Number 1 Black List script!
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: Two strangers scramble to find someone to sleep with on the one night of the
year when premarital sex is legal.
About: Travis Braun wrote one of my favorite scripts last year, Dying For You. The guy’s a great writer. So it should come as no surprise that another one of his scripts finished number 1 on the Black List.
Writer: Travis Braun
Details: 98 pages
Pugh for Hannah?
Is this the new rom-com template?
Create a big flashy high-concept way into the genre?
I wouldn’t bet against it. Even though rom-coms have had these little victories over the years, the genre is still nowhere near its former glory. Travis Braun had the idea that, maybe, if you guss it up with a fanciful foundation, it won’t be seen as just another excuse to watch pretty people smile at each other.
Let’s find out if he’s onto something.
In a not-so-slight dig at conservative culture, we now live in a world where, in order to promote family values again, the government has made it illegal to have pre-marital sex. Except for one 12 hour period a year.
Twenty-something pizza-cook, Owen, just got dumped by his girlfriend not only because she doesn’t see a future for them but also because she really really really really wants to have sex with this one guy and since this is the only night to do it, she has to dump Owen NOW.
Cut to Hannah, a personal assistant, who races across town to meet her hot Spanish date for their crazy sex night. They did a Before Sunset thing where they met last year on this day and agreed not to exchange names. Instead, they would meet in this exact spot tonight, a year later. Except Spanish Hottie’s a no-show!
Hannah and Owen both stumble into the night, aware that their only chance to have sex all year just evaporated. You’re probably thinking they’ll bump into each other, right? Correct! They do! And Owen proceeds to throw up all over Hannah’s shoes. It’s what we call, in the business, a “Meet Barf” moment.
They go their own ways. But after Hannah gets arrested for almost having sex with an all-year sex violator guy and Owen falls for a digital honeytrap sending him into Central Park where he’s summarily robbed, the two end up at the police station together.
It’s clear these two are not into each other but when Hannah says she’s starving for some pizza and Owen announces that he’s a pizza chef, there is a slight bit of hope that sex is still on the dough-filled table tonight!
However, just as things are looking up, some too-cool-for-school chick named Nia pulls Hannah off to an exclusive party where she has a chance to not only hook up. But hook up with her celebrity crush! Owen is left alone once again. But only momentarily. He coincidentally ends up at the same party, giving these two one final chance to make sex happen.
I call these ideas “speculative hook” ideas. A world where you can murder one night a year (The Purge). A world where all books are illegal (Fahrenheit 451).
They’re a subset of high concept ideas that focus on creating one shocking societal rule and building a story around it.
I’ve never been the biggest fan of speculative hooks. This type of speculation is so writer-driven, they come off as fake.
But Carson. Aren’t all movie ideas fake? Isn’t Jurassic World fake? Actually, no. That idea makes sense to me. Science has evolved to a point where we can clone animals. So why wouldn’t we be able to clone dinosaurs?
That’s the thing about high-concept ideas. There has to be a line of logic that leads up to their birth. Otherwise, it’s just a writer coming up with an idea and forcing it upon reality.
And yes, I know you can get into the weeds with this stuff. Why do I believe a man can fly around and have super-strength and x-ray vision but not believe the government would limit pre-marital sex to one day a year?
I can’t explain that logically. I can only say that the mythology of Superman, and other superheroes for that matter, is so well-established within our culture that I believe it in the same way that I believe Tom Cruise can cling to the side of a flying airplane.
The result of ideas that don’t immediately meet the ‘suspension of disbelief bar’ is that the reader must climb a steeper hill to get hooked. And other problems in the script become magnified due to the fact that the reader isn’t immediately immersed.
For example, where are the stakes? Why do I care if two adults can’t have sex? What happens to these characters if they don’t succeed? They have to wait a year? Okay. So? There are people in this world, the real one mind you, who haven’t had sex in years. They’re still living their lives.
So, yeah, with every page, I was losing hope.
However…
The script gradually began to win me over with its charm.
Once I realized that, at its heart, it was a romantic comedy, I stopped judging it so harshly. All I care about with romantic comedies is that they meet three criteria. Do I like the guy? Do I like the girl? Do I want to see them end up together?
One Night Only meets all three of those criteria.
A low-key thing that Braun does well is he creates these characters that are fallible. They know they’re imperfect but they still try their best.
I’ll tell you why this is important. I recently watched this show called “Laid.” It’s a high-concept idea as well. This main female character starts to realize that every man she’s slept with is dying. So the show is about her going off and warning all these guys.
In that show, the main character is very dismissive of others, particularly men. She thinks the world of herself, unable to notice any of her flaws. She innately believes she deserves Channing Tatum when she’s more on the level of Jonah Hill. She looks down on most of the guys she runs into. They’re always wrong. She’s always right.
Why would I like that character? Why would I want to root for that character?
