#carry on 2024

[haleyatwell]

TARON EGERTON as ETHAN KOPEK CARRY-ON (2024) dir. Jaume Collet-Serra

[lukaskyle-moved]

CARRY-ON (2024) dir. Jaume Collet-Serra

[marv-el-spot]

FILMS WATCHED IN 2025 CARRY-ON (2024) Dir. Jaume Collet-Serra

[brynnterpretations]

Jason Bateman in Carry-On (2024).

[vcollies]

ok look. TO BE FAIR. if jason bateman made me put in an earbud and coached me through how to slip something past TSA id probably do it too.

[5thelement]

enjoyed him immensely in the role of a creepy psychopathic little guy named Watcher

[ankle-beez]

[looney-tact]

Someone please edit this sound to a Carry On scene. You have two options here:

1) “I realized I can’t have all this gluten. I’ll shit my pants in the middle of the…” [insert “airport”] MY MAN WAS CRUNCHING ON A LOT OF SNACKS

2) “Try to fucking get it down your hole and then communicate.” … use your imagination

[academicelephant]

The guy on the phone in Carry-On (2024), his voice is incredibly good, and I love the way he speaks. And the way he's just so calm, no matter what. Omg. Although I don't usually like Christmas movies, this one was good. I mean, beyond just me liking this one guy. The beginning wasn't that good and I almost stopped watching but once we got to the airport, things got interesting. Anyway, if you like action/thrillers and don't mind some... kinda awkward stuff, this one is for you

[abysmallylost23]

hurricane heist 🤝 carry on being called the worst movies alive as if terrible Z movies never existed before these two ever did

me enjoying the shit out of both of them due to the actors and the fact sometimes i don’t fucking care about plotholes and plot relevance or answers i want my mains to SURVIVE hell and be happy!!!

[whatohitsonfirewelp]

Guys I watched carry on and o genuinely don’t understand how people are saying the beginning is boring.

How are y’all not immediately hooked??

Everything is immediately intense. There’s so much we don’t know but we know there’s danger.

Some of y’all don’t appreciate these kind of films enough. The build up is WHY it’s so good, enjoy the build up.

[haleyatwell]

SOFIA CARSON & TARON EGERTON as NORA PARISI & ETHAN KOPEK CARRY-ON (2024) dir. Jaume Collet-Serra

[agentnico]

Carry-On (2024) review

I absolutely adore users’ reactions on Letterboxd. Here’s one for this movie by user ‘matthacunda’ - “TS-motherfuckin'-A. They handle shit. That's what they do. Consider this situation fuckin’ handled.” Love that.

Plot: A mysterious traveler blackmails a young TSA agent into letting a dangerous package slip through security and onto a Christmas Day flight.Some directors should be left to doing what they do best. Jaume Collet-Serra has made a living off establishing himself as a bonafide auteur of better than they have any right to be suspense thrillers about decent people (majority of the times played by Liam Neeson with a particular set of skills) trapped in compromising positions. Yet in recent years he has been offered the big pay-checks from major studios to direct big Hollywood blockbusters the likes of Jungle Cruise and Black Adam, and they ended up not that good. Look, those movies are the kind of forgettable Hollywood content that could be made by literally anyone, and as such leave directors to await their chance for a streamer to then give them another chance, and then they can go back to basics and make a name for themselves again. In cometh Netflix, a pioneer of endless algorithmic content, who have allowed Serra to make another silly action thriller, now involving airports and planes again, which is great, as his best in my eyes is still Non-Stop - that movie was a whopper! But how does Carry-On hold up against it?

There’s something really fun about setting a dumb action flick during the holiday season. Die Hard is prime example of this, using the holidays as a backdrop for pointless violence and action. Carry-On plays up to this genre, even if it is a tad predictable. I do wish it leaned more into the Christmas vibe, as aside from a couple of festive song cues (the film opens with Springsteen’s “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” as we pan down the winter sky, and a notable car crash/fight sequence is accompanied by “Last Christmas”) there wasn’t actually that much Christmas fluff to this, unlike the trailers promised. Furthermore, there was a lack of action for an action film. Don’t get me wrong, when the action happens Serra brings his signature style, with the aforementioned car fight in particular being a visually popping and exciting piece, evoking the opening of the first Deadpool movie. But otherwise this is mostly Bateman’s terrorist monologuing in Everton’s early for most of the runtime, which did become a tad repetitive and made the pacing a bit slow.

