Zendaya in Challengers
If you're a film fan and merely looked at domestic box-office revenue, it would be easy to get depressed about the state of movies – or, maybe more accurately, the state of current moviegoing habits.
It's not surprising that 2024's highest national grosser, Inside Out 2 ($652.9 million), was a sequel, nor that runner-up Deadpool & Wolverine ($636.7 million) was, as well. But of the year's top 20 earners, all of them landing at least $100 million, a full 17 are either sequels or prequels, and the only ones that aren't are Wicked, which is adapted from (Act I of) a merchandised-to-death Broadway behemoth, and It Ends with Us and The Wild Robot, which are adapted from books with massive built-in fan bases. You have to go to number 21 on the list, John Krasinski's big-budget family comedy IF, to find an original work – and that leads to its own kind of depression, because the movie largely stinks.
Yet the news is somewhat cheerier if you alter your perceptions about what, in a post-COVID cinematic landscape, qualifies as success. Because adult moviegoing habits have so drastically changed over the past four years, we may be long past the days in which Bong Joon-ho's South Korean Best Picture winner Parasite, a 2019 release held over into 2020, could nab more than $50 million in the U.S. and Canada. But indie stalwart Sean Baker's Anora, a Palme d'Or winner at 2024's Cannes Film Festival, wildly outgrossed his previous titles at $14 million, with more sure to come in the wake of Academy Award nominations. French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat's grisly Hollywood satire The Substance, another Cannes champ, scored upward of $16 million and stuck around long enough to be part of the cultural (and Oscars) conversation. Osgood Perkins' Nicolas Cage chiller Longlegs surpassed Parasite to become, with $74 million domestic, the independent Neon studio's highest grosser of all time. Even a downer such as Alex Garland's Civil War managed $68 million, perhaps because people wanted to have an opinion on what promised to be the hot-button cineplex topic of the year. (It wasn't, but the movie's still terrific.) None of these titles made as much in their entire runs as, say, Moana 2 did in its first couple of days … or hours. But they're all proof that audiences for original big-screen entertainments are still out there. They just don't attend quite as often as they used to, or in the numbers they used to.
For my part, with this annual roundup, I'm happy to deliver a 10-favorites list – hell, a 20-favorites list – without a single sequel, prequel, or remake among them, a dozen of which are wholly original projects. And while we patiently await the local arrivals of potential Oscars contenders that might shake up my rankings a tad – particularly The Brutalist, Nickel Boys, September 5, Hard Truths, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, and All We Imagine as Light (the latter of which I sadly missed during its brief engagement at Iowa City's FilmScene) – I'm very happy to present my faves as they stand. My favorite favorite, as of this January 3 writing, is also an original work that miraculously managed more than $50 million domestic … though “miraculously” might be overstating it, considering its female lead does have 181 million followers on Instagram. Guess we should've expected some of them to show up … .
1) Challengers. Bear with me, because I'm about to compare the Zendaya tennis movie to Citizen Kane.
To get the obvious out of the way: No, I'm not saying that director Luca Guadignino's and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes' first of two 2024 collaborations (the other being Queer – see number 17 below) is an artistic achievement comparable to Orson Welles' 1941 masterpiece. Weirdly, however, the two work in similar ways. Kane boasts a simple premise, with an investigative reporter trying to suss out the meaning behind a deceased media mogul's final word: “Rosebud.” What complicates the film, and makes it so eternally watchable, are the reams of flashbacks inspired by the journalist's sleuthing. A trip to Kane's library leads to Kane's troubled childhood and, in late-middle age, the sale of his newspaper empire to his former guardian; an interview with Kane's second ex-wife covers their entire, years-long relationship from first meeting to marital dissolution.
The simple story in Challengers, meanwhile, finds tennis pros and onetime best friends Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O'Connor) squaring off in a second-tier match in New Rochelle, New York, while retired prodigy Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) – Art's wife and coach, and Patrick's former lover – watches from the stands. Yet just like in the Welles, this basic tale is augmented by flashbacks: reflections on events that took place years, months, days, and even hours ago that continually add meaning and understanding regarding why a win in this measly tournament, with its $7,000 cash prize, is so thunderously important. Art and Patrick serve and volley, and Tashi looks on with apprehension, and gradually, through the backward leaps in time, what emerges is a full portrait of professional and romantic rivalry, personal sacrifice, and deep love shared by all three leads.
