“My Year in Movies – 2024 Edition” – Trending down.

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A favorite pastime of film industry journalists is predicting the demise of cinema. I’ve written several times about how much hooey that was all the way back in 2013, again in 2017, and again in 2019. Then, Covid appeared and said, “hold my beer.” Prior to the Covid lockdowns, streaming services were struggling to get a foothold in the area of new releases. In 2019, domestic (U.S. and Canada) theaters sold 1.224 billion tickets, grossing $11.2 billion (source: the-numbers.com). Even star-studded films like Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman (on Netflix) failed to draw people away from theaters. Then the pandemic changed the equation.

While people were stuck at home avoiding a deadly pathogen, they discovered the convenience of streaming movies in their living room. No more overpaying for popcorn and soda. No more cramming into small seats and sharing an armrest with a stranger. No more cursing the jerks who can’t go ten minutes without checking their cell phones. No more sitting through half an hour of advertisements and previews prior to the movie starting. And no more wondering which car belongs to the parents of the kid who won’t shut up or stop kicking the back of your seat.

Five years later and the box office numbers are nowhere near pre-Covid. With just a few days left in 2024, the number of domestic tickets sold is going to finish between 770-780 million tickets, with a value of about $8.3-$8.4 billion. That’s a 36% decline and the primary reason why Regal Theaters declared bankruptcy. It’s also the reason why theater chains are trying all kinds of things to get people to come back. Unlimited movie passes, heated and reclined seating, restaurant quality food, and even limited-edition, movie-themed popcorn buckets.

When a large chunk of moviegoers failed to return to theaters, studios attributed that to streaming and are trying to use that to their advantage. According to the-numbers.com founder Bruce Nash, movies pre-Covid averaged eighty days in theaters before studios made them available at home through rentals, purchases, or streaming options. Today, he says, that number is down to thirty-two days. For people who are on the fence about seeing a movie in a theater, waiting just a single month knowing they get to watch from the comfort of home and save money and not get kicked in the chair is a pretty easy decision.

But how sure are we that streaming is the primary culprit? Compare 2024 to 2023, when 828 million tickets were sold. The box office was steadily, if not slowly, clawing back audiences. Then, 2024 resulted in 50 million fewer tickets sold. What gives? Streaming hasn’t substantially changed since last year and the average ticket price remained the same at $10.78. In fact, the most noticeable change is what so many people were wishing for – fewer superhero movies.

Remember how everyone supposedly had superhero fatigue and that was supposed to be why ticket sales hadn’t fully rebounded? That people were absolutely clamoring for non-superhero movies? Well, Marvel’s MCU released just one (Deadpool & Wolverine), Warner Brothers released just one – Joker: Folie a Deux, and Sony released three (Madame Web, Venom: The Last Stand, Kraven the Hunter) Of those five, Deadpool and Venom turned profits, while the other three failed miserably. And they didn’t fail because of anything as vague as superhero fatigue. Joker failed because it was a terrible movie described as a middle finger to audiences and studios and has a real chance of being the last film Todd Phillips ever directs. Madame Web and Kraven failed because they, too, were terrible movies that everybody pre-decided not to see because Morbius and Venom: Let There be Carnage proved that Sony might actually hate the Spider-Man universe (note: Venom 3’s domestic box office finished $74 million below that of Venom 2’s $213 million).

Then, there is Deadpool & Wolverine. If people were so superhero-ed out, they had a funny way of showing it by making D&W the highest grossing R-rated movie ever ($636.7 million domestic; $1.338 billion worldwide). If not for Inside Out 2 doing ever better, D&W would have been the top-grossing movie of the year.

That’s not to say that flooding theaters with dozens of superhero movies will bring the box office totals back to pre-Covid levels. It’s to say that people will show up for superhero movies that are well-written and entertaining. The DCEU was rarely either of those things and the Sony Spider-Man Universe (SSU) movies actively tried to be the opposite of those things. The MCU overextended itself with all of the streaming series and the well-written part of the equation suffered.

The good news is James Gunn is rebooting the DCEU as just the DCU, the SSU is dead and crashed so hard that there are rumors Sony is considering selling the full Spider-Man rights back to Marvel, and Marvel is dialing it back a bit on the quantity of content. This equates to just four superhero movies slated for 2025 – Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts, and Fantastic Four: First Steps in the MCU and Superman in the DCU. But that slate looks very promising for recovering the drop in ticket sales since 2023.

