Yep, people still go to the movies.
Some people wondered whether that was so earlier this year. After The Fall Guy fell, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga crashed and Argylle triggered ever-so-many confused looks, some wondered whether streaming and strikes and COVID really had changed the movie industry.
But in the second half of the year, everything changed. And by the time the ball drops on New Year’s Eve, 2024 will have seen eight films make more than $200 million in North America, with two pocketing more than $600 million (Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine).
And in the midst of all that economic success, we also saw some films that were, y’know, good.
If you’re familiar with this blog, you know that the criteria for inclusion isn’t just about whether a film was aesthetically pleasing or not. The films here, with one or two exceptions, offer a little more: Some spiritual content worth discussing or a moral core worth applauding. Watching God considers what a movie says—not just how it says it.
Let’s take a look at Watching God’s top 10 films of the year.
While Anora, The Brutalist and Conclave have been dominating the Oscars’ conversation, I think Sing Sing is the year’s best. The film takes us behind the walls of one of the United States’ most notorious prisons and uncovers something surprisingly life-giving there: A theater group made up of members of the prison’s population—some of whom will never see the sun as free men again. Anchored by superlative performance by Colman Domingo, Sing Sing also stars many real-life members and veterans of the prison’s program, including Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, who delivers a riveting performance as a man truly transformed. The movie is not explicitly religious. But it’s bursting with spiritual themes: sin, struggle, salvation. This film is rough, especially in terms of its language—but the inspiration it offers is unmatched.
I had a chance to talk with Greg Kwedar, Sing Sing’s director, as part of The Plugged In Show. “I’m just interested in hard-won optimism,” Kwedar said of what attracts him to movies such as Sing Sing. “And the more examples of it I find around me, the more it kind of gives me courage that it can continue to multiply.”
Movies can make you laugh. They can make you cry. But it’s a rare film that causes viewers to do both. The Wild Robot is just such a movie. And in a year filled with tremendous animated offerings, this one is, without question, the best. Roz is the movie’s robot, and she’s programmed to help. Alas, the animals who populate the island on which she’s found herself don’t want her help. But when circumstances force her to “mother” a young, orphaned gosling, Roz ultimately goes way outside her comfort zone—rewiring her programming as she does. And what starts as a hilarious ‘bot out of water story turns into a beautiful, stunning rumination on motherhood.
I was able to interview The Wild Robot’s Chris Sanders for The Plugged In Show, as well. He’s no stranger to animation, having helmed Lilo & Stitch, The Croods and How to Train Your Dragon. But The Wild Robot is his best work. “I’m drawn to the emotional depth of things like this,” he said. “I want to feel when I go to a movie. I want to be taken on a journey.” Me too. And this is one of the year’s most beautiful journeys.
When Roone Arledge and ABC Sports planted its flag in Munich, Germany, for the 1972 Summer Olympics, they knew what they were doing was important: It was the Olympics, after all, and the first one to be transmitted around the world via newfangled satellites. But when the terrorist group Black September took Israeli athletes hostage, ABC Sports was forced to follow one of the year’s most important, and ultimately tragic, news stories as well.
September 5 rarely ventures out of the network’s control studios, putting a remove between us and the drama unfolding in the Olympic Village. But ironically, that distance seems to heighten the tension, not diminish it. And as we watch Arledge and his crew navigate the difficulties of how to cover the story and what to show, we’re given a front-row seat to difficult ethical decisions. September 5 is a master class in storytelling—one that suggests it’s not enough for journalists to tell the truth: They’re beholden to higher truths, as well.
When Dune: Part One was released in 2021, it felt like a tiny miracle. It took one of science fiction’s most complicated and complex stories (the first part of Frank Hebert’s Dune) and—gasp—did it justice, while still making comprehendible to newbies. But as good as the first Dune installment was, Dune: Part Two was better.
Diving into the political and spiritual nuances of the story, Dune: Part Two gives us a hero—Paul Atreides—who is mistaken for a messiah … or is he really the guy the desert planet’s Fremen have been waiting for all these centuries? It’s a powerful, sometimes perplexing tale of what may indeed be a literally self-fulfilling prophecy. Dune: Part Two is a triumph of sci-fi cinema, and it ends with the most spectacular battle sequence we’ve seen since Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movies.
