The Top 27 Movies Of 2024

Dec 31

Plus all 68 movies I saw, ranked.

Unfortunately, I was unable to see The Brutalist or Nickel Boys by year’s end. At the time of writing, I live in Puerto Rico and they haven’t been released here yet.

27

A Different Man

Impossible for the movie to end halfway through, but that first half was Criterion Collection type shit.

26

MadS

It’s a French movie that’s shot entirely in one take. Cool, sure, but it’s actual triumph is in the way it approached zombies with a Patient Zero bent.

25

Cuckoo

I really wanted this to be better than it was, but the cuckoo conceit (no spoilers) didn’t work for me. It did have an all-time scene towards the end when Hunter Schafer’s Gretchen has to get out of a sticky situation (no spoilers), though.

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The Top 15 Horror Movies of 2024

Dec 24

I mean, what is horror anyway?

15

Terrifier 3

Hard to top the first one because, unfortunately for the series, it’s one hit played (so far) just in three different styles. In ten years, I’m sure we’ll have Terrifiers for Thanksgiving, Easter, Memorial Day… because the people who love this just want more of it. He did firebomb a bunch of children, though.

14

MadS

Most likely, you didn’t know this movie existed. The entire 1h29m movie is one take, rooted in Patient Zero of a “zombie-like” infection taking first hold of a town. It’s a lot of fun, Gen Z coded, and one of the obscure ones I’d recommend to people who have “seen everything.”

13

Cuckoo

God I wanted so much more from this. Another remarkable Scene of the Year candidate towards the end of the movie, but I just had a hard time getting over the concept after which the movie is named. I still love you, Hunter Schaefer.

12

Alien: Romulus

It was exactly what I wanted from a movie that you know going in is attempting to re-hash the fear of “trapped in space.” How can you a) set yourself apart, b) maintain Alien-inspiration integrity, while c) coming up with new ways to make the closed-room-thriller instill fear? (Extra points for Fede Alvarez Going For It at the end.) Big year for Spaeny with this movie and Civil War on the heels of last year’s Priscilla.

11

Immaculate

Sydney Sweeney certainly saw an opportunity to showcase her Acting Skills. For a lot of the year, it was higher on my list, but it was a banner year for good horror releases and it kept being shown up. It will live on as great to throw on on any Halloween for a vibe set.

10

Maxxxine

I’m not sure it’s a horror movie, but it’s certainly horror adjacent as the conclusion in the X / Pearl / Maxxxine trilogy. Gets trite as it seems to treat any nostalgia like celebrity cameos, low-hanging fruit to score audience points. Did it work? Sure. I definitely enjoyed my experience watching it. Did that make it a better film? Maybe for some.

9

The Devil’s Bath

Obscure Austria-German co-production that apparently only made $55,000 at the box office but was nearly nominated for an Academy Award and is based on an obscure piece of European history where eternal damnation prevented suicide so (mostly) women would murder a child so they could be willingly executed.

8

Longlegs

Strictly as a filmmaker, Oz Perkins might be my favorite of the horror genre. The Blackcoat’s Daughter is one of the biggest inspirations in my life, and Gretel and Hansel and I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House are definitely under-viewed. Off-the-charts marketing campaign here getting a fever pitch to boil over for its release. But where the movie lacked for me, according to Perkins himself, was intended, e.g. the parody of Silence of the Lambs and killer-as-wacky tropes. (I’m not sure I believe him.) But Maika Monroe is the modern scream queen we deserve.

7

The Substance

As with Red Rooms (see below), an ending away from leapfrogging a ton of movies on this list. It’s pop-horror that’s freaking beautifully shot, perfectly saturated, and Stanislas Reydellet’s production design puts us right where we need to be to evoke the caught-in-time Neverland-Los Angeles of the movie. Margaret Qualley is a godsend. The movie also Goes For It, which see below, is something I always want from filmmakers.

