David Chen's Random and Dubious 2024 Movie Awards

A grab-bag of stuff that I haven't been able to get out of my mind.

As I’ve reflected on 2024, it’s been a tremendous year for movies. There’ve been huge, fun box office hits but also a bunch of quieter indie films featuring unique voices. On occasion when I’m putting together my annual top 10 films list, I’ve struggled to fill it out. This year, I won’t have that problem. (Stay tuned for the list, btw.)

But there’s also been some notable stuff that’s happened in movies that remains, to quote Morpheus, stuck in my head like a splinter in my mind. Rather than do the healthy thing and never mention these things ever again, I’m going to share them with you the first annual “Random and Dubious Movie Awards” for the year 2024. Enjoy. NOTE: Please assume any film mentioned below will be spoiled.

Best Love Letter To a Company That Got Acquired By a Multinational Media Conglomerate

Deadpool and Wolverine (Read my review) - I’m not going to pretend Deadpool and Wolverine is high art, but as someone who has been following movie news ephemera for about two decades, I was pleased to see a movie that seemed genetically engineered to reward all the time I spent paying attention to Fox’s superhero universe, which has since been subsumed under the Disney banner. One of the most moving moments of the film unexpectedly comes at the end, when a montage of behind-the-scenes footage plays over the closing credits of the film set to Green Day’s “Good Riddance.” It really gives you a sense of how long these actors have spent playing these characters and how much of their lives it must have consumed. Young Hugh Jackman had no idea how much Wolverine would be a part of all our lives, his included. You can complain about the movie all you want, but it clearly loved the Fox films that paved the way for its existence and wears its heart on its sleeve.

Best Remix of Earlier Films from Its Franchise

Alien: Romulus (Read my review): After years of cerebral Alien films that questioned that nature of reality and existence, it’s now clear what the people want: Alien thingies on spaceships slowly killing everyone on board. Writer/director Fede Álvarez loves the older films in this franchise to an actual fault. The film’s use of CG to revive a character played by a deceased actor is unnecessary and ghoulish, and some of the references to previous films are cringe. Despite all that, Romulus delivered the thrills, with a handful of really memorable sequences and gorgeous visuals. Its box office gross of over $350MM shows that audiences still have interest in this franchise.

Honorable Mention: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Gladiator

Most Unnecessary Director’s Cut

Rebels Moon (Read the history of Rebel Moon here): Here’s the problem with trying to inorganically engineer a phenomenon like the Snyder Cut: if you release a neutered version of the movie first, it won’t attract passionate fans, thus ensuring there will be no interest when the inevitable director’s cut is teased. Such was the curious case of Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon films, which were so critically reviled that the prospect of a director’s cut was met with negative enthusiasm. The sad thing is that the director’s cuts of these films were actually superior to the originals. Would they have been enough to make Rebel Moon into a continuing franchise if they’d been released first? I doubt it, but this cynical marketing tactic means we’ll never know.

Honorable Mention: Napoleon

Best Use of Color As a Storytelling Device

It’s What’s Inside: Greg Jardin’s Sundance sensation It’s What’s Inside sees a group of friends gather together for a wedding party and use a strange device to swap bodies with each other. Given the sheer quantity of characters and the number of swaps taking place, it would be easy for the viewer to lose track of WTF is going on here. But Jardin’s use of color and sound to clarify who’s who not only works (when the film is tinted red, you can see who people “really are”), it adds to the moodiness of the film overall. I had a blast with this movie and rated it as my favorite film from Sundance this year.

Honorable Mention: Red Rooms

Best Fictional Artist

Skye Riley in Smile 2 (Read my review): Naomi Scott put in one of the best performances of the year as Skye Riley in Smile 2. As the film kicks off, Riley has emerged from a horrifying accident and is trying to put her life and career back together. Of course, the Smile demon has other plans. Scott’s performance is fearless and spectacular but what also intrigued me were the short portions of the film where we see glimpses of Skye Riley in concert. They look spectacular and a great deal of work was put in to ensure they’d be convincing. Scott is a well-known, talented singer but I’d pay good money to see a Skye Riley concert (hopefully with less death than what we see in the film).

Honorable Mention: Lady Raven in Trap.

Sequel That Most Clearly Hated Fans of the Original

Joker: Folie à Deux (read our review) - Were you a fan of Joker? Too bad, because writer/director Todd Phillips probably hates you. Joker: Folie à Deux is a provocation, a sequel made by someone who views fans of its first film with contempt. Why else make a film that has virtually no plot, horrifically assaults its titular character, and ends with that character dying meaninglessly only to tease the movie people really wanted to see instead? In that regard, there’s almost something impressive about the way Phillips was able to light $200MM on fire. Bonus points for wasting Lady Gaga and making a “musical” that is highly unlikely to please any musical fans.

Movie That Most Did Not Live Up To Its Premise

A Quiet Place: Day One - I wasn’t super excited to watch a prequel to the Quiet Place franchise — after all, we already got a quasi-prequel in A Quiet Place Part II. But there was something inherently interesting in seeing how humanity figured out what was happening when the Quiet Place Aliens (also called Death Angels) first invaded. Indeed, this is what was promised by the trailers and marketing for the film (“Discover why our world went quiet”). But the movie itself does no such thing. The movie opens with the arrival of the Death Angels and it’s a harrowing sequence that ends up with Lupita Nyong’o being knocked unconscious. But when she awakens, pretty much everyone in Manhattan has already figured out the way to flummox these creatures is by shutting the hell up. No chaos, no trial and error, everyone is just already good to go. Day One was decent as a Quiet Place adventure but why tease a premise that’s not going to pay off?

Most Unnecessary Character Posters

Conclave - Character posters can be odd marketing tools. Done well, they can be a striking reminder of the talent in an upcoming film. Done poorly, they remind you how freaking weird a movie’s premise is. Conclave’s posters were just kind of weird? Do we really need character posters for the cardinals about to choose the new Pope? This isn’t the Avengers.

Movie Trailer That Gave Up Its Biggest Twist(s) Unnecessarily

Abigail: I had a ton of fun with Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s Abigail, which sees a motley crew kidnap a young ballerina for some ransom money. But I wasn’t a big a fan of the trailer, which gives away a massive twist: Abigail is a vampire and ends up turning the tables on her captors. I understand the temptation to reveal the high concept that this movie is based on, and there was probably no way to market this film without giving away that the crew gets under siege at some point. But I still wonder if the trailer had to give away quite so much for the second half of the film.

Honorable Mention: Speak No Evil, Red Rooms

Worst Movie Haircut On An Otherwise Extremely Attractive Person

Henry Cavill in Argylle - Seriously, I still can’t get over how bad this looks.

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Other Stuff David Chen Has Made

• On Decoding TV, Myles McNutt and I discussed the first season of Dune: Prophecy, which was ultimately a dramaturgical failure.

• Also on Decoding TV, Patrick Klepek and I got together to discuss the season 2 premiere of Squid Game. So far, it’s great!

• [PAID ONLY] On my personal Patreon, @joyofnapping and I made a podcast reflecting on our year: highlights, lowlights, and the things we’re proud of. Listen here.

• On The Filmcast, we reviewed Nosferatu, a movie to which we said YES-feratu!