Sometime late in 2023 I got really into capsule reviews, and even bought a copy of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide. I think there’s a lot of artistry to writing such succinct reviews, and a lot of fun to be had in reading them. So throughout all of 2024, for (almost) every movie I watched, I wrote a little review. Most of these are not movies that came out in 2024, they’re just the ones I watched that year.

Special favorites are rubricated (red.) I didn’t use any kind of star rating system, but the last line of each review is basically a rating. Reviews are arranged in order of viewing, with the most recently viewed movie at the top. My favorite movie of the year was Heaven’s Gate. My least favorite was Four Feathers.

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NOSFERATU (2024). A woman is tormented by horny vampire nightmares. Her husband is called to Transylvania to broker a real estate deal with a Count. Guess who the Count is.
Thick-as-blood atmosphere, great performances, decadent stylings. Ending felt a little pat, but story is otherwise well paced and constructed.
It’s great.

DOG DAY AFTERNOON. A bank robbery is going very well until the robbers find the vault empty. Having to improvise to scrape up more cash, they soon find the bank besieged by dozens of cops and hundreds of onlookers, trapping them inside with a dozen hostages.
Another great Sidney Lumet movie where people with opposing views are stuck in a room all day and get very sweaty. Stellar performances from Pacino as the irresistibly charismatic bank robber and Cazale as his quiet, lethal accomplice. And from the whole damn cast—it’s all great.
All time classic.

MEDIUM COOL. Picaresque film following a Chicago TV cameraman in 1968 leading up to the Democratic National Convention. Mixes real documentary footage and scripted scenes fairly seamlessly. Stupid climactic sequence and stupid ending, but all in all the movie has a lively, authentic feel.
It’s medium cool.

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE. Coming of age film about two brothers whose parents are getting divorced. Father is a formerly great novelist, mother is a rising literary star. These people all have problems and frequently behave horribly and insufferably and my god is it funny.
It’s the filet of Noah Baumbach.

LONGLEGS. A serial killer whose victims all kill themselves/each other. Actually it’s the devil.
A-grade execution of a D-grade story. The devil magic renders any twists arbitrary, makes the Nic Cage character not that scary because he can be as dangerous or as weak as the plot needs him to be.
Great cinematography, long shots slow-building tension. There’s probably a killer short film in here somewhere.
It’s fine.

CARNIVAL OF SOULS. Woman survives a car crash, takes a job in a new town as a church organist. On the way there she sees an old abandoned fair pavilion by the lake shore. Also sees a ghostly man in the middle of the road.
The man reappears a few times, and the pavilion haunts her. A movie heavy with dread, paranoia, and the uncanny.
Score gets kind of grating at times, but visuals and the slow-building terror make it.
Also all you dorks who lose it over “liminal spaces”,  this one’s for you.
It’s cool.

RIVER’S EDGE. Teen murderer shows his friends the dead body of their friend, who he murdered. No one cares.
A strange and pretty unpleasant movie, composed of a lot of very specific and unexpected choices which give it a bizarre sense of reality. The antithesis of the John Hughes teen movie.
Crispin Glover delivers an extremely affected and punchable performance, which is either terrific or the worst shit ever. Solid performances from everyone else.
It’s cool. It’s great?

AMERICAN PSYCHO. Investment banker murders lots of blonde women, and one fellow investment banker.
Funny movie! But a little aimless, no strong sense of increasing tension or stakes or psychosis. The movie hits a plateau after he kills his rival.
Tour de force from Bale.
It’s cool.

THE STRANGERS. A young couple at a vacation house in the woods are tormented by three people.
A series of contrivances keep the couple from escaping, keep the tormenters from catching them. Despite the stilted plotwork, the movie is very well-executed. Goes for long, dread-inducing shots over quick jump-scares. The couple are real people, who feel like they’ve been living a real life, having a real relationship, before the film starts rolling. Lots of small, very believable moments sprinkled throughout.
It’s cool.

