One-Liner Film Reviews for 2024

Most years on New Year's Day I try to remember everything I watched over the year for a round-up, but typically forget most of them. This year I kept track!!  (Next year I'll track my reading, too, but I mainly do that here - although I've definitely read more than eight books this year. I think I'm in the middle of more than eight books right now!) I'll divide the into categories of shows and films, but I tend to binge watch shows in a sitting, so, honestly, I had to look up a few to see which category it fit! They're more or less in the order I watched them, but with ratings out of 4, and I highlighted my top 5 favourites:

Shows and Mini-Series:

1. The Green Knight - It's fun King Arthur stuff with Dev Patel -- 3/4
2. The Curse - It got mixed reviews, but I loved it - maybe a little close to home satirizing passive house advocates and home-reno fanatics. It makes fun of people like me -- 3.5/4
3. Fargo, season 5 - Fantastic, edge of your seat drama. It's the best one yet. 4/4
4. Mr. and Mrs. Smith - Really fun spy romcom with Donald Glover. 3.5/4
5. Baby Raindeer - A bartender stalked by a customer - it has excellent pacing, and it's hard to believe it all fits in just 7 30-minute episodes. It's a very nuanced and realistic depiction of how abusers can take over. Also a fantastic soundtrack! 4/4
6. Ripley - Fantastic version of Talented Mr. Ripley that's worth watching even if you've seen that one. It has many nuanced changes and far greater artistry to the production. 4/4
7. Landscapers - I will watch anything with Olivia Colman. This is based on a true story of a couple accused of killing her parents. There's some excellent absurdist filming. 3.5/4
8. The Outlaws - A light and funny sitcom about a random group of people made to do community service together, featuring the hilarious Stephen Merchant. 3.5/4
9. Hit Man - A cute and light story of a boring high school teacher going undercover for the cops. 2.5/4
10. Kaos - A very fun modern (sort of) take on Greek myths mainly focusing on Orpheus and Eurydice. Zeus is played by Jeff Goldblum, of course. 3.5/4
11. Say Nothing - An excellent show about how Dolours Price got involved in the IRA. Some great edge of your seat suspense and lots of personal drama and ethical exploration. 3.5/4
12. English Teacher - It's a cute show, but something's missing. There wasn't enough chemistry between the main character and any of the love interests, but the one episode of angry parents was very realistic and made me glad to have left the profession! 2.5/4
13. Nobody Wants This - Kristen Bell is adorable, and this is a very sweet Romeo and Juliet style romcom. - 3.5/4
14. Man on the Inside - Ted Danson winds up as a spy in a retirement home. It was cute. 2.5/4
15. Squid Game 2 - Less time was spent in the way of character backgrounds that made us really care about them in first season, but good revenge plot. - 3/4
16. In Treatment - A psychiatrist's cases pretty much in real time. It got great reviews, but I stopped watching near the end of the first seasons. The seasons are incredibly long - flippin' 43 episodes!! It originally aired every night, Monday to Thursday, with one of four patients each night, and it's likely better seen as they aired instead of binged all at once. It got a bit dull. ?/4 (2/4 for what I saw so far)

Films:

