A Top 2024 List?! Sweet Christmas, but I love lists.
Well, I had my usual jolly time putting up a tree today, filling me with cheer like finding a forgotten bag of Skittles in your jacket because you can't gas up your car without impulse buying snacks. (There's a genetic component, on the father's side.) After a job marginally done, I still had too much energy and I'm ethnically an Indoor Kid on my mother's side, so lets get to it.
(I used numbers, but it's arbitary. I probably watched fewer new movies than I ever have as an adult this year, so there's a ton I missed, but such is life.)
10. The Beekeeper - Jason Statham kicked off 2024 with a film where he kills the people who get rich exploiting your parents and grandparents. Cut to the movie making four times it's budget, and the mandatory sequel will no doubt be labeled dangerous by newly terrified CEO's when the first trailer drops. The plot's a joke, with secret agent super-soldiers straightening out America, but it helps that the stupidest morsels of lore are all delivered, deliciously, by the sensational Jeremy Irons. ("They protect the hive!") It's not the best action movie Statham has ever made, but the third act goes pretty damn hard thanks to a wild twist, and a spectacular fight with a ludicrously tough henchman.
9. Saturday Night - I was pretty wary going into this, a vanity project where Lorne Micheals tells the story of how he heroically forged his legend, a dramatization of the first live show in 1975...and it is a little fawning, but nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. The movie has a breakneck pace, as a young Micheals struggles to sort out corporate concerns about contracts and product placement, his writers room warring with the studio censor ("What's a 'zipper dinner'?" the censor asks), the various building crews clashing with production demands, and so, so many problems with the talent. I think a lot of an individuals enjoyment is gonna come down to how much the show and the people being portrayed mattered to the viewer, with so many impressions of famous stars everyone is bound to feel differently. (Cory Micheal Smith is a huge standout as Chevy Chase) Even if this material is all unknown to you though, the fast pace, constant jokes, charming jazzy soundtrack, and J.K. Simmons's dick will still likely hit the spot.
8. Wicked Little Letters - Probably one of the less seen movies on this list, it's a take on a real, ridiculous scandal from about a century ago, the Littlehampton Libels. Olivia Colman plays a mousy woman who starts recieving insult-laden letters, all swears and slurs, constantly in the mail. It upsets her little world, and her tyrannical father, a petty, pompous, puritanical patriarch. (Say it like Daffy Duck). They quickly accuse their caustic neighbor, a single mother and Irish newcomer to their typical weird English village (and I can say that, I'm British on my landlord's side). Of course she denies it, but only finds support from one of the first women constables in the U.K., and....I don't really want to spoil where it goes from there, but suffice to say it's a fun watch, with a light tone for some pretty sad subjects in places, and a typical amazing performance from Colman.
7. Trap - Speaking of not spoiling things, I don't wanna say a goddamn thing about Trap. If you haven't seen it, just watch it knowing as little as possible, it'll get better and better. Josh Hartnett is a leading man again, bay-beeeee
6. Hit Man - Is Glen Powell the sexiest man in Hollywood? He is in *this* fucking movie, as a philosophy teacher named Gary Johnson, flexes his acting muscles for the FBI, posing as a hitman for hire to nail people out shopping for murder. Inspired by a real guy of the same name, if you can believe it! Hit Man is a showcase for Powell, putting on an array of characters for his various clients (including an alarmingly good Tilda Swinton impression), until a woman (Adria Arjona) looking to rub out her husband falls for one of Gary's cooler, sexier roles....and he maybe loves her back? The tension of maintaining the lie is classic screwball comedy territory, but the relationship itself is more interesting, satisfying, and damned *hotter* than anything on screen this year, or most recent years for that matter. Watch this with someone special, and let 'em know you'd kill for them.
5. Challengers - The action on screen isn't as sexy as Hit Man, but the music sure as shit is. I'm not sure I've heard a soundtrack that fucks like this one from Trent Reznor, and the movie is pretty gorgeous in motion. It's a bit of a tease, if you're going in thinking there's sex and threesomes, but it builds to a fantastic ending.
