2024 Best ofs and 2025 Looking Forward Tos

Movies

For at least the past two decades, I have loved going to the movies by myself on random weekday afternoons. I'm half-convinced that I wouldn't have made it through grad school without these solo matinees. But for a pretty good long stretch there, weekday matinees weren't a super accessible option to me. Since we moved back to a city with multiple movie theaters to choose from, I have possibly overcompensated for those lean years, but it's hard to feel bad about that.

This year, for the first time ever, I got to watch the Oscars knowing I had seen every single Best Picture nominee– most of them in theaters. And I'm setting that goal for next year, too. Not all of these will get nominations, and a lot of the films that will haven't gone into wide release yet, but here are my favorites of the year in reverse order of when I saw them:

• Wicked: I went into this movie with my expectations low– not because I have a particular fondness for this musical (I actually hate the book and have never seen the stage version of the show), but because the idea of the first half of the show becoming a two-hour-and-forty-minute-long movie convinced me that this was going to be an overly long, badly paced, and probably self-indulgent film. It isn't. The performances are great in general, but Cynthia Erivo is spectacular, capturing both the awkwardness of late adolescence and the confidence of a young woman coming into her own power.
• The Best Christmas Pageant Ever: I grew up with this book, so I was excited to see that it was finally getting a feature film treatment, though I was also a little nervous about how preachy it might end up being, given the director and studio attached. I didn't need to worry. Obviously, a story that centers a church Christmas pageant is going to be about religion, but this movie quickly establishes its "Jesus came for everyone" message and highlights the labor of women, which is generally overlooked. It's also funny.
• A Real Pain: So far, my favorite movie of the year. (I'm using the Oscar calendar here, in case you heard me raving about All of Us Strangers in the past twelve months and wondered how I could forget it.) The story is a small one, told well, which I tend to favor. More movies need to strive to tell good stories in ninety minutes. Everyone is going to talk about Kieran Culkin, whose role is showier, and he is very, very good, but I was just as impressed by Jesse Eisenberg (who also wrote and directed) in the quieter role.
• A Different Man: I can't remember the last time I experienced this level of discomfort while watching a movie, yet I also couldn't stop thinking about it for days afterward. Sebastian Stan nails this role, but the movie works because of Adam Pearson.
• The Wild Robot: The most beautiful and moving animated film I have seen in a while, but also basically a lovely and sad reminder about how much of parenting is about letting go. I really cried a lot.
• Thelma: This turned out to be such a complete surprise and delight– an action movie starring a ninety-year-old actress who does all of her own stunts. It plays with the genre in smart, hilarious ways, and ultimately just made us grin like idiots.
• Monkey Man: Since he is on record as not wanting the role, this is the closest we'll ever get to seeing Dev Patel as James Bond. It's worth seeing on those grounds alone.
• Dune: Part 2: As someone who has never read the book or watched other adaptations, I remain impressed at how coherent these films have been. Of course, they're also gorgeous to look at, which you can generally count on in Villeneuve movies. I think this is a very good pairing of material and director.

Television

I am a chronic rewatcher, and somewhere along the way, I sort of turned Jeremy into one, too. A lot of the TV we watch is... stuff we've already watched. We've run through all of the seasons of The Great British Baking Show and Top Chef multiple times. We just started rewatching the UK Ghosts (genius; watch it immediately if you haven't already). I'm in my elevevnty-thousandth rewatch of Gilmore Girls.

All of this to say that I miss a lot of the current TV shows. We keep up with a few– Only Murders in the Building, for example, though this last season was kind of a dud– but don't really start new ones from scratch very often. Here are the first-season shows that I did love this year, most of which actually came out in 2024:

