By Andrew Italia. Italia is a Quince Orchard High School graduate and MoCo resident. When he was in college at the University of Maryland, he was the movie critic for The Maryland Diamondback. During his time as the movie critic, he began making Oscar predictions for all 24 categories. His all-time record is 21 out of 24, but he usually falls in the 18-20 range. Below is his Top 12 movie list for 2024. For more movies on Twitter/X, see @Italia_budo
Following the first bloody Sunday at Shiloh, Ulysses S. Grant received news of his army’s brutal losses from Sherman with typical stoicism. His response? “Lick’em tomorrow, though.” Grant’s advice rings true today. When all appears lost, it’s time to return to first principles in order to move forward. Just like last year. After decades in the wilderness, Jayden Daniels led the Commanders back to the NFC championship for the first time since 1992. The Crab Five guided the Terps to the Sweet Sixteen for the first time since 2016. The Catholic Church conclaved their way to the first American Pope. Harlem opened a grand art museum for the first time. The Louvre almost lost its art for the first time. However, easily the biggest comeback of the year was made by the dastardly Dire Wolf (https://time.com/7274542/colossal-dire-wolf/).
The Cineplex followed suit. DC relaunched with Superman and a dog. Marvel relaunched with Fantastic Four and a baby. After Bezos did what Blofeld could not, James Bond is readying his own return. Happy Gilmore himself found rock bottom before selling faster than flaxseeds again. Hell, even both Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx were Back in Action. Beyond the champagne problems of the assorted IP potpourri were stories of parents going to the mat for their children…with varying results (Sentimental Value, Hamnet, and Train Dreams).
So no matter how grim it may get, recall Grant’s words and realize that it’s never truly too late for a comeback. Just ask the Dire Wolf.
12. Black Bag: Seeing a new Soderbergh on the screen is akin to finding fifty large in your Cava bag. His craft is as graceful as Nureyev, agile as Manolete, and solid as Mitsugu, and more than suitable to sink your battleship. The latest entry on his filmography is a veritable Janus, part orthogonal mole hunt fit for Le Carre lovers and part dramedy set to redeem a marriage on the rocks. So it’s a bummer he won’t be able to find Ben Solo for us (https://www.vulture.com/article/disney-ben-solo-steven-soderbergh.html). Watch it Now On: HBO Max. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: The Seventh Floor by David McCloskey (2024).
11. Friendship: The late and great Rob Reiner’s magniloquent missive Stand by Me reminds us that “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve.” Right on. Where does that leave the prospects for grown ass men finding bromance? To test this question, Tim Robinson created Craig, a gent as classy as Caligula and the epitome of our era’s menagerie of big backed bros who think they’re cooking when they’re really selling. Keep your golden guns locked up in the interim. Watch it Now On: HBO Max. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: The Gold Coast by Nelson DeMille (1990).
10. A House of Dynamite: What truly terrifies you? A close up from a Coldplay concert kiss cam? A merciless night at Mardi Gras with Shia LaBeouf? How about the existential specter of thermo-nuclear war? With a title coined by Sam Harris, this ode to the fundamentally flawed logic of geopolitical game theory was envisioned by Kathryn Bigelow after a childhood spent ducking and covering during the Cold War (think Broken Arrow, sans Woo’s nines). With approximately 12,300 nukes floating around, perhaps we’re not anxious enough. Watch it Now On: Netflix. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman (1962).
9. No Other Choice: Even in today’s spongy job market, you’re unlikely to find many lamp lighter, coach maker, or printer’s devil applications. These once venerable vocations went the way of the Commanders’ 2025 season under the scythe of societal progress. What of those left behind? Cinematic pugilist Park Chan-Wook pays them tribute with this tale of a recently redundant worker straining to maintain the mousetrap of his middle class malaise. What follows is a cinder black comedy about the lengths to which we’ll go to get ahead, packed with mayhem as squirm inducing as it is scintillating. This gruesome take is all the timelier given AI’s hand hovering above our own cookie jar. Don’t believe me? Just ask all the limeburners you know. Watch it Now On: PVOD. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: Island by Aldous Huxley (1962).
