A Happy New Year to all followers of One Mann’s Movies!
A little later than planned (due to a weekend away) here is my “Films of the Year” post where I list my Top 20 films of 2024. I also provide my Top 10 run-down of my worst films of the year. This follows my publishing of the respective videos on and around New Year, which are also included below.
My Top 20 Films of the Year
I’ve seen over 200 films this year and once again I would class it as a very good year for cinema. There have been a lot of cracking films during the year, making my job of selecting just 20 of them particularly hard. My ‘star’ system is only really a guide to what might go into the list, since to make my Top 20, and particularly my Top 10, requires films that are not only technically good but also ones that I really enjoyed and would choose to readily watch again. So, even though I rated seven films as 4.5 or 5 stars on review, they are missing from my Top 20. So honorable mentions got to Ian McKellen’s “Hamlet“; “The Fall Guy“; “Monster“; “The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes“; “The Greatest Night in Pop“; “My Old Ass” and “The Boys in the Boat“, a film that I’ve even appeared in! (No favouritism here… sorry George!)
I’ve also specifically not included any films that I’ve seen at Film Festivals during the year that have not had an official UK release during 2024. Even though there are some of those that I can already forecast will be making an appearance in my 2025 Top 20.
You might also note some films missing from here that you might be expecting. For example, I was not a great fan of the Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest” which I know some critics raved about. And although great films, you also won’t find “Anora“, “Emilia Pérez” or “Heretic” in my list.
So here is my Top 20 video presentation, followed by my scripted countdown of the Top 20. (My Worst 10 list will follow beyond that). To find where you can watch each film (if streaming) in your region, check out the “Justwatch” widget beneath each entry.
The Top 20:
20 Blink Twice
The terrific little “Me Too” thriller, “Blink Twice” the directorial debut of Zoë Kravitz, was a hugely entertaining, albeit at times uncomfortable, watch. Naomi Ackie and Adria Arjona really shone in the lead roles and Channing Tatum, as the pseudo-Jeffrey Epstein of the piece, gave his best performance in years. It’s only not higher in my list because I wasn’t convinced by the ending.
Where can I watch it?
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19 The Coffee Table
With Mary, Joseph and a little baby, this must surely be a Christmas film. Haha – actually, very much no! “The Coffee Table“, a unique comedy/horror story by Spanish director Caye Casas, takes you on a comedy horror journey like no other, mercilessly breaking taboos along the way. How can there be a horror film about a coffee table? Does it become possessed and turn into a devil-worshipping beast that attacks the family. No, of course not – it’s just a coffee table! But when the horror comes, it is truly shocking. Far darker than any other horror movie of the year. It really is “once seen, never forgotten”.
Where can I watch it?
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18 Challengers
I’m generally not a fan of Luca Guadagnino’s work but “Challengers” grabbed my attention. Zendaya (the future Mrs Holland!) is really hot at the moment (in more ways than one!) and potentially awards-worthy in this. The support from Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor is also fabulous. But it’s the cinematography of the dynamic tennis matches that really makes this movie stand out for me – like nothing we’ve seen before in tennis films. Genuinely exciting.
Where can I watch it?
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17 Gladiator II
Ridley Scott’s long-delayed sequel has not been everyone’s cup of tea, but I really enjoyed it, including its ‘space monkeys’ and the sharks (even though the sharks didn’t have Roman frickin’ laser beams on their heads!). I thought Paul Mescal and Pedro Pascal were fine but Denzel Washington was truly spectacular in his role as the manipulative Macrinus and will probably be my pick for Best Supporting actor at the Oscars.
Where can I watch it?
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16 Blitz
It’s the most non-Steve McQueen movie in his canon, but this take on wartime London contains some terrific performances from Saoirse Ronan and (a surprisingly good) Paul Weller. It also has and some truly memorable set pieces. A Fagin sub-plot with Stephen Graham and Kathy Burke feels a little misjudged but the scene it introduces – an attack on the Café Paris – is brilliantly done.
Where can I watch it?
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15 Young Woman and the Sea
I wasn’t expecting much from this, but both myself and the Illustrious Mrs Movie Man loved “Young Woman and the Sea” from Disney. This is a terrific PG film that the whole family can enjoy together. It’s based on a remarkable true story of one woman athlete’s fight against the patriarchy in 1920’s America. It stars Daisy Ridley who is really very good in the role. THIS is the sort of film that Disney should be making, rather than churning out their constant stream of ‘re-animated’ rubbish.