But what about the rest of the box office? Only time will tell if it ever fully comes back, but it’s going to be a long road, if it ever does. While people will head back to theaters for good superhero movies, as well as other anticipated blockbusters and occasional good-word-of-mouth flick, many people won’t ignore the convenience, cheaper cost, and reduced wait time that streaming provides. Not even if there’s a popcorn bucket that can literally fly like Superman.

Best of the best of the best, sir!

This might be the toughest top five I’ve chosen of all the years I’ve been reviewing movies. Not because there were a lot of great movies, but because there weren’t.

• Deadpool & Wolverine – Best movie of the year and it’s not even close. Not only was it the most entertaining movie of the year, it featured incredibly tight writing and exceeded astronomically high expectations while being movie three of the franchise. No other answer is acceptable for best movie of the year. I’m looking at you, Academy Awards.
• Dune: Part Two – A great example of a movie that should be seen in theaters. The sound and visuals alone were worth the price of admission. So was everything else about the movie, even the sandworm popcorn bucket.
• The Fall Guy – If not for Deadpool & Wolverine, The Fall Guy would have gotten my vote for most entertaining movie of the year. It was also the most surprisingly good movie of the year, considering every other 1980’s TV-show-turned-movie have ranged from embarrassing to ghhaaaaa!
• Heretic – I’m a sucker for any movie questioning religions, but Hugh Grant’s performance takes Heretic to another level. It’s the best horror film of the year featuring the best performance from an actor of the year.
• The Wild Robot – Inside Out 2 may be the highest grossing film of the year, but The Wild Robot edges it out for best animated film of the year. Both yank your feelings out through your tear ducts, but I wasn’t expecting to feel that way about a robot befriending forest animals.

You Almost Made It

If you named any of these next few movies as being in your top movies of the year list, I would just nod at you. The difference between these and my top five is very little. Well, except Deadpool & Wolverine. Nothing is close to Deadpool & Wolverine.

• Inside Out 2 – Like I said, your feelings out your tear ducts.
• Conclave – Great acting, great cinematography, great costumes and sets. But the best part is how Conclave is a respectful depiction of the election of the Pope while also pointing out how very human it is, political warts and all.
• Smile 2 – The second-best horror movie of the year to Heretic, but it was close. Naomi Scott is no Hugh Grant, but she was still very, very good. That’s far better than we get from most horror movie sequels.
• Young Woman and the Sea – A quiet little movie that flew under the radar, but one worth watching. Daisy Ridley is wonderful, it provides a bit of history, and reminds us how far we haven’t come as a nation with regards to how women were and still are treated.
• We Live in Time – I can’t stress this enough – it’s a movie about cancer that is somehow uplifting.

The Squirmers

These movies were very good, but every one of them is tough to watch for one reason or another. Rewatchability played a big factor in my rankings here. Parts of each of these would be really difficult to sit through more than once. So, they get a separate category so you don’t accidentally watch them on date night.

• Civil War – The framing of a fractured country as seen through the lens of journalists was a stroke of brilliance. So was Nick Offerman’s performance as the President. But it’s far too easy for this movie to become non-fiction to be able to sit through it in comfort.
• Woman of the Hour – It’s rare that a movie can keep you creeped out for its entire run-time, but Woman of the Hour pulls it off. It’s even creepier that it was practically a documentary. Just, eww.
• Will & Harper – This is the least tough to watch in this category, and might actually be a great choice for date night. What makes it tough to watch is hearing what Harper has had to put up with – and still puts up with – not just after her transition, but also the difficulty she had trying figure out why she felt off for so many years. I’ve never been a Will Farrell fan, but he seems to be a really great human and friend.

Surprisingly Decent

It is almost impossible to go into a movie without some sort of expectations. Usually, it’s from something you saw in a trailer, actors who are in the movie, or what you already know about the director. These are the ones that surprised me…in a good way.

