The Best Movies and TV Shows I've Watched in 2024

Credit: Tippi Hedren book "The Cats of Shambala"

1) Aniara, Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja, 2018

I came across this movie very randomly on reddit. The plot sounded interesting and I found it in my HBO Max account. I thought - Iet’s give this movie 30 minutes. I have a test where if I’m not sure about a movie, I’ll give it 30 minutes and if it doesn’t have my rapt attention in 30 minutes, I shut it off. This movie kept my attention for the entire time and now, months later, I still can’t stop thinking about it. 

This is one of the most unique, realistic, and depressing movies I’ve ever seen. It takes place in the future where Earth is ravaged and people are traveling to Mars to live. This plot is about a group of people on a luxurious spaceship traveling from Earth to Mars in three weeks. The spaceship is about 3 miles long and 0.5 miles wide. The starting population is 8000 people. 

But a few days into the journey, random space debris hits the spaceship, causing it to eject all its fuel and veer off-course. The captain initially says it will take them 2 years to get back on track but that ends up becoming 6 million years. The movie focuses on how these 8000 people deal with living in this “floating sarcophagi.”
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What I appreciated most about this movie was how realistic it was. I saw parts of myself in both the main character, the Mimarobe, and in her partner, Isagel. What really broke my heart was the journey the Mimarobe goes through. She starts off the journey alone, develops the relationship with Isagel, she is happy, they have a child, but her life ends in utter despair 24 years later as one of the few remaining survivors starving to death. The scene that stands out to me the most is 10 years in, after Isagel and the baby are gone, when she gets her medal from the captain. You can tell she doesn’t care. She goes back to her room, throws it on the floor, and collapses on her bed. The algae food and water supply are slowly contaminating in the background. It kind of reminded me of myself during a period of time when I was not feeling great. But the difference is that I was able to remove myself from the situation and become happy again whereas the Mimarobe was stuck there until the sweet release of death. 
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This movie does NOT hold back on anything. Whenever you watch space movies about people going to Mars, it’s always a joyous adventure or a horror movie where aliens try to kill you. There’s never a “normal” movie exploring how normal people would react in a situation like this. Aniara is a masterpiece. I looked up the 2 co-directors (Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja) and found it disappointing that they didn’t get opportunities to direct other feature length movies shortly after. Hopefully things change for them because I can’t wait to see what they do next.

​2) Mare of Easttown, Craig Zobel,​ 2021

This show is SO SO SO GOOD. It’s one of those shows that everyone wouldn’t shut up again and I finally thought, Okay, I’ll give it a go. I was SO hooked on it since the very first episode. Kate Winslet is spectacular as always and the rest of the cast is very strong. I like true crime stories and while I feel like this plot really did ask us to suspend our disbelief, it was very entertaining. I really, REALLY hope they have a second season!!!!
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I also want to note one thing. Kate Winslet looks like a totally normal woman in this show with a normal face and normal hair (if anything, she wore a wig to make her hair seem more natural looking). I kept thinking, “That’s how I look and dress every day!”I really appreciated it. And that’s all I’m going to say.

​3) Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Marielle Heller, 2018

I was surprised by how much I liked this movie. The plot is pretty basic but Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant are SO great!I I still see Melissa McCarthy as Sookie from Gilmore Girls so I wasn’t sure what to expect. This is one of those movies where the performances completely elevate the movie and make it spectacular. It's darkly hilarious and touching. The last scene between the two made me laugh. The tone of a movie like this is hard to achieve. It’s basically a movie about 2 characters who commit crime. (Are they really criminals though? Because the people who buy her manuscripts sell it for even more money even when they know they’re fake). But you like them and can’t stop laughing throughout the film.

​4) Citizen X, Chris Gerolmo, 1995

This movie is really, REALLY good. It’s about a serial killer in Soviet Russia. That tagline didn’t capture my attention, I thought it would be a boring Russian procedural. But it’s actually a very well-cast movie with a terrific plot that moves along at a good pace. Donald Sutherland is always so great in whatever he is in (may be rest in peace). From what I can tell, the director Chris Gerolmo stayed true to the source material and it is uncomfortable knowing just how much the serial killer got away with due to the bureaucracies in place.

​5) Rosemary’s Baby, Roman Polanski, 1968

Who hasn’t watched this by now?? We revisited this movie and I am always reminded about just how good it is. Their apartment building (modeled after The Dakota in NYC) is a character in itself. Ever since I got involved in real estate stuff, I pay a lot of attention now to how homes looked in different eras. I reread the Ira Levin book again after watching it. There are so many movies after that have copied this exact plot but they’re not good. Rosemary’s Baby is very basic at the end of the day. You don’t actually see anything. It’s the performances that make it so good. I was very excited to watch Apt 7A which also came out earlier this year but the reviews have been unfortunately not great as it appears to be a direct copy of Rosemary’s Baby with bad CGI. Some movies have that magic and others just don’t.

