How I track film
It’s all about Letterboxd! Late in the year, I upgraded to a pro account, and I got more stats as a result. I’m happy to support them in my small way; Letterboxd brings me a lot of joy, both from direct use of their website and through their short-form videos and interviews. Yes, I will watch an actor I’ve never heard of share their four favorite films, thank you very much.
Older films of note watched in 2024
I usually focus this post on 2024 films, but here’s a quick peek at some older films I watched in 2024.
- Jesus Christ Superstar (1973): I’ve seen other versions, but this was my first watch of the older theatrical film. It’s a good way to get the vibe closer to the time JCS was first big, you know? (Yes, this was part of my ALW spiral, as documented in the music post.)
- Weekend: An all-time favorite that is absolutely going to make my four favorites at some point. Love in a weekend! A beautiful, slightly bittersweet queer romance and character study that makes me cry every time.
- Paranormal Activities: I’m pretty sure I rewatched Paranormal Activities 1-4, but I don’t see 1 in my diary? Either way, I have a soft spot for this franchise. Three is my favorite; I watched it twice in 2024. If you watch, I’d stick to 1-3 to get the core story. Four continues it a bit, but it’s not good enough for me to recommend.
- The first three Scream movies: Can you believe I’d never seen any Scream movies before 2024? What a fun time. The first one was my favorite, but I’ve been thinking about three constantly since I saw it. Its specific flavor of meta commentary with Harvey Weinstein as a producer sure was dark.
- [REC]: I don’t scare easily with horror, but I found the end of [REC] actually terrifying. Not bad for a lower-budget zombie horror flick! I know there’s a US remake, but I have zero interest in it after seeing how great [REC] was.
- Perfect Days: This didn’t get US distribution until 2024, so I saw it on both 2023 and 2024 recap lists? I didn’t see it until 2024, but I loved its quieter qualities and wanted to include it somewhere. Gentlest and most cathartic cry of the year, for sure.
2024 films I didn’t watch (yet)
It’s as important to know what I didn’t get a chance to see or didn’t want to see in 2024 to gauge how I’m evaluating the films I did see. A selection, pulled from the most-popular films on Letterboxd:
Deadpool and Wolverine, Anora, Alien: Romulus, Civil War, The Wild Robot, We Live in Time, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, The Fall Guy, Twisters, Maxxxine, A Real Pain, Trap, A Complete Unknown, The Brutalist, Babygirl, Kinds of Kindness, Smile 2, Blink Twice, Flow, Immaculate, Juror #2, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, It Ends With Us, Queer, Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Foul, Megalopolis, Saturday Night, Venom: The Last Dance, My Old Ass, Cuckoo, Didi, The Apprentice, A Different Man, I’m Still Here
Top 10 films, ranked
Note: This list excludes Oscar nominations for simplicity.
10. Heretic: I didn’t get everything I wanted out of this film—I was hoping it was Mormon-specific horror, but it was more about high-control religion generally and how it dominates your life—but I really liked some pieces of it. The Air That I Breathe-Creep part was my favorite.
9. Lisa Frankenstein: Diablo Cody is hit-or-miss for me, but this was a definite hit. Kathryn Newton was the perfect lead, and Zelda Williams’s direction combined with an acidic 80s look left a real impression on me. I don’t know that I’ll watch this every Halloween, but it’s definitely going in the pile as a possibility.
8. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga: I really dragged my feet on Furiosa because I didn’t see the need for the story, and I thought the action sequences looked like they were done less practically than Fury Road’s, so it didn’t have the same thrill quality in the trailers. I was wrong about the former and partially right about the latter. The parts with young Furiosa in particular were electric. Wish I could have seen this one in the theater.
7. The First Omen: I’m such a sucker for visually-stunning horror, and The First Omen fits the bill in spades. It’s specifically a modern take on ‘60s/’70s horror, which makes perfect sense for the story and series. Some of my favorite shots of the year came from The First Omen. The weird franchise-style ending doesn’t fit the rest of the film at all, but I liked the family elements of it.
