
My Top 17 Movies and Series for 2024

This year I have seventeen films and series to recommend. Some are less well-known and under-the-radar. Also, there seemed to be more selections from DEI producers and writers, for a welcomed change!
Here are the reviews I wrote this past year with the criteria that they were available online. Of the 45 reviews I posted this year, these are my favorites, my “listicle”. As in past years, both television and cinema have continued to produce phenomenal story-telling and intriguing characters. And this year many of the indie/foreign films could have easily fallen into my “Psychological, Political, and Sociological” category. I listed them under Indie/Foreign because of limited circulation and publicity for these films.
The following list is not ranked, only grouped by genre and date of review.
INDIES and FOREIGN CINEMA
- American Fiction–Truth or Dare (February 11, 2024)
Black novelist and literature professor Thelonious Ellison is incensed that his novels are not well-received by readers, both Black and White. An academic specializing in Greek mythology and drama, his books are nonetheless shelved under African American literature in bookstores.
- Society of the Snow–The Taste of Friendship (February 19, 2024)
Based upon the 1972 Andes plane crash that is the Donner Pass equivalent of a brutally intense survivalist tale and the horrific necessity of cannibalism in the inhuman conditions of a violent winter storm.
- Saltburn–Class Wounds (April 1, 2024)
A brilliant middle-class Oxford student with few friends (except for one rather sadistic roommate), Oliver Quick has little appeal with women, but outsized ambitions to be popular with his fellow aristocratic students.
- Lawman: Bass Reeves–A Truthful Western (May 19, 2024)
The first Black US Marshal is one of the most legendary lawmen in the Old West, whose history has been mostly erased. Despite brutal circumstances, Reeves struggles to be a man with integrity in the face of immoral institutions. And everything that could go wrong does.
- Prisoner–Trapped with No Escape (May 26, 2024)
Miriam (Sofie Gråbøl) is a veteran prison guard with some compassion for the inmates, perhaps the only one with human feelings for the incarcerated. Until Sammi, of Danish-Arab ethnicity, desires to support prisoners for the good of society at large.
- Tokyo Vice (season 2)–American in Translation (June 20, 2024)
Jake Adelstein is a cocky American who becomes fluent in Japanese, both spoken and written, in order to become a reporter for a major Japanese newspaper. In season 2 Jake continues his investigation into the Yakuza.
- Shogun (2024)–”Game of Thrones” meets “Last Kingdom” (July 1, 2024)
In the feudal society of Japan in the year 1600, conflicts between ruling aristocratic clans have made the emperor impotent in maintaining control. Chaos and coups threaten the very existence of peace and harmony among wealthy and powerful overlords.
PSYCHOLOGICAL, POLITICAL and SOCIOLOGICAL
- Poor Things–The Lucky Devils (May 8, 2024)
A feminist Frankenstein-like tale. Mad scientist Godwin (“God”) admires his creation. We know immediately that God’s sinister surgery has produced a freak, Bella “the beautiful”. Essentially lobotomized, Bella has no memories. She is a fetal brain in a young woman’s sensuous form.
- Ripley (2024)–The One Who Got Away? (June 9, 2024)
This neo-noir remake reinterprets good and evil, survival and triumph, guilt and psychopathology. Tom Ripley is a young intelligent grifter residing in squalor in the 1960s. His low-class origins and his uncertain sexuality are knotted together in a tight weave of self-denial, narcissism, and fear of being discovered for who he is.
- I Came By (2023)–Don’t Look (July 8, 2024)
Two young working-class graffiti artists wish to taunt the most privileged and wealthiest. They boldly trespass into the purportedly secure, safe, and protected abodes of the elite. But a well-respected judge has a secret life. He knows the powerful can get away with murder in plain sight.
- Holdovers–No Home for the Holidays (August 4, 2024)
A curmudgeonly, lonely instructor is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the few students with nowhere to go. Most students revile him and for the most part, the instructor is proud of that. Three lonely, heartbroken people are thrown together over the Christmas holidays where joy and merriment are missing in action.
- Mary & George–Lust for Power (August 12, 2024)
The fiercely ambitious Lady Mary Villiers grooms her extraordinarily handsome son to be the boy-toy of King James 1 (1566-1625). This is not your usual mother-son relationship! Lady Mary’s fear that her original social status will be discovered by her enemies at court compels her to never give her strategic mind a rest. Sexual politics is the major theme.
- Serpent Queen–Venomous Power Grab (September 18, 2024)
Deception and betrayal start when fourteen-year old Catherine de Medici is forced into an arranged marriage by her powerful uncle, Pope Clement VII. Motivated by a large dowry he will share with King Francis I of France, the Pope contracts to have young Catherine marry Henry, the King’s second son. Unfortunately for Catherine, she actually loves Henry but he doesn’t reciprocate.
- Happy Valley–A Micro-Exorcism (October 1, 2024)
“Happy Valley” is the local police’s pejorative term for the low-income Halifax neighborhood. It suffers from a high rate of drug addiction and crime. Catherine Cawood is a no-nonsense policewoman with a tragic family history. She is committed to an incorruptible enforcement of the law. Colleagues look the other way.
- Slow Horses–Win the Race (November 19, 2024)
MI5 recruits and some agents who have failed training or assignments are banished to Slough House, the tawdry hellhole (“slough”=swamp) for those destined to fail. But they don’t.
- Penguin–A Waddle of Weirdness (December 1, 2024)
Oz Cobb, rather derisively called Penguin because of a limp and a disfigured face, no longer wants to be the nebbish that the mob boss orders around contemptuously as his driver and go-fer in Gotham City. Clawing your way to the top of a ruthless empire and staying there is not for sissies. And Oz is no one’s sissy.
- Day of the Jackal–Hunt or Be Hunted (December 13, 2024)
A cold-blooded, shapeshifting chameleon, the Jackal masterminds assassination assignments. Is he a dispassionate, killing machine? After all, he has a beautiful wife and a little boy waiting for him in Capiz, Spain. Eventually, his wife’s curiosity about where her husband keeps disappearing and what is the nature of his work become threatening obstacles for even his strategic genius to overcome.