2024--The Year's Movies In Review

Ikarie XB-1	Jindřich Polák	1963
Gothic	Ken Russell	1986
Ronin	John Frankenheimer	1998	rewatch
The Lair of the White Worm	Ken Russell	1988
Detective Bureau 2-3: Go To Hell Bastards!	Seijun Suzuki	1963
The Spy Who Loved Me	Lewis Gilbert	1977	rewatch
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia	Sam Peckinpah	1974
Až přijde kocour [The Cassandra Cat]	Vojtěch Jasný	1963
The Long Goodbye	Robert Altman	1973	rewatch
Inside Llewyn Davis	Joel and Ethan Coen	2013
The Limey	Steven Soderbergh	1999	rewatch
The Cat From Outer Space	Norman Tokar	1978
American Fiction	Cord Jefferson	2023
Gone In 60 Seconds	H. B. Halicki	1974
Thomasine and Bushrod	Gordon Parks, Jr.	1974
From Russia With Love	Terrence Young	1963	rewatch
Stalker	Andrei Tarkovsky	1979
Solaris	Steven Soderbergh	2002
Ishtar	Elaine May	1987
The Master	Paul Thomas Anderson	2012
I'm Not There	Todd Haynes	2007
The Blackcoat's Daughter	Osgood Perkins	2015
The Cat Creeps	Erle C. Kenton	1946
The Devils	Ken Russell	1971
Phantom of the Paradise	Brian DePalma	1974
John Wick	Chad Stahelski and David Leitch	2014
John Wick: Chapter 2	Chad Stahelski	2017
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum	Chad Stahelski	2019
Hundreds of Beavers	Mike Cheslik	2024
Exhuma	Jang Jae-hyun	2024
Star Trek: The Motion Picture	Robert Wise	1979	rewatch
Hopscotch	Ronald Neame	1980	rewatch
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan	Nicholas Meyer	1982	rewatch
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock	Leonard Nimoy	1984	rewatch
Dawn of the Dead	George Romero	1978	rewatch
Heat	Michael Mann	1995
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home	Leonard Nimoy	1986	rewatch
Wicked Little Letters	Thea Sharrock	2023
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier	William Shatner	1989	rewatch
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country	Nicholas Meyer	1991	rewatch
Targets	Peter Bogdanovich	1968
After Hours	Martin Scorcese	1985
Limbo	Ivan Sen	2023
Scanners	David Cronenberg	1981	rewatch
2001: A Space Odyssey	Stanley Kubrick	1968	rewatch
À bout de souffle [Breathless]	Jean-Luc Godard	1960	rewatch
This Is Spinal Tap	Rob Reiner	1984	rewatch
Furiosa	George Miller	2024
Mad Max	George Miller	1979	rewatch
Mad Max 2 [The Road Warrior]	George Miller	1981	rewatch
Don't Look Now	Nicolas Roeg	1973
In A Violent Nature	Chris Nash	2024
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome	George Miller and George Ogilvie	1985	rewatch
Mad Max: Fury Road	George Miller	2015	rewatch
Godzilla Minus One	Takashi Yamazaki	2023
Gojira [Godzilla]	Ishirō Honda	1954	rewatch
Godzilla Raids Again	Motoyoshi Oda	1955
The Trouble With Harry	Alfred Hitchcock	1955
Path To War	John Frankenheimer	2002
Noises Off	Peter Bogdanovich	1992
Kumo no Mukō, Yakusoku no Basho [ 'Beyond the Clouds, the Promised Place'; The Place Promised in Our Early Days]	Makoto Shinkai	2004
The Company of Wolves	Neil Jordan	1984	rewatch
Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant [Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person]	Ariane Louis-Seize	2023
Kinds of Kindness	Yorgos Lanthimos	2024
Rodan	Ishirō Honda	1956
Oddity	Damian Mc Carthy	2024
Longlegs	Osgood Perkins	2024
Gambit	Ronald Neame	1966
Shichinin no Samurai [Seven Samurai]	Akira Kurosawa	1954	rewatch
Repo Man	Alex Cox	1984	rewatch
Blow-Up	Michelangelo Antonioni	1966
Blow Out	Brian De Palma	1981
Streets of Fire	Walter Hill	1984	rewatch
Caligula [Ultimate Cut]	Tinto Brass	1979 [2023]
M*A*S*H	Robert Altman	1970
Secret Honor	Robert Altman	1984
The Last of Shelia	Herbert Ross	1973
Paris, Texas	Wim Wenders	1984
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension	W.D. Richter	1984	rewatch
Dune: Part One	Denis Villeneuve	2021	rewatch
Dune: Part Two	Denis Villeneuve	2024
The Forbidden Room	Guy Maddin	2015
The Fog	John Carpenter	1980
Dead of Night	Alberto Cavalcanti  Charles Crichton  Robert Hamer  Basil Dearden	1945
A Field In England	Ben Wheatley	2013
Kill List	Ben Wheatley	2011
Hotel Transylvania	Genndy Tartakovsky	2012
The American Astronaut	Cory McAbee	2001
The King of Comedy	Martin Scorsese	1982
Mothra vs. Godzilla	Ishiro Honda	1964	rewatch
Conclave	Edward Berger	2024
Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird	Steven-Charles Jaffe	2013
Curse of the Demon	Jacques Tourneur	1957	rewatch
Hundreds of Beavers	Mike Cheslik	2024	rewatch
Hundreds of Beavers	Mike Cheslik	2024	rewatch
Nosferatu	Robert Eggers	2024
loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies	Matthew Galkin and Steven Cantor	2006	rewatch
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans	Werner Herzog	2009

