Movie and TV Moments We Are Thankful for in 2024

While 2024 is not entirely over, it’s certainly winding down on some cold notes as the nights grow longer and the weather brisker. The holiday season leaves some relieved, others restless. For us, it’s a chance to take stock of the year that’s been and to count whatever blessings you can find.

And even in a year as marked by upheaval and post-strike fallout as 2024, there have been more than a few occasions in film and television to get us grinning. So without further ado, here are some of the movie and TV moments to be thankful for in 2024.

Real Tennis in Challengers 

Tashi Duncan tells her rival suitors and the audience what tennis can and should be: it’s a relationship and a destination; the opportunity to go somewhere really beautiful with your opponent, even if they are someone you hate. And yet, for so much of Luca Guadagnino’s frothy crowdpleaser, Challengers, tennis becomes a means to an end. It’s a weapon to be used by three toxic personalities, including Tashi, to hurt the others in their screwed up triangle earning money, prestige, or some semblance of control over this chaotic thing we call life. Often by way of hate or pity sex.

So when the final volley of the movie between Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) comes, it is downright euphoric watching all the years of bitter living (and hours of movie-watching) melt away. What’s left is just two old friends turned enemies PLAYING a game they loved as children.

It’s so giddy, Guadagnino doesn’t bother telling us who won the game, which holds the lives and careers of all three people at stake. What matters is that two pals who were doing anything but having fun are finally reconnected. Guadagnino frames this also with the most kinetic and inventive camera placements we have ever seen on a tennis court, including a shot of Art and Pat standing atop a glassy frame as they trade racket swings above us like Greek gods passing a lightning bolt. It’s electric. – David Crow

Chani Unbowed in Dune: Part Two

To continue the year of the Zendaya dominance, she enjoyed a more active part in defining the bitter stakes of Dune: Part Two’s finale, and all because of what her character would not do. During the climax of Denis Villeneuve’s triumphant adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, the character of Chani (Zendaya) has been betrayed by the man she loved, humiliated before all of her community of Fremen, and finally asked to bend the knee and honor Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), her lover who is now taking another woman, the Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh), as wife.

In the novel, Chani is an underwritten character who is asked to sit back and accept this indignity with a smile, because “history will remember you better.” That’s more or less the last line of the book; cold comfort sold as a happy ending. Yet from the beginning of Villeneuve’s two-part adaptation, the Canadian filmmaker has been interested in drawing out the tragic subtext of the material that Herbert didn’t get around to clarifying until his sequel Dune Messiah. That includes by being blunt about how Paul Atreides’ ascent as the new emperor of the Imperium is not a victory. It’s a nightmare, right down to his parting final words to his fanatical followers: “Send [my enemies] to paradise.”

Before that moment comes, however, Paul has claimed his throne by slaughtering his cousin in an epic duel. As a consequence, an old and enfeebled ruler (Christopher Walken) reluctantly bends the knee, as does every one of his courtiers, plus Paul’s Fremen disciples. The only two who do not bow are Irulan, the daughter of the now deposed older emperor, as well as Paul’s betrothed, and Chani. The three stand quietly in a state of detente and ambiguity, making eye contact in a crimson sunset and above a sea of enablers and followers sinking toward the earth. It crystalizes a triangle that will define the next movie, as well as the heavy cost of Paul’s thirst for vengeance. He gives up the life he loved with Chani for an unknown but likely dark future with a woman who surely does not love him. It gives the film’s intergalactic stakes an intimate, wordless tragedy that cuts far deeper. – DC

Defying Gravity in Wicked

Love it or hate it, Wicked is only half of the mega-musical from which it is adapted. Whereas the 21-year-old stage show ends its story after 145 minutes, Jon M. Chu’s new screen version only gets to the Act One finale inside of roughly the same amount of time. Still, if one is going to cut a Broadway musical in half, you cannot have a better climax than “Defying Gravity.” In fact, Chu and star Cynthia Erivo somehow make the iconic musical moment even better on the screen.