4. Godzilla Minus One - This one is a cheat, but I couldn't leave it out. It released in theaters everywhere at the end of last year, but for personal reasons that hasn't been an option, so I missed it then. You've heard about Godzilla Minus One, it deserves all it's praise, and is probably the best movie in this 70(!) year old franchise.
3. Furiosa - Fury Road as an epic poem, I don't know how Tarantino keeps saying he'll quit at ten movies when George Miller is over here getting ever more fucking metal with each passing year. Furiosa becomes myth and song in this movie, her origin passed down in the verbal Wordburger tradition of the History Men. Nothing else this year, or maybe any year, looks like this movie, like an angry dream. Despite taking place over decades and jumping around frequently, it also casually throws in two of the best action setpieces ever, while wrangling Chris Hemsworths finest performance, hands down. Apparently he just needed to be in the insane hands of a fellow Austrailian.
2. The Fall Guy - ...WAS MADE FOR LOVING YOU, BAY-BEE. I don't think anyone will like this as much as I did, and the reasons why I do, and who I enjoyed it with are more personal than I'd share online. With that out of the way, we don't do rom-coms all that much anymore. What a treat to get an amazing one starring Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling, as a meticulous but frustrated new director, and a golden retriever in the shape of a stunt man who wants to make her vision a reality. It's inside baseball at times, and theres a slow start, but the sheer infectious fun of this movie, y'all I've watched this nine damn times so far.
1. Hundreds of Beavers - *Incoherent screaming* This fucking movie....it's black and white, damn near dialogue free. Everything seems like a throwback, a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon. Yet, there's a forward thinking element to it. Namely, it's structure is that of a video game. Hundreds of Beavers stars a screaming idiot who starts with nothing, and after the intro cutscene he fails endlessly trying to progress/survive. He slowly learns the behaviors of the animals he needs to hunt, what to use and where to go, checking in occasionally at a trading post where he can exchange his loot for critical new tools that expand his options. Slowly, he circles his way towards the final dungeon, and wraps up the movie in a scene straight out of Donkey Kong Country and...well. Watch it. Watch Hundreds of Beavers, the funniest, and possibly most creative movie of 2024.
Watch Hundreds of Beavers, the most video game movie made to date. We've seen adaptations, and attempts at using game logic and aesthetic, like Boss Level, or Hardcore Henry, but this was the first movie I've watched that nails it.
There's a ton of stuff to watch, these were just the ones I felt like talking about. I heartily recommend others like Conclave, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Lisa Frankenstein, Love Lies Bleeding, Monkey Man, the new Roundup, Bikeriders, Bad Boys, Twisters, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, etc etc...2024 wasn't half bad for movies, EXCEPT....
...Dishonorable Mentions: Drive Away Dolls, Aliens: Romulus, Unfrosted, Argylle, every comic book movie is having a real problem right now oh my god, Madame Web, Joker 2, Hellboy, Deadpool!? Kraven looks to be closing the year out like shit as well. Probably a lot more but it was hard enough remembering this many boring movies.
Oh shit I didn't even see think about TV, this is already too long! Uhh, Arcane/Fallout/Hacks/Elsbeth/Abbott Elementary/The Apothecary Diaries/Shogun/X-Men 97/Star Trek Lower Decks, there's the top 10!
GORSE’S PICK FOR MOVIE OF THE YEAR: Why, it’s Late Night with the Devil! This was a very well-done horror film about the single scariest subject imaginable: 1970s late-night talk shows! A flailing TV host invites a “possessed” girl on-stage during a live broadcast, and let’s just say he gets a little more than be bargained for. 
I also saw Mars Express this year, but I didn’t really like it. The animation was fucking sublime — the French know 3D modelling like no one else — but the story was a bit jumbled and the characters were horribly rote. The movie had loads of neat concepts and ideas, and I cannot overstate how breathtaking it was to see how colourful and lively it all was, but when I say out loud “Oh god, THAT’s where they were going!?” during the ending, there’s a problem. Give this one a watch, but don’t pay money for it. 