6. Love Lies Bleeding: In another year, this would have been number one. I love muscular, bloody lesbians in heightened style existing in a desert that reminds me of the one I live in. I haven’t rewatched it, but that’s only because it left such an impression on me that I can basically play it in my head whenever I want.
5. Daniel Howell: We’re All Doomed: We’re All Doomed was a live comedy show, and this was the filmed version. I didn’t see it live because doomer/apocalyptic thinking can be hard for me, and I think it was the right move. Still, the filmed version was one of my favorite experiences of the year. The way the show itself pokes fun at doomer ideas before turning into an honest look at how damaging that line of thinking is really stuck with me. I particularly love that the show ended up being the way Dan Howell deliberately addressed his own depression and nihilism head on. I saw him (and Phil Lester) live in Terrible Influence in 2024; there will probably be a filmed version released in 2025, and it will probably be in next year’s version of this post.
4. Monkey Man: I could see a version of this list where Monkey Man ranks lower because I had some quibbles with its execution, but the film’s absolute sincerity really stuck with me. I get why Jordan Peele stepped in and got it theatrical distribution. I hope Dev Patel makes a million more movies. (And if he stars so I can stare at his face, so much the better.)
3. Challengers: Welcome back, erotic thrillers! It’s not easy to make a good character piece with this much energy, but Luca Guadagnino made it look effortless. The way the driving score would interrupt moments that other films would make dead silent…I grinned every single time it happened. A movie that tells you it’s gonna edge you with a wink and then does it? Immaculate.
2. Longlegs: I didn’t get many theatrical viewings in 2024 for a lot of reasons, but I managed to see Longlegs that way, and I’m so happy that I did. I love movies that click with me emotionally before I catch up logically with the plot, and Longlegs did a great job of conveying fogginess and dread before sharpening in the end. The look is wonderful, the vibe is perfect, and Nicholas Cage was a good combination of eerie and comedic.
1. I Saw the TV Glow: Forget 2024 releases. I Saw the TV Glow immediately became one of my favorite movies of all time on first watch. I’ve never seen a movie that spoke so directly to both my past experiences and current reality, while conveying a vibe and aesthetic that’s creepy and beautiful. (And I thought We’re All Going to the World’s Fair spoke to a part of me that no one had ever seen before! Jane Schoenbrun, your mind!) I think a lot of people can relate to the weird constructed parts of our lives, especially where gender and pop culture intersect, but man. Do cis/straight white guys always feel this spoken to?
Oscar nominees I watched, ranked
If you looked at the list of 2024 movies I saw, you know I didn’t reach my goal of seeing all the Best Picture nominees. It was impossible to do legally; I’m Still Here was completely inaccessible to me. (I wish I had an in for screeners!) Once I realized that wasn’t happening, I decided not to push to see the others if I didn’t want to see them. I would have skipped a couple of these if I had known earlier that completion wasn’t possible. Alas.
Still, I got a sampling of Oscar nominees under my belt, and I had a much better time watching than I did with a completed Best Picture run last year. (Don’t be me and ever watch Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer, and The Zone of Interest back-to-back if you want a happy week.) Here’s my ranking of the nominees I watched this season.
9. Gladiator II: This is not a Maestro-in-last-place ranking; this is a I-loved-Gladiator-and-I-was-deeply-disappointed ranking. The film served its actors badly; there were so many people I’ve liked elsewhere and found lacking here. Denzel Washington was absolutely the best part of the movie and still overhyped.
8. Emilia Pérez: What a terrible film. That this movie received a million nominations the same year I Saw the TV Glow released is a real low. The only reason it isn’t in last place is because the La Vaginoplastia song made me laugh.
7. Inside Out 2: Inside Out 2’s ending is astonishingly good. Rylie’s character arc gets better the more I think about it. Unfortunately, the emotions get completely shortchanged by comparison; Joy and Sadness fill out the middle of the first movie, and there’s nothing similar in the second. It’s not the worst sequel ever, but I was disappointed.
