Top 25 Movies I Watched in 2024
Plus an essay on Adam Sandler's 'Spaceman' that never got published.
In 2024 I consumed consumed consumed consumed consumed consumed consumed. I am looking back on it. I am inviting you to look back with me. This is the follow up to my Pulitzer Prize-nominated newsletter “Books I Read in 2024.” It’s targeted for the less literate audience. But I guess you have to know how to read in order to read it. And if you want to read it, I don’t really understand you. But still, I’m following up on my compulsion to share it with you. I like having a public diary. You can unsubscribe if you want. Or you can subscribe. I NEED TO BUILD A PLATFORM. I’M DESPERATE. HELP ME. RESPOND TO THE FOLLOWING POLL!!!!
Speaking of platforms, I resisted using Letterboxd for years, but in the distant past (2023) some friends finally convinced me to start posting on there. I’m a committed Goodreads user, and Letterboxd is basically the same thing but better… but oftentimes the reviews I read on there piss me off. Usually it’s because people rate movies and then try to throw out like one funny line that actually isn’t that funny. Which is what I’ve done below. At least it helped me remember what I watched.
I don’t feel as guilty ranking movies like I would books, especially because I don’t have any personal connection to the people who made the movies I watched. So the below Movies I Watched in 2024 are ranked in order from WORST to BEST.
25. Lisa Frankenstein
Unwatchable.
But I watched it.
24. Maestro
Somehow worse than Wonka.
23. Wonka
Horrible.
22. Anyone But You
Absolute trash.
21. The Fall Guy
Most movies about Hollywood sucking itself off suck way more than this, and this still sucks pretty hard. Ryan Gosling was a bad casting choice. He’s too famous. I’d never heard of Emily Blunt before but apparently she’s famous too. Thought she did great though. Too much cutting between scenes. Too long. Bad.
20. Priscilla
This was an enjoyable and almost entirely forgettable movie that didn’t glorify Elvis like most movies do. I need to watch more Sofia Coppola. I’m ranking it so low because I watched it early in the year, and I can barely remember anything about it. Sorry!
19. Poor Things
Not for me. My opinion might be impacted because I watched with my mother-in-law and it’s all about a woman’s sexual awakening. I generally haven’t liked Yorgos Lanthimos’ movies as much as other people seem to, but I haven’t watched Kinds of Kindness yet, and I’m expecting to also not like that much.
18. Killers of the Flower Moon
Feels like every four years I get scammed into “voting for the lesser of two evils” and “watching a Martin Scorsese movie.”
17. Inside Out
I enjoyed this children’s movie. I also thought it was funny when I overheard a little girl at an airport saying her favorite character is Anxiety. Anxiety didn’t exist when I was a kid. Even though I had it.
16. Self-Reliance
My podcast company Giardiniera Media provided video editing and YouTube management services for Jake Johnson’s podcast We’re Here to Help (I didn’t really do anything or make any money from it, but I can still claim credit), so I’m slightly biased in saying I like his work and appreciate his foray into directing and independently produced stuff. This movie had a great premise but the execution wasn’t fully there.
15. Dune: Part Two
As a huge fan of the Dune book and the David Lynch adaptation, I really wanted to hate the new Dune and didn’t love the first one. This one was one of the first movies I saw in a movie theater in a long time, though, and I loved it a lot. It’s loud and dusty.
14. Spaceman
Scroll to the bottom of this article for the full text of the essay I wrote for LA Review of Books about the 2024 Adam Sandler Netflix classic Spaceman and the novel it was based on, Spaceman of Bohemia. My essay was never published and probably never will be, so I’ll just post it here, buried at the end of a blog post about movies. I honestly think it’s a bad essay, but it’s also pointless if I never publish it, so czech it out (sorry).
13. Dream Scenario
I don’t love Nicolas Cage the way people who love memes seem to love him but I have loved several of his movies, and this is the best one since arguably the best movie of all time: PIG.
12. Godzilla Minus One
Yeah. It’s good, it’s heavy, it’s a little slow, but that’s alright.
11. Con Air
I’d never seen it before, but it was awesome. Maybe I am one of those Nic Cage Guys.
10. Twister
I’d also never seen Twister before because I was terrified of actual twisters growing up in Champaign, Illinois and I was terrified to go on the Twister ride at Universal Studios but after watching Twisters I was like damn, that’s a unique and cool concept and great execution and luckily Twister was the exact same movie.
9. Twisters
Like Twister but newer and with a sexier cast. Nice.