On a first look, Guadagnino's and Kuritzkes' chronological shakeups seemed a tad confusing, and maybe even unnecessary. Yet having watched the film a half-dozen times more, the tinkering with time feels not merely wholly comprehensible, but absolutely essential, with one action (or inaction) after another on the court leading inevitably to an accompanying memory. It's a stunningly ambitious, thrillingly well-executed conceit – a flashback structure held together by emotional logic rather than narrative logic – and it adds immeasurably to the fun, because after seven viewings, as with my million-ish viewings of Citizen Kane, I'm never entirely sure which scene is coming next.
All of them, though, are riveting. While I still wish Tashi were a more fully-rounded character, Zendaya delivers expert line readings and exudes electrifying screen magnetism for days, and the supremely horned-up O'Connor and Faist appear to be having an utter blast playing sexual subtext that would be evident even if they weren't constantly munching on churros, bananas, and foot-long hot dogs. (Watch how closely cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom places their faces in the same frame, and how frequently the actors make contact with one another's bodies – an upper thigh, a bare foot, an erection – in ways that make you go “Hmmmm … .”) The frequently employed slow motion, at it almost never does in films, provides genuine tension and dramatic urgency. Guadignino's staging of The Big Match grows increasingly delightful as wide shots become tight shots that become POV shots that become, in one extraordinary sequence, the audience literally cast as the ball. And through all this deliberately overheated, ecstatically composed and performed competition, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross deliver a humdinger of a boisterous, techno-heavy score, one that gets you grinning and your pulse racing even when Art and Patrick are enjoying an initially harmless practice session or Tashi and Patrick are enduring an understated dorm-room fight. I'm madly in love with Challengers. It's a net win.
2) Hit Man. Playing a goober college professor who finds his raison d'être posing as a hired contract killer, Glen Powell has received much-deserved accolades for his rising star going supernova in director/co-writer Richard Linklater's old-school yet utterly fresh comedy. Yet can we take a moment to also appreciate his dazzling co-star? Because while Hit Man's lead (and co-writer) is thoroughly marvelous, his portrayal honestly comparable to Dustin Hoffman's work in Tootsie, he's routinely matched by Adria Arjona, a bewitching screen presence who might have a task even trickier than Powell's. He gets the funny accents and wigs, but it's Arjona's Madison who keeps us guessing, her evident crush on murderer-for-hire “Ron” either completely on-the-level or part of a clever scheme to make the execution she claims not to want actually happen. I'm thrilled that Netflix purchased this compulsively gripping, thematically rich entertainment, which I've returned to nearly every week since early June. (I'm not kidding.) I also hate that Netflix purchased it, because Powell's and Arjona's combustible chemistry and the narrative's juicy, applause-worthy twists wholly deserved to be shared with a big audience that I'm almost certain would've turned out for something this bone-deep satisfying. Damn you, Netflix. And thank you, Netflix.
3) A Real Pain. Although he's been a film presence since he was eight, I've admired Kieran Culkin's acting since he was roughly 20, playing a misanthropic teen in Igby Goes Down. Even though the man is now 42, I think plenty of people consider “misanthropic teen” to still be Culkin's primary wheelhouse, and might consequently detest the idea of spending 90 minutes in his company in writer/director/star Jesse Eisenberg's buddy-comedy/dramatic-travelogue. But if, as I did, you were frequently flabbergasted by the exposed nerve he became on Succession, you might find A Real Pain's 90 minutes not nearly enough. Playing a directionless soul who masks his loneliness and self-hatred in bonhomie and affability (when he's not forgetting himself and causing others distress), Culkin is absolutely tremendous here, the weight of his and, as his cousin, Eisenberg's “Holocaust tour” of Poland signified in every silent reaction and loquacious tumult of conversation. The real pain on display is both the crushing reality of World War II's most horrific tragedies and the obnoxious yet helplessly lovable 40-something forcing himself to contend with them, and what results is a movie that makes you cry as often as you laugh. I did both pretty much from start to finish.
