Cavalcade of Awesome

Here we are. My favorite movies countdown of 2024.  This is my 18th year of doing this.  That’s kind of crazy!  As always, I’m keeping up with my movie watching throughout the year on my Letterboxd account.  Check me out there to see more reviews!

So, on to my list.  Rules are like my books, only movies new to me in 2024 are eligible.  I’ve gone back and forth on these lists about watching new 2024 movies after January 1st until I’ve done this list.  I’ve put a freeze on new movies, I’ve watched new movies (meaning 2024 movies eligible for the list).  It’s however I’m feeling at the time.  This time I watched one or two new 2024 movies before writing this list.  And new movies to me from any year are typically handled as honorable mentions in another article or one that I may tag on to this list.  We’ll see how I’m feeling after I word vomit all my stuff to you.

So let’s see what my favorite things to watch in 2024 were. This was an interesting year.  I normally do 5 spots.  That was about perfect, but I could really have done a top 7.  Maybe I will.  So, here are my top 5 (or more!) favorite movies of 2024. I got most of my images and links from Wikipedia.

Deadpool and Wolverine – I had super high hopes for this going in, despite me really trying to mitigate my hopes and dreams for this.  So I was primed for it to be the greatest movie ever, or a colossal failure.  And it managed to be one of my favorites of the year.  It worked on its own for me, but  lot of this is tied up in the experience of this movie.  My son was going to see this with me, so I had to prep him.  We did a whole “Road to Deadpool & Wolverine” marathon where I had to prep him for Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.  I think my son at the time had only seen the very first X-Men movie. So we watched X2, The Wolverine, and X-Men: Days of Future Past.  Then we also watched a few movies to prep him for cameos, like Daredevil and Fantastic Four.  He had already seen all the Blade movies.  And then we finished it all up with Logan, before we both watched Deadpool and Wolverine.  And it played like gangbusters.  I loved watching him slowly understand what it meant to have Hugh Jackman back as Wolverine, the history and the legacy he brings with that.  Deadpool was his favorite, but our marathon may have pushed Jackman’s Wolverine out in front.  So, like I said, all in all, this was a blast both because the movie turned out to be fun and awesome, but also because I shared all this movie’s history with my son.

Wicked – So, yes, it was super annoying to see Wicked Part 1 flash up on the screen when I saw it in the theater. I had no idea. They kept that little tidbit hidden VERY well.  That aside, I loved this.  First of all, I’m a big fan of Wizard of Oz.  I’ve read all 14 of the original L Frank Baum books.  I’ve seen the 39 musical so many times.  I read the original Wicked novel by Gregory Maguire back in the early 2000s (didn’t love it actually), and I saw the original Broadway run of Wicked with Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth.  TWICE (but I LOVED that).  So to say I was “on the jazz” for this movie would be an understatement.  And it lived up to everything I wanted out of it.  I was originally unsure about the leads, but they were wonderful.  I think my favorite thing was Oz.  The world building of Oz in this movie is incredible.  I loved how the world worked.  How everything looked.  I loved Goldblum as the Wizard, he was actually better than the Broadway version played by Joel Grey.  And having the Animals actually be animals instead of clearly people in animal masks, really really worked.  Well done.  I can’t wait for Part 2.

Fall Guy – I’m a really big fan of Lee Majors as The Six Million Dollar Man. I’m also a huge fan of Heather Thomas (particularly from the movie Zapped!). That led me to watch Fall Guy. I haven’t seen a lot of it, but I’ve watched a few episodes. So I was pretty excited that two of my favorite actors were teaming up for this.  And it’s GREAT.  The on screen charisma of both Gosling and Blunt is just joy to watch.  This is fun, fast, action-y.  It’s everything I wanted it to be.  This should be a series of movies.  Well, actually, AFTER Gosling makes a few more Gray Man movies.  That first.  Then do more of these.

Abigail – This one blew me away. I had no idea what to expect.  It was such a fun surprise that I had to put it in this list.  It’s got a great, eclectic cast, it’s super gory and over the top, and I was really surprised by the dark humor.  It may be hard now, but go in knowing as little as possible.

Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare – Oh man, I am in love with this cast.  Superman, Reacher, Snake Eyes?  Yes, yes, yes.  I have really been enjoying Guy Ritchie’s output lately.  The Gentlemen, Operation Fortune, this.  They are big, fun, blockbuster releases, but they are so entertaining.  Great actors having so much fun.  Lots of aweseome set pieces.  And a Nazi heist in the middle of it all.  Really enjoyed this one.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes – I had not seen the original Planet of the Apes movies when the first of these “new” movies came out in 2011.  But I loved this “new” trilogy so much, two of them directed by Matt Reeves, that I had to go back and watch the original 70s movies.  And I think, for me, these “new” movies I like better than all the “old” ones.  That’s just me.  Don’t get me wrong, I liked a lot of the old Apes movies, but this new set of movies is just DYNAMITE.  Kingdom continues the adventures by moving forward an uncertain amount of time (100 years? 200 years? Longer?).  We meet two clans of apes, new ape characters, and a few human characters.  Another really good entry in this series populated by good apes, bad apes, and good and bad humans.

