There's This Guy in the Sky

OPENING MONOLOGUE

Hello there from Poland.

How’s 2025 been treating you so far? Yeah, I get it.

Looking at the calendar, I can tell that this year is going to be a challenging one. I’m already carving out space for this year’s professional editing and personal writing projects, and there’s a chance something could happen (a good thing, no worries) this summer that will throw a grenade on all my best-laid plans. So, you know, I’m trying to be flexible without breaking.

This week I’m talking about the movies I saw in 2024. And there’s talk of cake too.

Let’s get started.

Today's reading

• 2024 Movie Watch List

• Don’t just forget about it

• It’s not about the cake

2024 Movie Watch List

• Smile 2 (2024)

• We Might As Well Be Dead (2022)

• Perfect Days (2023)

• Arrival (2016)

• Black Christmas (1974)

• Conclave (2024)

• Let Us Prey (2014)

• Foxy Brown (1974)

• Coffy (1973)  

• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

• A Different Man (2024)

• The Coffee Table (2022)

• Strange Darling (2023)

• Things Will Be Different (2024)

• Azrael (2024)

• Alien: Romulus (2024)

• Super Troopers (2001)

• The Deliverance (2024)

• Fright Night (1985)

• Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

• Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)

• The Thing (1982)

• I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

• Rebel Ridge (2024)

• The Batman (2022)

• Slingshot (2024)

• Cuckoo (2024)

• Mother, Couch (2023)

• Annihilation (2018)

• Rebel Ridge (2024)

• Rear Window (1954)

• The Night of the Hunter (1955)

• Twisters (2024)

• Oddity (2024)

• Longlegs (2024)  

• Jackpot! (2024)

• Trap (2024)

• Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

• A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)

• Sneakers (1992)

• Train to Busan (2016)

• Kill (2023)

• Until the End of the World (1991)

• Rope (1948)

• The Inheritance (2024)

• Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

• The Ritual (2017)

• The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

• Midnight Run (1988)

• The Watchers (2024)

• In a Violent Nature (2024)

• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

• I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

• The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024)

• Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

• The Mechanic (1972)

• The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

• Poolman (2023)

• The First Omen (2024)

• The Brood (1979)

• Civil War (2024)

• Predator (1987)

• Incendies (2010)

• Abigail (2024)

• The Last Stop in Yuma County (2023)

• Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

• Miracle Mile (1988)

• The Exorcist: Believer (2023)

• The Beekeeper (2024)

• New Life (2023)

• Hell or High Water (2016)

• Godzilla Minus One (2023)

• The Borderlands (2013)

• All You Need Is Death (2023)

• Arcadian (2024)

• Exhuma (2024)

• Monkey Man (2024)

• Monolith (2022)

• Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

• Humane (2024)

• Miami Vice (2006)

• The Stranger (2022)

• Immaculate (2024)

• Late Night with the Devil (2023)

• Dune: Part Two (2024)

• Road House (2024)

• Knox Goes Away (2023)

• Red Dawn (1984)

• The Seeding (2023)

• You’ll Never Find Me (2023)

• Movie 43 (2013)

• Vamp (1986)

• These Final Hours (2013)

• Alien (1979)

• House (1985)

• Showing Up (2022)

• Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023)

• Dreamscape (1984)

• Texasville (1990)

• The Last Picture Show (1971)

• Perfect Days (2023)

• Lovely, Dark, and Deep (2023)

• Anyone But You (2023)

• Poor Things (2023)

• Nope (2022)

• Spaceman (2024)

• Out of Darkness (2022)

• Decision to Leave (2022)

• Memory (2023)

• The Zone of Interest (2023)

• Predator (1987)

• Sexy Beast (2000)

• American Fiction (2023)

• Sicario (2015)

• The End We Start From (2023)

• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (2023)

• Umma (2022)

• I.S.S. (2023)

• Ferrari (2023)

• Lone Star (1996)

• Dual (2022)

• Piranha (1978)

• Eileen (2023)

• Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

• The Marvels (2023)

• The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)

Movies in bold are rewatches. You can follow me on Letterboxd.

I watched 123 movies in 2024. Here are some highlights (without spoilers):

The Coffee Table 

The Coffee Table was one of the most upsetting and unpleasant movie experiences I’ve had in years. At 91 minutes, it feels dreadfully long. It’s also a dark comedy, with a heavy black-hole-sucking emphasis on dark.