6

Oddity

Was this seen by a lot of people? Probably underrated, then. A masterclass in letting a holding shot do work on the viewers’ brains.

5

Red Rooms

This was an ending away from being one of the best films of the year, leapfrogging almost everything on this list. I’ve never seen a female protagonist portrayed this way in modern film. I’ve never been so locked-in on guessing at her intentions with absolutely no idea what was coming next. Fantastic one-take shot in the beginning that only kicks off the detailed filmmaking that was to follow. Even if it wasn’t No. 1 on this list, it would probably be one I recommend over all of them.

4

Nosferatu

The great parts are really great. My main complaint is Willem Defoe; he ends up being an unfortunate and unintentionally comedic role effectively playing himself. Following, he acts as an informal narrator, which cheapens the “show don’t tell” aspects of storytelling. This sounds like it shouldn’t be fourth on this list, but Robert Eggers’s pedigree warrants high criticism and this work still clears nearly all cinematic thresholds for stellar theater.

SPOILER: The great parts like the first time we see Nosferatu sucking blood; the final scene; nearly all of Lily-Rose Depp’s manic episodes.

3

Strange Darling

Am I cheating by putting this in horror? Thriller, for sure. The ending is one of the best scenes I’ve saw in a movie in all of 2024. Plot-chop techniques used to perfection, a great Tarantino feel to letting the action play out.

2

Late Night With The Devil

The ’70s, a great era to spook, when information was limited and people wanted to believe. Late Night With The Devil took the good concept and executed it great.

1

The First Omen

Most of the time, what I want in any movie is someone who goes there. Men from Alex Garland wasn’t perfect, but if you’ve seen it, you know he Goes For It. I want those wild swings because sometimes it pays off. The First Omen does this while keeping in close harmony with the original Omen. Not just one of the best horror movies, one of the best of the year period.

The Top 6 Movie Scenes Of 2024

Dec 21
What Kind Of American Are You?
What Kind Of American Are You?

6

What Kind Of American Are You?

Civil War

Brevity is the soul of tension in an apocalyptic United States.

5

The Lady in the Passenger Seat

Strange Darling

SPOILER ALERT

Willa Fitzgerald’s ability to hold the death in such a prolonged manner is one of the great long holds I’ve seen in a decade.

4

Fremen Ambush On A Spice Harvester

Dune 2

I saw this movie on IMAX (is that cheating?) and the scale of what the Dune team shot for this scene is astounding. It’s great when big ass movies do big ass things.

3

Octoboss Assault On The War Rig

Furiosa

Yes, they made a whole movie of this concept, but it’s not the concept that wins this scene. It’s the creativity in methods of attack that stand out. Crazy people pitching these ideas and everyone going, yup, let’s do that.

2

The Living Room Fight

Anora

No way I’ll be able to post a video of this — licensing and, honestly, it’s like 20 minutes — but Sean Baker excels at getting parties together in one place and having chaos ensue. Now that he’s seven or eight movies deep, he’s perfecting this moment and Anora delivers it with standout performances from Karren Karagulian and Vache Tovmasyan.

1

Storming the White House

Civil War

It’s so good, it spawned an entire new movie and what’s going to be the best movie of 2025, Warfare.

The Top 18 Songs Of 2024

Dec 17
Knocked Loose, Cigarettes After Sex, Post Malone, Peso Pluma Make 2024 Worth Listening To
Knocked Loose, Cigarettes After Sex, Post Malone, Peso Pluma Make 2024 Worth Listening To

18

“Madonna”

Natanael Cano feat. Oscar Maydon

The first of a few corridos tumbados to kick off this year’s list, Cano released Nata Montana in 2023, but spent all of 2024 releasing singles and getting featured on other tracks. By my count, he was on 14 other tracks after this one was released. Man’s got a work ethic, but this single was his best of the year.

