by Jacob Jones Hello, all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! As we wind down this journey to our Top 10 Movies of 2024, we wanted to take a moment to celebrate the almost best in movies for the calendar year. Many of these films were some of our favorites of the whole year, but as there are only so many spots to fill out even within the shortlisted titles being considered for the Top 10, more than a few were bound to fall by the wayside. To that effect, we came up with the idea of “pre-honorable mentions,” a space for those films , more than a few were bound to fall by the wayside. To that effect, we came up with the idea of “pre-honorable mentions,” a space for those films that made us laugh, cry, scared us, moved us, impressed us, and challenged us, but just couldn’t make it over the finish line and out of longlist placement. (It’s important to note that this list does not act as a stand-in for the official Honorable Mentions of 2024, which is included with our Top 10 piece as a signifier of what else was included in the shortlist from which we found our choices.) This will be our final list before we unveil our Top 10 Movies of 2024, and there are more films included here than on most other lists, meaning our reflections on them may run a little more brief than usual. So, let’s not waste any more time in giving these films the recognition they deserve as well as we are able. These are the Pre-Honorable Mentions of 2024! Alien: Romulus When it was announced that director Fede Alvarez would be helming a new Alien project under the 20th Century Studios banner (i.e. under Disney), I instantly began looking forward to it – albeit with some healthy trepidation – and while the final product does feature imperfections in some fan service over-reliance that ultimately brings the overall product down a peg, that overall product was well worth the wait. Alvarez both understands the horror of Alien and the action sensibilities of Aliens better than almost any other director the franchise has yet brought in, though the horror elements in Romulus work stronger than the action elements overall. Between Alvarez’ confident pitching of the tones this movie walks, the great performances of its cast (especially David Jonsson), and the film’s fantastic set-pieces buoyed by stellar practical effects, Alien: Romulus is a long-sought victory for Alien sequels that manages to both honor the franchise’s roots while charting a new path forward. The Apprentice I’ve already written about this one in my Top 10 Most Underrated Movies of 2024, so I won’t spend too much time on it here, but suffice it to say, The Apprentice just might be the only piece of media about Donald Trump to release since his first Presidential term to actually examine the heart of his unconventional origins and the events ultimately responsible for his rise to power. Ali Abassi’s biopic centering on Trump’s early life isn’t so much interested in the Trump we know today as how the Ali Abassi’s biopic centering on Trump’s early life isn’t so much interested in the Trump we know today as how the (unfortunately) President-elect became who we know him to be, and places its focus squarely on the relationship between Trump and his infamously mysterious lawyer, the late Roy Cohn. The question alone makes Abassi’s biopic worth watching, but it’s the world-class performances of Jeremy Strong as Cohn and Sebastian Stan as Trump that ultimately put it a step above any other recent piece of Trump-centered media. A Complete Unknown The greatest magic trick that director James Mangold pulls in his biopic about the life of Bob Dylan as the folk icon came up through the 60’s into the start of his electric era is that he doesn’t really make it a biopic about Dylan’s life at all. Dylan by nature has always been a somewhat unknowable figure, and Mangold makes the wise decision not to attempt to figure him out but to showcase just how impossible it was, is, and always shall be to ever accomplish that task, this particular time period in Dylan’s career being the most openly reflective of that notion. Timothée Chalamet, of course, excels as Dylan, never imitating and always trusting the writing from James Mangold and co-writer Jay Cocks to carry the character, with Edward Norton turning in what might be his most low-key performance to date, as well as Boyd Holdbrook rivaling Joaquin Phoenix for the best on-screen Johnny Cash in a James Mangold film. Special attention must be paid, though, to Monica Barbaro, who not only learned to sing for the part of Joan Baez, but learned to sing exactly like Baez herself, one of the most iconic voices in music history. She’s really excellent in the film, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see her show up with an Oscar nomination to her name come Thursday. Dahomey Clocking in at barely over an hour, Mati Diop’s Dahomey is among the most beloved documentaries of the year, and it’s not hard to see why. Chronicling the return of 26 artifacts plundered by French colonialism to their original home in Benin, Diop’s urgent call for repatriation is as captivating as it is digestible, partly told through narration via one of the artifacts, partly through a meeting of Benin leaders and citizens concerning the events of the film and what they mean to both the plundered and the plunderer. The sound design is shockingly underrated even from those whom I’m aware have seen the film, and while I can’t say much both due to the film’s brevity and its relatively simple framework, the journey