That being said, Jason Bateman as the baddie really is the best part of this film. For those surprised that Bateman can play a genuinely intimidating and unnerving villain instead of his regular awkward mess characters, you evidently haven’t seen his work in the Ozark series, and more notably the thriller The Gift, that really makes you re-assess Jason Bateman as am actor. The guy plays evil well. His calculated menace provides the perfect foil to Egerton’s everyman hero, creating a dynamic that keeps viewers guessing about his true motives. Bateman is both relatable and terrifying, with his banter throughout much of the film adding a mix of unease and levity. Taron Egerton is fine, however aside from those two the other cast performances leave much to be desired. Sofia Carson especially provides a bland performance as Egerton’s pregnant wife (which by the way her pregnancy being her only character trait), as she delivers all her dialogue in such monotone and lifeless fashion that one wonders if she’s talking to a tree. She lacks any kind of chemistry with Egerton, and in fact I was shipping Egerton more with Bateman.

Carry-On is enjoyable and fits right at home in Netflix infinite library of content. You’ll get a kick out of Bateman’s evil doings, as well as the unrealistic silly happenstances that occur within the narrative, but aside from that this is the type of movie that will be long forgotten after the holiday season is over. That being said, for Christmas 2024 this is a perfectly fine and entertaining enough palette cleanser for a year that has overall being a misfire for cinema.

Overall score: 5/10

[grigori77]

2024 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 1)

30. BOY KILLS WORLD – Turns out this was a REALLY GREAT YEAR for action cinema, and the first genre entry here is EXACTLY what you’d expect from the true master of anarchic movie mayhem, Sam Raimi, here producing the feature debut of ambitious young German visual effects artist-turned writer-director Moritz Mohr. The newcomer’s crazy PERFECTLY compliments our veteran’s crazy, because this is like if The Raid movies had been made by Don Coscarelli (see John Dies At the End for reference) – basically a geeky love letter to classic 90s 16-bit beat-‘em-up video games, it follows the bizarre misadventures of Bill Skarsgard’s “the Boy”, a traumatised deaf-mute orphan raised and trained to become a lethal living weapon by a mysterious (and genuinely WEIRD) jungle shaman (The Raid’s own Yayan Ruhian) in order to avenge his family’s brutal murder at the hands of the Van Der Kroys, the bloodthirsty organised crime family holding their dystopian city under a cruel thumb of violent oppression. The film has been described as a “fever dream”, and honestly that’s a pretty accurate assessment – this is a COMPLETELY FUCKING MENTAL film, frequently spiralling off on surreal flights of fancy as its already pretty bonkers plot starts to unravel in truly WEIRD directions, but thankfully this adds to the unique charm a lot more than it ever threatens to alienate the viewer, sticking to JUST the right side of satirical parody while delivering a consistently winning line in jet black comedy. Besides, the MAIN attraction here is EXACTLY what most viewers come to this kind of film for, and Mohr EASILY delivers in this venue – the action sequences are INCREDIBLE, flawlessly executed even as they frequently become as downright INSANE as every other aspect of the film, and without pulling ANY punches to deliver some of the year’s most gratuitously GRAPHIC blood-and-guts. Skarsgard is, like always, thoroughly BRILLIANT throughout, effortlessly proving what an incredibly expressive physical actor he can be since he never speaks a word throughout the entire film … but that doesn’t mean the Boy doesn’t get his point across just fine, the film delivering a pretty ingenious conceit by having him speak to us through his “inner monologue”, using the announcer voice from his favourite arcade game when he was a child (voice actor extraordinaire H. Jon Benjamin, star of Archer, Bob’s Burgers and Dr Katz, Professional Therapist). Then there’s the top-notch supporting cast, featuring the likes of Michelle Dockery, Stranger Things’ Brett Gelman, Sharlto Copley and Famke Jansen as the uniformly despicable Van Der Kroys, Jessica Rothe (Happy Death Day and its sequel) as their lethal enforcer June 27, and Andrew Koji (Warrior, Snake Eyes, Bullet Train) as Basho, the affable oddball resistance fighter the Boy befriends and enlists into his crusade along with Benny (the Old Spice Man himself, Isaiah Mustafa), a mighty warrior with a thick beard and moustache who provides some of the film’s biggest belly-laughs (for reasons it’s best for you to find out for yourselves, trust me). Relentlessly ridiculous, unflinchingly messy and frequently laugh-out-loud hilarious, this was definitely one of the year’s most unapologetically ODD films, but also definitely one of the most FUN too, as well as a spectacular showcase for the talents of a VERY fresh new filmmaking talent who is doubtless destined for great things in the future. Just be forewarned, it definitely AIN’T one for the faint-of-heart or weak-of-stomach …