4) Sing Sing. Over the decades, I've routinely railed about how movies never seem to get theatre right. Director/co-writer Greg Kwedar's exhilarating, legitimately inspirational drama gets it right. I'll try not to take personally the implication that all it took was for big-screen theatre to be performed by convicted felons. We never learn the nature of most of the crimes that led Sing Sing's prisoners (at least those participating in the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program) to incarceration. What we do witness is the transcendent freedom they find in the arts, for just a few hours a day, when putting on a stage show – even one as gloriously tacky as Breakin' the Mummy's Curse, an honest-to-God, real-life script that finds room for ancient Egyptians, gladiators, Freddy Krueger, and Hamlet. In dealing with personal rivalries, future dreams, and routinely quashed parole hopes before the play's debut, Kewdar's largely non-professional assemblage, mostly composed of former beneficiaries of the RTA program, stands as the most effortlessly affecting screen ensemble of 2024. led by the startlingly fine Clarence Maclin, who effectively (and brilliantly) portrays himself. Lead Colman Domingo, meanwhile, continues to emerge as the rare character-actor chameleon who's also an unquestionable star. Standing Os all around.
5) The Wild Robot. I've been seeing movies with my favorite 10-year-old since she was my favorite two-year-old, and writer/director Chris Sanders' animated adventure is the first she deemed one of the best movies she'd ever seen in her life. My young pal may have been smiling when revealing this, but the finale left my eyes too filled with tears to be sure. Easily Dreamworks Animation's new standard-bearer, this tale of shipwrecked helper 'bot Roz (peerlessly voiced by Lupita Nyong'o) becoming surrogate mom to a gosling runt (an endearing Kit Connor) would've been plenty charming and magical had the whole film devoted itself to Roz's attempts to teach her charge to fly. This happens, however, around the halfway point, after which the movie becomes a gorgeous, deeply moving analogy for the extended goodbye between all parents and leaving-the-nest children. Before and after that initial flight, we're treated to robust comedy turns (chiefly by Pedro Pascal and Catherine O'Hara), explosively colorful images, and a hearty, unexpectedly mature acceptance of death, with all of The Wild Robot's island creatures – even the tykes – instinctively aware of where they fall on the food chain. It's exciting, wrenching, elating, and fulfilling, and I can't wait for sequels.
6) Didi. It's difficult enough when you're a 13-year-old nerd when you don't want to be, and a shy virgin when you don't want to be, and the child of a single parent when you don't want to be. What do you do when you're also a Taiwanese kid and don't want to be? Writer/director Sean Wang's coming-of-age comedy – winner of the Audience Award at last January's Sundance Film Festival – embraces loads of its genre's familiar trappings, and in basic outline, may sound like something you've seen dozens of times before. Wang's tough-minded cultural specificity, however, leads to an uproarious, frequently crude, witheringly relatable tale of impending adolescence that's like nothing I've seen before, capturing the details of summer-of-2008 (including its burgeoning/on-the-way-out tech) with perfect precision, yet ensuring that our young lead's confusion, awkwardness, and heartache feel unerringly universal. Newcomer Izaac Wang is spontaneous-seeming naturalism personified, and Joan Chen may have never been granted a better, warmer role than as the kid's unfailingly supportive, eternally undervalued mom, her climactic monologue about self-sacrifice enough to make you want to instantly call your own mother and apologize for being the clueless brat that Didi suggests we all were once upon a time.