While “Defying Gravity” will forever be a showstopper on the stage, with outsider Elphaba finding her self-actualization as the Wicked Witch of the West by flying above the boards, the moment takes on a more dire and thereby cathartically empowering bent in the film. This is partially because of the spectacle afforded by big budget Hollywood moviemaking, with Elphie not just flying a few feet in the air but diving and rising above the highest sparkling tower in the Emerald City. Yet how the movie frames the moment has new gravitas as well.

With a third act heightening the fascist and Nazi imagery of a despotic Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and his legions of green coats and flying monkeys being sent after a terrified Elphaba and Glinda (Ariana Grande), the stakes are desperate for an Elphie who, like the actress playing her, has lived a lifetime of bigotry and social pressure due to the color of her skin. But in the movie’s final moments, Erivo takes that lived pain and gives a blistering rendition of “Defying Gravity” while looming in all her power over the thugs in uniform who seek to bring her down. Her refusal to be grounded, and her final transcendent escape into the West’s sunset, makes for one of the most glorious movie moments of the year. – DC

“Remember It” in X-Men ‘97 – Joe

When it came to Gambit haters, I took the first spot in line. Even though I’m old enough to have read Gambit’s first appearance in Uncanny X-Men #266, to see him and Bishop duke it out in X-Men #8, and (of course) to watch X-Men: The Animated Series in its first run, I found the Rajin’ Cajun cloying and annoying, a pathetic forerunner of the headsock-clad, duster-sporting antiheroes of the 1990s.

I felt that same level of annoyance when Gambit showed up in the revival series X-Men ’97, but considered that a good thing. After all, it proved that the show captured the feel of the original. But then came episode five, in which a gigantic Sentinel ravages the mutant island of Genosha. As so often happened with X-Men ’97, the attack made political subtext text, showing how oppressors find the mere existence of the oppressed offensive and will do anything to eradicate those they hate. However, the episode doesn’t let its politics overtake its artfulness, and presents an exciting sequence in which Gambit fights back, all the way up to the point where the Sentinel’s tentacle pierces him.

“The name’s Gambit,” he says, smirking through the blood from his mouth and charging up the entire Sentinel. “Remember it.” And with that Gambit sacrifices himself, saving the day and permanently making me into a fan. – Joe George

Title Card in Hundreds of Beavers

Usually, a title card appearing after the 15-minute mark signals an artsy film, a desire on the part of the director to break the format and surprise the audience. Although incredibly well-made and full of throwbacks to classic comedy, no one charges Hundreds of Beavers with pretension. Directed by Mike Cheslik and starring Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, Hundreds of Beavers follows the travails of salesman turned trapper Jean Kayak as he tries to survive the Canadian wilderness. Like Terrifier 3 (of all things), Hundreds of Beavers revives silent cinema tropes, putting Jean through all manner of knockabout gauntlets.

We can track Kayak’s transformation through his relationship with a merchant (Doug Mancheski), who sells goods in exchange for pelts. As Kayak improves his skills, he catches the eye of the merchant’s daughter (Olivia Graves). When Kayak asks for the girl’s hand in marriage, the merchant refuses, and then gestures wildly to the sky. “UNLESS” declares the inter-title, “You bring me…” The camera pushes in the merchant and then the couple, building suspense for the pay off. “Hundreds of Beavers,” the title card finally says, 75 minutes into this 108 minute film. – JG

The Big Run in Love Lies Bleeding

A lot of unpleasant stuff happens in Love Lies Bleeding, much of which takes place in a desolate New Mexico town run by mulleted crime boss Lou Sr. (Ed Harris). When bodybuilder Jackie (Katy M. O’Brian in a starmaking performance) rolls into town on her way to a Las Vegas competition, she brings a bit of joy with her, especially for Lou Sr.’s daughter Lou Jr. (Kristen Stewart). 

Like any good noir, Love Lies Bleeding doesn’t make things easy for its central lovers, each of whose destructive behaviors threaten the blossoming relationship. But writer/director Rose Glass pays it all off with an exhilarating, dreamy moment in the end, when Lou and Jackie grow to touring heights and run through what can only be described as a Lisa Frank sticker book come to life, all set to a synth score. Instead of overpowering the film with its neon dreamscape, Lou and Jackie’s run feels totally earned, a moment of ecstasy away from the dusty, bloody environment that tried to contain them. – JG

The Power of the Gladiators 

Like an Oreo cookie scraped clean of its fondant filling, the word “reboot” has been emptied of the good stuff. There’s no longer any promise in hearing that an old TV format is being revived; we’ve watched too many amount to too little to feel anything but… what’s the opposite of anticipation? Pre-disappointment?