VIDEODROME. The head of a small paid-subscription TV station known for broadcasting softcore porn and violent movies is looking for something edgier. He manages to tune into another channel broadcasting 24/7 footage of torture and murder—Videodrome.
The snuff film stuff is fairly tame and always kept at such a remove that it’s never really disturbing or compelling—but that’s just the entree to the real horror of hallucinations, breathing TVs, throbbing cassettes, quintessential Cronenberg, as the protagonist becomes more and more obsessed.
Sharp script, solid performances, thought-provoking theming, repulsive effects.
It’s great.

THEY LIVE. Look to your left. Now look to your right. One of those people is an alien freak working towards the total subjugation and exploitation of the Earth.
Hot guy vagabond joins a homeless encampment which also hosts the nascent resistance to the alien overlords. The resistance makes the proverbial glasses which let you see who’s an alien, and read plainly the subliminal messages in ads, TV, books, etc.
This is such a fun bit of spectacle (ha), and used to great effect. Glasses off: Dollar bill. Glasses on: THIS IS YOUR GOD. Classic.
Schlocky meathead agitprop action flick. 
It’s great.

THE GATE. A hellhole begins to open at the base of a kid’s treehouse, and the kid and his friend inadvertently complete the 2-factor blood ritual authentication to fully open it.
Movie has a doltish pacing which lurches predictably between We did it, gate’s closed! and Psych, it’s still open!, but the core characters have a believable charm, and the special effects are a fun mixture of stop motion, costumes, and composites.
Really, you gotta watch this for the little demon guys. The little demon guys are great. They ook and eek and run around and steal every scene they’re in.
It’s cool.

MONEYBALL. Coach of the Oakland A’s gets the crazy idea to draft baseball players based on stats instead of vibes, proceeds to lead the team on a record-breaking winning streak.
The movie struggles to find its center—is it the team? The coach? This season? It winds up settling on the coach, relegating the team to bit players.
The real shame is the lack of attention given to the math! The movie doesn’t remotely attempt to explain any of the formulas, programs, any of the special sauce that makes this movie different from every other sports movie. Right as the math wiz character is about to explain it, we instead get a fucking Scrolling Numbers Montage, because this movie thinks its audience is morons.
This is a movie about an underdog sports team crushing the competition by focusing on solid stats for every player instead of blowing their budget on a couple big stars. But the movie just focuses on Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill.
It’s fine.

RECORDER. Documentary about Marion Stokes, a wealthy black Philadelphia woman who amassed an enormous archive of VHS and betamax tapes as she recorded TV news 24/7 for over 30 years—from the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 to her death in 2012.
A biography of Stokes and her fraught relationship with her family forms the emotional core of the movie, while the examination of the archive, its value and ethos, expands the film’s sociological dimension. With these themes deftly interwoven, the movie is captivating, touching, stimulating.
It’s terrific.

PRESIDENT. Another banger from Camilla Nielsson.
A documentary following the 2018 Zimbabwe presidential election, the first one after the coup against Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe since 1987.
Wonderfully candid look inside a presidential campaign, examining the procedural, electoral process of challenging a rigged system. Unlike DEMOCRATS we don’t get an inside look at ZANU-PF’s campaign, only the opposition’s, though we do get one moment where the two main figures of DEMOCRATS have a cameo together.
It’s great.

SCARY STORIES. A documentary about the iconic children’s book Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz, illustrated by Stephen Gammel. Mainly serves as a celebration of the book, with some historical background on its publication and the controversy it engendered, plus a clumsy attempt at an emotional through-line culminating in Schwartz’s son meeting with a former detractor of the books.
If you loved (or were terrified of) these books as a kid, definitely give it a watch.
It’s cool.

METROPOLIS. Why can’t the working class and the owning class just get along? 😥
Ideological bankruptcy aside, this movie slaps. A dazzling futuristic Babylon rises into the sky over a subterranean worker’s city. A woman leads the underclass, preaching about the injustice of their plight and the coming savior … who winds up being a bleeding heart scion. Very operatic and melodramatic in plot, astounding in spectacle, dumb as shit in its class analysis, overall a timeless classic.
It’s great.

