The Best of 2024
A look at the pop culture that shaped this year.
Hey, thanks for reading The Five in 2024.
Before we exit this year…here’s the best pop culture that happened.
[movies]
BEST MOVIE OF 2024: Sometimes I have to eat my words. When the trailer for Civil War dropped during the 2023 Super Bowl, I expressed apprehension at the project, worrying it would glorify intra-country violence.
I didn’t find time to watch it until this past weekend, when I was blown away by what writer/director Alex Garland (28 Years Later, Ex Machina) accomplished. There’s easily a dozen nods to other films, from Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket to the popcorn flick Independence Day.
It’s not just the best movie this year…it’s the best film of the decade, to date. If there was any justice in the world, Kirsten Dunst (Interview with the Vampire, Spider-Man) would be up for Best Lead Actress—but awards shows and stupid and corrupt—so probably not.
One footnote—this movie is grim, realistic and horrifying. If you’re easily disturbed—skip it.
It’s easy to forget that the Rambo franchise began as a humble movie about a Vietnam vet struggling with PTSD and clashing with a local sheriff.
Forty years later, Rebel Ridge picks up where First Blood left off, with the story of a man who’s cash from selling a business (which he plans to invest in a trucking company) is seized by the police. Mayhem ensues.
Like First Blood before it, Rebel Ridge is an important discourse on legal and civil policy…wrapped in an action flick package.
Oh, and newcomer (at least one this side of the pond—he has some British film credits) Aaron Pierre is a star. See him next as the lead in the DCU’s Lanterns show…and MAYBE a cameo in next summer’s Superman reboot?!
I’m cheating a bit, as Finestkind technically came out at the VERY end of December 2023…but didn’t trend on social media until January 2024, so we’re counting it.
Commercial fishing. Tensions with Canada. Drugs. The mob. Shipwrecked. And that’s just in the first 15 minutes. The cast is stellar—Tommy Lee Jones has a roster of stand-out performances, but this is one is my favorite, with the exception of The Fugitive, and Jenna Ortega (Netflix’s Wednesday, Scream VI) and Ben Foster (Hell or High Water, 3:10 to Yuma) are doing great work here.
This movie is also refreshing because there are so few films about blue collar trades that the characters feel organic, the setting lived-in—it’s nice to have a crime/caper/mystery outside of the typical cop/organized crime tropes.
I’m perhaps biased by the fact that I adore the original 1996 film and the fact that I grew up in the stretch of West-Central Illinois, a part the Midwest Meteorologists call “Tornado Alley,” including IL, MO, IA, NE, and TX that receive an outsized amount of the terrifying wind funnels that level whole towns.
Like most kids who grew up in cornfield country, I longed for a glimpse of the weather phenomenon…which is what Twisters is at it’s core—a movie about the fascination, beauty, respect—and terror of our interactions with the natural world.
Bonus points for the fact that Twisters pulled another 90’s hat trick and released an event-level soundtrack of up-and-coming country artists and established names like Luke Combs, Miranda Lambert and Jelly Roll to go along with the film. In my childhood, nearly every blockbuster—Clueless, Bad Boys, Romeo + Juliet, The Bodyguard, Space Jam—dropped a corresponding album that would rocket to the top of the charts. It was great to experience that again.
The only letdown of the film was that I saw it at a drive-in in Wisconsin, and a tornado didn’t rip the big screen in half during the movie. One can dream…
Just three things you should know about Land of Bad:
Russell Crowe is phenomenal.
It’s got that John Wick/James Bond pacing where the action is relentless, front to back.
It’s the first movie about drone warfare we’ve got—and the film shows just how much the battleground has changed.
Watch this one on the treadmill—the time will go by quick!
[shows]
BEST SHOW OF 2024: I don’t want to spoil anything here…so let’s just put it this way…whenever you think you have Dark Matter figured out, you don’t. Joel Edgerton (Warrior, The Great Gatsby) and Jennifer Connelly (Top Gun: Maverick, A Beautiful Mind) are both fantastic here…and the inter-dimension-travel plot puts the characters in some truly fantastic new worlds.
Dark Matter exemplifies what great sci-fi does best…shows us other worlds, to ask big questions about our own.
Michael Schur cut his teeth writing for The Office, Parks and Rec and Brooklyn Nine-Nine before creating a quirky sitcom about the afterlife, The Good Place, which ended in 2020.
This year, Schur paired up with Good Place alum Ted Dansen for…another comedy about death. This time, about a college-prof-turned-private-investigator going undercover at a retirement community to investigate death.