Hannah wants the best guy she can get, similar to the protagonist in Laid. But she’s not blind to her own weaknesses. She is fallible and knows it. She realizes that if she had her life together, she wouldn’t be in this position. It makes her a lot more likable so that, when Owen shows interest, I was rooting for her to like him back.
The science of character likability may be the most important component in all of screenwriting. It’s so delicate yet so important. If we don’t like your character, we don’t care about anything else. If you go overboard and make them too likable, they don’t feel like a real person.
It’s a fragile balancing act but it’s worth spending a lot of time on to get right. One of the main questions I would ask anybody who reads your script is, “Did you like my main characters?” Cause if they say “no,” or, just as bad, say, “They were okay,” then you have work to do. Stop worrying about your plot and your twists and your dialogue and get back in there and figure out how to make us love your characters. Cause if we don’t. You’re basically f*&%d.
One Night Only is not as good as Dying for You. That script fired on all cylinders. But it’s still good. And it’s a rare example of somebody in the business writing a funny script. After Hollywood sent the comedy genre to the death camps, all the good comedy writers disappeared. Travis Braun is one of the only few left.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: When you meet the three romantic comedy criteria I mentioned above, you can activate the “pull-apart” method. That’s what Braun did here. He kept pulling Hannah and Owen apart. They would meet, they would be pulled apart, they would run into each other again, then get pulled apart. When readers see characters they like pulled apart, they stick around until they come together again. This isn’t just true for romantic comedies. You can use it in any genre. One of the reasons The Empire Strikes Back is considered to be such a good film is because we are anxiously waiting until all the characters come back together again. Up until that point, due to their separation, all we feel is anxiety. But, again, this only works if we actually like the characters.
Bust out your Trapper Keepers and get this all down in your calanders!
This year, we’re going to have 11 showdowns at Scriptshadow. If you’re new to the site, a Showdown is when you send me a writing sample, I pick the best entries and post them on the site, then you guys spend the weekend voting on your favorite entry. The winning entry then gets reviewed on the site.
Normally, I’d announce each Showdown the month before. But I want everyone to have that information ahead of time so that you can prepare the best submissions possible.
We’re going to start off with one of my favorite showdowns to run, the LOGLINE SHOWDOWN. Except there’s a little twist! Instead of only submitting one logline, you must submit FIVE loglines. I will choose your best logline. That logline will be officially entered into the competition. I will then choose ten loglines to compete in the showdown.
As a bonus, even if you don’t make the cut, I will tell every single person who enters what their best logline was. The secondary goal of this showdown is to find your next script to write. So, at the very least, I’m going to tell you which of your five ideas you should turn into a script.
JANUARY – 5 LOGLINES SHOWDOWN
What: 5 Loglines Showdown
When: Friday, January 30
Deadline: Thursday, January 31, 11pm Pacific Time
Submit: 5 loglines, each with a title and a genre
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Okay, let’s move on to the rest of the showdowns
FEBRUARY – FIRST PAGE SHOWDOWN
Not enough writers understand the art of keeping the reader’s attention. They write for themselves rather than placing themselves in the minds of their readers and asking what would entertain them. That first page tells the reader SO MUCH about you. Namely, it poses the question: Would you keep reading? Would we?
MARCH – SCENE SHOWDOWN
Scene-writing is script-writing. You cannot write a script until you first understand how to write a dramatically compelling scene with a beginning, middle, and end. Something that conveys character wants. Something that shows you understand how to inject conflict into a scenario. Most of all, a scene displays whether you know how to be entertaining. This is your chance to prove all that.
APRIL – TWIST ENDING SHOWDOWN
I felt like we needed to have fun with a couple of these showdowns so these next two are, admittedly, different. You will write a short script that MUST HAVE a twist ending. Twist endings are super hard to write but when they work, they turn a script into a must-read.
MAY – CHARACTER INTRO SHOWDOWN
I thought we all knew how important introducing a character was. Yet I continue to read scripts with weak character intros! This is your chance to change that. If I told you that you had to create the best character in cinema history, what kind of first scene would you write for them? I’d imagine it would be amazing. Well, that’s how you should approach every one of your protagonist intros.
JUNE – MEGA-SHOWDOWN RETURNS!!!
Mega-Showdown returns! 10 uninterrupted days of showdown madness on the site. This was my favorite two weeks on Scriptshadow last year so I’m excited to see what happens next. If you haven’t already started on something, you should start the SECOND you get my reply e-mail about which of your five loglines is best.
JULY – HIGH CONCEPT LOGLINE SHOWDOWN
After you finish a script, the very first thing you need to do is COME UP WITH YOUR NEXT IDEA. Hollywood waits for no one. You must keep generating material. This logline competition, however, is going to be high concept only. No sad Alaskan coming-of-age concepts. Only stuff that results in anime eyes from any producer who looks at it.
