Monthly Archives: December 2024

Lists, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The 10 Best Movies of 2024

Out goes one year; in comes the next. A steady temporal turnstile incessantly reminding us that while we may slow down, the astronomical structures dictating our cultural conception of time are rigid enough as to appear as a constant. In other words, my eyes need a rest.

In other other words, it is best-of-the-year time for all matters cultural discourse. There really is little value to it, this arbitrary comparison between pieces of media based on a calendar release date (usually region-specific, to make it all the less comprehensive). The numbers mean virtually nothing. The voices speaking are minuscule, as they beat the drum for individual and subjective tastes but under the guise of a universal acceptance that these here cultural objects are worth categorizing and hierarchizing into list-like structures for other people’s amusement (and, often, a confirmation of those other people’s own individual and subjective tastes).

In short, I am one iota of cultural detritus contributing to this “online discourse” problem, fueling factional groupthink under some self-prescribed claim to expertise. Or I just feel like Continue reading The 10 Best Movies of 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), musical

A Complete Unknown (2024) Movie Review

No matter how you want to trace the lineage of the music biopic, we don’t arrive at a formula-to-an-absolute-fault film like Bohemian Rhapsody without first traveling through James Mangold’s Walk the Line. To see Johnny Cash resurface in Mangold’s return to the genre (now played by a perpetually suave Boyd Holbrook) is like witnessing a poltergeist haunting another film. Or a demon that somehow escaped total exorcism from Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a superior take down of the music biopic and a film that remains culturally relevant so long as Hollywood continues churning out mediocre celebrations of celebrity.

Walk the Line was a crossover success, breaking $100 million at the box office, garnering generally positive reviews, and earning a number of accolades including an Oscar for Reese Witherspoon. A Complete Unknown is angling to do the same. The problem (perhaps) is that Continue reading A Complete Unknown (2024) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Carry-On (2024) Movie Review

Carry-On is the dumb-as-rocks holiday crowd pleaser of the year, and many involved in its execution are game for embracing the buffoonery.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra had graduated from low-budget horror and slick low-budget action films to the Hollywood studio big leagues. To be clear, this graduation implies only an elevation in budgetary cushion, as his films for Disney and Warners — Jungle Cruise and Black Adam respectively — gave up propulsive energy for glossy studio sheen. Jungle Cruise is mildly entertaining and pleasant enough, for what it’s worth. But it feels like a lazy river compared to even the lowliest of Liam Neeson thriller. And Black Adam…well, we saw how that turned out.

In returning to the high concept action-thriller in the vein of the airport novel, but doing so under the Netflix banner, Collet-Serra scales back from the Continue reading Carry-On (2024) Movie Review →

Lists, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The 10 Worst Movies of 2024

Every year, I waffle in my decision to publish a worst-of year end list or to abstain. In most instances, it is an empty exercise to contribute to the ongoing discussion over the churn and lack of creativity in the media industries, and in Hollywood in particular.

On the other hand, negativity is not only the Internet’s main reason for being; it can also be productive. With each passing year in which franchises continue to circle the box office drain, celebrities fluff themselves up in vanity projects, and cheap cash grabs slip under the cultural radar, it feels more useful to mock than to ignore. In short, standards are necessary. And the bar doesn’t have to be high, either. Something always slips under like a world class limbo competitor.

These are 10 of those films which didn’t make the grade in 2024.

10. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

Despite minor improvements over the previous installment, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire proves that nostalgia-driven intellectual property maintenance has a ceiling so low that Continue reading The 10 Worst Movies of 2024 →