Welcome to the eighth annual FANBOYS FILM AWARDS!
This will be acting more as a personal list of just the movies that I've seen this year, rather than something that attempts to focus specifically on the superhero film genre as originally conceived.
I invite everyone to join in on the fun by leaving their own lists and thoughts in the comments below to tell us what you watched this year!
FILMS THAT CAME OUT IN 2024 THAT I WATCHED:
A Quiet Place: Day One
Abigail
Alien: Romulus
Argylle
Beekeeper
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
Blink Twice
Carry-On
Challengers
Civil War
Conclave
Cuckoo
Deadpool and Wolverine
Exhuma
The First Omen
The Front Room
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Gladiator II
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
Heretic
Humane
Imaginary
Immaculate
The I.S.S.
It's What's Inside
Joker: Folie à Deux
Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths (Parts One, Two and Three)
Kraven the Hunter
Late Night with the Devil
Longlegs
Madame Web
MaXXXine
Monkey Man
My Old Ass
Never Let Go
Nosferatu
Oddity
The Park Maniac
Ricky Stanicky
Road House
Saturday Night
Speak No Evil
Transformers One
Trap
Twisters
Venom: The Last Dance
Y2K
FILMS THAT CAME OUT BEFORE 2024 THAT I WATCHED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 2024:
2 Fast 2 Furious
Adventures in Babysitting
All of Us Strangers
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
Beyond the Law
Black Eagle
Blade
Blade II
Blade Trinity
Burlesque
City of God
Countdown
Crank
Crank: High Voltage
Demolition Man
Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead
DOA: Dead or Alive
Dream Scenario
Dreamscape
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
The Expendables 2
The Expendables 3
F9: The Fast Saga
Fast & Furious
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
Fast Five
Fast X
The Fast and the Furious
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
The Fate of the Furious
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
The Game
Glitter
Hackers
The Handmaiden
The Holdovers
Judge Dredd
Krull
The Lawnmower Man
Lone Wolf McQuade
The Manhattan Project
The Marine
Maximum Overdrive
McBain
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Monolith
Nine Days
The One I Love
Paradise
The Phantom
Point Break
Pokemon 3: The Movie
Rollerball (2002)
Safety Not Guaranteed
Showdown in Little Tokyo
Showgirls
Soldier
Speed
Speed 2: Cruise Control
The Spirit
Steel
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
Streets of Fire
Sudden Death
Tango & Cash
Tall Tale
They Live
Twilight
Twilight: Breaking Dawn Parts 1 and 2
Twilight: Eclipse
Twilight: New Moon
Twin Dragons
What You Wish For
Willow
Wounds
XXX
You'll Never Find Me
The Zone of Interest
BEST / FAVORITE MOVIES OF THE YEAR
No movies this year would cross over into S-tier alignment, sadly. It wasn't a particularly strong year for movies. Even the ones I did enjoy and will watch more than once are not going to be on my "all-time OMFG I love it so much" type of list. But of course, you can see where everything ranks on my 2020s My Favorite Movies of the Decade list as well as this one.
So in regards to S-tier:
- n/a
Other A-tier type films (roughly an 8/10) from this year would be:
- Civil War
- Deadpool and Wolverine
- Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
- Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
- Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part One & Three
- Late Night with the Devil
- Alien: Romulus
- A Quiet Place: Day One
- Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
- My Old Ass
- If we're not limiting it to 2024, then we can throw in The Holdovers for sure (as mentioned in last year's article)
B-tier (roughly a 7/10) would be:
- Kraven the Hunter
- Venom: The Last Dance
- Abigail
- Blink Twice
- Challengers
- Humane
- Saturday Night
Beyond that point, all the other movies listed above on my watch list would be C-tier or lower, and there isn't much of a reason to rank them, as they were all disappointing and I'll never bother with them again.
WORST / LEAST FAVORITE MOVIES OF THE YEAR
- I was SO disappointed with Argylle. But, to be honest, that's something I saw coming from a mile away, which is why I didn't bother seeing it in theaters.
- Madame Web was just atrocious. Sony should be ashamed for themselves. How did this even get released when we're in an age where so many other movies are being shelved and become tax write-offs?
- Everyone made such a fuss over Longlegs, and that's all it was? In typical fashion, mostly all of the horror films my wife convinced me to watch are ones that I disliked, as it's not my thing, but that one looked more interesting and had more hype to it and was very disappointing. At least Late Night with the Devil was solid.
- How was Joker: Folie à Deux that bad? I only liked ONE scene in the film (the Gary Puddles court room scene). This was such a flop that it feels like they made it bad on purpose.
- Trap felt like it wanted to be 3 movies, and the only one of them that was interesting is the one that ended first.
BEST ACTOR
WINNER = David Jonsson (Alien: Romulus)
EXPLANATION = I nearly gave this to Dastmalchian, since he's the true lead, but I can't overlook just how fun David Jonsson was as Andy. He was easily my favorite character of the film and he nailed being an android so well.
HONORABLE MENTIONS = David Dastmalchian (Late Night with the Devil), Gabriel LaBelle (Saturday Night), Michael Keaton (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice)
BEST ACTRESS
WINNER = Maisy Stella (My Old Ass)
EXPLANATION = To be perfectly honest, no female performances in the films I saw that came out in 2024 resonated with me all that much to be worthy of this type of top-billing major shout out. I tend to watch a lot of movies that don't have those parts written particularly well for any gravitas, as superhero films and whatnot aren't going to be where you find those. I could have easily found Maisy Stella's character obnoxious or annoying in My Old Ass, though, and I didn't at all, so I have to give her a shout out.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
WINNER = Ian Bliss (Late Night with the Devil), Josh Quong Tart (Late Night with the Devil), Cory Michael Smith (Saturday Night)
EXPLANATION = I have to give a tie to these two for being such big standouts in Late Night with the Devil in a way that made me feel like they were JUST the characters, as opposed to actors playing those parts. That helped the reality of the film in and of itself. / If I could just pick an ensemble cast, though, Saturday Night was just chock full of people doing amazing jobs portraying their characters. Actually, on second thought, I'm going to make this a three-way tie and also put Cory Michael Smith on there for his portrayal of Chevy Chase, as he was the best standout among an amazing cast and deserves some bonus credit.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
WINNER = Catherine O'Hara (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice)
EXPLANATION = She stepped back into this role and perfectly fit exactly as she had in the original. Great job for a goofy character.
BEST STORY
This is an alternative to Best Adapted/Original Screenplay where the execution of the overall product might not be the equivalent of Best Picture, but the idea was there.
WINNER = Civil War
EXPLANATION = Good lord, I did not anticipate that by the end of this year, I would be more nervous that this is going to happen, instead of how I was originally thinking "Wow, this is such a good cautionary tale, but I'm sure in November, things are going to go in the right direction and we won't have to worry about this." Ugh. I hate this world. But I thought this movie was the overall best that I saw this year.
MOST FAITHFUL ADAPTATION
Which movie felt like it was the most honorable to the source material it was trying to represent?
WINNER = Deadpool and Wolverine
EXPLANATION = They knew what people wanted. They gave it to them. As a hardcore geek that this movie was specifically made for, this spoke to me on that level. I did really like a lot of the honorable mentions here, and any one of them could have earned this win in any other year.
BEST VISUALS
This covers special effects, cinematography, production design and even editing.
WINNER = Uh....
EXPLANATION = By the end of the year, it's actually difficult for me to remember the specifics of these films, so just check the honorable mentions and pick from there. I'd have to go back and compare, but I do know that it would be between these options.
BEST ACTION SET PIECES
This honors the stunt work as well as the choreography and idea of an action sequence.
WINNER = Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
EXPLANATION = I nearly gave this to Civil War just for standing out among the pack. But at the end of the day, a bunch of silly, stupid monsters went smashy smashy on each other and the scope of that beats out the others.
BEST CHARACTER DESIGN
This combines makeup, costumes and the CGI build of characters.
WINNER = Deadpool and Wolverine
EXPLANATION = How did Gambit simultaneously look perfect and ridiculous at the same time? We finally got Wolverine in his costume (and multiple others, as well). I geeked out over stuff in this movie, for sure.
BEST MUSIC
This category examines both the score and the soundtrack.
WINNER = Deadpool and Wolverine
EXPLANATION = I would give this to Ghostbusters if we went on score alone, but you can't deny how popular the music from Deadpool was able to capture people's attention. No way in hell was I going to give his to Joker. YEEEEEESH.
HONORABLE MENTIONS = Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
To be perfectly honest, this wasn't a particularly memorable year for any of these facets. While there are movies that I really enjoyed, 2024 is going down as more of an underwhelming list than I had anticipated, which makes me sad. 2024 in general, just in life and everything surrounding it, was extremely rough for me, and this pretty much follows suit, unfortunately.
TELL US YOUR LIST IN THE COMMENTS BELOW!
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