2024 Flashback: Movies

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Happy New Year's Eve! 

Another year has come and gone, so it's time to take a look back at the best and worst of movies, television, music, books, and everything in between of 2024. Last year was so darn-tootin' bad for movies that I had to reduce my "best" list and expand my "worst" list. Thankfully, we're back to normal on that front this year. In the wake of the 2023 writers and actors strikes, many huge blockbusters were delayed, and I think that has given a lot of interesting, smaller movies a lot more space to find their way to screens this year.

That is not the case in the television sphere, however. The strike really has struck in 2024. The AMPTP's long delays in bringing unions to the negotiating table pretty much decimated the small screen, at least among the genres and platforms that I'm personally invested in. So I've reduced my TV section by quite a bit, shrinking my Best/Worst Lists and collapsing other sections. Hopefully things will be able to ramp back up in 2025. But they have tragically canceled Chucky in the meantime, so who the hell knows. Maybe next year is the year I get super into NCIS.

As usual, a few reminders before we dive into the first topic. First of all, nobody's taste in movies/music/etc is bad or wrong. There is no such thing as objective quality in art, and these lists are purely my opinion. I use words like "Best" and "Worst" because they're fun, not because they're legally binding across all people forever. If your opinion frequently differs from mine, maybe my "worst" lists will point you toward movies you'll enjoy more than my "best." It's all a matter of perspective.

And a word on my Trans/Nonbinary acting categories. Queer identities are difficult to put into boxes, because that's kind of the point. While some contenders in this category would identify under the "Best Actor/Actress" categories, many wouldn't. And some people would identify with multiple categories at once. And so on. My intention with these categories is to highlight performers from the trans and nonbinary communities rather than to separate them from the broader spectrum of gender or silo them out for participation trophies. As I said last year, if I completely removed gender from my acting categories, cis men would vanish pretty much instantly. Keeping the categories the way they are is not meant to limit the idea of gender for readers or actors, but merely to have more avenues by which I can celebrate performances from the year.

MOVIES

2024 Movies I Missed That I Wish I Had Seen Before Compiling This List: Babygirl, Monkey Man, Hundreds of Beavers, Love Lies Bleeding, Doctor Jekyll, Oddity, MaXXXine, Conclave, The Fall Guy

2024 Movies That I Missed, Don't Regret Missing, and Will Go Out of My Way to Continue Missing Until the End of Linear Time: Megalopolis, Ordinary Angels, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Civil War, IF, The Bikeriders, Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1, Borderlands, It Ends with Us, Reagan, Transformers One, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, Sonic the Hedgehog 3

Top Ten Movies of 2024

#10 Snack Shack

Sure, it's a little bit of a generic coming-of-age indie movie, but it is a pitch-goddamn-perfect generic coming-of-age indie movie, give or take a completely useless love interest character.

#9 Anora

Anora is a real journey, leading you by the hand through at least three distinct movies, going from romance to mob farce to family drama and offering humor and pathos in equal measure in each of them. 

#8 Emilia Pérez

The trouble is, I'm not supposed to like Emilia Pérez. This musical about a trans, Mexican cartel leader hiring a lawyer to help arrange her gender confirmation surgery has a relationship to transness and Mexican-ness that, even given the most generous of readings, betrays what many agree is an at best mildly problematic misunderstanding of both identities on the part of its non-trans, non-Mexican writer-director, French auteur Jacques Audiard. It's really not my place to decide whether this is a harmful thing or not, but it's the recommendation on this list that I would most like readers to take with a grain of salt.

However, being a problematic movie is not the same thing as being a bad movie, and Emilia Pérez bowled me over with its exhilarating, genre-bending approach. And I don't just mean cinematic genres. It bends musical genres as well. The soundtrack can cycle through everything from rap to reggaeton to Music Man-esque patter to torch ballad, sometimes all over the course of a single song. It is constantly throwing out something new and unique either visually or sonically, and while many of those things are intentionally unpleasant, it is a grunting, squelching, raw piece of work that grabs ahold of every one of your senses that it can. I understand why this hasn't been everyone's cup of tea, for every reason under the sun, but I found its bristling energy absolutely captivating from square one.

#7 Speak No Evil

This movie, a remake of the 2022 Danish film of the same name about a family who visits another family that they met on vacation, only to realize that they're maybe not as normal as they pretend to be, should not have worked for me. It was advertised to death, the ending was Americanized, and yadda yadda yadda. But as it turns out, it was a drum-tight thriller with some excellent performances (James McAvoy as the charming sociopath and Mackenzie Davis as the awkward and prickly guest are particular standouts), exquisite location shooting, and a lot more to its story than what was implied the trailer, which seemingly spoiled the whole thing. What a hoot!

