Incivility in 2024

I avoided talking about Donald Trump in my year-end post timed to the actual end of the calendar year -- or, talked about him only to say I was not talking about him, which is not quite the same thing. But I can't avoid the inevitable any longer, since there is no doubt the former and future president had a stamp even on the movies we watched in 2024, and not just because he was a character in one of them.

Alex Garland's Civil War would likely not exist if Trump had not spent the better part of the last decade -- really, a full decade now -- raising the temperature of political discourse in the United States, and prompting American citizens who had previously only angrily disagreed with each other to consider actually rising up and killing each other. We don't know who are the "good guys" and who are the "bad guys" in Civil War, nor what ideologies of the warring parties we can squint and associate with either today's Democratic party or today's Republican party. The beauty of the movie is, any viewer can probably see themselves in whoever they see the heroes of the story to be, though that may only be useful to the extent that it helps them reconsider their own tendencies toward this sort of violence. (And if you want the ultimate answer of whose side Garland is "really" on, it's as simple as the fact that the characters we follow are journalists, traditionally the enemy of someone like Trump, as he himself defines it.)

Whether or not actual violence prevailed -- thank you, Democrats, for showing your high road by not fomenting an insurrection like your rivals did four years earlier -- there is no doubt that incivility ruled the day, and has again reduced us to lesser examples of the human species than we once were. At the movies, this may not have resulted in a lot of stories about people strangling each other and calling each other names, though I'm sure there were a few examples of that.

No, more than anything a certain sense of apocalypse hung over the movies of 2024, and this was well before an actual apocalypse was visited on Hollywood and its surrounding neighborhoods in the form of the tragic wildfires of last week -- an event that occurred in 2025 so it cannot meaningfully speak to 2024 anyway. Even my #1 movie, The Substance, embodied this sense of anxiety and imminent destruction, as a woman fought her very self with competing values, ultimately none of them actually heroic, and all serving as a metaphor for the civil war embedded in our psyche right now. Even Hollywood is tearing itself apart in this movie, sometimes literally.

There is always a chance that a second Donald Trump presidency will contain actual good things, endeavors he never dared undertake the first time because he wanted to pander to his conservative base, talking points he no longer needs to execute because he has no more elections to win. Unfortunately, there seems to be a greater chance that the next four years will just engender more creative efforts in the mold of Civil War, which require us to wrestle with our very soul as Americans. 

Here's my annual look back on the year just passed with honors, details and other statistics, a thing I have traditionally posted the day after posting my list, for more than a dozen years now. 

Best and worst performers of the year

Each year in this spot I tell you that the performers listed below -- they aren't always all performers, but this year they are -- are not necessarily the best (or worst) at their craft in the year just completed. They are, however, people who had more than one good (or bad) performance, meaning it was worth writing up something about them beyond just praising them for a single instance of good work. (Or tearing them down for one particular instance of the opposite.) Also, the most determining factor is the quality of the movies they were in, not how they were in those movies. 

Three who had a good year

Demi Moore - Demi Moore stormed back on to the scene in 2024, but not because she was everywhere. It was because she was in one particular place that provided her with the opportunity to do the most daring and thrilling work of her career. What's more, Moore's role as Elizabeth Sparkle in The Substance (#1) involved her confronting the elephant in the room -- the plastic surgery fails of famous women trying to extend their time in the limelight -- and taking that elephant by the trunk, the big floppy ears and the tail, all at once. If Moore hadn't had her own (relatively tasteful) plastic surgery done, she might not be as convincing in the role of a woman so desperate to recover her youth that she tries a mysterious drug that will literally clone a younger version of herself out of her own biological material. As Moore throws strange ingredients in a bubbling pot on her stove and spits expletives, and especially when she rubs makeup off her face like she's rubbing off her own skin, we see a fearless 61-year-old woman (who has since turned 62) for whom the work obviously matters more than the glamour. Her willingness to go nude is only extra credit for the performance, which we are too condescending if we call "brave." Of course, a single good performance would not usually qualify someone to make this special recognition area, and so it is that we were primed for The Substance by seeing Moore in Brats (#62, to match Ms. Moore's age), Andrew McCarthy's documentary that tries to get all his contemporaries as worked up over the term "brat pack" as he is. One contemporary, Demi Moore, is the first to have a truly calming influence over this film, trying to suggest that Andrew take it easy and that it's all good -- but generously, without diminishing his perspective. At least where I sat, this film showed us that Moore, through whatever tabloid experiences she's had and marriages to Bruce Willis and Ashton Kutcher, is doing great, thank you very much. Brats meant we wouldn't even need her to have a Substance and she'd be just fine -- but how much better that we got The Substance, too. 

Austin Butler - I'm not sure if I've ever honored an actor in this section who's had two more different roles than Austin Butler had in 2024. They're so diametrically opposed, in fact, that I'm doing something I've never done in the history of this particular tradition on my blog: I'm including both pictures. How can one man embody both a character who is impossibly alluring and a character who is impossibly repellant, all within the same six-month period? (Answer: It's called acting. Look it up.) But seriously, Butler's work called attention to itself in 2024 -- and not just because I loved both Dune: Part Two (#8) and The Bikeriders (#11). And he wasn't just calling attention to himself by being showy, as that was only his mode in Dune: Part Two, where he plays Feyd-Reutha, the sadistic Harkonnen who is the nephew of Baron Harkonnen and the Baron's equal in repulsiveness, only of a different brand. Due to his far more physically fit frame, Butler is like the most homicidal hairless mole you've ever seen, bathed in the black and white hues of his homeworld and drenched in unsavoury malevolence. Add hair and a bit of a crooked half-smile, though, and you've got the most dreamy guy to wear a leather jacket since James Dean. That's Butler's mode in Jeff Nichols' The Bikeriders, which finds him more in his Elvis breakout form, only a quieter version thereof. And it finds us unable to take our eyes off him, unable to prevent ourselves from falling for him, enabling us to understand how easy it was for Jodie Comer's Kathy to slip into a world where she doesn't actually belong, just because she can't help herself in the presence of this heartthrob. It's a performance that doesn't seem, on the surface, to require a lot from Butler, but we also forget how rare it is these days for someone to convert good looks and laconic charm into the type of performance that would have made him a matinee idol back in the 1950s. Especially since we'd most recently seen him as an abomination who'd get his jollies from strangling cats. 

Cailee Spaeny - Actors don't truly break out in the role in which we first start to recognize them. No, they break out the next year, when they suddenly start appearing in all the biggest movies in Hollywood. That was the 2023-to-2024 trajectory for Cailee Spaeny, who was utterly unknown to me when she starred in Priscilla in 2023, the role that surely got her her 2024 work in Civil War (#7) and Alien: Romulus (#30). Now of course, they had to cast her in those movies before they knew she would receive strong notices for Priscilla, but the Spaeny wave that started in 2023 did indeed come crashing into the shore in 2024. Sharing some of the same traits that have turned predecessors Winona Ryder, Natalie Portman and Millie Bobby Brown into stars (even though she's six years older than Brown), Spaeny is giving us this perfect combination of vulnerability and toughness that characterized both of her 2024 roles. (Never mind that there is something of the shape shifter about her, as she looked more like a young Jennifer Love Hewitt in Priscilla.) Speaking of taking the baton from previous actresses, she made one of Sigourney Weaver's best successors to date in Alien: Romulus, which I liked more than any Alien movie since ... jeez, would it have to be Aliens? It isn't a role that requires a huge amount from her, but she gives everything the role requires and then some. The trickier role, in part because of the hardening undergone by her character over the course of the film, is the young photojournalist in Civil War, hopelessly naive and yet determined to throw herself into the fray like her professional heroes, such as Lee Miller. (Who had her own, far less successful movie in 2024.) Here she's the successor to the character played by Kirsten Dunst, as we get to see first hand how someone who went into the job for the right reasons steadily turns into someone who no longer submits her choices to the same sort of moral assessment. We see this change in Spaeny's performance as the movie goes. If 2024 is any indication, we should want Spaeny as anyone's successor, as she will surely carry that torch with honor. 