AUGUST – DIALOGUE SHOWDOWN
Write a scene that is dialogue-driven! I might even impose limitations of allowing a minimal amount of description. The scene’s value must exist solely on the ability to write great dialogue. Better get that Scriptshadow Dialogue book if you hope to stand a chance!
SEPTEMBER – OPEN SHOWDOWN
I’m still not sure what I’m going to do for this month yet. A couple of options are a Second Chance Showdown (for entries that were solid but didn’t make the Mega-Showdown cut). Short Story Showdown. Interpretation Showdown (I post a short script idea and everyone writes their version of it). I’m open to other ideas so feel free to suggest stuff in the comments!
OCTOBER – HORROR SHOWDOWN
It’s been a while since we’ve had a genre-specific showdown and what better month to bring it back than October! When Halloween is in the air. Poe will be thrilled. Scott will be furious. But, in the end, we’ll all be happy if we find a great horror script. :)
NOVEMBER – AI PITCH SHOWDOWN
A part of me doesn’t want to do this showdown but I think it’s necessary if we don’t want to be left behind. By the end of this year, I believe screenwriting will begin to heavily incorporate AI to bring in a more visual element when pitching our stories. So, I want to do a showdown where you pitch your movie idea using the available AI tools out there (image generation, video generation). Whoever wins, I will review their script (yes, this can include scripts that didn’t make the Mega-Showdown). I know there will be a lot of questions about this one. We’ll answer those questions as we get closer to November.
And there we have it. A year’s worth of screenwriting battles. I can’t wait! Can you??
Welcome to 2025!
Tomorrow, I will list the 11 SHOWDOWNS that we’re going to have this year on the site. Because I know how impatient you all are, I’ll give you a quick preview.
Our first showdown, which will happen on January 23rd, is going to be LOGLINE SHOWDOWN.
But it comes with a twist. You are not going to send in a single logline. You are going to send in FIVE loglines. I’ll decide which one is best. I will then post the 10 best loglines (from those top choices) that were submitted and all of you will vote.
Now, there’s a reason I’m doing this. We often get obsessed with a single idea. So much so that it’s impossible for us to receive criticism regarding that idea. We see it all the time in the comments. Someone posts a logline. Others don’t like it. The writer becomes fiercely defensive and everyone goes home angry.
I understand defending one’s idea. If we weren’t personally attached to what we wrote, what we wrote would probably suck.
But, the other day, I saw that one of you posted how John Hughes used to come up with hundreds of ideas a year so that he was only picking the best of the best to make movies from.
I want to use that same approach here. Instead of becoming attached to one idea that may be bad, I want you to generate multiple ideas. This will create less of an attachment and allow you to be okay with others judging them. Also, a lot of times what will happen is that a throwaway idea will end up being your best one.
This happens all the time in pitch meetings. The writer comes into the studio to pitch his slam-dunk idea. It’s immediately clear the executives aren’t into it. He pivots to another idea. They don’t like that one either. He then pitches some throwaway idea he came up with a couple of weeks ago and, bam, the execs are hooked.
So, if I were you, I would start generating five loglines A DAY leading up to January 23rd, Logline Showdown Day. Send me the top 5 of those 100 loglines. If you do that, you should have one good movie concept in there. If all this goes as planned, we’ll have the most competitive Logline Showdown ever.
And this is all part of a bigger plan. I will tell EVERYBODY who submits loglines, whether they get chosen or not, which logline was their best one. There will be a major Script Showdown announced tomorrow. I would then prefer that the entry for that showdown be your best logline.
I always say never to use flashbacks so I don’t know what it says that I’m violating my own rule.
BUT…
I did catch up on the last few movies that I missed last year and I wanted to give you my thoughts about them. Keep in mind that I saw faults in all of these movies from afar, which is why I didn’t see them when they came out. Therefore, I was predisposed to disliking them. I’ll start with the worst and move my way up to the best.
Elevation
What’s interesting about this movie is that this is the type of script I tell you guys to write. In fact, there’s a good chance this logline would’ve finished high on this month’s Logline Showdown. After a worldwide invasion by mysterious monsters, humanity’s only safety is to move up to a higher elevation, where the monsters can’t survive. In this case, that’s 8000 feet.
It comes from the same producers of A Quiet Place so it has that same high concept feel to it. But this movie was no Quiet Place.
I knew it was in trouble when the main plot revealed itself. This community lives in a safety zone above 8000 feet. The main character’s son has health issues. They run out of medicine for him so they have to head to the city to get more. The city, of course, is below 8000 feet. That’s your movie.
The “go get medicine” trope is so played out that you can’t use it as a main plotline. You can use it as a subplot in, say, a TV show, which shows like The Walking Dead do all the time. But it can’t be your main plot. That’s about as lazy of a creative choice as you can come up with. You need to be more original.
But the bigger issue here is that you could tell they didn’t have enough story. There were tons of scenes with characters sitting around, sharing difficult moments from their pasts, or talking about their feelings. A good script should never feel like it’s biding time. It should feel like there isn’t enough time. When you have to write scenes to stretch your script out to an acceptable length, your script is dead in the water.
