Best New Shows of 2024
5. Batman: Caped Crusader (Amazon)
4. Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Amazon)
3. Fallout (Amazon)
2. X-Men '97 (Disney+)
1. Shogun (Hulu)
Best Finished Shows of 2024
5. Clone High (Max)
4. Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Disney+)
3. Masters of the Air (Apple TV+)
2. The Penguin (HBO)
1. Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO)
Once again, I did a bad job last year of watching new movies that weren't about super heroes punching each other. I don't go to the theater very often because it's so easy to watch movies at home, and most of the movies I watch at home tend to be a little older. I stand behind everything on this list, though. They're all really good movies I'd like to watch again.
Best of 2017
10. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Super hero movie as bonkers space opera. Volume 2 is not as fresh and exciting as the original was a few years ago, but James Gunn recognized that he had a good thing going and didn't mess with it too much. He just made another solid, hilarious, original space adventure movie with decent dramatic chops. Family is a pretty common theme in modern action movies that try to have a heart, and this one tackles the idea head-on. It has what you would want from a sequel. More of what was cool about the original, without feeling like a retread and adding new characters and twists. Add another good soundtrack and you're all set.
9. Blade Runner 2049
There's lots of doom and gloom going around about the state of the movie industry, but I love that things like this can still get made. 2049 is a very long, slowly paced, big budget, R-rated science fiction movie. Worldwide, it probably lost the studio money. But it exists, and nobody can stop it from existing. The original Blade Runner is still revered, and its best assets were its sense of style and mood. I think 2049 captures those aspects well, with gorgeous cinematography, a soundtrack that feels both familiar and new, and an extension of the concepts of life and identity that are pretty familiar at this point. I think the movie works best as an exploration of tone and texture more than story. It tells a decent sci-fi noir mystery, but the best moments are just taking in the lavish sights and sounds. Plus it's the most tolerable Jared Leto has been in years.
8. Spider-Man: Homecoming
Super hero movie as teen comedy. Spider-Man is my favorite comic character, and it's great to see him in a movie that actually explores the original idea of a high school student juggling his powers and hunger for action with his everyday worries. Tom Holland is already my favorite actor to take the role, and he and his supporting cast create a great, fun atmosphere that backdrops the action. It really is a comedy more than anything else, though Michael Keaton's Vulture is a surprisingly good villain, with a few scary moments and exciting action beats. The movie doesn't totally follow through on the idea of responsibility that are the character's core, which is why it's not higher on this list. Still, I had a great time watching it.
7. Logan
Super hero movie as violent neo-western. I liked The Wolverine more than I think a lot of people did, and Logan goes even further in exploring the character of James Howlett and giving a different perspective on the cinematic X-Men universe. The movie takes place in a dour future where most of the famous mutants are gone, and the ones we recognize are really getting old. Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart both give standout final performances as their iconic characters. It's very R-rated, with lots of curse words and graphic violence in the action scenes, which are infrequent but always land with an impact. It's sort of the end of an era, but it also opens the door for other possibilities with the franchise. The question is whether any of that gets explored or if it all gets absorbed into Disney after recent corporate dealings.
6. Thor: Ragnarok
Super hero movie as broad cosmic farce. I enjoyed the first two Thor movies, but this is the first time the character has felt truly vital and relevant. Chris Hemsworth drips charisma and has great comic ability, and the whole cast and crew lean into that as they produce a movie that is not only grander than previous entries in the series, but also far sillier and more entertaining. It's a wonderful ensemble, with Bruce Banner, Valkyrie, Korg, and Jeff Goldblum's very Goldblum-y Grandmaster all making strong attempts to steal the movie. And while once again the villain doesn't get as much time to develop into a full character as we might like, Cate Blanchett is clearly enjoying the hell out of the role. It's a solid movie from start to finish, the best in a very strong year for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
5. Get Out
Not all racism is overt. It's not all slurs and hostility. Sometimes it's just a clear change in attitude in response to a person of another race being around, or saying what you think is a compliment but comes off as another stereotype. Or sometimes it's being victim to a system of violence because people simply care less when racial minorities are targeted. Get Out takes the familiar scenario of a black man meeting his white girlfriend's family and turns it into a horror story. They're all friendly enough, but what are they really thinking and hiding? Being a true horror movie, Get Out obviously goes a bit beyond reality with the events that follow, but the scariest part of the movie is how close to reality it stays in certain aspects. This is Jordan Peele's first time directing a film, but it sure doesn't feel like it. The movie is funny and scary when it wants to be, and his style is assured at all times. I already liked him as an actor, but I'm definitely interested in anything else he tries behind the camera.