WHEW. I did it.  I picked 5 (ish) movies to be my favorites this year.  I had a lot of good choices.  A couple big franchises weren’t included; Furiosa probably being the big standout. And don’t think I didn’t love that movie as well. I did.  But I had to make some cuts and I really feel like this group right now as I’m speaking to you were my favorites.

Now, let’s take a look at some of my movie watching stats from my account over on Letterboxd.

Here’s a graph of the number of films I watched throughout the year broken down by week.  My overall total was 270 movies watched, which is about 37 more movies than the last two years.  That’s just over 5 movies per week.  You can very clearly see that I had the highest viewing week in December.  The week of Dec 23-29.  This was all Christmas movie watching by me and my family.  13 films watched that week.  That’s one higher than my biggest week of 2023.

Here is the list of actors that I watched the most movies of this year. Elvis is at the top because I embarked on a journey of watching all of his movies starting back in 2023.    Overall there were about 31 of them to watch.  I watched 9 of them in 2024.  I still have three left to go.  My son is a huge fan of Keanu Reeves so we went on a bit of a binge watching his movies.  Schwarzenegger as well.  I watched all the Hunger Games movies with my daughter (they are great, btw), so that’s why Jennifer Lawrence and Donald Sutherland.  And you can see the remnants of my rewatching the Fast and Furious movies on AfterLunch with Vin and Michelle Rodriguez there.

I’m in the middle of an Elvis filmography marathon so that’s why Elvis is way out in front with 16 movies watched.  Seth Green seems an odd #2, but we watched all the Austin Powers movies with the kids as well as a few other of his movies randomly.  Courtney Cox and Roger Jackson are there because I did a Scream franchise marathon with the kids.  We watched all 6 of them.  I also rewatched Mission Impossible 3-6 (Tom Cruise) as well as watching all of Bruce Lee’s martial arts movies.  It’s interesting to see who pops up based on your watching habits.

Oh wow this is an interesting list of directors for the year.  The first two are for my rewatch of the Prep and Landing franchise.  Norman Taurog is for his Elvis movies.  Justin Lin for Fast and Furious movies, and Mangold for his Wolverine movies and I also rewatched 3:10 to Yuma.  We were doing a watch of the Ranown Westerns over on Hellbent for Letterbox, my western podcast, so that’s why Budd Boetticher is in there.  And Francis Lawrence is for the Hunger Games.  Wow, that’s such a weirdly, cool and eclectic list of directors.

Here are the milestones for the year.  My very first movie in 2024 was Good Burger 2.  My 50th movie was No Hard Feelings, and my 100th movie was Rambo Last Blood (with my son we were finishing out the Rambo franchise).  My 200th movie was the original Terminator when I watched it for I Read Movies, and my final movie of 2024 was my rewatch of The Count of Monte Cristo.  That’s such a bad ass movie.  Watch it if you haven’t.  It’s awesome.  There’s going to be a new adaptation of that story in 2025.  I’m really looking forward to it.

This was an interesting part of my stats I hadn’t noticed before. Movies that I rated higher/lower than the average across Letterboxd.  to be honest the top row where I rated those higher than the average, I’m not surprised by any of those, except for Hawkeye.  3.33 seems low for that series overall, but I don’t know.  I love that series whole heartedly.  Rated lower than average, I was pretty savage to those, it’s really hard honestly to get a 1 star out of me, but it happened three times there.  I really did not like those movies.  The Getaway is considered a classic, fine, but I really didn’t like it.

Here’s another section I hadn’t noticed before.  Highs and Lows.  Most Obscure must mean that it was the least reviewed of the movies I watched.  The lowest and highest average ratings make total sense.  The oldest movie I watched last year was Phantom Carriage.  That’s pretty cool.  I watched that for my horror podcast Crestwood House.

Well, there we go.  That wraps up my 2024 favorite movies list.  Man, I keep saying I’m going to do Honorable Mentions lists, but then I never do them.  I’m really going to try to get that done this year.

So.  Beginning of the year and my favorite movies countdown.  We meet again.

This is my 17th year making this list, guys.  How is that even possible?!  As always, I’m keeping up with my movie watching throughout the year on my Letterboxd account.  Check me out there to see more reviews!

So, on to my list.  Rules are like my books, only movies new to me in 2023 are eligible.  Normally, starting Jan 1 through whenever I post this article, I put a moratorium on 2023 movies that are new to me.  I don’t watch them.  I have to wait until I’m done with this article.  However, this year, I did actually watch a few new 2023 movie that I hadn’t watched within the calendar year of 2023.  So I’m trying new things.  Look at me, all growed up.

First, I’ll do a list of my favorite movies released in 2023.  Then, possibly, depending on how things go, I’ll do a second list of my favorite movies I watched for the first time in 2023.  Those can be from any year.  But in this article I’m focusing on 2023 released movies and a few stats from Letterboxd.

