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My Top 10 movies of 2024 (and bottom 5)

  • Writer: Jeremy Costello
    Jeremy Costello
  • Jan 23
  • 9 min read


To put it bluntly, 2024 was a lame year for movies.


A few years ago, I watched a documentary with celebrities and writers in the biz who foretold this. Streaming and the pandemic completely changed the way movies are made. Yes, everyone knows this, but there’s still nuance to the ripple effects. The output rate, the quality of writers and actors, the smaller production budgets, etc. all have an impact from which I still strongly feel the effects—from streaming movies in particular, which only chase trends instead of innovate and purposefully frontload the pacing with more of the good stuff to keep people streaming. I’m not saying people aren’t getting back out to theatres or that there are no good movies to stream. But outside of a few big-budget movies, I really wasn’t impressed with the big screen all that much this year.


With that in mind, it’s no wonder it was easy to pick the best movies I watched in 2024 because there weren’t too many that stood out to me. But the ones that did really did.

Here is a ranking of my 10 favorite movies; additionally, there were a few major busts that deserve to be shamed, so I’ve also added my Top 5 (bottom five?) busts.


My Top 10 favorite movies of 2024:


10) Megalopolis (theater)

Perhaps one of the most misunderstood movies of the year, Megalopolis certainly had a lot of say. Some things were worrisome, others were enlightening with a touch of hope, and some pointed out downright pathetic patterns about both the past and our current society. But there’s no confusing the sprawling visual storytelling and gorgeous cinematography. Some of the metaphors don’t land, sure, but this movie was far more about the journey than the destination, which was kind of a letdown. Oh, and Adam Driver is awesome.


9) Killer Heat (Prime Video)

Killer Heat was a standard who-dun-it murder mystery. It didn’t need gimmicks like the Knives Out or Hercule Poirot movies. It was simply a well-thought, tightly-written mystery that kept me guessing and invested. The story itself was okay, but there were just enough interesting characters from whom we got just enough mileage to care about their piece of the puzzle. It was great to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt; I feel like it’s been far too long since I’ve seen him in a movie. The rest of the cast turned in solid performances, too.


8) Fly Me to the Moon (Apple+)

A very late surprise hit for me near the end of the year, Fly Me to the Moon is as meta as a script can get, and I loved every second of it. Channing Tatum surprised me, and Scarlett Johansson fit into her role so well that I’m starting to believe a time portal plucked her out of that era and dropped her in our timeline. The flat-earthers and the fake moon-landing conspiracy theorists probably had a field day with this movie, which took us on a journey that showed how easily and even sensibly the how and why of the moon landing could have been faked. I love a good conspiracy more than most people, but I never subscribed to this one. I will say, I am awfully close to going down that rabbit hole. I’ve been needing new podcasts to listen to, anyway.


7) Deadpool & Wolverine (theater)

Look, the MCU has long been past its prime, and no, this movie didn’t get me all excited about it again. And while Ryan Reynolds continues to get applauded for so seamlessly and flawlessly bringing out the immaturity in the Merc with a Mouth, Deadpool was only half the reason why this movie worked for me (Half. You see what I did there? I’ll see myself out). The highlight for me was the storyline dealing with the timestream and the TVA, which connects to, and enriches, the Loki show on Disney+ (my second-favorite MCU show behind WandaVision). Wolverine’s crankiness so perfectly counter balanced Deadpool that he made this mash-up an easy slam dunk. The fan-servicey Easter Eggs were as meta as it gets, which has been a recipe for disaster for recent Marvel projects (and Star Wars, honestly). The Deadpool character gets away with those gags, though, so it was all in good fun.


6) Gladiator II (theater)

Decades-later sequels are pretty hit-or-miss propositions—usually more miss than hit—and Gladiator is one of my favorite movies, so I went into the sequel with a skeptical attitude. Thankfully, this one delivered. It had a strong plot that was developed for the long game, and it mostly paid off. The quirky characters kept the movie lively, and the acting was actually a lot stronger than I expected. It handled nostalgia plays a lot cleaner and far less fan-servicey/heavy-handedly than the cheap nostalgia thrills of most movie sequels. The action scenes were pretty cool, including the ridiculous boat contest scene in the Coliseum.


5) Unfrosted (Netflix)

The out-of-left-field surprise comedy of the year I never knew I needed just happened to star one of my favorite actors of all time. Jerry Seinfeld actually pulled off a very cheeky comedy performance in a movie that tells the hilarious story of the utmost importance: the sensation that is the Pop-Tart. Seinfeld loves cereal in real life (and he ate it all the time on his show), so it was a perfect idea to cast him in a movie about the war on breakfast between rival corporations. The guest stars and the oddball humor were non-stop.


4) Inside Out 2 (theater)

Leave it to Pixar to come up with yet another tear jerker. This was a perfect sequel. The returning emotion characters were just as endearing as we would’ve expected them to be, but the new batch of characters brought a tension and complexity that actual emotions bring to teenagers, as we saw in the film. The highlight character was Anxiety, who perfectly captured the difficulty of all the worries and challenges that come with that emotion. Anxiety gets a bad rep—even I believed (and still do to a smaller extent) that some people exploit their bad behaviors and attitudes through the guise of an anxiety disorder, but Inside Out 2 shows the reality of how hard it is to handle anxieties (especially at a young age); it’s a constant internal battle unlike most other emotions. This poignant, relatable tale really helped me understand more than I ever did before how much of a challenge anxiety poses for some people. I needed the lessons of this movie more than I ever thought I would.


