Once a year, I write up an article like this to say what I liked the most and the least in any given year. This year is no different, but I have a much more active dating life right now, so that means I am actually a little more discerning about what I do actually see. That, and I just plain didn’t see some things that I might have in the past. Basically, if you’re waiting for me to trash Borderlands, you’ll need to keep waiting.

It also means that my “worst” list is maybe not that bad. But I still wanted another list of 15 good movies and 10 bad ones, plus one special mention.

And so, without any further prologue, the best and the worst of 2024 according to me.

The Best of 2024

15. Challengers

I gave Challengers a C+ back when I first saw it, but something about this movie stuck with me. If I were the type to rewatch and reconsider something, I probably would rewatch and reconsider this movie about three really competitive people who play tennis. It would probably work out just fine for a lot of people who aren’t me.

14. Juror No. 2

I won’t call Juror #2 the most brilliant movie ever, but it was definitely a step up from director Clint Eastwood’s last few movies, and this one could be his last one. As it is, Eastwood still knows how to wring tension out of a scene, and what would normally be just a run-of-the-mill legal thriller seemed to be just a little bit better as a result. This movie is just a really good example of a craftsman director at work even if Eastwood has done much better movies over the course of his career. Plus, I usually grade Eastwood on something of a curve anyway.

13. The Return

The Return is something that, were it not for the lead performances at the center, probably wouldn’t have been worth much. But in this very human retelling of the last few books of The Odyssey, Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus and Juliet Binoche as Penelope are the only reasons to see this movie. It’s slow and tries to get to the human center of these figures from Greek myth, but it would have been really easy to screw this up with a pair of lesser actors at the center of the narrative.

12. Longlegs

Longlegs probably got more notice than any other horror movie of the year, and for good reason. It’s tense as hell, has Nicholas Cage at his most eccentric as a very bizarre serial killer, but it’s maybe a little too weird for a lot of people, and good luck figuring out what the ending means. This isn’t the sort of movie that takes the time to explain everything. If that’s alright by you, go check this one out.

11. The Wild Robot

A robot tries to understand nature and befriends the animals on an isolated forest. Oh, and she raises a Canadian goose to maturity after accidentally killing his mother before he hatched. A remarkably sweet movie, and it had a much better “the animals all attack the bad guys” moment than Mufasa: The Lion King. And yes, I am getting to that one later.

10. Thelma

Actress June Squibb got her first starring role in Thelma, and the 94-year-old actress made the most of it, especially since it was a comedic action movie about a slow-moving woman in her 90s trying to get back the $10,000 she lost to a phone scammer. The movie shows Thelma moving gingerly around obstacles that most people could easily step over, her getaway car is a two-person scooter she swiped from a friend at a nursing home, and she even does a slow walk-away from an explosion. However, Thelma also takes time to comment on aging, loneliness, and other concepts that I also saw play out on Netflix’s A Man on the Inside series. This is a movie where the protagonist needs to worry about falling over and not being able to get up again, but really, between Squibb, the late Richard Roundtree in his final movie, and a smart script from writer/director Josh Margolin, there’s a lot to love about Thelma.

9. Nosferatu

The other big horror movie everyone seemed to be talking about was Robert Egger’s Nosferatu remake. Moody, tense, and with one of the most inhuman vampires to appear in a movie in years, there’s nothing sexy about Bill Skarsgård’s Count Orlok. He’s just a nightmare, one beyond the comprehension of the poor mortals that are trying to stop him. If Longlegs director Osgood Perkins specializes in tension, Eggers’s specialty is atmosphere, and this movie practically oozes evil in every frame.

8. Deadpool & Wolverine

Sure, my girlfriend, who had seen all of three X-Men movies before watching this one and two of them were Deadpool movies, loved the hell out of this one. So did I. Sure, it’s more or less a lot of fan service Easter Eggs and the like, but the movie never pretended to be anything more than that, and it was still a lot of fun.

7. Small Things Like These

Cillian Murphy followed up his Oscar win for Oppenheimer with this quiet drama about an Irish coal merchant who has to decide what to do about how the nuns running the house of unwed pregnant girls are not treating their tenants very well. There are consequences for his actions, but Murphy’s character isn’t trying to change the world. He just wants to find help for one young girl. It’s a beautiful meditation on right and wrong as a result.

6. Conclave

Much like The Return above, Conclave is make-or-break on the performances of the cast. Unlike The Return, this one has a stacked cast in pretty much every major role, and hey, Ralph Fiennes is in it too. I saw some negative criticism about the movie’s story after seeing it, but I sure didn’t notice it much while I was watching it.