#6 Problemista

I don't always vibe with what Julio Torres is putting out there, but his directorial debut deftly combines his instincts as a quirky fantasist with lacerating satire of the art world, capitalism, and American immigration policies. It's also, somehow, simultaneously a funhouse mirror version of The Devil Wears Prada. Problemista, which follows a queer Salvadorian immigrant trying to find work as a toy designer but, in a bid for visa sponsorship, getting work curating an art show for an erratic critic's (Tilda Swinton) cryogenically frozen husband, is top-to-bottom hilarious. But it's also tender, heartfelt, and sad without ever once being maudlin. 

#5 Le Vourdalak

You're going to love Le Vourdalak if the phrase "vampire movie where the vampire is played by a life-size marionette" is something that instantly gets you excited. It sure worked on me. The movie, which follows an 18th century French courtier getting lost in the countryside and being taken in by a family that is being hunted by a vourdalak (a vampiric creature which preys on the blood of its loved ones), truly feels like it was beamed in from another century, delivering silent film, slow boil grandeur without skimping on the blood, sexuality, and intensely disturbing imagery.

#4 My Old Ass

Speaking of generic coming-of-age movies that elevate themselves... My Old Ass has a supernatural wrinkle in that its main character has the chance to connect with her older self, who attempts to give her advice on how to live her life. However, that quickly subsides into the background (as does Aubrey Plaza as the older version of the character) as we watch a teenager on the cusp of adulthood trying to get her life in order before it changes forever. The fact that it is so darn sweet and so deliciously funny is all on its own merit, avoiding overreliance on the gimmick that it keeps at its periphery.

#3 Big Boys

My goodness, people sure are coming of age all over the place this year, huh? This particular entry, which follows a 14-year-old realizing he has a crush on his female cousin's boyfriend over the course of a camping trip, is basically asking "What would happen if Eighth Grade starred a chubby queer boy?" And it answers that question with aplomb, depicting the character handling his crush with all the lacerating awkwardness that one could possibly withstand, but showing an immense amount of love to every character onscreen, even when they're not being the best to themselves or to each other. 

While it doesn't shy away from the realities of being chubby or queer in a society that isn't necessarily built for someone to be either of those things, it also avoids being a maudlin lament. Big Boys adores its main character, and you will too.

#2 Thelma

This is by far the movie that made me laugh out loud the most this year. This tale of a 93-year-old grandmother (played by a relentlessly captivating June Squibb) doing everything in her power to get back the $10,000 she lost to a scammer is equal parts hilarious and melancholy, exploring the darker realities of aging, but without being too maudlin about it. It expertly walks the tightrope of somehow being a somber feel-good epic, spinning big laughs and big thrills out of some tiny, well-observed everyday moments. Those moments include the single best "driving in L.A." scene in cinema since Cher took her friends onto the freeway in Clueless.

#1 The Substance

This is another Scream VI situation where I saw the movie and said "wow, that was a great movie, but I have some serious quibbles. This is a perfect #2 movie for the end of the year, and I can't wait to find the movie that surpasses it to claim the #1 spot." And yet, no such movie came along. Oh well. 

So, yes, I have some quibbles. For instance, as a movie with such a clear, blunt thesis, it maybe didn't need to be 140 minutes long. But it's still a dazzling cinematic achievement, fearlessly rushing toward the grossest possible conclusions in every scene that it can. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat, rightfully, seems absolutely disgusted, top to bottom, with every aspect of the human condition. She uses her camera as a cudgel to make moments as icky as extracting spinal fluid or as ordinary as being handed a wet piece of paper seem equally confrontational and repulsive. The Substance smacks you about the head with concussive force, over and over again, using every single shred of visual and sonic information available. It's a true triumph.

Best 2023 Film I Missed: Prom Pact

I expected this vehicle for Z-O-M-B-I-E-S star Milo Manheim and Doogie Kamealoha, M.D. star Peyton Elizabeth Lee to be a pretty generic Disney teen movie, but it was slightly edgier and a whole lot funnier, which is a win in my book, considering I have a good time with most Disney teen movies anyway.

Honorable Mention: A Quiet Place: Day One

I felt a little bad about how quickly this one got shunted from my shortlist for the 2024 Top 10. I like to have a little popcorn movie representation at the end of the year, and this prequel more than deserves to get its flowers. It's thrilling, well-shot (night scenes where you can actually see what's happening, be still my heart), heartfelt, and features two tremendous lead performances from Lupita Nyong'o and Joseph Quinn. It's well worth your time.

