The 26 Best Movies of 2024 (So Far) |
Why isn’t anyone going to the movies? That’s the big question coming out of Hollywood right now, following a dismal May and the worst adjusted\xa0Memorial Day\xa0weekend at the box office in nearly three decades. The most disappointing new release was George Miller’s latest installment in the\xa0Mad Max\xa0franchise,\xa0Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. The film debuted with a \\$32 million opening weekend, far below projections (and what it needs to recoup its \\$168 million budget). What’s unnerving isn’t that an\xa0expected blockbuster\xa0is underperforming but rather that an expected blockbuster as good—and downright entertaining—as\xa0Furiosa\xa0fell short.\xa0The film\xa0is a blast, it’s built from revered IP, and it sports two big stars (Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth). So what gives? \xa0 Frankly, I don’t have an answer. What I do know is, box office be damned, 2024 is shaping up to be a pretty solid year for new releases. In addition to\xa0Furiosa, we got an ideal movie to watch with the whole family (Hit Man), a thrillingly scrappy teen road journey (Gasoline Rainbow), and a quietly staggering meditation on humanity’s relationship to the natural world (Evil Does Not Exist). Here are the best movies of the year so far. |
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The Last Gay Erotica Store |
By the cash register at AutoErotica in San Francisco’s historic Castro gayborhood, a little sign sticks out from a plastic container of Ferrero Rocher chocolates.\xa0Have One,\xa0it reads, written in pink marker. You’d expect to see the chocolates when visiting your favorite uncle, not in a store packed with so many male bodies on display. The gold foil wrappers gleam against a framed 1970s ad for poppers—a white bottle blasting off through space—and a 1978 poster for a Chicago bathhouse bash. There’s another for the 1988 International Mr. Leather contest. And, of course, there are the dicks. On the walls, slim studs ripped from magazines lean back on couches at full salute. Illustrated Tom of Finland daddies showcase boners spilling out of leather chaps. Framed male nudes flank bins of vintage gay porn magazines with titles like\xa0Honcho, Mandate,\xa0and\xa0Blueboy. \xa0 Owner Patrick Batt opened this store in 1996, long before the Starbucks and the SoulCycle moved into the neighborhood. Before the current renewed interest in gay historic material (though for some, that spark never died) saw vintage magazines sell for upwards of \\$100 a pop on eBay. Before the guys wearing ’80s-inspired short shorts and Chuck Taylors on Fire Island were out of diapers, and before popular Instagram accounts began posting old magazine spreads, with photographers sharing their new pastiche pictorials. Blame the Internet for the death of retail stores, but it’s what saved AutoErotica, thanks to the Hail Mary of a GoFundMe drive started by Batt’s friend, photographer Bradley Roberge, during the pandemic. The store is also sustained by its popular Instagram (curated by Roberge), which lures folks in from near and far. New York City. England. As far off as Malaysia, which blew Batt’s mind. |
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The Dopp Kit That Will Last the Rest of My Life |
Not everything needs to be reinvented, but we’re obsessed with optimizing. Optimizing ourselves, optimizing products—it’s all part of this weird improvement-and-newness complex. My algorithm will show me ads for smart bar carts,\xa0smart vacuums, and smart toilet seats. The Internet wants to sell me the comfiest pants ever made or barefoot shoes that will fix how I walk. (Do I need to fix that?) \xa0 The travel world is one of the worst offenders. There are a million brands that make a million travel-hack products that will all end up in a landfill pretty soon. You know what I actually\xa0need\xa0while traveling? A bag—sometimes a suitcase—and a Dopp kit. I want all three of those things to last me as long as possible. About a year ago, after a few years of searching, I found\xa0this Lucchese Dopp kit\xa0that looks like it’ll go to the grave with me. |
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Is Summer Game Fest the Best Thing to Happen to Gaming—or the Worst? |
For the video game industry, Summer Game Fest has quickly become a combination of San Diego Comic-Con and the (now defunct) Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3): the single most important place for gamers to watch new trailers and for studios to show off their wares. With \\$180 billion in video game revenue last year according to Newzoo—more than global box-office and music sales combined—Summer Game Fest is arguably one of the two most important pop-culture events of the year now, alongside its sister event in December, the Game Awards, which has started drawing more viewers than the Academy Awards. \xa0 But unlike Comic-Con or E3, Summer Game Fest and the Game Awards are owned, operated, and hosted by one person: Geoff Keighley, a 45-year-old Canadian journalist and\xa0Muppet enthusiast with a penchant for tailored dinner jackets. While most people in the industry believe Keighley’s twin events are a force for good, others have raised concerns about Summer Game Fest and the Game Awards’ high entry fees, opaqueness, and celebritization, as well as Keighley’s silence on issues that have impacted game workers, like the mass layoffs that have\xa0decimated studios in 2023 and 2024. Before this year's Summer Game Fest, I asked more than a dozen video game professionals for their unfiltered opinions on Summer Game Fest, including what they’d like to see changed. |
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Ewan Mitchell and Tom Glynn-Carney Are Ready for the Throne |
The two onscreen siblings are in town from England for a weekend of early\xa0House of the Dragon\xa0promotion. They’re taking over leading-men duties for the HBO series, which is a\xa0Succession-esque tale focused on the Targaryen family, told nearly two hundred years before the events of\xa0Game of Thrones.\xa0(Glynn-Carney: “Not that it needs any advertising at all, but\xa0Game of Thrones\xa0is fucking amazing.”)\xa0Season 1 of\xa0House of the Dragon\xa0largely followed younger versions of their characters (played by different actors), the never-not-bickering brothers\xa0Aegon\xa0and Aemond. The final three episodes\xa0reintroduced the siblings\xa0at ages 21 and 18, respectively: Aegon (Glynn-Carney), the reluctant misfit chosen to sit on the Iron Throne, and Aemond (Mitchell), the cunning younger brother who wants to usurp him. \xa0 “In the last three episodes of season 1, I presented a character that was entirely black,” says Mitchell. “In season 2, I can’t wait to turn him gray.” And Aegon? “He comes into his own as an unpredictable live wire,” says Glynn-Carney. “He’s intensely ambitious and incapable of pursuing the things he sets for himself.” |
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I Am a Wellness Asshole Now |
To be a middle-aged man in southern California is to find yourself saying, with alarming frequency, “Yeah, I’m one of\xa0those\xa0assholes now.” If you’ve come from somewhere else—somewhere more\xa0corn-fed\xa0and\xa0homespun\xa0and other synonyms for\xa0unhealthy—you may adopt a wholesome habit out here. You may reap physical and emotional benefits, and you\xa0will\xa0be clowned to death by your friends from home. CrossFit, breath work, bullshitting through a gratitude journal—I’ve tried them all. Some have had a positive impact on my life; others have given me items to sell on OfferUp. (I’m looking at you, matcha stirring bowl.) \xa0 This year has been especially busy on the humiliatingly-healthy-habits front. Maybe it’s a post-Covid focus on fitness, or a more robust wellness marketplace, or the fact that I hit my 50s and need to get that shit started now if I want to live forever. Whatever the reason, 2024 has been a boom time for people who want to sell wellness stuff to Dave Holmes, and the truth is that a lot of it works. Here’s an incomplete list of the kinds of assholes I am now. |
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