BFG Podcast #179: The Best Movies of 2024

Let's have some real talk: This was not the best year ever at the movies. When you combine lingering production delays from the pandemic with the very real aftereffects of the Hollywood strikes, you had pretty slender pickings when it comes to big-studio pictures. That said: BFG still went to the movies, all year long! We covered all the film festivals, and saw every film we could, major-release and indie. There are still directors giving us intense personal visions and entertaining us with giant tentpoles. The world of entertainment is changing, but this year's relatively weak crop could still be just a blip.

Stephen Garrett, who sees every movie in the world, and Sara Stewart, who used to but has backed off to attend graduate school and pursue an actual career, join perpetual cinephile Neal Pollack to talk about their picks. Everyone loved Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, and Stephen and Sara try to persuade Neal that Dune 2 is great. Sorry, Neal finds Dune 2 boring. Neal himself loved The Apprentice and Challengers. For his art-house pick, he went with La Chimera. Stephen loved The Brutalist and Queer. Sara goes hard in the paint for Dev Patel's Monkey Man.

And because this is Book and Film Globe, Jewish-themed movies came up. Sara was a big fan of Between the Temples, which we've discussed exhaustively on this site. Neal and Stephen went for the more Oscar-friendly 'A Real Pain.' Other movies, selected by our critics but not discussed on this episode, include 'I Saw the TV Glow,' Dahomey,' 'Eno,' and 'His Three Daughters.' Finally, Neal gets real squeamish about 'The Substance.' Sara and Stephen both loved it, but Neal cannot tolerate movies where things come out of other things. It's a lot for him. And if movies in 2025 feature things coming out of other things, he'll assign them elsewhere.

Enjoy the show!