Welcome to my second annual winter review round-up. In the preamble to last year’s round-up, I wrote that I was trying out the format as a way to mitigate not publishing much because the events of 2023 had me in an acute state of agita and melancholy. Spoiler alert: the events of 2024 didn’t exactly help to improve my precarious mental and emotional stability.
While I simply couldn’t get it together enough to publish regularly in the waning months of last year, I nevertheless feasted on the glut of end-of-year titles. I played catch-up as much as I could in preparation for contributing nominations and final votes for awards as a member of two critics organizations.
Presented below are capsule reviews of a slew of titles I saw in my end-of-year scramble to see as much as possible before voting and preparing my top ten titles of the year. (Flying Spaghetti Monster willing and the creek don’t rise, I’ll publish that best-of 2024 list next week.) These capsule reviews are arranged in the order in which I saw the movies, over the course of a month or so. Without further ado, let’s get to the round-up: