{"id":3212,"date":"2025-01-20T01:47:17","date_gmt":"2025-01-20T05:47:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=3212"},"modified":"2025-01-20T01:48:32","modified_gmt":"2025-01-20T05:48:32","slug":"favorite-movies-from-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=3212","title":{"rendered":"Favorite movies from 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In addition to not doing anything useful or productive for another entire year (just kidding!), I watched a bunch of movies! <a href=\"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/mcl\/?page_id=963\">197 movies<\/a>, to be exact, not counting ones I re-watched. Here&#8217;s a collage of them all!<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/movie_collage3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"2047\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3213\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/movie_collage3.jpg 540w, https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/movie_collage3-79x300.jpg 79w, https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/movie_collage3-270x1024.jpg 270w, https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/movie_collage3-405x1536.jpg 405w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Some of my favorites include:<\/p>\n<p>Jackie Chan&#8217;s 1985\u00a0<strong>Police Story<\/strong>, which I had been meaning to watch for a while. The story is fun, but its wild stunt-filled action sequences are fantastic. And it&#8217;s all without shaky cam, frantic cuts, or CGI so typical in today&#8217;s movies.<\/p>\n<p>The biographical film\u00a0<strong>One Life<\/strong>, starring Anthony Hopkins, tells the true story of a British stockbroker who helps save the lives of Jewish children by placing them with British foster families. He later appeared on a British TV program, which became an early viral video on YouTube:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6_nFuJAF5F0?si=d1vt7xRRkyfOub-d\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I also really enjoyed\u00a0<strong>Reagan<\/strong>. Dennis Quaid does a great impersonation of the old president (and it was refreshing to see him playing something other than an overbearing or abusive father in a cheesy Christian film). It&#8217;s admittedly got some weaknesses story and pacing-wise, but works nicely as a positive overview of his presidency.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of politics, Matt Walsh&#8217;s\u00a0<strong>Am I Racist?<\/strong> offers a hilarious satirical look at the race-relation &#8220;anti-racist&#8221; industry grift. It&#8217;s perhaps too facetious and satirical to actually change anyone&#8217;s mind on the issue, but it successfully lampoons much of the mainstream media&#8217;s positions, pointing out absurdities and offering a sane alternative view.<\/p>\n<p>We finally got a Beetlejuice sequel in 2024 with\u00a0<strong>Beetlejuice Beetlejuice<\/strong>, which I really enjoyed. It didn&#8217;t quite capture the tone of the original, and was perhaps a little more frenetic with too many plotlines, but I still really enjoyed seeing the cast return, and seeing more of Burton&#8217;s darkly whimsical view of the afterlife. I wouldn&#8217;t mind seeing yet another! Make it trilogy, Tim Burton!<\/p>\n<p>I enjoyed the horror movie\u00a0<strong>Oddity<\/strong>, an odd but fun and suspenseful little ghost story. It was weird, but not in one of those ambiguous artsy ways; it&#8217;s weirdness still told a pretty traditional story.<\/p>\n<p>Also enjoyed\u00a0<strong>Speak No Evil<\/strong>, a remake of a foreign thriller. It&#8217;s admittedly a bit slow at the beginning, but eventually creepily descends into a thrilling fight for escape. James McAvoy does a great job as a charismatic but ultimately creepy and horrible character who you want to see defeated.<\/p>\n<p>Another thrilling horror movie I really enjoyed was <strong>Alien: Romulus<\/strong>, which I thought successfully captured a lot of the creepy dark horror vibe of the original. (As opposed to the more action-oriented sequels.)<\/p>\n<p>And then, finally, of course, there&#8217;s\u00a0<strong>Wicked: Part One<\/strong>, which I thought did a fantastic job of capturing the spirit of the musical. Rather than trying to rush through the story for the sake of runtime and cutting or shortening songs (which composer\/lyricist Stephen Schwartz already made pretty succinct, in my opinion), the film takes its time with the source material and cuts\u00a0<em>nothing<\/em>; instead it actually\u00a0<em>expands<\/em> some material.\u00a0<em>This<\/em> is the sort of musical adaptation fans of musicals actually want. I love the 2012 film adaptation of <em>Les Miserables<\/em>, but it was so annoying to see it cut verses all over the place, and 2007&#8217;s <em>Sweeney Todd<\/em> cut way too much. I also loved that\u00a0<em>Wicked<\/em> was in 3D! It looked great! I&#8217;m definitely looking forward to the second part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In addition to not doing anything useful or productive for another entire year (just kidding!), I watched a bunch of movies! 197 movies, to be exact, not counting ones I re-watched. Here&#8217;s a collage of them all! Some of my favorites include: Jackie Chan&#8217;s 1985\u00a0Police Story, which I had been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7gI4B-PO","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3212"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3212"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3219,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3212\/revisions\/3219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}