The movie hits and misses of 2024

By Simon Morris

This year was a bumper year for non-American films, for sequels and prequels, for horror films, and for some reason films about 1970s television. It was also a pretty good year for New Zealand films, low budget films and the best films from Pixar and Marvel in years.

All this plus the hotly-contested Cate Blanchett They’re In Everything award. No, Cate didn’t make it this year.

The so-called “Barbenheimer” phenomenon involved two massive hit movies – Barbie and Oppenheimer – that made no commercial sense at all.

They weren’t sequels, they weren’t established titles, they seemed to be aimed at limited, specific audiences rather than Hollywood’s famous “Four Quadrant” demographic.

Review: ‘Barbenheimer’ films are everything

Meanwhile, the films that did stick to the rules often died on the vine – superhero movies, animated family movies, popular franchises, star-driven projects – for a while at any rate.

But they mostly all came back, one way or another. While many of the American studios’ projects struggled to catch up, there was plenty of room for everyone else.

And that meant a dazzling parade of good movies from around the world – led by the German/British Oscar winner Zone of Interest.

Other international successes included Denmark’s The Promised Land, Italian/Senegalese film Io Capitano, Goodbye Julia from Sudan and a self-explanatory tearjerker from Thailand called How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies.

Review: Goodbye Julia

At The Movies – The Promised Land

But the country that made the most hay while Hollywood slept was France. This year’s French Film Festival launched a record number of winners.

There were costume dramas – including two Three Musketeers and the feminist swashbuckler The Edge of the Blade.

There was an Antarctic survival thriller Suddenly – only the French would make it just as much a love story. And the year’s most enjoyably silly mashup Under Paris – half police drama, half Jaws-style shark attack.

But The Taste of Things combined all the best of la belle France – food, history, love and Juliette Binoche. Top 10 this year without question.

Eventually American movies returned, with some initially underwhelming “business as usual”.

We’d rather got out of the habit of sequels, remakes, reboots and for some reason this year, an awful lot of prequels.

Wonka was soon joined by more, frankly redundant back-stories like Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, A Quiet Place: Day One, Transformers One and at the end of the year, Wizard of Oz prologue Wicked, and Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.

Review – The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

In fact, the best prequel was the one that looked like it was actually starting something, rather than just being tacked on the front of something that didn’t need it.

Alien Romulus kicked off a pretty good year for producer Sir Ridley Scott.

Scott also came up with a pretty good sequel. You’d think his belated followup to Gladiator 24 years ago would have been the longest time between drinks this year.

But not a bit of it. Steven Spielberg’s Twisters was 28 years after the first tale of tornado-chasers. And the year’s winner, Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice came a solid 36 years after the original.

Like most of these sequels, prequels and cover versions, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was no great shakes, joining Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Venom: The Last Dance, Kung Fu Panda 4 and the rest under the general heading “they came and they went”.

But there were three significant exceptions.

Dune: Part Two was just as good as the first, if a bit of slog by the end.

The other two big hits this year were also technically sequels – the best Pixar film in years, Inside Out 2, and the take-no-prisoners Deadpool & Wolverine.

Like Barbie and Oppenheimer, neither should have worked as well as they did. Inside out 2 seemed far too intelligent, while Deadpool & Wolverine kept gleefully biting the hand that fed it. No matter – a hit’s a hit.

Can Deadpool and Wolverine save the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

However, the opposite was the case with two films the industry was initially sure couldn’t fail.

The year’s anti-Barbenheimer has to be the spectacular crash and burn of what became known as “Joker-lopolis”.

Beloved veteran Francis Ford Coppola’s wildly over-priced, philosophic musings Megalopolis was a disaster, matched by the tone-deaf, musical sequel to freak hit Joker. Joker: Folie à Deux was generally accepted as the worst movie musical since Cats.

One curious post-script to all those sequels were the many missing ones. Where was part two of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One? Horror film The Strangers: Chapter 1 seemed to just quit, as did Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1.

Another dangling cliff-hangers this year was The Three Musketeers: Milady.

Aside from sequels, another trend this year was an embarrassment of horror films.

Mind you, when times are tough, horror films are usually a pretty safe bet. They don’t cost too much, there’s a captive market – the Saturday night date crowd – and mostly, you get what you expect.

The one horror film this year that actually included the phrase “Hail Satan” – Longlegs. It was joined by the likes of Baghead, The Watchers, Immaculate, Heretic and dozens more.

Does Longlegs live up to the hype?

There were two slightly out of the ordinary horror films this year.

Grafted was a rare, non-jokey New Zealand contribution to the genre, featuring an exchange student using surgery to achieve popularity. And the Cannes Festival winner The Substance took a similar idea to its illogical extreme.

Grafted – the new Kiwi horror flick that’s Mean Girls meets Face/Off

The Substance not only included some pretty hideous body horror at the end. It also welcomed back one of Hollywood’s own, after years away – the remarkably well-preserved Demi Moore.

This was a stellar year for veterans and survivors, starting with an almost perfect Japanese character-study Perfect Days, by German master Wim Wenders.

The quality of Wim’s fellow Gold Card-holders might have been a bit mixed – Coppola’s Megalopolis, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II, George Miller’s latest Mad Max thriller Furiosa – but you couldn’t argue with the quantity.

These were all huge movies.

A sentimental favourite among these golden age outings was The Great Escaper, in which an old soldier returns to his D Day battlefield on Normandy Beach. It marked the farewell performances of Sir Michael Caine and the late Dame Glenda Jackson.

And honorary mention must go to the only 93-year-old female action hero Thelma, played by the redoubtable June Squibb.