But are you ready to get mind-f*%&ed? I would still tell you to write this script. You know why? Because you’re reading a review of the movie. Which means it got made. Which means that EVEN THOUGH they had a bad script, they still made it. Why? Because it was a high concept. High concept stuff is more likely to get made, which means you don’t need to execute the script perfectly to get traction with it.
Saturday Night
There is NOBODY who likes a real-time concept more than me. I’m of the belief that the tighter you make your timeframe, the more urgency and tension you pack into your script. You do yourself so many favors with this format cause it hides a lot of the problems that come up in a script otherwise.
Jason Reitman has me rethinking that opinion.
Saturday Night has to be one of the more frustrating movies I’ve seen in a while because, with every scene, I thought, “I *should* be liking this.” Yet I wasn’t.
You have the insane pressure of putting on a show with only minutes left to get ready and everything is going wrong. It’s complete chaos. Nobody likes each other. That’s the recipe for a tension-filled movie!
But I think I know why it didn’t work. For one, the driving force for liking this movie is understanding who’s who. It’s understanding who Dan Akroyd is. Who Chevy Chase is. Who John Belushi is.
The movie does a terrible job of conveying this. None of the actors look like their real-life counterparts. This means that older people who grew up with Saturday Night Live come away frustrated.
Then you have the younger audience watching this movie. If you don’t have any idea who these people are at all, I don’t know why you would have any interest in the film. I suppose if you made the characters fun to watch onscreen, anybody would like them, regardless of whether they’d heard of SNL or not. But neither Chevy Chase, Dan Akroyd, or John Belushi, stand out. None of them have a moment where you think, “Ooh, this character is interesting. I want to know more about them.”
But the bigger issue is that the movie decides to make Lorne Michaels (the creator of Saturday Night Live) the main character and he is the single most uninteresting character I watched in movies all year.
A good protagonist should be ACTIVE. They should be exerting themselves on the plot. This does two things. It makes us like the main character (we like people who take action) and it injects life into the plot. If the protagonist is trying to do things, he will be met with obstacles and conflict, which create drama and entertainment.
All the Lorne Michaels’ character does in this movie is stumble from scene to scene and observe what’s going on. He never does anything. He never exerts himself on the production. He does so little, in fact, that I would not have faulted a viewer for assuming he was a production assistant.
On top of this, the movie isn’t funny. I didn’t laugh once. Much of the dialogue is Sorkin’esque, the walking-and-talking million-words-a-minute style that made Aaron famous. The problem is, it’s third-rate Sorkin at best. This goes back to my complaint about The Franchise. If you’re making a comedy, you need funny people in the key positions – director, writer, actor. There were no comedians in any of those positions here. So you reap what you sow.
Nightbitch
Nightbitch is one of those movies that would’ve finished top 5 on the Black List. Why? CAUSE IT’S A GIANT METAPHOR. A suburban mother who’s going insane due to her stay-at-home duties starts turning into a dog.
It’s a metaphor for… something.
The point is, scripts like this are always celebrated because intellectual types think they’re smart. They also contain an x-factor that elevates them above your typical movies that examine life.
But the script fails due to a basic problem – no plot. I see this all the time in character examinations. The writer becomes so focused on examining their main character that they forget to create a story for them to move through.
All Nightbitch does is drop us into unconnected scenes of our heroine either a) doing something with her kid, or b) doing something with her husband.
To the writer’s credit, there is a significant amount of conflict. There is conflict within our main character. And there is conflict between our main character and her husband. But you still need a plot. You still need a destination. If you don’t give the reader a destination and they, therefore, don’t know where they’re headed, it becomes very difficult for them to stay engaged.
This is Screenwriting 101. Build some GSU into your story. You may have been able to save the film.
The Order
I have begun to trust IMDB ratings much more than Rotten Tomatoes ratings. Rotten Tomatoes has this movie at 91%. IMDB has it at a 6.8. In general, a 7.0 on IMDB means it’s an average movie. A 7.1 is a little better. And a 7.2 usually means it’s good. Every point higher than that means the movie is genuinely good. A 7.6, for example would equate to a genuinely awesome flick.
The Order is a 6.8 movie. It’s watchable but weak in too many key areas. It’s a confused premise. It presents as a “based on a true story” movie, set in the 70s following domestic terrorists. But it’s not true. It’s all made up. Which is strange.
Why set some fictional movie in the 70s for such a random topic? Idaho (where the movie is set) has some domestic terrorist issues NOW. So, why not set it now? It would’ve been a million times more interesting.
The seriousness with which the movie presents itself prevents any sort of excitement from unfolding. And it seems to deliberately make choices that make the movie worse as opposed to better.
For example, in an early bank robbery scene, our crew steals money from a bank and shoot off in the getaway car, celebrating their victory. Then, out of nowhere, you hear a BANG and blood splatters across everyone’s face. There’s momentary confusion as to what happened and who got shot.
