2024 Movie Awards

The 2024 Kaedrin Movie Awards Winners were announced last week, which means that it’s time for more… arbitrary considerations. The idea is to recognize aspects of films that aren’t reflected in more traditional awards or other praise like a Top 10 list. However, any consistent, formal awards system will fail to capture all the nuances and complexity available; hence the 2024 Arbitrary Awards, an opportunity to commend movies that are weird or flawed in ways that don’t conform to normal standards. A few of these “awards” have become an annual tradition, some were stolen from other folks, but most are just, well, arbitrary. Previous Arbitrary Awards: [2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006]

The “You know what happens when a toad gets struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else” Award for Worst Dialogue: Madame Web. The most infamous line, “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died” is kinda perfect, and Dakota Johnson’s delivery just nails it. Plenty of other bad dialogue, including this banger “When you take on the responsibility, great power will come.” It’s hilarious how many Spider (and Spider-adjacent) movies have tried to do a spin on “With great power comes great responsibility” but botch it so thoroughly. Anywho, I somehow managed to avoid a lot of the more famously bad dialogue of the year (for example, the other Sony Spider-adjacent movie Kraven the Hunter). One that I did see that I’m a bit torn on is Megalopolis, which has plenty of bad lines, but at least the actors are really going for it (most of what comes out of Adam Driver’s mouth would not work at all coming from another actor). Also, it feels a little like cheating to talk about stuff like Hot Frosty for an award like this, even though it is eminently qualified. So we’ll just stick with Madame Web here. Dialogue that’s so bad it almost rebounds into good.

The Proximity to Jason Voorhees Award for Heroic Stupidity: Alien: Romulus. So much stupid in this movie, and indeed, some of the callbacks to previous films are absolutely hideous (the worst of which, a play on the “Get away from her, you bitch” line, could easily qualify for the previous worst dialogue award).

The Garth Marenghi “I know writers who use subtext, and they’re all cowards” Award for Achievement in Didacticism: The Brutalist. The first half of the movie is actually a pretty good exploration of post-war Jewish assimilation mixed with a mostly subtle portrayal of the conflict between art and commerce. The second half of the film surfaces all of the subtext and ends with a literal lecture, didactically explaining what happened in the movie.

Making the subtext into text isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world, and this movie has plenty of ardent fans, but I found it to be a bit of an eye rolling experience. It’s far from the worst recipient of this semi-regular arbitrary award, but it’s still a worthy recipient.

Spoilerific Twin Movie Phenomenon of the Year: I suppose even mentioning this is a spoiler, but both Lowlifes and Get Away rely on the exact same twist. It’s a fine twist, but I will admit that the second one I watched fell a bit short simply because I’d already seen something like it (though I did chuckle a bit at the unexpected coincidence).

Least Cathartic Documentary of the Year: Brats. What a bizarre movie. Director Andrew McCarthy was a tertiary member of what became known as the Brat Pack, a group of young stars in the 1980s who struggled somewhat with the label. Or, at least, McCarthy did, and clearly still does, blaming it for much of his career woes. Here, he goes around interviewing other members of the Brat pack, most of whom actively question the premise of the movie right to his face and absolutely refuse to provide McCarthy with any sense of the catharsis he so clearly seeks. It’s like McCarthy discovered a new form of Cringe.

The Quentin Tarantino Pressure Cooker Award: The Last Stop in Yuma County. Tarantino will do this thing where he collects a bunch of characters into an almost claustrophobic space, then uses dialogue to ratchet the tension up and up until the scene explodes into a usually violent climax. Sometimes he’ll center the entire movie on this sort of thing (a la Reservoir Dogs or The Hateful Eight), sometimes it’s just a sequence in a larger narrative (most notably with Inglourious Basterds, but he does it in several others as well).

Lots of folks have tried imitating this sort of thing, but few are as successful as The Last Stop in Yuma County, which is excellent (perhaps not as punchy as Tarantino, but still) and well worth seeking out. I’d say that Francis Galluppi is a writer/director to look out for, but his next film appears to be an “Untitled Evil Dead Project” which is something I could not be less interested in, so here’s to hoping he gets to make something of his own again soon.

Most Underseen Romantic Comedy: Fly Me to the Moon. I’m a sucker for anything set during the space race, and this movie is cute, but judging from the box office, no one saw it. Worth a watch!