7) A Different Man. We've been told all our lives it's what's on the inside that counts. In writer/director Aaron Schimberg's fiendishly trenchant comedy, Sebastian Stan's wannabe actor Edward decides it's what's on the outside that really matters – until discovering, through increasingly frustrating and riotous circumstances, that the cliché was right all along. As also evidenced by his turn as a young Donald Trump in The Apprentice, few handsome male actors currently appear to enjoy burrowing into complicated, unflattering character roles the way Stan does, and he's ceaselessly wonderful as a man whose genetic facial deformity neurofibromatosis is miraculously rectified. Stan's topnotch performance is incrementally enriched when someone else with Edward's former condition – a confident smoothie played by British talent Adam Pearson, who actually does have neurofibromatosis – usurps the guy's stage role as, well, himself. “Hilarity ensues” is a cliché of its own. Yet it absolutely does here, and the laughs hurt most when Edward's director/lover (a biting Renate Reinsve) demands that he wear a neurofibromatosis mask before they have sex, instantly turning Edward into the meek, hunched wallflower he thought he'd extinguished forever. You could unpack A Different Man's themes for years, giggling while doing so. I fully intend to.
8) Saturday Night. It's a fleeting cutaway in director/co-writer Jason Reitman's SNL origin story. But having only seen the film once so far, it's an image I haven't gotten out of my head for nearly three months: Gilda Radner watching John Belushi ice skate. Unlike Belushi portrayer Matt Wood, who's a dead-on doppelgänger, Ella Hunt doesn't strongly resemble her assigned comedian. Yet Hunt's expression when admiring Radner's soon-to-be co-star – wistful, entranced, overflowing with affection – so bespeaks our collective feelings about Gilda Radner that the casting and the moment suddenly seem unimprovable. I could say the same about roughly a thousand other moments in Saturday Night. A 20-something friend said he didn't much like Reitman's film because it didn't give him any particular reason to care about anyone. I'd argue, however, that if you already have enormously fond feelings for the original “Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time Players,” this fly-on-the-wall, ticking-clock comedy will be an hour-and-a-half of utter bliss, both for the absorbing, obviously fictionalized will-they-start-on-time? narrative and the obscene bevy of ensemble talent. Gabriel LaBelle's Lorne Michaels, Cory Michael Smith's Chevy Chase, Dylan O'Brien's Dan Aykroyd, J.K. Simmons' Milton Berle, and Nicholas Braun's Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson are among many, many bests in show.
9) Strange Darling. Halfway through writer/director JT Moller's gloriously perverse thriller, we get the momentary reprieve of lilting piano music while Ed Begley Jr.'s and Barbara Hershey's doomsday-prepping hippies prepare a massive breakfast. Here are the ingredients: Start with a pancake. Top it with a fried egg, four link sausages, and two tablespoons of unmelted butter. Slather that with grape jam, add another pancake, and douse the concoction with maple syrup. Add whipped cream and place a strawberry on top, and voilâ! It's truly disgusting. And yet, watching Begley's and Hershey's ecstatic expressions while consuming the atrocity, I thought: Yeah … I'd eat that. Consider this indulgent, nauseating, bizarrely enticing meal a metaphor for Strange Darling itself: It's kinda repellent, but good God is it tasty. With Moller's six story chapters presented out of chronological sequence, you may initially think you're seeing a standard B-picture about a deranged serial-killer (the outstanding Kyle Gallner) stalking a prototypical Last Girl Standing (a revelatory Willa Fitzgerald). In no way is that what we get, the gasp-inducing shocks, aggressiveness, and brutal comedy seemingly teased by the title card crediting Giovanni Ribisi as cinematographer. (!!!) In an exceptional, abundant year for screen horror, this freakout took the (pan)cake.
10) Conclave. A number of prominent reviewers appear to have taken issue with director Edward Berger's papal-ascendancy saga for essentially being a handsomely mounted version of a summertime beach read, the expert staging, pacing, editing, cinematography, score, production and costume design, and performances in service to what is “merely” a well-crafted potboiler with a grabby climax. I'm sorry: Do some critics actually have a problem with this? Despite the presence of its unimpeachable star Ralph Fiennes, I didn't enter Berger's outing expecting The English Patient. At best, I was hoping for a more satisfying take on a tightly plotted John Grisham from the '90s – a firmer The Firm. Instead, thrillingly, what we got was a deeply Catholic Election, with the malicious backstabbing not initiated by high schoolers, but rather ordained (vaping) cardinals as diabolically clique-y as Reese Witherspoon and company. Huzzah to adult audiences, a hard get post-COVID, for turning Conclave into an impressive mid-size hit. And huzzah, too, to Berger's first-rate cast that, beyond Fiennes in career-peak form, includes Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Sergio Castellito, Carlos Diehz, Lucian Msamati, and Isabella Rossellini, the latter of whom might just win an Oscar for fewer than 10 minutes of screen time. A-men.
