2025 Wrapped Up - 2024 Top 10 update!

We just ran through 2015 and so it's time to also update 2024! Last year seems odd, I only came up with nine movies like I even liked, and to be honest they're all pretty solid. I found myself really enjoying all these but it also really does feel like we're out of gas as a civilization. There is still a good mix

#9: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

The first maybe 30 minutes are such solid world-building and ideal screenwriting. It gets a bit meandering and the plot takes a bit to engage but it's still a good time.

#8: Blink Twice

The middle twist still gets me and while there are a lot of films with this sort if theme (hell, Barbie [2023] for one), this is the most artful and satisfying.

#7: The Bikeriders

We don't get a ton of these anymore. Well-acted mid-size dramas with a mix of established and rising stars. It captured my attention throughout and was a solid ride.

#6: Furiosa

It doesn't match Fury Road (2015) but gets a lot of marks for coming close and is a whole different kind if movie, more an epic saga than a prolonged hyper-specific chase.

#5: Dune II

I still think about how much I liked this more than the first Dune. It just has so much more narrative momentum. It feels like what a modern good blockbuster could be.

#4: Nosferatu

The greatest post-nut clarity of all time. Also maybe one of the best-looking films of the past ten years.

#3: Rebel Ridge

I am still blown away by this

#2: Challengers

Yes, Challengers was dethroned! Still a tight second. This is just the sexiest movie of all time.

#1: The Brutalist

Folks seemed to rag on this for its length and Adrian Brody being an absolute putz, both of which are true, but this is an epic like you'd see in the mid-2000s or 90s, a classic immigrant story except the immigrant is a huge heroin-addicted asshole! Amd not even the biggest asshole in the film!

I find myself really enjoying the Top Four here and can see myself coming back in 2034 without much change. It's a weird year, like super concentrated, be ause these goir are so rock solid to me but I could honestly take or leave everything else.

I have even less movies I like in 2025, and that could very well be more me getting older and being pulled in other directions and my interests getting more niche, but I like to think movies are just getting worse.

2024: Let's Try Villains Again

We were just having fun a few weeks ago when I realized that our villain pick, Jason Bateman in Carry-On (2024) was probably pretty weak sauce and mostly because I had just seen it. 2024 had a surprising amount of great on screen villains that we failed to recognize, so here we go!

Connor McGregor in Road House (2024)

Connor McGregor is a pretty awful person in real life, but boy is he a charismatic villain here! He's an absolute force of nature, psychotic, gleeful, and unstoppable. He has a memorable intro, butt naked and totally comfortable strutting his stuff around a chaotic environment. I hate to say he's pretty damn charismatic, too. The stakes in Road House are really solid, and he ends up being too much for even the people who hired him to control. That's all to say, it's really easy to hate him, but he also brings such competence and a challenge for Jake Gyllenhaal after the other goons are so dumb that you kind of cheer for him, too.

Dementus in Furiosa (2024)

Chris Hemsworth is an underrated villain and does a great impression of his grandfather here as the wildman throwing a wrench into Immortan Joe's works. He's a roving bandit of a villain, one utterly terrible at settling down even though that's what he's trying to do. You see him try to climb the ladder opposite to Furiosa but he's staggeringly incompetent. Furiosa seeks her revenge but finds more than anything she's outgrown him, and what seemed scary as a kid its just kind of a pathetic wiener man. He's got a magnificent arc, even it's a downward trajectory.

Evil monkeys

There was that weird guy in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024) and the weird red monkey from Godzilla X Kong and of course, Robbie Williams. Strong year for Apes. Scar King was interesting, totally a sort of wicked bad guy who mostly hid behind a strong spin whip and frost beast. Intelligent and a worthy adversary, though. You don't often see Godzilla villain kaiju hatching schemes. Proxima Caesar, was that his name? He was just having fun and probably arrives too late into the film to be a huge presence, but he's notable and has a great death.

Anything we missed?

2024 Movies in REVIEW MIRROR

Well, I can't believe I've been doing this for ten years! Ten years of data is pretty powerful. And the trends, Duke! The trends! It's envigorating. Here is my review of movie-watching data from 2024:

Grand Summary:

	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024
Total movies	198	220	224	249	200	182	181	202	171	123
First-time viewings	n/a	117	133	157	131	110	111	154	102	81
First-time viewing %	n/a	53%	59%	63%	66%	60%	61%	76%	60%	66%
Streaming	n/a	55	81	157	118	133	134	160	133	110
Streaming %	n/a	25%	36%	63%	59%	73%	74%	79%	78%	89%
TV	86	84	55	10	7	3	11	3	7	9
TV %	43%	38%	25%	4%	4%	2%	6%	1%	4%	7%
Theater	10	11	12	16	8	2	7	9	6	2
Theater %	5%	5%	5%	6%	4%	1%	4%	4%	4%	2%

That Theater includes one Drive-In and one movie theater. The only film I saw in theaters this year was Deadpool & Wolverine. Ugh, I'm part of the problem!