17

“EVERYBODY LIKE”

Kid Cudi feat. Pusha T

I’m a fair-weather fan of Kid Cudi, but Pusha T is in the pantheon of music (and Arby’s commercials). Hearing him pop in on this track when going through Cudi’s new album this year put it on repeat immediately. It’s not the best poetry from either of them ever, but still DRIES SWEATS IN MY ROD LAVERS.

16

“Rompe La Dompe”

Peso Pluma feat. Junior H and Oscar Maydon

As in “bust out the Dom.” Doble P is my guy. He’s been hit after hit, and he’s getting rewarded for it, already cracking the Top 60 global artists of all-time on Spotify.

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Link Oct 1

Carry On

Adam Curtis: 'Today, people are self-contained units and can’t bear the idea that they won’t exist.'
Adam Curtis: ‘Today, people are self-contained units and can’t bear the idea that they won’t exist.’

Crack Magazine has a new interview up featuring author and culture critic Nathalie Olah with filmmaker Adam Curtis. Pound for pound, Curtis is one of the most disarming, off-putting, and original thinkers of his generation.

In the old days – and this is not nostalgia, I’m just noting – when you were part of a church, a trade union, a political party or revolutionary movement, you felt that what you did would go on beyond you. Today, people are self-contained units and can’t bear the idea that they won’t exist. 

Adam Curtis
Filmmaker

La Nausée

Aug 19
Jean-Paul Sartre (left) and Simone De Beauvoir at la Coupole in Paris, 1969, as photographed by French photographer Bruno Barbey.
Jean-Paul Sartre (left) and Simone De Beauvoir at la Coupole in Paris, 1969, as photographed by French photographer Bruno Barbey.

It’s hard to love Nausea but easy to see why it’s a seminal work. Antoine Roquentin, the protagonist (?), is insufferable. He suffers through life, disgusted with his existence and existence around him. He wallows in the mundanity of being alive, and we get to (have to?) do it with him. Next to nothing happens as he moves from library to cafe, painfully detailing the world around him.

Which is the point. What makes it instrumental is that you feel seen. From the first person, a number of times, Sartre’s descriptions, asides, and observations via Roquentin are the same thoughts I’ve had and that, most likely, you’ve had. In a well-examined life, it is inevitable one would arrive at the paradox of being. And having experienced the void of what it means to be alive, the use of “nausea” to detail its procession from nowhere to comprehensive seizure is unerring.

Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that is all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition. From time to time you make a semi-total: you say: I’ve been traveling for three years, I’ve been in Bouville for three years. Neither is there any end: You never leave a woman, a friend, a city in one go. And then everything looks alike: Shanghai, Moscow, Algiers, everything is the same after two weeks. … The time of a flash. After that, the procession starts again, you being to add up hours and days: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. April, May, June. 1924, 1925, 1926.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Link Jul 31

The P.T. Barnum Of Tech

Sam Altman, "The P.T. Barnum Of Technology"
Sam Altman, “The P.T. Barnum Of Technology”

Sam Altman needs you to believe that AI will kill us all or going to destroy all our jobs and that he’s a little bit scared of AI, because if you think for even a second about what this man is saying, you’ll realize that he’s not an engineer, he’s a lobbyist and a liar.

Edward Zitron

Starting Out

Jul 19
Jessica Anthony, author of The Most
Jessica Anthony, author of The Most

I hated it when authors would say things like, “I didn’t know what the character was going to do.” It shattered my belief in fully-formed narratives, that genius is complete, self-contained.

Likewise, I hated it when authors would say things like, “I let the character tell me what to write.” This is hand-in-hand with the above. I wanted Gods; I was getting free will.

I have written a book now, so now I understand where my ignorance was coming from. When making a movie, actors get to use their experience and background narratives in bringing life to the characters. But when writing a book, it’s just you. You have to invent the personas and inhabit them when required in the text. I was ignorant of this before I had to do it.