8. Captain Underpants: The First Movie
This was so good. Loved this book series as a kid and I enjoyed watching it with my kid, even though he’s too young to be watching anything.
7. The Zone of Interest
I usually prefer thinking about craft while watching a movie rather than whatever other people focus on, like the themes and the meaning and whatnot. This movie made me think about themes and meaning and whatnot. But I also thought about the craft, because the form of the movie is what made me think about themes and meaning. The cinematography and shots were so unusual. Very strange and unsettling. Boring, at times, which seemed purposeful. I can’t remember if this won any Academy Awards but it should have. Super powerful, good, boring but in an interesting way movie. I fell asleep before the controversial ending, but I read about it and liked the idea of it.
6. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
It feels WEIRD ranking this ahead of Zone of Interest, but I watched this on a plane and it was good. Weird Al is one of those characters who seems to resonate with such a wide audience, and fill a particular niche that can never be recreated. He’s truly a national treasure. Harry Potter crushed it in the main role. It was much better and more memorable than Priscilla, in terms of biopics, no offense.
5. SHOT
This was a movie SHOT in the 70s for $15K in my hometown of Champaign, IL, by some university students. It’s kind of hard to find but it was recently rereleased on Blu Ray. I watched it illegally, though. If you’re interested in making low budget film outside of the Hollywood system, this is an interesting template from 50 years ago. I’m ranking it so high because movies are never really made in my hometown, and it was cool to see the scenery from back then. Also they did some nuts stuff like get overhead shots out of helicopters, which is fun.
4. The Substance
Thought that was Courtney Cox on the poster. I don’t really know who Demi Moore is. I just did an internet search for “Demi Moore Tom Cruise” because I thought maybe she was the wife that made him jump on Oprah’s couch, but it turns out that was Katie Holmes. Also, it turns out Demi Moore and Tom Cruise were both in A Few Good Men, which I haven’t seen but people tell me I should see. I might be ranking The Substance so highly because of recency bias, but it was such an interesting and unique concept. I guess you could call it “body horror,” but it’s also funny. It feels both high and low budget at the same time. It has a late 80s/early 90s vibe, and Demi Moore reads newspapers but texts on a cell phone. So I guess it’s an eternal story. Really great.
3. Wicked
I didn’t fall asleep. I pondered the nature of good and evil. I held back from singing. I wasn’t going to sing any of these trash musical songs because I didn’t know them. But every time I go to the movie theater (1x per year) I just get an uncontrollable urge to SING!
I like Ariana Grande. Didn’t know she was the co-star of the film until the movie started. I consumed one small popcorn, a bag of sour patch, a coke icee, a water and a Heineken. Peed once and missed a crucial plot point. Some of that animal rights subplot and the dumber explanations for Wizard of Oz shit were lame, but overall this was a surprisingly great PG movie. I love musicals.
2. The Wizard of Oz
Undisputed classic.
1. Y2K
I went into this movie cold, knowing nothing other than Kyle Mooney directed it. Usually I claim that spoilers don’t matter, but in this case my enjoyment of the film greatly benefited from not knowing anything. Opening scene I worried it was going to be a SEARCHING rip-off. First 20 minutes I worried it was gonna be Kyle Mooney’s SUPERBAD. At the point where the premise of the movie kicked in, it took me by surprise and I was fully on board. Spoiler alert: Y2K actually happens.
It was interesting to watch this in the theater and hear people laughing just from recognizing nostalgic things from 1999, or seeing Kyle Mooney in dreads. There was also one line referencing the main character’s skate shoes where nobody in the theater laughed except for one guy loudly cackling. Felt like I was watching a sketch show in a black box theater.
I logged on after the movie and read reviews trashing it, and I’m not sure why. I thought it was great. Best movie since Brigsby Bear. Best movie of the year. I’m old.
And now I present to you my article about Spaceman and Spaceman of Bohemia, including an interview with the author of Spaceman of Bohemia Jaroslav Kalfar.
“When you think ‘Czech astronaut,’ Adam Sandler isn’t always the first person that comes to mind,” says author Jaroslav Kalfar.
But that’s who plays the lead role in Spaceman, the new Netflix film adaptation of Kalfar’s 2017 novel Spaceman of Bohemia. Jakub Procházka is an astronaut on a solo voyage to the mysterious purple dust of the Chopra Cloud near Jupiter. As he drifts deeper into the emptiness of space, Procházka reckons with both the sudden, unexplained abandonment of his wife on Earth, and the appearance of a Paul Dano-voiced, Nutella-slurping arachnoid alien.
