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
Even the most risk averse Texas Hold’em novice knows that there are times to go all in. To make the grand gesture, take the deep plunge, and dive for the Berimbolo. Last year was seemingly the year of that big swing. Beyoncé released a country album. Taylor released a poetry album. Jim Miller broke the record for most fights in the UFC. Katie Ledecky broke the record for most medals in women’s swimming. Snoop learned to swim before becoming a LEGO. The heavens treated us to a historic solar eclipse, only for the Earth to double down by moving backwards (https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/05/science/earth-inner-core-rotation-slowdown-cycle-scn/index.html).
Hollywood also aimed high. Francis Ford Coppolla gave up his winery to make Megalopolis. Kevin Costner gave up Yellowstone (…and his marriage?) to make Horizon. Ridley Scott brought back Gladiator without its star, Tim Burton brought back Beetlejuice with its star, Zemeckis brought back all of his stars (but kept them all…right Here), and Eddie Murphy brought back Axel F – sans stairs (https://www.forbes.com/sites/timlammers/2024/07/03/beverly-hills-cop-axel-f-director-on-eddie-murphy-and-making-an-80s-type-action-movie/). The industry attempted a year without superheroes (…unless Madame Web counts), both Bobs got biopics, Joker became a musical (…in an asylum), Venom became a dancer (…on a horse), and Jerry Seinfeld became a…Pop Tart?
While some swings connected better than others, I think it was Thucydides who once surmised that you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take (…or was that Clausewitz?) So as we embark upon a new year, don’t be afraid to slide your chips to the center of the table. Or put more succinctly – “[i]t’s a real life boogie and a real life hoedown, don’t be a bitch, come take it to the floor now.”
It seems Queen Bey is also no stranger to the game.
12. Strange Darling: Like a high stakes trial, life is won or lost by asking the right questions. No movie last year lived this truth more than this bloody knuckled burnbag against the grain. Who is the good guy? Who is the bad guy? What happens to the human body if struck by a Ford Pinto? Most fundamentally – what’s the safe word? Watch it Now On: VOD. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: A Perfect Frenzy by Andrew Lawler (2025).
11. The Wild Robot: The man who killed Osama bin Laden once adroitly observed that being a parent was akin to having your heart walk around outside your body. The studio that Spielberg built paused their dragon training and Ogre enabling to pontificate upon this point, no less poetic for being palpable, by air dropping a robot into a no-frills post-apocalyptic nature preserve. Even if said android can galvanize the island’s inhabitants against an unthinking AI, she must still tackle the most herculean of all parenting tasks – letting go. Watch it Now On: Peacock. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945).
10. Civil War: Ask any cinephile what image keeps her up at night and she’ll name drop the usual suspects. Bruce the shark in Jaws, Pennywise in IT, and Nic Cage in…anything (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S73swRzxs8Y). This collection now claims Jesse Plemmons in heart shaped glasses. Plemmons’ uncredited soldier almost perfectly personifies the intravenous sense of dread permeating this piece of cinematic sandpaper to the scrotum. Anonymous, absurd, and able to go 0 to 60 in 2.9, he is beyond bargaining, politics, or reason. His screen time in this corrosive cautionary tale is seven spare minutes. Plan accordingly. Watch it Now On: Max. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen (2024).
9. Sing Sing: As far as relevance, the Academy of Motion Pictures is deader than RFK Jr.’s favorite bear. They gave What Dreams May Come more awards than Stanley Kubrick. Called Shakespeare in Love to the podium instead of Saving Private Ryan. Hand out three statuettes to short films but zero to stuntmen. Their latest unpardonable? Overlooking this avante garde depiction of a penitentiary’s theater troop. The highest octane prison pic since Red strolled up the beach to Andy, this iambic pentameter of a performance showcase deserved more gold than Senator Menendez’s basement. Instead, it must carry on regally below the awards radar. It’s at least in good company. Watch it Now On: PVOD. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone (1987).
8. Juror # 2: Between beating Medicare and avenging eaten pets, last year was a banner one for elderly men grappling with obsolescence upon the world stage. However, one flinty nonagenarian filmmaker stopped yelling at empty chairs and started packing theaters (well…at least where the WB brain trust let him – https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2024/10/24/warner-bros-will-not-expand-juror-2-beyond-50-theater-rollout). Eastwood brings back his A game for this courtroom procedural that is strong enough for a Dostoevsky, but made for a Grisham. Its last shot, leaving potent questions gloriously unanswered, is even more meaningful for being so meta. Will Clint come back for one last ride? Or is this his swan song? Whatever the case, he’s done yelling at chairs. Watch it Now On: Max. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: Defending Jacob by William Landay (2012).
