The movie list lives on. A bit late, and fewer movies, but I can at least say that my streak of ranking every movie I’ve watched for the last 19 years continues. I think this is the fewest movies I’ve watched in that stretch, for a couple reasons. One is that coaching basketball took up just about all of my free time, and more significantly a foot injury kept me off the treadmill in the morning for the last six months, which is where I watch a lot of my movies. Hopefully next year I’ll get back into the 40’s or higher. The good news is that my top 5 movies were all really great. Each of my top 5 would’ve been number 1 last year. On to the list!
30. Send Help Just a truly terrible movie. The premise sounded fun - a misogynistic boss and his cronies are flying to a meeting with an underappreciated coworker (Rachel McBride) when the plane crashes and the two of them are the only survivors on a tropical island. The tables are turned after he is injured in the crash and she turns out to be a survival expert. What could’ve been campy fun turns out to be a downer and all of the characters are so unlikeable there’s no one to root for.
29. Barbarian After watching and loving Weapons (we’ll get to it near the top of this list), I was interested in checking out director Zach Krieger’s earlier horror film, Barbarian. It’s a good setup for a horror movie; two guests arrive with reservations to the same AirBNB house in a run down part of town. From the moment the two of them meet, tensions rise and you find yourself waiting for something bad to happen. It definitely does when they venture down into the basement of the house. There are some similarities to Weapons in how the story is told with multiple points of view, but to me it was much less successful in pulling off the end of the story once the creature is revealed. I enjoyed the first two acts but the last third lost me.
28. Honey Don’t Together Joel and Ethan Cohen together made some of the greatest movies of the last 30 years; No Country for Old Men, Fargo, Raising Arizona, O Brother Where Art Thou, True Grit, etc. By himself Ethan Cohen has made Drive Away Dolls and Honey Don’t, two overly sexual, under-interesting and completely forgettable caper movies that make me hope that he goes back to making movies with his brother.
27. The Old Guard 2 Netflix action movie staring Charlize Theron as the leader of an immortal group of warriors that fight to protect the world. The original was surprisingly fun, this one was…meh. It was nice to see Uma Thurman acting for the first time in what seems like years.
26. Searching In Searching John Cho plays a single father whose daughter mysteriously goes missing. When he can’t get answers, the dad goes onto her laptop and phone and starts trying to figure out what happened. The story is told almost entirely in videos, text messages, and online communication. It’s a mildly entertaining plot device, but the story is so convoluted that by the end you’re left saying “oh come on” rather than being surprised by the twists.
25. The Amateur You know all those Liam Neeson movies where his wife gets killed or his daughter gets kidnapped and then he uses a very particular set of skills to get revenge? Well, this is one of those, but with Rami Maleek as a computer programer for the CIA whose wife is killed, and well, you know the rest.
24. Night Always Comes Portland author and musician Willy Vlautin has written a number of books (and songs) that explore the underbelly of the Pacific Northwest. They usually feature down on their luck character that try to find hope and beauty in their struggle to get by. In Night Always Comes, Vanessa Kirby plays a woman with a difficult past trying to find a way to keep the home she, her mom, and her brother (who has Down syndrome) grew up in before they are kicked out. Her mom can’t be counted on to help with the house or with her brother, and Kirby becomes increasingly desperate to find a way to get the money, making worse and worse decisions as the night goes on. I really wanted to like this because I’m such a big fan of Vlautin’s books, but I typically don’t enjoy stories where someone is in a downward spiral and you can tell that it’s going to end poorly (Uncut Gems being a recent example). It’s not a bad movie, but for a film that could’ve been a really devastating look at a pressing issue (housing insecurity in the Portland area), it felt a bit over the top.
23. 28 Years Later More than 20 years after 28 Days Later became a zombie apocalypse classic, director Danny Boyle returned to direct the second sequel in the series. A lot of people thought this was great, but I just couldn’t get into it. The original was uniquely terrifying because the zombies infected with the rage virus didn’t just stagger, they sprinted after their potential victims. In 28 Years Later, the zombies seem to be evolving to keep more of their human characteristics and become smarter. In the midst of the violence, Ralph Fiennes plays a semi-mad doctor that manages to stay alive and cleanses the bodies of the people that have died in the violence. It’s just ok. There is another sequel to this sequel that also came out this year. I watched the first 10 minutes and the violence was too much.
