So another year draws to a close which as usual has seen misfires and unexpected box office bombs matched by a bonanza box office and surprise hits. Here’s out list of the best and worst 2024 films …….and as a caveat we would add that these were our favourite arguably rather than the best and some may be missing as we occasionally didn’t get to see certain films. (‘Anora’ we’re looking at you!). So we start with the best and first on that list is…..
Alien Romulus
Starting in 1979 and followed by a n equally highly regarded sequel the Alien franchise started on a high but has since had a very chequered history. Even with Ridley Scott returning to helm Prometheus & Covenant was not enough to rescue the franchise so perhaps a fresh set of eyes is what saved it when writer director Fede Alvarez was given the opportunity to make a seventh film. It was something of a relief then that his film gave the franchise a much needed boost in a story set between the first two films with several call backs and yet was enough of its own thing to bring in a new audience earning an extremely good $350m at the box office and ensuring that there will be further instalments. Read our review HERE
Fede Alvarez chatted about the making of Alien Romulus …..
All of us Strangers
Back in 2015 director Andrew Haigh gave us the excellent ’45 years’ starring Charlotte Rampling in one of that years best films with a remarkable and stunning final shot. He returns to a love story with ‘All of us strangers, starring Andrew Scott as a screenwriter drawn back to his childhood home having started a relationship with a neighbour in a downstairs flat played by Paul Mescal. Based on a book by Taischi Yamada what unfolded on screen was a sensitive and moving love story that saw Mescal earn nominations and yet it is Scott who really is the beating heart of the film and unfathomably overlooked for awards. It was the first really great film of 2024 and rightly earned all the plaudits and six BAFTA nominations though sadly winning nothing. Read our review HERE
Civil War
Writer Alex Garland has written screenplays of several of director Danny Boyle’s films including The Beach, 28 Days Later and sunshine but his work over recent years has become far more interesting and often unsettling as seen in Ex Machina, Annihilation and Men which he also directed. ‘Civil War would continue that in a film that in the run up to the 2024 US election could have been arguably prescient if Trump had lost. Set in a dystopian future Kirsten Dunst stars as a photographer (based on real life war journalist Lee Miller) as she travels across the US during what appears to be civil war as they try to get to the Whitehouse to interview the president. With a bang on soundtrack and a stand out scene with Jesse Plemons as a trigger happy patriot soldier it was a film well worth a watch. It was the biggest budgeted film that studio A24 had made but their $50 investment paid off at the box office with the film taking in $126m. read our review HERE
Heretic
Hugh Grant had been largely written off with audiences largely tired of the rom-coms he had made his name. 2016’s Florence Foster Jenkins saw him star opposite Meryl Streep in a true life comedy and was a timely reminder that Grant was a sublime light comedian and his scene stealing turn in Paddington 2 secured that in the public’s mind. His ability to steal films continued with The Gentlemen, Dungeons & Dragons and Wonka. But it was Heretic that took things to a whole other level. As Mr Reed he invited two young female evangelists into his home to talk about their faith and in one particular scene eviscerated world religions. His seemingly pleasant, unthreatening manner hid a disturbed, unsettling and ultimately highly dangerous character that was as chilling as any screen villain and Grant absolutely nailed it brilliantly once again reminding audiences and film makers alike that despite his often self-deprecating interviews he remains a supremely talented actor. Read our review HERE
In a Violent Nature
With a background in special effects Chris Nash also had a love of those 1970’s early 1980’s video nasties that were banned kin the UK under the Video Recordings Act. Having made a number of short films he made his feature film debut with, ‘In a Violent Nature’ that was indebted to those video nasties. An undead and decomposing killer Johnny rises from the forests grave and slowly and methodically goes after a group of young people to retrieve the locket that belonged to his beloved mother. Playing like a first person video game the camera follows Johnny as he steadily walks through the forest after his prey dispatching them in the most astonishingly brutal manner using a steel hook on a chain none more so than the infamous ‘pretzel kill’. It’s a brutal film and in a world of often banal studio horrors this was a standout. Little wonder that a sequel is already in the works for a killer that will join the echelons of other screen maniacs. Read our review HERE
Longlegs
A low key campaign with a great poster and an unsettling trailer would turn out to be the best horror film of the year. Written and directed by Osgood Perkins it starred Maika Monroe as a rookie FBI agent in pursuit of a serial killer with links to the occult. So far so Silence of the Lambs except this had a profoundly disturbing killer that’s barely fully seen until well into the film. Even more of a surprise was that the killer was played by an almost unrecognisable Nicolas Cage calling on all his quirky mannerisms and warped delivery of lines and giving us a screen villain that would vie with Hugh Grants’ in Heretic as the screens most scary lunatic. That Perkins is the son of Anthony, one of the THE greatest of screen killers in Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ made it seem inevitable that here was a director who had learned from the best. Read our review HERE
Origin
In a world where allegations of racism are bandied around usually by clueless reactionary rent-a gob half wits with little if any understanding of what racism truly means Origin was and remains a must see. Written and directed by Ava DuVernay it was based on her own book and is a remarkably insightful look at the unspoken system that has shaped America taking in the Indian caste system and the Nazi regime to explore what racism truly is and that the white man is not the only race that has propagated such attitudes. Origin should be essential viewing. Read our review HERE
The Substance