4. John Wick: Chapter 2
I enjoyed John Wick, but I did not love it to the extent that a lot of action movie fans did. It felt like another Taken with only a couple of new ideas to differentiate it. John Wick 2 though? John Wick 2 is extremely my shit. It's a combination of things, I think. The action choreography felt further developed from where it was the last time. Close up head shots are cool, but close up head shots while performing complicated martial arts takedowns are cooler. We also see a bigger variety of weapons and situations, including a fantastic succession of scenes between Wick and someone who's actually close to his equal in skill. The story had more depth to it than the functional but simple revenge tale of the first. This ties into another thing I liked, the expansion on the strange alternate universe the series takes place in, where things seem normal on the surface but there's an underground society of high rolling hitmen and codes of honor and gold coins and hobo spy networks. The situation isn't as black and white for John, as he has to decide what he's willing to do to protect himself, and considers the cost of the actions he takes. I really liked the movie more than I expected and I would love to see a third.
3. Baby Driver
Edgar Wright's fifth film is his first that wasn't based on another work or co-written with Simon Pegg, so it's an interesting look at what his personal talents and interests are. If he has a weakness, it's probably creating women characters that stand on their own, but I enjoyed the hell out of most of this movie. It's an odd hybrid of action heist film and musical, where most of the chases and shootouts are timed to match the background music, which was chosen from an eclectic variety of periods and genres. The cast is pretty outstanding, and there are unexpected twists on the pretty familiar story of a criminal with a heart of gold who just wants to get away and live a simpler life. Almost every moment just works, and it has a sort of fairy tale tone that I liked. There's talk about a sequel, and I have no idea what that would be, but I'd definitely see it.
2. Dunkirk
Dunkirk is further proof that Christopher Nolan can take any type of story or setting and turn it into a taut, tense, non-chronological, clockwork puzzle box. The Dunkirk evacuation is one of the most famous events of World War II from the British side, and this movie examines it from the perspectives of soldiers waiting on the beach for rescue, civilians recruited to retrieve them across the English channel with their own boats, and fighter pilots protecting both groups from slaughter by the Germans. Each perspective is on a different time scale, and it can get complicated trying to keep track of events you see from multiple perspectives that can occur out of order based on that timeline. You kind of can't help but smile as Nolan pulls this off in what could have been a straightforward war movie. The film is greatly buoyed by Hans Zimmer's score, which uses a ticking clock as a constant motif and keeps the tension ratcheted at all times as Nolan cuts between scenes of various intensity but a nearly constantly sense of impending doom. It's a good thing the movie's under two hours, because if it was closer to standard war movie length it might become unbearable. As it is, it's one of my favorites of the genre, without relying on the intense violence and gore that's been so common since Saving Private Ryan.
1. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
After buying the franchise rights from George Lucas, Disney released Star Wars: The Force Awakens to get people to trust that they knew what they were doing. It's a pretty good movie that hits on familiar story beats, introduces a very likable new cast of characters in addition to some familiar faces, and really doesn't do anything to rock the boat. The Last Jedi is different. It's a movie that defies expectations, tears down false beliefs, and pushes in new directions. Very much unlike The Force Awakens, it provoked strong reactions on both sides. Personally, I loved it. Following in the footsteps of The Empire Strikes Back, the best Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi allows its characters to fail. But in failure, they learn things and find out more about who they really are. How does Poe handle discovering that his piloting skills aren't enough to truly lead the resistance to a meaningful victory? Can Finn find something bigger to believe in than just the safety of himself and the people he's close to? How does Rey handle realizing that there's more to the force than magic tricks and fighting skills, and that just because a bad person is conflicted, it doesn't mean that they're capable or worthy of being saved? I think there's honest quibbles you can make about many of the moments in the film, but the questions it was asking and how they were answered felt far more important to me. It rejects things I really didn't like about the prequels or The Force Awakens, and finds a new path forward for the series that I'm looking forward to seeing explored in future sequels. Mark Hamill gave probably his best ever performance as Luke Skywalker, and I thought the handling of that character fit perfectly with the themes and scope of the story. It also has some of the best action scenes and most astonishing imagery the series has ever had. I wasn't sure there would be another great Star Wars movie again, but I believe this one was.
Delayed Entry
This is the best movie that wasn't released in 2017 but I didn't see until then.
Arrival
Denis Villeneuve directed Blade Runner 2049, but his best science fiction movie is Arrival. It starts with first contact with aliens and explores the nature of language in interesting ways, and expands from there into broader examinations of the very basics of perspective, communication, and life itself. It plays with the nature of storytelling brilliantly, showing you how basic assumptions can be wrong, all of which ties into the basic plot itself. You add in Villeneuve's skilled direction and a terrific cast and you have a pretty amazing movie.
When you think about it, this was a pretty remarkable year for films based on Marvel comics. No real classics, but they effectively build up The Avengers for next year, and they managed to put out three films without any of them stinking, or even being less than pretty good for summer action blockbusters. X-Men: First Class might be my favorite of the three, not just looking at the whole X mythology in an interesting way, but being the second best X movie that's ever been released.
At this point, the whole continuity of the X movie franchise is pretty messed up. The Wolverine movie probably did the most damage, but the whole thing is fraught with issues arising from recasting and changing things that needed to be changed. As a way of pushing a big reset button, First Class mostly works while still acknowledging what's been done before for the most part. It shows the early lives of Professor X and Magneto, depicts them becoming friends during a conflict that alerts major governments to the existence of mutants, and sets the stage for their antagonistic relationship that defines the rest of the series. It doesn't do all this perfectly, but it gets the job done, and considering how little time Matthew Vaughn and his cast and crew had to put it together, I think it's fairly impressive work.
The best part of the movie is very easily the development of Erik and Charles as characters and as friends, and it's what the whole movie builds from. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender both give very good performances, especially considering it's a comic book movie, and there's a real camaraderie that builds and a sadness when their relationship inevitably turns sour. The other stuff isn't as good, but it isn't too bad either. Kevin Bacon and January Jones play Sebastian Shaw and Emma Frost, the leaders of the Hellfire Club, are the main villains who want to start a nuclear war and create a paradise for mutants in the aftermath. Tying the main external conflict of the film into the Cuban Missile Crisis is a pretty clever move, and it works to ground the story in a period of history and play around with what we already know. There's not much else to the plot that isn't maneuvering to get characters in place for where they should be later, but there doesn't really need to be.
A good deal of time is spent with the main characters working with some members of the CIA to essentially create an early version of Xavier's school for mutants, with some familiar faces and characters new to the movies both getting introduced. One of the best single moments in the film comes from the recruitment montage, where Charles and Erik find a certain popular X-Man and get a rude response from. Otherwise, the whole training and preparing thing kind of slowed down the movie a bit, and none of the new mutants or their little subplots were particularly interesting. In general, the script definitely feels a bit thrown together, with a climax that goes on for a while but doesn't always have a clear purpose, and a few silly bits that took me out of the story. But as I said, the central story of Xavier and Magneto definitely works, and resulted in a pretty good movie. I'm definitely more interested in more of this than another Wolverine movie.