6) The Sentinel, Michael Winner, 1977

Since we’re on the subject of supernatural horrors movies, let’s jump next into The Sentinel. I was truly surprised by how much I liked this movie. I thought it was going to be a poor quality Rosemary’s Baby mixed with The Omen ripoff. But this movie was surprisingly terrific! First of all, it has an extremely stacked cast. As we watched the opening credits, I start reading the actor names out loud “Jeff Goldblum? Beverly D'Angelo?? Christopher Walken?? Ava Gardner???? What kind of movie is this??” This movie came out in 1977 and all those names I read off (with the exception of Ava Gardner) were at the very beginning of their careers. I couldn’t believe how young Christopher Walken looked. He legitimately looked like he was still in college. 

Cristina Raines and Chris Sarandon are the two main leads. Cristina Raines is SO BEAUTIFUL. I thought she was also very good in her role. Chris Sarandon in this movie looks EXACTLY like one of my friends from college. I texted him after and said, “Did you know that in 1977, actor Chris Sarandon could have been your identical twin?” 
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I loved the Brooklyn brownstone that Cristina Raines lived in. This Brooklyn brownstone is still standing and looks identical to the way it was in the movie. I’ll be stopping by the next time I’m in Brooklyn to take a look.

This is the Brooklyn brownstone building from the movie. Credit: Google Maps

​7) True Detective season 4, Issa López, 2024

I tried watching the first season of True Detective and was NOT a fan. I turned it off after watching 30 minutes of the first episode. It was very boring. I’ve been told the show gets better throughout the season but I didn’t feel like I would have the patience to get there. 

Season 4 was the opposite. It grabbed my attention very quickly in the first episode. I’m a big Jodie Foster fan! The show is very good. I don’t like supernatural shows because you can pretty much just film whatever you want with no coherent explanation for anything. Thankfully, this season has a decidedly non-supernatural reason for everything that happened. I truly didn’t expect that ending and thought it was so clever!

Issa López wrote, produced, and directed season 4. She is SO talented and I’m very happy to hear that she was hired to develop the 5th season as well. I will DEFINITELY be watching that and hope she is able to have an incredibly long and successful career.

​8) Woman of the Hour, Anna Kendrick, 2024

This is a movie that was just so-so to me but I found the story behind the movie to be even more interesting than the movie itself. 

Anna Kendrick has been very honest about a prior relationship that went bad and how that affected her. What was the most heartbreaking for me to hear was about the frozen embryos she created with this person (and the implication that she could no longer use them). I have a lot of thoughts about this but will not discuss them here. I just hope that Anna Kendrick is doing much better and finds a partner who is good to her. I personally don’t relate to what she went through exactly but relate to being in situations where you wish you were being treated better. Once I developed some self-esteem, I no longer found myself in those situations and met my partner M. If anyone needs me to give them a pep talk about this issue, I’m more than happy to do so. Life is significantly better when you’re in a relationship where you both genuinely love and care for each other.

I also applaud Anna Kendrick for directing a feature length movie. It is A LOT OF WORK!!!!!! They apparently filmed everything in 24 days with very little money. You are truly running around like a crazy person for 24 days straight to get everything done on time and on budget. I’m excited to see what Kendrick directs next.

9) Angel Heart, Alan Parker, 1987

I’m a big Alan Parker fan, may he rest in peace. Not only was he a good director, but he was also an excellent writer with an extremely dry sense of humor. 

I watched Angel Heart a while ago and thought it was a decent thriller. It's basically a murder mystery set in New Orleans. We were in New Orleans earlier this year (I LOVE New Orleans and can’t wait to go back) and since we were on a New Orleans kick, decided to rewatch the movie. It's very good. Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro are really terrific. I can’t believe how handsome Mickey Rourke was when he was younger. The mood is dark and sinister. The soundtrack is great. You’ll almost certainly be surprised by the ending when Robert De Niro is revealed to be Lucifer himself. 

Alan Parker has a website where he writes longform essays about how he made his movies. I really liked his essay about filming Angel Heart. It sounds exhausting. I really don’t know how movie directors can deal with everything that goes on and then decide they want to do another one. 

10) Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Werner Herzog, 2009

Like I said previously, we were on a New Orleans kick and decided to watch this little known Nicholas Cage movie. It was bizarre but I really liked it!!

Nicholas Cage is always a draw, you never know how crazy he will get. This is going to make me sound terrible but I couldn’t stop laughing during his scene in the nursing home. His hallucinations about the iguanas and literal “dancing souls” are just so out there but truly hilarious. I can’t even describe this movie properly. It’s technically supposed to be a crime drama but Nicholas Cage turns it into a comedy and it works! 
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Btw, Nicholas Cage has many links to New Orleans. His pyramid tomb is there at St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and he used to own the LaLaurie Mansion, both of which we visited.

We are at the Nicholas Cage pyramid tomb within St. Louis Cemetery No. 1

The LaLaurie Mansion in New Orleans