It might be a bad sign that when I think of 2024, I immediately think of the movies I was disappointed with or outright hated more than the movies I loved. There are good movies that came out this past year. And I’m here to tell you that there are some real pieces of crap too. Luckily, as your local AMC A-Lister, I’ve seen a lot of movies. I’m not willing to admit how many times I went to AMC this year. But my wife can recite Nicole Kidman’s entire dialogue in her ad that plays before the movie. My DNA, I’m convinced, is being tainted by popcorn butter and ICEE flavoring dye to the point that if I’m going to bite the dust this next year, it will probably be in seat C4 in theater 6. I’ve seen a lot this year. I think it’s only fair before I recap the best movies of the years, that I outline the worst of the worst.

There are a few movies this year that I strongly disliked. I also want to hit on some movies that really disappointed me too. One of the biggest disappointments is being excited by a movie, only for it to let you down. Sometimes a good friend will recommend a movie that they love, yet when the credits roll you’re bummed. It just isn’t what you wanted. There was something off.

So without further ado, let’s first jump in to what disappointed me this year. Before we get to the movies, I have to first address a maddening aspect of the industry.

Biggest Disappointments

Limited Releases (Looking at you, The Brutalist)

We live in a digital age where we can consume every piece of content with our finger tips. As the younger generations are using social media more and more, traditional formats such as reading, watching television, and going to the movie theater are declining. It’s why it’s so maddening that Hollywood continues to use the limited theatrical release model. A limited release is when a company puts a movie into a small number of theaters to gauge its performance. There are a number of reasons to do so, such as determining if the movie is suited for a release in more theaters or to figure out how much marketing to give it. These are typically refined for more arthouse and independent releases. Case in point for this year: The Brutalist, a three and half hour epic about the American immigrant experience.

The Brutalist is one of the favorites to win multiple awards this upcoming season. Lack of word of mouth will not be one of the reasons people won’t know about it. If people aren’t going to show up for the movie, it’s because of its lengthy runtime. It begs the question: why is A24 not shopping the digital release rights to one of the major streamers? Considering the success of Killers of the Flower Moon and the library of content they offer, I feel as if Apple TV+ is the perfect spot for it. Trust me, considering that The Brutalist is the first movie since 1961 to be shot in VistaVision, I think enough people nerds like me will line up to see in theaters. Don’t make me arbitrarily wait for reasons that don’t stand up to scrutiny in the digital age anymore.

Now for the movies that disappointed me for one reason or another. 

Strange Darling

Strange Darling is not a bad movie or one worth skipping. In fact, I feel a little bad including it on this post with the movies that follow. It’s just a movie that you don’t want to know anything about before going in. If you haven’t seen it yet, skip this section entirely. Light, very vague spoilers ahead:

It’s very unfortunate that I guessed the twist in the movie very quickly. The film is presented in a non-linear order and one reason that writers/directors do this is to withhold information from the viewer until a specified story beat. A non-linear order of storytelling isn’t interesting unless there is something missing for the viewer to learn. With this in mind, I guessed that things weren’t all that they seem, and the twist was the point of view we were getting wasn’t correct. Turns out, I was right. The rest of the movie I kept waiting for another twist to happen… and it never did. 

I know people that are big fans of this movie. I hope it hits for you like it did for them. I was left disappointed.

The Wild Robot

The most overrated movie of the year. I’m not entirely sure how this is the highest rated release of 2024 on Letterboxd. I think most people that will watch this animated movie (myself included) will agree that it is entertaining, humorous, and artistically pleasing. 

But some of the hype I’ve been seeing about it? You would almost think it’s the second coming. I can assure you it is not. For a supposed film that people call the best animated movie in years, I certainly don’t remember a lot about it. Unfortunately, the movie is largely forgettable. You’ll never forget the name Woody from Toy Story. I couldn’t be bothered to tell you what any of the character names in The Wild Robot are. 