7. A Real Pain: From Huck and Jim’s downriver odyssey, to Bonnie and Clyde’s blood stained wanderings, to Neal Page and Del Griffith sprinting across the northwest to arrive home in time for turkey, there are few stories so seminally American as a road trip. So what happens when a typically angst ridden Jesse Eisenberg teleports this trope to a Holocaust remembrance tour in Poland? A note perfect script, granular attention to character, and deep dive into trauma bring a miasma of competing genres into surprising equilibrium as two mismatched cousins search for their late grandmother’s ancestral home. Let’s just hope they have better luck renting a car than poor Page. Watch it Now On: Hulu. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean (1976).
6. Gladiator 2: The year was 2000 when we watched General Maximus Decimus Meridius self-identify his pronouns as “father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife” and vow vengeance. The century was fresh from turning, we had survived Y2K, and the biggest crime Big Will had ever committed on screen was Wild Wild West. Our future, post-Fukuyama’s End of History, appeared as noble as Maximus himself. A scant quarter century and one exhausting eternity hence, the sequel is as soiled as its respective time. Maximus’ son returns to toil amidst carnage in a crumbling Colosseum and the Aureliusian dream that was once Rome buckles beneath the rot of the kakistocracy. As syphilis-infected sycophants suck what little lifeblood is left from the proletariat and place a pet monkey in charge, it is left once more to the man in the arena to make the (ancient) world safe for democracy. If you’re nervous about Gladiator III arriving, you’re not alone. Watch it Now On: Paramount +. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (2023).
5. Rebel Ridge: When they’re not occupying the halls of Montezuma, trolling Private Pyle, and ordering code reds, Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children (more commonly known by their nom de guerre the US Marine Corps) rock their acronyms. Like ‘PACE.’ Whether a combat strategy, weapons system, or logistical hierarchy, it’s a philosophy of redundancy. One employed by the hero of this hard-boiled and ham-fisted modern day Western as ruthlessly as any Marine. Upon arriving in a corrupt Southern town to bail out his cousin, said Jack Reacher-adjacent protagonist unleashes righteous mayhem (and a precise Americana shoulder lock – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhh4W24rwrw) upon a sus sheriff slippier than a party with P. Diddy who did him dirty. The resulting melees, chases, and mata leaos seem inspired by John Rambo and worthy of John Wayne, as our ronin burns his way through his primary, alternative, and contingency tactics… Until there’s only one letter left. Watch it Now On: Netflix. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: First Blood by David Morrell (1972).
4. Challengers: Meet the heretofore promising tennis prodigy Tashi Donaldson. A savage siren of schadenfreude, she won’t hesitate to Gone Girl the shit out of the competition, whom she routinely leaves wide eyed and wanting. When her own ride to stardom is derailed by a fickle ACL, she lives vicariously through Art and Patrick, two top competitors who were heretofore best friends. Embodied by Zendaya, bringing enough zest to the role to enjoin any alternative interpretation, Tashi is the lynchpin of this love triangle, which manifests professionally and even biblically. Her melody is sung with the marksmanship of Hancock himself, bolstered by the pugilistic percussion of Reznor and Ross and quicksilver lens of maestro Mukdeeprom (…if you ever wanted to see a tennis match from the ball’s POV, this is your huckleberry). The story of these three sweat slick starlets crashing into one another on the circuit, and in between the sheets, is ultimately about hunger. Whether for half a bagel sandwich, a championship, or a level ten gyatt, it’s insatiable, all absorbing, and potentially damning. Don’t believe me? Fine. You serve. Watch it Now On: Amazon Prime. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins (2018).
3. The Brutalist: In 2024 we bid some sad farewells, as The Simpsons‘ Larry, Fruit Stripe gum, and celebrated peanut farmer Jimmy Carter all went the way of Secretary Noem’s poor puppy Cricket. With box office stuck in second in a post-pandemic reality, it appeared that OG movie making might not be far behind. However, the craft proved as cool and capable as Caitlin Clark and harder to submit than Yan Xiaonan, as Brady Corbet dusted himself off, strapped on his ruck, and cashed a check for a lean mean ten mill production. An epic thicker than a Cheesecake Factory menu (complete with a no-shit intermission), filmed in 35 mm VistaVision, projected gloriously on to big backed 70 mm screens, and booming with Blumberg’s gallant score, it’s big bullocks filmmaking of yesteryear fashioned for the ‘no cap, cooked chat’ crowd. A holocaust survivor building a mecca in the Pennsylvanian hills becomes a primal interrogation of the alchemy between commerce and art, trauma and renewal, ambition and greed. All baked into the cake of an American dream turned (…literally, in one harrowing shot) upside down. For old school cinema, it’s a comeback to shame Simone Biles. All 215 MF minutes of it. Watch it Now On: In Theaters. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: The Women by Kristin Hannah (2024).
