Film and TV Reviews and Podcasts
Now that 2024 is behind us, it’s time to reflect on the past year and share my thoughts on the best films of the year and some stand out moviegoing experiences. Below are my honorable mentions and my top ten movies of the year, along with links to the coverage I provided on the title.
Now that 2024 is behind us, it’s time to reflect on the past year and share my thoughts on the best films of the year and some stand out moviegoing experiences. Below are my honorable mentions and my top ten movies of the year, along with links to the coverage I provided on the title.
On January 16th, our Year in Review episode of The Obsessive Viewer Podcast will come out where Tiny, Mike, and I will do a deep dive on our top ten lists and viewing stats. And this week on Patreon, I will have a full episode breaking down my podcast and writing stats for the year, plus a further breakdown of my honorable mentions.
I set a goal for myself sometime in late October to try to hit 300 by the end of the year. I’m proud to say I was able to reach that goal and managed to watch 300 movies in 2024. This was significantly more than I watched in 2023. It was not quite as easy a feat as I expected, considering I set the goal so late in the year. However, thanks to a couple days of doing not much else besides watching movies, I was able to achieve it!
Of those 300 viewings, 215 of them were “first viewings” while the other 85 were “rewatches” of movies I’d seen before.
69 of my 300 viewings were movies I watched in a movie theater. 57 of which were watched at my local AMC theater and 53 of those were tickets I got with my AMC A-List subscription.
In July, I had an opportunity to see my all-time favorite movie in the theater for the third time since 2019. Seeing the 4K restoration of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai at the Kan-Kan theater in Indianapolis was my favorite theater experience of 2024.
In October, in the wake of some personal hardships, I focused my attention on attending and covering the Heartland Film Festival. I ended up seeing 6 films at Heartland and was able to interview filmmakers on the podcast for the films ReEntry, Off the Record, and The Waiting Game.
Finally, in November, I attended a press preview of the new Alamo Drafthouse ahead of its opening in Indianapolis. Attendees were given a tour of the theater and invited to a complimentary screening of Ron Howard’s 2013 film, Rush. I also went a little out of my comfort zone and created a YouTube video previewing the Alamo Drafthouse.
So, let’s get to my 2024 honorable mentions and top ten list. First, I want to note that of my 300 movies watched last year, 149 of them were 2024 releases. So my honorable mentions and top ten list are drawn from 149 titles. Of course, I didn’t see every 2024 release, so there may be some notable omissions. I didn’t get around to seeing movies like Anora, Kinds of Kindness, Flow, All We Imagine As Light, Will & Harper, or some others.
Sebastian Stan and Adam Pearson are both incredible in this movie. The deep self-loathing Edward experiences throughout the movie is evident in every quiet beat of Stan’s performance. Especially when he’s interacting with Oswald. You can see him quietly wrestling with questioning why he could never be as comfortable in his skin as Oswald is. It’s heartbreaking even as the movie plays with some more humorous tones.
Coverage
His Three Daughters is an incredible depiction of grief and the extremely fragile and sometimes volatile way it can be expressed among a family all going through the same ordeal. The three leads are astounding and give performances that could have easily felt melodramatic but instead are subtle and measured so the bigger personality of one character doesn’t outshine the other, more reserved, characters and vice versa.
Coverage
The People’s Joker is a magnificent and surreal journey through the filmmaker’s personal coming out experience. Through the lens of a heightened and quirky vision of the Batman universe, Vera Drew brings us into her experience toward self-discovery and ultimately embracing who she is.
Coverage
For as long as I live, I will never understand how, of all people, Donald Trump was able to brainwash so many gullible, hateful morons to the point where they became domestic terrorists. And I will never understand how January 6th wasn’t the mass wake up call for the MAGA cult. In the age of short attention spans and aggressive misinformation and disinformation, The Sixth is a vitally important documentary depicting a surreal and horrific event in US history that will be downplayed or outright lied about if we choose not to remember it accurately.
Coverage
Making the protagonist of Smile 2 an ultra famous pop star was an interesting almost inversion of the first movie. The first film was a doctor whose sanity was constantly questioned. Now we have a pop star who generates millions upon millions of dollars for the people around her. So when her sanity is tortured by the entity, people turn a blind eye. I love that Parker Finn found a way to tell a different kind of story within the world he’s built while also building upon the first movie.
Coverage
The level of design and the overall pacing of this movie is pretty astonishing. There’s a sense of impending doom building up to Orlok’s arrival that gives the movie a sense of urgency that runs somewhat counter to the slow and methodical way the characters all come to be aware of the vampire threat.
Even though it’s obviously well-trodden territory in terms of vampire stories, I really love the way Eggers approaches it here. He explores themes like desire, influence, obsession, yearning, possession (to name a handful) while also hitting on the sexual subtext in a way that ties everything together nicely. And it all culminates in a really spectacular final scene.