There are aspects of this movie that make it seem like it might not be that bad. The director and at least one of the writers have both been involved with some good or at least interesting projects. The last X-Men film was pretty bad, but it could have been the influence of Brett Ratner rather than a trend for the franchise. Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber are both good actors, and do some solid work in this movie. And really, there are parts that aren't bad at all. Honestly. But then there's everything else. Basically, anything actually related to the fact that this is a comic book movie.
After the opening scene which recreates the most startling moment from Origin but robs it of any emotional weight, they ignore the rest of that story, put Logan and Sabretooth farther back in time so they can fight through a bunch of major wars in the opening credits, and then have them hop on a team of super powered special forces. The movie then embarrasses the shit out of itself with a sequence where several of them show off their powers in ludicrous ways that just look silly rather than the cool effect I'm sure they were going for. Agent Zero still uses guns but is apparently magic now, Wade Wilson is not only skilled with swords but capable of manipulating them faster than the speed of bullets (he's not a mutant yet what the fuuuuuuuck), and instead of a pilot they have Dominic Monaghan playing a dude who can control the plane with his mind because uh... they think it's cool I guess.
So anyway Logan leaves the group after some differences and meets a telepathic chick, but a while later someone starts going around and killing his teammates and blah blah it's Sabretooth obviously and Stryker recruits him for Weapon X. I don't really get it... this movie's supposed to be a prequel for the existing movie series, but they sort of change and ignore things for some reason, changing the cast, adding in the bone claws, mixing up the reasons for things to be happening, et cetera. So then some more stuff happens, a lot of it totally stupid looking, and Logan, now Wolverine, confronts Stryker in his secret lair. There's a pointless plot twist that just adds some artificial drama for a few minutes, a bunch of cameos by some other mutants, and Stryker reveals what he's done to Wade, now Deadpool, for Weapon XI.
Oh my god that is not Deadpool. Yeah they did use what they got from Wolverine to experiment on him, but that was it. What they make him into is completely ludicrous and not Deadpool and I just don't understand the point of changing what a character is THIS much. Who is it serving? It's an uninteresting villain, and one unfaithful to the memories of people who actually know and possibly care about who he is. What an amazing combination of wasting my time and spitting in my face. Also, in case you were wondering, even if you have an incredible accelerated healing power, if you fall from a high enough distance your head will pop off, and any skin grafted over your mouth will be removed. Good to know. So they take away Wolverine's memory as necessary and the movie ends without much of a resolution to anything. God, this could have been a pretty decent movie. Why did this come out of it?
So here's the story I'm not sure anyone really needed to know - the truth of Wolverine's childhood and coming of age. I mean, most superheroes have an "origin" story of some kind, but Logan already had one, the Weapon X program that gave him his claws and turned him into what he is now. I guess there's not really harm in knowing more though. Origin is a nice change of pace from the typical Marvel story, and while I didn't love every page of it, it does some interesting things. There's a few twists here and there, and while not every one is palatable, the plot is generally solid and sustains itself despite not a whole lot really happening. I don't like when they changed it so he actually had bone claws all along, but that actually helps makes this story work the way it does, and without that it wouldn't have had the same chance to be effective. I'd rather not tackle the question of whether the antagonist of the story is supposed to be Sabretooth, because Marvel themselves seem incapable of agreeing on the truth behind that whole mess and frankly I've never found the character interesting. The art might be the book's strongest asset, with some nice pencil work and an impressive painted look to the colors that really sell the mood and setting, over a hundred years before the modern day. It's definitely a unique tale within the Marvel canon, and since I have plans to watch all the modern Marvel movies I've missed I can't wait to see how the latest X-Men movie messes it up.
So a couple days ago I found a few comic books in my house I'd never seen before. Apparently someone found them and just brought them home. I decided to read them, after all, why not? Especially since two of them were written by, surprise of surprises, Joss Whedon, he of Firefly! "Holy shit, since when does he write comics?" I asked myself. Since they brought back the Astonishing series a couple years ago, I guess.