29. CARRY-ON – Arriving just in time for Christmas, this fast-paced suspense thriller from Netflix is genuinely the closest in a very long time indeed I’ve seen a film get to challenging Die Hard as the DEFINITIVE festive action flick, and for once it doesn’t feel like it was really even TRYING to. For the most part the latest from pulpy Spanish action cinema director Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan, The Shallows, Black Adam) seems more intent on following the tried and tested formula he’s mostly reserved for his regular collaborations with Liam Neeson (particularly Non-Stop and The Commuter), although he definitely seems to have made something that feels a good deal more vital and worthy of our serious attention this time round. Taron Egerton’s back on the unassuming action hero track as Ethan Kopek, a young TSA officer at LAX who dreams of being a proper police officer and has grown disenchanted with his his current lot in life even though he’s in a loving relationship with his girlfriend Nora (Descendants’ Sofia Carson), who’s pregnant with their first child. Looking to show willing in order to secure a promotion so he can support his new family and move on to better opportunities, he talks his boss Phil (Breaking Bad’s own “Big Jim”, Dean Norris) into giving him a trial run with a good deal more responsibility manning a baggage-scanner on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately this is the day a group of domestic terrorists have chosen to smuggle a dangerous package onboard one of the flights, and Ethan’s now in their crosshairs as the man they need to extort into letting them get it through customs without being stopped … as taut, knuckle-whitening edge-of-seat thrillers go, this is a genuine doozy, ramping up the tension with Collet-Serra’s trademark skill while simultaneously doing a bang-up job of establishing just what a likeable, stand-up guy Ethan in so we’re fully invested in everything he does and goes through as he searches for any loophole he can exploit in order to squeeze out of this terrifying dilemma. Egerton handles his substantial share of the narrative’s heavy lifting pretty effortlessly, once again showing us what a winningly charming talent he is, while he’s ably supported by Carson, Norris, Theo Rossi (Sons of Anarchy), Logan Marshall-Green and, in particular, Danielle Deadwyler (Station Eleven, The Harder They Fall) as Elena Cole, a tough LAPD detective whose current investigation leads her into a collision course with the day’s events. The standout turn here, however, definitely comes from Jason Bateman, who oozes subtle menace and sharp-witted guile as Traveller, the cold-blooded mercenary looking to force Ethan to comply with his demands no matter how much blood he has to shed to get there. Their fraught exchanges are the particularly vital life’s blood of the film, Egerton and Bateman’s dynamite chemistry providing particularly powerful fuel to keep this razor sharp thriller barrelling along at a spectacular clip. Ultimately, as far as festive thrillers go Die Hard may still rule the roost, but this is definitely the strongest contender I’ve come across in quite some time. Looks like I got an extra little Xmas flick to enjoy during the Holidays now ...