22. House of Dynamite If this was just the first 90 minutes it would’ve been a top 10 movie for me. But I can’t think of many movies where the ending has so completely changed my opinion of a film. An incredible cast, a terrifying premise (nuclear missiles launched on the United States), and a tense look at the situation from multiple different perspectives, all made by a Best Picture director. And then, it just stops.
21. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere Deliver Me From Nowhere is a biopic set in the period right after Springsteen burst onto the scene with the album Born to Run. He’s gone from a local act to someone with a national profile, and all the accolades but also the pressure that comes with it. It was a trying time for The Boss (before he was The Boss), who struggled with depression knowing that the quiet, acoustic music he wanted to make was at odds with what the studio executives wanted and expected after Born to Run. The sessions ended up producing what became the album Nebraska, as well as many of the songs that would form the backbone a couple years later of Born in the U.S.A. I love Bruce Springsteen. He’s a top 10 all-time musician for me, maybe even top 5. But I have to admit I couldn’t ever really get into the movie. It was fine, and maybe it was just that I couldn’t get over Jeremy Allen White playing Springsteen. His Bruce wasn’t bad, but I felt like I was watching Carmy, not The Boss the entire movie. Maybe it’s because I know Springsteen and his story so well that it was hard for me to suspend disbelief. I did enjoy a supporting role by the Jamie Taco guy, though.
20. Friendship I really, really wanted to put this movie in my top 10. Tim Robinson is one of my favorite people on the planet. If you don’t know who Robinson is, he started as a writer/actor on Saturday Night Live. Despite some great skits (John Tesh’s brother), his stuff was a little too weird for SNL. He and good friend Sam Richardson had their own show, Detroiters that ran for two years on Comedy Central. It’s great. After that he had a Netflix special called The Characters, which was so great they gave him his own sketch comedy show, I Think You Should Leave, which is one of my all-time favorite TV shows. More recently he filmed the first season of another good show on HBO called The Chair Company. All that to say, he has a great track record, and the prospect of a feature movie with him AND Paul Rudd, I had enormous expectations. Friendship had some funny moments, but unfortunately the uncomfortable humor from a short skit on I Think You Should Leave doesn’t hold up quite as well in a feature length movie. My favorite part of the movie is actually a scene that got cut, but made its way onto the internet. In fact, I’d recommend just watching the full cut of the garage scene (which is just Tim and ITYSL regular Connor O’Malley improving) instead of watching the movie: https://www.reddit.com/r/IThinkYouShouldLeave/comments/1mj6qg8/friendship_2024_extended_garage_scene_with_connor/
19. The Rip I will watch any movie with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. After The Instigators last year, my faith was beginning to wane. Were they washed up as a creative duo? I’m not sure The Rip totally puts that to rest, but it was a solidly entertaining movie. Affleck and Damon play Miami cops that go on a drug rip at a stash house, only to find much much more money than they thought. Things get tense as everyone on the crew begins to wonder who they can trust while they count the money and try to figure out what to do with it. The setup is pretty great, and the director does a nice job of ratcheting up the tension as every minute passes. Once the climax arrives it ends up a little too over the top and it doesn’t quite stick the landing, but overall I thought it was a very entertaining watch.
18. Jay Kelly Goerge Clooney is Jay Kelly, an aging movie star, loved by the public, but facing a mid-life crisis as he’s set to be recognized for a career achievement award that he’s not sure he wants. Jay is surrounded by a team of yes men, including Adam Sandler and Laura Dern that cater to his every need. As he searches for who he wants to come with him to receive the award, he begins to realize that his real relationships are all shallow or broken. He’s divorced and he’s barely involved in his daughter’s life. When he tries to reconcile with his father, he realizes he’s as difficult as ever. A reunion with an old acting classmate ends terribly. As he is faced with the realization that the only friends he has now are people that he pays, his colleagues begin to question where their undying loyalty to Jay has gotten them. On its surface it’s a movie about an actor, but it speaks to a common story of sacrificing family and relationships for a job, of being loved by many for your skill and your work, while not really being known by the people that are close.
17. Ballad of a Small Time Player A Netflix movie that I went in with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised. Colin Farrel plays a gambler living in Macao, using an assumed name and on the run from old debts and relationships. He connects with a mysterious woman working at the casino, and their relationship changes his story in an interesting way.
