All the best movies of 2024 according to Karl Puschmann

As the year draws to a close the Herald’s entertainment columnist takes a look back at the films he enjoyed the most.

What a blinder of a year 2024 was at the movies! Or so I assume. I don’t know for certain as this year I didn’t get to the cinema as much as usual or as much as I’d like. What a time-poor year 2024 was!

But the films I did see I thoroughly enjoyed. For the most part, anyway. In this economy, it pays to be selective before heading out and handing over your hard-earned cash. Sadly, the days of taking a punt on movies that might be good, or might be so bad they’re good, are over. For my $20 I want as close to a seal of quality as I can get.

But even the best of us make mistakes – so what hope for the averagest of us? Is there a greater bummer than spending $20 of your money and two hours of your time on a solid gold turkey? Let me answer that; No.

I found this out the hard way by going to see the misguided musical-courtroom-drama Joker: Folie a Deux. And then, just to make sure the lesson was thoroughly learnt, I found out again by going to see the painfully slow action-drama Gladiator II. Maybe I just don’t like hyphen-dramas? That’s a strong possibility.

Joaquin Phoenix (left) and Lady Gaga (right) in Joker: Folie a Deux. Photo / Warner Bros

But we are not here to dwell on our personal failings and lapses of judgment. Let old mistakes be forgot and never brought to mind etc. Instead, let’s remember the good times. The happy times. The times the $20 admission felt like a steal.

Topping that list for me has to be Denis Villeneuve’s cerebral sci-fi action flick Dune: Part 2. When we talk of movies as an experience, this film is what we mean. A thrillingly brilliant realisation of an artistic vision that is strange and weird and frequently mind-blowing. And, by God, was the sound design ever incredible. Roll on Part 3.

Revving up dangerously close behind it was Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Which was another strange and weird, brilliantly realised artistic vision set on a mostly sandy planet. Director and co-writer George Miller’s bizarro, hyper-realised apocalyptic future was a totally chaotic thrill ride that like Mad Max: Fury Road before it, was mostly a calamitous, two-hour set-piece vehicle-based havoc and destruction.

I don’t know if “enjoyed” is the right word to use when talking about the The Substance‘s gross-out body-horror satire. But this grotesque gonzo rollercoaster didn’t just tick my favoured boxes of “strange” and “weird”, it mutated them in a viscerally horrifying fashion. If only it’d been set on a sandy desert instead of glitzy Los Angeles it may have placed higher on my list.

Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool & Wolverine.

And rounding out the blockbusters was Deadpool & Wolverine, whose meta-comedy, purposefully crude comedy, solid action spectacle and emotional sincerity proved the antidote to superhero fatigue.

As a good and responsible parent, I like to take my two children to the movies in the hopes that it will instil a lifelong love of the cinema. This frequently means I’m sitting through stuff I’d rather not be. This year it was serviceable but not really $20-worthy films like Kung-Fu Panda 4 and Inside Out 2. These are the sacrifices parents have to make.

But one film we got all behind was Bookworm. This local film directed by Ant Timpson and starring Elijah Wood and local discovery Nell Fisher (look out for her in the upcoming season of Stranger Things) was delightfully weird and strange and a loving throwback to the classic ‘80s style of family adventure films. Easily my pick for the family movie of the year.

Loren Taylor and Robbie Magasiva star in The Moon Is Upside Down. Photo / Rebecca McMillan

Elsewhere on the local front, arthouse dramedy The Moon is Upside Down was neither strange nor weird but still won me over with its jaded yet hopeful take on romance and its dry, dark humour.

The Elizabeth Banks-led medical drama A Mistake was a relentlessly bleak, surgically executed film that was way more intense than a story revolving around hospital bureaucracy should be.

Of course, in this wondrous technological age in which we live theatres are no longer the only place movies are released. The streaming giants all beamed hundreds of new release, streaming-exclusive films of all genres and budgets straight into our homes.

But my faves tended to be the ones that I just collapsed in front of at the end of a long day, They didn’t ask anything more of me than to be simply entertained.

This is why the ridiculous remake of the Patrick Swayze action-classic Road House tops my list of Best Direct-to-Streaming movies, 2024. It was gleefully over the top and more cheesy than a mozzarella pizza. But damn was it a rollicking, bone-crunchingly entertaining good time.

So there we have it. The best films I saw this year. Roll credits.

Karl Puschmann is an entertainment columnist for the Herald. His fascination lies in finding out what drives and inspires creative people.