The character of Jakub Procházka—equal parts absurdly comedic and tragically dramatic—doesn’t stray far from Sandler’s expected career milieu. When you think ‘Adam Sandler,’ you might think ‘Happy Gilmore taking softballs to the chest and whacking Carl Weathers’ prosthetic hand onto the highway.’ Or you might think ‘Howard Ratner risking it all on a big parlay, grinding his teeth watching KG on the opening tip.’ Despite relentless critical malignment during the Sandman’s early 90s SNL tenure and the latter half of that decade’s goofball comedy era, films like Uncut Gems and smaller passion projects like Hustle—plus a nostalgic, retroactive fondness for the earlier output—has reversed the critical consensus. Adam Sandler has range. He takes risks. When you think ‘Astronaut, in a $40 million moody, contemplative film,’ Sandler could reasonably come to mind.
It’s Procházka’s Czechness—an integral aspect of the source material’s characterization—that complicates Sandler’s casting. Through allusions to Czech history and mythology, Spaceman of Bohemia places Procházka’s Czech identity at the forefront. In long chapters about the character’s childhood and adolescence—revealed only in brief flashbacks in the film—Kalfar explores the way the Czech Republic’s changing political and economic systems have impacted multiple generations of individuals living there.
American screenwriter Colby Day and Swedish director Johan Renck decided to focus less on Czech mythology, more on Procházka’s relationships with his wife Lenka (portrayed by Carey Mulligan) and the arachnoid alien Hanuš. Procházka retains his Czechness in the adaptation, but the filmmakers only hint at it in minor background detail. Procházka’s spacesuit has a patch of the Czech flag, but another European country’s flag could be sewn in its place without the plot losing anything. In Spaceman of Bohemia, as the elongated title suggests, Jakub Procházka must be Czech. In Spaceman, he can be Adam Sandler.
“Czech Astronaut” and “Adam Sandler” appear incongruous. Both Sandler’s career and the history of the Czech Republic can, however, be described in the same way as Procházka: a blend of absurdist comedy and tragic drama.
From Little Nicky to Punch Drunk Love, Sandler has proven his performance range. He can find humor in darkness, and vice versa. Beneath the funny antics of Billy Madison lies the sadness of a man who won’t grow up. It took serious dramatic roles for the Sandman to be taken seriously, but that hasn’t stopped him from putting out a new Murder Mystery. He can do it all. Sandler is a megastar, renowned globally, but the significance of his cultural contributions have been historically overlooked.
The Czech political and economic system has undergone sequential generational transformations, from the Nazi occupation in 1938 through the end of World War II, to a brief period of reformed socialism in the late 1960s, to Soviet puppet government takeover in the 70s and 80s, and the 1989 Velvet Revolution’s peaceful transition to capitalist democracy. In each of these periods, Czech literature and film has tended toward the comically absurd as artists living there have reckoned with the conditions those in power have forced upon them. The underground music scenes of the 70s and 80s drew from Frank Zappa, The Velvet Underground, and avant-garde movements. Before serving as President of Czechoslovakia in 1989 and the first president of the newly-established Czech Republic in 1993, Vaclav Havel was a playwright and poet who adored Lou Reed.
The surface-level narrative is that the rebellious Czech art of the Soviet occupation led to the nation’s independence, but in many instances the repressed writers and musicians were natural products of their environment rather than active antagonists against it. Literature-wise, Kafka, Kundera, Hašek and Hrabal are the most internationally-renowned examples from various eras. Like any regional scene, the depth and scope goes much deeper and carries on today. Kalfar recommends Jiří Hájíček, Petra Soukupová, and Magdalena Platzová as contemporary must-reads. Like Adam Sandler, the cultural contributions of Czech artists—and international understanding of the nuanced context from which that art emerged—have remained massively underappreciated.
Spaceman of Bohemia is a modern example of a Czech author using absurdism to examine the impact changing political power has on a nation’s citizens. This includes Czechia’s ongoing embrace of Western capitalist democracy. A handful of ridiculous corporations sponsor Procházka’s mission. The government’s space program praises the astronaut as a national folk hero, selling merch whenever possible. Raised during the end of the Stalinist era, with beliefs and opinions shaped by those times and those that followed, Procházka represents a generation pushing forward wholeheartedly into capitalism, regardless of the consequences of its excesses. It takes an absurdist element—the alien spider Hanuš—for Procházka to confront his true place in a universe governed by natural laws far beyond human comprehension.
