Best/Worst Movies of 2024

The Top 20:

1. My Old Ass

I figured the comedy about Aubrey Plaza talking with her younger self (irresistible mega star in the making Maisy Stella) would be pretty good. What I never expected was for it to be an emotionally resonant and, at times, deeply moving film.

2. Strange Darling

The surprise of the year, if not the millennium. I went in totally cold on this and was blown away. The most cleverly twisty and expectation-upending thriller (horror? comedy?) in years. In a just world, Willa Fitzgerald would be showered with awards. 

3. Inside Out 2

The best Pixar film in years. Took the original concept and built on it in hilarious, smart, and emotional ways. It deserved to be the runaway #1 hit of the year. 

4. Anora

Mikey Madison, the star that you are. 

5. Deadpool and Wolverine

BUT I WAS TOLD Marvel was dead. 

6. The 4:30 Movie

Kevin Smith's best movie in 20 years, a deeply heartfelt and charming ode to being young and obsessed with the movies. 

7. We Live In Time

Another year, another spectacular performance by Florence Pugh in a criminally overlooked drama. 

8. Love Lies Bleeding

Wonderfully sleazy crime movie. 

9. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Breathes life into the post-Caesar franchise, and now it can go on. 

10. Hit Man

Richard Linklater's super charming crime caper with Glen Powell in full movie star bloom. 

11. Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire

They have cracked the code on how to make super entertaining movies in this franchise. 

12. The Substance

The wildest, goriest, sickest movie of the year. Demi Moore shall be heard. 

13. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story

Terrific, moving documentary about Reeve's life and career.

14. Didi

Another excellent coming of age comedy in a year full of them. 

15. Young Woman and the Sea

A radiant Daisy Ridley in a really good old-fashioned inspiring sports movie. 

16. Perfect Days

Wasn't on my original list cause I wasn't sure it counted (but it had no US release til 2024). It's just a story of a Japanese man going about his daily life and finding the joy in that. As simple as filmmaking gets. 

17. Heretic

Superb, career best performance by Hugh Grant. Would be even higher without a formulaic 3rd act. 

18. Alien: Romulus

At last, a back to basics Alien horror film. 

19. A Quiet Place: Day One

Might have expected this to be higher on the list, and it was my least favorite of the series, but it made a lot of its setting, and Lupita was great. 

20. Saturday Night

Once this film, set on the night of the first airing of SNL, kind of lost its awards buzz, it was forgotten. But it was hugely entertaining and cast amazingly well.

-Some of the close calls:

Nosferatu was a masterpiece of mood and design, and Lily-Rose Depp...hello!

A Complete Unknown was the best, freshest take on the music biopic in a long time. 

Abigail and Your Monster fed by Melissa Barrera craving for the year.

Dune Part 2, Twisters, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and Gladiator 2 were all very satisfying blockbuster sequels.

Trap was M. Night Shyamalan in all his crazy glory.

Smile 2 bettered the original with a magnificent Naomi Scott.

If Juror #2 was the final Clint Eastwood film, he went put with one of his latter years best.

The Road House remake had no reason to be as thoroughly entertaining as it was. 

-Some of the middling films, the disappointments, the "I wish they were betters":

Civil War should have been a timely masterpiece. Instead, it had no opinion on its own existence.

Challengers, Wicked Part 1, Emilia Perez, and Conclave will all be factors in the awards season, and while none were bad, none were that good either.

I was excited for Furiosa due to the casting of Anya Taylor-Joy, but she isn't even in half the movie.

-Near misses for the worst list:

Hey, Madame Web and Venom: The Last Dance missed the cut. Good for you!

Immaculate, The Watchers, Longlegs, and Speak No Evil making up some of the year's forgettable horror movies. 

I probably should have put the 2nd Rebel Moon movie on the list, but I barely remember it. 

Borderlands was surely bad, but I did think it made the "entertainingly bad" cut.

And probably the year's single most disappointing movie: MaXXXine. Baffling how the 3rd entry in the trilogy that elevated Mia Goth to elite status could be so much of a mess, that even sidelines Goth herself for large chunks of the film. 

And now, the 10 worst of the year:

10. Joker: Folie a Deux

Okay, this is probably more disappointing, cause the original Joker was excellent. This sequel though spends 2 hours punishing anyone who dared to like it, and decides to spend half its runtime being the Seinfeld finale. 

9. Bad Boys: Ride or Die

This made big money, but I found it a depressing, lifeless slog of a movie to watch. Nothing that I liked in the franchise originally remains. 

8. Mean Girls

Another movie that made money, unfortunately. I hated the songs, and the uninteresting presentation of them. All that was left was a poor xerox of the original movie, with many lines and some entire scenes lifted word for word. 

7. The American Society of Magical Negroes

Boy, if you're going to try to make a racial satire with that title, you better come up with a hell of a lot more to say than this does.

6. Divorce In The Black

I did get some entertainment out of this latest Tyler Perry melodrama (Meagan Good, you poor girl), but zero of it was intentional. 

5. Never Let Go

One of those horror movies that stretches out its (boring) mystery for so long that you don't care anymore, cause no resolution is worth the tedium. 

4. Kinds Of Kindness

Congratulations to Yorgos Lanthimos (whose previous films I did like) for becoming an acclaimed enough filmmaker that he can now throw any pointless slop he wants to up on screen and get a lot of critics to praise him. Nothing worked in this.

3. Kraven The Hunter 

You know why Madame Web and Venom 3 don't look so bad? Cause THIS is what rock bottom comic book filmmaking looks like. Easily the most boring film in its genre I have ever seen. Stunning beyond words it came from J.C. Chandor, a very good director.

2. Blink Twice

Big fan of Zoe Kravitz. But holy christ was she way out of her depth in trying to handle this material as her first directing effort. It appears to want to be a Get Out type film with something to say within a genre structure. But she fails miserably at that. The result is a grotesque film that uses the drugging and raping of numerous women for shock value and nothing more, cause whatever "more" may have intended to be there never breaks through. 

1. Megalopolis

Well, good for Francis Ford Coppola that he finally got his $100 million dollar passion project finished. But there's a reason no studio would bankroll this, and he basically had to give it away for free to get it released. Because it is the kind of incoherent, bloated fiasco that used to sink careers and bankrupt studios. A lot of big name actors are in this, including a career worst Aubrey Plaza (Congrats on being in my favorite and least favorite movies of the same year btw), but nobody had a chance. I think it's trying to say something about modern society's ills, but nothing is more revealing about how fucked up we are than a single American being rich enough to drop over $100 million of their own money to make something like this. This was truly a torturous chore to sit through.