But instead of telling you, the director cuts to the next scene, our bank-robbing leader arriving home with the money, covered in blood. His girlfriend says, “What happened!?” “Nothing, just an ink explosion.”
So nobody got hurt then. Oh and, also, all the money they stole was wrapped in plastic. So none of the money got hit with the ink explosion. Nobody got hurt. The ink explosion didn’t mark the money, meaning it can still be used. WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THE INK EXPLOSION THEN!!??
The movie’s shining light was its bank robbery scenes. They were the best bank robbery scenes I’ve seen in years. But there were only a few of them. Everything else about this movie plods along boringly.
Gladiator 2
Oh, Gladiator 2. This is a tough movie to talk about because it’s so decidedly average and we don’t have a community to discuss average movies anymore. Movies either need to be great or terrible. There’s no in-between.
The biggest award I can give this film is that it takes a rather elaborate plot and manages to keep it on the tracks. There’s a lot going on here. You have these co-emperors of Rome and they defeat some country in battle and they make that country slaves and they bring them to Rome and yet one of those defeated men, our hero, used to be Roman and he falls under the tutelage of some “vice” emperor played by Denzel, who turns him into a gladiator and, oh yeah, it turns out (spoiler) that he’s actually Maximus’s secret son and then Denzel takes out the brother emperors and becomes emperor himself and now he and our gladiator are enemies.
There’s a LOT going on in this plot. It’s the opposite of Nightbitch.
Despite Denzel being the best thing about the movie, the decision to hire him ultimately hurt it. Because Denzel blows everyone out of the water in every scene that he’s in in every movie. Here, he’s pitted against an actor, Paul Mescal, who’s still raw. He doesn’t yet have gravitas onscreen. The reason the first movie worked so well was because Russell Crowe was always the biggest thing onscreen. Mescal is no Crowe. And, therefore, it’s the villain, Denzel, who comes away as the biggest character in the movie as opposed to who it should’ve been – our hero.
I still think this movie is worth checking out. I liked the unique choice to make the emperor a two-headed monster. And I liked the weirdness of those characters. And, unlike a lot of the movies listed above, Gladiator 2 never gets boring. It only fails to achieve what you want it to. And maybe that’s because our expectations were too high to begin with.
Wicked
Wicked wins the “Best of the Missed Movies” list by a hair over Gladiator 2. You can always tell if a movie is “working” within the first scene. That doesn’t mean you’ll like it. But there are so many movies where the elements don’t come together in a harmonious way, leaving the movie feeling disjointed and unsure of itself.
I’m thinking of movies like The Fall Guy and If and Fly Me To The Moon and Borderlands and Megalopolis. The ingredients of these movies are all fighting against the overall product.
Not the case with Wicked. You can feel a certainty behind the film. The director, the actors, the production designers – they all knew exactly the film they were making and that confidence comes across on screen.
The actor I was most worried about was the big revelation in the film – Ariana Grande. This is because I assumed she was playing the good guy. Ariana Grande is not good! Therefore, when we learn that she actually plays the villain, everything falls into place. She is the most villainous villain of the year, both in real life and in the film. And the movie shines because of it.
The script shines the brightest by utilizing one of the most tried-and-true devices in screenwriting – a pair of characters (Glinda and Elphaba) who despise each other. Forcing two people who don’t like each other to be around one another is the dramatic gift that keeps on giving. It’s so simple yet so effective and, for me, it was what made the movie so fun. In fact, whenever the two were apart, I would eagerly wait for them to reunite. The movie was always best when they shared the screen.
That doesn’t mean there weren’t issues. The movie was way too long, an unapologetic 2 hours and 40 minutes. It certainly took its time through some sections. But I thought the movie was good overall.
Did you see any of these movies? Or did you catch up on any 2024 films that surprised you? If so, share your thoughts below! And if you want to start pitching loglines for community feedback, go for it!
The great thing about a Scriptshadow Best Movies of the Year list is that you’re not getting any b.s. All these other list-makers are giving you their cinephile-signaling choices, the movies they think they’re supposed to tell the world they like. Not Scriptshadow!
Every single pick here is, genuinely, one of my favorite movies of the year. That means you’re going to see some movies you’re not used to seeing in a Top 10. There will be complaints. There will be defiant comments written, comments that sound something like this: “That movie was garbage. It was boring and I hated the characters and you could see the twist coming from a mile away.”
Those comments? Those comments are wrong.
Every single pick on the Scriptshadow Best Movies list is, objectively, one of the best movies of the year according to moi.
Before we get to those picks, I want to comment on some movies that didn’t make the list, in case you were wondering where they were.
I haven’t seen Wicked because I assumed I wouldn’t like it. But several friends who aren’t Wickeders, or whatever you call them, saw the movie and enjoyed it so there’s an off-chance that if I saw the movie, it would make my Top 10. I finally saw A Quiet Place: Day One and it was better than I thought it would be but too flawed to make the list.
