Welcome to the 2024 Kaedrin Movie Awards season, which we’re kicking off with nominees in our standard categories! The idea is to recognize films for achievements that don’t always reflect well on top 10 lists or traditional awards. There are lots of formal award categories and nominees listed below, but once those are announced, we’ll also leave some room for Arbitrary Awards that are more goofy and freeform. Finally, we’ll post a traditional top 10 list (usually sometime in early/mid-February). But first up is the awards! [Previous Installments here: 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023]
Standard disclaimers apply: It must be a 2024 movie (with the one caveat that some 2023 films were not accessible until 2024 and are thus eligible under fiat) and I obviously have to have seen the movie. As of this writing, I have seen 104 movies that could be considered a 2024 release. This is a little ahead of where I was last year, but there are still tons of films I want to catch up with. I’ve probably seen less movies that a lot of critics, but more than your typical moviegoer and certainly enough to populate the nominees. I think that’s enough preamble, let’s get to it:
Best Villain/Badass
Another moderate year for villainy, though I will say that there are actually a few true standouts, and while the list isn’t as long as the Hero list below, it’s still filled with solid options. In accordance with tradition, my picks in this category are limited to individuals, not groups (i.e. no vampires or zombies as a general menace, etc…) or ideas. This exclusion also, um, includes inhuman monsters or creatures (sorry Godzilla, we’ll hit you up in the Arbitrary Awards). Sometimes there’s a fine line here and certain nominees might be borderline, but we’re all just going to have to learn to live with it.
- Feyd-Rautha, played by Austin Butler in Dune: Part Two
- Knox, played by Conor McGregor in Road House
- Robert Jackson, played by Michael Jai White in One More Shot
- Dementus, played by Chris Hemsworth in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
- Johnny, played by Ry Barrett in In a Violent Nature
- Frederik de Schinkel, played by Simon Bennebjerg in The Promised Land
- Longlegs, played by Nicolas Cage in Longlegs
- Cassandra Nova, played by Emma Corrin in Deadpool & Wolverine
- Cooper, played by Josh Hartnett in Trap
- Art, played by David Howard Thornton in Terrifier 3
- June27, played by Jessica Rothe in Boy Kills World
- Traveler, played by Jason Bateman in Carry-On
- Count Orlok, played by Bill Skarsgård in Nosferatu
Best Hero/Badass
A pretty good year for heroism, certainly better than villainy, and the list grew quite long, such that there probably could be another 5-10 nominees, but I felt like I should probably narrow it down a little bit. I mean, these are my awards and there’s no rule limiting the number of nominees or anything, but still. Same disclaimers as the villains: limited to individuals and not groups/creatures.
- Adam Clay, played by Jason Statham in The Beekeeper
- Dalton, played by Jake Gyllenhaal in Road House
- Kid, played by Dev Patel in Monkey Man
- Gus March-Phillips, played by Henry Cavill in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
- Colt Seavers, played by Ryan Gosling in The Fall Guy
- Jake Harris, played by Scott Adkins in One More Shot
- Furiosa, played by Anya Taylor-Joy in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
- Ryo Saeba, played by Ryohei Suzuki in City Hunter
- Ludvig Kahlen, played by Mads Mikkelsen in The Promised Land
- Hayes Ellison, played by Kevin Costner in Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1
- Amrit Rathod, played by Lakshya Lalwani in Kill
- Logan / Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman in Deadpool & Wolverine
- Kinney, played by Liam Hemsworth in Land of Bad
- Terry Richmond, played by Aaron Pierre in Rebel Ridge
- Azrael, played by Samara Weaving in Azrael
- Boy, played by Bill Skarsgård in Boy Kills World
- Alex Faulkner, played by Bren Foster in Life After Fighting
- 13, played by Aurora Ribero in The Shadow Strays
Best Comedic Performance
This is sometimes a difficult category to populate due to the prevalence of ensembles in comedy movies (this year being no exception). Also because the number of straight comedies being released has become quite low in recent years. Offsetting that is other genres that incorporate humor, which means some of these movies aren’t strictly comedies, but they might still have a solid comedic performance. Anywho, a few standouts this year for sure.