8. Weapons: The moment that Allison Williams confiscated Daniel Kaluuya’s car keys was both the rubicon of Jordan Peele’s riotous romp Get Out and the ick that launched a thousand so-called ‘elevated horror’ movies. From this weaponization of suburban white guilt, to the Daedalean glare of Midsommar, to the immurement of toxic relationships in Together, it’s a run of highfalutin filmgoing strong enough for a Craven but made for a Moore. Plunging into this lineage is da bomb dot com Zach Cregger, whose sophomore effort autopsies the crisp emptiness of grief with low key Rashomon BDE and a bonkers finale of a fever dream fit for anyone sniffing more cocaine than RFK Jr. at a roadside reststop. Chef’s kiss, no notes. Watch it Now On: HBO Max. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (2002).
7. Avatar: Fire and Ash: You can learn a lot from a cantankerous cross-examination. Is this threequel the best of its trilogy? No. Is it shorter than Corey Booker’s filibuster? Just barely. Is it nevertheless the most propulsive moviemaking to IMAX the shit out of your Sunday matinee? Yes. How does Big Jim answer those traducing him for squandering 35 years of his life in single-minded pursuit of able-bodied blue people? “I’m feeling fulfilled as an artist, and when [they] become filmmakers, they can make those types of decisions for themselves – or just stay the fuck out of it…[i]t’s none of your business” (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/james-cameron-interview-avatar-future-1236451614/). Should Disney not finance its fourth and fifth chapters, what is the final line of this stalwart saga, uttered by Spider, the dreadlocked hippie turned human hybrid? “No Shit!” Really? No, really. No shit. Watch it Now On: PVOD. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu by Tom Lin (2021).
6. Superman (2025): From pilgrims to pirates, Albert Einstein to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mariano Rivera to Rihanna, and even my great grandparents, immigration has been our nation’s lifeblood, and the e pluribus unum printed on our Benjamins its true north. At the risk of lazily lifting a lyric from Lin-Manuel, there is one immigrant who has gotten the job done better than any other in our collective mythos – Superman a/k/a Kal El (the Kryptonian…not to be confused with Nic Cage’s Earthling son). This erstwhile American fable from Siegel and Shuster gets a Gunn makeover, complete with a bedazzling Lois Lane, barking Krypto, and balding Nicholas Hoult, among other select Silver Age trimmings. It even plucks Kansans to play the Kents (…as most geriatric farmers don’t clock it quite like Kevin Costner and Diane Lane). After a decade in the dark dismay of the Snyderverse (“Martha!”), this retelling is as palatable as a plate piled high with papaya, a profound parable about the limits of power, and a salute to the punkrocker in all of us. Watch it Now On: HBO Max. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (2017).
5. F1: The Movie: The ripe age of forty-two isn’t old for a star, a planet, or even a tree. Though on a jiu-jitsu mat, it’s Cretaceous AF. So how does a Masters III manage to hold off menacing twenty-something Blue Belts looking for a good smash? By being better, smarter, and more technical (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R2D39GVrXI). This mantra might equally apply to Sonny Hayes, an aging racer who’s been around long enough to know who’s who in the zoo. The prodigal son of F1, Hayes returns to duel with drivers half his age by prioritizing progress over perfection with a sense of pareidolia and taking a Moneyball to the rulebook. This spirit may also sum up the OG technical wizardry of the film itself. Humming to a Hans Zimmer joint, the team behind Top Gun: Maverick created an entirely new camera rig, shot actual ass actors driving actual ass cars, and staged scenes in front of packed stadiums before real races. Arming itself with a halcyon approach, it interrogates the timeless question – if it’s not about the money…what is it about? Watch it Now On: Apple TV+. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: To Build a Fire by Jack London (1902).
