The IP wars of the 21st century are over, and the studios have won. This year, for the first time ever, the 10 highest-grossing movies in America were all sequels.

Technically, “Wicked” is a prequel, and “Dune: Part Two” is the second half of one long movie, but there’s still a “two” in the title, and intellectual property is intellectual property – the saga of Paul Atreides exists as a presold, pre-mulched commodity. The late film critic Manny Farber’s theory of white elephant art vs. termite art – where termite art consisted of unpretentious B movies oblivious to greater meaning and therefore more alive – has been reversed; genre has not just won but become bloated and cautious, coasting on the self-congratulatory snark of “Deadpool” and “Venom” movies and afraid to sell us something we haven’t already consumed. When we watch a studio sequel, or reboot, or remake, we are eating our own waste.

So the great entertainment corporations sell us what we want, and we want what they sell us – or at least, that’s all we find at the multiplex. In an inversion from the previous century, you frequently have to turn to TV for original ideas, and in fact, some of the year’s very best movies landed on Netflix or Prime Video after a pro forma genuflection in the direction of a theatrical release. Others were independent films that toured the art houses and are now available for $3.99 on a streaming platform near you. Maybe you miss the unique experience of seeing a rascally roller coaster ride like “Hit Man” – a movie made to be shared with an audience – in a roomful of strangers, but at least you get to see it.

True, some of those box office champs gave us our money’s worth. Denis Villeneuve is a ponderous visionary, but he is a visionary, and his “Dune” films are rich toffee, micromanaged down to the last megapixel. “Twisters” was fun, “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” muscular and engrossing. A fellow I went to college with started the studio that invented the Minions; he’s a really nice guy, and I’m happy for his fortune.

But I’m tired of franchises and pixels, and maybe you are, too. It’s been a rough year for many of us, and while you have every right to numb yourself with a big, empty studio confection like “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” I found sustenance in tales of human connection, disaster, survival – dramas of getting through the day and comedies of making peace with the flawed people in our lives and our own flawed selves.

There’s this, too: A revolution may be underfoot, tiny mammals with big ambitions to tip over the dinosaurs on their way out. One of the movies in my 2024 Top 10 is a home-brewed slapstick comedy made by a bunch of nobodies in the Upper Midwest; it arrives on Blu-ray this month after knocking them dead at local film festivals across the country. An even more daring outlier, Vera Drew’s “The People’s Joker,” isn’t one of the best movies of the year, but it may be the most important, a proudly kitchen-sink repurposing of “Batman” iconography in the service of a freewheeling trans coming-out comedy. (The lawyers over at Warner Bros. are doubtlessly not amused, but Drew has claimed fair use, and the film is available for streaming on Prime Video and Apple TV.)

The mere existence of these movies gives me hope for a new people’s cinema, a cargo culture to plunder corporate IP for a million private, jury-rigged needs. The promise of the digital revolution has always been that anyone can afford to make a movie and get it seen by everyone. The studios, and the conglomerates that own them, still hold the keys to the kingdom, but streaming TV and pandemics have loosened their grip and made them overcautious, doubling down on our need for nostalgia in the face of an uncertain future. You want “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” or “Kung Fu Panda 9”? Don’t worry, you’ll get them. But some nobody in nowhere-land may be making a movie that could rock your world with entertainment – or challenge everything you hold to be true. Let a thousand provocations bloom.

A few caveats: Because this list is restricted to films that played theatrically in the D.C. area in calendar 2024 or are available on streaming platforms, a handful of titles that would otherwise make my Top 10 are ineligible, specifically “Nickel Boys,” adapted from Colson Whitehead’s novel by sophomore filmmaker RaMell Ross; “September 5,” a stark lesson in journalistic ethics set during the 1972 Munich Olympics attacks (ditto); and “No Other Land,” a powerhouse documentary about a tenuous alliance between two young men, Palestinian and Israeli, as the former’s village is destroyed by government bulldozers (it has played at festivals but has yet to find a U.S. distributor).

I also have several runners-up. In no particular order and with some awaiting local opening dates, they include “Conclave,” “Love Lies Bleeding,” “Dahomey,” “The Substance,” “Thelma,” “All We Imagine as Light,” “Hard Truths,” “The Room Next Door” and “The Seed of the Sacred Fig.”

Other than that, here’s my list.

10. ‘Challengers’

A throwback to when movies were unafraid to be sexy (see also “Hit Man”), this tennis roundelay from Italy’s Luca Guadagnino (“Call Me by Your Name” and other sybaritic delights) casts Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor as participants in a years-long throuple’s match on and off the court(ship). “Challengers,” more than “Dune Two,” stakes Zendaya’s claim as one of the sharpest Gen Z actors around – let’s just go ahead and call it Gen Zendaya – and the movie’s a sensual/sensuous treat on the filmmaking and narrative levels alike. Profound? Hell, no. But it sure hits the sweet spot.

The wordless stars of “Flow” include a cat and a golden retriever. Courtesy of Sideshow/Janus Films

9. ‘Flow’

Did you know they made animated films in Latvia? Neither did I, but it’s not like you need Duolingo to fall headfirst into (and in love with) this wordless fable about a group of animals – cat, dog, capybara, lemur and secretary bird – who journey by boat through a flooded wonderland bereft of humans. You can mine the second feature by Gints Zilbalodis (after 2019’s “Away”) for eco-warnings or simply steep in its evocation of the universe’s presence and mystery. A great movie for kids, but don’t make the mistake of cheating yourself out of a transporting experience.