16. A Gorilla Story 50 years ago, David Attenborough filmed one of his most iconic scenes. While shooting a scene for a nature documentary, he approached a group of mountain gorillas, and in doing so a curious young gorilla came over and laid on top of him and began to play. It’s a scene that is guaranteed to make you smile, but also to wonder at the connection shared between the two species. The young gorilla, named Pablo, went on years later to become the dominant silverback in the entire area. 5 decades later, the filmmakers went back and made a documentary about this group, now called the Pablo group, and it is narrated by none other than 100 year old David Attenborough himself. Attenborough is an international treasure. His signature whispered voice, barely containing his excitement for what he is seeing is what I will always associate with nature documentaries. When (if?) he ever stops working, it will leave an incredible void as the man that has done more to illuminate that natural world than any other narrator in the history of nature documentaries. This documentary is a wonderful way to appreciate what will surely be one of the last films he narrates.
15. F1 Pure fun. I’m not quite sure how or why it was nominated for Best Picture, but F1 was a really enjoyable watch. If you’ve ever watched any kind of sports movie, you have seen this formula before. Brad Pitt plays the aging veteran, Damson Idris plays the young up-and-comer forced to team up by owner Javier Bardem. They predictably butt heads, and predictably figure it out to find success. Nothing particularly creative or unique here, and even though I’m not an F1 guy, I thought the racing scenes were really fun, and Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem are fun in just about everything they do.
14. The Order A surprisingly solid police procedural, set in the Pacific Northwest. Jude Law plays a detective trying to solve a series of violent robberies that end up being connected to a white supremacist group in Idaho, led by Nicholas Hoult. Good acting, a couple of good action scenes, and a disturbing picture of the “normalcy” of the white supremacists until they are brought into the light.
13. Elway Sports documentary about one of my all-time favorite athletes. I really loved watching this. I can’t say I learned too much new, but it was great to re-live the highlights of Elway’s career, from Stanford to the Broncos in the NFL. Elway’s career had an incredible narrative arc - highly touted number 1 pick, expected franchise savior, crushing defeats in the Super Bowl that left people questioning if he could ever get over the top, and late career redemption with consecutive championships to end his career, and then a championship as general manager and architect of the team he played for.
12. Frankenstein Best Picture Nominee. A retelling of the classic story directed by Guillermo Del Toro, with Oscar Isaac as Dr. Frankenstein, and Jacob Elordi as his creation. I wasn’t blown away, but I enjoyed it. I’ve never read the book, and I think I’ve only seen bits and pieces of the original movie, but I thought the take on the relationship between monster and creator was interesting. The ending is a powerful moment in the film, but probably my biggest quibble with the film is that the transformation felt “unearned” - a redemptive arc without any process that would’ve led to the redemption.
11. Highest 2 Lowest I’m not sure why this didn’t get a little more hype. Spike Lee directs Denzel Washington and Jeffery Wright in a modern retelling of Kurosawa’s High and Low. Washington is a music executive whose son gets kidnapped for a huge ransom. Wright is his longtime driver and confidant. But when it turns out the kidnapping isn’t what we thought, the friendship and loyalty are tested.
10. The Secret Agent Sounds like a spy movie, but it’s actually a period piece, set in 1970’s Brazil, where Wagner Moura’s character is in hiding for fear of political violence. A best picture nominee, the story is well told and filled with interesting characters. My only complaint is that despite its long run time, it felt like a very important chunk of the movie was omitted.
9. Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning Mission Impossible is probably my favorite action franchise. Tom Cruise started making these movies 30 years ago, and every chapter has managed to be entertaining in its own way. I thought the previous entry, Dead Reckoning was one of the best in the series. The Final Reckoning is entertaining, but not quite as spectacular as some of its predecessors. Like usual there’s a crisis facing the world, this time around an AI entity that could wipe out humanity. Esai Morales as the main bad guy, Gabriel wasn’t an especially memorable villain, more of a bland “bad guy” than anything actually terrifying.
8. The Phoncian Scheme This is middle of the road Wes Anderson, but I’d be happy to get a new Wes Anderson movie every year. Benicio Del Toro stars, and like everything he’s in, he’s great. I might go as far to say he’s my current favorite actor. It’s not Anderson’s best, but it’s fun and worth watching.
7. Bugonia Hands down the weirdest movie I watched this year, but surprisingly good. Jesse Plemons plays Teddy, a conspiracy theorist convinced that drug company CEO Michelle (Emma Stone) is an alien. It’s quite the ride. Stone is excellent as the executive trying to figure out what exactly is going on and why she’s been kidnapped. Teddy and cousin Don seem to get more and more detached from reality and more violent as the kidnapping stretches on. It’s a movie you watch with a vague sense of dread that something bad is right around the corner, but also a sense of curiosity about where this is headed. All that I’ll say is where it’s headed is wild.
