Well, we’re now a quarter of the way through the 21st century. There are still no hoverboards or flying cars, but we are a little closer to sex robots, so swings and roundabouts. One thing that we will always have are movies.
I think we can all agree, that 2024 has not been a remarkable year for movies. Yoda and I covered some of the movies from 1982 a while back, and what an amazing year it was. I still say 1999 was better. No one will look back at this year and say it stands out as anything memorable.
I’m not going to go over every movie and TV series of the year, that would take forever and I just don’t want to. We can, however, go through the year and look at some of what came out. Does that sound like fun? Look, we’re doing this anyway, so relax and go to your happy place.
January
Biggest movies of that month:
- Night Swim
- The Count of Monte Cristo
- The Beekeeper
- Mean Girls – The Musical
- Cowboy Bepop: The Movie
- Hundreds of Beavers
A mixed bag there, I didn’t finish Night Swim as it was pretty awful. Although I quite liked Mean Girls, I remember having a good time with it. Same with Hundreds of Beavers.
February
Biggest movies of the month:
- Argylle
- Mr & Mrs Smith (Series)
- Lisa Frankenstein
- Madame Web
- Bob Marley: One Love
Argylle was a shame, as it had potential, but it just wasn’t good. And remember when Madame Web came out and we all thought it was the worst of the superhero movies?
March
Biggest movies of the month:
- Dune: Part 2
- Spaceman
- Poor Things
- Kung Fu Panda 4
- Imaginary
- Arthur The King
- The American Society of Magical Negroes
- Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
- Sleeping Dogs
- Immaculate
- Late Night with the Devil
- Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey
- Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
There’s a lot of titles there, but not much to talk about. I will say, that overall, I was a little disappointed with Dune 2. After the first one, it was just a bit of a letdown and finished too quickly.
Poor Things was interesting and you saw Emma Stone’s boobs. Immaculate was interesting and you didn’t see Sydney Sweeney’s boobs. The rest of the titles were very much ‘I have seen them, but couldn’t tell you a thing about them now’.
April
Biggest movies of the month:
- Wish
- The First Omen
- Monkey Man
- Civil War
- Sting
- Fallout (Series)
- The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
- Abigail
- Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver
- Challengers
This was a little more like it. Monkey Man was pretty good, the Fallout series surprised everyone. Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare was the fix we needed after Argylle and Abigail was a fun horror.
The director’s cut of Rebel Moon came out, but I’ll be damned if I was going to watch them.
May
Biggest movies of the month:
- I Saw the TV Glow
- The Fall Guy
- Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
- IF
- The Strangers: Chapter 1
- Back to Black
- The Garfield Movie
- Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
- In a Violent Nature
Personally, I liked Furiosa, but it’s not Fury Road. The Strangers was terrible! Both The Fall Guy and Kingdom of the Apes were OK, but again, instantly forgettable.
June
Biggest movies of the Month:
- The Acolyte (Series)
- Bad Boys: Ride or Die
- Inside Out 2
- The Watchers
- The Exorcism
- The Bikeriders
- Kinds of Kindness
- Horizon: An American Saga
- A Quiet Place: Day One
The Acolyte hit a new low for Star Wars, and that’s saying something! Bad Boys wasn’t terrible, but again, instantly forgettable. I never finished Horizon or Kinds of Kindness.
July
Biggest movies of the month:
- Despicable Me 4
- Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
- Fly Me to the Moon
- Longlegs
- Twisters
- Oddity
- Deadpool & Wolverine
Obviously, one of the biggest movies of the year was Deadpool & Wolverine. It wasn’t that good, but it gave the nerds what they wanted.
Personally, Longlegs was one of the best movies of the year for me. A very well-made horror, which I’m still mulling over now.
August
Biggest movie of the month:
- Trap
- Harold at the Purple Crayon
- It Ends with Us
- Borderlands
- Alien: Romulus
- Terminator Zero (Series)
- The Crow
- Blink Twice
- The Killer
- Reagan
- Afraid
- Slingshot
Borderlands was one of the biggest flops of the year, and in 2024, that’s saying something. The Crow was a horrible remake, as was Alien: Romulus, as it was just a rehash of the original movies.
September
Biggest movies of the month:
- Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
- Transformers One
- Speak No Evil
- Am I Racist?
- Never Let Go
- The Substance
- Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
- The Wild Robot
- The Penguin (Series)
- Hellboy: The Crooked Man
- Apartment 7A
At first, I loved The Substance, but as one of the Outposters pointed out, the story made zero sense if you thought about it. This really annoyed me.
Hidden gems were Transformers One and The Wild Robot. The Penguin came out of nowhere and surprised everyone with how good it was.
October
Best of the month
- Salem’s Lot
- Joker: Folie a Deux
- V/H/S Beyond
- Saturday Night
- Terrifier 3
- The Apprentice
- Smile 2
- Venom: The Last Dance
- Conclave
Do you even remember that Salem’s Lot came out? I did see it, but have no memory of it now. Horror sequels came and went, although even I found the Terrifier 3 too much.
Joker might have been the greatest troll in cinema history, or just one of the worst movies of the year.
November
Best of the month
- Here
- Juror No 2
- Heretic
- Red One
- Wicked!
- Gladiator 2
- Moana 2
Heretic turned out to be one of my favorites of the year, a very well-made game of chess, with an excellent cast.
I did not like Gladiator 2, it was a terrible version of the original movie. I have not seen Wicked yet.
December
Best of the month
- Y2K
- Nightbitch
- The Order
- LotR: The War Of The Rohirrim
- Kraven: The Hunter
- Carry-On
- Mufasa: The Lion King
- Babygirl
- Nosferatu
I started LotR, but I don’t think I’ll finish it. The animation is nice, and reminds me of the good old days of Akira, but the story is far too aimed at the ‘modern audience’.
Eventually, I might drag myself to the cinema to see Nosferatu, but also, I might just wait until streaming. Whichever, it’ll be 2025 before I see it now.
Best of 2024
My personal best movies and shows for 2024 are hard to pin down. I don’t think I have an order for them, but some of the better movies, in my opinion, were:
- Longlegs
- Heretic
- Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
- Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
- The Penguin
That’s about it. I didn’t put Dune 2 on there, as I felt it was a letdown on the second viewing and I haven’t been back. Everything else was just “meh” in content. The type of movie I might put on in the background, when it’s on terrestrial TV, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to watch it again.
Summary
For me, my main takeaway is how many movies I started to watch and then never bothered to finish; Horizon, Night Swim, I Saw the TV Glow, In A Violent Nature, Kinds of Kindness, the list goes on of things I doubt I’ll ever finish. 2024 has been a very mediocre year for movies, with nothing that special.
Now over to you. What was your movie of the year? What was in your top ten (or top five if you can’t manage 10)?