Longlegs was too “indie” for my taste. The movie felt like it needed another 20 million in budget to make the most of its potential. Smile 2 was a nice surprise. Great directing. But I definitely wouldn’t call it one of the best movies of the year.
Blink Twice was better than I thought it would be so if you haven’t seen it, check it out. Just not “best of” worthy. I absolutely positively HATE The Substance. It has permanently put me off body horror. Late Night with the Devil was probably the best surprise I had all year. Very fun movie. Nearly made my Top 10.
The Last Stop at Yuma County would’ve made the list if it extended to Top 15. A tense little thriller with great directing and good use of payoffs. As would Love Lies Bleeding, another directing tour de force. A very spooky film that makes you feel off-center from the very first scene. Oh, and Magpie! Magpie’s concept comes from Daisy Ridley. A fun little slow-burn thriller about a family that’s falling apart with a unique plotline that involves a married couple’s child landing a role in a big local movie.
Never saw Here. Never saw Monkey Man. Never saw Heretic. Of those three, Heretic is the only one that legitimately had a shot at making my Top 10.
All right, now that you know all that, time to get to the Top 10 movies of the year!
NUMBER 10 – CIVIL WAR
I watched this movie at just the right time. If I would’ve watched it when it came out, I think the hype would’ve led to disappointment. But I went in long after the movie hit streaming and therefore my expectations were low. The movie is not perfect. And, if I’m being honest, it’s slow, especially early on. But it grows on you. You start to care about the characters. And when you hit one of the best scenes of the year – Jesse Plemons killing anybody he sees fit – you’re all in. The movie then has a big finale that climaxes in the ultimate character arc. If you’re looking for a good adult movie, this is the second best option of the year. I’ll get to the first soon enough.
NUMBER 9 – KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
There may not have been a studio movie this year I was more convinced I would dislike than Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. 20th Century Fox has had issues with this franchise from the start. Every single one of the movies looks the same. Every single one of these movies has a title that sounds the same. I had no interest in seeing this. But the director does an incredible job mining an emotional story from the ape characters. I was shocked at how intensely I was drawn in. It’s one of the few examples of a studio putting character over spectacle. Definitely worth your time.
NUMBER 8 – DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE
Deadpool and Wolverine had a lot to live up to. If it would have toppled, it would’ve taken all of the 2024 box office with it. So give it to Ryan Reynolds for knowing exactly what the audience wanted and giving it to them. The thing I was most impressed by with this movie was how the character of Deadpool was in this sunny crazy kooky movie while the character of Wolverine was in this dark dusty devastating movie. And yet, somehow, they still played off each other perfectly. You know a movie is working when you don’t even care about the parts that aren’t working. For example, I have no idea what was going on with the villain in this film or what she wanted. Didn’t matter. We got Deadpool and Wolverine fighting 300 Alternate Universe Deadpools and that’s all we needed. That and Madonna.
NUMBER 7 – CONCLAVE
Conclave is a masterclass in plotting. A big part of plotting is pacing – understanding when to introduce new plot developments into the story and how frequently. Most writers wait too long to introduce the next big plot point and, as a result, their stories stall. You don’t get that with Conclave. Conclave keeps hitting you with new plot points every 10 pages. And each of those revelations either make the story more interesting, add higher stakes to the proceedings, or both. It’s a great example of how you can build an exciting plot into “small” situations. You don’t need to have Tom Cruise trying to save the world. You can build compelling plot points out of many different situations, especially high-stakes situations like needing to anoint the next pope.
NUMBER 6 – KINDS OF KINDNESS
Contrary to popular belief, I need my “weird” in my movie-watching. I don’t always want it. But I eventually crave it because I need something to balance out all the logical storytelling that dictates my taste. Kinds of Kindness gave me all of that and more. What surprised me most about the movie is that, even though it’s a compilation of 3 short stories, each of those stories is really good. Normally when writers do this, there’s always a weak story. But not here. Each one is weird in its own wonderful way. The storytelling Yorgos Lanthimos uses is one where he plops you into a story that you don’t quite understand yet and you need to keep watching to figure it out. I noticed that that device was very effective here as I always wanted to know more. I kind of wish Yorgos would’ve figured out how to make this one big movie because, that way, more people would’ve seen it. But even in its current state, it’s a gem that people will stumble upon and enjoy for years.
NUMBER 5 – THE WILD ROBOT
The second I saw this trailer, I knew it was going to be great. The contrast of this mechanical being placed in the midst of such unforgiving nature was a pot just dying to boil up plenty of drama. I was telling a writer how clever the writing was in that it could’ve been really sappy with just the robot and the little bird. But the writer, Chris Sanders, added this conniving fox to the mix and that created the perfect balance to the proceedings. The movie has these great sequences that are both cinematic and emotional. When Roz teaches Brightbill to fly, it’s total movie magic. Sanders also took a big risk by embracing maturity instead of catering to a more youthful approach. He could’ve easily pandered to children here and the film probably would’ve done a lot better at the box office. Instead, he kept it mature and, as a result, it’s going to win the animation Oscar and go down as a classic.