6. Wake Up Dead Man Despite being the third movie in the Knives Out franchise, Wake Up Dead Man manages to feel fresh. All three Knives Out movies are ensemble whodunits. The original was brilliant, I think it reminded everyone why people like this type of movie when it’s done well. Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc was iconic. The sequel, Glass Onion, had its moments, but felt like a sequel. Wake Up Dead Man managed to rise above Glass Onion in part because of its nuanced take on faith and the modern culture wars. Josh O’Connel plays a Catholic priest whose quick temper gets him assigned to a remote parrish with a domineering leader in Josh Brolin that preaches fire and brimstone to his devoted congregation while scaring just about everyone else away. There’s a muder to solve, of course, which is where Benoit Blanc gets involved, but the conversation around faith and the role of the modern church is what makes this a surprisingly great watch.
Top 5 (All really great movies)
5. Weapons I’ve always said that I don’t really like horror movies, but this is not the first year that I’ve had multiple horror movies in my top 10. Horror movies are definitely having a bit of a moment right now. A lot has been written about how horror films can be made on a small budget and pretty reliably produce decent to good ticket sales. But I also think that there’s something larger going on. It’s become a genre that allows directors to explore ideas about some of our fears in mind-bending ways. Kubric was the master of this (2001, Clockwork Orange, The Shining), and I think of the early Alien movies as being excellent examples. In recent years Get Out, Us, It, and Sinners are all great scary stories that hold up with any Best Picture nominees. Add Weapons to that list. The concept? A teacher walks into her 4th grade class, and all but one student is gone. When police begin to investigate and look at doorbell cameras and surveillance footage, they realize that all of the kids ran out of their houses at the exact same time in the middle of the night. No one can figure out where the missing children went, and the town begins to turn on each other and on the teacher that some of them think is to blame. The story is creepy and violent at times, but part of what makes it great is the way the story is told. Director Zach Kreiger is a director to keep an eye on, and hopefully this is the start of a great career.
4. Sinners Sinners was maybe the most fun I had watching a movie all year. On the surface it doesn’t seem like a “Best Picture Nominee” type movie. Michael B. Jordan plays twins that come home to Mississippi after working in organized crime in Chicago. I’ve found that a number of people were turned off by the supernatural aspect of the movie, but I thought that was part of what made it great. Yes, there are vampires in the movie, but the vampires are as much allegorical as they are actual characters in the movie, literally stealing the music from the black performers in one powerful scene. The music in the movie is part of what makes it truly special. My favorite scene in any movie this year was the scene in the juke joint where Delroy Lindo starts playing the blues, but as the camera pans the music draws connections between centuries of Black musical expression. The song is incredible (it should’ve won Best Original Song), and the dance and camerawork is mesmerizing. I went back and watched that scene at least 10 times I thought it was so great.
3. One Battle After Another This was a well deserved Best Picture winner, with a great cast, an entertaining story, fantastic action, and a plot that couldn’t be more of the moment. Teona Taylor and Leo DiCaprio play activists in the French 76, a revolutionary group fighting the U.S. government and its anti-immigration tactics. There is just so much going on here there isn’t a single dull moment. It’s funny, as in when an older and drug-fried DiCaprio tries to remember a safehouse password, it’s thought provoking, and it’s just fun. Any time Sean Penn or Benicio Del Toro are on the screen they steal the show. Seriously, who is a better actor right now than Del Toro? Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies have always been interesting to me, but this was the one that I enjoyed watching the most.
2. Project Hail Mary A nearly perfect book adaptation, in fact I think I enjoyed the movie even more than the book, and I loved the book. Everything about this movie seemed to be tailored for me to love it. The hero is a science teacher, which is obviously awesome and should happen more often. Ryan Gosling was a perfect choice for the lead. Like The Martian (Andy Weir’s previous book that was adapted into a movie), it’s science fiction, but there’s a lot of pretty interesting (and creative) science throughout the story. It’s a terrifically fun story of a journey to another solar system to try to save the Earth, but the most memorable part of the movie is the relationship between Gosling and Rocky, the alien he befriends. Why can’t Hollywood make more great original movies like this?