Bottom Five Movies of 2024

#5 Venom: The Last Dance

Tom Hardy is still having a great time as both Eddie Brock and Venom, but this movie sloughs off the characters and storylines from the previous movies (which weren't that good to begin with) in favor of a nonsensical trudge through generic grey spaces populated with a troupe of British actors trying desperately to claw their way out from under a menagerie of terrible American accents.

#4 Mufasa: The Lion King

Gee, I was wondering how Rafiki got his stick, thank you so much for taking two hours out of my day to inform me! 

Look, this isn't as much of an unmitigated disaster as the 2019 The Lion King, but it comes close thanks to the Lin-Manuel Miranda music pilfered from the crumpled up papers in his trash bin, the hideous grey-brown lions who are almost impossible to differentiate from each other or - often - the grey-brown landscapes behind them, the bizarre camera choices, the noxious Timon and Pumbaa comic relief, the dazzlingly ugly camerawork, and... maybe I'll leave it at that, I should probably keep an eye on my blood pressure.

#3 Love & Jane

Love & Jane's premise - the spirit of Jane Austen guiding an unlucky-in-love woman in the modern world - requires the screenwriter to at least have read one Austen novel or biography, you'd think. However, they don't seem to have even cracked open the Jane Austen Wikipedia page before sitting down to crap out this bland Hallmark romance centering on a character who is not remotely recognizable as the author of Pride and Prejudice.

#2 Descendants: The Rise of Red

Disney's Descendants franchise is categorically the most ramshackle of their big musical franchise. If High School Musical is a floodlight and Teen Beach, The Cheetah Girls, Z-O-M-B-I-E-S, and Camp Rock are blazing bonfires of various sizes, Descendants is a birthday candle. However, The Rise of Red (though admittedly hobbled by having very few returning cast members in the wake of the tragic death of Cameron Boyce) is a top-to-bottom disaster. It combines the cheap gaudiness of the previous movies with a complete disinterest in proper storytelling, setting up a whole heap of intriguing premises that it fails to pay off in its perfunctory, effortfully stupid third act.

#1 The Watchers

I guess one cannot blame Ishana Night Shyamalan for, in her directorial debut, making a movie with an intriguing concept that fritters away everything interesting about it more or less immediately. That trait clearly runs in the family. But wow, words cannot express what an incoherent mess The Watchers is. It doesn't seem remotely interested in exploring the coolest aspect of its premise beyond a single scene, requires its characters to be atomically stupid, and absolutely refuses to end. A complete and utter shambles.

Best Worst Movie: Madame Web

From the second its teaser poster launched, Madame Web began to occupy a dark, cobwebby corner of my heart. It's so charmingly misguided and crappy in every way, both on and off the screen, and Dakota Johnson clearly knows this. There's something about the way she seems to be using her acidic sarcasm to dissolve the movie from the inside out that makes this unstable, sloppy mess a total delight to watch.

Worst 2023 Film I Missed: The Marvels

It's certainly not the worst Marvel movie out there. I can think of quite a few titles that deserve to be the first one to tank in theaters this goddamn badly. However, it is pretty terrible. In every moment, you can hear the gears of the MCU machinery haphazardly grinding themselves into place. In addition to diminishing The Marvels' capacity as a standalone story, this serves to tether it to a whole roster of other shitty MCU properties that aren't worth watching either, like a half-dozen albatrosses around its neck.

Best Dramatic Actor: Fred Hechinger, Thelma

I've had my eye on Fred Hechinger for a couple years now (not just because he's cute), and 2024 seems to be the year that he has really stepped out into the spotlight, what with that big splashy Gladiator II role alongside his work in Nickel Boys and Kraven the Hunter. But wowza, what an excellent performance he gives in Thelma. Everything about the story's dramatic spine hinges on his character, who is the deadbeat Gen Z analogue of his grandmother Thelma and comes to understand her perspective on life at the same time that he comes to understand his own. It's a tricky thing to pull off, and Hechinger nails it, forging an irresistibly sweet dynamic with June Squibb along the way.

Best Comedic Actor: Julio Torres, Problemista

One thing you can never criticize Torres for is a lack of commitment. His character Ale has this mincing little walk that is perfect for exhibiting his desire to take up very little space, and he never lets up on it even once. Plus, this is a man who can hold his own against Tilda Swinton, for Pete's sake. He has many stellar line readings throughout the movie, but even a basic interjection like "oh no" becomes comic gold in his hands.

Best Dramatic Actress: Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

Watching this movie, I realized that I was witnessing Zoe Saldaña act for the first time, rather than being a movie star, which are two very different, though not mutually exclusive things. Especially in her musical numbers, she taps into this well of live-wire energy that I truly didn't know she had in her.