NUMBER 4 – STRANGE DARLING
It’s hard to talk about this movie without spoiling it. So, if you haven’t seen it yet, move on to the next movie on the list. Okay, spoiling commencing. Strange Darling shows that you can make a small cheap movie hit hard. One of the best ways to do this is to tap into a belief that the general audience has been conditioned to believe and then slam into them with the opposite. The last four years have been movies telling us: Men toxic, women perfect. Director JT Mollner uses that belief against you. When our evil looking dude is hunting our helpless heroine, we’re rooting hard for her to get away. That is until we find out that the heroine is the villain and the man is the hero. It’s a great midpoint twist that turns the movie into a whirlwind of emotions and momentum. Biggest surprise of the year. Didn’t see it coming.
NUMBER 3 – SPEAK NO EVIL
A few of you are probably surprised to see this movie ranked so high. So let me explain why. Speak No Evil is, in my opinion, the type of screenplay you can get the most bang for your buck out of. Because all you’re doing is putting characters in a situation. There are no monsters here. There are no shootouts. There are no car chases. It’s just a group of people, in this case a family, placed in a dangerous situation that they probably won’t escape. I love scripts like this. I love scripts that reveal things before our heroes know. Cause now you’re strictly using dramaturgy (in this case, dramatic irony) to keep the reader invested. It’s pure writing, these stories. So to see one done so well? I’m always going to celebrate when that happens. And even if you throw all the complex screenwriting terms to the side, it’s just a fun thriller. It’s tense. It’s suspenseful. It’s got a couple of great reveals. It’s got a great villain. For pure entertainment, you can’t beat Speak No Evil.
NUMBER 2 – FURIOSA
Years down the line, random people are going to stumble across this movie on streaming and wonder where it came from and how they’ve never heard of it before. It is a riveting movie. It’s also an epic story. This isn’t Mad Max. It isn’t Fury Road. It takes place over years and years. We see characters grow and mature and move their way up the ladder. We see these incredible action sequences. The best car chases you’ll see in any movie this decade. I remember watching this film and, at first, feeling that it was too clunky. But it was only because I didn’t understand how big the scope was. Every time I look back at this film, I grow more and more fond of it. It achieves that rare feat of feeling big (incredible set pieces) and small (intimate moments) at the same time. I have no idea why this movie didn’t do better. Maybe it’s because nothing in this universe could’ve looked better than that Fury Road trailer. So it was always doomed. But this movie was freaking awesome.
NUMBER 1 – ANORA
When I think of Anora, I think of one word: Energy. Every single frame of this movie is packed with energy. You don’t see that anymore. We used to get it in movies like Trainspotting and Fight Club and Amos Perros and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. We don’t see it much anymore, though. Sean Baker is one of the few filmmakers who’s able to infuse that same level of energy into every moment of his movie. Anora is a long film but it never plays like it. The entire second act is a chase where we’re always one step behind. The screenplay preys on your expectations at every single juncture. You always think you know what’s coming. You don’t. Even when we get to the ending, a time when we’re usually able to put all the pieces together, we STILL don’t know where it’s going. And it’s an amazing experience because of it. The acting is incredible. The casting is incredible. The directing is superb. Scott says this movie won’t win the Oscar because Neon doesn’t have the cash to bankroll an Oscar campaign. But I think this movie is so good that it will overcome that. Expect Anora to pick up a golden statute this March.
For a franchise that was DOA when its first trailer arrived, it’s amazing that Sonic has become such a dominant franchise that it’s now beating Hollywood juggernaut, Disney, at the box office. And not just beating it. Destroying it. Sonic 3 took in 62 million dollars this weekend whereas The Liong King prequel, Mufasa, took in a measly 35 million dollars.
It’s not just a boon for Paramount’s video game star turned movie star, it’s a likely goodbye wave to Disney’s “live-action” adaptations. Between the underperforming Little Mermaid, the failure of Mufasa, and the impending failure of Snow White, which is rumored to have cost 300 million dollars to fix all its various issues, the unexpected cash cow that is live-action adaptations is now kaput.
It’s a footnote, albeit a big one, since Disney’s Marvel franchise is no longer a guaranteed money-maker. They needed this other pipeline of profit to ward off all these new Marvel bombs that were imploding. But now that the curiosity factor is dead, the live-action adaptations have to stand on their own. And it doesn’t look like they’re able to.
Luckily, Disney still has the best catalog of films in the business and, therefore, they can churn out animated sequels that always do well. Disney *does* have two of the top five movies of the year with Inside Out 2 and Moana 2. They also have Deadpool and Wolverine, although that one comes with context since it’s not a Disney-generated movie.