2. Dune: Part 2: Somewhere in the collision between Denis Villeneuve’s well thumbed paperback of Dune and his gelignite adaptation of the same lies the titular subject itself. The desolate desert of spice world Arrakis is barren and brutish, a no man’s land where chosen one Paul Atreides dares to tread among assorted drones as bellicose as barracudas with BBLs. It is on this world that we feel the darkened load of destiny weighing down Atreides’ armored shoulders as he grapples with the inevitability of fate in fine Faustian fashion. As fanciful, high-fructose franchises go, this one’s as uberproduced as they come, with a busin’ pedigree, unerring tempo, and drama that fucks and slaps. It is painted upon a stark canvas bigger than The Tortured Poets Department (sans Post Malone), yet with enough legerdemain to litigate more intimate questions. How do you choose between love and duty? What is the cost of toxic hagiography? Would Elvis or Bob Dylan win in a knife fight? Why the heckfire won’t this win more than one Oscar? Warning: Some questions have no good answers. Watch it Now On: Max. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (2023).
1. Anora: Rhett and Scarlet. Jack and Rose. Wall-E and EVE. Ivan the Russian oligarch and Ani the Brooklyn stripper? …one of these things is not like the others. While they may stand out, the players in this whimsical anti-rom com jab far above their weight in a missive about Mertonian consequences and a Molotov cocktail to the very idea of ‘happily ever after.’
Casting Mikey Madison in a career-making turn, the film follows the familiar footsteps of a three-act play. Act one sets the table, flowing from the meet cute (…in a classy Brighton Beach gentlemen’s club), through a swooning infatuation, to the almost inevitable nuptials (…in a classier Vegas chapel). After a hard left, the second act transmorphs into a raucous screwball comedy, complete with a chase across Coney Island, with broken noses, biting, and candy store carnage left in its wake. The final act of self-discovery packs a punch poignant, but not bathetic, as gravity finally rears its unflattering face (…ironically aboard a private jet).
Unlike other star-crossed lovers, ours navigate a landscape far removed from classical Verona or any romantic watering hole in North Africa. It’s a relationship buoyed by, and ultimately awash in, our veritable Old Country Buffet of contemporary cultural enshittification. An errant new Gilded Age where Sigma boys and social influencers are glorified and bedrock institutions are broken. This societal chasming of the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ is the undertow supercharging the narrative, from determining who does the dirty work and what, precisely, is done. It’s upon this cratered landscape that this impeccably crafted tale shakily holds a mirror to our present moment to question what we value and what we’re worth. When our seemingly unsinkable heroine Anora stares back into this abyss, we see the rare crack in her almost otherworldly armor. The fleeting connection she grabs to stop from plunging over the edge is that rare light at the end of the tunnel for her.
Potentially for us too…? Let’s just hope it’s not a train headed our way.
Watch it Now On: VOD
If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925).
The rest of the list…
13. Nickel Boys (PVOD)
14. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Max)
15. Hit Man (Netflix)
16. Flow (Max)
17. Didi (Peacock)
18. Conclave (Peacock)
19. A Complete Unknown (In Theaters)
20. Wicked (PVOD)
21. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (Starz)
22. Monkey Man (Peacock)
23. The Substance (VOD)
24. Alien: Romulus (Hulu)
25. Deadpool & Wolverine (Disney +)
26. Blitz (Apple TV +)
27. Inside Out 2 (Disney +)
28. The Fall Guy (Amazon Prime)
29. Carry On (Netflix)
30. Thelma (Hulu)
31. Longlegs (Hulu)
32. Twisters (Peacock)
33. Love Lies Bleeding (Max)
34. Speak No Evil (2024) (Peacock)
35. Here (Netflix)
36. The Apprentice (VOD)
37. The Order (VOD)
38. Trap (Max)
39. Unstoppable (Amazon Prime)
40. Heretic
41. Horizon: An American Saga: Part One (Max or Netflix)