Best Comedic Actress: Ariana Grande-Butera, Wicked

I had extreme doubts about miss Grande's approach to the character, but lo and behold, she really put her entire pop star persona aside to deliver a pitch-perfect Glinda. She gives the character texture, ensuring that it isn't just a Kristin Chenoweth impression, and really opens herself up to more musical theatre and opera-inflected vocals that, naturally, she can sing the hell out of.

Best Dramatic Supporting Actor: Mark Eydelshteyn, Anora

Eydelshteyn's job is a tough one. He needs to bring a character to the screen who is annoying and unlikeable from the jump and yet charismatic and guileless enough that you believe Anora has genuinely fallen in love with him. Plus, he needs to be just soft enough that she can hang on to the smallest scrap of hope that he might feel the same way about her despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The young actor threads that needle with aplomb, and even though his character Vanya is a little shit, you can't help but enjoy spending time with him anyway.

Best Comedic Supporting Actor: Justin Theroux, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Sometimes, all you really want to do is watch an actor dig their teeth into a profoundly bastardly character. This is how Bette Davis got a career, after all. Theroux is clearly having so much fun playing this manbunned Hollywood douchebag, and it's just as fun to watch him work.

Best Dramatic Supporting Actress: Robyn Lively, National Anthem

It was so nice to see the star of my beloved Teen Witch get such a meaty, complicated role in the modern age. Her mother character is prickly, warm, and everything in between. You completely believe why this very flawed, human character would be such a mess that her children would need to seek refuge on a queer ranch, but also why they wouldn't want to leave her out of their lives entirely. 

Best Comedic Supporting Actress: Parker Posey, Thelma

Posey exhanges her trademark airiness for a very grounded, overbearing character that is perfectly calibrated to be a hilarious parody of a meddling parents whose well-meaning efforts to control her child inevitably make things worse.

Best Trans/Nonbinary Actor: Brigette Lundy-Paine, Amelia's Children

Lundy-Paine, who would go on to a much more prominent 2024 horror role in I Saw the TV Glow, elevates this bland Portuguese horror movie by imbuing their character with a warmth that allows for an instant connection, which makes the terrible things that are about to happen seem that much worse. And, reader, the alleged terrible things need all the help they can get.

Best Trans/Nonbinary Supporting Actor: Mason Alexander Park, National Anthem

Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon, but this movie's depiction of its group of queer ranchers is less "queer joy" and more "queer people shrieking and being terrible to each other and those around them." But Mason Alexander Park gets out scot-free with a layered performance that takes a generic "best friend" character and makes them one of the best elements of the entire movie.

Best Child Actor: Isaac Krasner, Big Boys

I'm always a little loose with my definition of the age range of "child," but so what. It shouldn't be physically possible for an actor who is roughly the same age as the character to be able to deliver such a well-observed performance that should have taken years of practice to pull off. This is why all teenagers on TV are played by 28-year-olds, after all (in addition to child actor labor restrictions), but Krasner is showing them all up.

Best Last-Minute Redemption: Bill Skarsgård

After starting the year with the deeply mediocre Boy Kills World, ol' Bill followed that with a lead role in The Crow, a deeply incompetent movie that nevertheless gets a lot of mileage out of finding more and more improbable in-universe ways to get him to take off his shirt. His grumbling, wheezing, chilling, work in the Christmas Day release Nosferatu came in right under the wire to remind us all that he's a really stellar performer. Unfortunately, this likely means that we will not be seeing his face without it being buried in six inches of monster makeup for another few years.

Best Stunt Casting: Hayley Mills, Trap

Get it? She's the FBI profiler in Trap? Cuz she was in The Parent Trap? What a way to stumble ass-backwards into what is actually pretty great casting.

Best Worst Actor: Russell Crowe, Kraven the Hunter

I don't even know if this is the right category for him, if we're being honest. Crowe's goofy-as-hell Russian accent is a howler. But he's still delivering a pitch-perfect performance as an intimidating father, even with one hand tied behind his back. Maybe next year I'll just fully give up and call this the Tom Hardy Award For Mystifying Accent Choices That Somehow Avoid Ruining The Character.

Best Monologue: Willa Fitzgerald, Strange Darling

There is a monologue this woman delivers from inside an ice box that is performed so compellingly, you either don't realize or don't care that it makes no sense, because she delivers it with perfect verve and emotional clarity. 