of watching it is one of the most moving one can have in any year it’s viewed. Didi Coming-of-age stories from indie studios are nothing new, but coming-of-age in the digital age is an especially tricky feeling to pull off well without seeming either condescending or simply too inexperienced to tackle such a delicate subject. Luckily, Sean Wang throws Didi into the mix at exactly the right pitch, capturing the adolescent anxiety of growing up in a time where everything around you is now being immortalized, and every decision you make feels like your social life literally depends on it. Joan Chen gives an Oscar-worthy turn as Wang Wang’s mother, and while it’s not an especially revolutionary character for her to be playing, she plays it with such grace and poise that one could be forgiven for forgetting that it’s a performance at all. For YouTubers especially, this movie is a different kind of special. Evil Does Not Exist Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car was among the most celebrated films of 2021, going so far as to earn Oscar nominations for both Best Picture and Best Director, so why is it that his existentially reflective follow-up, Evil Does Not Exist, seems to have passed so many would-be enthusiasts by? One could asset that this is due to Japan’s passing it up as their submission for Best International Feature this year, opting instead to back Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud (which recently announced a summer 2025 release date in the U.S.). Or, as in many cases with smaller films such as this, it could be that the summer 2024 release was so limited that the film simply didn’t gain enough traction for Japan to push a filmmaker whose work has already been widely recognized on the world stage. But if I were to tell it, to really, honestly tell it, I would say that believe it or not, Evil Does Not Exist is simply a much more low-key film than Drive My Car, and without a three-hour runtime to sustain its subtleties, its unassuming, ambiguous narrative could pass people by if they don’t examine it with the same vigor. There’s little risk of spoilers for this one because so little happens in it narratively speaking, but its thematic implications pack a significant amount of weight. It was recently issued on blu-ray through Criterion’s Janus Contemporaries label, so if – like me – you’re a regular collector of physical media, I’d highly recommend giving it a shot. Hit Man Between Top Gun: Maverick, Anyone But You, and now Twisters, there’s no denying the theatrical appetite for Glen Powell’s movie star charm, but it’s in Richard Linklater’s Netflix crime comedy Hit Man where he turns in his best work to date in that regard. Based on a real-life Texas Monthly story written by Skip Hollandsworth, the film stars Powell (who co-wrote the script with Linklater) as a college professor who moonlights as a fake hitman for the New Orleans Police Department, essentially setting up anyone looking to hire so they can be arrested and taken off the streets. Regardless of how casually the film seems to treat entrapment law in general, the ride itself is a blast, and Powell is clearly having the time of his life, especially when paired with Adria Arjona, with whom he has an unbelievable amount of on-screen chemistry. (I mean, I don’t know who wouldn’t have chemistry with Glen Powell, but still.) It’s a real shame this one never got a theatrical release; it would play exceedingly well with a crowd. Kill Of all the action movies to come out in 2024, Kill was not the best (and no, I have not seen Shadow Strays yet), but it was by far the gnarliest. How confident do you have to be in how good your movie is to drop the title card halfway through, knowing you’ve saved almost all of the best stuff for after that happens? Sure, you could call this John Wick on a moving train, but the truth is the violence enacted here is of a largely different variety. There are kills in this film I have never seen before, including one with a thrown lighter that readers will know when they see it as one of the coolest takedowns in any action movie. Lakshya Lalwani excels in the lead part, and the stunt work is some of the best than Indian cinema has to offer. Kinds of Kindness Yorgos Lanthimos’ follow-up to the multi-Oscar-winning Poor Things may not be touching the same gold even given how unpredictable the current field is, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value, and it turns out I seemed to enjoy it more than most. The first of the short films within this themed collection is easily its best, touting a Jesse Plemons performance that absolutely could compete for Best Actor in a slightly weaker year (and in fact won him the same award at last year’s Cannes film festival), but the latter two are also just as off-kilter and unpredictably chaotic as that one. If you’re a Lanthimos fan, even if you consider this one of his weaker entries, it’s still an undeniable good deal of fun. Longlegs The most viral marketing campaign of 2024 prior to Wicked’s complete domination in the fourth quarter belonged to none other than Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs, and while it is an imperfect film to be sure, I haven’t yet encountered a film whose marketing so perfectly encapsulated just how creepy it actually turned out to be. No, it’s not outright scary or terrifying in a studio horror sort of way, but everything that creeped me out as a child was on full display here, pitched straight at the old 70s shag carpets and windowless basements