I didn’t do a lot of reviews this past year. Fifty three in all. It was an election year and I write mostly about politics, and I have a backlog going into 2025. Also, if I think something is rubbish, I’m very unlikely to review it. And there was a fair old bit of rubbish that came out last year.
Fortunately, there was a lot of good stuff, too. The second of the Dune movies came out and fully lived up to expectations. Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon was a powerful indictment of the whole ‘cowboys and Indians’ genre. The Batman was the darkest and in many ways most credible of all the dozens of Batman movies made, and led to the brilliant and yet-to-be-reviewed Penguin TV series. Even the Christmas movies had a couple of notables: the surprisingly dark Australian movie Nugget is Dead, in which the family dog, Nugget, does indeed die, and Dear Santa, with Jack Black as Lucifer. At the end of the year (and awaiting a full review, which it will get) was Hulu’s Nightbitch, a feminist tour de force in which lycanthropy is only incidental to the main character’s storyline.
I also got around to watching the entire run of Breaking Bad, and discovered for myself what a lot of other people had been telling me all along: it is one of the greatest television series ever made. I’m watching the prequel, Better Call Saul now, and it’s showing similar promise even though, being a prequel, the survival of the two main characters is assured. (Only a handful of the main characters in Breaking Bad made it to the thunderous ending.)
Animated movies made a good showing this year. Mabaroshi & Suzume were both fairly penetrating looks at the intricacies of inter-dimensional/higher plane interventions in human existence and what it means for said humans. In conventional animation, we were treated to the hyper-realistic and surreal Flow, the charming The Wild Robot, and I finally noticed the absolute fun of the Sing series.
Science fiction on television was pretty good this year. Severance and Dark Matter were two of the best of that genre I’ve seen in years. The first was a fascinating look at the possibilities of a bifurcated brain divided (and yes, that is a real thing) and Dark Matter was a twisty dark alternate realities show. In other genres, Mr. and Mrs. Smith was the best of the various shows of the same name that have come out in recent years, a surprisingly sophisticated look at the dynamics of a bad marriage in the middle of a spy caper. KAOS was a fascinating take on the ancient Greek pantheon mythos, dark and funny. Jeff Goldblum, strange as it might sound, made a very credible Zeus.
Foreign made TV series had a banner year: A Murder at the End of the World, an Icelandic murder-mystery with an Elon Musk cognate as the Big Bad; Boy Swallows Universe, a penetrating coming-of-age story of a Brisbane boy in the eighties in a deeply dysfunctional and shattered family; Gyeongseong Creature, a Korean horror story of genetic manipulation in the closing days of the Japanese occupation; The Gentlemen, a hilarious crime-caper British effort based on the movie of the same name; Decameron, a hilarious plague-years recounting based on the old Pilgrim’s Progress tales; The 8 Show, a very dark Korean game show parody that makes Squid Game look like child’s play; and
Slow Horses, the MI5 send-up series utterly owned by Gary Oldman about the spy agency’s fuckup squad.
It was a good year for documentaries, although I only reviewed two series: History Channel’s Kennedy, and National Geographic’s Secrets of the Octopus. The later left me in no doubt that octopuses are in fact intelligent, even if that intelligence is vastly different than our own. I learned a lot about John Kennedy I didn’t know from that series. I also saw two excellent sets about the Solar System from Brian Cox (BBC) and Jim al-Khalili (Secrets of the Solar System by Curiosity Stream), and a good comprehensive series from ITN5, Churchill, about Winston Churchill. My British father-in-law, whose middle name was Winston, would have absolutely loved it, but sadly it came along too late for him to enjoy.
As far as reading, the only non-fiction I reviewed was Brainstorming, by my friend Isaac Peterson. Isaac suffered a massive stroke in November of 2016, and surprised everyone by not only surviving, but coming back nearly all the way. He wrote a riveting story of those experiences and what lays ahead. I reviewed a lot of SF: Phil Bailey’s Kelvoo series, which featured the most original and engaging alien species since the Moties, Paul Dixon’s dark and epic Carpathians, and only three novels this year from Peter Cawdron. Only three. I should call his town’s police and have them do a wellness check. Despite the prodigious output, the quality of his work remains sky high. The Anatomy of Courage; The Simulacrum; Love, Sex and the Alien Apocalypse. The first was one of the best WWI in-the-trenches novels I’ve ever read, and the third one was a penetrating look at the limits and lack of limits of consciousness. I’ve got about a dozen other books in the queue for review. Including the latest historical fiction from Neal Stephenson.
In animated series, dramatic and comedy, there were two absolutely no-doubt-about-it winners for best show. Arcane is the best adult animated series I’ve seen, bar none. Strong characters, a unique world, and a thunderous plot. On the comedy side, we loved Hazbin Hotel so much we’re watching the whole thing again. Fast-paced, vulgar, hilarious rapid-fire dialog, head-spinning visual gags, and even the assholes are engaging—yes, even Adam, “the first swinging dick.” It’s about Heaven and Hell. Oh, yes—it’s a musical. A damned good musical. You can’t help but love it.
Next year should be promising. The final season of The Boys will drop. New seasons of Severance and Hazbin Hotel are coming. The final final season of Stranger Things wraps up that series before all the child actors retire. Cawdron has one called Minotaur in the works. Joe Abercrombie starts a new series. And I’ve still got a bunch of stuff from 2024 to review. I need to get caught up on the election, too. I think Harris has it in the bag, though.
List of things reviewed:
Movies:
Dune Part II
Joker
Joker: Folie a Deux
Sting 2024
G-1.0 (Godzilla)
Ghostbusters Frozen Empire
The Batman
Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Wolfs
Nightbitch
Anime
Mabaroshi
Suzume
Animated
The Sing series
Wild Robot
Flow
Foreign Western
Killers of the Flower Moon
TV series
Severance (SF)
Mr and Mrs Smith
3 Body Problem
Dark Matter
KAOS
Breaking Bad
Foreign Series
A Murder at the End of the World
Boy Swallows Universe
Gyeongseong Creature
The Gentlemen
Decameron
The 8 Show
Slow Horses
Documentaries
Kennedy
Secrets of the Octopus
Real action adaptations:
Avatar the last Airbender
Golden Kamuy
Fallout
Time Bandits
Animated:
Hazbin Hotel
The Grimm Variations
Twilight of the Gods
Amazing Digital Circus
Arcane
Anime:
Scavenger’s Reign
Sakuna of Rice and Ruin
Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction
Books:
Brainstorming (Non-Fiction)
Carpathians (SF)
Waiting for the Galactic Bus
You Like It Darker (King)
Tales of Tinfoil (Anthology)
Cawdron
The Anatomy of Courage
The Simulacrum
Love, Sex and the Alien Apocalypse
Bailey:
The Kelvoo Series