28. LAND OF BAD – Remember back in 2020 when I heaped praise on the harrowing deep sea horror thriller Underwater, the first proper studio movie from up-and-coming writer-director William Eubank, after he’d become one of my one-to-watch rising stars with his first two definitively INDIE sci-fi movies Love and The Signal? I’m sure my regulars will … anyway, he’s shed those more outlandish genre trappings for his fourth feature, but none of his winning auteur flair, robust atmospherics and deft skill at crafting meaty action sequences, this time turning his already deeply assured artistic hand to cranking out a good old fashioned action flick, and the results are as impressive as previous showings. This one definitely has the strongest star power to date, with the new Netflix Witcher himself, Liam Hemsworth (The Hunger Games), putting in a solid action hero showing as Sgt. “Playboy” Kinney, a young US Air Force TACP officer who finds himself attached to a small Delta Force team braving Philippines jungle to rescue a captive CIA asset from an imbedded terrorist cell; Russell Crowe, meanwhile, chews the scenery as Capt. Eddie “Reaper” Grimm, the grizzled, OCD-riddled drone pilot assigned to provide overwatch and air support throughout the operation. Needless to say, when things go badly wrong and Kinney finds himself alone in the bush with angry hostiles hot on his heels, Grimm becomes his only hope for making it out alive … this is a typically big, loud and dumb action-fest that wears its trope-heavy heart on its Star Spangled sleeve, but Eubank and The Signal’s co-writer David Frigerio keep things compelling and make it EASY for us to invest in the story’s well-rounded characters, while the cast are all in fine form, the two EXTREMELY capable leads ably supported by Heroes’ Milo Ventimiglia, American Gods’ Ricky Whittle and Hemsworth’s brother Luke (Westworld) as the Delta troopers, and Chika Ikogwe (Heartbreak High, The Tourist) as Grimm’s steadfast co-pilot Staff Sgt. Nia Branson. Of course, at the end of the day we don’t watch these kinds of movies for complex plots, Oscar-worthy performances or Shakespeare-level scripts – this is all about thrilling escapist action, big explosions and maybe even some deftly-executed, stylistic cinematographic eye candy, and Eubank and co DEFINITELY deliver on ALL these fronts, crafting a persistently white-knuckle rollercoaster ride that’s guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat. Subtle it ain’t, but this movie does EXACTLY what it promises to, and does it with STYLE.

27. THE IRON CLAW – Acclaimed indie filmmaker Sean Durkin has been making waves ever since 2011 with his complex psychological drama Martha Marcy May Marlene and long-gestating 2020 follow-up The Nest, but his third feature is finally propelling him into BIG TIME star-power recognition with an unflinching and emotionally devastating exploration of the haunting true story of the Von Erich family, who rose to stardom in the late 70s to ALMOST become the dominant sporting dynasty in American pro-wrestling, if not for a persistent family “curse” which kept them from every truly reaching that coveted top spot. Rocked by a string of accidents and harrowing deaths, it’s a compelling tale of tragedy and heartbreak which writer-director Durkin turned into one of the year’s most powerful pieces of worthy Award-bait (only to be unfairly and comprehensively SNUBBED across the board, particularly by the Academy). The story unfolds predominantly from the point-of-view of Kevin Von Erich (Zac Efron), the (sort of) eldest son of the family’s brutally overbearing never-quite-made-it veteran wrestler patriarch Fritz (Mindhunter’s Holt McCallany), whose dream is to be the greatest pro-wrestler of all time, only for his dad to continually pass him over for his brothers David (Trust’s Harris Dickinson), Kerry (The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White) and Mike (Superior and Two Sentence Horror Stories’ Stanley Simons) while he tries to fulfil his own dream of creating a wrestling-based media empire … only for compounded tragedy to knock the Von Erichs off their newfound pedestal just as they’ve mounted it. Durkin has crafted a potent biopic of significant raw power, turning one of the darkest chapters of the dawn of modern pro-wrestling into two of the most heartbreaking hours I’ve spent at the cinema in a good long while, largely reining in any artistic flair and indulgence to instead let the challenging story and well-realised characters do the heavy lifting, and the uniformly EXCEPTIONAL cast definitely rise to the occasion. All four of the young actors playing the Von Erich sons are amazing here, particularly White, while Maura Tierney and Lily James help to keep the film from getting TOO overwhelmed by burgeoning testosterone as the boys’ gentle, devout mother Doris and Kevin’s opinionated young wife Pam; in the end, though, the film is soundly dominated by the two-handed lead fireworks from Efron and McCallany – Zac has NEVER been better than he is here, going above-and-beyond by COMPLETELY transforming himself physically while also acting his socks off in what must have been an extremely draining performance, while it’s nice to FINALLY see Holt get a role that can REALLY get his amazing talents the recognition they’ve long deserved, sinking his teeth into a complex portrayal of a man who never quite made it for himself and is now determined to live that dream vicariously through his own children, no matter the cost to their wellbeing. This is, ultimately, a very tough watch, but it’s still an incredibly well-made film that rewards those who are strong enough to tough it out, albeit one which is guaranteed to jerk a whole lot of tears out of viewers before the end credits roll.

