Top 15 Movies of 2024: Honorable Mentions and Other Stuff

Wildly late as usual on my plans. This post concludes the Top Movies of 2024 series. 

I'm still considering exactly what I'll do for a Top 10 List of Video Games in 2024, whether or not even such a list even makes sense anymore. I'll have something out eventually on that front, I hope. Still gotta finish Metaphor ReFantazio and that game is loooong.

But for now, let's talk about all the Good Movies of 2024 That Didn't Make the List - there's a lot. Also a Bad Movie. And a few movies in between.

And yes, I am requesting that you watch every single one of these movies (except the last one). If you start now you can probably be done by about oh... Sunday. I'll talk to your boss for you, they'll understand. This list is in no particular order, by the way.

Hundreds of Beavers, dir. Mike Cheslik

One of the few movies whose title could easily be its own porn parody. Hundreds of Beavers was really close to making the Top 15, until I ultimately decided I did not have much to say about it that was not just 'describing the object'. It's a really cool movie to describe, sure, however, my opinion does not bring much to this movie. I like this exists, I cannot I learned much about life or myself watching it - besides learning that I really need that hat.  

Hundreds of Beavers is a live-action cartoon comedy. The entire thing operates on a mixture of Looney Tunes physics and video game economics. Our trapper hero (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) completes several "runs" to collect loot and objects across an old-timey theme park vision of 17th century fur trading in the Great Lakes region. And maybe he'll win the heart of a local cute Furrier girl (Olivia Graves). This movie is all black and white, with almost no spoken dialog. And everybody is wearing big goofy mascot costumes. It is a little over-long. Personally, I'd have cut down the first act by a lot, but Hundreds of Beavers has a vast wealth of jokes, and lots of visual gags. It is maybe the most creative movie of 2024. Everything you can imagine, and several things you could never imagine, happens in this grand battle between fluffy animals and our goofy bearded protagonist.

Be a Hater in These Super Bowl Times

 

I hate this fucking Super Bowl.

Now: am I really angry about football? Maybe not. Maybe this is all about the personal life stuff I've gone through these past two months, where I've watched most of the NFL playoffs in various hospital rooms. (I'm fine, by the way, I'm always a visitor in these rooms, not a patient.) The reason is I feel just a crushing overwhelming feeling of hopelessness lately, that we passed the point that anything can be done to stop this unending era of horror and depravity. That the authorities that should have stopped this have all been bought, the champions we should have had were insufficient and came up weak, that the media can only given token complaints, that many in the punditry class actually are all too happy to prove how smart they are and be contrarians about this. "No, it isn't that bad, relax, in fact, what you think is bad is good, because I see the nuisance of this situation, because I'm that much more wise and brilliant", says the opinion editors.

And yeah, maybe that is all a metaphor for something. I can't really say for sure. Nor will I be particular vague about it, what am I, Jonathan Swift? All I do know is that there is no part of me that wants to watch this unfold. I have no doubt about the outcome. Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs will three-peat, and it will be miserable.

Here's what I don't want to hear: "relax, be positive, enjoy yourself." Instead, let's appreciate the power of Hating. I am full of Hate. This is a full-on, big league, major levels of Hate now in 2025. I think this is healthy, to really really deeply despise something. The power of positive thinking only gets you so far. No, you need to recognize when you're fucking pissed and you need to relish that emotion. Really stew in the broiling hatred. Braise yourself in your contempt. Be really fucking mad and don't give yourself a reason. Do you need a reason to enjoy something? No. The power of sports is to create completely arbitrary emotions. It is emotional gambling, and also real gambling, parasitic to a reckless degree. What happens with a random ball bouncing two thousand miles away means nothing to me. It has as much affect on my life as the shape stars million and billions of miles apart appear to have if viewed from Earth's arbitrary position in the universe. If the Broncos shocking us all and winning ten games in a season can bring me joy, than the Chiefs being this damn unending of a nuisance should also bring me to a rolling boil.

I have motto these days: A.B.H.

A. - Always

B. - Be

H. - Hatin'