Million dollar sale for first-time screenwriter!

Genre: Thriller/Drama/Supernatural
Premise: A couple struggling to save their failing marriage take a risky step in their sex lives, igniting a chain of events that threatens to destroy everything they’ve built together.
About: Script sold for a million bucks once Robert Pattinson attached himself. It’s a great sign for screenwriters who believe that selling a script is impossible. Newbie Ross Evans doesn’t have a single credit to his name yet still pulled a 7 figure sale. It’s also a reminder that the people you have to win over to get a script sold these days are the high profile creatives. The name director or the name actor.
Writer: Ross Evans
Details: 101 pages

I still don’t know what to think of Robert Pattinson. He’s not very memorable in any of his performances. But he’s not bad either. The one thing I will give Robert Pattinson is that he seeks out incredibly talented people. Therefore, when he gets involved in a project, it’s usually, at least, interesting.

Let’s see if this continues that trend.

Jake and Emma have been married for 8 years and are incredibly unhappy. Unfortunately, instead of acknowledging that they’re unhappy, they either ignore it (Jake) or act out (Emma).

After Jake runs into his ex, Kate, he comes to realize that it’s finally time to cut his losses. That is until Emma suggests something radical to inject some spark back into their marriage – she’ll have sex with another man and he’ll watch.

Jake is reluctant at first but what does he have to lose at this point? So they hire some guy off the internet and he’s at their house the next night. Unbeknownst to Emma, the guy slips Jake a vile of mystery liquid. He then has sex with Emma.

But, during the sex, he starts chanting some weird language and the next thing you know, Jake is in Emma’s body and Emma is in Jake’s. WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED!!?? Before they can ask Sex Guy, he disappears!

Uh oh. This is bad. The two are forced to continue their lives in each other’s bodies while they try and locate Sex Guy so he can give them the cure. But when Jake goes into Emma’s work the next day, her boss does some dirty sexual things to Emma (aka Jake), confirming that the two are having an affair.

Furious, Jake (as Emma) invites the boss up to their remote cabin under the premise of sex only to chop his penis off and kill him. Emma shows up not too long after, having caught on to Jake’s plan, and the two must work together to bury the body.

What we eventually learn is that the vile Sex Guy gave Jake is the cure and will change them back. But when Jake (as Emma) gets pregnant, they decide not to change back, since Emma (as Emma) could never get pregnant.  Something about Jake being in her body has changed that.

Oddly enough, all this energy has reinvigorated their marriage. The two are…happy? That is until Emma admits she liked the thrill of Jake’s murder and wants to kill someone else. This happens right as Kate (Jake’s ex) becomes suspicious that the two are up to no good. So she tries to bust them. What happens next changes all three of their lives forever.

Well that was……….. not what I was expecting.

I think after you watch a movie like The Brutalist, it’s hard to come back down to earth and read something this detached from reality.

My eyes might as well have been dice when Emma and Jake switched bodies cause they were rolling all over the place.

However, I quickly began to see what Pattinson saw in this. When Jake goes to Emma’s work (as Emma) and her boss does something sexual that Jake isn’t remotely prepared for, I realized that this was a good setup to explore gender roles.

Not only is the moment a shock for Jake in so far as, within seconds, he experiences the world through a woman’s eyes. But it opened the door to explore this genre in a bold, new, uncharted way. We always see this genre as a broad comedy, but making it Hard-R allowed us to push boundaries and reveal uncomfortable body-switch antics that have never been seen before.

In the ultra-competitive world of storytelling, where every story has been told a thousand times over, that’s the name of the game – finding new avenues that allow you to explore things in ways they haven’t been explored before.

In other words, this ain’t Freaky Friday.  This ain’t Tootsie.

The setup is also, clearly, why it sold for a million dollars. Robert Pattinson gets to play two parts for the price of one. He gets to play Jake and he gets to play Emma. Actors LOVE playing multiple roles in a movie. And oddballs like Pattinson love scripts like this especially because they get to play a woman. What better acting challenge is there than playing a member of the opposite sex?

