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I have now published several posts detailing the summary of 2024 in different areas, and I saved the one about my most common non-work activity for last. Of course, usual readers know that I have been publishing a post each week, since the end of March, listing the films I’ve watched and adding a short comment. So, it’s not like I - and readers interested in this subject - don’t know what kind of year it has been. Still, I thought it would be nice, at the end of 2024, to corroborate my certainties with some data.
I know it’s a long and probably uninteresting post for anybody but me, so feel free to skip some parts (or the post in its entirety). I’ll help you with a
Table of contents
Overall statistics for 2024
Before getting to the inevitable ‘Top’ charts of the year, let’s have a look at some general data.
In total, during the year I have watched 333 non-short films (by which I mean, having a runtime of at least 45 minutes) - 342 films if we include rewatches. It’s the highest number of movies I have seen in a year, amounting to 24 full days. That goes to show that New Year resolutions often don’t work.
83% of films were first-watches, and 35% of films were from the 2020s.
Films by Genre
Nobody who reads these pages will be surprised by the dominant genres in my year. Let’s just say it wasn’t a year for romance. Still, one in five films I watched was a comedy! That’s a good outcome.
Films by Country of Origin
I’m also not surprised the third place by Country of Origin is taken by Japan, since it clearly it has been the year of J-Horror for me; an unplanned theme, that started when I finished watching US horror film series (to the extent I cared about - I’m looking at you, Jason Goes to Hell). Still, I didn’t expect it to be so close to the UK’s second place. The US, predictably, are responsible for two-thirds of all my 2024.
Films by Production Company
Counting of the films I watched in 2024 by production company gives an unexpected dominance of Paramount Pictures, which is explained as a combination of the horror series I caught up with (Friday the 13th and Paranormal Activity) and the comedy ones I re-watched (the earlier Zucker-Abraham-Zucker films, the Wayne’s Worlds and the Addams Families).
The Paranormal Activities contribute also to the Blumhouse pile - which is then enriched by The Purge films - and the presence of Solana Films.
The first non-US company appearing is the Japanese Daiei Film, responsible for films ranging from Hiroshima Mon Amour to Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse and Serpent’s Path, as well as the Tomie films I started watching in the last months of the year.
Top released in 2024
So let’s go through the highlights of the year, starting with my Top Ten films released in 2024. What constitutes a ‘2024’ film varies depending on the Country, but the ten movies below should be valid for both Belgium and Italy.
Top Ten Films
Again, it’s not a big surprise to see that most films are either horror or horror-adjacent stories.
Alex Garland’s Civil War is of course more relevant than ever, as is Zoë Kravitz’s amazing debut film Blink Twice: in both cases, the urgency of the subject matter is evident, but it doesn’t prevent from telling a good story.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things was the zany inventive film we needed at the beginning of the year. But it was Luca Guadagnino who proposed the nudity-free sexiest film of the year (ok, maybe after Hit Man? And in fairness, I haven’t been able to see Love Lies Bleeding) and managed to create the rare event where I loved a story despite not agreeing with it in his Challengers.
All of Us Strangers by Andrew Heigh brought the tears and the emotion.
Demián Rugna’s When Evil Lurks and Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs are the two films I had to re-watch immediately after the first time, both incredibly upsetting and atmospheric.
Strange Darling by JT Mollner was a late watch during the year (it didn’t have a wide theatrical release in Belgium, and it took a while to be available for renting), but luckily I managed to avoid any spoiler. I loved the fact I could distinctly hear the penny dropping in my head at the right time.
Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days was also a last-minute addition to my 2024 films. Aside from it bringing back some personal emotions, it was the low-key feel-good film that I needed to start the new year with quiet optimism. More so because, after all he went through during the whole year in all the Kiyoshi Kurosawa films I watched, finally I saw Koji Yakusho smile and be happy.
Finally, I pay my tribute to old favourite Denis Villeneuve and his epic Dune - Part Two.
As honourable mentions, I have to say that despite all its silliness and lack of originality, I loved Tim Burton’s return to fun with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and the flawed, but willing to do something interesting, Late Night with the Devil by Cameron and Colin Cairnes.