4. Warfare: I didn’t personally know Rudyard Kipling, but I’d wager his canny observation that “[i]f you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of a distance run, yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,” wasn’t advice for lounging poolside with a lukewarm Natty Lite and an omnivorous gait. It more likely met the mission of US Navy SEALs, renown for their ability to kill bin Laden, save Captain Phillips, and flank’em and spank’em better than the next guy. This dynamic docudrama chronicles a real deal SEAL mission during the 2006 Battle for Ramadi as recounted by those who shed blood in its mud (co-director Ray Mendoza included). Stripped bare of pretension, sanctimony, or anySaving Private Ryanish sentiments, it’s warfighting as told by the warfighters and a savage shuto to the solar plexus. Each snap of a bullet, roar of an IED, and blood-wrenching cry should justifiably shake you to down to your dentures. Afterwards, the smoke clearing upon a Pyrrhic victory reminds of the Charlie Mike ethos of, and sacrifices made by, its survivors in this most perilous of unforgiving minutes. Watch it Now On: HBO Max. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (1948).
3. Sinners: There are certain images you’ll never shake. Lindsey Vonn’s catastrophic crash, the precise moment of your conception, or even Buzz’s much maligned girlfriend (“Woof!”) For Ryan Coogler, it was something less extreme but more profound. Once the iconic cover of Marvin Gaye’s 1976 “I Want You” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Want_You_(Marvin_Gaye_album)), itself a reissue of Ernie Barnes painting ‘The Sugar Shack,’ became stuck in the palm of his mind’s hand, it evolved into one of the most crackling scenes to shine on the silver screen. A juke joint deep in the 1930s delta of the segregated South that slips loose the bonds of time, space, and genre centers this oeuvre. Next is the barnhouse cunnilingus. Only then do the vampires come knocking. The most sophisticated film on this list (the period dress! The labyrinthine cinematography! Two, count them, two Michael B. Jordans!), it does yeoman’s work as both a history of the Blues through the prism of cultural misappropriation and a cautionary tale of how quickly today’s misdeeds summon tomorrow’s judgment. For those searching for schadenfreude, just wait until you see what happens to the KKK. Watch it Now On: HBO Max. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: James by Percival Everett (2024).
2. Marty Supreme: Meet Marty. Marty travels the world to play table tennis (…don’t call it “ping pong.”) Marty is a self-proclaimed “ultimate product of Hitler’s defeat” in a geographic allusion to post-WWII pax-Americanism. Marty hustles, scams, and tells time by way of a classic, but existentially ergonomic, vintage 1951 Elgin. Marty is a downright drippy amalgam of a Nicholas Nickleby unleashed on the Lower East Side and a Patrick Bateman in the trench warfare of Wall Street. Marty is a cheaper than chips creature of the 1950s synthesized to 1980s sound. Marty grabs’em by the nose and kicks’em in the ass, pursuing Samurai precision whilst lesser competitors fiddlefuck their way through a dreary tableau of rules, rents, and obligations. Marty doesn’t waste time doubting his inevitable stardom (in fact, “[t]hat doesn’t even enter [his] consciousness”). Marty is a pointed avatar of the performer who plays him – one Timmy C – training seven years for the role, chasing Cruise level fame, and boasting Kardashian arm candy. Chalamet’s best chance at ascending to the Oscar podium next Sunday starts where Marty ends; offramping from the narcissism and naked ambition of his ’20s towards a higher calling. We should all be so fortunate. Watch it Now On: PVOD. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: Alone on the Wall by Alex Honnold (2015).
1. One Battle After Another: An urban legend amongst cinephiles claims auteur PTA (“Paul Thomas Anderson,” not “Parent Teacher Association”) was so inspired by Terminator 2 that he quit film school in order to make his own brand of movies. So it’s fitting that his magnum opus culminates in a spiritually synonymous Californian desert chase, wherein he whimsically transfigures the chaser and the chased. Instead of a shimmery T-1000, his pursuer is Jeff Spicoli (…of Fast Times fame) in the role of sexually frustrated, Anthony Chigurh-adjacent fascist ordure Col. Lockjaw (…if there is a better nom de guerre for such a villain, I’ve yet to hear it.) The pursued? A not-so-baby-faced Jack Dawes (…of Titanic fame) as a paranoid post-revolutionary papa dubbed Bob (f/k/a “Ghetto Pat” and/or “The Rocketman”), dressed as The Dude (…do all heroes wear bathrobes and shades?), and tasked with saving his daughter Willa (…fearless Chase Infiniti, born the day I first saw Gladiator).