In A Violent Nature

I made it my mission to break out of my comfort zone and watch more horror movies this year. I wouldn’t call it a move that paid off. There were good horror movies in 2024, but more often than not, I felt very disappointed. No movie fits this bill more than In A Violent Nature. It’s a horror movie with a unique twist in that you see the entire movie from the killer’s point of view. On paper it sounds great, but in execution I kind of wish I had been put out of my misery instead. 

One of my least favorite tropes in horror, people who consistently make dumb decisions, is on full display here. It wasn’t before long before I was openly rooting for these people to be killed. The biggest sin that In A Violent Nature makes, however, is that it’s just a bore. Following in the footsteps of a serial killer who doesn’t talk isn’t exciting. Trust me, there’s a lot of slow walking in this movie.

Worst Movies of the Year

Emilia Perez

Emilia Perez just racked four wins at the Golden Globe Awards, including Best Picture — Musical or Comedy (in a category that had Wicked). Oscar nominations are out this week and it’s bound to pick up several nominations as well. I don’t really care about awards season in general, but it’s no doubt going to be a big contender at the various awards over the next couple of months. 

For the uninitiated, the movie follows lawyer Rita Mora Castro (Zaldana) who helps cartel leader Juan del Monte (Gascon) disappear and transition into a woman. 

I do not get the hype or the admiration for this movie. I found it to be completely insincere and poorly executed. 

People are lambasting this movie for a variety of reasons, some of which are credible and others which are not. Before jumping off into the deeper reasons, I want to focus solely on the movie itself and why it didn’t work for me at all. 

First and foremost, I do not like musicals. So Emilia Perez already had that going against it, but it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate them. Yet throughout the entire movie I could not fathom why this had to be a musical. I did not think it added anything unique. More often than not, it kept pulling me out of the movie completely. I cannot understate how jarring the musical transitions are. When Zaldana is making a serious phone inquiry in a dark alley, she suddenly breaks out into dance with other people in the street. It was off-putting, sometimes humorous when it wasn’t trying to be, and seemed to be doing it for the sake of doing it. Emilia Perez might have the worst scene of the year when Castro travels to Thailand to visit a doctors office, where the entire office sings about what happens during a gender-affirming surgery. It’s one of the cringiest scenes I’ve seen in years. 

Its biggest failing point is that Emilia Perez just seems so damn insincere. I am not an expert or a qualified person to tell you about the struggles of the trans community. But the response from the trans community has been anything but great. 

The film’s regressive politics are everywhere, not just in the way Emilia’s transition is presented (complete with a ‘woman stares at her new vagina through a pocket mirror’ shot that bafflingly comes while Emilia is still bandaged from head to toe after surgery). Any time Emilia ‘reverts’ to her ‘old ways’, Gascon lowers her vocal register as if to equate masculinity with evil and femininity with good. Men may be no more than props, but no woman’s narrative arc is remotely well-developed, Audiard shrugging aside any attempt at fleshing them out, having them blandly deliver their lines (with poor Gomez unable to finish some of them in her in-film native language of Spanish) until they are disposed of. — Juan Barquin

Whether made by us or about us, I want more trans stories that are audacious, ambitious, and new. The problem with Emilia Pérez is that while it’s new in some ways it’s very, very tired in others.

The film hits just about every trans trope you can imagine:

1. Trans woman killer
2. Tragic trans woman
3. Trans woman abandons her wife and children to transition
4. Transition treated as a death
5. Deadnaming and misgendering at pivotal moments
6. Trans woman described as half male/half female

This is the entire experience of the film. A wonderful awe is felt during a musical number or when the film allows its trans character to act in ways we rarely see on-screen. And then a line of dialogue will be said or a narrative choice will be made that feels at best an eye-roll and at worst a gut punch.

