2024 at the Movies

My tradition of catching up with movies in the following summer remains intact, here are my top-20 movies of 2024. In other years I tend to make these lists 25 deep, and some of my earliest lists went as long as 30-35 movies. Last year was not a bad year for movies, my top three are likely to end up high on my ultimate ranking for the decade, but beyond those there were a bunch of fun movies and most of the Oscar bait movies were just fine. It also happened to be a year where the "bad" movies still had quite a bit of entertainment value to them.

1. Dune Part Two

I am a fan of Dune, although I read the book rather quickly a long time ago and wasn’t especially good at following the character names, I have every film or miniseries version of Dune on disc and I love the immersion into the world, the music and style of the films. This is the second half of the book Dune, and yet both parts are long enough to become meditative, burning in hot sand and a droning score. This section has one of the most incredibly stylized scenes in a long time, a gladiatorial scene set on a planet orbiting a star with an abnormal wavelength of light making the scene look almost like a film negative.

• HBO Max

• Netflix

2. Civil War

This was pretty much made out of the fears of our time, a bit of a horror movie about America while disconnecting with the fact pattern of our reality, Texas and California in a political alliance really seems like a stretch. Really well shot, however it is so visceral that it definitely isn’t for everyone. Truly a cautionary tale of authoritarianism as well as violent resistance. 

• HBO Max

3. Flow

If ever there was a movie that quickly won over the whole family, it was this animated film with no dialogue out of Latvia. The story of a black cat surviving a supernatural flood in a landscape of giant sculptures and animals from almost every continent. This sure sparked debate in our house on how recently the people disappeared and what happened to them. 

• HBO Max

4. Deadpool and Wolverine

The best Marvel instalment of the year was Deadpool’s introduction to Disney in simultanious “fuck you” and embrace of corporate media. Very funny, Cinematic universes and cinema’s infatuation with multiverses collide to bring the spirit of comic book storylines together on screen. 

• Disney+

  
  

5. The Comeback

This is the documentary series on the Red Sox comeback in the 2004 ALCS against the Yankees. We are now more than 20 years out from the Red Sox first World Series victory of the century, a moment in sports that is more celebrated for that comeback in the series before the World Series, coming back from losing the first three games to the Yankees to win in Game 7. I was in college at the time, watching all of the games in my dorm room, and I have to admit that Game 4 or 5 or 6 went so late, and I had class first thing in the morning, that I went to bed before the end of the game. I did get back up once or twice to check on the game, but I gave up, only to be woken up by cheers in the hallway. This is great to revisit that amazing comeback, but it is also one of the best baseball documentaries ever made.

• Netflix

6. Love Lies Bleeding

I have to admit that I went the first third of this movie thinking, “wow, that actress is great, and she looks just like Kristen Stewart!” only to realize she just had a slight different haircut and was being a very good actor. Both performances are great, this is much more than just a lesbian love story about a bodybuilder drifting into town. Steroids altering the character development of a story that has already gone sideways is really an interesting statement on fitness culture today and the chemical role of testosterone as it shapes society. And it’s just a really good movie.

• HBO Max

• Cinemax

7. The Bikeriders

I have been an ardent Jeff Nichols fan ever since I saw a great Ebbert and Roeper review of his second film, Take Shelter, in 2011 and I instantly had to track down a way to track down that relatively obscure movie at the time. His modern western style of filmmaking works really well with a story of a biker gang in the 1950’s, diving into the politics, crime and depravity as it morphed from a club to a gang. Many of Nichols’ favorite actors are again in this film, Michael Shannon has been in every one of his films, and a few new players come and fit in very well. 

• Prime 

8. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

The last Mad Max movie is one that has only grown in my appreciation over time, from a film that I found to be a just fine dystopian action film to one of my favorites of the previous decade. This is really fun and brings the incredible Mad Max world back to life in over-the-top craziness.

• Netflix

• HBO Max

9. A Different Man

I feel like cinema history is filled with films where a main character either lives with a facial deformity or drastically changes their face, finding a new way to navigate through society while overcoming their own identity crisis. Many of these films are actually really highly regarded, but they all tend to use the same tools to make the audience uncomfortable before lifting them up or they are more akin to horror films. This is more surreal, more of a comedy, more of a character study of strange people. Everything about this would make you think that “the other man” has a certain perfection about him despite his appearance, and ultimately, he is more flawed than expected, even if it doesn’t seem that way to anyone around him. Incredibly well shot, and oddly fun. Just one of the two amazing performances from Sebastian Stan, including The Apprentice, he should have won the Oscar just for knocking it out of the park in as two very different characters, two very different movies.