Achievement in the Field of Gratuitous Violence: Terrifier 3. Say what you will about these movies, but they certainly contain copious amounts of gnarly, gratuitous violence.

The “Futurama” Award for Best Science Fiction Comedy: Molli and Max in the Future. It’s basically a live-action Futurama movie with lots of goofy SF-based concepts and plenty of laughs. It shades a bit too topical (it’s sometimes hard to predict what will feel dated in the future, but I feel like this is a movie that is just very 2024).

Best YouTube Release: The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel. It’s a four hour long video about Jenny Nicholson’s visit to the now-defunct Star Wars Hotel that is somehow riveting. And it perfectly illustrates why the Star Wars Hotel failed so spectacularly. Whatever you may think of Nicholson, she was 100% onboard with the idea of the theme hotel. This isn’t cynical, bad faith criticism. She loves theme parks, she clearly went into this hoping to engage with the concept, but the hotel experience thwarts her at every turn. It’s not exactly cinema in any real sense, but it perfectly encapsulates the sort of thing YouTube is for.

Just Missed the Cutoff for the Formal Awards: Even though the awards started a few weeks ago, I’ve still been watching movies since the original nominees came out, and some of them were pretty good! Good enough to be nominees, though probably not winners. So take a bow, Exhuma and Oddity (Best Horror), What You Wish For (Best Twist, maybe Best High Concept or Best Horror too), and Here (Best High Concept). All worth watching!

Should Host the Oscars: Monstro Elisasue from The Substance. I mean, it’s no New Year’s Eve hosting event, but I think it’ll do. The longlist: Wow Platinum from Megalopolis, the Octoboss from Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Abraxas from Late Night with the Devil, the sentient ravioli from Unfrosted, Longlegs from… Longlegs, Art the Clown from Terrifier 3, Count Orlok from Nosferatu, Moebius from Molli and Max in the Future, Gorcha, and the Vourdalak puppet from The Vourdalak. A solid list, but you really just have to give it to Monstro Elisasue. She was literally made for hosting events like this!

Congrats to all the 2024 Arbitrary Awards winners, stay tuned for moar 2024 movie news, including the traditional top 10 list (probably in a couple weeks) and the usual Oscar commentary.

The nominees for the 2024 Kaedrin Movie Awards were announced last week, and today we announce the award winners. The Oscars were also announced recently, and the discourse has produced the usual unhinged complaints about snubs and relatability and other bitter recriminations. As with many things, the Oscars has had a weird few years in this post-pandemic era. Hosting woes, The Slap™, and ever present controversy has taken a toll, but it’s still fun if you don’t take it too seriously. Speaking of which, it’s about time to get to my silly little awards. I realize this is happening about a month or two later than most publications’ year end roundups, but I’m not a critic with access to screeners and don’t attend every film festival, so I’m still catching up with a lot of 2024 movies. Anywho, that’s enough preamble, let’s get to the fireworks:

Best Villain/Badass: Dementus, played by Chris Hemsworth in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Hemsworth’s weirdly articulate but incompetent hippy-esque wasteland villain is the type of character you love to hate, and he meets a suitably “epic” end (as he memorably asks).

Strong competition for this award from David Howard Thornton as Art the Clown in Terrifier 3, who has really refined the character over the past decade and does excellent work, even if this particular entry in the series is not as good as the previous (and if the ever-nebulous mythology driving the series has sorta implied a greater evil at work). Bill Skarsgård was also apparently up to the task of portraying another Horror icon in Nosferatu, to pretty good effect. To a lesser extent, I also thought Frederik de Schinkel (more like de Stinkel, amirite?), played by Simon Bennebjerg in The Promised Land was among the better hate-able villains of the year. Nicolas Cage’s Longlegs is certainly… memorable, and Josh Hartnett’s performance in Cooper in Trap almost makes you root for the guy. I described this as a moderate year for villainy, but narrowing the nominee shortlist down to an even shorter list and then settling on a winner was surprisingly challenging. Maybe it was a good year for villainy after all (certainly a much better year than last year).

Best Hero/Badass: Adam Clay, played by Jason Statham in The Beekeeper. Statham has been playing this sort of righteous action hero for decades at this point, and yet something about this particular take on his own persona somehow feels like the perfect distillation of the archetype that he’s spent a career honing.