AKIRA. Quintessential banger.

SPARTACUS. One of my favorite movies about labor organizing.
A school of gladiators revolts against their masters and leads a slave rebellion across the Italian peninsula. Grand visions of spectacle and awe interwoven with smaller, more intimate moments, all rendered beautifully. I joke, but I really do see this as a movie about a utopian struggle against imperialism and exploitation. It happens to also be a banger of a movie, magnificently acted, filmed, scored, and choreographed.
It’s fantastic.

BLAISE PASCAL. A biopic about 15th-century math nerd Blaise Pascal. Wonderful set dressing and costuming, and pretty nice performances. A bunch of stuff happens. Do we care?
It’s cool.

THE CRADLE. Historical drama about Mieszko I, the 10th-century founder of Poland, recounted as witch’s-brew-induced flashbacks on the eve of a fateful battle.
Pretty impenetrable for an anglo viewer, unsurprisingly! Some very impressive horsemanship and falconry, but overall lackluster cinematography and roughshod editing. 
It’s fine.

SOCIETY OF THE SNOW. Historical survival drama about the proverbial Uruguayan Rugby Team.
Terrific performances by the actors, though being so numerous and so little differentiated, they are massively upstaged by the environment. This is a movie of movement, space, elements, brought to bear on feeble human flesh. The infamous cannibalism is absolutely the least interesting turn in this tale.
It’s great.

DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS. Postwar LA. Easy Rawlins is one of many black men who left the south for the abundant wartime jobs in Southern California. Now out of work, he takes an odd job for some quick cash, and must soon adopt the role of a hard-boiled detective to get himself out of the conspiracy he’s stumbled into.
Terrific costuming and set dressing, potent sense of time and place, and dynamite performances from the whole cast. Denzel as Easy and Don Cheadle as his loose cannon friend Mouse are a killer duo.
It’s great.

ISLE OF DOGS. A plague has infected the dogs of Megasaki, so the mayor banishes them to Trash Island. Both strays and pets are banished, including even Spots, the personal guard dog of the mayor’s son. 6 months later, the mayor’s son arrives on Trash Island to rescue Spots, aided by Bryan Cranston, Jeff Goldblum, Ed Norton, Bob Balaban, and Bill Murray, who are dogs.
Wonderful stop motion animation, with some 2D animation mixed in. Wes Anderson’s stop motion movies are the apotheosis of his style, I think. Charming, witty, richly designed. Female characters only exist as romantic appendages to male characters, whoops!! But other than that,
It’s great.

THE MAN FROM LONDON. You know how sometimes at the end of a movie, the camera will just hold on a long shot as the credits roll over it—you’d almost think it was a freeze frame, but there’s a little motion, there’s a person walking around or a flag waving in the wind. So Bela Tarr made this entire movie out of those shots.
A railway switchman on the night shift at a harbor rail yard witnesses a pair of foreigners struggling over a briefcase. One goes down in the water and drowns, still clutching the briefcase. The switchman later fishes it out of the depths and discovers it is filled with thousands of British pounds.
A paranoid, dour, guilt-ridden, obsessive, fixated movie. Gorgeous black and white cinematography. Slow as a glacier. I think I liked it?
It’s cool.

PLAYTIME. A mostly wordless comedy following a group of American tourists and an old frenchman as they bumble through modern Paris. A satire of rationalized architecture, technology, and design.
A triumph of comedic choreography and staging. Director Jacques Tati makes frequent use of long wide shots, densely packed with actors all going about their own business. More visual gags and clever vignettes on screen than you can spot in a single viewing.
Banger.

