The Top 24 Movies of 2024, From 'Super/Man' and 'Babygirl' to Netflix’s 'Hit Man' and 'Woman of the Hour'

Happy Tuesday morning, folks!

How about those Golden Globes on Sunday night? I caught about 30 minutes of the show, half of which were spent watching the winners make their way to the stage, where they awkwardly wondered which camera to look into. Congrats to all the A-list talent who decided to stay home and dodge a bullet.

Nikki Glaser, who is just as hilarious with her new nose but a lot less relatable, did a good job with her monologue — and with censoring herself for an extremely sensitive industry audience. I’ve been a fan for at least a decade, and it’s nice to see the rest of the world come around to her talent. But yeah, the risque jokes she presented on The Howard Stern Show were a lot funnier.

As for the Globe winners, they were fine — it’s hard to complain about the success of The Brutalist — but the truth is that they don’t matter a single, solitary iota. I’d be a hypocrite if I suggested that the Globes suddenly mean something simply because one of my favorite films won the top prize.

The truth is that nothing that happened on Sunday night will affect what is going to happen on March 2, 2025 — not even the speeches.

Demi Moore was either going to be nominated for Best Actress, or she wasn’t. Her Golden Globes speech won’t get her an Oscar nomination that she otherwise would not have received. I know people want to believe that stuff matters, but I refuse to believe that it does.

The Golden Globes are voted on by 300 international journalists, which is like saying, “We picked 300 random people off the street and built an entire awards show around their taste.” Some of these people are paid annual salaries of $75,000, which is more than Jay Penske pays some of his own employees who work for him year-round.

So it drives me nuts when otherwise smart pundits like The Ankler’s Katey Rich write stuff like, “The Golden Globe has made [Zoe Saldana] the one to beat,” or, “For months, [Demi] Moore has seemed to be on the bubble of making the Oscar best actress five; I’d say last night’s speech cements her spot.”

With all due respect to Katey, who is lovely, but what are you talking about?

300 random journalists no one has heard of — okay, there are, like, five I’ve heard of — think one thing, so that makes Saldana the one to beat in the eyes of a different group of voters featuring no overlap? Demi Moore wins a Globe for Best Comedy or Musical — I don’t remember The Substance being either one, quite frankly — and suddenly, she’s a lock for a nomination? How so?

I just don’t see a correlation whatsoever, and I’m convinced that anyone who does is grasping at straws to place some kind of significance upon the Globes, which none of these pundits have the balls to simply ignore. They can’t afford to — it’s an opportunity for their sites to drive traffic, and for them to get dressed up and rub shoulders with celebs.

And believe me, I get it… because I used to be them. But at least I knew what I was before I refused to keep playing the part. I think the current media class has lost any and all sense of self-awareness. Few have any personal brand, for they’ve drunk the corporate Kool-Aid.

Meanwhile, some of these outlets that claim to be taking a stand over the Globes are talking out of both sides of their mouth, as they still apply for a media credential and send a reporter and devote coverage to what is ultimately all fake. It’s pretend. Yet they continue to spend real money on and devote real resources to perpetuating the credibility of this industry circus.

It’s funny, my fellow newsletter men Richard Rushfield and Matt Belloni have both thrown some shade on The Brutalist winning Best Picture because Globes co-owner Todd Boehly was an early investor in A24. But I imagine that The Brutalist won Best Picture - Drama because it was clearly the best movie up for that particular award.

No, the Best Picture statue that raised an eyebrow to me was, of course, Emilia Perez, which beat both Anora and Wicked for Best Picture - Comedy or Musical, which is insane by any measure. The only rationale is that it makes sense that 300 international journalists would select the sole international movie in the race.

To me, what Emilia Perez’s Globes win really does, whether voters knew it would or not — is that it keeps Netflix on the hook by subtly encouraging the streamer to spend more on FYC ads in the Penske trades. Its victory has sold the streamer on the idea that Emilia Perez represents its strongest chance to win Best Picture in years, and to go all-in on its chances, with a full-blown FYC campaign coming in Phase 2 of awards season.

If Emilia Perez had lost, Netflix may have thought about packing it in and submitting to a Wicked victory, but I don’t think it will now even though the streamer shouldn’t read anything into it, and I personally wouldn’t spend a penny more than I had to on an Oscar campaign for that film, which is a lost cause in my mind.

Meanwhile, I thought the industry had come to its senses a few years ago when everyone pretended to be fed up with this charade because of its lack of diversity, but that problem has since been “solved,” and everyone is back to going along to get along.

Yes, everyone knows the Globes are a sham, but it’s another opportunity for everyone in the industry to get paid — from the valets outside the hotel to the waitstaff inside the ballroom to the hair and makeup artists who make stars camera-ready, to the photographers on the carpet itself, to the security positioned at the ends of each carpet, to the babysitters watching the kids whose parents are out for the night.

If the Golden Globes don’t exist, none of those people get paid, which is why they exist. It’s a billable hour, or four, that supports an entire cottage industry, one that continues to be exploited around the world without the pesky eye of any industry press, since they all share the same owner as the show itself.

I still think there are a handful of movies that could win Best Picture, and that The Brutalist is the most worthy winner among them. Not the best film, mind you — as you’ll see below — but the movie that is in play and most deserving of that particular award… along with Best Director and Best Actor, too.

Best Actress is still wide open — Best Supporting Actress is a little less so — and Best Supporting Actor continues to trend in the direction of Kieran Culkin even though I’m skeptical his turn in A Real Pain will resonate strongly enough to go all the way, nor do I think it deserves to.

And don’t even get me started on the newsletters that the studios are advertising in — they might as well create the ads with invisible ink. Everyone knows that if you want to be seen these days, you appear in this newsletter, which people read with a magnifying glass, but eventually, ad buyers will figure out what’s good for them.

In tonight’s newsletter, you’ll read the full 5,000+ word list of my Top 24 Movies of 2024, which features a handful of movies you’ve heard of, and maybe a few that you haven’t.

There are also items about Jacob Elordi, Bret Easton Ellis, Palak Patel, and Arianna Bocco, and I bid farewell to directors Jeff Baena and Charles Shyer.

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