Top Directors and Writers
No need for a lot of additional words here: the top films of the year are reflected directly in my top directors and writers. I already mentioned Zoë Kravitz and Alex Garland, both of whom deserve the top spot both for directing and writing. The third director on the podium is of course Yorgos Lanthimos, even though I didn’t like his second release of the year (Kinds of Kindness) that much (despite it being closer to the Greek director’s debut films).
In terms of writing, top honours also for E.T. Feigenbaum (co-author of Blink Twice; he and Kravitz previously worked together on the High Fidelity TV series) and Tony McNamara, who adapted Alasdair Gray’s novel Poor Things (and previously co-wrote The Favourite for Lanthimos and Stone).
Top Actors
A total of 47 actors have appeared more than once in 2024 films I watched, with Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley present in four titles each (one of which required them to play multiple roles).
Emma Stone and Zendaya take the top spot, while Cailee Spaeny - this year’s ‘revelation’ for me with two lead roles, and I haven’t seen Priscilla - comes third.
Honourable mention in this category for another break-out star Adria Arjona (Blink Twice, Hit Man, plus I’ve seen The Belko Experiment this year, and I think I have seen Morbius - though I haven’t logged it).
Appearing in multiple films in not just a prerogative of lead actors: apparently Yorgos Stefanakos is a friend of Lanthimos, while Jerskin Fendrix, beside cameoing in both Lanthimos’ films, also composed their soundtracks.
And Giancarlo Esposito needs no introduction.
Top watched in 2024
Above was the ‘institutional’ part of the 2024 summary. You’ll find a million top tens for films released on a given year.
But what if we go back and take a look at the 2024 that was specifically mine, filled with a ‘unique’ selection of films?
Top Films
Of the 229 films released before 2024 that I watched for the first time in 2024, I rated 34 with a score of 4 or more: too many to list, but the ‘Top 2’ were the comedy-not-really-horror One Cut of the Dead from 2017, and the 2007 version of The Mist.
Top Directors and Writers
The criteria I’ve chosen for this section include directors and writers for whom I watched at least three films in 2024, excluding any rewatch (if I did include rewatches, Park Chan-wook would lead the chart, with six films, most of which I like a lot).
As I mentioned above, this year was all about Japan and horror (and their combination), and the main side effect of it was that I became a fan of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, although (or maybe because) his work can’t exactly be defined J-horror. Since he’s been active for quite a long time, I’ve had the opportunity to ‘discover’ six of his films this year (excluding Cure, which I saw two years ago).
The contribution of J-horror is quite evident, with the two most famous series fully represented by Hideo Nakata (four films, including Dark Water) and Takashi Shimizu (five films, including Tomie: Rebirth). Longlegs made me discover Osgood Perkins (although his other two films aren’t as good), whereas I explored more of Ti West’s production (partly) due to Maxxxine (with four films and the segment in The ABCs of Death).
Most of the directors mentioned are also screenwriters, so the only difference if we consider writers is that Hideo Nakata is replaced by Hiroshi Takahashi, who adapted Ringu from Kōji Suzuki’s novels, and also wrote Kurosawa’s Serpent’s Path.
Top Actors
The criteria for this section include, again, actors appearing in at least 3 films I watched for the first time in 2024. I define ’lead actors’ as those appearing within the first four places in the cast list.
If I had included rewatches, Song Kang-ho and Maika Monroe would have led the dances.
From the directors/writers list, naturally come the lead positions of Koji Yakusho, appearing in many Kurosawa films and leading Perfect Days, and Miki Nakatani, the protagonist of Ringu, also playing in the sequels.
Nicolas Cage’s presence is linked mainly to Longlegs, but I also watched Con Air for the first time, as well as Mom and Dad and Dream Scenario.
We already discussed Willem Dafoe.
Finally, Jun Kunimura appeared as a co-lead in several films from different authors.
The list of non-lead actors, with the same criteria, speaks for itself, showing how the the most well-known Japanese productions, especially from the early 2000s, reuse a lot of the same character actors.
Conclusion
I prepared many more details, but including them would make this post even longer and insufferable. It’s just a first-time analysis of my film experiences for a year, and I will try and improve - both from the analytical and technical point of view - in the future. I intend to create soon a general movie statistics page, where I will consider my whole history of film ratings.