Ignorance firmly displaced, it now gives me great comfort seeing that other writers just… write, which is what inhabiting the characters is actually about. Start somewhere and let them lead you.

Jessica Anthony wrote a book called The Most, a novel where protagonist Kathleen Lovelace “decides to get into the pool in her family’s apartment complex one morning and won’t come out.” A great hook, and:

I only know that when Kathleen got up and decided to go for a swim, she didn’t know what would happen to her that day because I didn’t know.

Jessica Anthony
Interview with Chloe Norman on The Dirt

It turned into a psychological thriller that shifts perspectives between Lovelace and her husband set over the course of eight hours in a day, but the hook was all the seed she needed to begin.

A friend of mine, Michael Kearns, helped me edit the first few chapters of my book. He’s a writer himself. As he was working with me on my book, he told me over lunch he was inspired but that the only thing he had was one line: “Jesus walked into a bar.”

Less than three months later, he sent me a full manuscript based around that one quip. He didn’t know where “Jesus” was going to go, but he went and Kearns wrote.

I get it now. It doesn’t have to come out fully formed. That’s not how babies work.

Instead, you just have to start.

Black Gloves

Jul 16
Tommie Smith, left, and John Carlos, Olympic medal winners
One pair of black gloves split between two black men, and it would be just a coincidence that both black men had each hurt their hand?

One of the best, most incredible photos that has ever existed. Tommie Smith and John Carlos, first place and third place in the 200m dash, respectively, Oct. 16, 1968, Mexico City. Wearing black to represent Black America. No shoes, black socks to represent the poverty in which American Blacks lived. As a representation of lynching, Smith wore a scarf and Carlos a bead necklace.

But they also wore black gloves.

They only had one pair, so they split: Smith wore the right, Carlos the left. But the man who put the medals on their necks, Lord David George Brownlow Cecil Burghley, was blissfully ignorant. When asked later what he had thought of the gloves, he said: “I thought they had hurt their hand.”

Throwing Shade

Jul 10
The cover was designed on a 150-by-150-pixel canvas at 72dpi and is scaled up regardless of application.
The cover was designed on a 150-by-150-pixel canvas at 72dpi and is scaled up regardless of application.

Charli XCX tested 65 shades of green before settling on “the most ultimate brat green.”

“Imagine AI coming up with this. It would never.”

Max Ottignon

More great commentary from Ottignon on the campaign.

“We designed the album at 150px/72dpi then resized for whichever format we needed it for in the earlier days of the campaign. It then became a daily task for someone at the studio to have to communicate to a printer that the low res was intentional.”

SPECIAL OFFER, Inc.‘s Brent David Freaney

The Man in the Mirror

Mar 15
An Inmate From The Joliet Correctional Center Shows A Battered Nose (At Left) And, Two Years Later, The Results Of His Cosmetic Surgery
An Inmate From The Joliet Correctional Center Shows A Battered Nose (At Left) And, Two Years Later, The Results Of His Cosmetic Surgery

Dr. Michael Lewin, born in Poland in 1909, was encouraged by his uncle to go into the field of cosmetic surgery. At age 25, he moved from Poland to the United States. That was in 1934. A few weeks after arriving, he joined the house staff at Beth Israel hospital in New York, but by the time he was ready to pursue a private practice, World War II had overcome the U.S. medical field. Lewin became a Major in the Medical Corps and served dutifully until the war was over.

Following, his list of accomplishments and titles would be extensive: founder, chief, director, sometimes all three. Post-war, he could do as he pleased. But among all his responsibilities to this professional work, he pursued a number of special projects in reconstructive surgery. One of those normally would have become a footnote in his career; when Lewin passed away, he was actively a member of 23 separate medical societies and the aforementioned list could fill volumes. But in 1963, he had decided to take up the mantle for a social idea: If we physically altered the look of inmates, would that change their futures?

