A very late ‘best stuff I watched in 2024’ post

Everybody likes an end of year “best of” recap, so here’s mine for 2024, three months into 2025, a very normal, very chill year so far.

This isn’t going to be a Top 10 or in any particular order because honestly I watched even less tv and movies in 2024 than I have in previous years. That number has been getting lower and lower in recent years. 2024 was the first year in a long time, maybe ever (I’ll have to check my watching/reading notebook) that I read more books than watched movies.

So, here we go.

Juno Temple as Dorothy Lyon

Arguably the best thing I watched last year was season 5 of Fargo. It’s got all the Fargo hallmarks - chilly midwestern setting, charismatic scumbag criminals, a noble cop, surprisingly violent in places, characters who can barely comprehend the very bad situation they’re in, etc. It’s also directly about the abuse done to women, physical and mental, by men. Every actor in this show is doing A+ work, Juno Temple and Jon Hamm in particular. But a shout out must be made to Jennifer Jason Leigh, Lamorne Morris, and Dave Foley as well. I don’t know if Dave Foley ever thought he would play a high-level fixer, as he does here, but congratulations to him because he does it well. He plays his character, Danish Graves, like he were Michael Clayton but with a Bugs Bunny glint in his eye. It’s delightful. You can watch Fargo on FX/Hulu.

For all Mankind, baby

The other arguably best thing I watched in 2024 was season 4 of For All Mankind. This is the alternate history show on Apple+ about what if the space race never really ended and Russia got to the moon first. The magic of this show is that every season skips forward a decade so we get to watch our characters either age with the show, die spectacularly in a space disaster, or just disappear from the show and they get to live their lives. If you’re one of the few people who will read this and you’ve never seen the show but want to give it a shot, I don’t want to say too much. Part of the success of the show is seeing how our actual history is reflected in the show’s alternate history, but tweaked in very specific ways. Season 2, for example, is essentially “what if the Cold War happened on the moon”. This is one of those shows that feel like it’s always on the verge of being cancelled (I don’t know if that’s actually true!) so every season feels like a miracle. Season 5 is coming out sometime this year (I think) and it seems like we’re even getting a spin-off show entirely focused on Star City in Russia. Amazing.

Okay, movies…

Rebel Ridge might be my favorite movie from last year. It’s on Netflix, directed by Jeremy Saulnier, stars Aaron Pierre, AnnaSophia Robb, and Don Johnson. Saulnier made two of my favorite crime/revenge thrillers in the last several years: Blue Ruin and Green Room. Rebel Ridge is kind of a political thriller and kind of an action thriller. Aaron Pierre plays Terry Richmond. He’s kind of Jack Reacher and he’s kind of John Wick, but if he was a former Marine and his whole thing is that he doesn’t want to kill you but does want to take you down quickly and do the least harm to your body as possible. Aaron Pierre is incredible in this. I want more Terry Richmond movies. I want Terry Richmond books. I want a Terry Richmond mini-series. It’s also one of the rare movies that goes straight to streaming that feels like an actual movie. Everything feels calculated (in a good way) and doesn’t feel slapped together. This might be uncharitable of me to say about movies made for millions of dollars by directors and writers and actors I like, but there’s something about them (Wolfs, I’m looking at you) that don’t feel real.

Wow, I’ve written a lot. I’ll get through the rest of this quickly. A few of these might not have even come out in 2024, but that’s when I watched them!

Jim Cummings as The Knife Salesman in Last Stop in Yuma County

The Last Stop in Yuma County was a great little crime thriller. I want to watch Furiosa again - I have a feeling I’d like it more than I did the first time. Dune: Part 2 is a fantastic follow-up to part 1. Rebecca Ferguson is the best. Can’t wait for Part 3. The First Omen is a wild horror movie with some incredible direction by Arkasha Stevenson and a fantastic central performance by Nell Tigerfree. I am in the bag for the new Planet of the Apes movies and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was no different. Looking forward to the next one and am curious about where Noa’s character goes from here. The Wild Robot: I don’t think it’s as good as the book, but it’s still pretty good. I wish it would have had the quiet the book had. That said, it’s got its moments and those moments brought a tear to my eye. I finally watched The Fabelmans, Spielberg’s semi-biographical latest, and what a picture. All the stuff with Sammy Fabelman in high school. David Lynch! The last shot of the movie! Good stuff.

Okay, that’s it.

I’ve watched six movies so far this year. Conclave being my favorite, with the new Nosferatu coming in a close second.