Plenty of competition, including Chris Hemsworth’s heroic foe in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, played well by Anya Taylor Joy, as well as Hemsworth’s brother Liam in the underseen and underrated Land of Bad. Henry Cavill does admirable work in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, but part of his badassery is smeared across his assembled team of badasses (I easily could have nominated Alan Ritchson from the same movie, for example). Dev Patel surprisingly established himself as an action hero in Monkey Man (it’s just a shame that the story for that movie is a bit of a mess). Lakshya Lalwani represents the Indian contingent (a growing demographic in these Hero/Villain awards in recent years) for his lead role in Kill. We’ll say more about Aaron Pierre in Rebel Ridge below, and Aurora Ribero does great work in Timo Tjahjanto’s The Shadow Strays. Solid year for heroism, with a long shortlist, but Statham is the pretty clear winner.

Best Comedic Performance: Glen Powell in Hit Man. Probably not a conventional choice here, but bear with me. I just keep thinking of the short scene where Powell is sorta in a Tilda Swinton getup and I can’t stop laughing at that (there’s probably a dozen similar moments in the movie as well). And it’s not like comedy is a thriving genre these days, though there were a few other notable performances. Ryland Brickson Cole Tews is probably the most interesting of all the nominees for his work in Hundreds of Beavers; a silent performance with lots of physical comedy, it’s certainly impressive and probably should be a co-winner or something, but this praise will be enough (and Hundreds of Beavers will get more love elsewhere). John Cena in Ricky Stanicky and Jerry Seinfeld in Unfrosted represent the direct-to-streaming contingent, and both are pretty strong (Cena and Stanicky being the more surprisingly strong effort). Cory Michael Smith in Saturday Night was fantastic, but a small part of the movie and his nomination represents one of the big challenges with this category, which is targeted towards singular performances, which makes things tricky because a lot of comedies rely on an ensemble. In the end, I really wanted to give Powell and Hit Man some love.

Breakthrough Performance: Aaron Pierre in Rebel Ridge. This should have been a real star-making performance, the undisputed arrival of a new mega-star, but it’s a Netflix movie so it’s largely disappeared into the ether. Still, it’s a fantastic performance and worth seeking out. Margaret Qualley was certainly busy in 2024, with  Drive-Away Dolls, The Substance, and Kinds of Kindness, and she’s great in all of them (for different reasons too). David Jonsson was great in Alien: Romulus, but he’s hampered by two serious problems: 1. He’s saddled with one of the worst franchise callbacks in cinema history and while he tries his best, he can’t overcome the hideousness of the line (I don’t think anyone could, but it’s still jarring) and 2. I actually already nominated Jonsson last year for his work in Rye Lane and totally forgot about it (a distinct performance too)! Lily-Rose Depp certainly gives it her all in Nosferatu, and it’s a huge leap in quality from some of her previous work (largely due to quality of material, but still). Bren Foster has arrived on the DTV action scene with Life After Fighting and the fact that he’s also a director should help as well. In the end, this was Pierre’s year, and I’m really curious to see what he does next.

Most Visually Stunning: Nosferatu. Absolutely gorgeous movie. I complain a lot about modern horror movies’ tendency to rely on overly dark cinematography where you can barely see what’s on screen, but Robert Eggers perfectly balances the darkness on screen with contrast and focus in a way that is far more legible (and yes, visually stunning) than the movies I tend to complain about.

One of the interesting things about the way this category has evolved over time is that there is much less in the way of special effects spectacle, and much more in the way of simple but great photography. Indeed, I don’t think it’s an accident that a large proportion of the nominees are captured on photochemical film rather than pure digital (but not all! You can have good cinematography in digital!) I think both Dune: Part Two and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga are worthy contenders (and, as you’ll see in the next two awards below, these three films are basically in the running for all three awards and are basically neck and neck in the standings – you could probably interchange these three films in these three awards).

Best Sci-Fi or Horror Film: Dune: Part Two. I’m not especially a fan of the way modern blockbusters have been split into two half-movies, but these Dune movies seem to be an exception. As mentioned above, this movie could easily have also taken Most Visually Stunning (the sequence on Giedi Prime is particularly striking) or the next award for best sequel, but I’m trying to spread the love. There actually is another nominee that I included in the nominations, but thought better of when it came time to give the award. I suppose Civil War is technically an alternate history (a sub-genre of science fiction) and it’s certainly speculative, but while it’s a fantastic movie, it’s probably not quite right for this award (don’t worry, it’ll show up on the top 10). Of course, Nosferatu and Furiosa are also interchangeable here. Otherwise, there’s a long list of nominees that are worth checking out, though several are not for everyone (i.e. some of the more experimental horror can be a bit grueling – in a good way if you like that sort of thing, but still).