Next in Line:
11) Thelma. Writer/director Josh Margolin's nonagenarian Die Hard is so clever, funny, and touching that I would've loved it even without rightly picturing my own mother in the Bruce Willis role. Richard Roundtree received a deservedly lovely cinematic sendoff. Ninety-four-year-old June Squibb made us pray her own sendoff won't ever be forthcoming.
12) Flow. If director/co-writer Gints Zilbalodis' Latvian gem about the world's – some world's – most industrious feline snags the Animated Feature Oscar away from The Wild Robot, I still won't complain, rife as it is with staggering imagery, immersive sound, and bone-deep investment in story, dialogue be damned. A true stunner.
13) Kinds of Kindness. After years spent on Oscar-winning period fare, director/co-writer Yorgos Lanthimos returned to contemporary, determinedly divisive nuttiness, releasing a triptych as hilarious as it was really unpleasant. Its impact dulled on a second viewing, but few beyond Yorgos could make suicide, self-mutilation, spousal rape, and animal abuse worth a second viewing.
14) I Saw the TV Glow. I Heart Justice Smith, part one. Writer/director Jane Schoenbrun's quasi-supernatural fantasy may indeed be a trans coming-out story. What I saw was a mesmerizing, gorgeously evocative deep-dive into fan culture, with Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine emphatically, heartbreakingly recognizable as fellow '90s-serial-television obsessives. The owls, indeed, are not what they seem.
15) The American Society of Magical Negroes. I Heart Justice Smith, part two. Were audiences and critics so wary of its PC-unfriendly title that they refused to give this hysterical, fantastical, mildly subversive rom-com a chance? Smith and An-Li Bogan provided swoon, David Alan Grier supplied laughs aplenty, and writer/director Kobii Lini landed a deliciously savvy kicker.
16) Wicked. Who knows what'll happen this November when we don't have “Popular,” “Defying Gravity,” and a generally light tone to sate us. For now, director Jon M. Chu's first half of the Broadway sensation provides delirious joy, with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande delivering big-screen-musical turns completely worthy of extended ovations.
17) Queer. Is Daniel Craig almost having too much fun not being 007 anymore? In Luca Guadagnino's William S. Burroughs adaptation, Craig gets another opportunity to kiss Bond goodbye, this time with drug-and-booze-fueled loquaciousness, enjoyably pathetic groveling, and unbridled horniness. He's so intoxicating that his divinely hallucinogenic movie is practically a chaser.
18) Anora. Unlike Mikey Madison's heroine, I wasn't charmed by Mark Eydelshteyn's Russian scion. If I were, writer/director Sean Baker's modern-day Lubitsch would've ranked higher, given that this tragicomic Cinderella tale is an otherwise excellent, incisive study of broken dreams, with Yura Borisov unforgettable as the least dopey of three desperate stooges.
19) Civil War. Despite preparatory hand-wringing about how We Do Not Need This Right Now, people seemed to forget about Alex Garland's provocation awfully quickly. It shouldn't be forgotten, though; the writer/director explored worst-case scenarios with exceptional dystopian-thriller skill, and Kirsten Dunst led a superb journalistic crew that exuded heart within national horror.
20) Snack Shack. I don't know how he did it. But in 2024, Gabriel LaBelle was wholly convincing as both a 30-year-old Lorne Michaels and, in writer/director Adam Carter Rehmeier's hormone-driven coming-of-age comedy, a 14-year-old Nebraskan entrepreneur. The movie is silly, raucous, profanely riotous, and unexpectedly poignant. LaBelle himself is a chatterbox miracle.
10 Runners-Up to the Top 20: Dune: Part Two; The Fire Inside; The Greatest Night in Pop; Heretic; Immaculate; In the Land of Saints & Sinners; Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes; Late Night with the Devil; Oddity; Out of Darkness.