Where can I watch it?
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14 Poor Things
Yorgos Lanthimos has always pushed the boundaries of good taste in his movies and with “Poor Things” he continues that trend. The raucous, sexually explicit, fairy tale is filmed with mind-blowing style and won Oscars for Production Design, Hair & Make-up and Costume Design. It also of course won Emma Stone the Best Actress Oscar for her brave performance, “brave” always being the phrase used when an actress gets stark naked on screen and leaves nothing to the imagination!
Where can I watch it?
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13 The Holdovers
Very much a Christmas film, Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers” was deliberately filmed in 1970’s retro style to the extent that it even had an old-school trailer and a 1970’s BBFC ‘AA’ title card! There’s a standout comedy performance from Paul Giamatti as the jaded Classics teacher Paul Hunham. And of course it won Da’Vine Joy Randolph an Oscar for her Supporting Role as Mary, the recently bereaved matron.
Where can I watch it?
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12 Io Capitano
Charting the desperate road trip of two poor Senegalese boys and their search for a better life in Europe, “Io Capitano“, Italy’s entry for the International Film Oscar, features an astonishingly proficient debut performance by young Seydou Sarr. The gripping realistic action is interspersed with surreal dream sequences. A really pleasant surprise of a film.
Where can I watch it?
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11 Society of the Snow
Nominated as Spain’s entry for last year’s International Film Oscar, J.A. Bayona’s “Society of the Snow” tells the traumatic true story of the Andes plane crash survivors. Before we get into the starvation and cannibalistic horror, the film stages one of the best (ie most realistic) plane crashes ever put onto film. The scenary is also spectacular with Spain’s Sierra Nevada mountains standing in for the Andes.
Where can I watch it?
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10 Civil War
Alex Garland’s “Civil War” paints a horrifying picture of a dystopian America with a US president desperately clawing on to a third term against mounting public unrest. (Yeah – as if THAT could ever happen!!). Kirsten Dunst plays the lead with rising star Cailee Spaeny impressing as her enthusiastic protégé. But it is the short cameo by Dunst’s husband, Jesse Plemons, that sticks in the mind. It wouldn’t surprise me if his short appearance generated a Best Supporting Actor nomination.
Where can I watch it?
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9 Cabrini
As with “Young Woman and the Sea” at my number 15 slot, “Cabrini” is another powerful true story about an extraordinary woman facing up against the patriarchy of the past. It tells the story of Mother Cabrini who struggles to establish a mission for the homeless in a marvellously visualised 1889 New York. Made by Angel Studios, this slipped pretty well unnoticed through UK cinemas in March. But you can now rent it on streaming. For example, in the UK, it’s currently available both on Apple TV and on Amazon Prime for just £1.99. Do it…. It’s terrific!
Where can I watch it?
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8 Girls Will Be Girls
This year has been a terrific year for female directors bringing films to the screen with strong female characters. This is the case with my number 8 choice, “Girls Will Be Girls“. ‘Coming of Age’ and ‘sexual awakening’ films have been done many times before. But Shuchi Talati’s film, set in a mixed boarding school high in the mountains in the northern Indian region of Uttarakhand, just does it to perfection. It features a brilliant central performance by the delightful Preeti Panigrahi in her feature debut. The sexual content is delicately done, but has the best masturbatory use of a stuffed toy since Ling Ling the Panda in “Booksmart“! But in addition, the film sizzles with sexual tension and unsaid things happening off-screen, such that it really plays like a thriller. In the UK, it’s currently available to rent on streaming platforms including Prime Video and Sky Store.
Where can I watch it?
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7 Dune: Part 2
From an indie film with a tiny budget to a blockbuster with a $190 million budget. “Dune Part 2“, directed by Denis Villeneuve, is a science fiction spectacular and very exciting with it. The rendering of the sand worms is particularly impressive so I’d have thought this was a favourite for the VFX Oscar. Although, with that being said, I also predicted the Hans Zimmer score might win the Oscar and it hasn’t even been nominated in the long list of 20, which feels like a crime!
Where can I watch it?
