Thanks to having an Alamo Drafthouse season pass, I saw a lot of movies this year (43 to be exact). Some were older movies that Alamo would have a special showing, like It’s a Wonderful Life, The Shining, and Chungking Express, the majority of films I saw this year were released this year.
Some were bad, like Madam Web and Y2K, others are still on my mind months after they’ve come out. Whether it’s the way it’s made me think about grief or if it’s just how I think about movie stars, these are my favorites from 2024.
Instead of ranking them in order, I decided to rank them by genre. I don’t watch every single genre—I can’t handle horror—but I watched enough in these four genres (animated, musical, comedy, drama, musical, and action) to give them a ranking.
Favorite animated film: Robot Dreams
Of the animated movies I watched this year, the best two involved robots. While I loved The Wild Robot, it was Robot Dreams that left the greatest impression on me.
Following a lonely anthropomorphic dog looking for a connection. After seeing an ad for a robot, the dog purchases it, instantly becomes best friends with it, loses it, and then tries everything he can to reconnect with it.
The dialogless film still manages to make you laugh, gasp, and cry. The characters are still charming without saying a word.
Favorite musical: Wicked
Having never seen the play in any form, I had doubts about the film going into the final weeks before it premiered. The trailer didn’t move me, but because of my girlfriend’s birthday, I was going to see it whether I liked it or not.
I should’ve known better.
Despite the nearly two-hour-forty-minute run time, the movie blazes through. Both Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo play compelling versions of Glinda and Elphaba, respectively. The numbers are still playing in my head over a month after watching.
Favorite action: Twisters
There’s something about Glen Powell. I watched three films this year with him in it and each time found myself excited for his next project.
This was the second new film I saw with Powell in it this year, (more on the other in a second), and as much as I feel like I should hate something like Twisters, I couldn’t help but love it.
Following a meteorology savant played by Daisy Edgar-Jones, Twisters follows the chase to figure out how to tame tornadoes. After a tragic accident that forces Edgar-Jones’s character, Kate, to step away from storm chasing, she’s roped back in by a college friend, who has come across generous funding.
Kate initially is pitted against stormchaser Tyler, played by Powell, but like the rest of us, sees more in Tyler than she initially expected.
This movie might not be high art, but it is fun art.
Favorite Comedy: Hit Man
I’m a huge fan of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, but I wondered how he was going to pull off a movie called Hit Man.
Thankfully, he had Glen Powell starring for him.
Playing a meek professor named Gary Johnson who is thrown into the world of undercover copping, Powell goes above and beyond for every flavor of hitman he can think of. Along with a great pairing with Adria Arjona, we get to watch what happens when the hitman gets in too deep and what happens when he lets one target go.
Favorite Drama: A Real Pain
This might be my favorite film of the year. At just ninety minutes, A Real Pain somehow manages to be funny and heartbreaking.
Kiernan Culkin is captivating in the role of Benji, a charismatic but deeply flawed man. He is over-sensitive to a fault, but his magnetic energy makes it impossible to hate him.
Jesse Eisenberg, who also wrote and directed the film, is the perfect counterweight to Benji, playing his anxious, obsessive compulsive cousin David.
As the two cousins journey to Poland, honoring their grandmother as they tour along with a group. The two process grieving in very different ways, showing us there really is no right way to manage pain.
While it is not the soul crusher The Iron Claw was for me last year, A Real Pain has lingered in my thoughts. It is the movie that makes you feel, the movie that breaks you out of the routine you’ve fallen back on for years and reflect for weeks on whether you’re a Benji or a David.
Mitchell Barbee graduated from Calvin University with a B.A. in writing in 2021. Originally from Boone, North Carolina, he is currently residing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He enjoys hanging out with the few friends who stayed, wearing grey hoodies, and hoping that he doesn’t get sucked into the nightly wormhole of watching a baseball game.
