I have not done a Best or Worst of Lists for some time. I now will attempt to rectify that.
2024, I found, was a simply terrible, terrible year. This year's Best Picture winner, Anora, was one that I found rather distasteful and rather long and boring. That does not even cover another Best Picture nominee, Emilia Perez, which I thought played like parody and whose two Oscar wins (Best Supporting Actress for Zoe Saldana and Best Original Song) to be not just among the worst of the year, but of all time. How that film earned the most Oscar nominations for 2024 at 13, coming one short of tying the record for the most Oscar-nominated films in history, is grotesque.
It is a sign of just how awful 2024 in film was that failing to make my personal Ten Worst Films of the Year were films were such horrors as The Crow remake or The American Society of Magical Negroes, the latter which I found far more racist than what it thought it was commenting on. I thought these films were better than something like Madame Web, which I found less bad and more incompetent, veering close to a "so bad it's good" type of film. Yet, despite how awful those films were (and they were), I would rather watch them again than I would the following films which I have as my Ten Worst Films of 2024 So Far.
In retrospect, I think both Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt are probably better actors than I give them credit for. I recently saw Gosling in Half Nelson and Blunt has handled both comedy and drama with films as varied as The Devil Wears Prada and Oppenheimer. However, I found The Fall Guy incredibly smug and obnoxious, convinced that it was the height of hilarity when it was the height of idiocy. Scenes that ran far too long, with leads that looked as if they wanted to be anywhere but there, I continue to be amazed that The Fall Guy is so beloved by so many people. Allegedly a love letter to stuntmen and women, The Fall Guy had a convoluted plot. I also continue to believe that Gosling struggles if not is incapable of playing comedy. He is far too serious to make any kind of humor believable on screen. Maybe he is a funny guy off screen. In the few comedies that I have seen in Gosling's filmography, I am never able to shake the sense that he wants to force the comedy. It ends up having the opposite effect of making it look fake.
I watched the original Deadpool in horror, finding the violence and vulgarity far too graphic and gratuitous. I get that many people, however, love the Merc with a Mouth, his snide quips and sarcastic tone a tonic to other somewhat overly serious comic book films. You do not get more serious a comic book character than Wolverine, so bringing the somber Logan and the absurd Wade together seemed like the joining of titans. I know that many people were laughing throughout Deadpool & Wolverine, but I did not even crack a smile once. At a certain point, smugness and sarcasm cannot or should not make up for not having anyone or anything to care about. Also, at 55 and 47 years old respectively, isn't it time for Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds to move on?
One of the great mysteries to me is how Ghostbusters ended up as a franchise. The original Ghostbusters was one of the first films I saw in theaters after they were allowed to reopen during the pandemic that has been essentially memory-holed. It was entertaining albeit longer than I remembered it to be. After that, I did not see any need to make more Ghostbusters films. To many other people, however, these mad scientists became so beloved that we needed more movies, a cartoon series and then an all-female version and more follow-ups. When I, very reluctantly, went to see Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire when it premiered, I looked at the grown men, who were probably in their forties and/or fifties, dressed in their Ghostbusters costumes and thought they were a sad and sorry sight. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is simply too stuffed with characters, unable, unwilling or uninterested in trying to be one thing. It can't integrate the original Ghostbusters cast. Worse, it can't integrate the new Ghostbusters cast. Going all over the place, Frozen Empire ends up nowhere. Finally, thanks to Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the term "lesbian ghost sex" will forever haunt my mind (no pun intended).
Try as I might, I cannot convince people that Henry Cavill cannot act. He is a breathtakingly beautiful man. I concede as much. However, in terms of acting, of being able to portray a character, Cavill has the acting range of a wet paper bag. In The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Cavill showcases his total inability to act because he is speaking in his actual British accent. As such, he cannot hide behind the idea that his lack of acting ability is due to how he has to keep his mind on speaking with an American accent. Attempting to pass off a true-life story into something that makes Inglorious Basterds look like The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is something totally deadly in a film that is meant as an action/action-comedy film. It is boring.
For the longest time, I would say about a bad film, "Well, at least it is better than Argylle". Argylle became a byword for "bad film", something so irredeemably awful, stupid, pointless and brain-killing that to make anyone watch it would constitute a crime against humanity. There is simply so much wrong with Argylle. Even good actors like Bryan Cranston, Sam Rockwell and Catherine O'Hara appear lost to where it elicits sorrow to see them here. The plot is totally nonsensical. The sight of Bryce Dallas Howard skating on oil is groan inducing. Seeing the smaller Rockwell lift her up in this pas de deux makes one question the logic of life itself. Oh yes, and Henry Cavill still can't act, his dead expression attempting to pass him off as a human and not an auto-animatronic figure. Perhaps the worst aspect of Argylle is the suggestion that not only will this be the first film of a new franchise, but that it will eventually tie itself into the Kingsman film series. Not since some brainless satanic figure thought up the idea of having the 21 Jump Street films morph into the Men in Black universe has there been such a monstrous concept. Lawrence Welk headlining Woodstock is more believable than having more Argylle films.
I held out on having Argylle be my Worst Film of 2024 for the longest time. I simply refused to believe that there could be worse films than that. Even now, I struggle with the idea that there were films worse than Argylle. However, I have to bend to reality and acknowledge there are other 2024 films that I would watch Argylle over.