Most Confounding British Accent: Catherine O'Hara, Argylle

There's a line of dialogue right after she trots out her British accent where a character points out that she's now speaking with a British accent, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to go "Oh, is that what was happening?" I don't mean to besmirch the woman who gave us Moira Rose's incomparable vocal tones in Schitt's Creek, but British just isn't in everybody's repertoire.

Most Confounding American Accent: Eliza Bennett, An American in Austen

The titular American in Austen in the Hallmark movie is played by a Brit literally named Eliza Bennett, and I couldn't even tell! Usually I'm excellent at sniffing out fake Americans! Good on you, Miss Bennett.

Best Couple: Eloise & Sam, Paging Mr. Darcy

Look, did I think multiple Hallmark movies would end up receiving accolades on this list? Of course not. I'm just as surprised as you. But co-leads Mallory Jansen and Will Kemp are somehow both delivering solid performances (in Hallmark romance movie, the good actor is always one, the other, or none, and never both) and actually craft a romance worth spending 80 minutes with.

Worst Couple: Avery & Logan, Our Little Secret

The happy rom-com ending here seems more like a Shakespearean tragedy after spending 90 minutes with these characters. While Lindsay Lohan's lead is sweet and engaging, Ian Harding's love interest character is frequently unbearably toxic and, when he's not being that, he peaks at milquetoast.

Best Villain: Mr. Reed, Heretic

This movie, which derives its terror from an asshole monologuing at two trapped girls for the better part of 90 minutes, desperately needs the actor bringing that character to life to be equal parts charming and sinister. Enter Hugh Grant, whose entire life has basically been about finding the balance between those two things.

Worst Villain: Delores LaFerve, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

I have truly never seen a villain more obviously searching for a storyline. She keeps poking her head around doorways, practically begging to be useful, and the movie never finds a single interesting thing for her to do other than service some ghastly "ex-wife" comedy.

Best Creepy Little Weirdo: Dan Stevens, Cuckoo

Dan Stevens' eerie German resort manager character is always just popping up to make poor Hunter Schafer's life worse in the smallest, most insidious ways. He's constantly invading her personal space - when he sits on her bed, you'll want to punch him in the face - but there's no moment more skin-crawling than when he has his hand on her shoulder and switches which side he's standing on, trailing his hand along her back while he moves. A beautiful physical performance.

Best Hero: Lee Harker, Longlegs

Longlegs was a bit too arid for me to love it, but Maika Monroe perfectly captured a character who is trying to do good even though she feels disconnected from the world around her, something that drives quite a few unexpectedly hilarious moments.

Worst Hero: Lucius Verus Aurelius, Gladiator II

Lucius is a pretty flat cypher on the page in the first place, but Paul Mescal is doing less than nothing to breathe life into him. I find it hard to imagine a less commanding lead performance in a blockbuster movie, and I saw multiple Sony Spider-Man spinoffs this year.

Best Cameo: Channing Tatum, Deadpool & Wolverine

It turns out, I'm still not immune to MCU cameos. Giving Channing Tatum the chance to finally play Gambit after so many years of lobbying for the role, only to ask him to lean into all the wrong aspects of the character to prove why he probably shouldn't have bothered, is probably the best, snottiest joke of the entire movie.

Worst Cameo: Matthew Goode, Abigail

With many apologies to Mr. Goode, when you reveal your baddie vampire after talking about him for an entire movie, it should be played by someone who would actually be considered a "get." Goode would be solid casting for a vampire in a horror movie, sure, but if they couldn't get a big, cool star to show up for this one scene, they at least needed to get a horror name. Jeffrey Combs would have said yes! He says yes to everything!

Best Costume: The Ceremony Dress, Immaculate

This gets this year's Midsommar award for the dress that is the most exciting to look at but also feels the most powerfully oppressive, with both parts feeding into the other in an endless loop.

Worst Costume: The Word Helmet, Boy Kills World

Why hire Jessica Rothe if you're going to cover up her face for 70% of the movie? And if you're going to do that, why have it be this shitty LED screen that displays random, useless words? The movie thinks this is badass, and the movie is wrong. She might as well be standing outside a food truck, advertising their Taco Tuesday specials.

Best Set: The Library, Wicked

This almost makes up for Gregory Maguire naming the whole place "Shiz."

Worst Set: Kathy's Kafé, Hot Frosty

This is supposed to be a cozy small town café, so why does it look like an Eastern Bloc munitions storage facility? Mind-boggling.