Honorable mentions: Michael Shannon (The Bikeriders, A Different Man), Peter Dinklage (Wicked, Unfrosted), Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (Nickel Boys, The Deliverance), J.K. Simmons (Juror #2, Saturday Night, Red One)

Three who had a bad year

Nicolas Cage - Nicolas Cage has two modes nowadays: The outrageous, playing-to-the-back-row-of-the-theater, gonzo mode that has made him an icon over the course of the last 40 years, and the staid, just-showing-up-for-a-paycheck mode that has resulted in so may straight-to-video movies in the past ten, that only Keith Phipps, the Next Picture Show podcast host who wrote a book about him, could have possibly seen all of them. In 2024, Cage failed in both modes. Although I'm obviously in the minority on Longlegs (#177), my worst film of the year, I doubt even those who liked the movie felt Cage's sing-songy performance as the title character was one of the film's best assets. (Isn't there a scene where he literally sings the birthday song for about five minutes? I've tried to block it out.) Describing him as looking like a bleached Robert Smith does a serious disservice to Robert Smith, but it gets at how ridiculous this guy seems in this movie -- though not as ridiculous as the movie itself. I can't begin to understand how some people found this performance disturbing, given that they knew it was Cage and that his performance is pure hackery. Then there's Arcadian (#156), a truly forgettable post-apocalyptic movie where Cage plays a man who fights -- werewolves? what were they again? -- alongside his sons, in what appears to be England after some disaster has unraveled the rule of law. (While that sounds promising, I promise you, it's so forgettable that I won't even consult Wikipedia to refresh my memory on the basic plot.) Here he's bearded and solemn, and though the two bad performances may showcase as much range as Austin Butler's two good performances, they have a highly unfortunate net output of quality. The good thing about Nicolas Cage during this late stage of his career is there's little chance this previews an imminent decline, especially since I hear good things about next year's offering, The Surfer. (And am friends with someone who produced it.) Cage'll be back, but he does need to be held accountable for 2024 first. 

Pedro Pascal - This will be a sort of piling on of Pedro Pascal without any malice behind it. What can I say, making the shortlist for "Three who had a bad year" entails appearing in a certain quantity of poor-quality efforts, though that doesn't mean your own effort as an actor is responsible for the relative failures of the movies. And in some cases in Pascal's 2024, they truly are relative failures. But let's start with the one I really didn't like, Drive-Away Dolls (#158), and proceed upward from there. The tone of Ethan Coen's movie was just way off -- epitomized by a Margaret Qualley performance I really didn't care for, which might have earned her a spot here if not for The Substance -- and it starts from the film's opening, the only part Pascal is in. It's a poorly written part (what isn't in this movie), and it basically just involves Pascal looking scared while clutching a briefcase before he gets ... well, we won't get into that. But what's ultimately revealed to be in the briefcase just makes the way Pascal acts the scene seem even sillier in retrospect. Then there was my next least favorite, Gladiator II (#143), where Pascal was actually one of my favorite elements of the film. (See, I told you. Unfair piling on without any malice.) Still, I consider this movie pretty empty, and those who chose to participate had to sign off on its lack of usefulness as a sequel to a movie that never asked for or needed one. Finally we have a movie that you'll be surprised to see make this list, The Wild Robot (#119), which most people consider a success. I don't really consider it a success though I did give it a star rating that correlates to marginal approval (three stars). Let's just say that the thing I didn't like about it most was the talking animals, and Pascal voices one of those talking animals. What's more, his fox character, Fink, is highly indebted to a much better fox character in a much better movie, Jason Bateman's Nick Wilde in Zootopia. Pascal's year wasn't awful but it was far from either a utopia or a zootopia. 

Carrie Coon - Like Cage, Coon spent 2024 straddling the line between art and commerce, and neither venture worked out for her. Let's start with the one that should have been in her wheelhouse because it most closely resembles the thing she spent the earlier part of her career doing. Azazel Jacobs' His Three Daughters (#148) is basically a play, and the fact that it didn't originate as a play is frankly sort of astonishing. Coon was a renowned theater actress before she tried out screen acting, and she should absolutely thrive in this environment. And I'm not saying her performance is bad overall -- though there are times that I thought it was bad -- but the movie itself is extremely wordy and poorly directed, leading to sub-par performances from Coon as well as the usually reliable Elizabeth Olsen and Natasha Lyonne. Jacobs' writing makes each of these characters obnoxious in her own particular way, beyond what I think was supposed to be their actual level of obnoxiousness, and all three performers are taken down by the deficiencies of the material. It's just that as the best pure actor of the three, Coon had the farthest to fall. Coon's role in the failure of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (#147) is far more insignificant, in part because the cast is so overstuffed that no single player can bear the lion's share for anything the movie does right or wrong. Frozen Empire isn't a terrible movie, it's just such a lackluster one that it would almost be better if it were a flaming turd -- which would at least mean someone had made daring creative decisions that had not succeeded. Particularly for a performer like Coon, we'd rather see her swing wildly and miss than to lay down the feeble sort of sacrifice bunt that Ghostbusters represents for her. Actors with Coon's sort of enviable pedigree don't stay down for long, and it's likely she'll come roaring back in 2025. 

Dishonorable mentions: Emma Roberts (Space Cadet, Madame Web), Celeste O'Connor (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Madame Web), Olwen Fouere (Tarot, The Watchers)

Trans stories take a step forward

There was some hope in among all the ascendant Trumpism of 2024. Movies by and about trans people were not only present in larger numbers, they had a cultural cachet they have not previously enjoyed. It reminded me that even as we see evidence of society taking steps backward, it is ultimately moving forward in ways that can never by dialed back, as the gradual mainstreaming of "others" also gradually has the impact of getting even Trumpers to start accepting them. And the big difference between these and past films about trans people is that there was always an actual trans person either in front of or behind the camera.

The biggest indication of this trend was likely Emilia Perez (#4), a movie not without its controversies in terms of its trans depiction. I've seen it labeled as "incurious" about the trans experience, using it more as a narrative device than as an actual exploration of the thoughts of a non-binary person or person undergoing a gender transition. My take on that is that Jacques Audiard wanted to make an ambitious film with a lot of different things on its mind, one of which is the transition of the title character, but which also includes a social drama worthy of a telenovela, a look at the criminal underworld and even a musical. If the trans themes got short shrift, at least they were there to begin with. And though the movie certainly has its detractors, it cleaned up at the Golden Globes in a way that can't be ignored and that no other film involving trans subject matter has ever done.

Moving down in my top ten just a few slots we have The People's Joker (#6), Vera Drew's controversial use of trademarked Batman characters to dramatize her own trans coming-of-age -- though I reckon this one was more controversial from Warner Brothers' perspective, given that Drew didn't have a legal right to use any of these characters. Her reward was an eventual lack of legal retribution by the copyright owner and widespread critical acclaim of a movie that had a very limited theatrical run, but was ultimately available everywhere for rental. This would be the answer to Emilia Perez in being the opposite of incurious, as it is essentially a confessional told directly to us by the person it most intimately affected. And it's affecting as hell.

Another trans filmmaker who had a prominent placement of her work in 2024 was Jane Schoenbrun, whose I Saw the TV Glow (#41) was a very thinly veiled trans story rather than an overtly textual one. As these characters imagine themselves as characters on a TV show as a metaphor for their trans identities -- more for one character than the other -- Schoenburn uses all her gifts as a filmmaker to place us within the depths of their at times overwhelming despair, putting some truly frightening images up on screen in what is effectively a horror movie. Only the film's flat ending prevented it from being higher on my list -- though I understand that may have been my own experience of it, dramatically from a narrative perspective and as a sis person, while others may have received it differently. 

Finally you have the one true documentary of the group, Will & Harper (#29), which I only finally saw within the past week as my wife finally made the time to watch it with me, releasing it from cinematic purgatory. This is the useful companion to these other three movies that pointedly allows Will Ferrell to ask the questions of his friend Harper Steele that any person trying to warmly embrace the new trans identity of their friend might want to ask. Just because we are caring people with open hearts, it doesn't mean we don't have questions, and in the case of Will Ferrell, most of them are just in the interest of trying to better love his friend of nearly three decades.