The movie’s biggest challenge is going to be de-messifying the script. There’s a lot going on here. Our two leads are in each others’ bodies. There’s a serial killer subplot that comes into play. The “potion” is used as a way to switch other bodies throughout the story. So the two need to save enough liquid to switch themselves back. Then you have the pregnancy. Then you have Kate coming into the picture. It’s a lot.

But I give it to Evans because, unlike yesterday’s film, he landed the plane. There’s a wild scramble during the climax (spoilers) where characters are bouncing into other bodies and when the dust settles, we’re not sure who’s where. It’s really clever because, in those last scenes, two out of the three people die, and we don’t know which ones!

In the end, How to Save a Marriage is a great example of what happens when you take a big creative risk. That body-switching scene was a bridge too far for me. It was tonally inconsistent with the rest of the movie and felt beyond sloppy. But once we got past that, the darker body-switch dynamic – specifically placing our heroes into opposite-gendered bodies – allowed this script to feel much deeper than your average screenplay.

It’s still too messy. But I’m hearing they’re continuing to develop it so I hope they’re smoothing all these bumps out.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Back in 2011, there was a Ryan Reynolds, Jason Bateman body-switch movie called “The Change-Up.” When Reynolds and Bateman were debating on whether to make the movie, they asked the same question I alluded to above. What’s different here than other body-switch movies? Reynolds argued that they were making the first R-rated body-switch movie. That was enough for Bateman and he signed on.

Years later, however, Bateman was asked about the failure of the film and Bateman noted that, yes, they were doing the first R-rated body-switch movie but they didn’t really do anything with it other than swear more. It wasn’t enough to truly explore the different path.

The reason How to Save a Marriage works is because they fully exploited the different path of their premise. They didn’t merely swear more. They explored uncomfortable territory that occurs when men and women switch bodies, stuff we’ve never seen before. That’s what every writer should be doing. When you come up with a premise, after you decide what your unique angle is, make sure to lean 100% into that unique angle. It’s the only way your script is going to be different. If you pull punches, like they did in The Change-Up, it’s going to be a forgettable screenplay.

How to come up with better movie ideas

We’re about two weeks away from our first showdown of the year, the 5 Loglines Showdown. You come up with 5 loglines, submit them to me. If any of them are awesome, they will be featured during Showdown weekend, where your writing peers will vote for the best logline and hopefully crown you the winner. Wanna compete? Here’s how…

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

You better come correct because there are a lot of writers taking this assignment seriously. They’ve been generating ideas EVERY DAY so that they send in 5 strong contenders.

If coming up with movie ideas isn’t easy for you, don’t worry. We still have plenty of time. So, today, I’m going to give you some tools that will help you generate the best ideas possible.

We’re going to start by going over a list of the best original movie concepts that have come out over the last several years.

Keep in mind, I’m not factoring ‘execution’ into this. Just because you come up with a good idea doesn’t mean you’re going to write it well. Or that the director will direct it well. But these are all the ideas I felt had the potential to be good movies due to their strong concepts.

They are….

Heretic
65
Red One
Here
The Zone of Interest
Cocaine Bear
The Last Voyage of the Detemer
Sisu
The Menu
The Platform
Don’t Worry Darling
Speak No Evil
Free Guy
Old
Promising Young Woman
Leave The World Behind
Copshop
Nine Days

Now, I can already hear some of you moaning, ready to attack my choices. But I would challenge you to look back through the last few years and find more than three original movie ideas that you think were great concepts. It’s hard because the industry has moved so aggressively towards IP, leaving less original ideas out there.

So, after you’re done confirming that I’m right, let’s look at why these ideas are good.

Heretic gameifies the concept of selling religion via a contained horror setting that packs a ton of tension and surprises. 65, which sends its characters to earth 65 million years ago, with less than 24 hours before the infamous ‘dinosaur-killer’ asteroid crashes into the planet, is about as high concept an idea as one can come up with.

Red One mixes spy movies with saving Santa Claus. Genius. “Here” makes the incredibly bold choice of locking its characters into one room over the course of their entire lives. That’s a creative concept if I’ve ever heard one.