Best Cinematography: Emilia Pérez

I tend to bristle against people defending the aesthetics of movies like The Witch with "it's ugly on purpose," but with Emilia Pérez, I actually kind of get it. It has this harsh, digital vibe that runs through most of it, making everything seem like it's taking place in a demonic discotheque, but it will break into these moments of sheer beauty (like the above shot of spotlights coming on, revealing face after face during a powerful group number) that send your eyes whirling about in your skull. The intrusion of the fantastic might be considerably less powerful if not for the way the other elements of the film are captured.

Worst Cinematography: Arcadian

Arcadian is a post-apocalyptic movie that features some really neat monsters, and I sure wish I could see them. Hell, I wish I could see anything. I understand that low lighting and shakycam help hide the limitations of the CGI, but did we need to hide the limitations of the actors' faces too? Does a scene like, say, the dinner table sequence, need to be shot like the cinematographer was actively doing a TikTok dance while holding the camera?

Best Exposition: Problemista

In a more just world, this movie will do to Isabella Rossellini what March of the Penguins did for Morgan Freeman. Her no-nonsense voiceover is effervescent and becomes the rare work of narration where you feel like she is not only delivering a load-bearing performance, but is even providing some of the best moments of the movie.

Worst Exposition: Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

I had to invent this category this year just so I could celebrate the horrendous scene where Rebecca Hall watches a documentary about her own adopted child so the audience can get up to speed.

Best CGI Creation: The Hand, The First Omen

(spoiler alert) There is a whole-ass demon hand that emerges from a woman's vagina in this movie, and I sure hope that was CGI.

Worst CGI Creation: Rook, Alien: Romulus

Setting aside the huge ethics issues with using AI to recreate a dead actor's image, every time Rook is in motion, he looks like someone carved a bust of Ian Holm out of khaki jello and has begun shaking the pedestal it's resting on.

Best Soundtrack: Anora

It takes a hell of a lot of confidence to take this movie full of electrifying club music and make its major needle drop motif a remix of a Take That song, but you don't hire Sean Baker to be demure.

Worst Soundtrack: Venom: The Last Dance

This soundtrack is just lazy. Every single time, it chooses the most obvious song for the scene. Are we dancing? Throw on "Dancing Queen." Is a character obsessed with aliens? Have them sing "Space Oddity." It's insulting, is what it is.

Best Needle Drop: "One Less Lonely Girl" Justin Bieber, My Old Ass

The glorious Justin Bieber lipsync moment came out of nowhere and is both hilarious and feels entirely well-observed to the lived experience of a bisexual of a certain age.

Worst Needle Drop: "Now and Then" The Beatles, Argylle

I do like this song, but it's entirely inappropriate for the movie, giving it a droning quality where it desperately needs to be peppy. However, my biggest issue is with the fact that "Now and Then" came out just months before the movie did, and is yet meant to have been a fave for the characters across the past several years, which just grinds my gears.

Best Worst Needle Drop: "Memories" Maroon 5, Venom: The Last Dance

This song, which plays over a montage of happy (you guessed it) memories, is at least sappy and hilarious enough that it earns a great big belly laugh, unlike the rest of the movie's ploddingly obvious needle drops.

Best Original Song: "Dance Before We Walk" August Moon, The Idea of You

When you want to write fake songs for a fake One Direction, you should hire some of the guys who wrote "What Makes You Beautiful," because they will turn out this delightful boy band number that feels completely true to the spirit of the exact type of song that would make this exact type of group a sensation.

Worst Original Song: "Bye Bye" Mufasa: The Lion King

The verses on this song are fine. Mads Mikkelsen is certainly not a singer, but for a villainous character song like this, you don't really have to be. But the chorus is juvenile first-draft nonsense that made me laugh so hard I almost projectile vomited in the theater.

Best Musical Sequence: "El Mal" Emilia Pérez

The aggro, staccato nature of the Emilia Pérez musical numbers come to a head here in this sequence that is simultaneously angry, delightful, beautiful, and ugly. It's a true wonder. A highwire act that could have gone wrong at any moment, and yet doesn't.

Worst Musical Sequence: "Defying Gravity" Wicked

Don't get me wrong, none of this is the fault of Cynthia Erivo or Ariana Grande-Butera. They sing the house down, but the movie is so obsessed with prolonging every last moment so it can justify splitting the play into two parts that it needlessly stretches out the natural breaks in the rhythm of the song. There is so. much. dead. air. before you get Erivo really ripping into that riff, and it completely ruins the momentum of a great song that is iconic for a reason.

Best Fictional Horror Movie Pop Star: Skye Riley, Smile 2

Skye is serving looks, she's giving production value, she dances, she sings, she does it all. Sure, a few less of her songs could be about the themes of the movie, but what a star!