THE KEEP. A troop of nazi soldiers commandeer a strategically located fortress in the mountains of Romania. The fortress imprisons an ancient evil which begins attacking the nazis. Various persons and factions vie to release or imprison the “evil” (?) presence, which is steadily gaining power.
As with Mann’s preceding film THIEF, the vibes are immaculate. Eerie, incandescent special effects and a killer soundtrack by Tangerine Dream. Characters and performances are great, but the film makes strange leaps in plot and relationship development which leave big gaps. I understand the film was cut down from 210 minutes to 96 after testing poorly. No director’s cut exists yet :(. Despite this, there’s enough of a plot, and the core characters are strong enough, to keep the film compelling.
Watch with friends. Banger.

JULIE AND CELINE GO BOATING. Girlfriends Julie and Celine stumble upon a haunted house in which, every day, the inhabitants act out the same tragic melodrama. Each time Julie or Celine emerge from the house they remember nothing, but they’re left with a candy, and eating the candy recalls fragments of the drama to them. They slowly piece together the fragments, then hatch a plan to save one of the ghosts. This is a fun enough premise, the treatment is goofy and playful enough, but it unfolds over two hours, and we only arrive at it after one hour of tedious fuckery.
This movie has two faults. First, it is three hours long with only an hour and a half of plot in it. Second, Julie and Celine have no chemistry. They laugh during their lines for no reason, then laugh at each other’s laughter, in a rote imitation of genuine friendship.
Either of these two sins would be pardonable without the other, but together they are poison. Disappointing!
It’s crap.

MONKEY MAN. A boxer with a tragic past is out for revenge, working his way up as an employee at an elite night club, hoping to get a shot at one of the VIPs.
The first third of the movie is fast and punchy, the final third an orgy of violence, but the middle third is a stuttering revelation/spirit journey/training montage/flashback mess.
The political dimension of the movie is both superficial and incoherent. The movie’s original sin is land appropriation, but we spend the first third focusing on prostitution, and the latter third focusing on Hindu nationalism. And there are no Muslim characters? Superficial politics are fine but they must be simple. Nuanced politics are fine but they must be treated at length, which is impossible in such a high-octane action film. Oil and water, this shit doesn’t mix.
The action is good, the soundtrack slaps, would’ve been better as a mindless revenge flick, alas. Not a banger.
It’s cool though.

EMMA (2020). A delight!
Emma, a spoiled only-child rich girl, befriends Harriet, an unrefined girl with no connections, and meddles in her life. Various love interests and rivals are introduced, and Emma makes a mess of things. It’s like CLUELESS.
Terrific writing, striking characters, excellent performances, gorgeous costuming and set dressing. People who like Wes Anderson will eat this movie up (as long as they can stomach characters expressing actual emotions.)
It’s great.

MANHUNTER. Someone is serial killing, so serial killer whisperer William Graham has to come out of retirement to track him down. Like a dog sniffing the quarry’s socks, Graham has to stick his nose all up in Hannibal Lecter—successfully caught by Graham years ago—so he can pick up the trail of the new killer.
Pretty standard 80s detective thriller, even with the addition of Lecter and Graham. What stands out is the haunting soundtrack, surreal visuals, and striking colors.
The shootout at the end is quintessential Mann.
It’s cool.

BARCELONA. Ted, an American salesman working in Barcelona, gets an unexpected visit from his cousin, Fred, a naval officer whose fleet has just been posted to Barcelona in the midst of NATO talks. The movie follows their relationship, and their romantic relationships with local women. I may have mixed their names up. They are two different flavors of dweeb.
The movie is charming enough, witty enough, but at a certain point expects the audience to take a genuine, openhearted interest in the fate of these characters, which I could not. I prefer METROPOLITAN, the director’s previous movie.
It’s fine.

THIEF. A safecracker (James Caan) recently out of prison is desperate to make up for lost time, desperate to start a family, desperate enough to deal with a major crime boss so he can get a lead on one big, final score.
Caan delivers a killer performance, the rest of the cast are great too. The safecracking is fascinating and ingenious and authentic—director Michael Mann used legit former thieves as technical advisers, and used real tools to fuck up real safes. 
And the VIBES. The vision is metallic, industrial, neon, nocturnal, chrome, steel, glass. Tangerine Dream delivers a matching score.
Beautiful, infernal, magnetic movie.
BANGER.