26. GLADIATOR II – There is NO WAY this should have worked. Ridley Scott’s seminal Millennial comeback masterpiece, the film that single-handedly revitalised the decades-dead sword & sandals subgenre of historical epic cinema, told a perfectly complete standalone story and came to a pretty definitively FINAL climax, so the thought of even TRYING to make a sequel seemed like anathema. But it was also a truly INSANE financial and critical hit, so the studios were DETERMINED to make the idea work, no matter the cost. Amazingly, Scott was entirely onboard with the idea, and if ANYONE could come up with a way to make it work … even so, it languished in Development Hell for SO LONG that it started to look like we’d probably end up being spared the ordeal after all. Until NOW … so, does the finished product actually DELIVER on what Scott and co have been promising all these years? Well … SORT OF … for the most part, at least, it manages to pull it off well enough to justify its existence, and in fact in several places even does its sky-high predecessor proud. Explaining how they actually made it work doesn’t exactly dump any major spoilers our way, the identity of the hero this time round’s been a pretty open secret for YEARS – Paul Mescal (Aftersun, All of Us Strangers) takes over from original actor Spencer Treat Clark in the role of Lucius, the now grown son of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) and grandson of the great Caesar Marcus Aurelius, who returns to Rome after years spent in hiding from lethal political machinations as an enslaved gladiator after being taken as a prisoner of war in Africa. Bought by ambitious former slave-turned would-be usurper Macrinus (Denzel Washington), he quickly makes a name for himself as the people’s champion, “Hanno”, in the Colosseum and becomes a pawn in a desperate plot to depose the tyrannical twin emperors, Geta (Stranger Things’ Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fear Street and The White Lotus’ Fred Hechinger), once his mother realises he’s alive. Typically for a Ridley Scott film, this is a massively opulent and visually stunning piece of work, every penny of the almost indecent budget right there on the screen for all to see, and once again he’s done as much of it as he can for real with expansive sets and insanely over-the-top stunt-packed action sequences (this time introducing the added complication of WATER to proceedings in the film’s two most impressive set-pieces, the opening battle and the standout arena match), while the cast is, yet again, comprehensively STACKED. Mescal may be a little too internalised to really stand up to comparisons with Russell Crowe, but he definitely LOOKS the part, and acquits himself admirably through this physically demanding role; ultimately we have a lot more fun with the supporting players, with Quinn and Hechinger chewing the scenery with gusto while Nielsen and Pedro Pascal (as her husband, General Acacius, a celebrated hero) deliver the requisite dose of highbrow stately gravitas alongside Tim McInnerny, Game of Thrones’ Rory McCann and a returning Derek Jacoby. The film is thoroughly stolen, however, by Washington, who’s clearly having the time of his life getting to overact as one of the most enjoyably theatrical villains I’ve had the pleasure of watching on the big screen in quite some time. Ultimately the finished film proves to be a bit less than the sum of its parts, particularly suffering in terms of a sometimes muddled, occasionally even nonsensical plot, but as overblown spectacles go it’s nonetheless huge fun, clearly giving up on even TRYING to equal the worthy heft of the original by instead opting to become a far more unapologetically camp and intentionally melodramatic popcorn extravaganza. The result may very much be a guilty pleasure, but there’s no denying that it’s still THE BEST thing we’ve seen from Ridley Scott since The Martian. And as far as I’m concerned that makes it a ROUSING success.

