Before we send 2024 packing, it’d be good karma to acknowledge some offbeat screen experiences don’t fit a typical best-of-the-year list. And we’ll also get to the worst movies of the year, guaranteed to undo that karma in a flash. So. Goodbye, year. And hats off to Chicago’s cinema workers, archivists, educators, theater managers, projectionists — and to all venues offering real butter on popcorn that didn’t come out of a bag and doesn’t taste like something that fell out of an Amazon packing envelope.
Favorite never-again screening experience of 2024: “The Art of the Benshi” at Gene Siskel Film Center, April 16-17. What was it? It was a series of programs featuring Japanese silent film, presented in the virtually lost art form and framework of the benshi orator tradition of live performers at the side of the screen, providing vocal characterizations, some historical footnoting and so much more. The result bridged the gap between cinema and live theater in a way I’ve never seen before. That, plus a beautiful quartet of musicians accompanying the action. The Chicago run sold out in a flash, and I’m glad I caught this stunner at the Brooklyn Academy of Music during another one of its four U.S. tour stops.
All hail Dick Van Dyke: And Chris Martin of Coldplay, and director Spike Jonze. You’ve heard about it and seen it by now, probably, but the simple, deeply sincere music video (see the director’s cut if you haven’t) features a 98-year-old Van Dyke (he’s now 99) dancing to Martin’s “All My Love.” This tribute to a great American entertainer and Danville, Illinois, native arrived near the end of 2024, when our hearts needed it the most.
Ace wordsmith and musician Elle Cordova: It took me until this year to discover someone whose short-form videos built on highly unlikely subjects for comedy — Mother Nature interviewed on a podcast hosted by Father Time; dinosaurs in their final minute on Earth before extinction; Romulus and Remus, debating the name and location of Italy’s capital; dialogue between a frustrated texter and the underminer known as Autocorrect — have been rolling around on TikTok and YouTube and Instagram for years. Well, better late than never, as younger generations never tire of hearing from older, squarer ones. Check her out, along with the rangy, inventive songs that Cordova and Toni Lindgren have featured on five albums to date.
And now, because the film industry remains hardy enough to withstand it, and in alphabetical order …
The worst movies of 2024
“Argylle”: A frantic, overelaborated action bore.
“Bad Boys: Ride or Die”: The last scene at the barbecue nearly made up for the rest of it. Also, the movie found a clever way to comment on co-star Will Smith’s behavior on Oscar night in 2022. The other 111 minutes, not so good.
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”: The first one: funny, unpredictable, fresh. Sequel: bigger, more popular, not funny. Nostalgia sold it.
“Deadpool & Wolverine”: Big hit, which the theaters needed this summer, but after the relative bounce and invention of the first two “Deadpools,” particularly the second one, this two-hour Tikety-Tokety fan service blowout was a serious come-down.
“Kinds of Kindness”: Numbing misfire from filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, coming off the riches and visual wonders of “Poor Things.”
“IF”: Cloying to the point of offensive, this ode to the glories of childlike imagination could’ve used some.
“Red One”: Some scripts just don’t have that holiday spirit, and everything that went haywire with “Red One” happened long before the actors arrived on set.
“Road House”: The brutal Doug Liman-directed remake un-learned every lesson the 1989 “Road House” teaches us, to this day, about trash with panache and the right spirit.
“The Substance”: Demi Moore, fully committed and very good. But she could not transcend some mighty reductive and wearyingly familiar material. Still: bonus points for writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s final bloodbath, which goes on so long it becomes a kind of crimson fugue state.
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