Coverage
Dune: Part Two It builds off the first movie incredibly well and delivers a stunning adaptation of the rest of the novel.
The scale is massive and the visuals are so stunning. The confidence and care with which Denis Villeneuve tells this story is present in every scene as it expands the universe while also delving into Paul’s journey (and Lady Jessica’s).
Coverage
I Like Movies gets a very specific type of shithead teenager so absolutely right on the money it’s scary.
Lawrence is an entitled jerk but he’s also an insecure introvert whose entire personality centers around his love of movies. Which, in turn, creates lofty hopes for his future born mostly from being completely focused on being an expert/know-it-all about his specific niche. He has an expectation of success without doing anything to achieve it, either out of fear of failure or outright laziness.
The beauty of I Like Movies is, despite all that, Lawrence is worth following and worth rooting for. He says heinous things to people but you still want him to reach an emotional maturity by the end of the movie. That’s incredibly special and makes this a really memorable movie.
Coverage
I really like how Civil War wasn’t an extrapolation of the current political landscape in the US. Instead, Garland chose to depict a more vaguely fictitious fracturing of the US in an effort to drive home how authoritarian regimes led by despots all look the same. The war-torn US shown in Civil War could be anywhere in the world and Nick Offerman’s nameless President could be any leader desperately grasping for absolute power.
This “less is more” approach to the narrative and the backstory gives the movie a ton of room to breathe. And while the characters are admittedly not as well defined as they could be, Civil War does give them plenty to work with and play off as they traverse an increasingly shocking and dangerous America.
Coverage
This movie feels like we’re watching a collection of moments from Wang Wang’s summer that are forming the core memories he’ll carry with him while navigating high school and growing into himself. The movie accomplishes this beautifully by letting us into moments of vulnerability, whether it’s through IMs he doesn’t send or in how he reacts to people who have slighted him or he wants to impress.
Didi is the exact type of coming of age movie I gravitate towards and it has tons to say about the most awkward and vulnerable stages of growing up. In particular, Wang Wang’s desire to fit in and discover his own personality while trying to adopt the personalities of others is incredibly well realized and drives the drama in surprising and subtle ways.
Coverage
I grew up in Speedway, Indiana and researched the specific case this documentary depicts thoroughly in my 20s. With that caveat, I was blown away by The Speedway Murders.
This is not only a thorough examination of the case, but it’s also a caring tribute to the victims that brought me to tears. The narrative segments with the kids start as reenactments but soon evolve into them addressing the different theories surrounding the case to the camera before discussing them as a group.
It’s done with the specific purpose of delivering information to the audience. But on a deeper level, it’s designed to give a voice to those whose voices were silenced 46 years ago. It’s handled with such care that it was almost overwhelming for me. And it leads to an ending that was profound and beautiful.
Coverage
There’s so much substance and subtext to this gargantuan, epic look at the pursuit of an American Dream as promised (in theory). Brady Corbet shows us the reality of that pursuit through László’s post war experience and how his genius and skill is wrought with pain and trauma while also being taken advantage of by those more powerful than him.
The power dynamic explored between Harrison and László brings to mind Daniel Plainview and Paul Sunday in There Will Be Blood with plenty of Kubrickian influence thrown in for good measure as well.
Coverage
I could spend many more hours watching Eisenberg and Culkin play off each other as two cousins who couldn’t be less alike but also can’t be more bonded together. Their performances (especially Culkin’s) are amazing and the chemistry between them is incredible. The script is spectacularly measured when it comes to navigating the comedic beats against the mournful subject matter.
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I am really not good with body horror in movies. So this was definitely an experience for me. My heart was racing, I was shaking throughout it and had some concern I might vomit a little.
But aside from my squeamishness, this movie was absolutely phenomenal. Incredible acting from Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley. The aforementioned imagery was grotesque and horrifying. And the sound design was so visceral that even without as much imagery, the sound would have made me almost as uneasy.
There’s a lot of depth here to mine regarding image, fame, beauty standards, the celebrity machine, and self-perception.
Coverage
I Saw the TV Glow is an incredible and transcendent look at the tragically shattering effects of the mind suppressing one’s sense of identity. Exploring that through this surreal prism of a 90s late night genre show is just the icing on the cake. The way the characters bond over the show and the way the movie pulls us through time as Owen specifically grows and goes through life is laced with layers of characterization that lead to an amazing and profound ending.
I adored this. Jane Schoenbrun took the things that worked for me in We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and expanded upon them for I Saw the TV Glow and left me just blown away.
I haven’t stopped thinking about this movie since I saw it in May.
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And that’s it for 2024! On January 16th, The Obsessive Viewer Podcast‘s 2024 Year in Review episode will be released in which Tiny, Mike, and myself will share our top tens and viewing stats for the year. In the meantime, you can find all of my writing and podcasting for the year on my 2024 Archive page.
Thank you so much for reading, listening, and supporting what I do here! I’m looking forward to more good movies in 2025.
The Obsessive Viewer 