In one of the novel’s flashbacks set on Earth, in Prague, Procházka travels to the busy central area of Wenceslas Square. The narrator describes his surroundings: “Alcohol sales keep the vendors in competition with the McDonald’s, the KFC, the Subway, those invaders seducing the populace with the sweet breath of air-conditioning, restrooms free of toilet paper charge, hot food injected with chemical pleasure.” The capitalist period of Czech history is marked by this corporate kind of American occupation, and sending an astronaut on a pointless mission to deep space pushes capitalist thinking to a plausible extreme.
On the topic of KFC, and how it relates to the modern incarnation of capitalism in his home country, Kalfar says, “We Czechs have embraced capitalism with open arms, and our transformation brought much prosperity, so it is a complicated issue, because this process of corporations coming in and changing the country of course looked great as it was happening, after decades of oppression and austerity, but where are we headed now? Our politicians are adopting the American model of society: cutting retirement payments for seniors, allowing college to become expensive, disassembling our very affordable healthcare system. Many things trouble me about capitalism, and this is one of them: the idea of running a country like a corporation. So, now we have overembraced capitalism. Instead of looking at it merely as an economic system, we are making it a philosophy of living, the main organizing principle for Everything. We should’ve stuck to just enjoying our Original Recipe.”
Other characters in the book help illustrate earlier Czech periods. Procházka’s father represents both the idealistic hope of socialist revolution and the ensuing hypocrisy of the Soviet era: he was a Party spy who secretly listened to confiscated Elvis records. Procházka’s grandparents have lived through it all, including the Nazi occupation, and they do their best to survive and provide for their descendants despite the challenges changing systems bring upon them. A character named Shoe Man haunts the Procházka family in a vengeful pursuit: Procházka’s late father arrested and tortured him under communism, and under capitalism Shoe Man schemes to drive Jakub and his grandparents out of their rural land with intergenerational spite and malice. The interactions between these characters—all of whom, sans the vague references and brief appearances of Procházka’s father, are excised from the film script—call forth the way individuals behave according to (or regardless of) the political situations in which they find themselves.
As a response to Shoe Man’s harassment, Procházka both attempts to atone for his father’s transgressions and inadvertently mimics the same path. Procházka risks his life for the glory of the Czech Republic, willfully endorsing disinfectant brands and cinema chains as he journeys into the unknown. He’s happy to be a cog in the machine, because it brings him a false sense of power and importance. In order to attain that power, Procházka has to submit himself fully to his nation’s new system, like his father did the previous one. The systems they embrace are theoretical opposites, but the manner in which the characters embrace them is the same.
Spaceman of Bohemia shows the ways in which characters are affected by societal forces outside of their control, like the changing of governments, but it also demonstrates how humans behave regardless of their political environments. When Shoe Man confronts Procházka at a pivotal moment, he says, “If the Americans had liberated us from Hitler before the Russians, we could’ve been free. Your father and I might’ve been great friends. You could’ve taken all the gum you wanted from me. I wonder. I always wonder.” If Procházka’s father grew up in a capitalist system, Shoe Man suggests, he would have behaved differently. The opposite could also be true. A man who becomes a Party spy might become a ‘Karen’ under capitalism.
“Power is what drives people to do truly brutal things, and this is the case in any political system,” Kalfar says. “Jakub’s father would make for a terrific capitalist, because he has no trouble being a true believer in order to position himself closer to power.”
Procházka deviates from his father’s absoluteness in that he does—amidst a psychological breakdown and existential crisis on the doomed space shuttle—question how his behavior aligns with his own intrinsic values. Flying a spaceship to Jupiter makes him an instant national legend, but costs him his sanity and his marriage. The price of his ambition is horrifying loneliness, and he breaks from generational trauma to pontificate on the worthiness of it all. Hanuš—again, an alien spider voiced by Paul Dano—steers him toward epiphany.
Due to the inherent formal limitations and time constraints of film compared to literary prose, the adaptation of Spaceman loses the significance of these Czech-specific themes. The ‘Czech Space Program’ becomes the ‘Euro Space Program.’ A competing Russian spaceship becomes a South Korean ship, losing a significant historical contextualization. Kalfar suggests that change might have been a result of the current geo-political landscape, which also emphasizes how artistic decisions are made with capitalist considerations under our system.