You’ll laugh. You will also sob. The brilliance of A Man on the Inside is that it takes humor and tragedy and smashes them together in a head-on car collision.
The most impressive element of Taylor Sheridan running a gaggle of shows, including Yellowstone, 1883, 1923, Lioness, Bas Reeves and now Landman, is that they all feel fresh…it would be easy for Sheridan to lean on recycled plots or character archetypes, but he just keeps creating compelling narratives.
Set in the oil fields of Oklahoma, this is the best work Billy Bob Thorton has done on camera, and Demi Moore is enjoying a much-deserved career revival. Jon Hamm wraps up the trio of A-listers in this cast. This one was a ratings juggernaut right out the gate, and may challenge Yellowstone as Sheridan’s most-viewed show before it’s all said and done.
Odds are, you’ll be very hot or cold on Twilight of the Gods, from everybody’s favorite (or least favorite slooooo mooooo director Zack Snyder (Watchmen, Justice League). Diving into the original stories of Norse mythology that we know…as Marvel characters, Snyder finds something darker, and weirder. Thor is the bad guy, for one.
It’s a revenge tale. An Illiad style journey. It’s animated, but borders on horror. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but if this sounds like something you’d be interested in—drink up.
Yes, I’m fully aware that season one…wasn’t very good. But here’s my case as to why Rings of Power is must-see-streaming in season 2. Even when the execution is mid, Tolkein’s world is still pretty dang compelling. The overly complicated storylines from season 1 have been dropped, and what we’re left with is a much more focused story about greed, power, fear…and the will to overcome the worst parts of our nature.
Overall, the audience agreed. Season 1 was a massive disappointment for Amazon, as the viewership shrunk with each episode. But season 2 started out slow, then grew as more people found out…that this is the rare rare show that started out pretty bad, and fixed itself.
[albums]
BEST ALBUM OF 2024: I didn’t want to go with the obvious choice here, but the reality is that Zach Bryan has almost single-handedly carved out a new lane in country music that a gaggle of other artists, like Wyatt Flores, Maggie Antone and Sam Barber are now following. Before the album even dropped, “Purple Gas” and “Pink Skies” (the dude loves his color songs) had blown up on social media and streaming.
When the album finally dropped, the features from John Moreland, John Mayer and Bruce Springsteen were all as good as you would hope for. Then “Oak Island” blew up thanks to a video starring Oscar-winner Casey Affleck (that’s well worth your time) and “American Nights” became a cultural anthem organically.
Some critics dinged the album for being A) too long and B) too midtempo…not varied enough. These negatives are true, but it’s also true that each of these mid-tempo songs is pretty great…perhaps the 19 songs should have been split across two projects.
But Zach Bryan hit true superstar status and released pop-icon worthy singles this year, without dipping in quality on his deep cuts…and he did all that on a self-produced album. The Oklahoma native went into a recording studio and just made this thing with no outside help.
Maggie Rogers dug into the early 2000’s pop rock of Michelle Branch, Natalie Imbruglia, and Sixpence None the Richer, and also reached back to touches of Fleetwood Mac for her third studio album. Famously discovered by mega-producer Pharrell, who was drawn to the folk/dance hybrid of the then-college-student (the video of Pharrell hearing her debut single is the stuff of legend).
Rogers took time away from touring to attend Harvard Divinity School, and it’s refreshing to hear a pop album that’s focused on the big questions of God, purpose and personal growth…in an era where the biggest pop star in the world is 34 in years, and 17 in maturity (yes, that was a diss of Taylor Swift’s latest album, which is pure garbage—and that’s coming from a Taylor fan).
A close second for BEST ALBUM OF 2024, Smith & Co have been in the pop culture lexicon for years now, thanks to a healthy rotation of songs being used in Yellowstone. Named after the local name for violent seasonal storms that roll through Smith’s home state of Texas, the album is loosely organized around love, loss and perseverance. Pick one of the 13 songs at random, and you’ll find something special. The band leans more into the rock side of Americana this time around, which pair’s well with Shane’s baritone, low and hoarse, in the same vocal register as Johnny Cash.
Apple Music | YouTube Music
BEST LIVE ALBUM: Live instrumentation is a rare thing in hip hop. Jay-Z pulled it off brilliantly in 2001 with his MTV unplugged album, and live hip hop band The Roots chugged along with brilliant records for years, but have been essentially dormant since 2014.
That makes nobigdyl. the first rapper in a decade to drop a live instrumentation project…in which he translates every single sound of his programmed songs to live instruments and backing vocals. An oddball in the music industry, he was dropped from a Christian record label after a single album…he’s been building his own thing since 2018. And what he built on Unplugged Vol. 1 is pure brilliance.