Worst Fictional Pop Star: Lady Raven, Trap

I'll give this to Saleka. She could have been much lazier when writing tracks for the movie her dad built as a showcase for her music career. However, her character Lady Raven delivers the exact kind of midtempo pop music that I'm busy ignoring in real life. I don't need it in fiction, either.

Best Monster: Monstro Elisasue, The Substance

Monstro Elisasue has everything. She gives Demi Moore the chance to do some beautiful Bride of Frankenstein face acting, for one. But she also delivers humor (the stagehand somehow not noticing the bulging pile of flesh behind the photo she's stapled to her face) and pathos ("It's still me!") and plenty of gruesome body horror to boot.

Worst Monster: Betelgeuse, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Yup, he's still rapey and gross. Nope, nobody seems to have noticed, yet again. I really don't get the appeal of this guy. The Beetlejuice movies would be so much better without him, which feels like a problem.

Best Cat: Frodo, A Quiet Place: Day One

Frodo! So soft. So pet. Such a survivor. Gotta love him.

Worst Cat: Alfie, Argylle

What the fuck is that? Why is it looking at me? How can I get it to stop?

Biggest Laugh: Breakfast, Strange Darling

When my audience saw how much butter was going into that pan, there was an audible gasp. I don't think there has been a funnier dialogue-free moment in cinemas since Charlie Chaplin was topping the charts.

Biggest Cry: The Future, My Old Ass

Aubrey Plaza is not in as much of this movie as you'd think, but when she is, she delivers absolutely everything it needs in order to propel its thesis about being unable to protect oneself from the future and how that is ultimately A-OK.

Biggest Scream: The Nightmare, Le Vourdalak

Violating the sanctity of the bed is a great way to get under the audience's skin (here's looking at you, The Grudge), and the sudden appearance of the life-size vampire marionette alongside the main character is an excellent shock gag in a year that has been in dire need of some adrenaline.

Biggest Squirm: The Vein, Heretic

(mild spoiler) There's a part of this movie that I'll never forget where Hugh Grant chuckles good-naturedly about accidentally pulling out a character's vein instead of the thing he's digging around in their arm for. Disgusting! Beautiful! Hilarious! Pardon me while I throw up laughing.

Biggest Thirst: The Chokeout, Strange Darling

Kyle Gallner's arms flex so nice when he's strangling someone, don't you think?

Best Kill: Yoga, In a Violent Nature

It has to be seen to be believed. This is truly one of the most ludicrously creative kills I have ever seen depicted onscreen, and I've probably seen more slasher movies than you have had bowel movements.

Biggest Thing I Can't Believe Actually Happened: Off With Her Head, Descendants: The Rise of Red

(spoiler, but who cares) This is still a Disney Channel Original Movie, so it doesn't explicitly say that the Queen of Hearts has decapitated Brandy's Cinderella in the alternate future. But the fact that it doesn't not say it is frankly the most shocking thing about the movie, and the thing that made me respect its unhinged energy the most.

Biggest Scene Stealer: The Carousel Horse, We Live in Time

I've never seen this movie. Probably never will. But c'mon, look at this guy. How could he not be your takeaway from the movie? Florence Pugh could get abducted by aliens at the end and you'd walk out talking about the carousel horse. He's stolen the whole movie, frankly, let alone whatever scene this is.

Best Press Tour: Wicked

May we always hold space for the lyrics of "Defying Gravity." 

This press tour was so much more than that one viral moment, though (as it needed to be, to steal this accolade from Madame Web and Dakota Johnson's obvious antipathy toward it). This tour was oodles and oodles of sweaty, overemotive theater kid energy, horniness for Jonathan Bailey, treating the movie adapted from the musical adapted from the book that is a hamfisted prequel to The Wizard of Oz with so much reverence that it might as well be the Dead Sea Scrolls, and so much more.

Best Post-Credits Scene: Kraven the Hunter

The fact that this movie doesn't have a post-credits scene honestly makes me feel way better about the state of the world. I hope they never stop making these godforsaken things, but I'm glad they've clearly given up all hope that anyone would actually care to see, say, Morbius teaming up with the Vulture to steal Kraven's rhinos or whatever was meant to happen in this misbegotten universe.

Worst Post-Credits Scene: Argylle

OK, so you're vaguely connected to the universe of the Kingsman franchise. I say this as a fan of (most of) those movies: Who the hell cares?

Best Title: Lisa Frankenstein

It just instantly conjures up an image of more or less exactly what the movie is going to deliver.

Worst Title: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Even if it has multiple chapters, one movie can't be a saga, folks. Every time I hear this title, I get 10% angrier.

Best Line: "You want this? It's a marble. I've got a ton of these." Thelma

Thank you, Thelma, for perfectly capturing the experience of having a grandparent.