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6 The Substance
There are films that stick in the mind after you’ve seen them and “The Substance” is one of them. With yet another female director in Coralie Fargeat, this satirical body horror shocked audiences. It sees a brilliant (and Golden Globe award-winner) Demi Moore grasping for a solution to aging that gets her more than she bargains for through an horrific transformation into the young and sexy form of Margaret Qualley. The film also sports a massively creepy turn from Dennis Quaid. The finale went massively over the top for me, in a Carrie-esque sort of way, else this might have been higher up in my Top 10.
Where can I watch it?
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5 Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Like “Dune Part 2“, “Furiosa” is pure big-screen spectacle. The veteran director George Miller is again in the chair. Charting the original story of Furiosa, the striking character from Mad Max Fury Road played by Charlize Theron, The wonderful Anya Taylor-Joy plays the younger character with a scenery-chewing Chris Hemsworth playing the big baddie Dementus. With characters like Scrotus and Rectus and with Dementus swirling bommy-knockers around, it’s totally mental but enormously entertaining. Also watch out for the neat cameo appearance of Max himself.
Where can I watch it?
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4 Chuck Chuck Baby
Another tiny film but one that I fell in love with, “Chuck Chuck Baby” is written and directed by Janis Pugh and scrunches together the gritty reality of a Ken Loach social drama, some of the surrealist whimsy of “La La Land“; the toe-tapping karaoke nature of “Sunshine on Leith“; the dark humour of “The Full Monty” and it even leaves you with the uplifting, life-affirming joy of the finale of “An Officer and a Gentleman”. How’s that for a movie cocktail? As a pair of women working in a chicken factory in North Wales but romantically drawn together, it stars Louise Brealey and Annabel Scholey and is simply terrific. Brealey’s ‘Oscar reel’ moment is early on in the film as she sings along to Neil Diamond’s “I am.. I said” – a passionate cry to validate her self-worth while reducing herself to floods of genuine tears. I had the great joy of meeting Louise Brealey at the BFI earlier this year but had yet to see the film which is a shame or I would have gushed much more!
Where can I watch it?
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3 American Fiction
It’s always difficult to juggle these lists between films I’ve seen and loved early in the year versus those that have only recently passed by my eyes. A darling of last year’s Oscar nominations, “American Fiction” was written and directed by Cord Jefferson and won Jefferson the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. The script is simply brilliant, featuring the wonderful Jeffrey Wright as Monk, a serious writer told to make his books “more black” to gain popularity. It’s full of charm and wit and is utterly delightful. The out-there fourth-wall-breaking ending wasn’t for everyone… but I really enjoyed it.
Where can I watch it?
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2 Conclave
Only just leaving cinemas, “Conclave” is virtually all set in a single location, the Vatican. The film follows the bureaucratic process of the election of a new Pope. That doesn’t sound promising for a gripping thriller does it? But Edward Berger really delivers with 2 hours of high tension and glorious acting from the four principal leads: Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow and Isabella Rossellini. It’s a really strong field this year, but Ralph Fiennes must surely get a Best Actor Oscar nomination and might be on for the win. If you haven’t seen it yet, make sure you do. It’s almost movie perfection.
Where can I watch it?
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1 All of Us Strangers
I declared at the time that “All Of Us Strangers” would be going on my Greatest of All Time list so it should be no surprise that this gets my number one slot for this year. It features pitch perfect performances from Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal as two lonely men in a gay relationship but also has elements of mystical time travel that just work so perfectly. Claire Foy and Jamie Bell co-star as Adam’s long dead parents and play their 1980’s attitudes just perfectly. A scene where Foy knowingly sings “You Were Always on my Mind” while decorating a Christmas tree ranks as my Number 1 stand-out scene from any film in 2024.
All of us Strangers is currently available to watch on Disney+.
Where can I watch it?
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The Worst 10 Movies of the Year!
Having seen over 200 films in 2024, there are inevitably going to be some stinkers in there. I’m sure the production team didn’t go out of their way to make a bad film, but for whatever reason the movie just didn’t work well, at least, not well for me!
So here is my list of my ten worst films from 2024., in both video form and as a countdown list.
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10 Venom the Last Dance
A plot that is total bollocks; CGI scenes that aren’t thrilling; Supposedly funny banter that isn’t in the least bit funny; “The Last Dance” is a really poor end to a three-part series that was only just bearable at the best of times.