Writer director Coralie Fargeat had helmed the feminist revenge thriller…….um…., ‘Revenge’ – a decent and bloody thriller that caught the eye. Her follow upfilm, The Substance would take it to a new level. A remarkable cast of Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley playing two sides of the same character of Elizabeth and Sue respectively of a fading Hollywood star who takes a black market drug that splits cell matter creating a temporary younger fresher version of herself. It’s a searing indictment of the quest for eternal youth and both actresses are quite brilliant especially Moore in what was a bold comeback role and a reminder that given the right script she’s a good actress. Loaded with increasingly horrifying moments that builds to a shocking Grand Guignol climactic finale it made a huge impression on audiences of which there were reports of members fleeing the screenings. Rightly nominated for the Cannes D’or it won Fargeat a Best Screenplay award. See it and if you can stomach it but it’s well worth the watch. read our review HERE
…….Take a look at our Substance instagram reel HERE
And so to the very worst of 2024……
Borderlands
Then video game to film adaptation is a notoriously tough one to get right. For every Sonic the hedgehog, Resident Evil and Pokemon Detective Pikachu (and when are we going to get a sequel to that?) there’s an Alone in the dark, Hitman and Assassin’s Creed. So to the latter we can now add Bordelands. The omens were already when the film had been sitting on the shelf for a couple of years and when the film was finally released a disinterested public shrugged and instead went o see whatever film was playing in the neighbouring screen. Co-written and directed by Eli Roth whose forte is horror not video game adaptations the film limped onto screen and was subsequently panned earning a paltry $32m putting an almost immediate end to any sequel. read our review HERE
Janet Planet
Written and directed by Annie Baker in her debut helming a film set in rural 1991 Massachusetts as an 11 year old girl spends a summer as three men enter the life of her mother. There was little cinematic in what became an increasingly dull film that’s encapsulated in a prolonged shot of a microwave cooking food in real time. Even the engaging performance of young actress Zoe Ziegler could not relieve the tedium. Read our review HERE
Joker Folie a Deux
Expectations were high for the sequel to the Oscar winning Joker and one of the best films of that year. And boy were expectations going to be dashed with the sequel. Rumours of it being a musical a were partly true with Lady Gaga doing her bit along with Joaquin Phoenix but this was not the sequel anyone was expecting least of all the studio who funded the movie to the tune of $200m hoping for it to match the billion dollar busting earning of the first film. Instead it crashed and burned with audiences certainly with those at the media screening we attended who walked out in their droves. Several directors notably Tarantino and Coppola ( who after the mega flop Megalopllis was not in any position to defend it) spoke out in support but at best it was a disappointment at worst it was a disaster that failed to recoup its budget, pretty much ensuring that this incarnation of Joker will never see a third outing. read our review HERE
Harold and the Purple Crayon
Based on a much loved children’s book by Crockett Johnson where young boy Harold draws things with his crayon which magically come into being, it had the potential to be as magical as the books. Instead the film makers chose to cast Harold as a grown man in the real world as played by Zachery Levi in a film that would be his second consecutive bomb after Shazam 2. It only occasionally came to life mainly due to a scene stealing Jemaine Clement as the bad guy but audiences generally steered clear with the film earning $32m which came nowhere near to covering its budget. Read our review HERE
The Mouse Trap
After the novelty of the ultra low budget ‘Winnie the Pooh : Blood and Honey’ made a profit turning a beloved character into a maniacal serial killer all bets were off and when the copyright of Mickey Mouse’s incarnation in Steamboat Willie expired filmmakers churned out another horror version of a children’s favourite with ‘Mickey’s Mouse Trap’ a title that was soon changed to The Mouse Trap when the first trailer was released to general apathy on 1st January 2024 and continued when the film was released. Inexplicably an amusement arcade owner dons the mask of a murderous Mickey Mouse and goes about offing his staff and their friends as they hold a surprise birthday party at the arcade. Released to download few bothered to do so and whereas Blood and Honey had made $5m this barely scraped over the £60k line and understandably so in what was a tension free and largely gore absent film. read our review HERE
Mickey Mouse in The Mouse Trap – director Jamie Bailey & star Simon Phillips takes us BTS……
Megalopolis
Francis Ford Coppola’s folly or Francis Folly as it should now be known would equally be at home in our Disappointment of the Year category. Self financed by the director to the tune of £120m it gave him the power to do whatever he liked in what would be an epic and hoped for masterpiece that is likely to be his last film. A story set in New Rome that sees a duel between Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a brilliant artist in favor of an Utopian future, and the greedy mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito). Between them is Julia Cicero (Ntahalie Emmanuel), with her loyalty divided between her father and her beloved. Coppola had attracted a starry cast that included Aubrey Plaza, a frankly bonkers Shia Labeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman and a fleeting pointless cameo from Dustin Hoffman in what turned out to be a almost incomprehensible mess with the very occasional flash of brilliance that puzzled critics and repelled audiences meaning the film took a risible $13m at the box office. read our review HERE
And the disappointment of the year goes to…….
So this was a difficult decision because Joker Folie a Deux was an immense disappointment but that it was awful too meant that it lost out on the disappointment category to Furiosa. After the extraordinary Fury Road which was both a box office success and earned a whole load of Oscar nominations, anticipation for the follow up was high. A prequel to Charlize Theron’s incarnation of Furiosa in Fury Road this saw Anya Taylor Joy take over the role in an origin story. It had the expected sumptuous visual flair of writer-director George Miller’s previous film and Chris Hemsworth was good value as the villain of the piece but there was little we hadn’t seen in previous films in the franchise and in terms of the insane stunts of Fury Road this could not hold a light to its predecessor and audiences seemed to agree with the film barely covering its budget and likely putting an end to any further films in the Mad Max world. Read our review HERE
…….and that’s our best and worst 2024 list! Do you agree? Tell us your best and worst in the comments section below