25. DOUBLE BLIND – Every year there’s at least a handful of under-the-radar indies that really impress me enough that I’m willing to really champion them, and it’s particularly gratifying whenever I find one which blows critics and other audience members away as much as myself. Such it is with the feature debut of Irish director Ian Hunt-Duffy, a sneaky psychological horror thriller which earned itself a coveted 100% Fresh Score from Rotten Tomatoes with its mixture of slowburn creepiness, burgeoning stress-driven paranoid terror and some particularly twisted mind-bending body horror. Millie Brady (The Last Kingdom, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies) makes for a compellingly believable rough-around-the-edges every-girl heroine as Claire, a down-on-her-luck young woman who enrols in a double blind trial for an experimental drug to keep from becoming homeless, only to become increasingly miserable as the compound she’s been injected with causes chronic insomnia in herself and her fellow test subjects. Then one of them suddenly dies in the most horrible way when her exhausted body finally succumbs to long-prevented sleep, and it quickly becomes clear that every one of them is now living on a dangerously short amount of borrowed time, while the pharmaceutical company they’ve been hired by is suddenly refusing to let them out of quarantine … Brady’s ably supported by a small but perfectly cast collection of talent, with Akshay Kumar (Pandora, Homeland) and Diarmuid Noyes (Borgia) particularly impressing as fellow sleep-deprived lab rats and Pollyanna McIntosh (The Walking Dead) as the trial’s put-upon overseer, Dr Burke, while Hunt-Duffy wrangles his potent cast through the increasingly nightmarish twists and turns of the harrowing script, crafted with similarly assured skill by fellow newcomer screenwriter Darach McGarrigle. Altogether this is an incredible debut for a couple of clear one-to-watch talents, and a nifty little uncut gem which deserves sleeper hit status going forward. Definitely well worth chasing down and giving a chance.

24. THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE – Once again Hollywood is making it ABUNDANTLY clear they just DON’T LIKE Guy Ritchie any more, and I have NO IDEA WHY … despite 2020’s The Gentleman becoming a modest box office hit and signifying what many considered a triumphant return to form for the man who brought us the likes of Snatch, RocknRolla and the Sherlock Holmes movies (although personally I never thought he actually really fell off, despite what Swept Away and Aladdin might have made us think), his subsequent releases all got largely BURIED online – granted, some of it was down to COVID, but even after everything started to get back to normal the inexplicably disrespectful treatment continued, with Wrath of Man and The Covenant, both impressively well-executed and evocative cinematic features in their own rights, getting released straight to streaming in many countries with frustratingly little fanfare to drum up the attention they clearly deserved. At least this one made it into more theatres, but with a lacklustre advertising campaign and stiff competition from much more high profile fare it sank like a stone, almost like Lionsgate didn’t even WANT IT to succeed. Even worse, for some unbelievably stupid reason it didn’t even RELEASE in the UK, meaning I had to wait until it subsequently hit Amazon before finally getting to check it out. The most frustrating part, though, was that the critics CLEARLY feel the same as I do about the film we actually received – this is a TOP DRAWER piece of work, further proof that Ritchie never actually LOST a step, another genuine belter of a flick which takes a brilliant premise and crafts an offbeat and deliciously entertaining cinematic caper that deserved to be seen by a really big audience on a proper big screen. Taken from Winston Churchill’s declassified WWII files, it follows the true life exploits of special forces commando Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill) as he put together a covert team in order to execute a top secret raid on a German U-boat outfitting operation in the hopes of crippling the subs long enough to help bring the