1. After the Party - It starts well with an intro of a biology teacher explaining porn to a class of boys, then gets into a family gradually coming to terms with their past. Did he or didn't he? Compelling enough. 3/4
2. Poor Things - It's a mix of Pygmalion and Frankenstein with some Buddhism and burgeoning feminist values. Delightfully weird. 3.5/4 
3. Inside Out 2 - About even with the first one, but with more complex emotions to explain. I don't love these, but watch them because so many people talk about them! 2.5/4
4. American Fiction - Light and funny but also a sad journey as a writer sells out in order to be published. 3.5/4
5. Maestro - I love musicals and was raised on opera so loved this story of Leonard Bernstein. It reminded me of Barney's Version (about Mordecai Richler) as the passion for life that necessary for creativity tends to provoke much collateral damage. 3.5/4
6. Phone Booth (2002) - It holds up well as an excellent psychological thriller! 3/4
7. Peanut Butter Falcon - A lovely road/raft trip movie about unlikely friends: Huckleberry Finn with a Hunt of the Wildebeest vibe. 3/4
8. Perfect Days - Absolutely beautiful film about a bathroom cleaner's appreciation of the world. 4/4
9. Boy and the Heron - I love Studio Ghibli, but this was a disappointment. It felt like the best parts of prior films got shoved together, and I wasn't really rooting for the main character. 2.5/4
10 A Fantastic Fear of Everything (2012) - I'm not sure how I missed this earlier, but it's a very funny and sometimes scary look at fear and trauma with Simon Pegg just trying to get his book published. 3.5/4
11. The Substance - Gory and unnerving look at aging, with some great make-up artistry. Don't watch it if you have a needle phobia (or don't want one). It's Portrait of Dorian Gray mixed with Requiem for a Dream. - 3.5/4
12. Living in Oblivion (1995) - A trippy film with Steve Buscemi as a director trying desperately to put on a play! 3/4
13. Conclave - Fantastic reviews, but I didn't love it. I did love The Two Popes (2019), which I think handled some similar issues in a more gripping way. 3/4
14. Flow - Animation following a cat finding allies in a flood. It's beautiful, but I wasn't invested in their survival enough. 3/4
15. Carry On - It feels like it's trying hard to be the next Die Hard, and got great reviews, but I don't think it comes close. It was entertaining enough, but I can't imagine watching a second time. Some parts were laugh out loud funny, but I don't think they were meant to be. At all. It took itself way too seriously. 2.5/4
16. Anora - Like Pretty Woman with TONS of sex - so much that I stopped noticing it (mainly just bouncing around rather than anything erotic, and no sexual violence). A stripper looking for love falls for a wealthy partier throwing around his money until trouble comes. It was excellent! 3.5/4
17. My Old Ass - Love Aubrey Plaza, but this was almost unwatchable. It's kind of trying to do an Arrival theme in Back to the Future with Plaza coming back from the future to help her younger self, and maybe it's meant for a younger crowd, but I think it would still undermine the audience's intelligence.  1/4 
18. Who Killed Santa - Funny but mainly from being SO CRINGE! 1.5/4
19. The Fall Guy - Stuntman romance action flick with Ryan Gosling. It was okay. 2.5/4
20. Saturday Night - I know the story, yet was still excited for them to pull it all together. They took a few liberties with a few facts to craft a better story. Lots of fun and 70s hair! 3.5/4
21. Late Night with the Devil - Some people love it. It wasn't horrific enough for the build up, but it was good Exorcist-y fun on the set of a talk show in the 1970s. - 3/4
22. Hundreds of Beavers - It's weird and creative, and reminded me of cartoons of my childhood with a dastardly villain, but it felt really long, and I got distracted. It's a movie that needs to be watched, so I'll be giving it another try in the new year. ?/4
23. Furiosa - Fun backstory vision! 3/4
24. Woman of the Hour - It's the story of a serial killer who get on to the old Dating Game show back in the 1970s, but it was way too rapey for me in the first 30 minutes, so I didn't finish it. ?/4 
25. All of Us Strangers - Loved every minute! It's a beautiful film of two people falling in love in a way that's so easy and caring and uncomplicated, until we start to question the writer's "trips" to see his parents. Leaves you thinking for days after. 4/4
26. Wild Robot - Not a fan. 1/4

I didn't track the old movies I like to watch while doing housework or the many British game shows or reruns of Bob's Burgers, or  Ted Danson's interview show, which is often very good for feeling more authentic and not at all polished, Where Everybody Knows Your Name. But I think I got most of them! Judging by last year's totals (when I watched more than twice as many shows), I might do just as well not keeping track!