So, in looking at the movies I saw in 2024, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to essentially break them up into two tiers, so essentially a Top *insert number* and an Honorable Mentions. As a guy who likes to just talk about the art that I love, I have decided to basically free myself from the paradigm of keeping these lists to round numbers or what have you. I said last year that if there are nineteen movies that I think are great, I refuse to put a mediocre movie on the list just because I’m “supposed” to have a top twenty. Likewise, and this is the case this year, if there are twenty-one movies that I love, I’m not going to pit them all against in other in order to find the “worst” one so that I can have a top twenty by leaving one off.
So, this year, I have 5 regrets, 6 honorable mentions and 21 top movies.
Here’s what those categories mean:
Regrets: movies from 2024 I haven’t gotten to that I suspect would have made these lists
Honorable Mentions: movies that had great moments or were even excellent overall, but also had flaws that held them back
Top Movies: movies that I absolutely loved, feel passionate about how great they are, and could talk about at length.
Let’s get started with the regrets and the honorable mentions.
Regrets:
The Brutalist
A Complete Unknown
A Different Man
Kinds of Kindness
Love Lies Bleeding
Honorable Mentions:
Alien: Romulus
An overall intense action thriller with some great performances, it was still a hair too long and at least one action set-piece should probably have been cut.
Cuckoo
While the film doesn’t exactly come together, Hunter Schaefer’s central performance is brilliant and the film has a genuinely off-kilter, unsettling atmosphere and some great, memorable scares.
Late Night with the Devil
I loved the central performance from David Dastmalchian and the way the film committed completely to its premise, but it certainly had no idea how to end.
Longlegs
This movie had as unsettling an atmosphere as any I saw this year and Maika Monroe’s raw performance is just the anchor the movie needs, but I really disliked Nicolas Cage’s performance, so this falls to only an honorable mention based purely on his scenes.
Rebel Ridge
Another movie that stretched a solid 20 minutes too long and copped out with an overly neat ending, but the first half has some of the most suspenseful sequences I’ve seen in a long time and the chemistry between hero Aaron Pierre and villain Don Johnson absolutely crackles with tension.
Strange Darling
Smartly written and a lot of fun, this one could have used a better lead performance to ramp the intensity up but it’s still satisfying and features perhaps the strangest scene of the year with two characters sharing coffee and breakfast.
Okay, next time, I’ll get to my top tier.