the French musical Emilia Perez and the film about the career and music of Robbie Williams Better Manto mention only the most obvious absences.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of titles that have already been released in theaters (indeed, some are still at the cinema during these Christmas days) which have musically marked 2024 on the big screen. This list includes both the best strictly musical or musical-themed films, and the most relevant films of the year in terms of the impact of the musical sequences and soundtracks present in them. Some of these titles are not even convincing films, but they have attracted attention for the role that music plays within them.
So let’s see what happened in the musical field on the big screen in 2024.

Glory!

One of the most beautiful music-themed films seen in theaters in 2024 is Italian and is also a directorial debut: that of Margherita Vicario, surprising behind the camera in “Gloria!”, presented at the Berlin Film Festival in February.

Director but also composer of much of the film’s musicm, Vicario takes the viewer in a romanticized, ironic and proudly feminist way into the forgotten world of female music of the convents. The film tells the story of the passion for singing of a group of guests of the St. Ignatius Orphanage in 1800. As was customary at the time, the protagonist girls are young, propertyless people hosted by Catholic institutions to start them on a musical career, working as musicians and singers in church and convent choirs.

For quantity and complexity of the sung parts “Gloria!” comes close to being a musical, among other things seeing some truly important names in Italian music in the ranks of its cast: Veronica Lucchesi of the Representative of Lista and Elio, supported by the comedian Paolo Rossi in three very ironic roles.

A little gem that unfortunately went unnoticed and absolutely needs to be recovered.
The interview with Margherita Vicario

Wicked

Cultural phenomenon and box office hit in the United States, a film that went almost unnoticed in Italy and the rest of the world: thefilm adaptation of the famous Broadway musical marks a sort of caesura between the United States and planet Earthbut it remains the musical of the year, with a serious chance of ending up at the Oscars in very important categories.

It is not a film of amazing workmanship, even as regards the choreographic and directorial component, but the killer hits of the soundtrack they work just as much as on a theater stage. The truly inspired presence of aAriana Grande simply perfect and a vocally impressive Cynthia Erivo they make the film themselves. What remains is the regret of what could have been in the hands of a director and a production capable of transforming the musical potential of the film into high-quality cinematographic material.

The review

Trap

Underrated and mistreated, M. Night Shyamalan has brought out an ironic and biting horror film from a situation in which many fathers found themselves in the year of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour: accompanying their delirious adolescent offspring to pop concert of one’s favorite. In Trap this premise (and its related musical complement, which does not remain so in the background) are transformed into a delightful horror-tinged thriller, in which the father is actually an elusive serial killer and the stadium filled with 30 thousand people is a trap set by the police to capture him.

The plot alone would be worth a place in the ranking, but the subtle references to American musical reality and the excellent workmanship of the film make it rightfully included in this list.

Flow

In a film starring a handful of animals who find themselves surviving an unexpected flood in a world where only traces of human presence remain, the soundtrack necessarily has a crucial role in the narrative without dialogue and without the possibility of explaining itself in words.

The impressive aspect of “Flow”, which in itself is one of the most popular animated films of the last year, is that Gints Zilbalodis, in addition to directing, producing and editing it, also co-composed the soundtrack. Seven hours of instrumental music written with Rihards Zalupe and then carefully selected to obtain the fifty minutes that ended up in the final feature film.

Without ever becoming a cumbersome underlining, the sweet, curious and always incisive music of “Flow” is a crucial element to tell the interior life of the protagonist black kitten, who we follow as we explore a world where humans are just a memory.

My Robot Friend

Another animated film, another practically silent feature film, but only in words. Even in this touching film that tells the story how human stories (of love, of friendship, of closeness) begin and end because this is how it has to happenmusic plays an absolutely crucial role. Also because the animated feature film by Spanish director Pablo Berger tells with incredible punctuality how the songs, as well as being beautiful to listen to, relevant at the time of launch, can come loaded with emotional baggage that comes back to hit us when we hear them again on the radio, by chance, suddenly, years later.

It deserves to be on this list even just for the unforgettable sequence in which the two protagonists they dance on roller skates to the tune of “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire.