If I had to sound one potential sour note about all this, there is the slight possibility that the new prominence of trans people in film played some role in getting Trump elected again. But every dying ideology has to find its last gasp of energy in targeting the thing that threatens it the most, and it's a necessary burning down of the old ways that prepares us for the new. Besides, do we really think your typical Trump voter in Arkansas saw any of these films, or was likely even aware of them?

If it keeps bringing members of our society equally deserving of love -- our friends, our family members, even strangers on the street -- further into the light of our acceptance, it's a short-term trade-off I'm willing to make. 

Musician biopics ape-plenty

If I had to choose a type of movie that was dying out due to creative exhaustion, I might have provided you with the musician biopic as that subgenre. Then in the last month of 2024 movie watching I saw a half-dozen of them.

A couple of them supported my analysis of their dwindling artistic merits. But then, a couple of them did not in ways that I thought were really reinvigorating. 

Rounding out my top 25 was Better Man (#25), Michael Gracey's take on Robbie Williams, bringing his razzle dazzle from The Greatest Showman. This is a straight biopic except, of course, for the fact that the main character is represented as an ape. I liked both movies with motion capture apes I saw this year, but I was more impressed by this one, especially a couple rip-roaring musical numbers that were recorded on a soundstage here in Melbourne (as was much of the film). In using a tantalizing central conceit, Better Man more easily got me to the place a biopic should get me, of making me realize that I love two Williams songs: "Rock DJ" and "Angels," the former of which is the standout musical number, possibly of the year. 

Then on my second-to-last night of the year I watched Piece by Piece (#37), Morgan Neville's documentary of Pharrell Williams that is really hard to classify that way because the entire thing is made of Legos. So yeah, it's interviews with Pharrell and others who worked with him, but it reads more like a biopic because of this glorious bit of artifice. It might have taken me a few minutes to adjust to the choice, but eventually it just made the thing achieve lift-off ... and also made me realize how influential Pharrell has been on the industry. I can't even name the Williams songs I love like I did for the other Williams, because this movie revealed there are too many. 

Then there was a combo of the biopic format and the documentary format, as Kneecap (#34), the movie about the Irish rap band of the same name who rap in the Irish language, actually play themselves in the movie. But then everyone else is actors, most notably, Michael Fassbender. The movie has a joyous punk aesthetic but combines with real social commentary about Ireland and great music. Made me think of Trainspotting, not for the subject matter but for the milieu. 

Alas, that leaves three more titles that were decidedly not in my top 40. The Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black (#120) and Bob Marley: One Love (#121) were so similar in their mediocrity, and seen in such similar proximity to one another (both on the same leg of one flight to America -- separated only by Kneecap, as a matter of fact), that they couldn't even extract themselves from one another in my rankings. But the big disappointment was A Complete Unknown (#128), the final film I saw of 2024, which was so lacking in narrative momentum that I was dying for some sign, any sign, of how close it was to ending -- and not just because I'd start to get finalizing my list as soon as I got out of the theater. It was also lacking in compelling reasons for its existence, which was the bigger sin. 

Sorry, long foreign movies

I don't usually spend a lot of time in these wrap-up posts talking about movies I didn't see, but this idea struck me and I decided to lean into it as my final mini piece. 

I seemed to accumulate a lot of very long foreign-language movies on my Letterboxd watchlist ... and then didn't get to watching most of them. Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, a 179-minute slow cinema movie from Vietnam, was on my radar almost the whole year because one of the Flickchart hosts championed it, ultimately naming it his #1 movie of the year. I learned of his lofty placement of the movie before I finalized my list, but still didn't carve out the time.

A similar fate befell Victor Erice's Close Your Eyes, from Spain, whose 169 minutes would have been marginally easier to fit in. I did go looking for it a couple months ago, but it was not available yet on iTunes, and by the time it was available I'd moved on to other things. Besides, I still sort of want to see his movie Spirit of the Beehive first, but this does not seem to be available for rental anywhere.

There was probably never any chance I'd see Seed of the Sacred Fig from Iran, because it was a late release and not available for rental yet (nor in cinemas here yet in Australia). But it's two hours and 47 minutes might have gotten me anyway.

The one long foreign movie I did watch, however, maybe suggests it was a good thing I didn't try to fit in the others. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, from Romania, clocked in at 163 minutes -- incidentally, the shortest of these four -- but only clocked in at #110 on my list. 

Top ten non-2024 films I saw in 2024

I always have to give shout-outs to the best of the best that weren't qualified for the year in question, that I saw in the year in question, and this is me doing that again. Listed alphabetically:

Charlie's Country (2013, Rolf de Heer) - A vital document of the present-day Aboriginal experience by a white Australian director who can pull off that sort of thing, performed by the great David Gulpilil as something of a career capstone. 

Come and See (1985, Elem Klimov) - This harrowing and unflinching one-timer about the horrors wrought upon Russians during World War II holds your face in its hands in the way the title suggests, and is as enthralling a work as it is depressing. 

The End of the Affair (1955, Edward Dmytryk) - I read the novel, then intended to rewatch the 1999 film, but watched this instead, and was very happy I did. 

Giant (1955, George Stevens) - The sort of sprawling American epic they used to make regularly, complete with a performance from James Dean that I never would have expected given what I know about his screen persona. 

Godzilla Minus One (2023, Takashi Yamazaki) - Near my 2023 ranking deadline, I chose to watch The Boy and the Heron in an available time slot where I could watch one of two Japanese-language movies that qualified for that year. I chose poorly. 

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982, Tommy Lee Wallace) - I watched 11 Halloween movies I hadn't seen in 2024, but this one -- not part of that project, and actually watched nearly a year ago -- was easily the best, simply by not being indebted to anything else in the series. 

The Human Condition I: No Greater Love (1959, Masaki Kobayashi) - A sprawling Japanese epic as long and as engrossing as Giant, which takes the time to burrow down deep into its characters and setting. 

King Kong (1933, Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack) - Both Godzilla and King Kong made it onto this list, but I didn't even see the 2024 film in which they appeared together. Mad respect for one of the original monster movies that has effects I can't believe were done in 1933. 

Me and Orson Welles (2008, Richard Linklater) - I didn't expect this to pop up among the big guys for non-2024 movies I saw in 2024, but I really liked this movie. 

The Prince of Tides (1991, Barbra Streisand) - My periodic Audient Bridesmaids series, in which I watch best picture-nominated films I haven't seen, hasn't turned up a real winner until this one, which I had (incorrectly) written off as sentimental pap back when it came out. 

Statistics

Here's where I tell you about what I saw and how I saw it.

Movies by star rating on Letterboxd: 5 stars (2), 4.5 stars (15), 4 stars (27), 3.5 stars (50), 3 stars (28), 2.5 stars (20), 2 stars (19), 1.5 stars (13), 1 star (2), 0.5 stars (1)

As it usually is, 3.5 stars was far and away the leader, though this year it was larger than usual as both ends of the spectrum seemed to be a bit less represented. 

Movies by source: Cinema (44) (5 by advanced screening), Netflix (44), iTunes rental (30), Amazon Prime (17), Airplane (14), Screener (8), MIFF (7), AppleTV+ (6), Disney+ (3), Stan (2), Kanopy (1), Max (1)

Very similar to last year except screeners and airplane movies both took a jump up, and Disney+ fell off.

Total new movies watched in the year: 287

Total rewatches: 35

2024 movies watched more than once: 2 (Unfrosted, The Dead Don't Hurt)

Discoveries

Ariana Grande (Wicked)

Katy O'Brian (Love Lies Bleeding)

Karla Sofia Gascon (Emilia Perez)

Vera Drew (The People's Joker)

Maisy Stella (My Old Ass)

Welcome back

Demi Moore (The Substance)

Mary-Louise Parker (Omni Loop)

Viggo Mortensen (The Dead Don't Hurt)

Ellen Burstyn (Mother, Couch!)

Oliver Platt (Babes)

Dearly departing

Richard Roundtree (Thelma)
M. Emmet Walsh (Brothers)
Louis Gossett Jr. (IF)

John Ashton (Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F)

Quincy Jones (The Greatest Night in Pop)

(We lost plenty of other lovely movie people in 2024, but these were the ones who were also in a movie I saw this year.)

Another name for ...