Americans into the War. The only problem? March-Phillips was a disgraced loose-cannon, a fiercely independent troublemaker with a reputation for going off-mission and a major problem with authority figures … he was also the original inspiration for James Bond, then mid-ranking SOE-officer Ian Fleming using him as the basis for the mercurial protagonist of his best-selling spy novels (and the rest, of course, is history). Needless to say, it looks like this will be the closest Cavill’s ever gonna get to actually playing Bond, and he really sank his teeth into the opportunity, clearly having the time of his life investing the character with his trademark twinkle and roguish charm (as well as an amusing appreciation for fine men’s fashions); he’s the ironclad backbone of the film, driving the action and story with typical aplomb, and is ably supported by a winningly motley collection of misanthropes, the gang of miscreants March-Phillips put together to execute Operation Postmaster brought to life in pitch-perfect performances from Alan Ritchson (Reacher), Alex Pettyfer, Eiza Gonzalez, Henry Golding and more, while there’s an enjoyably NASTY turn from Inglourious Basterds’ Til Schweiger as the film’s dastardly big bad, SS Commandant Heinrich Luhr, and Ritchie regular Cary Elwes brings his classic stiff-upper-lip to bear as the operation’s top CO, Brigadier Colin Gubbins, while an all-but-unrecognisable Rory Kinnear portrays a suitably gruff Winston Churchill. Ultimately, Ritchie delivers an enjoyably fiendish heist movie masquerading as a war flick, the plot snaking with crafty glee through a series of expertly executed set-pieces and ingenious little twists before finally landing a brilliantly cathartic climax which pays fitting respect to the real life heroes that inspired the film, along with one of the greatest espionage thriller franchises OF ALL TIME. That alone should have won this movie some respect, at least enough to raise its profile, and it’s a criminal shame it’s been treated with SUCH glaring disrespect. Here’s hoping it earns the cult classic status it deserves, that might redress SOME of the balance …

23. LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL – Australian writer-director duo Colin and Cameron Cairnes exploded onto the indie horror scene with their delirious jet black comedy horror 100 Bloody Acres back in 2012, which proved to be one of the most enjoyably OUT THERE horror flicks I’ve EVER SEEN come out of Aussie cinema, and they continued the trend with similarly ingenious but more serious prank-show slasher Scare Campaign. Their long awaited Hollywood debut definitely plays itself dead straight, presenting a faux-documentary presentation of a long-lost episode of fictional 1970s chat show Night Owls (together with “recently unearthed” B-roll footage of backstage events) in which struggling TV host Jack Delroy (The Suicide Squad’s David Dastmalchian) attempts to put his long-time second-place show (always outshone by The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson) at the top of the ratings board by capping his annual Halloween Special with a live interview with a demon supposedly inhabiting the teenage sole survivor of the bloody massacre of a Satanic cult. This is EASILY one of the scariest films I saw this past year, a skin-crawling, spine-chilling piece of thoroughly queasy-making atmospheric horror that uses its period setting to perfect effect to not only give the unfolding events a convincing flavour but also pay off some particularly interesting era-specific themes and conceits. Even before the horror elements start to come to the fore the film is shot through with a palpable sense of lingering dread, building to a genuinely terrifying climactic unleashing of nightmarish proportions to rival the very classic genre mainstays, like The Exorcist and The Omen, that it’s clearly paying loving homage to. There are quality turns from a very game cast, particularly Ian Bliss (The Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions) as one of the night’s guests, Carmichael Haig, a stage magician-turned professional sceptic, and Ingrid Torelli (Five Bedrooms) as Lilly, the supremely creepy overly-cheerful and polite vessel of demonic possession, but the film is definitely dominated by its lead, Dastmalchian turning in yet another astounding performance of perfectly pitched charismatic charm that hides an intriguingly affecting reserve of wounded vulnerability, powering the film’s horrifying events through to their genuinely shocking conclusion. Did I mention there’s also an enjoyably quirky turn from Michael Ironside as the documentary narrator? That’s just the icing on the cake for a truly perfect slice of horror cinema which, in a purely critical rundown, would land close to the top of my cinematic list for the year. As it is, this WAS one hell of a genre gem …