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A New Form Of Regulatory Capture

Mar 14

“The most disgusting pro-monopoly thesis yet … Government should support Big Tech monopoly maintenance, because Apple and Google can more strongly reinforce US control over information …”

Tim Sweeney, Twitter/X

It used to be about protection: “We will protect you” as the trojan horse for monopoly. “Who controls my data?” is the latest.

It is not a binary decision. It’s a false dichotomy. As Ryan Broderick recently wrote:

White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan asked reporters yesterday: “Do we want the data from TikTok — children’s data, adults’ data — to be going — to be staying here in America or going to China?”

What about, uh, no one? What if nobody had… our children’s data?

Broderick, What if nobody owned our children’s data?

The Top 18 Movies Of 2023

Dec 29
The Top 18 Movies of 2023
The Top 18 Movies of 2023

18

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

I didn’t think I would be tearing up at a climax involving a 12-year-old getting her period, but here we are.

17

The Killer

David Fincher’s work is a creative muse for me.

16

Anatomy Of A Fall

Some obvious metaphors cheapen the script, but the deliberation and in-depth character study save it. An especially great performance by Swann Arlaud.

15

How To Blow Up A Pipeline

I mean, they did it. Might sound wild, but I didn’t think They would let them do it but they did it.

14

May December

The real star of this movie is Marcelo Zarvos and Michel Legrand’s soundtrack.

13

Bottoms

Rachel Sennott is one of my favorite people working in movies right now.

12

Thanksgiving

The very reason I have a filmmaking degree was because of horror movies, and Eli Roth wrote Hostel. It’s not easy to make slasher films patently un-camp even with lines like, “There will be no leftovers.”

11

Maestro

Includes the second best scene of the year.

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The Top 18 Songs Of 2023

Dec 12
Let's Do This, 2023: Emarosa, Face Yourself, Better Lovers, CHVRCHES, Rosalía
Let’s Do This, 2023: Emarosa, Face Yourself, Better Lovers, CHVRCHES, Rosalía

18

“Red Dot Sight”

To The Grave

The face you make at the breakdown.

17

“Sunshine!”

Beartooth

Caleb Shomo is one of the modern kings of melody without sacrifice.

16

“What Was I Made For?”

Billie Eilish

I think I read somewhere from some critic that this song was a disappointment because it was too on the nose for its release for Barbie. Dude. What an existential cogitation.

15

“Yo Preferi Chambear”

Chino Pacas

Most of Peso Pluma’s stuff slaps — and Mexican Regional or corridos tumbados common to Sinaloa and the Guadalajara area where he’s from has been internationally chart breaking for a couple of years now. Now, Peso Pluma’s winning VMAs and Billboard Music Awards. Chino Pacas isn’t from the same region as Peso Pluma — he’s about a four-hour drive due east in Guanajuato — but the Regional Mexican influence is fire and whatever coattails it took to get this 16 year old to this song, I’m in.

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Not For The Glory Of War

Oct 17
The 28th Regiment at Quatre Bras by Elizabeth Thompson
The 28th Regiment at Quatre Bras by Elizabeth Thompson

This painting is called “The 28th Regiment at Quatre Bras,” painted in 1875 by Elizabeth Thompson. It hangs in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

It’s a war scene, but to me, it’s muted. The primary color comes from the soldiers’ uniforms, and it’s a dullish, blood red as if the blood had been spilled an hour before and has already oxidized. The sky is colored by a sunset horizon — we can see the colors peeking through — but the sunset is covered in greys from the clouds. Squint, and it looks exactly like the ground.

I love the way Thompson draws our eye up and back down through the implied pyramid at the center, rooted on the protective stance of the lower soldiers merge into the sphere that surrounds the English regiment in position.

The English opponents have either fallen or are falling or… non-existant? There are only about four enemies despite myriad British soldiers. The troops’ faces are all stoic.

Except for this guy. Thompson put him dead center, one of very few soldiers in this painting she even chose to give an expression. And he’s the one in the strongest position of the pyramid:

Hidden within the lifeless faces and quintessence of war is this guy. He is having a blast.

