It’s Oscars weekend! Which can only mean one thing: I bloviate about the best movies I saw in 2024, regardless of whether they were released that year. Fun fun! This was another year in which I did not see anything in a movie theater. Very sad; I miss the filmgoing experience. Streaming services make it easy to stay home and watch flicks, but some movies made specifically for streaming services land with a thud. (Examples: “A Family Affair,” “The Instigators,” “Wolfs,” “The Family Plan,” “Me Time,” “Family Switch.” Basically anything with “Family” in the title.) I won’t get into the “why” of it, but to me, one reason is that many of us are going to watch whatever is new on Netflix/Prime/Max/Paramount Plus/Hulu/Peacock etc., quality be damned. “Hey honey, there’s a movie with Mark Wahlberg murdering people while a baby is strapped to his chest! It’s a comedy!”
Anyway, the plan for 2025 is to get me to a theater. Let’s do this! My lovely wife Jen doesn’t have the time or the interest, so hit me up, readers! I’ll buy the snacks. (Who are we kidding? I’ll smuggle in the snacks.) Okay, here’s my list:
- The Holdovers,” 2023 comedy/drama directed by Alexander Payne, starring Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and Dominic Sessa. I believe this film will hold up over time. It’s a less cloying “Dead Poets Society” (which I loved). Set in 1970, the film takes place over Christmas break at a New England boarding school, where classics teacher Paul Hunham (Giamatti), whose life has not worked out how he had hoped, has to chaperone for the “holdovers,” students who can’t go home for the break. He’s joined by a cafeteria worker (Randolph), who is dealing with deep pain and loss, and troublemaking student Angus Tully (Sessa in his debut film performance). Like anything Alexander Payne makes, humor and heartbreak go hand in hand.
2. “My Old Ass,” 2024 comedy/drama directed by Megan Park, starring Maisy Stella, Percy Hynes White, Aubrey Plaza, Maddy Ziegler, and Kerrice Brooks. This is very much a Gen Z film (not the only one on my list). It has a strange conceit as its premise: Stella (in her film debut) portrays Elliott, a teen on the cusp of leaving her small Canadian cranberry-farming community for college. She and her friends decide to camp out on an island and take mushrooms; while her friends (Ziegler and Brooks) have relatively expected hallucinogenic trips, Elliott is visited by the 39-year-old version of herself (Plaza), who gives her advice on how to change her life for better outcomes. What young Elliott does with the advice is where the problems lie. Low-key, moving, and funny; I look forward to more films written and directed by Park
3. “Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in Two Pieces,” 2024 documentary directed by Morgan Neville, with interviews of Steve Martin, Martin Short, Jerry Seinfeld, Adam Gopnik, Tina Fey, Diane Keaton, and many others. You should read Martin’s memoir of his stand-up career, “Born Standing Up,” if this movie interests you. Part 1 of this doc focuses on what the book did: Martin’s childhood and how it shaped his meteoric rise to becoming the first comic to fill arenas, and his decision to walk away from stand-up at age 35. Part 2 is about him looking back on the next chapter of his life, up to his two-man revue with Short and their hit show “Only Murders in the Building.” For anyone who likes to see how a creative mind works.
4. “His Three Daughters,” 2023 drama directed by Azazel Jacobs, starring Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen, Rudy Galvan, Jovan Adepo, and Jay O. Sanders. A moving film about three women who come together as their father Vincent enters hospice care. Lyonne is particularly good as Rachel, the daughter who has taken care of Vincent in his apartment for the past several years. Tensions any family deals with are heightened as the sisters wrestle with guilt, resentment, and judgement over who has and has not pulled their weight, and what that means for them moving forward. Somehow, Jacobs finds humor in the darkest moments.