Apple Music | YouTube Music
I quit paying attention to Coldplay about when the economy crashed in 2008…turns out, I was missing out, as I rediscovered their latest album, as well as a stellar back-catalog.
The band committed to only doing 12 albums total, and to choosing a title and theme before writing any songs for the project. Moon Music is a companion to the 2021 release Music of the Spheres. In a year of war and rumors of war, assassination attempts and public executions, a little dream pop about love, wonder and the solar system (really) is a welcome change.
Moon Music is album 10…which means we’re closing in on the end of Coldplay…which is how a band should wrap things up. Go out strong, rather than become a geriatric touring greatest hits package at the state fair.
BEST NEW ARTIST: at 23, Oklahoma native Wyatt Flores writes with the maturity that Jason Isbell didn’t find until he was a decade older. Dude is an early twentysomething, so there are a handful of love/breakup songs here, but the core of the album is Wyatt reflecting on, and wrestling with, growing up on the plains of Oklahoma.
I wanted to see Wyatt in St. Louis this spring, but the venue of 150 sold out before I could snag a ticket. A few months later…Wyatt was playing in Milwaukee for five thousand people.
The kid’s a star…if you haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet, now’s a great time.
BEST EP
It takes a certain temperament to love sad songs, from The Cure to Dashboard Confessional, no matter what mood you’re in. I’ve just got that gift…I can put the windows down on a warm summer day and happily crank up some heartbroken ballad about unspeakable tragedy.
Nobody does sad better than newcomer Evan Honer. There are a lot of break up songs in the world, but “Lead Role” takes an approach I’d never heard before—in which Honer imagines himself as the main character on a failing TV show that serves as an allegory for the breakup.
[singles]
THE BEST SONG OF 2024: Speaking of Evan Honer, he teamed up with West Virginia Americana artist Charles Wesley Godwin for “Mr. Myers,” the tearjerker story of a widower who drives a Grey Oldsmobile, and can’t quite figure out why he’s alive after his wife had died.
Prepare to sob.
I'm Mr. Meyers
And I'm alone
My only person left me too soon
And you were the reason why this
Place felt like home
Now they're meaningless rooms
A country/folk zinger that pulls on the Memphis sound, current alt-country king Zach Bryan teams up with fellow Oklahoma native John Moreland for a joyous musical romp. “Don’t you think we outa live a little bit before Gabriel blows his horn.” Indeed.
Morgan Wade has referenced Chicago in past songs…the breakup ballad “Halloween” doesn’t explicitly set itself in the Windy City, but just feels like something that should be in your earbuds on a chilly stroll on the North Side in late fall.
A side project of Dan Campbell, vocalist for Philly punks The Wonder Years, the latest from Aaron West and The Roaring Twenties is a great album, front to back. But it’s “Alone in St. Lukes,” an ode to being a broke, unknown, but very happy, touring band that takes the cake.
This was the year the last class of pop stars made terrible albums that rendered them semi-obsolete (looking at you, Beyonce and Katy Perry—and, arguably, Taylor Swift), and a crop of new ones popped up, including Gracie Abrams and Sabrina Carpenter, the latter owning the summer with her smash singles “Please Please Please” and “Espresso.”
But it’s a deep cut on Carpenter’s album that makes the best of 2024 list. “Lie to Girls” is a brilliantly written ballad about a protagonist trying to talk her into (and out of) a toxic relationship.
[books]
BEST BOOK OF 2024 [TIE]. Jonathan Haight and Abigail Shrier wrote the two most essential books of the year, both dealing with why younger Millennials and Gen Z are just so…stuck. Both are essential reading to understand the world we’re currently living in, regardless of your age.
Dr. Wilford Reilly is not who you think he is, based on the book title Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me. A PhD at Kentucky State University, Reilly was a notable critic of President Trump in 2016. Rather than a “right wing” answer to the left-of-center predominant narratives about the more controversial bits of American history, Reilly provides a balanced, nuanced look at divisive events in our nation’s past.
Sebastian Junger may be the best living American nonfiction writer. I don’t think his atheism-meets-new-age findings on the afterlife hold up to reason, but the account of his near-death experience is well worth your time.
The lone piece of fiction on the list…Harlan Coben, my favorite mystery writer, cranks out a book every year. But this is a particularly fresh take on the whudunnit…as a man who’s been dead for two years is named as a murder suspect.
Journalist Megan Basham digs into who’s giving money to Christian causes, and it turns out many of the checks are being written by atheist & far left donors who want to change Christianity…with dark money.
Until the next…year.
-sth