A year of top 10 lists and taking over cinema screens

For the Hollywood-centric, the celebrations of choice and the countdown to the New Year mean another set of seasonal rituals: The accountants tally the box office returns and the critics compile their Top Ten lists. The first has the advantage of mathematical precision, the second the satisfaction of bursts of taste, and together they neatly encompass the trade and art that define the subject at hand. In short, it’s time to put together a montage of photos from the past year and take stock of the big picture.

In commercial terms, the news from 2024 was surprisingly not bad. Total domestic box office receipts appear to be heading for around $8 billion, down from 2023’s exciting post-COVID revenue of $9 billion, but the National Association of Theater Owners prefers to highlight the positives, attributing the decline to a lack of product due to labor strikes and encouragement from the renewal of the film habit. Whether it’s because of cabin fever, Nicole Kidman, or the release of movies at the end of the year that people really wanted to see, going out to the movies seems to have returned as a swipe-right option on the entertainment menu.

Predictably, and disturbingly as it portends more of the same, the films that drew the biggest crowds were fueled by the lure of pre-sold properties. Every single one of the top ten box office hits of 2024 was a sequel, a remake (was Twisters a sequel or a remake?) or a prequel. The formula with numbers is certified by the digit after the title, without spending extra effort to invent a subtitle (Moana 2, Kung Fu Panda 4), not that explanatory subtitles helped Joker: Folie à Deux or Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Gladiator II wisely remained on the mark with the Roman numerals.

Interestingly, or fortunately, the cinematic universes of Marvel, DC and Star Wars failed to extend: apart from Deadpool and Wolverinenot one of the big hits came from a cartoon series or a galaxy far, far away. The good news for the theater chains is tempered by the bad news when you get down to it — not the movie, but the audience. The cinema experience from 2024 cannot be rewinded without only a jarring screed against the intrusion of the cinemagoers who see the screen as a distraction from the screen in their hands. According to anecdotal reports from regular moviegoers, that is me, a scourge of illuminated screens, texting and chatter has increased alarmingly, amplified this year by a fresh inferno: the cheeky recording of clips from the screen.

One wonders if the interruptions from the smaller screens will be a permanent blight on the big screen theater experience. Of course, obnoxious, inconsiderate and self-absorbed moviegoers have always been annoying to the members of the audience who attended, you know, watched the movie – hence the slides projected on the screen at the nickelodeons to remind the ladies to take off their hats and the gentlemen to refrain from spitting tobacco juice.

But throughout the classic Hollywood era, audiences generally adhered to a decorum code that seems lifted from a Jane Austen novel. True, the crowds were noisier and more raucous in audible expressions of commitment — hissing, cheering, clapping, with the occasional wisecrack — but the responses were collective and inspired by the story on screen. They enhanced the movie experience rather than distracting from it.

The exhibitor-oriented trade press – especially the monthly section “Bedre teatre” i Movie Herald — devoted a great deal of attention to finding ways to nurture an atmosphere conducive to a pleasant night out. In those days, even small neighborhood theaters used uniformed ushers to guide latecomers to their seats with a flashlight, patrol the aisles, and deal with troublesome patrons. The attendants were issued strict instructions on how to conduct themselves on duty: “Keep obviously intoxicated persons out,” “be tactful in subduing unruly patrons or children,” and “watch out for mashers, degenerates, and idiots. Report them immediately to management .” (Also: “never flirt with patrons.”)

Even in the 1950s, when teenagers became the dominant audience, the good kids worked with local theater managers to police their own and discourage rowdy antics. “When we go to a theater, we must remember that we are only buying the right to one seat,” said an editorial in a high school newspaper in 1952. “A reckless person is one who spoils the picture for others with excessive noise. Movie manners are too all.” In the same year, a teenage girl Colbert Culbert wrote in Photo game to ask if it was appropriate to whisper to his girlfriend during the show. “It is extremely bad manners for a theater patron to carry on a conversation, either personal or critical, during the performance,” Colbert responded.