Inside Out 2 is ... Joy

Joy is ... Babes

The Substance is ... My Old Ass

AfrAId is ... The Wild Robot

MaXXXine is ... Hundreds of Beavers
MaXXXine is ... How to Have Sex

MaXXXine is ... Woman of the Hour

The Crow is ... The Dead Don't Hurt

Harold and the Purple Crayon is ... Imaginary

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story is ... Don't Move

Sasquatch Sunset is ... It Ends With Us

Mary is ... Immaculate

A Different Man is ... Emilia Perez, The People's Joker or Will & Harper

Lightning round

I usually start out with some comparisons of my list to the Oscar nominations. Alas, not this year. So let's get right into the other stuff:

Most surprised I loved: Wicked

Most surprised I did not love: Longlegs 

Best relative to hype: Conclave

Worst relative to hype: A Complete Unknown

Best movie named after the main character: Emilia Perez
Worst movie named after the main character: Mary

Most surprising use of an actor: Adam Pearson (A Different Man)

Least surprising use of an actor: Chris Pratt (Garfield)

Most common word in 2024 movie titles: Man (Better Man, Spaceman, Monkey Man, Super/Man, Hit Man, Hellboy: The Crooked Man)

Least common word in 2024 movie titles: Sasquatch (Sasquatch Sunset)

Most likely to appear in multiple 2024 movies: The Joker (Joker: Folie a Deux, The People's Joker)

Least likely to appear in multiple 2024 movies: Lorne Michaels (Saturday Night, The People's Joker, Will & Harper)

You could furnish a living room with: The Coffee Table, I Saw the TV Glow and Mother, Couch! 

Director who lost me: Oz Perkins (Longlegs)

Director who won me back: Clint Eastwood (Juror #2)

Best title of the year: Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person
Worst title of the year: My Old Ass (but good movie)

Narrative that most needed its shuffling: Strange Darling

Narrative that least needed its shuffling: We Live in Time

Best item hidden in a suitcase: It's What's Inside

Worst item hidden in a suitcase: Drive-Away Dolls

Best movie with a miniscule budget: The Coffee Table
Worst movie with a huge budget: Gladiator II

Longest title: Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
Shortest title: IF

Best umpteenth movie in a series: Alien: Romulus

Worst umpteenth movie in a series: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

Okay, one final 2024 wrap-up post tomorrow with my annual portmanteaus post. 

The style and substance of 2024

I didn't expect to set a ranking record in 2024.

Usually when you set a personal record on something -- say, a high score on a video game -- you have to have an exceptional go at it. You have to try really hard and narrowly avoid defeat on multiple occasions. The previous record was your record because it was hard to topple, but if you can get just the right set of circumstances to go your way, you can topple it.

Well, I never did anything like that in 2024. I never watched a stupid number of movies in a short time to try to goose my totals and get myself up into the range of setting a record. In fact, I was not conscious of any changes in my routine whatsoever. I guess the previous record was not so stalwart after all.

There are, however, two viable explanations for how I was able to surpass my previous record of 175 movies ranked, set in 2022, without a specific effort to do so:

1) I took four round-trip plane flights in 2024, two within my most recent trip, and two of them greater than eight hours in duration each way. I'm not sure if the first one really counts toward this effort, though, because it was back in April, when I doubt there were many if any movies from 2024 yet available on the plane. (Actually, I just checked, and I did watch Mean Girls on one of these flights.)

2) I rewatched a lot fewer movies in 2024 than I usually do. Those viewing hours have to go somewhere, and it's not like I'm going to allocate them to some non-screen-watching activity, now am I? And I don't do a lot of TV. 

This is not a record I wanted to set. As you may recall in the past, I've fretted about setting new viewing records, because I worry what it says about me and how I'm spending my finite time on this earth.

But as I was noticing the record was in range, I didn't shy away from it. In fact, I sort of leaned into it, in that there were a couple days in the past week where I watched two movies, up from my average of one per day. 

I guess I thought: "Well, I'm going to set the record anyway, why not set it in style?"

And also I thought: "There were a lot of good movies this year, and there are still more, always more, I need to see." 

In the end, I only eclipsed the total by two, ending up at 177. Which means that if I had only watched one movie on the days within the past week where I watched two, I wouldn't have beaten the record.

But who wants to tie a record, or come up short by one? Better to just set the new record and hope that it lasts for a decade. 

Before we get into talking about those movies, I need to get some business out of the way:

Here are the five films I'm most sorry about not appearing on this list. I feel a similar (low) level of disappointment for all of them, so don't read too much into the order. 

5. September 5 - In theory this was released in LA and New York before the end of December, but I didn't see it on any of my searches of local theaters when I was in LA.
4. Queer - This was lost when I skipped going in Maine last month, wanting to earn points with my wife for not insisting on going to the movies while visiting my own family. 
3. The End - I've had Joshua Oppenheimer's movie on my Letterboxd watchlist for like three years in a row, but it came out with such a whimper that I didn't even notice it as being one of my LA viewing options until near the end of that trip. Even there it was only playing at one single-screen theater.
2. Sing Sing - Yesterday I posted that this was going to be my final movie of 2024. It wasn't. I would have worked out my schedule to see this if I had realized earlier it was opening yesterday in Australia. 
1. Nightbitch - Love Marielle Heller, but her movie was only available on Hulu in the U.S. and I couldn't figure out how to make that work at our AirBnB.

Here are five other prominent films that I could have seen but just didn't:

5. Moana 2 - The timing meant I'd have to see it in the theater at a busy time of year in order to rank it, and I wasn't an ecstatic fan of the first so I just didn't make the time.
4. Mufasa: The Lion King - The comments for the other Disney movie at #5 can basically be copied and pasted here. 
3. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire - Kong: Skull Island made my top ten in 2017. That feels like a long time ago. 
2. Kraven: The Hunter - This had been on my watchlist since I thought it was supposed to come out last year, but it also came out at a difficult time of the year, and there just wasn't time.
1. Heretic - The most surprised not to have seen. Another critic reviewed it on ReelGood, so I didn't prioritize it in the theater, and then it never came down from that premium $19.99 rental price before my deadline. 

And finally, two movies I might have seen but intentionally skipped:

2. The Apprentice - I just didn't want to/couldn't watch a movie that made Donald Trump a sympathetic character. Even a small modicum of sympathy was too much. Not this close to the election.
1. Joker: Folie a Deux - I don't take a lot of stands on movies by not seeing them, but I was annoyed enough by the original Joker, and heard enough bad about this one, that I just decided not to reward the right-wingish Todd Phillips with any of my attention. 

Okay, now to highlight my top ten before revealing my whole list.

10. Nickel Boys - I have more a suspicion of the greatness of RaMell Ross' Nickel Boys than I have a certainty of it. The reason for my uncertainty lies in the circumstances of my viewing: jammed into a trip to Los Angeles, starting at nearly 11 p.m. after trailers, and following margaritas at dinner. Ross' film is the sort of demanding tone poem, which burns with indignation beneath its abstractions, that benefits from more ideal viewing conditions. Neither, however, can I dismiss what I saw before me: a story told from the perspective of two young Black men at the hands of a system of pernicious racial discrimination, at a reform school where they receive vastly different treatment from their white counterparts. Because the perspective is very specifically theirs -- all shots in the movie are POV shots from one of the two of them -- and not an omniscient perspective, it lacks the heavy-handedness that may seem part and parcel to this approach. Instead, this is the ultimate example of showing rather than telling, and the things Ross shows us are not limited to the characters' literal observations of the world around them, as they also include bits of ephemera from the time period, such as shots from space and other details that establish the time and place. I have never seen a movie quite like this, and even though I feel like I only half saw it, I think Nickel Boys is probably the most marvelous sort of challenge even under the best of circumstances. It also contains probably my favorite final shot of the year, one that contains an unlimited quantity of hope, much of it in direct contradiction to what we've just witnessed. I look forward to grappling with it again when my margarita count is zero. 