After setting up the characters and the titular piece of furniture, the most horrifying thing imaginable happens around the 20-minute mark — the kind of thing that makes or breaks most viewers. The rest of the movie’s runtime is waiting for the other characters to realize what happened. It’s 70 long minutes of waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak.

I mentioned the movie to my father and warned him not to watch it. But telling my father not to watch a movie because of how horrifying it is is like giving the marshmallow test to a seagull. The next day, I got this message: “Finished it last night. I must say that it was the most uncomfortable movie that I have ever watched. Just as you think the gut-wrenching emotions can’t get any worse, they do. Wow!”

When I talked to him on the phone about the movie later that night, we were honestly laughing about it. I mean, like, stomach-hurting laughter. Everything I detested about the experience was somehow funny to talk about. My mother passed away the month before, so I think talking about The Coffee Table and all of its horrors was the release we needed at that moment. So from that point of view, I’m grateful for The Coffee Table.

Until the End of the World/Perfect Days

I saw Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World on VHS back in 1992. I remember it being a half-baked movie with a phenomenal soundtrack. But after watching Wenders’ glorious Perfect Days in March (and revisiting it on Christmas day), I wanted to give Until the End of the World another chance. Why not? I’m a different person now.

I originally saw the two-hour and 38-minute US cut of the film. This time, I watched the four-hour and 40-minute director’s cut.

While the story doesn’t come together in either version, the new cut is indeed the better movie. It’s an earnest, global version of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World set in the future (1999!) as an orbiting nuclear satellite slowly spirals toward Earth. Its charm comes from how it aspires to be the ultimate road trip movie, but it falters because the story rests on the shoulders of Solveig Dommartin, a French actress who can’t seem to live up to her character, Claire. Thanks to voiceovers, we understand Claire to be this force of nature that comes and goes as she pleases.

But Dommartin spends most of the time looking lost, like she can’t believe she’s in a movie. And yet everyone responds to Claire as if she were a goddess walking among humans. If Claire is not in a scene, everyone is asking where she is. She’s so out of place in a movie she’s supposed to command that it’s honestly befuddling because everyone else — William Hurt, Sam Neill, Max von Sydow, Rüdiger Vogler, Jeanne Moreau, among others — is giving it their all, even when the material isn’t giving them much to work with.

All that said, Until the End of the World has a charm I liked. It’s cool seeing European cities I love as they were in the early 90s. And the music is solid throughout (I wasn’t kidding about the soundtrack!). I’ve heard rumors of a 20-hour cut of this movie, and I think the project was too ambitious and ahead of its time, as today I could see it working as a 10-part series on Netflix with a sprawling international cast and even bigger ideas.

Horror

This was another great year for horror with movies like All You Need Is Death, Arcadian, Longlegs, Exhuma, The First Omen, In a Violent Nature, Smile 2, and tons of movies I still haven’t seen.

The First Omen was one of the movies I had zero expectations of and was simply delighted by how they managed to create a prequel that fits wonderfully in the Omen series while laying down track for its own sequel.

I’ll admit, the trailer for Smile 2 didn’t fill me with the I Must See This energy that the original did, which is a shame because I would have seen it much earlier and realized how wrong I was. I’m still in awe that a major studio is putting out such a bleak and unrelenting series like this — I mean, I love these movies, but they are not what you’d call fun.

If I had to choose a favorite horror movie, I’d go with I Saw the TV Glow. For my money, nothing beats the emotional gut punch of that final scene. But I’m also impressed by how it portrays how certain things hit us at just the right moment when we’re young and how it warps the way we see it through nostalgia (in the movie’s case, it’s a TV show that’s very much in the vein of Buffy the Vampire Slayer). The scene where the main character revisits the show as an adult and sees a seemingly different version than the one he remembers is really effective. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that portrayed so well before. Wonderful work.

Comfort Movies

I don’t know if it’s my age (I turned 50 in July) showing or just where I am in life, but this year was about comfort movies.

When it comes to horror, I have a soft spot for that period in the 80s when horror movies could be funny and scary, like House, Fright Night, Return of the Living Dead, and Vamp. So I spent more time watching those kinds of movies this year.