Emilia Pérez is a glorious disaster. Not since Xavier Dolan’s “Laurence Anyways” has a trans film been so bold and so boring all at once. But it’s been over a decade since that film and my patience is waning. Certainly, this shallow understanding of trans people can’t still be interesting to cis people. How many times do cis people have to learn about us before a portrayal like this one rings as false to them as it does to me? — Drew Burnett Gregory 

Who exactly was this movie made for? Director Jacques Audiard said at a press event that they wouldn’t have made this movie without getting input from the community. Are we sure about that?

Babygirl

I am not an individual that really gets upset with a movie. Upset, in the sense, that it angers me beyond the day that I see it. Every time I think about this movie, the more it pisses me off. 

Let me be clear: Babygirl is, at best, a dull, poorly written piece of sexual fan fiction, and at worst, an offensively shallow attempt at sultriness that only comes off as crass and obscene.

There is an audience for this type of movie out there—Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight are evidence enough. I really thought this movie would at least make an attempt to be more coy in its sexual tension and themes of sexual repression. 

Right from the get-go, the sexual tension between Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson is just soulless and unbelievable. There is absolutely no buildup. They meet, they talk, have one meeting, and then BAM! We’re off into the deep end. I’m not joking that the runtime is two hours long and it took no less than 15 minutes for things to get weird.

Babygirl does have deeper themes, but they’re not worth exploring if the movie isn’t great at surface level. There are plenty of movies out there that I think explore these themes much better. Shame (2013) by Steve McQueen doesn’t feature a remotely likable protagonist, but the character is at least interesting. Y Tu Mama También by Alfonso Cuaron examines the sexual relationship between individuals far apart in age, to grossly simplify it, but did so in a way that was poignant. Babygirl just doesn’t have any of those attributes. 

It’s a pass. 

Megalopolis 

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the worst movie of the year—bar none. While I really disliked Emilia Perez, Babygirl, and a few others, they were at least competently made. You understood the plot, the actions of its main characters, and in general knew what point it was trying to make. 

Megalopolis fails to execute any of that. 

There is a real scene in this movie in which Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight) is sitting in bed and approached by Wow Platinum (Aubry Plaza). Hamilton asks Wow what she thinks of his erection, as we see the comforter pointing up like a tent. Is it an erection though? No! It’s a crossbow that he’s hiding!

I just typed a paragraph that included the names Hamilton Crassus III, Wow Platinum, and crossbow disguised as an erection—and that’s just the tip of one of the many illogical moments that plagues Megalopolis. That paragraph alone tells you the absolute turd that this movie is. 

What makes this even more sad is that this is from legendary director Francis Ford Coppola, who has directed some of my favorite films of all time in The Godfather Part II and Apocalypse Now. Coppola’s career in the 1970s might be the best ten year stretch a director has ever had. Yet since the 80’s, his career hasn’t been able to mimic any of that glory or acclaim.

I couldn’t help but root for Coppola when I found out that Megalopolis was going to release this year. This is a man who poured a vast amount of his own resources into this project, which apparently he has wanted to make for many years. Yet my only thought as I left the theater was that this was made by a man who you would almost mistake for being in an early cognitive decline.

Though, in a way that Tommy Wisseau’s The Room has entertained audiences for how terrible it is—I actually think that Megalopolis will be viewed in a similar way in the years to come. Again, I think when you read about the erection crossbow above, there may have been a part of your brain that recovered from the shock and thought “I have to see how bad this is.” I would totally agree with your instinct. 

That being said, be prepared for an incoherent story with borderline cognitively dissonant filmmaking. Contrary to what others may say, I thought the acting was pretty putrid. Yes, they all had to work with a terrible script, but they sure as hell don’t sell it in any way, shape, or form. 

It’s slightly poetic, but there’s something compelling about The Brutalist and Megalopolis both releasing this year. Both attempt to encapsulate the idea of the American Dream and its limitations. However, these two movies couldn’t be further apart.

Stay tuned for my post on the Top 25 movies of the year. If you like what you read, don’t hesitate to sign up for updates. I don’t write as often as I like, but whenever I put a new post up you’ll be notified immediately.