Best Sequel/Reboot/Remake: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. It’s basically impossible to follow up Mad Max: Fury Road, but George Miller somehow managed to craft something that has just enough similarities (and at least one exceptional action set-piece) while still carving out an identity of its own in a surprisingly satisfying way. Everyone knows I’m not a huge fan of movies that generally fit this category, but this year was better than most (it probably helps that it was an overall weird year). The aforementioned Dune and Nosferatu are both eminently qualified here, and as already mentioned, are basically interchangeable. Special callout to The Fall Guy, which is just a boatload of fun that, if box office is to be believed, most of you didn’t see.

Biggest Disappointment: Argylle. I don’t really know why this disappointed me so, so much, but it’s just so bad and I really did have high hopes. It’s probably due to the talent involved, both in front of and behind the camera. Monkey Man is far from a bad movie, it’s actually pretty decent, but my expectations were probably just too high. I didn’t really know what to think of Megalopolis, but I love Coppola, admire the attempt, and wanted to see his gamble payoff… but it pretty emphatically didn’t. Thankfully the nominee list is relatively short… it could probably be longer, but it’s not a category I like to dwell on, so let’s not do that, eh?

Best Action Sequences: The Shadow Strays. Timo Tjahjanto’s action chops are well established by this point, and this movie hits that same relentless, bloodthirsty note that makes his movies so distinctive. Plenty of solid competition here as well. The Fall Guy gets credit for all the real stuntwork, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has one exceptional action set-piece that rivals its predecessor (which is really saying something), Land of Bad is underseen and underappreciated, and Kill represents a somewhat more grounded approach to Indian action than I’m used to… The DTV contingent also provides a healthy dose of action as well, with One More Shot and Life After Fighting taking top marks there. Finally, a quick shout out to John Woo’s The Killer, a remake that can’t really even begin to compete with the original, but is still worthwhile.

Best Plot Twist/Surprise: First Time Caller. Probably the most obscure 2024 movie that I’ve seen, but it’s well worth seeking out. As per usual, just knowing this movie qualifies for the category represents something of a spoiler, but I will give you two quick tidbits here: 1. This is a movie primarily set in one location, an “edgy” internet podcaster/broadcaster’s home studio and 2. Don’t let the “edgy” part of the guy’s schtick get to you. Once the story proper kicks in, that won’t matter much. I don’t want to say too much about the competition due to the spoilerific nature of the category, but I will say that Juror #2 has plenty of twists and turns spread throughout and Caddo Lake did a pretty good job pulling the rug out in that Science Fictional way that I’m always a sucker for…

Best High Concept Film: Hundreds of Beavers. This movie is basically a live action Looney Tunes cartoon, a Raimiesque diy extravaganza (complete with the way Raimi can balance a slightly darker tone with silly slapstick), it’s the sort of thing that reminds you of lots of other things… but which carves out an identity of its own, such that you really can’t think of anything else like it.

Plenty of other high concepts that were pretty neat this year. I’m always a sucker for the single take action flick like One More Shot. In a Violent Nature is certainly not for everyone, but it’s pretty rare to find a traditional slasher that actually does something new and innovative with the concept. The aforementioned First Time Caller deserves a bigger audience (it’s on Tubi, give it a shot!) The Last Stop in Yuma County harkens back to the post-Pulp Fiction 90s era of nonlinear storytelling. M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap has such a goofy premise that I can’t help but love it. Azrael‘s mostly dialogue-free approach is always an admirable strategy. A pretty good year for high concepts!

2024’s 2023 Movie of the Year: RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop. I did a pretty good job catching up with movies last year, so the pickens were somewhat slim for this award, and indeed, RoboDoc is one of those movies where you could debate whether or not it’s more of a TV show or something. Still, It’s a pretty great, exhaustive look at an amazing movie. Shout outs to The Channel, especially for fans of Heat imitations (seriously, it follows all the beats) and Sniper: G.R.I.T. – Global Response & Intelligence Team, which is an action film series that somehow managed to hit their stride only upon their, like, 8th entry in the series and is still going strong (another coming this year, and I’m actually quite looking forward to it).

Congratulations to all the 2024 Kaedrin Movie Award winners! And stay tuned, for next week, the awards get arbitrary!

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.