The Zone of Interest shows us the power of irony. A movie about a happy care-free family living five feet away from Auschwitz during the height of World War 2. Cocaine Bear shows us what happens when you mix ‘fun’ and ‘bananas,’ going all in on its wild concept.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is one of the best uses of a contained horror location that I’ve ever come across. Sisu shows us that you can adjust the John Wick equation (make the hero older, set it in a popular time period) in a way that gives you an unexpectedly kick-ass action premise.

The Menu builds mystery around a subject matter that doesn’t typically engage in mystery (high end restaurants and chefs). Not only is The Platform the most inventive high concept on this list, but it somehow manages to say the most about humanity.

Don’t Worry Darling uses time and technology to explore the patriarchy in a unique way. Speak No Evil is what I call “stealth high concept.” It’s a small idea that feels huge due to its nifty setup and continuous reveals.

Free Guy shows us that concepts fly highest when they’re simple. A programmed character inside a game wants free choice in his life and will risk anything to get it. “Old” uses the dependable high-concept variable of time to explore aging, placing a bunch of people on a beach where they’re all aging 20 times faster than the rest of the world.

Promising Young Woman shows us what the intersection between high concept and character-driven looks like. A young woman pretends to be blackout drunk at bars in order to expose rapists, part of a bigger plan to take down those responsible for her friends’ rape and subsequent suicide.

Leave The World Behind has the best ‘end of the world’ premise I’ve come across in five years. A mystery country is attacking the U.S. in a manner that makes it turn against itself.

Copshop is a clever little action movie idea that asks, what happens when bad guys chasing other bad guys end up in the jail cells right across from each other one night. And finally, the thinking man’s high concept, Nine Days, which pits 9 people against one another, all of whom are vying to prove their worthiness to be born and live a life on earth.

These are all good movie ideas. But how do writers come up with them? Unfortunately, we don’t know the answer to that because everyone has their own methods for coming up with ideas.

But the most common method I’ve heard, and one that I’ve found to be true with myself, is an “when inspiration strikes” idea. You’re doing something and the idea just hits you, like a bolt of lightning.

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to rely on random moments of inspiration. You can actively generate them by keeping your ‘movie idea generator’ running in the background of your brain wherever you go.

Armed with this weapon, everything you see or experience throughout the day will automatically pass through the “could this be a movie?” filter, allowing you to spot potential stories in even the most ordinary places.

In other words, you should never just see a building. You should see a building that could be taken over by terrorists on Christmas Eve. You should never just see a man acting strangely in the park. You should see an alien from another planet attempting to acclimate to the oddities of his new human body.

If you’re someone who travels a lot, you often find yourself in the most tense anxiety-ridden spaces in the world. There are movie ideas everywhere you look. We just saw one, with “Carry-On” on Netflix. Or “Plane” with Gerard Butler. Or “Hijack” with Idris Elba.

You even want to take this generator into your movie and TV watching experience. A lot of times I’ll be watching a bad movie only to come up with an adjacent movie idea that’s much better. Or an idea that improves upon the many tropes that that genre typically gets trapped in.

For example, what if you were watching a cliched heist film only to come up with the idea of: what if it wasn’t the heist itself that was the difficult part, but rather transporting the money that you stole afterwards (Triple Frontier).

Movie ideas are everywhere! You just have to have your movie generator running in the background to find them. The 2022 Best Picture winner? That idea was literally built on top of an everything bagel (Everything Everywhere All At Once). Yes, you might have won an Oscar the last time you ordered a pastrami sandwich had you been a little more attentive.

So, keep testing those loglines out in the comments. The bigger picture here is to find your next script, which I’m hoping you’ll enter in June’s Mega-Showdown. So, this isn’t just about finding a fun little logline. It’s about writing a script to win a contest, which will get you representation, which will lead to your script getting sent around town, which will lead to directors and actors signing on, which will lead to your movie getting made.

It all starts with a great logline. So, what are you waiting for?

P.S. Feel free to share some good movie concepts that came out over the past five years that you felt I overlooked.

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.