Said percussive pursuit is the spine of this ready-to-rumble rip on contemporary angst and gonzo Girl Dad’s quest to protect Willa from the sins of his past. Riding shotgun closer than kissing cousins is a cast of merry marauders worthy of its PTA film pedigree. There’s Willa’s militant mother Perfidia Beverly Hills; MIA when the monsters arrive. There’s also “Sensei” Sergio St. Carlos, a contemporary Harriet Tubman whose koan – “Play defense” – is refrained amidst riots, raids, and righteous escapes with Zen aplomb. The less said about their fellow revolutionary Sugarpussy, the better (…this is a family Top Twelve after all).
In the other corner? August authoritarianism, personified almost perfectly by puppet masters the Christmas Adventurer Club. These Strangelovian scoundrels have their own secret greeting (“Hail Saint Nick!”), surprising needle drops, and schemes more ruthless than Texas’ war on masturbation (https://www.sacurrent.com/news/texas-republican-lawmakers-take-aim-at-sex-toy-sales-37094336/). It’s Lockjaw’s desire to join their ranks that accelerates his Faustian descent (…paging all Boomers…)
Captured on OG Vistavision, PTA elevates his filmmaking with influences as varied as The Battle of Algiers, The Searchers, Running on Empty, Mad Max: Fury Road, and The French Connection. In the bullseye of this bedlam are our weary antiheroes, so lost they cannot even remember their own codes (…literally, and hilariously, during several phone calls).
It’s no accident that the passwords which Bob’s blazed brain can’t recall are “time doesn’t exist, yet it controls us anyways.” Nor is his frenzied response – “you obviously don’t have kids.” Described as a mirror to our fractured times, this bazooka of a ballsy barnburner is an urgent story of one generation’s shortcomings coming back to haunt the next (Willa observes that she “didn’t ask for this…[t]hat’s just how the cards were rolled out.”) It’s also a clarion call for us to save what is left for them. Despite all of our unending battles, if we hope to make it out of this miasma intact, it’s going to be Willa and her ‘six seven’ loving contemporaries who will lead the way.
How can we cover their six? Remember Sensei Sergio’s timeless wisdom:
“You win some, you lose some, you’re back on defense.”
Or put more succinctly:
“Courage. Courage, Bob.”
Thank you, Sensei.
Watch it Now On: HBO Max
If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: The Dark Knight Strikes Again by Frank Miller (2001).
The rest of the list…
13. Train Dreams (Netflix)
14. 28 Years Later (Netflix)
15. Hamnet (PVOD)
16. It Was Just an Accident (VOD)
17. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (Netflix)
18. The Secret Agent (Hulu)
19. The Naked Gun (Paramount+)
20. Thunderbolts* (Disney+)
21. Zootopia 2 (Disney+)
22. Frankenstein (2025) (Netflix)
23. Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (Paramount+)
24. The Smashing Machine (2025) (HBO Max)
25. Bugonia (Peacock)
26. Sorry, Baby (HBO Max)
27. Companion (HBO Max)
28. Roofman (Paramount+)
29. Sentimental Value (VOD)
30. The Life of Chuck (Hulu)
31. Highest 2 Lowest (Apple TV+)
32. Eddington (HBO Max)
33. From the World of John Wick: Ballerina (Starz)
34. The Surfer (Hulu)
35. Predator: Badlands (Hulu)
36. Presence (Hulu)
37. Eephus (VOD)
38. Jay Kelly (Netflix)
39. The Perfect Neighbor (Netflix)
40. Relay (Netflix)
41. Twinless (Hulu)
42. Drop (Peacock)
