Hey Folks, it's that time of year we wait for all year - the end of the year! Everyone who's anyone is submitting their Top Ten lists for the year, and just because we have to be different, we're just going to do this differently.
I feel more than ever that I really just have not been able to watch every movie I wanted to watch this year. A lot of that is living in a relatively smaller town in the middle of the Great Plains, but it's also me having a wee baby at home and a full-time job which means I both can't get out that much and even when I'm chilling around I just have other things to do. Weirdly I am also going to cite the cessation of Netflix DVD as a big blow to me watching random movies I'm really into.
There is also the fact that every year I have also tended to reassess the previous year, mostly because it takes me a full year to catch everything that came out, and then I reassess again after ten years. Most people would call all this crazy. I don't know what this list looks like going forward, but I may just decide to do this list a year late.
Or it might be kind of like this year, I'll cite the movies I've seen, I'll mention the ones I think could break in, and then rank everything when it's all in. I'm not sure what the future will look like, if for some reason you still check this site out, you'll know that we aren't actually really beholden to anything, and NMW is endlessly flexible.
So, taking this one year at a time, here are seven movies that I saw this year that I felt were deserving of mention here:
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
I have seen just about all these other films crop up somewhere, but I feel like no one is giving Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes the love it deserves. All the love went to Dawn (2014), my previous favorite was War (2017), but I actually think this one might be the best. Set far in the future, this might have one of the better calls to action and organic inciting incident of any major blockbuster. It also looks absolutely great, but that should be a given by now. I don't think the main chimp is nearly as compelling as Caesar, and the third act kind of drags, but there is really sincere worldbuilding here, a really nasty villain, and a great ending that pays off some sly set-ups. It's just really great, if not by the book writing, but that's still hard to do.
Dune II
Aka TWONE. Pronounced Tooon. I guess that's why they didn't put that on a poster. Dune (2021) was fine, I was never all that into it, I think it moved a bit too fast with too many characters and not enough rationale behind what was happening, but most of that works in the sequel, which is laser focused on this false messiah thing, which becomes too real for everyone involved. The cast is impeccable and Austin Butler probably should have gotten Villain of the Year over Jason Bateman. Dagnabbit, forgot about that. I love how much each society we see connects through lighting, culture, and action. The scale here is ridiculous and it earns its epic feel and the characters gel together more than in the first one.
The Bikeriders
Let's go Austin Butler again. This also has gotten hardly any love, especially for Tom Hardy, who balances tough and psychotic so well here. This movie might truly have no protagonist. It's a multi-year subaltern epic akin to Goodfellas (1990) but it feels slept on. It's a movement that gets out of control and it's tough to see because there's not really a solution, it's out of everyone's hands. There's a lot of pain here, too and genuine tough guys who exude that kind of charm, ignorance, and mistakes that make the movie feel really real. I also give credit to Jodie Comer who has been in stuff, but this might be her biggest role. Like I said, I think she might even be the protagonist here? But she holds her own across from Tom Hardy spectacularly.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
I don't know why we don't praise Chris Hemsworth more. It might just be because he mostly chooses Thor movies and random stuff on Netflix (Extraction? Retraction? Whatever that was?). But with this, Bad Times at the El Royale (2018) and Spiderhead (2022) we are slowly getting to see how good he is at playing an unhinged maniac. He might actually be a character actor stuck in a leading man's body and that's a good thing. Furiosa tends to take a backseat in her own movie, and I was surprised that Anya Taylor-Joy really only shows up in the last hour or so. Having said that, this is assuredly told through her lens.
This movie was really unexpected, in that it really wasn't anything like Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). I think it probably needed more hype and perhaps a different title that didn't sound exactly like that movie. But when it calls itself a saga it is truly that - a long, like twenty year saga that demonstrates the rise, decline, and fall of multiple marauding wasteland gangs in ways that don't really care about lining up with Fury Road, despite being a prequel. And I don't mean they don't line up, more like they don't really seem to care about setting up little things that don't matter like a lot of prequels do. Everything here is done as well as Fury Road, and it only loses its glisten a big because that's a big chunk of novelty already spent.