22. THE FALL GUY – Stuntman-turned-director David Leitch’s latest film (following well-deserved previous successes co-helming the first John Wick film before striking out on his own for Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, Hobbs & Shaw and Bullet Train) is not only a genuinely EXTRAORDINARY big screen adaptation of one of the classic old school action adventure TV shows I grew up watching (alongside Knight Rider, The A-Team and Airwolf), but also raises one of the great unanswered questions of cinema – why isn’t there an Academy Award for stunts? Anyway … turns out that Ken, in last-year’s runaway hit Barbie, wasn’t the ONLY role that Ryan Gosling was born to play – he’s equally perfect for the role of Colt Seavers, the seasoned “unsung hero” who makes all those action hero movie stars look so awesome, at least until an on-set accident left him with a near career-ending back injury which forced him into semi-retirement. He’s brought back into the game, however, when the action movie star he used to double for, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), disappears midway through the production of the debut directorial feature of his former lover, camera-operator Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt). On paper he’s here to fill in for Ryder, but he’s really been brought in to find the missing star before the studio gets wise and shuts down production, but as he delves into what turns out to be a pretty tangled mystery it becomes clear that Colt might not really be the right man for the job … unfortunately he’s all they got … Gosling may be a master of understated performance, but as I’ve learned over the years (particularly from the criminally underappreciated The Nice Guys) he’s ALSO a master of comedic acting, and he’s really firing on all cylinders for this one, frequently damn near stealing the show from a high class cast who are nonetheless all equal to the task. Blunt is, as always, as flawlessly charming as she is STUNNINGLY beautiful, while Taylor-Johnson is clearly really enjoying playing a supreme douchebag of a preening self-promoting prima donna, Ted Lasso’s Hannah Waddington frequently walks off with her scenes as supremely oily producer Gail Meyer, and Everything Everywhere All At Once’s Stephanie Hsu and the great Winston Duke both hold their own admirably as Ryder’s put-upon personal assistant Alma and Colt’s long-suffering best friend, stunt coordinator Dan Tucker. Needless to say, Leitch has long since proven that he is a MASTER of on-screen mayhem, effortlessly ushering in some of the very best action sequences we saw in the cinema this past year, but he also once again proves he’s ALSO a master of big screen comedy, bringing the pitch perfect screenplay from Drew Pearce (who previously wrote Hobbs & Shaw, as well as Iron Man 3 and his own directorial debut Hotel Artemis) to effervescent primary-coloured life as a gleefully anarchic and thoroughly irreverent celebration of action cinema excess and the gruelling hard work that it takes to actually make it all possible, all done with barely ANY digital trickery at all. All round, then, this was some of the most fun I had at the cinema in 2024, and once again, it really does raise that all-time great question – WHY ISN’T THERE an Oscar for stunt work? Gods know this one would definitely have been a shoe-in come the Awards season …

21. DON’T MOVE – You may not know the names of co-directing duo Adam Schindler and Brian Netto (to date I only really know them from little-seen but admittedly pretty impressive straight-to-demand found-footage horror Delivery), but you should definitely make a note of them for future reference given just how beautifully this short but VERY SWEET high-concept suspense thriller from Netflix and producer Sam Raimi executes its fiendishly simplistic premise. Kelsey Asbille (Wind River, Fargo, Yellowstone) shines incredibly brightly in a beautifully nuanced and physically demanding turn as Iris, a young woman who’s having a hard time getting over the tragic loss of her young son, only to find herself stalked through isolated woodlands by serial killer Richard (American Horror Story’s Finn Wittrock, equal parts charming and chilling throughout), who knows he only has to wear her down after injecting her with a dose of a drug that will inexorably rob her of control of all her bodily functions. Her only hope is to get away from him long enough to wait out the drug’s effects, or otherwise find help, but as he dogs her trail her situation goes from bad to worse to truly desperate indeed … this is one of the most anxiety-inducing thrillers I’ve seen in a VERY LONG TIME INDEED, the directors and screenwriters TJ Cimfel and David White (Intruders, VHS: Viral) wringing every ounce of suspense out of each twist and turn the deliriously harrowing narrative drags us through, as well as throwing some skilfully executed rug-pulls on us as they build up to a fraught but deeply cathartic climax. The results are one of the biggest surprises that Netflix managed to spring on me this past year, which is very impressive indeed for what was such a seemingly low-profile release in their 2024 roster, which ultimately just makes this one of those hidden gems that it’s well worth your time to dig up ...

[saltyfilmmajor]

Typical behavior from two Jersey motherfuckers

[bbbbingbongloveheart]

Hi guys! These are my paper dolls I made of my comfort characters (uhhh idk why they are 😥) It’s Jang Wonyoung of IVE, Min-su, and traveler!

💕 you!