I used to encounter all the time, and drenched in an atmosphere of dread we could only be carried through by two vastly underrated performances from Maika Monroe and Blair Underwood. The talk of the town for this one, though, is Nicolas Cage as the titular character, able to turn the things that usually make him entertaining or annoying to the opposite side of his fandom into the very things that make his under-your-skin creepiness so effective here. If you’re a horror fan, but somehow missed this over the summer, do yourself a favor and watch it in complete darkness. Memoir of a Snail I came late to the game on Memoir of a Snail, as I wasn’t able to watch it until it finally hit VOD, but once I finally was able to view it, I found myself completely unable to resist its myriad charms. The animation is incredible creative, the story is moving in ways I didn’t expect, and it’s often quite funny, though parents be warned, this is not an animated movie for kids. All told, this is probably the most underrated animated movie of the year without Transformers in the title, and one of the medium’s few genuine successes in 2024. Rebel Ridge Carry-On might well end up being the most popular movie in Netflix history, but it’s far from its best, even within the calendar year of 2024, and while I still have a few of their originals left to catch up on (which unfortunately won’t be considered for my Top 10 due to time constraints), it’s gonna be tough to beat Rebel Ridge, director Jeremy Saulnier’s revenge thriller about a former marine who gets caught up in small-town corruption when the police department enacts a civil asset forfeiture on the money he’s meant to use to bail out his cousin. It’s not exactly the most high-minded concept, but it’s handled in exactly the right way for a movie of its type, and once Emory Cohen yells at Don Johnson’s police chief to put some distance between himself and Aaron Pierre’s hulking frame, the film turns up to eleven and seldom comes back down. This is the movie future movie historians will point to (if they can find it without a physical edition) when they indicate where Aaron Pierre became an action star, and as perfectly pitched three-star rides go, this one is 2024’s absolute best. Sugarcane Watching Sugarcane directly after having finished “The Nickel Boys” by Colson Whitehead in preparation for that film left me with an eerie, unsettled feeling, so similar are the two stories in setting and tone. tone. This documentary from National Geographic, which is available to watch now on Disney+ and Hulu, centers on a group of Canadian natives who endured years of mental, physical, and sexual abuse at an Indian residential school on the Sugarcane reserve where many of the natives went missing and were never found again. The film is an investigation into the events surrounding the disappearances, as well as a search for any possible mass grave wherein the native dead are buried. It’s far from an easy watch, but in some small way, its existence offers some justice in telling the story of these Canadian Indians, reckoning with their past and acknowledging the hurt and loss they’ve suffered, even when the responsible parties seem unable to do even as little as that. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story You can read my full review for all my thoughts on this documentary, but suffice it to say, while it missing the Oscar shortlist for this category is disappointing, its presence at almost every other awards body’s events is a heartening thing to see. It may not do anything especially new to the documentary format, or even give us information on the titular Reeve that wouldn’t be easily available in public record, but it’s the way that directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui manage to tell Reeve’s story that makes the film so moving. Able to both excavate the super and celebrate the man, The Christopher Reeve Story deftly demonstrates to us all that, at least for a short while, we really did believe a man could fly. The Wild Robot As animated movies go, 2024 was not an especially strong year, and I don’t think it’s an unpopular notion amongst cinephiles that even within the cream of the crop, there were no outright masterpieces that rose to the top of the pack, no matter how charming or moving they were. What most people did seem to agree on is that neither of the best animated films of the year belonged to Disney or Pixar, and one of those two was Dreamworks’ The Wild Robot, which came to us from director Chris Sanders as he adapted the beloved children’s book with co-writer Peter Brown. The animation in Wild Robot is stunning, painterly without ever betraying the use of CG effects, but not so anti-CG that it looks truncated or any less smooth than it’s meant to. The story itself lacks a little emotional elevation, for my part (even if I do quite like Lupita N’yongo’s vocal performance), but so much of what makes this movie special is about the craft, including Kris Bowers’ excellent score which could Bowers himself an Oscar nomination. If you’re looking for an animated movie to watch with your kids, or even just for yourself, this is the best dialogue-inclusive one of the year. And those are our Pre-Honorable Mentions for 2024! Have you seen any of these films? Any guesses as to what triumphed over them in the Top 10? Let me know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading! (Next up: The Top 10 Best Movies of 2024!)
- The Friendly Film Fan
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