• HBO Max

10. Hundreds of Beavers

Just an insane concept, like Guy Madden meeting Looney Toons for a 1920’s slapstick comedy. This is like a low budget magic trick that shows all of the seams of moviemaking, while still managing to be completely believable and incredibly hilarious. A fur trapper runs afoul of the beavers he is hunting, played by people in beaver costumes, while they pull every level of slapstick comedy.

• Prime

• Tubi

• Pluto

11. The Wild Robot

Need a good cry? A great companion film to Wall-E, this story of a robot learning to become a parent is beautifully animated. At least in this household it struck a chord with both the challenges of parenting and childhood. 

• Netflix

12. Will and Harper

A touching documentary about a newly transitioning trans woman, who happens to be an incredibly funny and accomplished comedy writer from SNL, movies and even commercials, and her creative partner and friend Will Farrell as they take a road trip across the country. It’s really touching, for some viewers it might be their first experience getting to know a trans person, and we get to know Harper as a person, as well as her own journey in life, get to know other trans people and see some in middle America meet a trans person for the first time ever. It’s heartwarming to see some people really interesting to get to know her, heartbreaking to see others be brutally judgmental without actually talking to her and pretty frustrating to see how people change when Will Farrell’s celebrity enters a room.

• Netflix

13. Conclave

What’s interesting about this movie is that it really is about the politics of catholicism and not some kind of mystery or a story of a villain. While there are factors of ambition in the candidates, and disputes over tradition and scripture, this ends up being more personal and thought provoking. It doesn’t hurt that every location looks incredible, even in natural lighting.

• Prime

14. The Beast

In what seems to be a love story, a woman uses AI to relive past lives, telling a story of her current life and the people around her. From French director Bertrand Bonello, a boldly visual director, The Beast is a captivating thriller from the near future.

• Criterion

• Kanopy

15. Drive Away Dolls

The Coen Brothers have gone their separate ways as filmmakers, but Ethan Coen is continuing to make interesting movies. This is part of a series of films Ethan is writing with his wife Tricia Cooke, apparently related by themes and not characters. This is a very funny story, a bit of a “wrong man” movie in the style of Hitchcock, about two young women delivering a car in a cross country trip while hitmen trail them looking for their McGuffin. 

• Peacock

16. Saturday Night

An Electric telling of the early days of Saturday Night Live compressed into the final 90 minutes before the airing of the first episode. Good cast, good writing, and I’m pretty sure this dramatic film with some comedy is actually more funny than any 90 minutes of that first season holds up today.

• Netflix

17. War Game

A documentary about a simulated test run for current and former government officials from all of the last five presidencies practicing a response of an insurrection similar to January 6th, but different in the way that it plays out. Well shot as a documentary of the war game, mixing historical context and including commentary both from a policy and political science perspective but also from participants with personal connections to American extremism.  

• Available for rent

18. Blink Twice

A young woman is wooed and invited to the private island of a billionaire CEO who is rehabilitating his image after personal controversy. Channing Tatum is incredibly charming in his villain turn, and so much more vile than expected. This is a twist filled story featuring fun characters and slickly stylized direction from Zoe Kravitz. 

• Prime

• MGM+

  
  

19. Road House

I had to come back and amend my list. This is in here for pure fun. I had been thinking about which movies I would recommend to friends to watch, and the humor and action in this is worth the viewing. I understand that it is not quite the same type of strange that the original was, but it is a fun little action movie in the apparently lawless Florida Keys.

• Prime

20. Argyle

This is as dumb of an action movie as it gets, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. It’s the fun and excitement that Matthew Vaughn had provided earlier in his filmography before his movies had gotten a bit cluttered. This dials back the impossibilities of action movies, while still overcharging the stylization. The great cast doesn’t hurt either

• AppleTV+

Others

I usually make these lists closer to 25 films, but the last five movies on my list all felt a little more like honorable mentions: Road House, September 5, Argyle, Piece by Piece, and Separated. A few other movies of note just out of the top-20 are Fly Me to the Moon, Juror #2, Masters of Air, Longlegs, Anora, The Order, The Substance, Snack Shack, I Saw The TV Glow and The Apprentice. All of these are solid movies, some I liked despite not being perfect movies, some are really well made movies that I just didn’t fall in love with. For more serious movies, I could have included Anora, The Substance or Longlegs in my top-20 if I compiled the list on another day. Bad movies that I didn’t hate, hell, I kind of got a kick out of them are Joker: Folie a Deux and Megalopolis. My worst movies of the year are Abigail, and Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1. Fun fact: Horizon is the first writer’s credit of Costner’s career, and he has three more credits for writing Chapters 2 through 4, as well. They aren’t going to get any better.

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