I’M RIGHT REVIEWS’ DEFINITIVE RANKING OF 2024 MOVIES – PART 2 (#35 – #27)

While Part 1 was replete with the truly abominable films of 2024, Part 2 is filled mostly with disappointment. None of these movies are awful, but many of them failed to move me in ways I thought they could have, had they been executed better. I’m not mad, I’m just…no, actually, I’m very mad at Civil War. And maybe Deadpool & Wolverine. And Hit Man. I think I have a cinematic anger problem.

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#35. WISHING ON A STAR

#34. DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE

Maybe the schtick has gotten old, or maybe the movie’s just not as good as the franchise’s previous entries…either way, the fourth wall breaking got tedious not 15 minutes into this meandering clutter of CGI dreck. I’d put the joke hit-rate at approximately 25% which actually sounds worse than it is; D&W chucks so many jokes at the target that while most of them fly into a nearby tree, others manage to hit the bullseye (Chris Evans’ surprise cameo somehow eked a substantial chuckle out of me). D&W languishes when it comes to Deadpool himself but shockingly shines as an(other) end to Wolverine’s lengthy journey from grizzled badass dude to grizzled badass dude with a heart. I appreciate that the film knows when to shut up and let Wolverine get serious for a while. Now if the merc with a mouth could shut up for longer, that would be just peachy. 

#33. SELF RELIANCE

Jake Johnson’s Self Reliance sits on the precipice of having some kind of worthwhile point but falters when it comes time to let us in on it. It’s one of those “is he crazy/paranoid or are these wacky things really happening” movies but…the movie makes it fairly obvious that he’s just crazy, sometimes to comedic effect. It’s entertaining in spells but predominantly listless and hinges on some kind of philosophical grand meaning that simply isn’t there. Maybe the audience is expected to hallucinate a more coherent ending. Biff Wiff is in this, though, so that automatically made it shoot up at least a couple spots if I’m being honest. (I wrote this prior to his tragic passing and though I can’t bring myself to place Self Reliance farther up my list, I appreciate this movie a little more due to how much Biff Wiff there is in it and how brightly he got to shine.)

#32. IT DOESN’T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS

#31. HIT MAN

Does one little detail ever ruin a movie for you? If you ignore my tiny-but-ever-so-itchy sore spot, Hit Man is an inoffensive little rom-com with a surprising criminal twist that works to its benefit and detriment in equal parts. The movie feels like it’s built around a single scene and, to Hit Man’s credit, it’s a damn good scene, bolstered by cute performances from Glen Powell and Adria Arjona. I won’t spoil it but I will say it’s the most creative use of the iPhone notes app I’ve seen outside of some unhinged Twitter apologies. Oh, my little problem? Why. The fuck. Are they still living in New Orleans at the end?!?!? If a single cop sees them together, they’ll easily connect the dots and put them both away for life for committing two murders! All the writers had to do was have them move, like, a state away and I’d be willing to suspend my disbelief! But as it is? Absolutely immersion-shatteringly stupid! Unwatchable! Otherwise it’s perfectly fine.

#30. CIVIL WAR

I wish I could place Civil War lower on this list. Its competence is overwhelming which lands it a spot this high by default – but I cannot muster a modicum of respect for this movie. Alex Garland has immaculately crafted a film in which a series of discretely good scenes coalesce into something that has been designed to say nothing. Nothing. It all means nothing. It’s a movie about nothing. From Alex fucking Garland. What an embarrassment. Oh it’s about journalism, it’s about the horrors of war…no it’s not. If it were, the language of the film would’ve said so. It doesn’t. It shows journalists and it shows the horrors of war and yet nothing can be gleaned from these impressively empty images. Alex Garland needs to figure his shit out because each directorial project of his has been worse than the last. The dude made Ex Machina, I know he has another masterpiece in him. Don’t disappoint me next time.

#29. BABYGIRL

Speaking of disappointment, here we have a movie supposedly all about subversive sex stuff that’s about as titillating as an episode of Succession. Which isn’t to say it’s not titillating at all, just that I was expecting significantly more. What you see in the trailers is what you get and basically nothing more; it’s just Secretary without the feeling that you’re seeing something you shouldn’t be seeing or 50 Shades with rational characters. The film spends far too much time showing us the weird (but, let’s be real, not that weird) sexual encounters Nicole Kidman has with her intern without properly building out their relationship, leaving the scenes feeling empty and unearned. Babygirl is always decent but never great; delivering exactly what you’d expect and not saying anything particularly novel in the process. Go watch some porn instead. 

#28. CUCKOO

Cuckoo and Longlegs – two horror movies that were released around the same time and share a lot of the same problems. Cuckoo falls a tad shorter because its extremes are lesser; Longlegs’ highs are higher and its lows are lower. This film builds out a great cast of characters throughout its opening acts, with Hunter Schafer’s brooding teen butting heads with anyone in her blast radius. The little mysteries and setups are abundant and the movie is clever enough to trickle a few answers in here and there. But it’s all paid off messily in the last act, rotating between confusing exposition and wordless chases that aren’t as creepy as the movie seems to believe. In fact, nothing about this supposed horror movie is particularly…scary. Unsettling, sure. But never outright terror-inducing. The pieces for a pretty great spooky flick are here, I just don’t think Cuckoo was ready to hatch.

#27. LONGLEGS

Longlegs is missing all but one piece of an excellent spooky flick. But while Cuckoo’s absent piece was lingering somewhere in the box just out of view, Longlegs’ was tossed into the dumpster on the way home from the toy store. Puzzle analogy over – I was ready to absolutely adore Oz Perkins’ Longlegs. The atmosphere it develops just over its opening sequence is so oppressively bleak and ever-so-slightly otherworldly; it’s spellbinding. Maika Monroe nails the subdued, resigned vibe as a detective investigating a series of seemingly impossible murders. Ahem – actually impossible murders, I should say. A word of advice: if your movie has only the subtlest hint of supernatural bullshit until the last act, maybe supernatural bullshit will come off as a lazy copout. Longlegs had all the goodwill in the cinema universe going into its bombastic final act and yet somehow they squander it with extensive exposition, absurd twists, and worst of all, a betrayal of its otherwise flawless ambience. I’m aware that the Longlegs discourse has comfortably settled on it being overrated overhyped garbo but I don’t think an awful ending entirely undoes its earlier brilliance. Things can be good and bad at the same time. And it truly is both – not a single moment of the film is just okay. It’s one or the other and it’s all the more fascinating for it. (follow-up note from many months later: I saw The Monkey recently and it was bad. Oz Perkins is a bad director. The Blackcoat’s Daughter was confusing. Gretel and Hansel was really bad. Longlegs was good and bad. The Monkey was bad. This adds up to a bad director, and there’s a big enough sample size at this point to say so confidently. I want to be proven wrong, Oz, so try to learn something from this.)