• Immaculate – I watched four movies featuring Catholicism in some way and all four of them came at it from a different approach. I liked that Immaculate took a very scientific approach, wrapped in a horror movie. It has one of the better endings to a film and one that I definitely did not see coming.
• MaXXXine – I only saw parts of X, Pearl was a boring waste of time, and Mia Goth is a very unconvincing actor. Suffice it to say, I expected MaXXXine to be another boring, overhyped film featuring Goth continuing to not be good at acting. Turns out I was right about Goth, but wrong about the film. It’s amazing what a well-written story and a very good cast around Goth (highlighted by Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Debicki) can do.
• Sleeping Dogs – It reminded me a lot of Memento, but without the clever structure. Just a neat little mystery with a neat little ending.
• Challengers – I saw two movies this year that were very unsubtle about the point they were going for. Challengers was the better of the two (the other is The Substance), practically screaming at the two male characters to just bang one out already. Also, they play tennis.

Movies for Me

Movies for Me are my guilty pleasures. Whether or not they’re objectively good doesn’t matter. All that matters is they did the thing I wanted them to do – entertain me.

• Abigail – The first part of the movie is not very good. But when it sheds its premise, it leans all the way into B-horror and becomes a bloodbath of fun.
• IF – I like Ryan Reynolds, John Krasinski, and imaginary friends. I even like sappy endings once in a while.
• Kraven the Hunter – I will die on the hill that Kraven is the best movie of the SSU, which is a really, really low bar.
• Red One – Don’t look at me like that. You know you secretly liked it too.
• Cuckoo – I fully expected to watch this movie over two sittings because I started it really late at night, but I just had to finish it. It’s about a human cuckoo bird hybrid. I said don’t look at me like that.
• The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare – What if Ocean’s Eleven worked for Winston Churchill during World War II?

Movies Not for Me

Flip a coin on these films. These movies were okay and also were movies. None of them spoke to me in any way, but maybe they spoke to you.

• Nosferatu – My full review of Nosferatu is getting far more attention online than any of my other reviews and it’s baffling me. My review was very lukewarm and I didn’t use any naughty words to goose the algorithms. I guess I just underestimated how many people are so into vampires that they’re horny even for the ones that are quasi-black-and-white remakes of hundred-year-old German silent films.
• It Ends with Us – Anyone who secretly liked Red One is not the target audience for It Ends with Us. 
• In the Land of Saints and Sinners – How could a movie about the Irish Republican Army featuring Liam Neeson be so meh? Seriously, I’m asking.
• Role Play – It’s a spy movie with Kaley Cuoco and David Oyelowo. Like Nosferatu, that sounds great on paper. Unlike Nosferatu, I can’t put my finger on why Role Play didn’t work for me.

Intermission

There are so many series that people insist we watch that I sacrifice watching some movies to fit those series in. Some of them are actually good.

• No Good Deed – If you like Only Murders in the Building, try No Good Deed. It’s a little more Desperate Housewives, but with far more likeable characters.
• Pen15 – This show was recommended by a book that my wife read (Decoding Boys, by Cara Natterson, a parenting book focused raising sons). The show does a really good job of addressing the awkwardness, confusion, and self-discovery that comes along with puberty. For teen viewers, it makes all the uncomfortable, humiliating, and difficult issues relatable. As a parent, it evoked surprisingly accurate feelings from that time in my own life and started some awesome and hilarious conversations with my kid.
• Big Mouth – Also recommended by Decoding Boys. Also does a good job of addressing just about every issue puberty (or just middle school) throws at kids. Also, it’s one of the raunchiest shows I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen The Boys. If you can handle the conversations this show leads to, your kids are going to grow up to be amazing adults.
• Echo – I said some. Echo isn’t bad, but it’s another example of why people have tuned out the MCU lately.

We’re Really Only in it for the Money

Nothing provides studios more inspiration than easy money. Nothing provides studios more fear than expiring IP rights. That’s how we continually get an annual plethora of lackluster uninspired sequels, remakes, and franchise entries.

• Mufasa – The main reason most prequels don’t work is because they always fall into the trap of putting a character into a situation that we know they get out of because we saw the movie(s) that the prequel is preceding. In short, there is no drama. Also, stop putting so much emphasis on explaining some tiny little detail that doesn’t matter. I don’t care how Rafiki got his staff, just like I don’t care how Professor X became bald.
• Moana 2 – I don’t know, but it’s the same (as Moana). Except for the music. Definitely not the same.
• Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – I strongly considered putting this one down in the poopy sequels category because every time someone sees it, they tell me how bad it was. The real problem with this movie is how many people went to see it ($451 million box office), proving yet again that audiences really don’t care about original content.
• Twisters – Like I said, audiences love what they already know ($371 million box office).
• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes – The story was over. We all went home. But I do still want to know what happened after Mark Wahlberg saw a memorial featuring Ape-raham Lincoln.