Lady Butler said, “I never painted for the glory of war, but to portray its pathos and heroism.” But occasionally, heroes love blood.

There Is No Mystery

Jun 14
Your heart’s desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.
Your heart’s desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.

Yesterday, Cormac McCarthy died of natural causes at 89.

McCarthy wrote Blood Meridian, the best book of all time. I have always loved to write, but after reading Blood Meridian, I felt like I could never write again.

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.

He wrote with with three- and four-word phrases that devastate and demand: “See the kid.” “A legion of horribles…”

Not six months before his death, he published his final novel and an accompanying novella. His biblical writing never waned.

If birds couldn’t fly they wouldn’t sing.

His truth was profound to me in nearly everything he wrote, simple and direct, honest and unflinching. He made me think about how I fit into a world where “the Earth is a globe in a void the truth there’s no up nor down to it.”

He loved mathematics and physics and saw the beauty in them. He wrote extensively about them in some of his work, while also seeing the beauty in landscape, something that was alive to him, seeing its magnificence even in cataclysm.

He walked out into the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of an intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.

He reminded me that every day you get up is a fight worth fighting.

What’s the bravest thing you ever did? He spat in the road a bloody phlegm. Getting up this morning, he said.

Until there are no more days.

And since death comes to all there is no way to abate the fear of it except to love that man who stands for us. We are not waiting for his history to be written. He passed here long ago. That man who is all men and who stands in the dock for us until our own time come and we must stand for him. Do you love him, that man? Will you honor the path he has taken? Will you listen to his tale?

Quote Mar 2

“To ride the zeitgeist successfully you have to know when it’s turned,” says Marc Andreessen. Just kidding, that’s a quote from Tina Brown in her 2017 memoir, The Vanity Fair Diaries, which chronicles her time editing Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. … “It should be a sound, not an echo.”

Daisy Alioto in “The Taste Economy” quoting Tina Brown
The Vanity Fair Diaries
Permalink: Earth Chamber

An American Socialist

Jan 31
Growth at all costs
Growth at all costs

In one of the best parts of Triangle of Sadness, a yacht is being torn to shreds by a storm while the Captain — who remains drunk and in his room for most of the journey — and a hyper-wealthy foreigner find common ground trading barbs about socialism and capitalism. The captain, an American socialist, and the traveler, a Russian capitalist, drink each other under the table.

One of the quotes the Captain says to the traveler represents an important tenant of my investment philosophy, shaped by my work with Golden Section. Andrew Smith, one of our executive directors, recently said to me:

It’s that type of thinking we work against, to go and spend all the money and then go and raise more. You could be in a position to never have to do that again and be just fine! Sometimes it’s doing a lot of reorienting with founders, to realign with them their actual goals.

I recently went to a lecture featuring (a local Houston) company, and (their co-founder and CEO) was like, “Look, you’re over here worried about giving up 5% of your company or 10% of your company? It doesn’t matter, you just gotta grow.” And I’m like, that is like the exact opposite — the polar opposite — of our view. It’s not the way we like to operate. People like that, right, they’re just trying to grow at all costs and hire and do all that rather than be worried about how their business runs and be worried about building something that’s sustainable over the long term. You lose sight of the business itself and just become the guy that’s out raising money all the time. You should be known as the guy that’s growing your business. 

Andrew Smith

In the movie, the Captain shoots back at Dimitry:

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. Edward Abbey.

Link Jan 19

Try Harder

I often say that “everything is securities fraud,” that every bad thing that a public company does can be characterized as securities fraud, because public companies do not disclose all of their bad actions in real time. Do 10% of public companies do undisclosed bad things each year, things that would lead to securities fraud lawsuits if they were discovered, but that mostly go undiscovered?

Matt Levine
“Slicing Cash Flows For Better Ratings”

If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.