Speaking of superhero films, there is no studio more dependent on the success of a superhero movie than Warner Brothers is with James Gunn’s Superman. The trailer for the new film (and the rebooted DC franchise) just came out last week and, I have to say, it is amazing.
James Gunn knows that there has to be a balance in order for emotion to connect. Because if it’s all emotion all the time, then there’s nothing to contrast that emotion with. It’s like a roller coaster that only goes down. Technically, that should be fun but the whole reason that the “down” works is because the roller coaster ever-so-slowly brings you UP beforehand. You must feel that slow suspense of the “up” in order to truly enjoy the “down.”
You also have to take risks in today’s movie marketplace to stand out. This has always been the case. But in 2024, it’s even more so, since movies aren’t just competing with other movies. They’re competing with 300 million dollar TV shows. They’re competing with the internet. They’re competing with Twitch and video games and New Jersey drones and Mr. Beast.
If you give out the same ole same ole in 2024, you’re just not going to get people talking. So for James Gunn to include a SUPER DOG in his Superman movie is insane when you think about it in a vacuum. They didn’t even try that in the original Superman movies, which came out during the height of 80s cheese. We live in a way more cynical world where the inclusion of a dog with a cape in a superhero movie could lead to a laughingstock meme that dominates the internet for the next 20 years.
And yet the “Superdog saves Superman” moment in the new Superman trailer is the most talked about thing of the Christmas season. Everyone is in love with Krypto. Including me!
The Superman trailer was good enough that I now think it could be the biggest movie of 2025. Yes, it needs to beat Avatar to do so. But it’s got a chance.
Speaking of emotion, I finally saw The Wild Robot and thought it was tremendous. One of the reasons this movie works so well is that it leans into this concept of contrast. A robot does not fit into nature. They are two opposite things. That’s what makes their combination so intriguing. Therefore, before a single plot beat has occurred, we’re already intrigued.
And the writer, Chris Sanders, leans into this idea when creating Roz’s (the robot’s) flaw. Roz is only able to think in terms of her programming. The movie is about her learning to think with her heart.
Writers get lost in this concept of character arcs. They make them more complicated than they need to be when, often, the simplistic ones are the ones that work. Character thinks logically. Character learns to think emotionally.
It really is an excellent movie and worth checking out.
But if The Wild Robot feels too juvenile for you, you’ll want to check out the most un-juvenile movie of the year, Conclave. It’s free if you have Peacock. Conclave is the best-plotted movie I’ve seen in 2024.
If you haven’t seen it, it follows the aftermath of the pope dying. A new pope for the Catholic Church must be chosen quickly, which means that all of the cardinals must hunker down and vote. If the vote isn’t supported by two-thirds of the cardinals, they have to go back to square one and try again.
The story follows Cardinal Lawrence, who’s one of the few cardinals who has no aspirations of becoming pope. He’s more of a “fixer” within the church. He’s the guy who talks to everybody and tries to get them on the same page.
So what does “best-plotted” mean seeing as ‘plotting’ is a vague term?
What it means is that the plot keeps advancing at a good pace and in interesting ways. You can write a script where the plot barely advances at all. You run into this with slow-burn thrillers, for example (think 2017’s “It Comes At Night”). You can write a script where the plot *does* advance but does so in uninteresting ways. For example, I can reveal that my female lead character is pregnant, which is advancing the plot, but does that pregnancy make the movie better? If not, it’s not good plotting.
Good plotting is when you keep advancing the plot – usually every 10-12 pages – in ways that add context and excitement to the story that wasn’t present before the plot beat arrived.
For example, one of the plot beats we learn about 25 pages into the screenplay is that Lawrence is losing his faith. He’s questioning his belief in God. Then, about 15 pages later, when the first votes come in, we learn that Lawrence is one of the favorites to become pope.
Do you see how the first plot beat, which was interesting in and of itself, works in tandem with the second plot beat? A cardinal who’s losing his faith is problematic. But a cardinal who’s losing his faith and is at risk of becoming the biggest religious figure in the world? That’s catastrophic. Which is what makes the plotting-combo so good.
Conclave does a great job of these plot advancements coming from the internal (the characters) as well as the external (the outside world). This is a late-movie spoiler so look away if you plan on seeing the film, but a later plot beat has a terrorist bombing outside the Sistine Chapel. It’s one more obstacle the Cardinals have to deal with.
The movie also does a good job employing today’s screenwriting theme, which is CONTRAST. The Catholic Church props up morality and peace and kindness. Yet the politicking that comes with voting in a a new pope is built on backstabbing and ambition and greed.
Both Conclave and The Wild Robot will end up on my Top Ten of the Year list, which I’ll publish tomorrow. I have one last movie I want to see before making the list. That would be The Brutalist, which looks like it’s going to be Anora’s main competition for a Best Movie Oscar. It’s 3 hours long, though. I’m hoping that won’t deter me when I wake up tomorrow. :)