THE ASPHALT JUNGLE. A criminal mastermind recently out of jail has plans for a big caper. He enlists the city’s local talent to help him pull it off.
The fun of this movie is the interplay between the different characters—the mannered, cool, professional mastermind; the deadbeat, hot-tempered “hooligan”; and the playboy millionaire fixer—who is actually not so rich anymore, and plans to betray the others. All the other characters are distinctive too, but this triangle is at the core.
The plot is uncannily similar to RIFIFI, which came out 4 years later, though both are based on different novels.
The heist itself is not so spectacular, but the clash of personalities and motives is compelling, and makes for a strong second half.
It’s cool.

THE HIDDEN FORTRESS. The Akizuki clan has been defeated, but the princess and a cartload of gold remain uncaptured in a mountain hideout. To get the gold and the girl to safety, General Makabe Rokurota has to smuggle them through the heart of enemy territory, enlisting the aid of two greedy dumbass peasants.
This plot is mainly a structure from which to hang scenes, moments, ideas, all very well executed and strikingly filmed.
It’s cool.

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940). A story of two friends, one a king who has been usurped by his vizier, the other a young thief. Abu the thief wants to go out to sea and have adventures, while Ahmed the king wants to marry the princess of Basra. The thief defers his own desires so he can be the king’s wingman, and many adventures ensue.
Spectacular color, resplendent sets, gorgeous backdrops, luxuriant costumes, and special effects which still dazzle 80 years later (most of them, anyway). The story is a little convoluted, but the individual scenes have the narrative magic of great fairy tales.
We love Sabu. He and Rex Ingram play their characters with zero nuance and infinite heart. They are The Thief and The Djinn, and they are a joy to watch. Nice performances from Cornad Veidt (the vizier) and Miles Malleson (Sultan of Basra) too.
Banger.

FOUR FEATHERS (1939). England’s most mentally stable man gets called a pussy by his friends and fiance; proceeds to mutilate self, submit to slave labor, and generally fuck about in the Sudan to prove them wrong.
Characters as broad as a barn door, and performances to match.
Seems to have doubts about British notions of bravery, masculinity, duty, and war, but ultimately doubles down on them.
Beautiful technicolor cinematography and some nice set pieces are the best this movie can offer.
It’s crap.

BROKEN TRAIL. Epic TV movie western about a nephew-uncle pair driving a herd of horses across the northwest to sell them to the British army in Canada. Early on in the journey, the two cross paths with a sex trafficker transporting Chinese immigrants to a mining town, and they end up rescuing the would-be prostitutes and taking them into their protection.
All in all well written. Low rent in some aspects (e.g. score, some of the cast), but delivers on cinematography and performances by the principals. Robert Duvall and Thomas Hayden Church, the uncle and nephew, are great, and especially great together.
Not quite a miniseries, not quite a movie, the plot is meandering, relaxed, picaresque. This is frequently a movie about hanging with da boys (and sometimes girls.) Lots of grilling and chilling.
It’s cool.

RE-ANIMATOR. A renegade med student has discovered a serum that can bring back the dead, and recruits his roommate to his cause.
If pushed a little farther into the comedic this would be a slam dunk. As it is, its still pretty funny and entertaining. I’m told HP Lovecraft was not proud of this story, and would likely hate this movie, and that is also pretty funny.
It’s cool.

HOUSE. High school girl goes to visit her aunt at the old family house in the country, and brings along six friends and a cat. They die.
This was my second time seeing this movie, but my first time seeing it with friends, which is the ideal viewing experience.
B-movie plot and characters, exquisite craftsmanship as far as special effects, sets, lighting, cinematography, editing, all that, magnifique!!
Despite being made in the 70s it has the frenetic energy of a 90s music video, constantly throwing out new visual ideas, always unexpected, zagzigging and zigzigging and zizzing gagging etc. Frequent and unapologetic use of green screen is novel.
Banger.