I never understood the fandom for the Venom films. I thought the first Venom was terrible but also unfairly bashed, finding that it might just have been made for people who do not care about things like plot or acting. Venom: Let There Be Carnage was something that I found barely passable, a film that was bad but also bizarrely goofy to where I did not hate it. No such reprieve for Venom: The Last Dance, however, a jumbled mess of a movie that does not bother to try and make sense. For all the talk about the acting brilliance of Tom Hardy, I find nothing to suggest that he is his generation's Richard Burton. Burton could be hammy, but at least he had his boozing to blame for that. Hardy has no such recourse (I hope), going into The Last Dance fully aware that it goes all over the place. Incoherent, unfunny, with nothing to say, The Last Dance is hopefully true to its word.
I never thought that Gladiator was this unimpeachable work of cinema. It was fine. It was entertaining, good popcorn fare. I still would have voted for Traffic as that year's Best Picture winner, though maybe I could be persuaded to selecting Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as well. Still, Gladiator has many fans. I can't believe, however, that those fans thought a sequel to Gladiator was needed, especially since the title character dies in the first film. How do you have a sequel to a film whose main character is dead? Gladiator II has an easy answer: just remake the first film and tie in some characters from the first film in some misguided step at continuity (and I think I am being generous in that view). Son of Gladiator is an absolute disaster from the very opening. The plot asks us to believe that the charisma-free Paul Mescal could lead anyone to try and overthrow the Roman Empire. Gladiator II: Judgment Day has sharks floating around the Coliseum, which to my mind is probably one of the more logical things in Gladiator II: Electric Boogaloo. Denzel Washington is hamming it up for all its worth, but at least he was doing something. Everyone else in Gladiator II: Freddy's Revenge was just embarrassing him/herself. There has been talk of a Gladiator III. We as a nation have already suffered enough.
There is a danger to high praise in that it makes one believe that his/her work is actually good when it is anything but. Such is the case with Monkey Man, a film beloved by critics and held as some kind of new John Wick. To be fair, I have seen only John Wick: Chapter 4, but Monkey Man is anything but a new John Wick. An idiotic plot that is more interested in attempting a visual style that ends up chaotic. A film that thinks it is blending high action with strong social commentary. Monkey Man is moronic. I thought that it was better than Argylle, but in retrospect at least Argylle was not as punishingly ugly visually as Monkey Man was. Written, directed and starring Dev Patel, Monkey Man is not an homage to or inspired by John Wick. It is a vanity project for Dev Patel.
The Numbers Two and One Worst Films of 2024 can go either way, as I found them both rather grotesque and abominations to cinema. I have gone back and forth between them, but now, I think I am ready to decide.
My cousin travels for his job. He told me that on one of his trips, he went to Joker: Folie a Deux and left angry. First, he did not know that it was a musical. Second, he found Folie a Deux so traumatizing an experience that he did not go to another movie the rest of his business trip, worried that he would find something equal to if not worse than Joker: Folie a Deux. The first Joker film made my Ten Best Films of the Year, a film that went past its comic book origins to profile a troubled and self-destructive man. I do not know if Joker: Folie a Deux would ever have reached those lofty heights even if it was crafted as a faux-musical. It is not a real musical in that Folie a Deux just uses pop songs and has the characters perform them. Far too long, too convoluted, and too openly hostile to the audience, Joker: Folie a Deux did not subvert expectations, unless one expected a good movie.
Thirteen Oscar nominations. Emilia Perez, the single worst film of 2024, received thirteen Oscar nominations, the most for a foreign language film and one short of the record currently held and shared by All About Eve, Titanic and La La Land. Unless there is a massive number Academy members who have had lobotomies recently, no sane person would look at Emilia Perez as anything other than what it is: a massive pile of shit. The story of a fearsome Mexican drug lord who has a sex-change operation and then attempts to force him/herself back into the life of his/her wife and kids via a self-righteous female lawyer is already idiotic. That it is an alleged musical makes it more laughable. That should be the reaction to Emilia Perez: laughter, but not the good laughter. You laugh at Selena Gomez's struggles with Spanish, as the film never makes clear whether her character is a native Mexican or a Mexican American. You laugh at the songs. Gomez's big number, Bienvenida, has her thrashing about a bed looking like she is having an epileptic seizure. The song El Mal performed by Saldana (which were the film's sole Oscar wins) is equally laughable, with bad lyrics and a cartoonishly idiotic dance routine by Saldana. The film's title character, played by Karla Sofia Gascon, also attempted to sing in El Mal, but it was horrendous. What is the film's message: that becoming a woman makes you a better person? Forget the misery that Emilia's previous life as drug lord "Manitas" (which translates to "Little Hands") created for everyone, from those he had killed to his vaguely American, vaguely Mexican wife and kids. Forget the horrendously staged musical numbers. Forget the lack of acting performances that would make Henry Cavill look like Alec Guinness by comparison. Emilia Perez plays like parody, like some kind of joke that no one outside Cinema Intelligentsia would take seriously. Emilia Perez will be forgotten within a year or be shown as punishment. Both El Mal and Zoe Saldana will go down as among the worst wins in their respective categories.
Emilia Perez is the worst film of 2024. It is also one of the worst films ever made. It manages to make Argylle look like Goldfinger by comparison. Emilia Perez is so bad that yes, I would wish it on my worst enemy, on a permanent loop, for time and eternity.