1. Train Dreams An unexpected gift of a film, Train Dreams shares a throughline with stories like A River Runs Through It (my favorite book); set in a naturally beautiful landscape, beautifully shot, poignant with a sense of loss hovering throughout. Joel Edgerton plays Robert Grainier, a loner on the Western frontier in the 1800’s. Granier is a good man, trying to make a living in the tough worlds of railroad construction and logging. He meets Gladys (Felicity Jones), and they make a life together in a cabin they build in rural Idaho. He is increasingly torn between heading off into the woods to work to provide for his family, and the sadness of leaving them behind for months at a time. Working in the woods he sees violence, but also beauty in the setting and some of the characters he meets along the way. William H. Macy plays a particularly memorable old-timer. It’s a movie I would’ve enjoyed without any dialogue, just the scenery and sound of the Northwest forests. But Will Patton’s narration adds a depth and poignance that made it my favorite. This was the only movie I watched twice this year, and I was so taken by the movie that I bought and read the Dennis Johnson book it was based on. This was a rare case where I thought the movie was even better than the book it was based on.
Bonus Section: Older movies and Show Ranking
I only re-watched a couple older movies this year: Dune: Part II and Tenet. Both were among my top 25 movies of the last 25 years (I’ve started making that list, but my top 25 became a top 40 and I didn’t get it done by the end of 2025). Tenet is Christopher Nolan’s most underrated movie. I don’t know why no one likes it as much as I do. I can’t wait for The Odyssey this summer. The Dune trilogy has the potential to become the best trilogy since Lord of the Rings if they can stick part 3.
TV Show Rankings
Every show on this list was one I enjoyed. The ones that I didn’t enjoy, or that lost my interest, I just quit after I get bored. These are the ones I made it through, so they were all good.
15. Hijack season 2 Idris Elba returns as a corporate negotiator whose calm under pressure helped him survive an airline hijacking in an excellent season 1. This time around he’s the hijacker, but it’s because he’s been forced to, and this time it’s a train instead of a plane. It doesn’t make a ton of sense but there are some good moments.
14. A Man on the Inside Season 2 Ted Danson returns as a senior citizen private investigator, this time trying to figure out what’s going on at a local college. Not as good as season one, but still charming.
13. Your Friends and Neighbors I haven’t finished season 1 yet, but so far it’s been fun. Jon Hamm plays a hedge-fund millionaire in a swanky community that loses his job and tries to keep up his lifestyle by robbing his wealthy neighbors.
12. Alien: Earth The aliens from the Alien franchise finally make it to Earth. But the show is as much about androids, synthetic humans, and other creatures that make it to Earth as it is about the Aliens. Mostly explores the same territory as the movies, but some interesting moments.
11. Dopesick Michael Keaton stars in a drama about the Sackler family and the frontlines of the opioid epidemic.
10. Planet Earth 3 Nature documentary series on HBO. David Attenborough is still the greatest.
9. The Wire, 1-3 For years people have been telling me I needed to watch The Wire. Season one was as great as everyone says. By season 3 I ran out of steam.
8. Slow Horses 6 One of the most reliable shows on TV. Every season has been good, and you don’t have to wait years between seasons.
7. Company Retreat If you liked Jury Duty, you’ll probably like this just as much. One of the rare shows that makes you feel good about humanity.
6. Stranger Things 5 This season felt like a rare “water cooler” show, during a time when everyone is watching something different at different times. It felt like an event when each episode came out, and I watched it with my kids. Everyone at school was watching it too. I can’t think of the last time there was a show like that.
5. The Chair Company Tim Robinson sits on a chair and is humiliated when it breaks in front of everyone at a corporate event. He starts trying to figure out who made the chair and why it broke, and gets dragged down a rabbit hole into a huge conspiracy. Somehow it’s really funny, in a very Tim Robinson way.
4. The Bear, Season 4 Great show, and season 4 was one of the best seasons.
3. Scrubs Scrubs was a super meaningful show for me. First, it’s hilarious, but second, it came out when Jodie was doing her residency and we loved watching it together. When I heard that they were re-booting the show I was nervous. Most of these much later re-boots (like Arrested Development) end up being disappointing. This re-boot was surprisingly great.
2. Adolescence 4 short movies made into a miniseries. Devastating. Episode 4 especially. I think it won all of the Emmys, and it deserved to.
1. I Think You Should Leave, Seasons 1-3 I watched every skit (for like the 4th time) one night when I had to wait 8 hours in the ER. It’s probably the only thing that kept me from losing my mind that night.
Comments
Post a Comment