We Decided We Weren’t Just in it for the Money

These movies are no less money grabs than the films you just read about, but they actually tried to provide some solid entertainment for your money. This might be the weakest crop of this type of movie in years, but they were all much better than everything in the previous category.

• Wicked – The rare prequel that does work and the rare movie that is better than the book. We still have Part 2 coming next year, but so far so good.
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga – I found Mad Max: Fury Road to be quite overrated and I find Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga to be quite underrated. Furiosa has a much better story and isn’t so obsessed with fetishized cars and emphasizing practical effects. It doesn’t make sense until you realize they’ve made eleven Fast and Furious movies.
• A Quiet Place: Day One – I nearly put this one in the previous category. It’s much more of a typical studio film looking to keep milking a surprisingly popular film. I’m still not sure I got this one right.
• Alien Romulus – The end almost ruined this entire film, just like its inspiration – Alien: Resurrection. Almost.

This Parachute is a Knapsack!

The second category where expectations are key. Lazy screenplays and disappointing films will always exist. And some are the movies that start strong and don’t stick the landing, otherwise known as Shyamalan-ing.

• Alien Romulus – But it was so close. I’m really hoping we can be done with the whole Engineers crap that Prometheus foisted on us.
• The Substance – Wow, did The Substance completely face plant in its second half. I can’t remember the last movie that fell apart so completely, especially just so it could literally hose down the entire cast and set in fake blood.
• Longlegs – I don’t think the religious/supernatural bit helped this movie at all. In fact, it made Longlegs himself irrelevant to the movie and he was the most interesting part of the movie. Sometimes, the devil shouldn’t be in the details.
• Blink Twice – Almost as bad a second half as The Substance, Blink Twice also had no idea where to go after a solid first-half setup, other than blood, blood, bloooooooood.
• Speak No Evil – As much as I like James McAvoy, this movie disappointed in so many ways. Even the filmmakers seem to realize it, which explains why the third act featured a standard home invasion climax. Ironically, the third act was the best thing about this bummer of a film.
• I.S.S. – I’m always on the lookout for a good science fiction film and this wasn’t it. It’s a weird movie that doesn’t work on any level, but also doesn’t not work. But as with every movie in this category this year, the end is just a big eyeroll.

TL;DR

At least ‘The Letdowns’ contained some entertainment value. These next films were very boring, not the least bit entertaining, and lacked any plot beyond the initial premise. Or they were movies I quit in the middle or refused to watch. They are the very definition of “two hours of your life you will never get back.”

• Drive-Away Dolls – I will never understand why people like Coen Brothers movies so much. Or in this case, Coen Brother movie.
• 2073 – The idea of framing a documentary as being told from a dystopian future sounds interesting on paper. But when the execution is mostly just a series of video clips of the worst moments of history featuring many of the worst people humanity has shat out, you get something borderline watchable. My son and I made it thirty minutes into the film before we turned it off, disgusted with the human race.
• Road House – Mixed martial arts and ultimate fighting championship are two of the dumbest things ever invented by humans. When a film has to resort to including former UCF champ Conor McGregor to generate interest, especially one that is a remake of an ‘80s cult action classic, you know it’s not worth your time.
• Joker: Folie a Deux – I missed the advanced screenings, but I’m still very tempted to watch this movie. But everyone I know who saw it adamantly said not to. When a movie has been described as a middle finger to both audiences and studios, I should probably listen.
• The Brutalist – I didn’t watch this one either, but only because I didn’t want to sit through an advanced screening of a three-hour-thirty-five-minute movie, with an intermission, at a theater an hour away from my house. But nobody called it a middle finger to anyone, so…yeah.

Not the Worst, But You Sure Tried Hard

The challenge with this category is convincing you of the one redeeming quality for each of these films that kept them out of the cellar. Good luck to me, right?