5. Anora

What starts off as a Cineralla story goes the route of the in-laws-from-hell story, all while the charismatic title character tries to maintain some sense of dignity and maybe eke out a win when Russian oligarchs, used to getting their way, come to town to get their son out of his hasty Vegas marriage to a stripper. I can pretty much guarantee audiences will not see where this movie is going as it happens, and that’s one of the movie’s many charms.

4. Wicked Part One

Here’s where my ranking starts to get more difficult. How do I put the amazing adaptation of the first half of Wicked here? Simple: on reflection, there were other movies I liked better. However, Wicked is perhaps one of those rare movies where the excess is actually justified. Plus, I will never say no to Cynthia Erivo’s voice singing anything.

3. Civil War

A24 tries to do something big budget, and Alex Garland was up to the task. A tense movie about journalists in a United States falling apart during a second civil war, the scene with Jesse Plemmons’s white supremacist is a great reason to see the movie all by itself.

2. Inside Out 2

About the only knock I have on Inside Out 2 is it isn’t quite as good as the original Inside Out. Showing Reilly’s new emotions and how Anxiety, though not evil or anything, is actually ruining the adolescent girl’s life, it’s another meditation on emotions and the role they play in our lives.

1. Dune: Part Two

I’m no fan of Frank Herbert’s original novel, but this retelling sure works well. So much cinematic sci-fi looks very much the same, but Denis Villeneuve actually created a setting that looks like nothing I have ever seen before. Factor in as well the real-world politics and a hero who sure seems to be anything but, and you have the second in the planned trilogy. I can’t wait for the end if for no other reason than it will cover a book I haven’t read before.

Special Notice: Love Lies Bleeding

Love Lies Bleeding is probably the sort of movie that is going to make a lot of people’s top ten lists for 2024. I’ve seen it, and I would even say it would be justified for most people. The thing is, there’s a moment that happens in the closing minutes of the movie that will probably make or break your suspension of disbelief. If you can get past that moment–and you will absolutely know it when you see it–and it doesn’t knock you out of the movie, you’ll probably love the movie. I was knocked out, and it retroactively affected how I viewed the rest of the movie.

And the Worst…

10. Venom: The Final Dance

I think there are a lot of years when a Venom movie wouldn’t have made my “worst of” list, but I didn’t see as many bad movies this past year. It was more of a mess than anything else, somewhat forgettable, but Rhys Ifans and his hippie family seem like they wandered in from a different, much more fun movie. Not exactly worth the price of admission, but worth noting if nothing else.

9. Bob Marley: One Love

Again, this was hardly the worst movie ever made, but given the sheer number of people with the last name “Marley” in the closing credits, it’s not that surprising that the movie seems to set up Marley as maybe the greatest, kindest man who ever lived with very few flaws on display. There were times when other characters referenced Bob’s flaws, but the movie rarely showed him as anything other than a great artist and all-around human being.

8. Here

To be honest, Here is not a bad movie. It’s a movie with a gimmick that becomes mostly about that gimmick and not much else.

7. Argyle

The excess in Wicked felt justified, and I didn’t mind it. The excess of Argyle was the opposite of that. Someone really should have told director Matthew Vaughn “no” on some of those scenes in the last act.

6. Mufasa: The Lion King

I’ll have a review for this one coming up in a day or two, but this movie was just a whole lot of everything that somehow added up to nothing. The final act is too over-the-top while the movie’s framing sequence keeps popping back up with bad comedy with Timon and Pumbaa. At least it was an original story this time…

5. Trap

If this movie revives Josh Harnett’s career, it will have done exactly one thing right. Presenting a story where a supposedly smart serial killer is cornered at a concert with his unknowing pre-teen daughter, the script was less about his being brilliant as everyone else being an idiot.

4. The Book of Clarence

The Book of Clarence had some interesting ideas, and there were even a charming moment here or there. But the movie never quite seemed to figure out if it was satire or farce, the comedic timing often didn’t work, and it does seem like Jesus set a poor beggar up to die for no reason. I shouldn’t expect much from a January release, but this one was just profoundly disappointing considering the promising premise.

3. Joker: Folie à Deux

There are actually more than a few effective moments in this movie, but it never quite adds up to anything. I suspect no one involved really wanted to make it when all was said and done, and it shows.

2. Megalopolis: A Fable

Francis Ford Coppola spent so many years trying to get this movie made. I don’t know why.

1. Madame Web

I figure picking Madame Web as the worst of 2024 is probably going to be popular. I don’t really want to go with the expected entry here, believe it or not, but nothing about this movie works in any way, shape, or form. I don’t think I have the time or the inclination to list everything the movie did wrong right now. Just, you know, don’t watch it.