So let’s see what my favorite things to watch in 2023 were. This was a tough decision to make. There were three big tentpole releases that could have made it into this list, but I made a decision to nudge them out and do a couple other movies I felt needed the exposure.

Here are my top 5 favorite movies of 2023. I got most of my images and links from Wikipedia.

Barbie – I don’t know what I expected here, but I did not expect *this*.  It’s lovely.  It’s hilarious.  It’s thought provoking.  I was already getting a major man crush on Ryan Gosling and this just furthered that cause.  It’s amazing what Greta Gerwig did with this movie.  I love what it wanted to say, I love how it said it.  Just a wonderful movie and if pressed, I’d probably almost call this my favorite movie of the year.  Almost, this is a tight top 5.

Spider-man: Across the Spiderverse – Man, they managed to do it again.  The first one was such a masterpiece, I’m like, how are they going to follow that up?  And they managed to do it by making almost every frame of the movie a work of art unto itself.  The way they have art styles blending through the movie and even within one scene, it’s breathtaking.  And they brought in one of the more interesting villains, Spot, and made him crazy and weird and totally awesome.  I can’t wait to see the final installment.

Three Musketeers: Part I – D’artagnan – This was the movie that benefitted from my new rule this year where I could watch movies from 2023 that I didn’t get to before Dec 31 and it could still count towards this list.  I’m a big fan of the Alexander Dumas novel, I read it in college.  And I love all of the adaptations I’ve seen of it.  A particular favorite is the Disney version from 1993 with Chris O’Donnell, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, Oliver Platt, and Tim Curry.  Anyway, this version is not only an excellent adaptation of the novel, but it’s a great movie with amazing sets and costumes, and the cast they got is KILLER.  I thoroughly enjoyed this and look forward to Part II, which doesn’t drop until December, unfortunately.

Air – I’m really getting personal in this list.  You’ll notice neither Fast X nor John Wick 4 have shown up yet.  Air hits every kind of button I have.  It’s a “behind the scenes of a bit pop cultural event.  It’s about the 80s NBA.  It has Matt Damon, and Ben Affleck in a fun role as Phil Knight.  This scratches all the itches for me and it’s a great movie.  I watched it twice last year.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves – Again, I’m picking the movies that entertained me the most here.  This movie looked good, but man oh man, this was better than even I thought it was going to be.  I love the humor.  I love the awesome cast.  The world is wonderful.  The easter eggs for the D&D cartoon were a salve to my battered heart as it’s one of my fav Saturday morning cartoons.  They need sequels to this.  NOW.

There you go.  I did it.  I picked 5 movies to be my favorites this year.  Like I mentioned, that was hard this year.  I had a lot of good choices.  Fast X, John Wick 4, and Mission Impossible 7 all could have been in this list.  I only didn’t include them because I’ve included iterations of these franchises in my list before.  These movies are a given.  I’m of course going to like them.  The above movies I loved and there was no guarantee that I was going to love any of them (well, maybe Spider-man).

Let’s take a look at some of my movie watching stats from my account over on Letterboxd.

Here’s a graph of the number of films I watched throughout the year broken down by week.  My overall total was 233 movies watched, which is exactly the total I got last year.  Weird.  That’s 4.5 movies per week.  My highest weekly total of movies watched in 2023 was 12.  It happened the week of Oct 23-29.  That was me finishing out some Halloween watches.  Next highest total was 10 movies in a week, and then 9 movies.

Here is the list of actors that I watched the most movies of this year. I’m in the middle of an Elvis filmography marathon so that’s why Elvis is way out in front with 16 movies watched.  Seth Green seems an odd #2, but we watched all the Austin Powers movies with the kids as well as a few other of his movies randomly.  Courtney Cox and Roger Jackson are there because I did a Scream franchise marathon with the kids.  We watched all 6 of them.  I also rewatched Mission Impossible 3-6 (Tom Cruise) as well as watching all of Bruce Lee’s martial arts movies.  It’s interesting to see who pops up based on your watching habits.

This is the top 10 list of directors I watched this year.  Again, you see where marathons shape these lists.  Norman Taurog directed Elvis’ movies.  Wes Craven directed the majority of the Scream films.  I watched a couple of the Zorro films, and Mr Deters and Mrs Wermers-Skelton directed the Prep and Landing shorts which we watched over the holidays.

According to my milestones, the first movie I watched in 2023 was See How They Run, a murder mystery starring Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan on January 1.  The last movie I watched in 2023 was Gran Turismo on Dec 29. Surprising I didn’t watch any movies between Dec 29 and Dec 31 last year.  You can see my other milestones there, the 100th movie I watched in 2023 was Air.

Anyway, that about wraps up my 2023 movies list.  I’m kicking around the idea of doing a few “honorable mentions” articles.  Talk about some TV shows I watched, and maybe some other movies and books that I read last year that might be worth talking about.