Best of 2024, Introduction and Four Movies Not on the List

Welcome to the Best Movies of 2024! As usual, I will begin by pointing out some movies I didn’t see and explaining why some movies aren’t on the list. I didn’t see Nickel Boys, I’m Still Here, The Apprentice (all too depressing given what’s going on) and Flow (which I’ve heard is great but haven’t gotten around to seeing.) Now let’s get to some (but not all) of the movies not on the list:

• Hit Man: This is an excellent script, directed by an excellent director, so it should have ended up on the list, but the movie had one glaring flaw that kept it off: the star. The hero is a nerdy professor type who ends up going undercover for the police and getting transformed into the sexy hit man he only pretends to be, steaming up the screen with the target of his sting. The challenge for the casting director was to find an actor who could do both, but unfortunately, they cast Glen Powell instead. Powell was great as a cocky asshole in Top Gun: Maverick, and he's good here when his character becomes a red-hot-loverman, but he’s utterly unconvincing when his character is a nerdy professor type (see above). I didn’t see Powell’s two other leading-man-tryouts this year, Twisters or Anyone But You, but based off of this one, he just doesn’t have the range.
• Deadpool and Wolverine: This threequel was very similar to another recent Marvel movie: Ant-Man 3: Quantamania. Once again, after spending the first two movies on relatively grounded Earthbound adventures, they spend the entire third movie on sci-fi worlds, forgetting all about the Earthbound supporting cast, which was disappointing in both movies. That said, this movie was a lot of fun, and it was great to see so many surprising actors pop up in limbo, or show up in different roles than we expected them to play. The music was great, too.
• The Substance: This was a very powerful movie with a lot to say about society. The sequence in which Demi Moore prepares for her date is one of the best scenes of the year and she deserves Best Actress for it. But this movie is just too much. It’s by far the grossest movie I’ve ever seen, which is fine, but it’s also 2 hours and 20 minutes, which is unforgivable. No movie this gross should be this long. I would have been happy to cut 30 minutes out if they’d just given me a few days to edit it.
• Dune Part 2: I had completely forgotten Part 1, so I spend all of Part 2 trying to remember who all of these people were. The result is that, a year later, I’ve completely forgotten Part 2, too. All I remember was that the hero surprisingly ditched Zendaya at the end for a more advantageous marriage, which was an interesting twist. 

Tomorrow: One more movie that’s not on the list (Yes, it’s that one)