Into that arena of imperceptible shrugs and audible eyerolls strode Gladiators, a TV reboot that stands tall where so many have crumbled. Why? Because it remembers exactly what had made the 1990s original–-in which members of the public were chased up walls and poked off podiums by Lycra-wrapped giants with oversized Q-tips—so much bloody fun. By changing basically nothing (the outfits are metallic now, everything else is the same), they’ve reconjured all the Kellogg’s Pop-Tart joy of our youths so convincingly that even our own kids want to watch it. With us. In the same actual room. I’m grateful for every fake tantrum by every protein-shake-guzzling heel, for every muscular buttock that hits the crash mat, and for every chanted Queen song that echoes around my head while I load the dishwasher afterward. – Louisa Mellor

Mark Rylance Sobbing in Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light

It isn’t just the sobbing, I’m grateful for every step Mark Rylance takes as Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall, for every calculating look out of his sad eyes, and for every sigh and threat issued from his hardly moving lips. The whole performance, the whole show, is supreme. 

The sobbing though, which happens in The Mirror and the Light episode two, is of particular note because it’s so unexpected. Cromwell has just learned that he’s been slandered. Harmful lies were told to the one person whose opinion he cared about equal to God’s, and that person now being dead, he has no way to defend himself. He’s wretched and he sobs, and it’s… weird, like seeing Mount Rushmore weep, or tears roll down the Empire State Building. Lord Cromwell is a giant of English history, and in this intimate moment is so vulnerable that it feels like we’ll be sent to the Tower just for watching. – LM

KAOS Being Fun While It Lasted 

The early days of the streaming wars were basically the last days of Rome. Extravagance! Excess! Boy emperors making land grab deals with anyone who’d sell their soul for an exclusive multiyear deal with, say, Bumf, a new on-demand streaming service from the manufacturers of Whirlpool washing machines! Big stars signed up to make passion projects and to endlessly explain how they were really 10-part movies. It was exactly the kind of time in which a modern adaptation of Greek myths starring Jeff Goldblum as Zeus would have been announced. And it was in Netflix’s KAOS.

Unfortunately, by the time KAOS was finally made, the gold rush was over. Bumf had been absorbed by streaming service Guff (from the makers of Hotdog on a Stick) and bundled in with pet food company/new streamer Oof!, and the whole lot had been shuttered by their parent company as a tax write-off. Blank checks were no longer being written to make shows like KAOS, with scope and imagination and high production values, but not bland universal appeal, merch revenue, and the potential for tie-in theme park rides. Brilliant, clever, transportive KAOS went too soon, but I’m grateful at least that it was made at all. – LM

Brian Jordan Alvarez’ Unusual English Teacher Promos

Promoting a television series in the year of our lord two-thousand and twenty-four must be an absolute nightmare. Not only are there approximately 40,000 TV shows commanding consumer attention at any given moment, but there are at least that many platforms to promote them on. What is an advertising department to do? Plot a grueling publicity tour? Burn money on Facebook ads? Hire planes to unfurl “Please watch our show” banners above a sporting event? Well, FX comedy English Teacher found an ingenious (and very cheap!) solution: just get your lead actor to do little dances on TikTok.

Before he was the creator and star of English Teacher, Brian Jordan Alvarez was a veteran online content creator and social media presence. As such, he speaks the beguiling language of the internet as well or better than any marketer. When a new TikTok trend emerged of users dancing to a mashup of dialogue from a Gilmore Girls episode and Olly Alexander’s song “Breathe,” (it’s a long story), Alvarez not only jumped on the fad but commandeered it. 

There were dozens of near-identical clips of Brian Jordan Alvarez lip-syncing and dancing sensually all over my TikTok feed in 2024, accompanied by the simple caption “Stream English Teacher on Hulu.” 