9. The Brutalist - The Brutalist is my most likely 2024 film to end up on my top ten of the decade, even though it is at "only" #9 this year. It has such fantastic materials -- materials being a primary subject of this architecture-themed film -- that it should endure very well in my memory, and in potential repeat viewings. (Though probably not a lot of repeat viewings, given the 3 hour and 35-minute running time.) In fact, the film I was most inclined to compare it to was There Will Be Blood, my #1 of 2007 and my #8 of the 2000s. In the first half of Brady Corbet's film, I was sure I was making way for a new #1 of 2024, and even started imagining what clever pun I would use in the subject of this post. ("A brutal 2024"? Would have been appropriate for a year where we elected Trump.) But I didn't appreciate the second half at the same level, maybe because of some bits that I thought were narrative non-starters -- or maybe it was the extra ten minutes tacked on to the intermission, as discussed here. Anyway, there's some exquisitely thrilling, epic filmmaking here from a director I would never have guessed capable of it (I was not a fan of Vox Lux), and Adrien Brody's performance in the lead role is outstanding. The Brutalist is the kind of vision you live in, and its long running time enables that. From that striking shot near the beginning of the upside down Statue of Liberty, Corbet announces the boldness of his intentions, and never lets up on that boldness. Given that we did elect Trump this year, that image may also be the year's most symbolic. 

8. Dune: Part Two - Every time I thought about sticking Dune: Part Two behind another film in this vicinity on my list, which would endanger its spot in my top ten, I thought about how the second Dune movie has parts that are undeniably dramatically flat. But then I'd think about the sheer grandeur and scope of Denis Villeneuve's epic filmmaking, and I'd know that it belonged on this hallowed ground, matching the feat of the first Dune and even increasing its spot in the rankings by one. (That's not comparing apples to apples in terms of the rest of the movies in those years, though.) This actually makes Villeneuve only the third four-timer in my top ten after he also achieved the feat with Sicario and Enemy. The sequel is of a piece with the original in everything except the part of the story that's covered, which I find more interesting in the first half of Frank Herbert's novel and in the first movie. But I might be even more impressed by the technique here, as I think of dozens of individual images and moments (the silently flying villains in jetpacks, Paul Atreides finally standing on the back of the worm) and just how spellbound I was. The latter scene even pushed me to the verge of spectacle tears, wrapped up in my favorite use of a Hans Zimmer score in some time. Add in the black and white Harkonnen homeworld and you've got a series that can give me as many sequels as it wants, because I know each new one will creatively stimulate its director, and in turn that director's audience. 

7. Civil War - Alex Garland made what seemed like the most timely and potentially prescient movie of 2024, and then the American people did the rest in allowing it to come true. Thankfully, due to the general sense of decorum of progressive voters, the worst possibilities depicted in Civil War have not yet come to pass, but this movie does create a frightening template of what the future could hold if Donald Trump is just the beginning of a form of inflated political rhetoric that could well last for decades. The director's always intense filmmaking style just gets a jolt of additional anxiety out of the sheer plausibility of what we're seeing here. And though some people considered this a bug not a feature, his unwillingness to clearly take a side in the fight -- there are indications where he stands if you look for them -- just makes it all the more effective a cautionary tale for whoever needs to see it. (Though unfortunately, not an effective enough cautionary tale for the election to go the other way.) Kirsten Dunst is a force to be reckoned with here, but the others who fill out the cast -- particularly fellow journalists played by Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Wagner Moura, but also supporting players like Jesse Plemons and Nick Offerman -- put personal faces on the ideas. A series of tense set pieces culminates in a climax of such apocalyptic sound and fury that I was basically left speechless, and knew this was going to make my top ten even with some minor complaints and nitpicks. (Oh yeah, and I loved the soundtrack.)

6. The People's Joker - I have never seen a movie like The People's Joker because there has never been a movie like The People's Joker. Anyone who has ever flagrantly used the trademarked intellectual property of a giant corporate behemoth has paid the price in terms of risk to their personal fortune long before the art in question ever saw the light of day. Vera Drew's film, on the other hand, not only made it to places people could see it despite Warner Brothers' unsurprising objection to depicting Batman as a predator who grooms young men, and many other Batman characters as gay or trans -- when she shouldn't have been able to use their likenesses at all -- but many critics hailed it as a triumphant cinematic experience, which it surely is. Drew's story of coming out as trans is told through these iconic figures set against DIY Gotham city backdrops that were shot in little distinct locations during the pandemic, and it's both a very funny and a very moving experience. Warner Brothers smartly loosened its grip on the legal apparatus that could have sunk The People's Joker, as someone somewhere had the good sense to acknowledge this obvious parody existed for the most earnest reasons possible, and does more good for their brand than harm. We are all reflections of what we see in our culture, and imagine ourselves limited to those options. But when someone reaches for more than what they were told they could have, and uses classic comic book characters to get her there, it does good for us all -- either in coping with our own similar issues, or better empathizing with others who find themselves in Drew's shoes.

5. The Coffee Table - There is no way to talk about The Coffee Table, and yet you have to talk about The Coffee Table, especially if you are naming it your fifth favorite film of the year. The reason you can't talk about The Coffee Table is that knowing what it's about ruins that important surprise, even though that surprise comes fairly early in the proceedings. There are also reasons why what it's about might prevent people from even watching it in the first place. Allow me just to say that Spanish director Caye Casas' film starts with an argument between a new father and mother over the purchase of a coffee table that he likes but she doesn't, which she has agreed to let him buy because he considers it his only contribution to their decor. The piece has gold nude sculptures as legs, but at least they are done in a sort of art deco style? In any case, this purchase leads to an unimaginable sequence of events where we in the audience are privy to certain information that only one other character knows, and the exquisite tension between what this character knows and what the others don't, but inevitably soon will, is both nearly intolerable and wickedly humorous in the darkest way you can imagine. No less than Stephen King has called this the darkest movie he's ever seen, but we are starting to get close to spoiler territory so I will veer off this track. All you need to know is that I have never seen a movie quite like this and I knew right away I was glad a) that such an original social drama? black comedy? what exactly is this? exists, but also b) that it is the only one of its kind. We don't need another Coffee Table, but this Coffee Table is a feat to behold that will not be forgotten by anyone who sees it. 

4. Emilia Perez - Every time I hear someone write or talk about Jacques Audiard's film, I also hear them drop the word "controversial." I haven't yet dug into what's considered most controversial and from what perspective. If it's controversial from a right-wing perspective, I don't want to hear it. If someone takes offense at the tone-deaf sex change operation number, or anything else that doesn't quite translate the trans experience, I get it. However, I think everything else about this film is marvelous, and it's part of a collection of films in my top ten whose likes I have never seen before. A musical about a Mexican drug lord who wants to live as a woman, in part to protect himself and his family, and in part because he's always seen himself as a woman? Make that she? And from Audiard, a consummately realistic director who makes serious social dramas about criminally adjacent people? Who's ever seen anything like that before? I was wowed by Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez giving great performances in the language of their heritage -- as I wrote about here -- but this movie really belongs to trans actress Karla Sofia Gascon, who plays both Emilia and her predecessor, Juan "Manitas" Del Monte. I really liked the songs and the energy of the project, to say nothing of the delicious narrative complications that develop after Emilia makes her decision. But it was when I realized it had me emotionally -- during that final scene between Emilia and Gomez's character -- that I knew this was one of my favorites of the year. 

3. Grand Theft Hamlet - And that makes four movies in a row that were completely and totally something I had never seen before. The highlight of my 2024 MIFF was this documentary, of sorts, in which two struggling British actors (Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen) were playing a lot of Grand Theft Auto during COVID, and then wondered if they could make the game universe effectively a stage where they could ply their trade, even if for practice and personal connection only. In the course of trying to put on Hamlet, they collected other interested gamers from the international community -- acting experience preferred but not essential. Crane and Pinny Grylls' film takes place entirely within the game, as we hear their audio while we see their avatars attempt to stage a full run through, without getting blown away an inordinate number of times by other gamers who have no idea what they're up to. If it sounds funny, it is -- hilariously so at times. If it sounds poignant, it also is, as Oosterveen in particular is struggling with the isolation and the recent loss of his last living relative, leaving him desperate for a project that may be falling apart in front of him. The standards of profundity are met and exceeded on numerous occasions, with the small ticker of deaths of other characters in the game universe appearing at the bottom, a haunting echo of real-world pandemic mortality. Who would have ever guessed video game characters spouting soliloquys could contain so many of the different reasons we go to the movies. 