MY ARCHITECT. A playground of architectural ideas. The movie’s core structure, its driving force and line of inquiry, is not about architecture—it’s about Nathaniel Kahn’s journey to get to know his father, famous architect Louis I. Kahn, through his former colleagues, admirers, detractors, and his buildings. It’s about chasing a ghost. And along the way, it does lightly touch on various ideas to do with architecture, art, and life. That emotional, personal core is strong, and the architectural ideas are stimulating, intriguing. Plus, beautiful, striking buildings—they practically film themselves.
It’s great.

HEAVEN’S GATE. 1890, Wyoming. Cattle barons are gobbling up all the land. Immigrant homesteaders steal cattle to get by, or just to get drunk. The cattle barons put together a list of 125 suspected thieves, and hire 50 bounty hunters to kill them all at once. Three people are caught up in this struggle—James Averill, a US marshal; Nathan Champion, a hired gun; and Ella Watson, the madam of a whorehouse.
FUCKING HELL, this movie. Nearly four hours long, and so much money on screen in every single shot. The set dressing and costuming is relentlessly rich and authentic. The cinematography is sweeping, expansive, epic. Humans are subordinated to the colossal landscape, the thundering traffic of horses and trains, the spectacular city. Utterly immersive. Inhabiting, not indicating. The movie uses no shorthand, no easy symbols, no cipher character for a disoriented audience. Everything is shown, everything is right there if you will see it. You are dropped into it and given no life preserver to float on—you are meant to sink, to see what you cannot see from the surface.
After watching this movie, I walked over to a liquor store, and felt utterly dazed just walking around, like I’d woken from a dream.
I have talked about setting because that was what so struck me about this movie, but it would be worthless without the characters and the superb performances of their actors. ALIVE. These people are hungry, tired, angry, happy, sorrowful, proud, ALIVE to the moment. The leads and the minor parts alike. This happened. You live here. You know these people.
A lesser movie would’ve been structured thus: first act, the marshal investigates, discovers the plot; second act, the marshal tries to stop things, but fails, and preparations are made for the conflict; third act, battle. But Michael Cimino understood that the substance of this story is the lives of the people caught up in it, the reality of their existence. If you did not get all this, the final battle would be mere theater, a new performance of a familiar tune. But because you have seen and believed this world, these lives, you can see that humans are fucking killing humans! They’re killing the immigrants for money, but now the immigrants are shooting and killing them back!
When was the last time you heard the phrase “an eye for an eye” and actually imagined someone gouging someone’s eyes out? It’s a dead metaphor.
Even “gouging someone’s eye out” is a stock phrase, and won’t discomfort you as much as “scraping someone’s eyes out” would. Sometimes you have to make an effort to get people to really see something. The cast and crew made the effort for every frame of this film.
It is insane that this movie is as obscure as it is—especially with a cast including Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, Jeff Bridges. The theatrical release was significantly cut down, make sure you see the full director’s cut.
Transcendent.

THE LAST EMPEROR. Spoiled brat grows up to be taller spoiled brat. Sweeping historical epic, but the main character has no agency, and it takes him almost the whole movie to realize this.
The theme of a supposedly all-powerful emperor being in fact imprisoned, both physically and culturally, by a moribund institution—that is interesting. The film has nothing to really say about it though, and fails to dramatize it. Narratively, the film just checks boxes of historical events.
It’s fine.

BELLY OF AN ARCHITECT. A dickhead American architect goes to Italy to curate an exhibition of Boullé and gets a tummy ache. An Italian architect tries to steal his wife and the exhibition.
Should’ve leaned further into the absurdity. As psychological drama, utterly inane. As weirdo campy spectacle, quite fun. Love the long, exquisitely composed static shots. Human form contained & governed by architecture. Wes Anderson, eat your heart out.
If the film has anything to say about architecture, I didn’t hear it. A good companion to THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY.
It’s cool.

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I will do this again for 2025.