Astonishing X-Men #10
So before this issue, the famous Danger Room apparently gained sentience and came to hate the X-Men. It was able to insert its existence or what have you into a robotic body that looks like a woman with large breasts for some reason, and attacked our heroes. At first I wasn't sure who one of the X-Men was, he looked like a lame cat-version rip-off of Beast. It turns out it actually was Beast, who sometime fairly recently underwent a secondary mutation and gained feline features and powers. It seems kind of silly to me, but what do I know?
This was actually a pretty good issue. The story was interesting, with the introspective narration coming from Danger - the obvious name for the Danger Room's new incarnation - and flash-forward scenes depicting "her" taunting Xavier after she's apparently defeated the X team. The action was also good for a comic, with the frames showing a lot of dynamic range and being easy to follow. Danger knew all their moves and tactics but they were able to fight back by acting erratically, like throwing each other at her. What was strange was that I only had this and issue 12, without 11. 12 has a synopsis explaining how the X-Men came to Xavier's aid, but not how they managed to survive long enough to do so. Emma Frost, Wolverine, and Beast were believably okay, but Cyclops was under a floor that collapsed and wasn't breathing, while Colossus and Shadowcat were freaking impaled on a gigantic spike. What the hell happened in between these two issues?
Astonishing X-Men #12
So anyway, Danger was defeated but activated this gigantic sentinel thing that Emma had previously come in contact with. It unleashes a huge wave of flaming destruction, but Shadowcat protects everyone with her incorporeality. While the sentinel is unleashing a horde of smaller robots to attack the good guys, Colossus throws Wolverine at them, who declares that he's "killed a city before." Um, what? Cyclops continues to suck like he always does and Beast protects Xavier from a new Danger with these weird wings. He kicks her ass, but not before she says she lives on in her new creation. Meanwhile, Emma pointlessly meets with her secret, shadow-covered allies, leading to suspicion about where she was during the battle. She arrives back on the scene to save her man Cyclops, while spouting a great variation on the "Sorry I'm late" line the cavalry always says: "Sorry, darling. Had to pee." This is a classic example of Whedon's unique, strange sense of humor that plays with typical action clichés.
Shadowcat pretty much saves the day, as her powers keep everyone from getting incinerated and she defeats the sentinel by reasoning with him. Why doesn't this happen more often in comic books? Anyway, after that's over, the crew gets pissed at Xavier for knowing of Danger's existence but keeping her suppressed. How dare he treat intelligent life like that? Anyway, they're all super angry as they leave, watched by Emma's evil cohorts, who turn out to be, shocking plot twist: Hellfire? I've never heard of them and I didn't recognize any of the drawn characters, so a lot of the dramatic impact was probably lost on me. Oh well, some weird stuff but definitely entertaining.
Ms. Marvel Special - One Shot #1
I'm not really familiar with Ms. Marvel besides the fact that Rogue had her powers in the X-Men cartoon, but luckily this was a standalone issue that didn't require any knowledge and was just interesting for the story. It's about a kid who can conjure anything he imagines into reality. At first it's just by reading something and picturing it in his head, and it affects everyone nearby except for the person who wrote it. Anyway, the kid starts reading this book Ms. Marvel wrote to his friend, and it gets out of hand and envelops the whole city.
There's some interesting stuff as Ms. Marvel tries to talk with the kid and get him to realize what's happening and how he can fix it. Eventually order is restored, but in the process the kid has discovered that he doesn't have to read to use his powers. He then gets accosted by some weirdly uniformed people who he gets rid of, and then acts all threatening before making Ms. Marvel forget what happened, and of course there's the lame ending where she wakes up and isn't sure whether it actually happened or was all just a dream. Similar story ideas have been explored before, particularly the concept of someone becoming involved in a story they or someone else is writing, but it's still pretty cool.
