Pop Culture Favorites of 2024

I almost didn’t bother doing anything here this year. Even though these lists find no new eyes, I’ve been doing it so long I’d be too disappointed in myself if I didn’t log anything for the first year of my son’s life. And specifically because this was the first year of my son’s life, I have never been so disconnected from new television. I’ve done my best to keep up with new movies, but still have come up short. It also feels like it's never been so difficult to find the crop of Best Picture nominees. I haven’t seen Shogun, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Wicked or I’m Still Here, to name a few.

My typical format of five Pretty Damn Goods followed by a top ten list was always because there were more than ten things I thought to be worth mentioning. I’ve seen so little that I would be stretching that format to include things that I  never would otherwise. So I guess I’ll make a bullet point situation.

• A special shout out to Nickel Boys. RaMell Ross and company created a truly inspired piece of cinematic adaptation.
• In what was my working top ten list for the year, I had six movies, two scenes from two movies, one album and one tv series.
• The album is Stung! by Pond.
• The series is Ripley on Netflix, which I never would’ve watched if not for Andy and Chris on The Watch podcast. It’s one of, if not the most beautifully photographed tv series I’ve ever seen.
• The first movie scene is the one with the cell phone at the end of Hit Man. My feeble brain nearly broke watching that. The second one is when Nicholas Hoult’s character treks toward Orlok’s castle in the moonlight and is approached by the carriage. I wasn’t rapt by Nosferatu, but when that scene happened in the theater, I said aloud as a knee-jerk reaction, “Fuck yeah.” I can’t think of a theatrical moment in recent years that so perfectly encapsulates my personal aesthetic.
• Five of the movies in no particular order are The Substance, Oddity, Red Rooms, Challengers and Dune: Part Two.
• My favorite movie this year was Anora. I get that it was overhyped for some folks, but it worked like gangbusters for me from start to finish. Demi Moore deserves recognition at the Oscars tonight, but if Mikey Madison should pull the upset, it couldn’t be more deserved.