The other big note is that my streaming percentage spiked quite a bit. That proportion is mostly due to Netflix DVD ceasing operations. That might be a bit why my overall numbers also took a massive hit, but quite frankly I have a child and a high demand job now and I can't believe I ever watched 249 movies in a year.

My first time viewings were also solid, I really can't believe how many repeat movies I still watch, like that's crazy. It's really wild that 2016 was almost 50/50 but I think movies on TV was such a bigger force back then. Speaking of which, I watched the most percentage since 2017! I had some extended hotel stays here. It's really just hotels. TV has been such an afterthought for years. If only we had an accurate breakdown by streaming service....

Netflix	31	25.2%
Amazon Prime	18	14.6%
Max	18	14.6%
Hulu	17	13.8%
TV	9	7.3%
Other Streaming	6	4.9%
Tubi	5	4.1%
Paramount+	4	3.3%
Disney+	3	2.4%
Apple TV+	3	2.4%
Peacock	3	2.4%
Planes	2	1.6%
Theater	1	0.8%
Drive-in	1	0.8%
Total Streaming:	110	89.4%

I was pretty surprised by this. Netflix was a good chunk above the rest, and then Prime / Max / Hulu form a nice second tier. Max had been my mainstay for the past three years but now they're just kind of same as anyone else. Netflix is actually also pretty steady but just other sources have dropped off. Amazon Prime has really surged and I love how all the other services are kind of equally bottomed out. Other streaming included XUMO, Xfinity, and YouTube, which hasn't really changed.

My life is just really stable now, there's less going over to a friends' house and seeing something random on TV. I also did NOT watch a DVD this year, like how is that possible? You know, I feel like I watched Weird again. I wonder if I forgot to log that? We'll never know.

It's crazy, it's all the lack of Netflix DVD as I'm looking at it. Nothing seems to have taken its place, everything else is pretty much where it's been. Wild.

By Decade:

1940s	1	0.8%
1970s	1	0.8%
1980s	10	8.1%
1990s	13	10.6%
2000s	11	8.9%
2010s	14	11.4%
2020s	73	59.3%
2023	38	30.9%
2024	35	28.5%

Yeah, alright. I really just haven't sat down and searched for something old or challenging. 80s, 90s, and 00s are all kind of leveled out, but that's even starting to happen with 2010s movies, which is wild. My biggest seen year was 2023. Only five years in the 2000s decade were represented but my biggest year not in the current decade was 2002.

By Genre:

Action	33	26.8%
Adventure	15	12.2%
Comedy	28	22.8%
Drama	22	17.9%
Horror	18	14.6%
Thiller	4	3.3%
Romance	3	2.4%

I don't know if I'll keep doing genre. Not a ton of interesting data here. Believe it or not I like Action and Comedy movies. I did watch a bit more Horror this year. That's fun. Yeah, if I do this again, I might skip this part.

By Month:

	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	AVERAGE
January	19	17	23	16	22	15	15	17	16	13	17
February	11	15	12	14	17	21	15	11	10	11	14
March	15	12	18	16	14	27	16	12	16	14	16
April	15	23	15	25	22	23	13	12	18	7	17
May	15	17	22	13	19	22	29	19	12	11	18
June	20	16	25	8	18	19	24	18	17	8	17
July	16	15	16	18	17	15	10	15	17	12	15
August	12	14	18	25	18	25	14	17	6	10	16
September	10	14	16	13	20	16	12	14	12	6	13
October	14	20	17	10	19	24	10	15	18	15	16
November	12	18	18	10	18	21	20	16	9	6	15
December	22	21	20	28	20	21	22	16	20	10	20

It was wild to see 2024 plummet my averages. December's still pretty good, but this was the worst January, April, May, June, September, November, and December on record. Yay. A lot of this was fatherhood. They kept some general proportions and February I watched more! That's something! Looking at these trends, the months are actually sort of even. September is always busy and that dips. February, too. December is a big catch-up month and you've got time at home, so that's nice.

Last year I thought that more people might be watching movies than we think. After talking to the young people I can say that uhh...no we are not. This was such a rough year, a big reckoning year for Hollywood. There's weird mixed messaging like how well the absolute rehash that was Deadpool & Wolverine found success. But clearly we are so sick of a lot of these other same old garbage.

The other big mainstream sequels that did well (because yes, they were all sequels) had something novel about them, like Godzilla X Kong or Dune II. Venom got in there, I don't know, that one is a bit weird and I don't think anyone actually considered it a success. But there were four animated sequels that did absolutely crazy. I did not realize Inside Out 2 and Moana 2 were so lights out bonkers successful. I really did not give a shit about either of these and will probably never see either. But those did really well.

Indie stuff is the weirdest, though. It's out there but it feels even more fractured. I'm not sure how people sift through and find this kind of stuff. It just takes digging and keeping an ear to the ground for that buzz, man. I'm not even happy with my pics this year, especially when I realised that Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was going to be one of the best movies I saw.

2025? It feels right, but my numbers are going to drop even more. Stay tuned, folks!