2. Wicked - Having zero exposure to this musical before seeing the movie -- I had heard "Defying Gravity" before, but no exposure beyond that -- was surely key to why I loved Wicked as much as I did. But more than that, it is just a perfectly executed cinematic gem with popular appeal and real substance, one that defiantly opposed the conventional wisdom to stage a musical within a single film, and came out leaving us waiting in anticipation for the conclusion of the story later this year. Although I have chosen a picture of the stellar Cynthia Erivo to accompany this blurb, and there is every reason to consider this her movie, I was most gobsmacked by the exquisite comedic fitness of Ariana Grande, a pop star I had spent the last decade utterly dismissing. Grande's background in acting was not known to me, and she therefore left me speechless at the fleetness and humor of her performance. The two together in that scene at the dance left me crying for one of the few times at the movies this year, and the only time in the theater, but the more dominant impression of this film is how it sent my spirits soaring with every impeccably staged number, and with that sweet spot between production design and digital effects that stop short of overwhelming the story. Wicked reminded me that I am, indeed, a fan of the movie musical at my core, but it's just so rare to find one carried off as successfully as this one. Jon M. Chu has now made my top ten twice as a director after Crazy Rich Asians, and because I forgot he also directed the less-successful In the Heights, I was equally gobsmacked about his capabilities as I was by those of Grande. One of only two five-star movies for me in 2024. 

1. The Substance - If Tom Cruise had Renee Zellweger at hello, Coralie Fargeat's The Substance had me from its virtuoso opening scene, involving the startling God's eye view of the lifecycle of Elizabeth Sparkle's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and then it proceeded to deliver me to the promised land for the remainder of the movie. Among its many miracles is that there are essentially three characters with any lines of spoken dialogue (and two of them are the same person), yet it runs for 2 hours and 20 minutes and never for a moment feels boring. Fargeat impressed with her style in Revenge, but who knew this masterwork of a satire of Hollywood, replete with significant quantities of body horror, was beating within her chest. The Substance is not only the most visually distinctive film of 2024, it also provides an incredible showcase for its three leads, specifically Demi Moore in a role that may one day be considered the finest work of her career. The Substance also finally brought me around to Margaret Qualley, for whom less dialogue is more, and reminded me of the grotesqueries in the arsenal of another actor whose last name begins with Q (Dennis Quaid). I have to acknowledge that some people found this movie anti-feminist rather than feminist, and have other issues with it like whether Fargeat's camera leers too much at Qualley or if it's just hitting the same note over and over. For me, her point was not to make a movie with a message so easy to dissect as "women good, men/Hollywood bad," and The Substance provides evidence to suggest all parties are complicit in the paradigm that requires aging actresses to submit their bodies to all manner of artificial adjustments, as likely to disfigure them as to convince us they're still "young." The truth is, when a movie spins my head this much with its technique and its wicked sense of humor, I don't care what the themes are because I'm just swept along in its visionary tide. I spent a couple months hoping a movie would come along to eclipse The Substance, then about a month feeling there was little chance I'd see something better. I didn't, and I embrace this #1 as I do any other. 

And lest they think they've escaped my elaborations on their significant lack of merit, here is my bottom five:

173. Mary - I'm not sure how I hoped a biblical story of the events surrounding Jesus' birth would be brought to the screen, but I can tell you this wasn't it. Complete with silly action scenes and a performance from Anthony Hopkins as Herod that leaves broken bits of chewed scenery in its wake. 

174. The Wages of Fear - Seeing this title in my bottom five of any list is enough to knock me off my chair, but usually this title would make me think of Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1953 version that I watched again in 2023 and dearly love. Going forward, I hope it almost never makes me of Julien Leclercq's inert 2024 remake, as lacking in tension as it is in soul. 

175. Imaginary - Mainstream horror movies, especially those from Blumhouse, are almost always passable and usually no worse than forgettable. Actually, I do sort of forget why I disliked Imaginary so much, but I think it happened around the time they went into that alternate dimension inside the house -- not something I would have expected or wanted from a movie about imaginary friends coming to life.

176. Space Cadet - I'm sorry, I just don't buy that a prospective candidate for the NASA astronaut program, who wears ridiculous clothing and calls everyone "dude," would a) be able to fake her way into the program and keep it secret despite her obvious mismatch with all the other candidates, or b) ever ever, and I mean EVER, walk in space. (Spoiler alert.) 

177. Longlegs - How do I hate thee, Longlegs? Let me count the ways. A friend of mine wrote a blurb on the Flickchart Blog year-end post in which she described the charm of Oz Perkins' movie as arising from its total preposterousness and failure to make sense in any given moment. I agree with those observations about the film but not with the idea that it leaves the film with any charm. Like, whatsoever. 

And here's the whole list!

1. The Substance
2. Wicked
3. Grand Theft Hamlet
4. Emilia Perez

5. The Coffee Table

6. The People's Joker

7. Civil War

8. Dune: Part Two

9. The Brutalist

10. Nickel Boys

11. The Bikeriders

12. It's What's Inside

13. Strange Darling

14. Conclave

15. Unfrosted

16. Frida

17. A Different Man

18. Love Lies Bleeding

19. Rebel Ridge

20. All We Imagine as Light

21. Daughters

22. Juror #2

23. Omni Loop

24. Problemista

25. Better Man

26. Anora

27. Suncoast

28. Ultraman: Rising

29. Will & Harper

30. Alien: Romulus

31. Here

32. Black Barbie

33. Hit Man

34. Kneecap

35. The Idea of You

36. Babes

37. Piece by Piece

38. Harold and the Purple Crayon

39. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story

40. Goodrich

41. I Saw the TV Glow

42. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

43. Io Capitano

44. Joy

45. The Greatest Night in Pop

46. Thelma

47. The Critic

48. Ricky Stanicky

49. My Old Ass

50. The Dead Don't Hurt

51. Monkey Man

52. Road House

53. Mother, Couch!

54. Oddity

55. Free Time

56. Tuesday

57. Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person

58. A Quiet Place: Day One

59. Speak No Evil

60. Inside Out 2

61. Immaculate

62. Brats

63. Wolfs

64. The Outrun

65. Saturday Night

66. Woman of the Hour

67. Nosferatu

68. How to Have Sex

69. The Deliverance

70. Red One

71. Orion and the Dark

72. Survive

73. The Underdoggs

74. It Ends With Us

75. We Grown Now

76. Fancy Dance

77. Sasquatch Sunset

78. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

79. Force of Nature: The Dry 2

80. Skywalkers: A Love Story

81. Good One

82. Transformers One

83. Matt and Mara

84. Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F

85. Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution

86. House of Spoils

87. Turtles All the Way Down

88. Jackpot!

89. A Real Pain

90. Red Rooms

91. Don't Move

92. Deadpool & Wolverine

93. Scoop

94. Damsel

95. Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver

96. The Instigators

97. Late Night With the Devil

98. Blink Twice

99. Hundreds of Beavers

100. Challengers

101. The Platform 2

102. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

103. Sting

104. Sonic the Hedgehog 3

105. I.S.S.

106. Just a Farmer

107. The Piano Lesson

108. We Live in Time

109. Lift

110. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

111. Slingshot

112. Time Cut

113. MaXXXine

114. Under Paris

115. The Fall Guy

116. Hot Frosty

117. Kinds of Kindness

118. AfrAId

119. The Wild Robot

120. Back to Black

121. Bob Marley: One Love

122. You'll Never Find Me

123. Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1

124. Shirley

125. Kill Me If You Dare

126. Trap

127. September Says

128. A Complete Unknown

129. Fly Me to the Moon

130. The Crow

131. The Kitchen

132. Am I OK?

133. Lee

134. A Family Affair

135. Role Play

136. Our Little Secret

137. Night Swim

138. The Exorcism

139. The Beautiful Game

140. Twisters

141. Atlas

142. Birdeater

143. Gladiator II

144. Salem's Lot

145. Borderlands

146. The 4:30 Movie

147. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

148. His Three Daughters

149. This is Me ... Now: A Love Story

150. The Balconettes

151. IF

152. Megalopolis

153. Upgraded

154. Tarot

155. Uglies

156. Arcadian

157. Mean Girls

158. Drive-Away Dolls

159. Trigger Warning

160. La Cocina

161. Blitz

162. Summer Camp

163. Argylle

164. Irish Wish

165. Spaceman

166. Madame Web

167. Mothers' Instinct

168. Brothers

169. Carry-On

170. The Watchers

171. Hellboy: The Crooked Man

172. Janet Planet

173. Mary

174. The Wages of Fear

175. Imaginary

176. Space Cadet

177. Longlegs

And finishing with ten more movies whose placement required a little more elaboration, I thought:

15. Unfrosted - There was a moment in this that made me laugh harder than I have at a movie in a couple years, and I thought that was worth top 15.