Blink Twice
This was a damn hypnosis of a movie. Many people have lauded director Zoe Kravitz and it's not just the subject matter or shot selection, I cited the moment it becomes an entirely different movie in my best scenes, but it's a real delicate hand that does it. I knew the basic premise (SPOILER here I guess, just skip to the next review), but not the details and I was actually sitting there wondering why these guys were so nice and charming. And strangely sex free...I mean, clearly something was wrong on this island, and then when it's all revealed, it's horrifying but also lines up well from a writing stand point. And the direction matches everything, the shots get wider, the montages fade away, even the hair and make-up changes. As the characters stop living in the dreamlike fantasy, so do we and the magic of film as a visual medium fuels all that. Channing Tatum is also a great villain of the year. And no, I don't like the ending, either. I just don't think that's what her character needed to really grow. It was kind of a want and not a need, you know?
Rebel Ridge
I really debated these last two. Ultimately I went with the one that has stuck with me more, but that doesn't mean this hasn't. Rebel Ridge is just an avalanche of superior filmmaking, it stretches and draws tension like Picasso and Aaron Pierre is set-up to be THE dude for the next decade after this. It's a true star-making performance. I'm not sure how Don Johnson ended his career playing racist authority figures, but here we are. The one thing that doesn't line up to me is SPOILER Roy's turn as the informant, I just don't think that motivation was set-up but whatever. This film also shows how well you can do action on a budget - just write it and it's fine, you don't need a lot of CGI non-sense, just some smoke and a USMC Karate expert. The message here is obviously, like police are bad and the justice system is corrupt BIG SHOCKER but it does present a little more nuance than that, and most importantly, it uses that as a realistic vehicle to build stakes and tension to push its story forward.
Challengers
This movie was absolutely wild. I started kind of half-watching it because it starts a bit boring but then the saga of these three Tennis players gets so damn wild and sexy it becomes a must watch. I literally think that that all three wanted to fuck each other and as it chronicles how they were friends and split up, slowly revealing the past through time jumps everything just adds up. It's the film with the richest characters I've seen this year. Zendaya is so driven and competent and gets the most taken away from her, so she reacts the strongest in her exertion of control. The blonde guy struggles to articulate his own desires and plays everything too safe despite being the only player with actual success. And the brunette guy is just a bad boy who talks too much. He's like Vegeta.
It's got one of the most unreal endings of all these movies, too. Like, SPOILER, he banged the other guy's wife but the other guy kind of likes it and Zendaya likes it too. Like, do they end up a throuple? Luca Guadagnino is clearly a mad but horny genius and I love how much natural sex is in this movie.
Others: The Glen Powell double feature of Twisters and Hit Man came close but I don't think they could seriously be considered for this list.
Movies I might consider but haven't seen yet:
Anora - I have loved all of Sean Baker's previous work and this might be his film with the most mainstream appeal. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, but I'd like to see it.
Megalopolis - Again, I haven't seen it, but I want to. I enjoy big swings and curious to really figure out what it's saying and cut through what a lot of people who probably don't understand how insane Coppola is are saying about it
Saturday Night - I don't think this would get in, but I'm a big SNL fan and intrigued by this. I kind of feel like it had hype but kind of landed with a thud? Like I said, I'm just curious, failure or success I like movies that try this kind of stuff.
Joker 2 - This is on Max and I hope to see it before the year is over. Dude, I know, but I really disliked Joker (2019) and so from everything I hear, I might be the target audience...I mean, how does this even get made, but I don't care about that, I'm into what it could be.
Venom 3 - shut up
Nosferatu - Robert Eggers, 'nuff said. I should have seen it Christmas Day, fuck my family.
Juror #2 - Also on Max, Clint Eastwood's purported last movie and I'd love to see it. I don't actually know much about it
The Brutalist - There is a whole lot of crap out there, I feel more than any other year, so many weird random indie films that are popping up on people's lists. I honestly feel a little outmatched, like, how have you even heard of these things? Also they seem uninteresting. The Brutalist seems cool, though, and I've seen it pop up quite a bit. I don't even know how I'll keep track of whenever this comes on streaming somewhere, which is my only option these days.
So, that's it! Can you wait until December 2026 for our review next year? Or maybe we'll just post it whenever we feel confident we've seen enough. Like I said, we keep things loose around here.
Happy 2024 everyone!