10 Runners-Up to Those Runners-Up: Alien: Romulus; Babygirl; Beetlejuice Beetlejuice; The Best Christmas Pageant Ever; The Bikeriders; Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga; His Three Daughters; My Old Ass; Twisters; Wicked Little Letters.
10 Unexpected Pleasures: Cabrini; Ezra; Garfield: The Movie; Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire; The Killer's Game; Night Swim; Ordinary Angels; The Six Triple Eight; Tuesday; Unsung Hero.
10 Unexpected Disappointments: Blitz; Brats; Fly Me to the Moon; In a Violent Nature; Love Lies Bleeding; Nosferatu; Piece by Piece; Sasquatch Sunset; Shirley; Will & Harper.
10 (Well, 13) Great Performances in Solid-to-Meh Movies: Amy Adams in Nightbitch; Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes in The Return; Nicolas Cage in Longlegs; Timothée Chalamet and Edward Norton in A Complete Unknown; Danielle Deadwyler in The Piano Lesson; Carol Kane in Between the Temples; Jessica Lange in The Great Lillian Hall; Demi Moore in The Substance; Lupita Nyong'o in A Quiet Place: Day One; Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong in The Apprentice.
10 Solid-or-Better Sequels, Prequels, or Remakes: Bad Boys: Ride or Die; Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F; Despicable Me 4; Inside Out 2; MaXXXine; Mean Girls; Smile 2; Sonic the Hedgehog 3; Terrifier 3; White Bird.
10 Blah-or-Worse Sequels, Prequels, or Remakes: The First Omen; Gladiator II; Joker: Folie à Deux; Kung Fu Panda 4; Moana 2; Mufasa: The Lion King; 'Salem's Lot; Speak No Evil; Transformers One; Venom: The Last Dance.
One Fine Film That'll Be an Awfully Tough Sit Going Forward: It Ends with Us.
One Fun Film from 2022 That Finally Got a Proper Release: Hundreds of Beavers.
One Unholy Mess More Interesting Than 75-Percent of Everything Else That Opened: Megalopolis.
One Comic-Book Flick That's the Year's Best and Still Sucks: Kraven the Hunter.
One Likely to Score the Most Oscar Nominations This Year and Are We Freaking Kidding with This … ?!: Emilia Pérez.
10 That Could Easily Have Been My Least-Favorites of the Year: Arthur the King; The Beekeeper; Drive-Away Dolls; The Fabulous Four; IF; Maria; The Strangers: Chapter 1; Tarot; Treasure; Y2K.
But My Actual 10 Least-Favorites:
10) Argylle. Romancing the Stone meets James Bond … if Romancing the Stone were terrible and Bond were an abject moron.
9) Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1. Kevin Costner reportedly put a lot of his own money into this exhausting, colorless, nearly three-hour Western, and has almost nine more hours planned. How much could we collectively pay him to stop?
8) Summer Camp. Homesickness? Bee stings? Bed wetting? All preferable to enduring the 90-minute waste of Diane Keaton, Kathy Bates, and Alfre Woodard.
7) Deadpool & Wolverine. Because neither superhero can be killed and the snark never stops, their endless slug-fests and even more draining repartee are like what would eternally screen in Purgatory, leaving some of us to consider Hell the preferable destination.
6) Rumours. In this thunderously inept political satire headlined by Cate Blanchett, the most memorable figure is a functional brain the size of a Volkswagen. It might be the only working brain in evidence.
5) Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. Because clearly, what legions of fans always loved most about this series was its seriousness.
4) Madame Web. I'd compose a longer screed on the year's most dismal big-screen comic book, but I'm behind on work. I was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.
3) Borderlands. Proof that 2024, en masse, was dreadful? Cate Blanchett has two titles in my bottom 10. Who does she think she is? Ryan Reynolds?!
2) Unfrosted. Jerry Seinfeld's abysmally unfunny Pop-Tarts origin story scored an Emmy nod for Outstanding Made-for-Television Movie, making a successful argument for the immediate eradication of that category.
1) Here. Poorest Gunk.