- Margaret Qualley in Drive-Away Dolls
- John Cena in Ricky Stanicky
- Jerry Seinfeld in Unfrosted
- Ryan Gosling in The Fall Guy
- Glen Powell in Hit Man
- Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool & Wolverine
- Ryland Brickson Cole Tews in Hundreds of Beavers
- Zosia Mamet in Molli and Max in the Future
- Cory Michael Smith in Saturday Night
Breakthrough Performance
This used to be a category more centered around my personal evaluation of a given actor (rather than a more general industry breakthrough), but it’s trended more towards the youngsters breaking through as time has gone on…
- Margaret Qualley in Drive-Away Dolls, The Substance, and Kinds of Kindness
- Cailee Spaeny in Civil War and Alien: Romulus
- David Jonsson in Alien: Romulus
- Katy O’Brian in Love Lies Bleeding and Twisters
- Aaron Pierre in Rebel Ridge
- Naomi Scott in Smile 2
- Willa Fitzgerald in Strange Darling
- Mikey Madison in Anora
- Bren Foster in Life After Fighting
- Lily-Rose Depp in Nosferatu
Most Visually Stunning
Sometimes even bad movies can look really great… Worth looking into: How many of these are shot on film as opposed to digital?

- Dune: Part Two
- Civil War
- Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
- In a Violent Nature
- The Substance
- The First Omen
- Strange Darling
- Hundreds of Beavers
- Nosferatu
- Challengers
- The Brutalist
- I Saw the TV Glow
Best Sci-Fi or Horror Film
It’s always nice to throw some love to genres that don’t normally get a lot of recognition in end-of-the-year lists. As an avid SF fan, it’s sad that the genre usually has to be combined with Horror in order to come up with a well rounded set of nominees in this category, but I feel like this year’s list is longer than usual, in part because there were a lot of options (not to mention a lot of overlap between the two genres).
- Dune: Part Two
- Late Night with the Devil
- Civil War
- First Time Caller
- Abigail
- Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
- In a Violent Nature
- MaXXXine
- Time Addicts
- Longlegs
- The Substance
- It’s What’s Inside
- Terrifier 3
- Azrael
- Strange Darling
- Lowlifes
- Nosferatu
- Molli and Max in the Future
- Get Away
- Caddo Lake
Best Sequel/Reboot/Remake
Always an awkward category to populate, especially given my normal feeling on this sort of thing (i.e. I’m not a huge fan of sequels), but this year wasn’t that hard.
- Dune: Part Two
- The Fall Guy
- Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
- MaXXXine
- One More Shot
- Terrifier 3
- The First Omen
- Smile 2
- Nosferatu
- Inside Out 2
- The Killer
Biggest Disappointment
A category often dominated by sequels and reboots, but the occasional original film makes an appearance. Note that these movies don’t necessarily need to be “bad” in order to be a “disappointment”. Basically, these movies scored poorly on Joe Posnanski’s Plus-Minus Scale.
- Argylle
- Monkey Man
- Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver
- Trigger Warning
- Alien: Romulus
- Emilia Pérez
- Megalopolis
Best Action Sequences
This award isn’t for individual action sequences, but rather an overall estimation of each film. As with the last few years, this category is pretty easy to populate. The added accessibility of streaming DTV actioners has been a boon to this category.
- The Beekeeper
- Dune: Part Two
- The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
- The Fall Guy
- Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
- One More Shot
- Kill
- Land of Bad
- Boy Kills World
- Life After Fighting
- The Shadow Strays
- The Killer’s Game
- The Killer
Best Plot Twist/Surprise
I suppose even listing that there is a twist is a bit of a spoiler, but I guess we’ll just have to risk it.
- The Beekeeper
- First Time Caller
- Time Addicts
- Hit Man
- Trap
- The First Omen
- Strange Darling
- Lowlifes
- Hundreds of Beavers
- Juror #2
- Caddo Lake
Best High Concept Film
Always a bit of a nebulous concept for this category, but there’s some good stuff worth recognizing here because they took chances on a weird concept.
- Late Night with the Devil
- Civil War
- Unfrosted
- One More Shot
- Hit Man
- In a Violent Nature
- First Time Caller
- Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1
- Time Addicts
- The Last Stop in Yuma County
- Trap
- The Substance
- It’s What’s Inside
- Azrael
- Hundreds of Beavers
- Caddo Lake
2024’s 2023 Movie of the Year
This is a weird category that is sometimes difficult to populate. The idea centers around movies I never caught up with last year during the Kaedrin Awards season, but which are worthwhile in their own right.
- Blackout
- The Channel
- Sniper: G.R.I.T. – Global Response & Intelligence Team
- Reptile
- RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop
- Next Goal Wins
So there you have it, please congratulate all of the 2024 Kaedrin Movie Awards nominees! Stay tuned for the winners (probably next week, but you never know), followed by the Arbitrary Awards and (eventually) the Top 10 list. I’m still catching up with a bunch of movies, as this has been a bit of a strange year, so there are a few high profile movies that might actually deserve nominations (maybe you’ll even see one of the winners be a movie that wasn’t nominated – not an unprecedented event!) Only time will tell.
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