Where can I watch it?
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9 Tarot
There have been a number of sub-par horror films during the year that could have gone into this slot… but I used “Tarot” as a placeholder for them. Others during the year that come to mind are “AfrAId“, “The First Omen” and “Baghead“. Many of these were generic, cookie cutter offerings that failed to stir my horror meter in any way. Compare and contrast with “The Coffee Table” in my “Best of” list.
Where can I watch it?
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8 Trap
This M. Night Shyamalan flop felt like it had some promise from the trailer with Josh Hartnett playing a father taking his daughter to a pop concert where a serial killer (I know, I said “terrorist” in the video!) is being trapped by the FBI. There’s a twist of course. But while the first reel of “Trap” plays out quite well, the final reel is so utterly awful that it dragged the whole film down the drain with it.
Where can I watch it?
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7 Red One
A film that cost $250 million with Dwayne Johnson said to have pocketed $50 million of that for his appearance. Some seem to have no problem with “Red One“, but I thought it was awful. Zero charm; zero chemistry between Johnson and co-star Chris Evans. A Christmas film to avoid.
Where can I watch it?
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6 Irish Wish
Lindsay Lohan visits Ireland and finds romance – need I say more? “Irish Wish” is dreadful – bland and insipid and mining every Irish diddle-di-die moment you can think of. What is the moral we are supposed to take from this film? That Lohan’s character got what she wanted but (coincidentally) found something better while doing it and then wanted that instead? How very American and capitalist! Also to add insult to farce, Saint Brigid keeps popping up like some Wicked Witch of the West of Ireland, spouting nonsense and then disappearing in a flash. Terrible.
Where can I watch it?
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5 Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
Where do I start? The story of this “Godzilla x Kong” is bone-numbingly awful. It’s just crashy bashy nonsense from beginning to end with the human actors being simply set-dressing for the special effects. We jump from monster-bashing fight to monster-bashing fight just to move the vacuous plot forwards a tad.
Much of the acting is wooden and stilted and the dialogue is atrocious. At one point, Dan Stevens utters the line “While we’re throwing shit at the wall…” and you think “Yep! Just about sums up the scene in the writer’s room”.
Where can I watch it?
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4 Imaginary
I mentioned when including “Tarot” that that was a placeholder for a lot of dodgy horror films, but I felt “Imaginary” needed pulling out for special ‘recognition’. Not just poor, stealing ideas from other films, but horribly dull and tedious with it.
Where can I watch it?
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3 Madame Web
Just when you thought Marvel’s new offerings couldn’t get any worse, here comes “Madame Web“. Timey Wimey Spidey rubbish that lacks logic and the actors clearly know it. Dakota Johnson sleepwalks through the role for the pay check and the talented threesome of Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced and Celeste O’Connor don’t fair much better. Awful.
Where can I watch it?
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2 Lift
Kevin Hart with the right material can make me laugh – take the “Jumanji” reboot films for example. But here he plays an unlikely action hero as art thief Cyrus who leads a gang, recruited by Interpol agent and ex-girlfriend Abby (#punching given that she is played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw), to pull off an audacious heist to foil the plans of international terrorists. It is utterly and completely lame from beginning to end.
Where can I watch it?
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1 Megalopolis
It’s almost impossible to believe that Francis Ford Coppolo was the creative force behind this pile of cinematic poo. I found “Megalopolis” laughably poor with its overly pompous dialogue and absurd storyline. Most of the actors in it – and that list includes the likes of Adam Driver, Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza and Shia LaBeouf – come out of it terribly. A low point is Driver spouting Hamlet’s soliloquy so terribly that it was head in the hands “Make It Stop” bad for me. Dustin Hoffman seems to fizzle out of the story completely when a wall falls on him… he probably said “I’ve had enough of this shit” and left. And Shia LaBeouf’s performance (pictured) just boggles the mind.
Where can I watch it?
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So that’s that for 2024. Hopefully I will have to suffer less of this last set of films and more of the films at the top of this post during 2025. Who am I kidding! Next year will inevitably have it’s whole new set of stinkers to sit through!
Have a Happy New Year and thanks for continuing to follow and support One Mann’s Movies!