Do these clips have anything to do with English Teacher? No. Did they convince a lot of people to stream English Teacher anyway? Demonstrably yes. I was not one of those people, having already watched and enjoyed the show’s first season long before Alvarez’ dancing trend began. But for as good as English Teacher is (you should indeed Stream English Teacher on Hulu), these dumb videos are somehow even better. The charming ludicrousness of these clips and the wholesome community of supportive commenters that arose out of them is what I’m most thankful for this year. – Alec Bojalad

Kit Harington’s Heel Turn in Industry Season 3

Playing the hero can be a pretty thankless job. That’s something Kit Harington surely learned while embodying the brilliant but boring Jon Snow over the span of eight seasons on Game of Thrones. Once the monumental HBO fantasy series wrapped, Harington ran the risk of being forever typecast as a well-meaning paragon in projects like Eternals. This year, however, I’m thankful that he took fate into his own hands and advocated for a big boy role in season 3 of another HBO’s title: Industry.

While Harington’s Henry Muck is far from Jon Snow’s virtue, he isn’t necessarily “the bad guy” of this Succession-esque finance drama. Each of the show’s narcissistic market-moving characters is, by definition, a bad guy. Instead Muck is something far more compelling. He’s a rich guy… an incredibly, unthinkably rich guy. 

Harington believably depicts every bizarre idiosyncracy that comes along with outrageous wealth and fortune. He begins as a tech startup CEO-type before retreating back into the comfortable boys club of the aristocracy. When he can’t get what he wants through his meager talents or less-than-endearing personality, he opens up his family’s deep pocketbooks and finds that “winning” that way is no less satisfying. Through it all, Harington helped to elevate Industry from a good show to a great one. – AB

Eight seasons of Monk on Netflix

There’s something brilliantly indulgent about a show on streaming that can boast both quality and quantity, and that is Monk for you. Monk stars Tony Shalhoub as the titular detective who was once a celebrated homicide detective, but now dismissed after the murder of his wife Trudy triggered a massive breakdown. Now Monk uses his incredible powers of observation to help Captain Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine) solve tough cases while navigating his extreme OCD, germaphobia, and multiple anxiety points. He is assisted initially by his nurse Sharona (Bitty Schram) and later Natalie Teeger (Traylor Howard). Sharona is a legend and I miss her every episode she isn’t it, but Natalie is alright too. 

All eight seasons of Monk came to Netflix in February (and it IS available in the UK on Netflix despite what Google’s terrible AI software thinks). That’s 125 episodes, each running to just under an hour. It is gold—funny, warm, packed with some excellent clowning, boasting hosts of celebrity cameos and each episode a meaty mystery. Shalhoub as Monk is wonderful: brilliant, sympathetic, but also a bit of a selfish dick. It’s the sweet spot. So thank you, Netflix, for many comforting hours—just what you need when, well, It’s a Jungle Out There. – Rosie Fletcher

Cinema

Just cinema in general. Look, I know I am unusually privileged when it comes to cinema: 1) because of my job; and 2) because I live in London (and therefore have a lot of choice when it comes to theaters and movies). But I’d like to believe my point still stands. Cinema is really great. I’m as lazy as the next person and particularly at this time of year, staying at home is deeply appealing. But come on, there really isn’t much that beats cinema.

I’m particularly grateful for it this year in the wake of varying bad press, bad behavior from audiences who look at their phones, chatter, munch and take pictures of the screen, plus inconsistent box office, a certain unwillingness for studios to take risk, delays from the writers’ and actors’ strikes etc., etc. It can look like a bleak time for cinema. But then you go, and it’s dark and warm and it is baboons and sharks and rhinos in Gladiator II, as old fashioned a piece of spectacle as you’re likely to get these days, made by an 86-year-old auteur still at the top of his game. And then you go to The Substance, and everyone is groaning and gasping and laughing together, and enjoying the frequent bum shots and the inevitable demise of those perfect bottoms into the grotesque Monstro Elisasue, in only the second feature from French woman Coralie Fargeat. Then earlier in the year we got to become the ball in Challengers, and ride the tornado in Twisters. Not all films need to be seen at the cinema, but aren’t you glad some of it can be? So thank you cinema, long may you reign. – RF

The post Movie and TV Moments We Are Thankful for in 2024 appeared first on Den of Geek.