I’M RIGHT REVIEWS’ DEFINITIVE RANKING OF 2024 MOVIES – PART 3 (#26 – #18)

Good movies! Good movies! These are good movies! Less fun to write about, more fun to watch! Good movies!

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#26. MEAT

#25. MY OLD ASS

My Old Ass functions better as a showcase for breakout star Maisy Stella than it does as a film with a satisfying narrative. And honestly? That’s okay. What My Old Ass lacks in conflict and stakes it more than makes up for in Canadian cottage country charm and a well-tuned cast, with Maisy as the obvious standout. The wacky premise is perhaps too often brushed off in favour of a sweet coming-of-age romance but whenever Aubrey Plaza’s future version of Maisy does show up, it’s a treat. I hope to see more Canadian films of this caliber in the future – this is exactly what we should be making up here!

#24. ELSE

#23. LINDA

#22. KNEECAP

Someone has to correct me on this because I can’t possibly be right: is the message of this movie that doing drugs is cool and you should be able to do them as much as you want because it’s rebellious and fosters creativity? I’m no war-on-drugs conservative but…I kept expecting the movie to in some way – in any way – criticize or denounce the rampant drug abuse and it just never did. It’s a good thing, then, that the eponymous rap duo (plus their trusty producer) are so delightfully uninhibited, both as musicians and actors, that they transcend any moral criticism. Kneecap is even oddly educational in its reverence (and irreverence) for the tragically languishing Irish language. The overstuffed tangle of plot threads and confusing messaging may keep me from loving the whole package but there’s a ton of promise here. And the music slaps. 

#21. HERETIC

I sure hope this isn’t what my Catholic girlfriend thinks I sound like. Hugh Grant has the most fun – without getting into scenery-chewing territory – as a deranged, lonely atheist who’s lured a couple of young Mormon women into a twisted game of forced religious questioning. It’s a clever little movie with more to say about the nature of religion than you might think, though the literal events of the movie sometimes struggle to keep pace with its themes. I’ve loved seeing people of different religious backgrounds reacting differently to the film; it’s started some compelling conversations and just for that I think it deserves a fair amount of praise (the Lord).

#20. QUEER

Luca Guadagnino, you god damn bizarro wildcard genius. I love that you can put out a film as perfect and tight and accessible as Challengers in the same year you put out a Beau is Afraid-esque unfocused arthouse curiosity that I couldn’t help but lap up. I’m not gonna pretend I know what the hell happened, literally or metaphorically, all I know is that I trust Luca’s vision entirely. If he wants to make a movie about Daniel Craig obsessing over a student in an overwhelmingly gay district of 1950s Mexico City then I shall love it. If that movie happens to also include a jungle-set body horror interpretive dance sequence, then I shall love it all the same. More, even! You stay weird, Luca. And I will continue to lovingly consume whatever you do, bones and all. 

#19. WICKED

This is a hard review to write since my thoughts are so simple. I really liked Wicked. I have no major complaints. It breezed by. All the performances were decent-to-great. So instead, I’ll talk about Jeff Goldblum. Jeff, we’ve gotta talk. I like you, man. You’re charming and kinda funny-looking but in a way that’s endearing, not off-putting. You’ve had some stand-out performances over the years. The Fly, Jurassic Park. So why oh why do you insist on just playing yourself, or your own impression of yourself, in everything you’re in these days? It used to be fun, now it’s just exhausting to see you do your same quasi-wacky delivery and hand movements in every single role. Playing The Wizard could’ve been your chance to step up and finally bring something new to a role but instead you fell back into your routine and it’s gotten exhausting. I hope Wicked Pt. 2: For Good (is that really what they went with?) proves me wrong. As it is, you’re just a big, flashy, grandiose head hiding a tired, played-out actor behind the curtain.

#18. KINDS OF KINDNESS

It’s hard to rank a film that’s actually three somewhat thematically connected short films. The first is great, the second is excellent, and the third is…I’m still processing it, months later (while jamming to strip club banger Brand New Bitch by Cobrah, the song Emma Stone inexplicably dances to at the end of the last short). Overall, this may be Yorgos’ best Tony McNamara-less work yet. The films he writes tend to be so offputtingly stilted that I can’t help but feel alienated but with these three shorts, his signature style finally came together for me. I feel like it served a greater purpose this time, that of defamiliarizing the familiar and normalizing the bizarre to extract some wild observations about humanity that often go unnoticed. The second film especially sees some deep insights into the different ways we love people and how sometimes we muddle the idea or memory of a person with the real thing. I would love to see Yorgos parlay this into a full length film with all the right lessons learned from Kinds of Kindness.