26. Anora - Is it wrong to say the middle dragged, the characters were not developed enough and the ending left me feeling bummed, but not in a good way?

31. Here - I think I gave extra points just for the gimmick.

41. I Saw the TV Glow - I will always remember being haunted by images from this film ... and wondering why Jane Schoenbrun could not stick the landing.

60. Inside Out 2 - I don't know, I just wasn't feeling it. No pun intended.

78. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - I love this world. I don't really love this movie.

95. Rebel Moon: Part 2 - The Scargiver - It was such an improvement from the first one (my bottom-ranked movie of last year) that I had to reward it.

100. Challengers - I guess I was just exhausted at the end. 

119. The Wild Robot - Am I dead inside, or is this movie not as good as everyone says?

128. A Complete Unknown - I never had any idea how close this was to ending.

Thanks for reading. As always, comments are welcome. And be sure to come back the next two days for two more 2024 wrap-up posts ... and then an informal one on the third day. 

The Oscar nominations moved, but I'm staying put

When you are driving toward your final movie watched of a given ranking year, mapping out what days you'll watch what movies for as long as ten days out from that deadline, you develop a certain mentality of finality, of how it's all ramping up to a finish. 

So when the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences needs to move its announcement of this year's Oscar nominations six days forward due to the ongoing fires in Los Angeles -- a more justified decision there never was -- it's hard, nay impossible, to shift forward with them.

Some people might say "Another six days of watching movies? Great! My 2024 list will now just be that much more complete."

Me? I'm saying "It's time to move on to something else."

And so after learning yesterday that the announcement of nominations was moved from the expected date of January 17th at 5:30 a.m. PST to the new date of January 23rd at 5:30 a.m. PST, I decided this did not change my own timeline, and I would still finish up tonight with my final movie of 2024, as first conceived when I learned of this year's nomination date several months ago. Tomorrow, I will post my list. 

Look, I'm tired. And (spoiler alert) I will already be setting a record number of movies ranked this year, even without bonus time.

This was not the only 11th hour change related to my movie rankings.

I had expected to see A Complete Unknown tonight as my final film. In fact, I already had a post written called "My final screening is an advanced screening," which will now sit forever in my drafts folder, since I never delete my unpublished drafts, leaving them as sort of a record of unfinished thoughts. 

See, A Complete Unknown does not come out in Australia until next Thursday, a fact I did not realize when I ignored the opportunity to see it in Los Angeles. I assumed it was one of the many high-profile Boxing Day releases in Australia, and that I'd have ample time to squeeze it in when my family returned from our trip to America. Then again, even if I had known about Unknown, there was very little chance I would have prioritized seeing a musician biopic over the movies I did see while I was there, The Brutalist and Nickel Boys.

So I expected the Bob Dylan biopic to go unseen by me prior to closing off my rankings, until I got invited to an advanced screening that was scheduled, lo and behold, for the 12-hour window before the Oscar nominations went live in a time zone 19 hours different from my own. I RSVP'd straight away.

Fortuitously, it would mean I finished my 2024 rankings in the same place I finished my 2015 rankings, at the glorious venue The Astor in St. Kilda, an old-fashioned movie house if ever there was one, complete with balcony. In 2016 (for the movies of 2015), that was where I saw the first of three movies that had only just been released on my final day of ranking, which was The Hateful Eight, intermission and all. I finished the epic day with Carol and The Big Short at venues increasingly closer to my house. Only Carol did not make my top 20 and The Hateful Eight made my top ten. I actually have not been back to The Astor since later that same year, when I saw a special screening of the beloved Australian film Malcolm, my wife having worked with its writer and director. 

I loved the idea of finishing at The Astor, but there was something nagging and incomplete with this plan. Despite RSVPing within a day of the invitation being sent, I had not heard back from the publicist confirming my spot. I followed up with her about five days later to be sure I was on the list, and again did not hear back. Yesterday at work I went so far as to print out the emailed invitation as well as my response to it, should my legitimacy as an invitee be questioned.

Only after getting home from work yesterday did I notice I finally had a response from her, which was to tell me that alas, the screening was at capacity, but she would add me to the waitlist.

That's lame. When you respond within 24 hours, you should be on the list, especially at a venue as large as The Astor. I was surprised it could be at capacity regardless, and I wonder if she intentionally didn't respond because she had other higher priority attendees she wanted to accommodate. After all, my site is still not one of the big players in Australian film coverage. Nonetheless, it would be hard for me to imagine that there are, oh, 500 ahead of me, though obviously a lot of those seats would be reserved for other VIPs/ticket winners etc. 

I don't expect my waitlist spot to materialize -- possibly especially after I responded stating (politely) my disappointment in the outcome -- so now I am pivoting, and it's actually to see a movie I am a lot more interested in than A Complete Unknown.

I had written off Sing Sing as a movie I had any chance of seeing before my deadline. In discussing it briefly with my friend who also ranks his movies, he told me he wouldn't be able to rank it because it had disappeared after a very brief Oscar-qualifying run. If it isn't generally available in the U.S., I figured it was one of those movies that wouldn't come out in Australia until March.

Lo and behold, it actually opened yesterday.

So I guess there is a net positive here. My wife still thinks I'm going to see A Complete Unknown tonight -- or at least to an advanced screening, since that's all I told her and she didn't ask for any clarifying details. So I'm going to use the preapproval for the time slot to go to Cinema Nova instead of The Astor, and if she asks what movie I saw, I'll just tell her the truth. After all, she didn't know this wasn't the movie I was seeing, and she does not keep track of release dates. 

And by finishing with Sing Sing at Cinema Nova, I'm finishing at the real place I concluded my viewings nine years ago, as this was the venue where I saw my final film of 2015, The Big Short. I believe only a single final film of a year has been in the theater since then, which would be Darkest Hour in 2017. 

I suppose there is still a chance the publicist comes back to me with apologies and an open-arms invitation to A Complete Unknown, and if that happens I would go, having been bent out of shape about it to her. Even though Sing Sing is now the center of my thoughts.

You'll know either way tomorrow, when I finally post my rankings of the films of 2024, all the way from best to worst. 

The busiest 75-year-old in the movie business

I don't mind telling you that the preparation for my three -- actually, four, but one of them is informal and does not involve any compiling of information -- end-of-ranking-year posts begins weeks ago. And that's how it is that I have already completed more than 90% of the writing and other compiling for those posts, just waiting until I'm officially done in two days before putting on the finishing touches.

And what I already have for these posts -- or don't have -- may, just may, guide some of my thinking on the final movies I watch.

The example in this case is my "three who had a bad year" segment of my wrap-up post that follows the day after I put up my rankings. I've already got my three, but I am still looking for one other honorable mention. I thought Bill Nighy could be that guy, just because I noticed I'd seen him in a movie I didn't like very much (The Beautiful Game), and if I also did not like Joy, one of my contenders for my third-to-last movie of the year, then he could work his way into my final honorable mention spot. (Or dishonorable mention, I should say.)

Is this a good way to go about this? Who can say.

So I also went on to IMDB, to ensure there weren't other Nighy performances in 2024 I hadn't considered in my calculations, that might either support or detract from his candidacy.

As it turns out, there were seven. 

Two of those were movies that could potentially be feathers in his cap for the dishonor. I mas middling to negative on both The Wild Robot and Role Play, the latter of which was the second movie I watched for the year all the way back in January. (Yes, I don't love The Wild Robot. We can talk about it another time.)

But then Nighy was also in five other movies I did not see, much of it also as vocal work like he did in The Wild Robot. Those titles were That Christmas, Gracie & Pedro: Pets to the Rescue, The First Omen, Dragonkeeper and 10 Lives.