But this wasn’t just a year for sentimental favourites and looking to the past.

Some films actually had something to say about now, though in two cases you get the idea that they made their points in the nick of time.

Civil War took the last decade’s culture wars to their logical conclusion. What happens if things get so bad that actual war breaks out, and the president decides to scrap the Constitution?

The film split opinions – particularly over the role of the media. I loved it, as I did the far more direct take on America’s President-elect.

The Apprentice may not explain what’s happened to American democracy, but it certainly shows how to game the new system.

Jeremy Strong as notorious lawyer Roy Cohn has the flashier part, but it’s former Marvel Comics anti-hero Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump who shows what the point of a decent biopic is.

Donald Trump tried to ban The Apprentice, was it worth the fuss?

There were a bunch of biopics this year, ranging from karaoke cover-versions of Bob Marley and Amy Winehouse to heart-on-sleeve love-letters to racing-car hero Enzo Ferrari, and ultimate trophy wife Priscilla Presley.

But true stories work best when we’re less familiar with them.

Bradley Cooper’s Maestro was about his childhood idol, composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein. But it came alive every time Carey Mulligan as Lenny’s more interesting wife Felicia hit the screen.

And Dame Helen Mirren – all but unrecognisable as Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir – was equally electrifying in Golda.

There were some curious coincidences this year.

American television in the 1970s, for instance, managed to accommodate both the rise of late-night satirical show Saturday Night Live and a horror-film about a talk-show host who gets more than he bargained for in Late Night with the Devil.

But the third time was the charm – a real-life scandal where a guest on a 1978 dating show turns out to have been a serial killer.

The charm being star Anna Kendrick, playing an unlucky contestant, who also directed Woman of the Hour, extremely well. A director is born, we hope.

Another common theme around the world seems to have been schools this year – particularly schools in under-privileged areas. In some cases, it’s about a gifted, inspiring teacher – like Mexico’s Radical.

In others, like France’s Divertimento, a plucky pupil from the Parisian projects dreams of conducting, despite not being male, white or wealthy. Spoiler alert – you go girl!

And sometimes – like multiple Oscar-nominee The Holdovers – teacher and pupils end up saving each other.

A top performance from the brilliant Paul Giamatti matched by that of another actor’s, Jeffrey Wright in Cord Jefferson’s Oscar-winning script American Fiction.

There was a distinct lack of old-fashioned Hollywood star vehicles in 2024 – meaning films dependent on who was in them, rather than being grateful to have them in a film that was already being made.

The likable Fly Me to the Moon, starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, was the exception rather than the rule.

This was in contrast to the fate of a film called Wolfs, starring two of the biggest, most starry stars around. Time was when just the presence of George Clooney and Brad Pitt in a thriller would guarantee a hit.

This year, Wolfs didn’t even reach the cinemas.

This was a productive year for New Zealand films – with successes across the board.

There were strong documentaries. The micro-budget tale of architects Miles Warren and Maurice Mahoney – Maurice and I – was one of my favourite films this year. And Lucy Lawless made her debut as a director – Never Look Away, about legendary photojournalist Margaret Moth.

Another actor turned director, Rachel House, came up with charming family adventure The Mountain, while teen romance at the height of the Land Wars, Ka Whawhai Tonu, proved a winning combination.

A long fight to tell the story of New Zealand Wars in te reo

And for the grownups – Christine Jeffs took a sharp, critical look at the state of our health system with A Mistake.

I was particularly keen on the least locally-based Kiwi film – James Napier Robertson’s tale of an American fish out of water at the Bolshoi Ballet’s notorious Academy.

Not sure how he managed to smuggle Joika through the Film Commission, but I’m delighted he did – it was a knockout.

But this year was full of small mercies among the flukey big hits. Some of the films I enjoyed most this year cost less than the manicure budget on Megalopolis.

Like a tiny, English film about three teenage girls on a spring break, and what could possibly go wrong? It was called How To Have Sex. The title, you’d think, says it all. But you’d be wrong.

Just as you’d be wrong to lump Richard Linklater’s real-life story of a fake hitman into the category of “routine true crime”. It’s better than that, with a star – Glen Powell – who’s a lot more expensive now than he was then.

But maybe my favourite this year featured the world’s least likely Romeo and Juliet – construction worker Dan and middle-aged, failed actress Rita in Ghostlight.

If you haven’t seen it yet you’re lucky – you’re in for a treat. But take a hankie. In fact, take a few.

About now I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering who’ll win the coveted Cate Blanchett They’re In Everything award this year?

Sadly, it won’t be Cate herself. She was knocked out of contention by a rare flop – the truly dismal Borderlands.

Among the men, the front-runner was obviously Timothée Chalamet, or the equally omnipresent Harris Dickinson, a sort of B-Movie version of the Dune/Wonka star.

But I’m sticking to Star of Tomorrow Glen Powell. You loved him in Hit Man, as Sydney Sweeney’s sparring partner in Anyone But You, as the hotshot hurricane-hunter in Twisters and many more. Clearly a man to watch.

Among the women the competition was even fiercer. The popular Zendaya had two big hits – Dune and Challengers. Newcomer Caelee Spainey had three – Alien Romulus, Civil War and Priscilla. But hits alone don’t secure a Blanchett. We’re looking for volume.

It’s the wonderful Lesley Manville with a staggering 10 titles to her credit this year, whether it’s playing Amy Winehouse’s Gran in Back to Black, Gemma Arterton’s Mum in The Critic or Princess Margaret in The Crown. The former Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris has come a long way.

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