Other comfort movies included Sneakers, The Thing, Predator, and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (any of these movies work), and I’m happy to add Rear Window and Perfect Days (which I feel could be on repeat all day).

Best Moments

Monkey Man: The drum/punching bag sequence.

I Saw the TV Glow: The ending scene.

Perfect Days: The final scene in the car ala Michael Clayton.

Furiosa: Her final confrontation with Dementus.

Rebel Ridge: The moment when our hero (the electric Aaron Pierre) explains PACE to an out-of-his-depth police chief (Don Johnson). By the way, PACE is what the movie should have been called, especially if they make more of them.

Immaculate: I wish I had seen the final sequence in a packed cinema because I think experiencing the collective “There’s no way she’s going to do that! Yes, she’s going to do that!” would have been one for the books.

Best Older Movies I’d Never Seen Before

Lone Star
Rear Window 

How I lived without either of these movies in my life for so long is something I’ll never understand.

Favorite Movie

Based on what I saw this year, I’d go with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. I generally don’t like prequels. On top of that, I’m one of those people who puts Fury Road as one of the best movies of the 21st century. My hope for Furiosa was that it would at least be okay, like George Miller’s previous movie (Three Thousand Years of Longing) was.

Honestly, I think I like it more than Fury Road.

A lot of this has to do with the story itself. Whereas Fury Road was essentially one long car chase, Furiosa is one long revenge tale that spans decades of her life. The fact that the movie ends where Fury Road begins is beside the point because everything that happens after her revenge against Dementus is secondary. Throw in some amazing action set pieces and a surprisingly heartfelt love story, Furiosa has a lot of meat on the bone to pick through, even with repeat viewings.

Most importantly, this story needed an older Miller to really deliver his grand statement on the world of Mad Max. The final scene between Furiosa and Dementus could have easily been a “We're not so different, you and I” scene (and it comes close, even delivering the quote) in lesser hands. But Miller has lived in this world for nearly 50 years, and he’s not the same person he was when he started. He understands now that even the monsters are as much victims as the heroes — everyone suffers in this apocalypse. Mad Max mourns the death of his family. Furiosa mourns the death of her family. Dementus mourns the death of his family. Everyone had the world taken away from them. Everyone is living their own tragedy. No one is special.

Mad Max spends most of the series outrunning his suffering. Furiosa runs directly at it in her pursuit of revenge. Both paths are wrong. The only way through, as they both learn, is by helping others — the lesson most people in this world fail to grasp.

Don’t just forget about it

Did you know that Paul McCartney and George Harrison were in the same music class in school, and the teacher didn’t see anything remarkable in either of them?

Did you know that Walt Disney was once fired as a newspaper cartoonist because he "lacked imagination and had no good ideas"?

Did you know that after his first movie, Harrison Ford was told, “You’re never going to make it in the business; just forget about it”?

Did you know that getting rejected is just part of the process?

Your day is coming.

Keep going.

It’s not about the cake

I was walking my dog Taco past a neighbor’s house a few doors down. Brunette (I’m going to be real here: I don’t know the names of many of my neighbors, so I have assigned codenames for them like Versace, Jesus People, Army Guy, etc. I know, I suck.) is unpacking groceries from her car and she stops to pet Taco. She mentioned that their dog had just passed away. I offered her my condolences, but seeing how sad she was hit me hard.

The next day was New Year’s Eve, and I was baking cakes and pies for the evening. So I made a chocolate cake (actually, it was a Coca-Cola cake, but the name just confuses people) for the neighbor. My daughter and I walked over and knocked on the Brunette’s door. Her son answered and we said that we were sorry to hear about their dog’s passing and here was some cake to help bring in the new year.

I realized later that I did it all for me. My mother had passed in November and it had been weeks since anyone asked how I was doing. Even at Christmas, people were asking how my father was doing (a legitimate question), but no one asked about me. This isn’t to say that I need the attention or have an answer — honestly, I don’t know how I’m doing — but it also highlights how fucked up mourning is in terms of how we experience it and how everyone around us doesn’t know how to deal with those experiencing it. It’s a process we’ll all have to manage sooner or later, yet no one wants to discuss it.

I wrote all of this, and you’re still thinking about the Coca-Cola cake, aren’t you?