Is anyone working harder in Hollywood than this man, who turned three quarters of a century old less than a month ago? More to the point, is anyone in such demand?

Obviously you can churn out vocal work at must higher rates than work that requires you in front of a camera. Still, even with those four vocal roles, there were still five of the "in person" type. (And I noticed that he is called Cardinal Lawrence in The First Omen, which is the same name as Ralph Fiennes' character in Conclave. Coincidence? I may have to look into this.)

I have always appreciated Nighy as an actor, though I can see, I have never yet written about him on this blog. And certainly, he does have one of "those voices," which explains why he's cast in so many animated films -- other than his sheer willingness to do it.

Maybe Nighy does still need to put away money for his retirement, if it ever comes, considering that he is comparatively late to becoming a household name. It strikes me that I only first became aware of the actor 22 years ago, when he was in Love Actually and when he was already 53. That's right, my entire awareness of him as an actor comes at ages when he was older than I am now.

Now of course Love Actually was not his first role -- in fact, it was his 70th, of an eventual 168 (and rapidly counting), dating all the way back to 1976. But the fact that I did not know who he was before that, when I'm the sort of guy who keeps track of this sort of thing, means he toiled in some form of obscurity for those first 27 years of his career. (It turns out, I had seen him in at least three movies before Love Actually, which are Alive and Kicking, Lucky Break and Blow Dry, though clearly he didn't make as much of an impression on me there as he did in Richard Curtis' dubiously enduring Christmas movie.)

And there can be little dispute that the use of Bill Nighy is only becoming more common as he ages. These recent years of his career may not be featuring his most prominent roles, though there can be no arguing the perceived desirability of casting him. And even in saying the roles themselves may be getting less juicy, I have to acknowledge that he received an Oscar nomination just two years ago for his work in the pretty good Living. Which, interestingly, was his first such nomination, further proving his status as a late bloomer.

So if you want a Brit who's a bit crusty and a bit superior, but ultimately has that twinkle of warmth that undercuts those traits, Bill Nighy is your guy, and it appears he will be for several more years to come. 

If you're looking for range, well, it may be wisest to look elsewhere. As just one example of how Nighy always plays variations on the same character, he has, to my knowledge, never even played an American, unlike many of his fellow countrymen and women in the acting community.

For the record, Nighy will not be getting a dishonorable mention for his "bad" 2024. I did watch Joy, and liked it quite a bit. And I attribute a significant percentage of my affection to Nighy, though Thomasin McKenzie is fabulous in it.

Of those traits I ascribe to Bill Nighy, dishonor is not one of them. 

Not looking beyond this week

Usually at this time of the year, I get visions of old movies or beloved rewatches dancing in my head, just as little children in "The Night Before Christmas" get visions of sugar plums doing the same. In other words, I cannot wait to be done with movies from the current year so I can again start watching whatever movies I damn please.

For some reason, that's not happening this year.

And from this I draw two possible conclusions:

1) I am not sick of ranking movies this year. I could go on ranking them for another month and see more than 200 movies and be perfectly fine with that. That speaks well to my overall engagement with movies at this point in time, early in the year of our lord, 2025.

2) I may be sick of ranking movies this year, but I am not particularly starved for some sort of alternative of watching old movies or movies I've already seen. In fact, I could be ready for some sort of long break. That does not speak well to my overall engagement with movies at this point in time, early in the year of our lord, 2025. 

I guess I won't know which one is the case until after I finish this up on Friday. 

The earlier deadline this year could have something to do with it. The Oscar nominations are being announced nearly a week earlier than they were last year, when they were revealed on Thursday, January 23rd. That meant I was basically already up against it in terms of the approaching end of January, having to watch a movie for two different monthly series, as well as my annual movie in celebration of Australia Day, right quick. That also meant I couldn't take more than a single night off from watching movies after I posted my list. 

This year, the amount of remaining January time is closer to two weeks. So I don't have to think ahead. 

But there should still be movies clambering their way to the top of my list of wants and needs, whether that is revisiting an old favorite or finally seeing some movie from the year 2023 or earlier that I have never seen. Events in our normal lives conspire to bring these movies to the front of our cerebral cortex. 

In 2025, there are no movies in that spot, meaning that when I do watch my first movie after Friday, the thing I watch may result from something so arbitrary as going to one of my streamers and seeing what's on.

So really, it was a bit of a straw man argument to suggest I might not be engaged with movies anymore and might be ready for a long break. I think I prefer to interpret it that I'm enjoying movies enough right now that I am not impatient to get on to the next thing, and am just appreciating the thing that's happening as it's happening.

Now, if you had asked me after I finished a sleepless night of watching five mediocre movies on one of my recent plane rides, I might have told you a different story.

My son is currently watching a movie for pleasure

One of the first indicators I might become a cinephile was all the movies I watched on repeat on VHS in the mid- to late-1980s. I won't go through those titles again, because I've done that before, and it is not particularly relevant to the current post anyway. But let's just say that I burned a hole in those VHS tapes, watching some of them upwards of ten times. And given that there were at least ten of those titles in heavy rotation, that's a lot of viewings.

We live in different times now. Children do not, to the same extent, satisfy their twin appetites for screen time and storytelling by watching movies. I should say, some children might do that. Mine do not.

Oh, they'll watch a movie with us if we put it on the schedule. The younger one enthusiastically, the older one less so. But these events are also becoming less common, in part because my wife is also less interested in them.

Except maybe there is still hope for my 11-year-old.

Yesterday afternoon, I noticed he was starting to watch Spider-Man: Homecoming. When he saw me notice him starting to watch it, he kind of gave me a look like "See? I'm doing something you like doing." Though the fact that it was a newsworthy event does indicate how uncommon it is otherwise.

When I asked him if he had seen the movie before, this is when I got more encouraged. (I should be able to remember myself, but I've got two kids and sometimes I can't remember who has seen what.) "Oh yeah," he responded. "Two or three times."

Which means that yesterday, my son just felt the urge to watch Spider-Man: Homecoming, so he started to watch it. 

Hooray.

It was a similar urge that prompted me to press play on all those VHS tapes back in the 1980s. I don't know why on certain days I felt like watching, I don't know, WarGames, and on other days it was The Pirate Movie. But the point is I got those urges, and responded accordingly.

Now, things still aren't what they once were. Attention spans are much different now. I say my son is "currently" watching Spider-Man: Homecoming, even though I also said he started it yesterday. Both of these things are true. While watching, he's likely to take breaks and game for a while, or watch a YouTube video.

However, the fact that he started it yesterday and returned to it today means he sees something sacred about completing a viewing, and not just sampling a small part of a movie and moving on. There are cinephiles who do the second thing, of course, and God bless them for whatever form they want their engagement to take. But my son is taking my form of engagement, completing what he started, and that further tickles me.

What's more, this additional engagement -- even if it is in its nascent stages -- is deepening his overall engagement with the cinematic landscape. Another thing I have wondered is if today's children -- or more specifically, my children -- would ever become conversant about movie stars, knowing their names and what other films they had been in. They do know some names, such as Dwayne Johnson and Jack Black, but even some very famous names, like Tom Cruise, may cause them hesitation. 

Well, one person my younger son knows is Tom Holland, star of Spider-Man: Homecoming. He mentioned him by name earlier this month when we were at Universal Studios. So it may be that my son is choosing personal favorites among actors and intentionally choosing films starring those actors, which is another way further in to cinephilia. I just don't need him to watch Holland movies like The Devil All the Time -- not at this stage, anyway. (Given that I think that movie is shit, possibly not ever.) 

Look, I'm not going to blow this out of proportion, all evidence to the contrary in the fact that I'm writing this post. But for a guy who constantly longs for "the way things used to be," this is an encouraging development, both for me personally and for my hope about the younger generation. 

I have also been worrying lately about the way the kids are spending their summer, essentially devoting most of their time to screens except for the break we force them to take for a couple hours in the early afternoon. If my 11-year-old starts choosing to wile away his summers on movies -- the way I once did -- then that removes that stress for me as well.

Now, I just need him to start obsessively ranking his movies and watching more than 150 of them per year ... 

NOTE: Less than an hour after I published this, my son began watching Spider-Man: Far From Home. Yay.