Worst Line: "Death can mean the end of something or the start of something new. But in your case, it just means death." Tarot

Did I sneakily just include a second best line of the year in here? ...Maybe. But come on, this is undeniably unhinged screenwriting.

Best Worst Line: "I don't have a neuromuscular disorder..." Madame Web

This is more about the context and the delivery, I suppose, but... well, if you know, you know.

Best Poster: Stopmotion

As a movie where the imagery is much more interesting and potent than the actual story it is telling, Stopmotion has a poster that perfectly captures its most fucked-up and exhilirating elements with a simple but powerfully dynamic image.

Worst Poster: It Ends with Us

I don't even know where to begin with this. It would be a boring, kinda off-putting design even if the image wasn't this illegibly dark, low-contrast nonsense. But also... what am I supposed to glean about this movie from looking at the poster? It's all a hash. Throw it out, start again.

Best Poster For a Bad Movie: Joker: Folie à Deux

Elegance! Poise! Lighting! All things this movie doesn't have, but the poster does!

Worst Poster For a Good Movie: Blink Twice

This is a poster where the design is more boring than bad, but yet again it tells you absolutely nothing about the movie itself (which is actually a pretty solid thrill ride - Blink Twice just barely failed to make my Top 10). But what even is this? You're telling me Channing Tatum takes pictures in this movie? Is this a "Say Cheese and Die?" situation? Is the camera cursed like in a J-horror movie? Am I blinking twice because of the flash? The poster does a disservice to the movie by raising all of these questions, because the actual plot has nothing to do with any of this.

Best Trailer: 28 Years Later

The instant descent from Teletubbies into apocalyptic madness? Great. The return of some of the scariest movie monsters of the 21st century? Great. The propulsive, dismal recitation droning on repeat to ratchet up your heart rate? Brilliant. Love it. I'm so ready for this movie.

Worst Trailer: Mean Girls

Much hay has been made about the fact that this movie desperately tried to hide the fact that it was a musical, but a project filled with musical numbers having its trailer lean on a mediocre Megan Thee Stallion closing credits song is just pathetic. (I love Megan, but all closing credits songs written for movies by great artists are mediocre, I don't make the rules.)

Top Five Movie Discoveries

#5 The Shaggy Dog (1959)

I'm passably familiar with the Tim Allen remake, so imagine my surprise when the teenage son turned out to be the titular shaggy dog instead of the dad. And imagine my further surprise when said teenage son proceeds to invoke a curse from the Borgias and then thwart ex-Nazi spies in their attempt to steal government secrets. They really don't make 'em like they used to.

#4 The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)

This horny, creepy, very 1970s thriller about a young woman attempting to hide a dark secret in a lonely home while being either predated upon or failed by every adult in town is an unusual and exhilarating thrill ride featuring one of Jodie Foster's most incandescently disturbing performances.

#3 Fögi Is a Bastard (1998)

This movie exactly tiptoes across the line between being gay softcore smut and European arthouse cinema. It's got a sharp screenplay with an incisive character study, a dazzling aesthetic sensibility, and a deliciously kinky approach to sexuality that makes Call Me By Your Name's peach scene look like an episode of Saved by the Bell.

#2 The Good Son (1993)

The 1990s really were a time when you could drive to a movie theater, buy a ticket, and spend 90 minutes in the dark with a Lifetime movie that has somehow been given a major budget and is allowed to be all jacked up and full of worms. This thriller where Macaulay Culkin tortures his innocent cousin (Elijah Wood) is a deliciously wicked little yarn that also benefits from some jaw-droppingly beautiful location work.

#1 Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire (1987)

I always say that the more words you need in order to describe the genre of a movie, the better it's going to be. Well, the Wikipedia description of Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire calls it a "British independent musical fantasy horror comedy-drama sports film." 

It's an original musical about British class disparity (featuring high and low-class rivals represented by a literal vampire and Billy the Kid, who last I checked isn't from England) as seen through the lens of a snooker tournament. It's super low-budget, but it manages to use light to carve dazzling spaces from its limited set and uses the concrete, bunkerlike nature of the interiors that the filmmakers do have access to in order to craft an eerie dystopian nightmarescape. The music is surprisingly accomplished as well (the vampire has an opera number that is downright mind-blowing), and let me tell you, even with all of this going on, I cared about the outcome of that snooker tournament like nobody's business.

2024 Movie Crush: Lakshya

A man so hot that I actually considered finishing Kill, a movie I turned off halfway through for being exponentially more boring and shoddily produced than its reputation had led me to believe.

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