Jesse Eisenberg, left, and Kieran Culkin in “A Real Pain.” Searchlight Pictures

8. ‘A Real Pain’

Well, of course it’s talky – Jesse Eisenberg made it. But the actor turned writer-director comes of age in this sophomore effort about two cousins – one (Eisenberg) tightly wound and the other (Kieran Culkin) lost and full of light – on a Holocaust tour in Poland, with all the historical and emotional mishegoss that entails. It’s a movie that comes with a fair amount of comic business but also a bottomless sympathy for family ghosts of past and all-too-present generations, and Culkin gives a performance that’s a mitzvah, plain and simple.

This image released by A24 shows Julianne Nicholson, left, and Zoe Ziegler in a scene from “Janet Planet.” (A24 via AP)

7. ‘Janet Planet’

Playwright Annie Baker – she won a 2014 Pulitzer for “The Flick” – was one of many filmmaking outsiders to bring jolts of fresh energy and empathy to the screen this year. Here she fictionalizes and memorializes her childhood with a vulnerable New Agey single mother in 1990s western Massachusetts. Zoe Ziegler plays the 11-year-old daughter like a refugee from a Roz Chast cartoon, and the great Julianne Nicholson is the mom, yawing between flawed lovers, needy friends and shady gurus until she wobbles up onto her own feet. A lovely movie made of found moments and Berkshires pine.

6. ‘Daughters’

Angela Patton and Natalie Rae’s documentary – winner of jury and audience awards at Sundance 2024 – is about a father-daughter dance at a D.C. prison, with much of the focus on the lead-up and aftermath and particular attention paid to four of the prisoners and their daughters. Life coach Chad Morris helps the men tease out their regrets and hopes in group sessions that are both moving in their vulnerability and enraging in the glimpses they provide of America’s for-profit carceral system. If you don’t tear up watching this, you’re missing some functional part of your humanity.

This image released by SRH shows a scene from the film “Hundreds of Beavers.” SRH via AP

5. ‘Hundreds of Beavers’

Let’s hear it for the little guys – the all-American maniacs like Wisconsin’s Mike Cheslik who pour their souls and relatives’ money into black-and-white slapstick silent comedies of the frozen north, replete with their friends stuffed into raccoon and beaver mascot costumes and desktop digital effects that may not be as convincing as the ones in “Wicked” but are way funnier. Starring and co-written by the enthusiastically named Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, “Beavers” was a film festival hit that conquered streaming audiences the way termites infest your house. It’s equal parts Buster Keaton, Betty Boop and a wheel of Wisconsin cheddar left outside so long it’s become hallucinogenic.

This image released by Mubi shows a scene from the film “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World” Mubi via AP

4. ‘Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World’

If you feel like taking the title of Radu Jude’s scrappy Romanian fable of our devolving civilization and stapling it to your head, feel free – he’d probably join in the bleak merriment. The film stars the unsinkable Ilinca Manolache as a production assistant/gofer/gig worker driving endlessly across the hellscape of Bucharest traffic, cursing right back at a society that teeters on the verge of collapse and using her online alter ego, Bobita – a rude, crude, hilarious parody of right-wing Slavic bros – to taunt the state of the state. With a climactic single-shot scene that’s a masterpiece of comic entropy, this is cargo-cult cinema at its finest.

This image released by Netflix shows Glen Powell in a scene from “Hit Man.” Netflix via AP

3. ‘Hit Man’

Every once in a while, indie-film legend Richard Linklater (“Dazed and Confused,” “Boyhood”) turns around and drops an audience-pleaser so ridiculously … pleasing that you have to wonder why he doesn’t do it more often. This based-on-a-true-story story about a professor who poses as a hired killer for police sting operations and starts to lose track of his own identity is the existential comedy of the year, and with the incendiary chemistry between leads Glen Powell and Adria Arjona, it’s also the hottest. (If you want to know what the Powell hype is, look no further.) The film’s another one that came off the festival circuit and went almost straight to Netflix; a proper theatrical release might have made “Hit Man” the hit it deserves to be.

This image released by Neon shows Mark Eydelshteyn, left, and Mikey Madison in a scene from “Anora.” Neon via AP

2. ‘Anora’

Writer-director Sean Baker (“The Florida Project,” “Red Rocket”) likes to make comedy-dramas about sex workers and other Americans in impolite society, and his heroine here – a young stripper who lets herself be wooed by a Russian oligarch’s kid, only to be forcefully reminded that Cinderella stories are just that – is given volcanic, funny, heartbreaking life by Mikey Madison. If you think it’s just the latest “Pretty Woman,” look again, and then again – beneath the stumblebum bad guys and farcical tours of deepest, darkest Brooklyn is a clear-eyed dissection of the prices women are sold for and pay. The final scene will yank out your guts, but is it true love or just another fairy tale? Go ahead, discuss – that’s why Baker made the movie.

1. ‘His Three Daughters’

Three sisters drive one another crazy in a cramped New York City apartment while their unseen father lies dying in the back room. Is this even a movie? Well, no, it’s something better: the human comedy in all its warmth and aggravation at a time when the weather outside has never been colder. Featuring career-peak performances by a trio of stalwart stars – Carrie Coon (the uptight sister), Elizabeth Olsen (the yoga mom) and Natasha Lyonne (the stoned one) – and an ending that shouldn’t really work but really, really does, it’s a reminder that the best movies hit us where we actually live. Azazel Jacobs has been making oddball little films for a couple of decades now (see 2008’s “Momma’s Man” or 2020’s “French Exit”), but with this beautifully written and performed chamber play, he has come home at last. “His Three Daughters” is Chekhov in Stuyvesant Town, and it’s sitting right there on Netflix, waiting for you with a light left on.