My 2024 R-Rated Movies Ranked: Theater Edition
Here's what I saw, what about you?
Happy new year! Over the next few entries, I’m looking back a 2024 movies and looking ahead to 2025 movies. I’d love to know about the movies you’ve been watching lately, so add your thoughts to the comments.
In 2024, I went to the movies 22 times. That’s a fairly high number for me, though I went 28 times in 2023. Some I’d seen before, and one was good enough for me to go twice, and overall they were all pretty good.
What did you see last year? Here are the R-rated movies I saw in the theater, ranked, in the order I saw them, first for the repeat viewings and then for the first-time viewings:
2024 R-Rated Movies in the Theater: Re-Releases
They Live! at CONvergence 2024 - 4 out of 5 Six-Minute Fistfights
This was a real treat. I attended CONvergence for the first-time ever and my oldest daughter and I stayed up for a late-night screening of They Live!, complete with a live Q&A with Keith David before the movie started. I got to ask him about what it was like portraying Frederick Douglass in one of my favorite documentaries ever, God in America by PBS Frontline and American Experience, and my daughter got a selfie with him. Okay, that was our night, what about the movie?
A pro wrestler and a character actor do everything they can to take down a secret alien race who lure humanity into complacency, including fisticuffs and kicking ass and chewing bubble gum? Yeah, I’m there for it!
This is such fun. If you’ve never seen it, I highly recommend it. You’ll get a great stew of serious science fiction, silly humor, low-budget foibles, lots and lots of stunts and action, and some of the most memorable dialogue you’ll ever add to your vocabulary. Plus, the social commentary, just wow. They say the social commentary is all the more relevant today.
“They” say…
RiffTrax Live! Point Break - 4 out of 5 Special Agent Johnny Utahs
We’ve attended the Rifftrax Live! events over the past few years as a family and this one was a lot of fun.
If you’re unfamiliar with Point Break, special agent Johnny Utah tracks down surfing bank robbers by become best friends with the very surfing bank robbers. It’s Keanu Reeves in his young starmaker days in a movie that both relishes in, and establishes, action movie cliches galore. Plus - and always a plus - Patrick Swayze!
If you’re unfamiliar with Rifftrax, the team of comedians play a movie while adding their own bits, jabs, and jokes along the way. What you get is an hilarious take on a beloved (or behated) movie experience unlike any other.
The kids had never seen Point Break before and through it’s rated R, I wouldn’t say it’s too extreme. The riffs were great and the crowd was into it. I can’t say Point Break is a great movie, but it wasn’t all that bad. Would I have paid to see a re-release of it in the theater without the riffs? Er, no. I haven’t seen all of the Rifftrax Live! movies, but I’d have to say my favorite that we saw as a family is 2023’s Rad.
Alien: 45th Anniversary - 5 out of 5 Facehuggers
We showed our kids Aliens a year ago and they loved it. They have become big James Cameron fans over the years, ever since Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The thing about Alien is that it’s a much more deliberate, slow pace than its sequels, and I knew that trying to watch this on Blu-ray at home just wouldn’t go over as well. Thankfully, it got a 45th anniversary theatrical re-release.
Ask me today and I’ll say that I enjoyed the second Alien movie slightly more, but this one broke the mold for science fiction horror and it set the franchise precedent. If you haven’t seen this one in a while, put down your phone, turn off the lights, and enjoy.
I wrote at Movie Memories about taking our oldest daughter to see this over at the Pika platform by Good Enough.
Shaun of the Dead: 20th Anniversary - 5 out of 5 Dogs Who CAN Look Up!
I didn’t even know about this re-release until just a few weeks before it came out. We’ve seen it as a family at home on Blu-ray so we went to this as a family in the theater and we all thought it was so much fun on the big screen.
What a wonderful movie. So much love for the genre, so much honoring for the history, so much passion for telling a good story. Shaun of the Dead follows a man named Shaun as he and his friends try to survive a zombie outbreak. The twist? It’s a British comedy with more homage toward the zombie movies than actual horror. The whole thing works. I’ve never not had a good time with this one, and to share it with the family in the theater was a fun surprise this summer.
I first saw this movie in Fort Collins, CO when it came out in the fall of 2024. I lived in Cheyenne at the time and driving down for lunch and a movie on a weekend was pretty standard for me. I remember I saw this and Garden State on the same day, then went to Best Buy to get the Garden State soundtrack on CD and listened to it on the way home. Zero 8 has been a favorite ever since.
2024 R-Rated Movies in the Theater: New Releases
Civil War - 3.5 out of 5 Haunting Endings
All of those trailers sold me, and I was really looking forward to this. The cast looked great, and I’m a fan of Alex Garland, so I trusted him with this. Overall, it was pretty good. I haven’t revisited it since the movie theater. I know some people are frustrated that we don’t know how the civil war all started, but that is not my critique. That’s not the story it’s trying to tell. It clung close to the journalists during the seemingly last days of the war and I found that compelling.
Funny enough, I remember people saying “Oscar buzz” for Jesse Plemons when this came out, but I don’t hear that anymore. Personally, I think about his scene at least once a month. Haunting.
“That’ll do.”
Deadpool & Wolverine - 4 out of 5 Meta-References
I was lucky, I didn’t get spoiled for any of the surprises in this movie. I avoided all of the trailers, images, articles, commercials, etc. leading up to opening day so I didn’t learn about any cameos, Easter eggs, or story beats until I was in the theater with my friends. I’m glad I did it that way, and I think that’s what helped me enjoy this one.
It worked for me. They could have taken the story in several directions, and perhaps some of them would have been preferable (I was truly surprised we didn’t get a montage of Deadpool injected into past Avengers movies), but it’s all good. I laughed, I teared up, and I smiled quite a bit throughout this one.
That said, I haven’t revisited it yet on Disney+ since it’s arrival a couple months ago. It is an exhausting movie, a long movie, one that demands your attention. With a busy year-end and a goal to watch a lot of new movies in 2024, I didn’t have a lot of time to give this another go. Perhaps this year, with a handy Easter egg cheat sheet at the ready.
Alien: Romulus - 4 out of 5 Facehugger Swarms (Yep, they swarm now!)
I had a lot of fun with this one. Alien fans appear divided, but I’m fully rolling with this. The characters worked for me, including the “flashback” character, and the set design transported us right back to 1979’s first film. I’ll be glad to add this to the Alien film rotation that I pull out every few years, and I look forward to whatever comes next.
Oh, and can we talk about debris crashing into the rings of the planet? Beautiful!
The Substance - 4.5 out of 5 Fluid Doses
This was another movie where I thankfully avoided spoilers, especially of the visual kind. The 1-minute teaser trailer I included here should be more than enough.
This commentary on what “clicks” with an audience and why treads old ground in new ways, taking it to an extreme that demands your attention at every turn. I’ve heard one critique is that a movie like this doesn’t change anything. Rather, it leans into what it critiques. I don’t see it that way at all. And I don’t think Demi Moore would have taken the project if that were the case.
I’m waiting for my wife and I to have a night free when the kids are in bed that we can rent this. And I hope she’s as spoiler-free now as I was when I saw it. Speaking of which…
Strange Darling - 5 out of 5 Giovanni Ribisis
Nope. No trailers. No review.
Go in 100% cold.
Trust me on this.
This is in my top 3 movies of the year.
Your turn!
What about you? What did you see in the theaters in 2024? Any reviews to share?
Thanks for reading, sharing, and subscribing. God’s peace and good movies to you!