Jeremy Beck

Jeremy Beck is the editor-in-chief of MovieManifesto. He watches more movies and television than he probably should.

Ranking Every Movie of 2024 (sort of)

Jeremy BeckFeatures
Lupita Nyongo in A Quiet Place Day One; Daisy Edgar Jones in Twisters; Kristen Stewart in Love Lies Bleeding; Aaron Pierre in Rebel Ridge; Willa Fitzgerald in Strange Darling

Last week, we exhaustively ranked and wrote about every TV show we watched in 2024. Today, we’re doing the same thing with movies—but not really. I spend most weeks reviewing individual films in detail, so beyond publicizing yesterday’s Top 20 list, I’m not undertaking some massive cinematic year-in-review project. Instead, this annual exercise is more designed to serve as a personal recordkeeping function, allowing me to memorialize all of the 2024 releases that I watched and to assign them relative levels of caliber—not in the form of a literal ranking, but by dividing them into qualitative tiers.

What do you get out of this? In theory, two things. First, for each movie listed, I’m including a parenthetical detailing which streaming service it’s currently available on, if any. (Obviously this information is subject to change, especially given the parsimonious whims of our studio overlords, but it’s accurate as of today.) Second, if you ever find yourself asking the age-old question, “What movie should I watch tonight?” then in theory this piece gives you a hefty bank of data, allowing you to make an informed decision rather than just surrendering to the almighty algorithm. Read More

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The Best Movies of 2024

Jeremy BeckTop 10 Lists
Adrien Brody in The Brutalist; Saoirse Ronan in The Outrun; Juliette Gariepy in Red Rooms; Maika Monroe in Longlegs; Zendaya in Challengers

For critics, every year-end review of the movies is an exercise in both celebration and consternation. We praise the art form and also lament its inexorable degradation. We highlight our favorites while bemoaning that they didn’t make enough money. We applaud the industry’s democratization and kvetch about studios’ entrenched homogeneity. We rhapsodize about the stuff we adore and snarl that there’s so much else to despise. We write about what’s good and still find a way to feel bad.

And look, I get it. It’s hard not to survey the medium’s financial landscape without shuddering in despair; total grosses seem unlikely to ever return to pre-pandemic levels, and of the 22 movies that did make $100M domestic in 2024, exactly one was a bona fide original (the Ryan Reynolds vehicle IF). The endangered mid-budget drama continues to dwindle with alarming speed, as corporations would rather churn out four-quadrant sequels than finance nominally riskier fare. Higher ticket prices discourage audiences from visiting theaters, especially when they can remain home and gulp down the anodyne content fed to them by streaming algorithms. Teenagers seem more interested in perpetually scrolling through bite-sized videos on their phones than in immersing themselves in dark auditoriums for two hours, and also they won’t get off my lawn. Read More

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The Best TV Shows of 2024

Jeremy BeckTop 10 Lists, TV Rankings
Keri Russell in The Diplomat; Sho Kasamatsu in Tokyo Vice; Hannah Einbinder in Hacks; Anna Sawai in Shogun; Keira Knightley in Black Doves

And here we are. After five days, 88 TV shows, and far too many words, we’ve arrived at the top 10. This is probably a good time to remind everyone that these rankings are objectively determined through a careful process of pure scientific rigor and are in no way the result of the vagaries of personal taste.

10. The Bear (FX on Hulu, Season 3; last year: 2 of 94). It’s imperfect. The pacing drags, it doesn’t really have an ending, and there are probably a few too many scenes of the Faks hitting each other. Whatever. As a piece of pure artistry—the marshaling of creative resources to produce a work that’s both viscerally invigorating and intellectually stimulating—this thing still (forgive me) cooks. The season premiere alone is a marvel, less a standard introduction than a grand overture (with a score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross!) that sets the mood for the vertiginous chaos to come. And while there may be two standout episodes (the one where Tina shifts careers and the one where Sugar goes into labor), their excellence shouldn’t distract from The Bear’s sheer force—the way it continues to define its characters and build a unique blend of suspense, pathos, and humor. And with all that said: If Hulu keeps dumping out entire seasons of this terrific show all at once, well, I found a hair in my soup, and I want to speak with the manager. Read More

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Ranking Every TV Show of 2024: #s 20-11

Jeremy BeckTV Rankings
Jack Lowden in Slow Horses; Olivia Cooke in House of the Dragon; Stephanie Hsu in Laid; Zosia Mamet in The Decameron; Andrew Scott in Ripley

Nearly there now. All week we’ve been ranking every TV show of 2024, and today we’re revealing the honorable mentions. For prior installments, check out the following links:

#s 88-76
#s 75-61
#s 60-51
#s 50-41
#s 40-31
#s 30-21

20. Under the Bridge (Hulu, Season 1). Oh, great, another true-crime show. But what’s gratifying about Under the Bridge is that it’s less a conventional murder mystery than a tender and searching portrait of a particular community. Most whodunits are structured such that they gradually crescendo until their final reveal of the killer (which is invariably uninteresting), but the identity of the perpetrator here is almost beside the point (which is why it’s disclosed with several episodes remaining). The focus instead is on the small town’s residents, all of whom are plagued with a curious mixture of anguish and longing. Riley Keough and Lily Gladstone are both very good as (respectively) an inquisitive writer and a weary investigator, but Under the Bridge is most unsettling for its depiction of teenage dynamics—how the toxic combination of insecurity and bravado can lead to ghastly behavior. Yet while the dutiful reenactment of real-life tragedy carries an undeniably sordid quality, the dominant tone of this show is one of empathy; it extends genuine compassion to all of its inhabitants, be they victims or killers or just scared little girls doing their best to fit in. It asks not if you know where your children are, but if you know what they’re feeling. Read More

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