3) It Ends with Us (theater)

As a man, I’m nervous for even writing this.


The goal of the “Me Too” movement is great in theory: women who have been abused—physically, sexually, or otherwise—finally started feeling safer to call out the despicable men who did despicable things to them, even if it was decades ago. Hopefully women nowadays don’t feel trapped or silenced anymore (well, ultimately, it’d be great if terrible men stopped doing terrible things to women). But there were women who tried to take advantage of that opportunity a little too much, and our society swung the pendulum a little too far (only in some ways; the movement overall still proved valuable).  


The story in It Ends with Us, on the other hand, showed empowered women calling out disgusting, parasitic men in the exact right way. Watching a story of a mother putting a stop to tolerating abuse was the ultimate picture of strength and courage. The directing of the movie’s key events was handled delicately—maybe a little too delicately; it almost felt like the guy just made a simple, albeit huge, mistake in the heat of the moment, though that is not the case nor the point of the story. On top of an uplifting story, the movie had an incredible charm with witty, flirty dialogue and great character plot points that blossomed into a great love story when all was said and done.


2) Dune Part 2 (theater)

I am all in on this franchise. The politics, the family drama, the lore and fantastical elements, the prophetic themes—it’s such a grandiose, sweeping saga with great stories and action throughout (okay, there were one or two lulls that could’ve helped shave some time off the all-too-long runtime). The end battle was truly shocking and had great choreography. Even within the dull sandy landscapes, the movie was a sight to behold with excitement around every corner (or, in this case, under every sandy hill). I can't wait for more, and I've even watched the TV spinoff show on Max (look for that in my Top 2025 TV Shows blog soon).


1) Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (theater)

Unlike surprise movies that I never knew I wanted, Furiosa was exactly the story I wanted in every way. It was the perfect prequel to a movie that was begging for more explanation, even though Fury Road didn’t leave me unsatisfied with the small amount of story we got. Chris Hemsworth was hilariously convincing as the rambunctious gang leader. Anya Taylor-Joy absolutely makes you root for her to crush him and exact revenge. The world building, the makeup, and the production design sell you on the world through and through. Somehow in all that awesome rough-and-tough action was a touching prequel story. This was a true masterpiece.



Honorable mentions:


Have It All Taylor Tomlinson Special—this isn’t really a movie so much as a comedy show, but it counted according to Netflix at the time (I think is has been recategorized since). This girl is hilarious, and she diffuses the inappropriate things that might make some cringe with witty misdirects, which is a refreshing change to hear from a comedian (I’m not saying she’s clean, but she’s cleaner than most).


Saturday Night—I technically watched Saturday Night in 2025, so I won't count it, but it was a pretty decent portrayal of how chaotic and unscripted the night of the first episode of the famous sketch comedy show probably was. The sound mixing was terrible, and neither the humor of the movie (not the skits themselves, mind you) nor the one or two touching moments were all that memorable or engrossing, but the film served as an adequate telling of a beloved show that probably will pull the nostalgia heartstrings for many older fans who remember the birth and evolution of the show.


Biggest Busts of the year (all in theater):


Mufasa – This movie answered a question we all wanted to know (like how Scar got his scar), but it answered several questions we didn’t care about at all (like how Pride Rock was form). The songs were awful—the lyrics sucked, the vocal performances were mostly trash, but most of all, watching the poor lip syncing of CG lions trying to sing corny lyrics completely took me out of the movie many times. This movie has zero of the charm that the original cartoon movie had.


A Quiet Place: Day 1 – I so badly wanted to see the prequel story to the two great A Quiet Place sci-fi thrillers, but instead we got this garbage. This movie had almost nothing to do with the actual good movies. It didn’t set up anything or explain a whole lot more of the setting. It was a complete waste of time. On top of that, what we got was boring.


Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire – The Universal monster movie universe has been hit or miss. I loved Skull Island and the first Godzilla movie in this series, but ever since then, they have mashed the two gargantuan monsters together in lousy films that have nose-dived in quality. The stories are messy. The CGI is actually distracting and has poor coloring. There are some cool action scenes, but this movie was a big miss for me overall.


Conclave – I’m a huge fan of Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, and Conclave was giving me serious vibes of those two films, so I was pretty excited to see it. The story idea was clever and detailed. The suspense engrossed me throughout the proceedings of Conclave. The acting was good. Everything about the movie was good.


Until the ending. That ending completely flushed the entire movie down the toilet.


That was such a cheap shot, a low-brow move. To sneak that kind of political messaging into a religious film was duplicitous and evil. And whom was that message even really serving? This movie tries to pull a fast one by showing how love wins over everything. Love does win over everything, but only in conjunction with truth. To say that love means ignoring flaws and turning a blind eye to that which goes against foundational principles is not correct.

The sad thing is, the real-world Pope has gone on record saying things completely against every principle of his own church. Go look it up on YouTube if you don’t believe me.


Joker 2 – This movie shouldn’t really be in this category because we all knew it was going to bomb. Just the decision to turn one of the greatest villains of all time into a chorus-singing clown (yes, I see what I did there) was just pathetic. Lady Gaga is a terrible actress (all right, she was okay in “Gucci”) and needs to stop being cast in movies just because she’s a singer. The first Joker movie was excellent. This one was not. Thankfully they’re done telling this story.

 
 
 

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