6. Wicked: I get that adapting any story will change from format to format, and I get that splitting a story in two means filling in some space. But the good rhythm established in the Wicked stage show was destroyed in the first movie, to the point where I was dying for a musical that I’ve loved for twenty years to end. The way I bounced off Ariana Grande’s performance didn’t help, either. Still, I’m glad audiences liked it. Maybe we can get more big musicals in the future? And Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba is fantastic.
5. Dune: Part Two: I recently rewatched both Dune entries, both to prep for this post and to see if my opinions on them changed. They haven’t. I think the first movie has worse action scenes with better emotional buy-in; I think the second has excellent pacing with colder distance. Both suffer from extracting the weirdness from its source material. Timothée Chalamet worked for me as Paul until the power switch two-thirds of the way in, and then I didn’t buy him remotely. (That there was a personality switch was totally appropriate to the story! I don’t think he accomplished what he was going for in that regard, though.) I liked it enough that I’ll see Part Three or Messiah or whatever they’re calling it, but I wouldn’t give it Best Picture.
4. Conclave: I find this an extremely competent film with good performances, but I’m turned off by even remotely positive depictions of the Catholic Church. (One of my all-time favorite films is Spotlight, if that gives you perspective.) I keep thinking about the ending in context with the story they were telling and like it better than when I was watching it, though. I want to give this a rewatch with the ending in mind. Maybe later in the year. In the meantime, the memes are fun!
3. The Substance: Finally, a movie I genuinely enjoyed! At times glossy and exploitative in its gaze, at other times disgusting and gory, The Substance is the story of a white woman taking the violence done to her and internalizing it until she explodes. Literally. The story is specific, but the metaphor works on so many levels, from ageism to ableism and, obviously, gendered marginalization. The filmmaking is confident, the performances are fantastic, and I had such a good time with the heightened levels of gore. Not a film for everyone, but definitely a movie for me.
2. Nosferatu: The gothic Dracula lover enjoyed a Dracula interpretation? Everyone’s shocked, I’m sure. I haven’t seen any Nosferatus before, so people who like the Nosferatu line of the story might not like it, but this Nosferatu gave me a level of brutality and sexual directness that I found really refreshing from the Dracula side of things. I love Robert Eggers as a director, and how he’s less inclined to play to modern sensibilities than following his world’s internal consistency to its full conclusions. (I respect it even with films like The Lighthouse, which I couldn’t finish.) There’s so much I could talk about here; I might have to write a full essay about Nosferatu later. Where I’ll leave it for now is that the sequence where Thomas gets sucked into the castle is my favorite of the year…outside of a lot of the next film, that is.
1. Nickel Boys: I went into Nickel Boys only knowing about the camera work as a conceit, and I can’t recommend doing that enough if you can. (If you need to look up trigger warnings, you absolutely should, although the movie does a good job depicting the after effects of trauma without directly showing the causes.) I’ve never seen a film convey the experience of living and remembering more than Nickel Boys does. It’s a drama with a lot of heart and beauty.
Note: Out of the above, Nickel Boys, Nosferatu, and The Substance would make an overall top-ten-of-the-year list, although I’m not sure how I would rank them.
The end(?)
My movie post(s) are usually the end of the 2024-in-review posts. This year, I have the beginnings of a long- and short-form video post, as well as some outtakes from this post that I could group together with my reactions after the Oscars. If I write either or both of these posts, they’ll go live in the next week or two. If I don’t, I’ve decided to move onto other projects.
If you liked this post:
- Consider subscribing to my Patreon for a bonus year-end post on productivity tips and tricks in 2024.
- Times are tough, so if this isn’t a paid-content time for you, you can still join my Patreon for free and read my off-the-cuff series, starting with my initial Oscar nominee reactions.
- Catch up on my 2024-in-review series on Egregious and read my TV recap, my video games recap, my music post, and my book post.
- Thanks for reading!