 

I wasn't sure I'd post the 2024 movies list so quickly after the reading list, but it's 11:30 on New Year's Eve and I don't think I'm watching another movie after finishing the year with Herzog's demented (in the best possible way) Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.  So this is the year's list.

I don't think it's a terribly hard challenge to figure out which movie brought me the most joy this year: it's very possible I didn't need to list Mike Cheslik's Hundreds of Beavers every single time I watched it, but since I was logging rewatches as well as first viewings, well, there it is.  And I laughed just as hard the second time as the first, and as hard the third time as the second even though I wound up watching it a third time with family just a few days after watching the second time while sick.

Most of the theatrical releases we saw this year were viewed around the corner at our local indie arthouse; the exceptions, I think, were Furiosa and Longlegs, and I have to be honest that the experience of seeing a movie in the cineplex in 2024 was not nearly worth the trouble of going out of my way to see anything in a chain theatre next year; the local indie place has character and big enough screens, the chain theatre has a thoroughly alienating experience of buying a ticket from a digital kiosk and sitting through what I think was a half-hour of advertising before getting to trailers for movies that all looked terrible.  I'm honestly not sure why the studios or the theatre chains think I'd want to see a movie at an AMC or Regal affiliate when they're consistently offering an experience that's less inviting than just streaming something on Criterion or Max or even Netflix.

One might be able to figure out from the list that the local indie did a run of Summer of 1984 films.  It was a good series; indeed a great series.  I'm especially pleased that I got to rewatch Repo Man, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, The Company of Wolves, and Streets of Fire for the first times in decades (the Scatterkat also got to see them for the first time, which was also joyous; friends, these cult classics gained at least one new cultist this year).  1984 was a remarkable year for film, though I don't think I even realized just how remarkable until the Independent ran their series.

One might also note that I wound up rewatching the entire Original Cast Star Trek franchise, the entire Road Warrior franchise, and started a rewatch/watch of the Toho Studios kaiju films, though I've only gotten as far as the third or fourth Shōwa Era entry.  2025 will see a continuation of that project.  One will also see that I finally got around to the first three John Wick films (hopefully the fourth will show up on one of the services we subscribe to next year--how could it not?).

Of the films I watched in 2024 that debuted in 2024, I think I'd have to say the best was either Conclave or Furiosa; both brilliantly acted, beautifully shot, beautifully directed, and each in their way science-fictioney presentations of a surreal alternate universe obeying its own narrative logic.  I'm afraid I can't care much if that observation offends anyone when applied to Conclave: in its way, Conclave is as much a depiction of a weird alien universe as Villeneuve's Dune: Part One and Part Two are.

Speaking of which: I think Dune: Part One isn't as good as the first half of Frank Herbert's novel and I think that Dune: Part Two is superior to the second half of Frank Herbert's novel.

There's a fair number of horror movies listed, including some recent ones, but the scariest movie I saw this year may have been, of all things, Peter Bogdanovich's Targets.  Who can even say why a movie about an overly well-armed crazy American deciding to randomly shoot people with a small arsenal he's accumulated would seem plausibly frightening... oh, yeah... right.  No, but seriously: it's actually a little depressing realizing that a 1968 film about a mass murderer is not only still relevant, but that if there's an issue with the setup, it's only that the movie's shooter is less well-armed with less powerful weapons than a 2024 spree killer would have easy access to.  And that's the kind of progress we've made in the last 56 years.

The biggest surprise of the year may have been Elaine May's Ishtar, which more than deserves the critical reappraisals it's received in more recent years.  Contrary to what you may have heard, it's good.  Not great.  The third act is a mess, just an utter mess, and some of the gags have not aged well in the past 37 years.  But Hoffman and Beatty are... funny, believe it or not.  (And of course, Charles Grodin was never anything less than great.)  It's pretty much a movie that got cut down because critics had knives out for Warren Beatty for reasons that hardly seem like anything now.  If you haven't given it a shot, give it a shot.

Anyway, it was a good year for movie watching, and these are the movies I watched this year.