• Laid: I'm susceptible to anything starring Stephanie Hsu, who should have won the Oscar over Jamie Lee Curtis, but that's a topic for a different time. This is a remake of an Australian comedy, and there's something I can't quite put my finger on that feels like this concept works better in Australia than it does here. (Update: I was wrong! This US remake is better than the Australian original in almost every way!) But it's funny and surprising, especially the scenes between main character Ruby and the one ex who survives the bizarre, mystical, currently unidentified thing that's killing them in the order she slept with them.
• Black Doves: I loved this show. I watched it out of curiosity about Keira Knightley playing a spy and because Ben Whishaw and his hair are always amazing, but I got hooked despite my general lack of interest in this kind of show because it plays around with storytelling and genre in funny, useful ways. There's also a very surprising cameo from one of my all-time favorite British comedians.
• Nobody Wants This: See what I said about Stephanie Hsu up there and how I basically have to watch things she's in? Same times two with Kristen Bell and Adam Brody. This little rom-com is not interested in breaking new ground, but the casting is 100% spot-on, and it's smart about how it navigates the relationships in the background of the central duo, who are golden retriever cute together.
• Severance: I was late to the game on this one, but it is a really fascinating little mind game of a TV show. Adam Scott is given some of the best material of his career (he really is as strong a dramatic actor as he is a comedic one), but the real star here is John Turturro, who has always been the kind of performer who grabs attention but is especially moving here.
• Mr. and Mrs. Smith: I wasn't particularly interested when I first heard about this show because I never thought the movie was very good, but this reimagines the premise in ways that make it a lot more interesting. Maya Erskine has always been underrated, and she more than matches Donald Glover's humor and energy. This show also nails stunt casting, especially with Paul Dano, whose ability to walk that thin line between normal and deeply not is perfect here.

Books

So in case anyone is looking to dump Goodreads, I highly recommend Storygraph. The rating system is both more useful and more nuanced than most sites, and it generates recommendations based on more than just the titles and genres of your most recent reads. My favorite new feature is that it lets you pause books, which comes in handy when one is listening to a forty-hour audio book that keeps getting recalled by the library. If you join, find and friend me– I'm sarakday.

I did a fair amount of rereading my comfort books this year, which happens when I'm stressed about stuff. ("What could possibly have been stressful leading up to November 2024?" you ask, and then we laugh and laugh, and then we cry.) But here are some of the new books I read and liked:

• Leigh Bardugo, The Familiar: I have lots of friends who are big fans of this author's Grishaverse books, but I'd never read her before. This is also a historical fantasy novel, which isn't a genre I dip into too often. I ended up loving this book about a young woman whose magic evolves from a secret to an effort to improve her position to a threat that could end her and many others' lives. It's also a love story between two characters who don't necessarily have to bring out the best in each other to be happy.
• Anabel Monaghan, Nora Goes Off Script: The best of the generally light but smart romantic comedies I turned to after the election (see also: Emily Henry, Elisa Sussman). Famous-people-falling-in-love-with-normal-people is a favorite plot of mine (if you also like this, you should really watch Starstruck, one of my favorite series of the past few years). This one pairs up a recently single mom and a handsome, somewhat detached-from-his-life movie star. The beats are very familiar, but the narration and the resolution both elevate the material.
• Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land: This is a big, unwieldy, multiplot book about books. Some storylines are much more compelling than others, but seeing how carefully Doerr puts the pieces together is what's really impressive. It doesn't have the emotional impact of All the Things We Cannot See, but it does have the gorgeous language that you expect from Doerr.
• Octavia Butler, Kindred: I had been meaning to read this book for literally years, and then it popped up on my book club's list for 2024. I cannot believe I took so long to finally pick this up; when I did, I could not put it down. Butler's genius was always in her ability to see the past, present, and future with a clarity that most of us lack. Dana is an incredible protagonist and narrator– pragmatic at every turn, navigating something utterly bewildering with a clear head even as her emotions churn.
• Julie Schumacher, Dear Committee Members: When this book came out, I was still firmly ensconced in academia myself, so even though the description sounded funny, I worried that I wouldn't be able to enjoy it because it was too close to real life. Waiting was a good idea. Schumacher's letter-writing creative writing prof is absolutely on point– there is at least one of this guy in every English and writing department I've ever been a part of. Sometimes it still stung to read, even two years after I got out, but on the whole I found it hilarious.

Music

Hahahahahaha. I won't even share my Spotify Wrapped.

What's Coming Up

Here's a not-even-close-to-exhaustive list of stuff coming out in 2025 that I'm excited about:

• September 5
• Paddington in Peru, even without Sally Hawkins. (We'll miss her, though.)
• Death of a Unicorn. (A24 has been killing it lately.)
• Mickey 17
• Wicked, Part 2, damn it.
• The Studio
• Top Chef: Toronto
• Season two of all of the shows I talked about up there.
• Stranger Things, season five (finally)
• The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong
• Black in Blues, by Imani Perry
• Yellowface, by R.F. Kuang (this one is already out, but I'm excited to read it for book club in May.)