BNP Staff Favorites of 2024: Movies

So…2024 was a hell of a year. Both eventful and in some respects…hellish. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t some high points. Here are just a few of the movies that spiced up the water cooler talk at work, bewitched us in theaters and that made this (silly, silly, silly) year one to remember.

Alien: Romulus For the longest time, I didn’t watch many horror movies because paying to be tense and stressed in a theater wasn’t exactly my idea of a good time. Although, I have since realized that the adrenaline rush is very much worth time and effort. Having watched snippets of Alien and all of Prometheus, when the trailer for Alien: Romulus came up, I watched the original quartet, rewatched Prometheus (a movie that gets surprisingly better with full context), and remembered that I had watched Alien: Covenant to prepare myself for the latest and I am glad I did.

Alien; Romulus takes the core formula of the original Alien with slightly different stakes, although empathically emphasizing that while the acid spewing horde of xenomorphs are terrifying, it is the capitalist framework that tries to leverage them that is the true villain. Cailee Spaeny’s Rain and David Johnson’s Andy anchor an emotionally charged story of survival and execute it brilliantly. Fede Alvarez’s direction was so brilliant that I knew the entire trajectory of the story the entire time, but between the eerie atmosphere, the existential dread, and sheer anticipatio…