Stew’s Top 20 First Time Watches Of 2024 (#20 – 11)

It was my goal to watch 200 movies for the first time in 2024, and it is fair to say that I hit that target resoundingly.

As of this writing, I am at 231. That is, 108 new releases from 2024 itself, and 123 other first time watches. Today, we are going to look at the best of the latter of those figures: the movies I watched for the first time that did not come out in 2024 proper. The films of the year will be getting their own list in a few days!

There are some amazing, and surprising, movies I saw for the first time this past year, as well as one entire franchise, but you’ll pick up on that soon enough. Let’s look at what makes the list!

20. Lady Bird

Extraordinarily well made and even better acted, Lady Bird is a movie that easily gets by with a plot that is little more than “a year in an eccentric girl’s life”. The titular Lady Bird experiences love–a few times–heartache, success, failure, loss, and regret. Through it all is her relationship with her mother, one based on love but also on overwhelming amounts of mutual frustration. It’s all very realistic and down to Earth.

By the future director of Barbie, no less!

Ronan is impeccable as Lady Bird. She is magnetic and carries the movie, appearing in just shy of every single scene. She can be charming, but also annoying, and it’s easy to see why her mom is so hard on her. At other times, Laurie Metcalfe as her mother embodies some of the more lightly damaging traits we’ve known in our own parents, and we sympathize with Lady Bird.

Like I said… it’s just realistic relationships in a realistic environment.

19. Mission: Impossible

For whatever reason, I had never seen any Mission: Impossible movie coming into 2024 except for the reviled Part 2, which I actually saw in theaters way back upon its release. And for whatever other reason, I decided this was the year I adjusted that oversight. Here we have the first, but far from the last, of those films to make this list.

This feels almost a bit corny and of-its-day, especially in terms of the direction and score (not necessarily the M:I theme, but the rest of it). It comes off a touch hackneyed at points. It just very much feels like a movie from the mid-90’s.

Still, Cruise rules as usual, and there are some very exciting and intense scenes. The scenes that became part of the zeitgeist–the wire-dangling scene and the explosion in the tunnel–still pay off and work so well.

18. Nosferatu (1922)

For my full review on Nosferatu, click HERE!

As I write this, we are four days away from getting Robert Eggers’ long-awaited Nosferatu reboot in theaters. Of course, I won’t be seeing it on Christmas proper, but I will check it out during the following days. This is why I’m putting off doing my Best Of The Year list at this point; I want to wait until I’ve seen that to see where it places.

The classic, though, is well deserving of its reputation.

17. Christine

The story is weak, but that comes with reducing 500+ pages to a less than two hour movie, I guess. Especially in the first act-plus, things just kind of happen here without much reason or just aren’t elaborated upon well enough. Arnie and Leigh’s relationship and Dennis’ hospitalization, in particular.

But ignoring that, you’ve got some great visuals, solid effects, some really good stuntwork, and a kick-ass soundtrack. So Carpenter really did everything in his power to make this work even with the somewhat slapdash script. And he does brilliant work with it!

“Shitter” is a really weird epithet, though. Everyone poops, Stephen King.

16. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning

We are back to the Mission: Impossible well again, and with the last entry having been the first of the franchise, this one is the most recently released. What this series always needed was Hailey Atwell and Pom Klemintoff, and we just never knew it. Both were fantastic, especially Atwell who had a much bigger role.

The problem is that after the absolutely bonkers and phenomenal finale and third act of Fallout (will that be enough to push it higher on this list? Stay tuned!), Dead Reckoning’s climax almost felt tame. The escaping the plummeting train got good, but everything leading up to it was relatively ho-hum.

For me, the best action set piece here was the car chase, which had plenty of drama and humor and just worked so damn well in a franchise known for its action beats. The movie was almost strictly downhill from there, though.

15. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

This was the part of the franchise where I threw up my arms and said, “Okay, I just have to give up on complaining about how these all have the same exact plot and just take them as they are, I guess”. Every single M:I film is about Ethan and his team facing betrayal from inside the IMF and having to be on the outside of the agency working their way back in. It’s very repetitive, and I couldn’t help but ding the movies for that for other entries. But with Rogue Nation I just learned to love the bomb.

This was easily the best of the series up to its point. Much more fun and humorous than parts 1 and 3. The best action set pieces of the franchise. A much easier to follow story than Ghost Protocol. Still not a villain as good as Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Part 3 or Jon Voight in Part 1, but better than whatever was going on in GP. It really kinda of leveled out in some areas while dramatically improving others. It’s a good franchise, so I can’t say it was “finding its footing”, but I guess it was more like perfecting the recipe.

14. The Fog (1980)

It wasn’t JUST Mission: Impossible movies I watched in 2024, though! As you may be able to tell from Christine and this, I put forth an effort to watch some John Carpenter that I had never seen before. He’s a master of his craft, but coming into the year, I’d only seen six or seven entries on his resume.

A great cast giving solid performances, a typically tense and eerie Carpenter score, some wonderfully shot and edited scenes, and creepy, suspenseful moments. This might be John Carpenter’s most underrated movie because I never hear it mentioned among his best. And yet, the quality is there in spades. This is definitely among my Top 5 of his personally now.

Sure the story is a bit generic, with angry ghosts haunting a town and killing people, but when all of the technical aspects are handled as well as they are here, you can forgive that pretty easily.

13. The Iron Claw

For my full review on The Iron Claw, click HERE!

There were a few terrific movies that came out late in 2023 that I didn’t get to check out until very early in 2024, so they got relegated to this last rather than getting to make my Best Of 2023. Hey, it happens. At least they are going to get their proper call-out in some list or another.

For my full thoughts on The Iron Claw, you can clearly click the link there, but what I’ll say now is that it was powerfully acted and had a very impactful storyline that stuck with my wife for days after we saw the movie. She kept asking me about the family and how things progressed for them. It was so well-made that she, who hates wrestling, was that absorbed by it.

12. A Fish Called Wanda

Although this takes a while to get going (humor-wise; the story starts off pretty much right away), once the funny kicks in, this becomes something of a riot throughout. Several substantial laugh-out-loud moments. I was surprised how humorous this ended up being after its slow start.

I’ve heard it was a good movie, but I’ve never heard anyone say that it’s one of the funnier pieces of cinema to come out in the revered 1980’s. But with the Monty Python talent involved here, I should not have been surprised, I guess.

Great cast apart from them, too, with Curtis and Kline doing just stellar work. Kline might be one of the most underappreciated actors ever.

The best part of the movie has to go to Ken and his quest to kill a little old lady. It left me in stitches.

11. Road To Perdition

If you are following the Stew World Order podcast–and if you aren’t, why the heck not?!–you will get a full episode on Road To Perdition coming out on 2/22/2025 where you can hear my full Ups and Downs on the film.

For here, I’ll say this was every bit as good as it should have been based on the cast. Tom Hanks playing against type, Paul Newman being so damn menacing, Daniel Craig as a looming threat, and Jude Law as the killer for hire. It was all superbly acted.

The story is also measured and told well. There are great characterization moments, but the more intense beats don’t let up for long.

*******

And those are the first ten of my top twenty! How many Mission: Impossible films–if any!–make it into the top ten? What surprises are in store as far as flicks go that it seems like everyone else in the world has already seen?

Find out next time!

And until next time… take care!