5. “A Good Person,” 2023 drama directed by Zach Braff, starring Florence Pugh, Morgan Freeman, Molly Shannon, Celeste O’Connor, and Chinaza Uche. I delayed seeing this film, having a general idea of the challenging subject matter. Pugh is Allison, a musician who causes the deaths of two people in a car accident. Subsequently, she struggles with drug and alcohol addiction while her mother (Shannon) alternately coddles and pushes her to get help. If you have any experience with addiction, you half cover your eyes through this movie, hoping that each scene is rock bottom but knowing there’s more to come. She seeks help in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, only to be reunited with Daniel (Freeman, in what could have been a cliched role but not in his hands), a family member of one of the car-accident victims. We think he’s being the bigger person by befriending her, until we hear his own back story. Braff wrote and directed a film that you want to talk about with someone after viewing.
6. “Somebody I Used to Know,” 2023 romantic comedy directed by Dave Franco, starring Alison Brie, Jay Ellis, Kiersey Clemons, and Danny Pudi. A cringeworthy comedy about going home again. Brie (who co-wrote the film with her husband Franco) is Ally, who returns to her hometown in Washington state to lick her wounds after her reality TV show gets canceled. While staying with her mom (Julie Hagerty in a scene-stealing role), she runs into her old flame, Sean (Ellis). She accidentally invites herself along to his engagement party, and then to his destination wedding, and finds herself competing with his bride Cassidy (Clemons). So many awkward moments! A great supporting cast (Pudi, Hayley Joel Osment, Amy Sedaris, Sam Richardson, Zoe Chao). It’s “My Best Friend’s Wedding” with nudity and punk music.
7. “The Map of Tiny Perfect Things,” 2021 romance directed by Ian Samuels, starring Kyle Allen, Kathryn Newton, and Jermaine Harris. This film follows Mark (Allen), who is caught in a time loop a la “Groundhog Day,” repeating the same day of high school over and over. He perfects the day, hoping that this will jolt him out of the loop, to no avail. He eventually notices that a girl, Margaret (Newton), is suffering from the same fate, and they decide to make out a map of the best little things happening in their lives. As they come closer to solving the science of getting back to normal, they have to answer the question: Is what lies in the future actually better than being stuck in a perfect day forever?
8. “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” 2022 musical biopic directed by Eric Appel, starring Daniel Radcliffe, Evan Rachel Wood, Toby Huss, Rainn Wilson, and Julianne Nicholson. I have to confess I was a Weird Al fan back in the day (by which I mean the 1980s because I am that old). This film is the only logical way to do a Weird Al biography: a bizarro, untethered from reality parody of Yankovic, with Radcliffe playing an Al whose father forbids him from playing the accordian and hanging out with polka lovers, and who dates Madonna, murders Pablo Escobar, and is upset because Michael Jackon’s song “Beat It” was actually a parody of Al’s “Eat It.” Hilarious and stupid.
9. “When You Finish Saving the World,” 2022 drama directed by Jesse Eisenberg, starring Julianne Moore, Finn Wolfhard, Jay O. Sanders, and Billy Bryk. Eisenberg is generating awards-show praise for his “A Real Pain,” and if you like that, you should check out his directorial debut. Wolfhard plays Ziggy, an Indiana teen who lives in the same house with his parents (Moore and Sanders), but they have no idea what he does with his time (mostly YouTubing music to an increasingly larger following). Ziggy is a loner at school. His mom, Evelyn (Moore), runs a domestic abuse shelter and develops a surrogate-son relationship with a resident to replace the estrangement of the son she actually has.
10. “Bottoms,” 2023 comedy directed by Emma Seligman, starring Rachel Sennott, Ayo Edebiri, Kaia Gerber, Marshawn Lynch, and Ruby Cruz. This Gen Z over-the-top satire of high school life for queer kids follows Edebiri and Sennott as Josie and PJ trying to navigate a school that worships the football team and marginalizes anyone who is different. The principal and teachers are openly hostile to the girls (remember, this is a comedy), and Mr. G (Lynch, the retired football player) agrees to be the faculty sponsor for their fight club, which is actually just a chance for them to get physical with other girls. Josie and PJ end up trying to save the day when their football team faces their biggest rival. I had no idea where this movie was going. And that’s a good thing.
Films that just missed the cut: “I Am Chris Farley,” “Flora and Son,” “Love at First Sight,” “Theater Camp,” “Raymond & Ray,” “Meet Cute.”