• Carry-On – This movie is getting compared favorably to Die Hard. Carry-On can’t hold Die Hard’s jock strap. If not for Jason Bateman pulling off an effortless villain, Carry-On would the skidmark on that jock strap.
• Back to Black – Marisa Abela’s singing and looks are an uncanny imitation of Amy Winehouse. The rest of the movie is an uncanny imitation of bad filmmaking and storytelling.
• The Beekeeper – Jason Statham is like an overpowered video game character. He rarely takes a hit and progresses through levels with no trouble. It’s just not fun anymore. Ok, it’s still a little fun.
• The Watchers – This movie Shyamalan-ed itself with a terrible reveal at the end. Ironically, it was written and directed by a literal Shyamalan – M. Night’s daughter, Ishana. Sometimes, the jokes write themselves.
• Hit Man – A convoluted mess of a film that collapses under its own weight by the end. Good thing Glen Powell is so fun to watch in this disaster.
• Monkey Man – Not just one of the most disappointing movies of the year, after so many critics praised it, but one of the most poorly constructed and written films. And it took forever to get to anything resembling a plot or even just a point. Just skip to the John Wick-esque climax and thank me later.

Pooping on the Silver Screen

And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for – the five worst movies of the year. Unlike with my top five, these terrible films were easy to identify.

• Trap – Another hallmark of some Shyamalan movies is a premise that is impossible to accept, but is required in order for the twist to work. Trap’s premise is so dumb that your brain will quit before you realize that the entire movie is really just a commercial for Shyamalan’s other daughter Saleka’s pop music career.
• Breathe – A post-apocalypse movie regarding climate change that is so bad that people might intentionally hurt the environment just to spite this movie. The embarrassingly bad performances by Jennfier Hudson and Milla Jovovich are enough by themselves to hurt the environment.
• I Saw the TV Glow – Words cannot describe how utterly uninterested this film was in connecting with human people, trans and cis alike. Or telling a coherent story. Or presenting anything even faintly resembling entertainment.
• Night Swim – I’ll give them credit for taking a shot at turning a four-minute short into a ninety-nine-minute feature film. Then, I’ll drown that credit for this floater-in-the-pool of a horror movie that literally had the audience laughing at it.
• Argylle – If the writer’s guild doesn’t want to be replaced by A.I., they simply cannot produce the kind of swill that is Argylle. Especially since Argylle is the kind of swill that A.I. will happily churn out.

Pooping on the Silver Screen: The Sequel

This is the bonus category for movies that were made as sheer money grabs, but were also terrible movies in general. They are the shitty sequels, prequels, remakes, and franchise entries that keep getting made because you won’t stop watching them.

• Madame Web – It’s bad enough that Spider-Man isn’t part of the SSU. It’s worse that Madame Web shows us nothing more than a glimpse of what the four spider-girls become. The worst is it insists that Dakota Johnson can carry a superhero movie. The SSU deserved its death.
• Kraven the Hunter – I would be remiss if I didn’t include this deeply terrible movie here, just because I’m weird and kind of liked it.
• Venom: The Last Dance – Tom Hardy appeared to be done with this movie and franchise during the movie. And I don’t blame him. Spending three films arguing with yourself is two and a half films too many.
• Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire – This movie got worse over time as I thought about it more. I mean, titan dentist? A super glove for King Kong? A conspiracy theorist even after the conspiracy is revealed to have been true? A prophecy? Just have the ape punch the lizard the whole time. I beg you.
• Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire – When the film opened with a chase scene through New York City, then revealed the mayor to be Dickless-Over-Here, I knew it was going to be bad.
• Bad Boys: Ride or Die – Die. The answer is die.

Well, the 2024 movie slate was definitely a step below 2023, and 2023 was a pretty lousy movie year. It also turned out mostly how I expected it would, especially on the superhero movie front. I, for one, am looking forward to the MCU returning with three films and I’m hoping James Gunn’s Superman kicks off a new DC era that isn’t just one big slo-mo of disappointment. I’m also hoping for a movie to truly surprise us. 2024 seemed to be missing that one movie that comes out of nowhere to capture our collective attention. And I’m crossing my fingers that at least some of the movies based on existing IP aren’t complete wastes of time because I really don’t want to hear people complain about no originality again. If people cared truly cared about that, the box office wouldn’t look the way it does every year and November 5th would have turned out very different. Happy New Year?