The review

I saw the TV shine

About creating a world using music as the emotional backbone of the same, how can we not mention this little indie jewel which unfortunately ended up in the oblivion of rental on the platform but considered internationally one of the cult films of the year?

In “I Saw the TV Shine” there is a supernatural and horror-tinged tale of what it meant to be a teenager in the 90s. A decade characterized by discomfort of feeling wrong in your own skin and understood only by a TV series that you secretly watch late in the evening resonates throughout the soundtrack composed by Alex G.

Halfway between music and the white noise of a poorly tuned TV, the film’s soundtrack also accompanies the creation of a fictional children’s TV show called “The Pink Opaque” which hybridizes with the film itself and conquers right from its opening theme, ramshackle, melodramatic, poignant.

The Substance

After Justine Triet with “PIMP” in 2023, this year it was the turn of another French director to make cult a piece that once would not have hesitated to define as zarro but whose brazen and ironic use in cinema really makes the spin to the song in question, making it irresistible.

The film is the cult horror “The Substance”, the piece is the remix of “Pump It Up” by DJ Endor, which in 2019 pumped up a song that was already anything but sober, namely Danzel’s euro-dance hit of the same name. Coralie Fargeat is the director who uses it as the soundtrack for a television pilates program bordering on pornographicin which the beautiful and sensual Sue (Margaret Qualley) shows off her charms and wiggles her tight, gravity-defying physique to the beat of this hit.

In short, you can’t get more excessive, brazen and brazen than that, but “The Substance” is a film that makes excess its flag, in a year in which many directors have decided to leave subtext and subtlety in the attic , also on the musical front.

Challengers

Luca Guadagnino doubled himself in 2024, presenting two very different works, but set to music by a duo who never takes prisoners in cinema: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Despite their already glorious career in cinema, the soundtrack of Guadagnino’s sports film could seriously be a candidate for the duo’s best composition for several years now.

Set among the isosceles of a love triangle between three young, ambitious, selfish tennis players, “Challengers” is a film that aims to seduce by showcasing its bold and elegant beauty: the impeccable direction, the impeccable photography, three protagonists who through Guadagnino’s lens become irresistible sex symbols. All in time a soundtrack that does not disappear within the film and it doesn’t act as a background, but rather sees the edited follow the beats, emerging as the absolute protagonist. Even within the Academy they seem to have realized that “Challengers” is undoubtedly one of the best, if not the most memorable film soundtracks of 2024.

Parthenope

The film was widely seen by Italian spectators and greatly divided its audience, displaced by the first female portrait as subject and not object (at least in theory) of Sorrentino’s cinema. In the musical field, however, Paolo Sorrentino proves himself to be a filmmaker with impeccable musical taste and with the enviable ability to place a song where it will have a devastating emotional impact. He had done it with Pino Daniele on the ending of “It was the hand of God”, he did it again with Riccardo Cocciante and his poignant “It was all already foreseen”. A perfect hymn to the brevity of existence and to certain courses and recurrences of life told from a Neapolitan perspective, which brings out that inevitable melancholy that colors all of Sorrento’s cinema.

Deadpool & Wolverine

The film is what it is: mercenary in every aspect, planned to squeeze as much as possible out of our somewhat faded love for superheroes in the cinema. Despite this it is undeniable that one of the most popular musical moments in cinema in 2024 was the opening credits of “Deadpool & Wolverine”. Titles in which Ryan Reynolds’ superhero dances an intricate, enthralling choreography to the tune of “Bye Bye Bye” by N*SYNC. All this while he kills some unfortunate hitmen sent to put a spoke in his wheels. Those who weren’t around at the time of the song’s release discovered “Bye Bye Bye” at the cinema or on TikTok, bringing it back to the charts and generating catchphrases, memes and imitations for weeks.

Also noteworthy is Reynolds’ incredible ability to getting people like Madonna to say yes does it to get the rights to use a hit like “Like a Prayer” for another musical sequence present in the film that is equally mercenary, equally iconic.

The “mercenary” music of “Deadpool & Wolverine” –