Film also presents opportunities that don’t exist in literature, and Spaceman exploits them. As Sandler floats through Jan Huš 1—the space shuttle named after the Czech theologian who launched the reformist Hussite movement—the set continuously rotates behind him. It’s a disorienting effect that amplifies the unfamiliar motions of space travel. In the absence of Kalfar’s narration, these visual tricks call forth how the unsettling qualities of the ship heighten Procházka’s despair. The camerawork on Earth is also unsteady, mirroring Procházka’s uncertainty about his wife Lenka or the fuzzy memories of his father. Seeing and hearing the alien spider Hanuš, too, establishes a quiet and somber tone that reader of the novel might interpret differently.
By shifting the focus away from the specificity of Czech history, but keeping Procházka’s emotional arc, Spaceman’s filmmakers reveal the universal nature of the protagonist’s ambition, loneliness, dedication, nostalgia, and regret. A Czech story becomes a human one.
Any adaptation is a form of translation, but Spaceman of Bohemia has already been translated at multiple levels. Kalfar grew up in the Czech Republic, and moved to the United States at age fifteen. He wrote Spaceman of Bohemia in English, about Czech characters in Prague and smaller villages. Within the novel, his characters translate ideas, attitudes, and cultural values across generations. Procházka’s relationship with his parents and grandparents reflects the current state of Czechia, in which an older generation grew up under communism and the younger generation grew up under KFC. Because of the unavoidable psychological toll political systems have on individuals, family members can be fundamentally at odds with each other. “All of them are haunted by the different political movements and historical tragedies that shape their time,” Kalfar says. “Often, they misunderstand each other, and the tension of the misunderstanding is at the heart of the shame that drives Jakub to accept a suicide mission.” The impossible process of translation, therefore, is the novel’s driving force.
Kalfar says that part of his intention in writing Spaceman of Bohemia was to explore another type of translation: reframing Czech identity. “For decades my nation was associated with communism, dissidents, fighting for freedom of art and expression,” he says. “We won that struggle—so, what now? Who are we? Where are we headed? And what do we want to be known for?”
These are all questions Adam Sandler might be asking himself as his career undergoes another transformation. Decades removed from Opera Man and “The Hanukkah Song,” Adam Sandler is taking on supporting roles in films like You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah, starring his wife and daughters. He’s taking chances on intimate Netflix dramas adapted from contemporary literary speculative fiction.
Sandler could provide a template for Czech artists like Kalfar. If his career parallels Czech history, there is hope of reclaiming the narrative. Recognition is long overdue.
“I used to think of Adam as the distinctly American funny guy, and nothing else,” Kalfar says. “But now I’ve experienced the depth of his devotion to his roles, his curiosity, his love for his family, his seriousness, his warmth. Similarly, I always hope my work might inspire people to look deeper into my country. Beyond the dissident art that came out of communism, beyond Kafka and Havel, beyond the things a lot of people associate us with most today, which is beer and pornography.”
Of all the Czech specificity lost in translation from the book to the film, one crucial mythologization remains: Procházka naming the alien spider Hanuš. The name refers to a well known Czech legend. The story goes that Hanuš built the astronomical clock in Prague’s Old Town Square in 1490. The local government was so displeased that they blinded him so he could never build another clock. So he sneakily disabled it, and no one was able to fix it for a century. Now, it’s one of the city’s top tourist destinations, and a spectacle of primitive genius. Historians claim to have debunked the story of Hanuš, but the significance of the story being passed down for generations makes it, in a sense, real.
“So much of Jakub’s motivation is driven by conflict about nationalism, and his father’s relationship with nationalism,” Kalfar says. “Czech myths and legends are crucial in this, as this kind of lore is tied up intimately with national consciousness. The legend of Hanuš was a powerful one for me when I was growing up, and it made sense that it would be powerful for Jakub too, because it is a tale passed on from his ancestors. A myth so powerful that it is the first thing that comes to mind when he names his life’s greatest discovery.”
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think ‘Adam Sandler?’ In addition to all the aforementioned roles, a wide-ranging multitude of characters and personality traits might appear. Including, now, ‘Czech Astronaut.’ It just so happens that the Czechness of that astronaut, so crucial in the novel, has been relegated to the background, like so much of both Adam Sandler and Czechia’s cultural contributions. That’s both tragic and funny.
Fun read. And if you don't know who Emily Blunt is, watch Edge Of Tomorrow (also includes Tom Cruise), which is like Groundhog Day with giant guns and scary aliens. Killer flick that turned 10 in 2024.