Against the ubiquity of handheld technology and the breakdown of public manners (and don’t get me started on the clueless scrollers planted on the Nautilus machines at the gym), exhibitors have limited options. Before the feature film ends, most theaters now show a PSA politely reminding moviegoers to mute their devices, but compliance is not enforced. The issue is acute enough to have inspired one of the best movie tie-ins of the year: Deadpool and Wolverine‘s “Silence Your Cell Phone” PSA, which delivered the message in praiseworthy, direct terms. If only Wolverine could make good on his threat to deal with the perpetrator in the prescribed manner.

Certainly no responsible film critic would ever fire up an iPhone or laptop in a movie theater to take notes on what has been an annual duty of the profession for over a hundred years, the Top Ten list. The credit for having originated the practice is contested by several claimants. In 1920, the National Review Board, founded in 1909 and still on the job, organized a special committee of critics “to examine those motion picture productions which appear to have unusual qualifications and to make selections from among them for a list of exceptional pictures.” Each month, the board designed a “Best Bet” in its publication Unique photo game. The first honoree: Reginald Barker’s Godless Mena seafaring adventure produced by Sam Goldwyn.

Trade journal Movies dailywhich operated from 1915 to 1970, also claimed to have begun the practice in 1921. Although the selections were initially made internally, the editors quickly cast a wider net by soliciting submissions from newspapers, trade magazines and fan magazines and collating the results, giving front page coverage to the finalists . “The poll has become a national event and is made possible only through the enthusiastic cooperation of some 400 newspapermen throughout the country,” boasted the editors in 1930, when the top of the Top Ten was an easy call: Lewis Milestone’s epic adaptation of Erich Marie Remarque’s anti-war novel , Completely quiet on the west front.

In 1923, New York Times film critic Mordaunt Hall won 10 titles from the more than 200 films the paper reviewed that year. His list included Charles Chaplin’s Comedy of Manners A woman from ParisErnst Lubitsch’s American debut RositaThomas Ince’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christieand to show he wasn’t overly sophisticated, crowd pleaser like James Cruze’s epic western The covered wagon and Wallace Worsley’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

When validated by New York Timesfew metropolitan film critics dared to opt out of the year-end work. “Around Thanksgiving, cinema students begin to select the ten best pictures of the year,” declared George Gerhard New York Evening World in 1930. Studio ad-pub departments soon began to pay attention to the rankings, as did filmmakers. In 1935, David O. Selznick confided The Hollywood Reporter that he hoped to produce “pictures that will be on the ‘Top Ten’ list, both commercially and artistically.” MGM boasted that its 1938 line-up “has more winners on the individual nationwide published lists of the film critic’s top ten pictures of the year” than any other company.”

Today, the individual critic, the film company, the website and at least one ex-president continue the tradition for the same reasons to mutual benefit. Announcing the list drives traffic to the critic, while the much-honored film earns cachet and, hopefully, a bump in attendance. Almost always, the critics’ choices reveal the gulf between the tastes of the accredited, who regularly receive invitations to press screenings, and the ticket buyer who has to stand in line at the mall. David O. Selznick’s aspiration remains the Platonic ideal: a film that both makes top ten lists and reaps the rewards of commerce and art: The best years of our lives in 1946, Saving Private Ryan in 1998, and Oppenheimer (2023). This year only the blockbuster Evil and A complete unknown seems to have threaded the needle.

The four critics’ darlings of 2024 arrive in matched pairs: the transgender theme Emilia Perez and Conclave and meat-for-fantasy provocations of Anora and The substance. A genre that rarely makes the top ten but had an unusually rich year was teen-targeted horror, fueled by dynamic all-in performances by young female leads: Hunter Schafer in CuckooNaomi Scott in Smile 2Maika Monroe in Long legsand of course Mia Goth, who ended her trilogy of intergenerational terror with MaXXXine.

By contrast, documentaries had almost no theatrical life, with one notable exception: Matt Walsh’s Am I racist?a Michael Moore-esque dismantling of the DEI bureaucracy. Ignored or trashed by critics, it was a textbook example of the divide between elite and popular taste. Perhaps not coincidentally, of all films released in 2024, Am I racist? proved to be the most reliable indicator of the shape of things to come – the November zeitgeist that many in the film industry recoiled against but could not stop. The story of the business and art of Hollywood in 2025 will be how well it connects culturally with an audience it is often out of sync with politically.