World War II wasn’t an easy time for anybody. But for parents in England, sending their children off to the safer environs of the country, the times came with their own challenges. Mother Rita decides to send her little boy away as the Nazi bombs fall, but George is having none of it. He escapes the train that’s taking him to safety and begins a perilous trip back.
Blitz feels a bit like Homer’s Odyssey: George, like Ulysses, is just trying to go home. And while no cyclops or Sirens hinter George’s journey, he does have to deal with dangers aplenty. But a thread of faith helps him along his journey: He holds a medal of St. Christopher close—one his mother gave George before he left. And the most honorable man George meets on his journey softly sings “Allelujah” as they walk through the city’s dark streets. It’s a harrowing, heart-felt story that reminds us that, even in the darkness, love and light can be found.
Riley, the little girl we met in the original Inside Out, is 13 now. And as a really distressing birthday present, nature gives her a whole bunch of new emotions. The most critical? Anxiety, a frazzle-haired ball of chaos that thinks if Riley doesn’t do everything exactly right, her entire life will be ruined.
Inside Out was one of Pixar/Disney’s best movies, and—given Pixar’s superlative track record—that’s saying something. And while the sequel might not be quite the equal of its predecessor, It’s still fun, thoughtful and incredibly heartfelt. I know what it feels like to feel like Riley; many of us probably do. And that made the movie’s messages all the more poignant.
Darkness is coming to the German town of Wisburg—a darkness wrapped in the guise of an old man with curiously sharp teeth. Based on the classic 1922 silent movie of the same name (which was itself an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula), the new Nosferatu is an atmospheric wonder—and, at times, a waking nightmare.
Yeah, Nosferatu has a lot of problems, no denying. It is not what you’d call even remotely family friendly. But I appreciated the film’s fealty to its source material—particularly the idea that when you’re facing a supernatural evil, you need to lean into faith, and love, and God to face it. For all its sex and blood, Nosferatu may be the most spiritually interesting and nuanced films on this list. And If I have a chance, I may return to this film in the weeks to come.
Tarrell is doing just great, thanks. He’s a successful artist. He has a loving wife and a cute kid. But when he’s forced to come home and confront his good-for-nothing father—a man who his mother insist has changed—he realizes that he might not be doing so good after all.
Has Tarrell’s father, La’Ron, really changed? If he has, he owes it to a turn to faith. He’s gotten sober and clean and goes to chapel every morning. He carries around a Bible. He prays frequently. And—at the urging of Joyce, Tarrell’s beloved (and religious) mom, he does his best to reconcile with his son. That reconciliation process is incredibly difficult, and I won’t tell you where it ultimately lands. But the film is more than just a powerful examination of a fractured family, but how faith and grace may—an emphasis on may—help patch the cracks.
For some, The Pink Opaque was just a 1990s-era throwaway teenage drama. But for Maddy and Owen, it became a point of connection. Of belonging. Of … obsession? For Maddy, the show was real—more real, in fact, than most of the rest of her disappointing life. For Owen? Well, perhaps it was just an excuse to connect with Maddy, his only real friend. But as we follow these two characters, we wonder ourselves just how “real” The Pink Opaque might be—and whether it might destroy the both of them.
This film contains plenty of potentially supernatural elements. But let me be honest: The reason that I Saw the TV Glow makes it onto this list (in spite of its significant problems) is that it’s just plain weird—and it keeps you thinking and guessing long after the credits roll. Sometimes, it’s fun to see a film that just makes you go, “whaaa ..?”
Notorious drug lord Manitas Del Monte has a curious request of his lawyer: He wants to become a woman—both to escape his horrific past and lean into who he always thought he was. But when his lawyer, Rita, successfully helps him to make the switch, Manitas discovers that it’s not so easy to divorce from his past life.
Emilia Perez is probably the most controversial film to land on Watching God’s list. It’s got some obvious problems, and its appearance here should not be taken in any sense as a recommendation. So why did I include it—aside from the fact that it’s a well-told, well-acted story? Its structure, in many ways, follows all the beats of a Christian testimony. You can almost picture Del Monte saying, “I had everything; riches, fame, a family. But I was lost. I was missing something. I was missing … [blank].” And instead of filling that blank with “God,” this film inserts “my true sense of sexuality.” Emilia Perez is a story about sin and salvation, a rumination whether it’s possible for a wayward soul to change its ways. Those themes are inherently powerful, and the fact that the story leans so heavily on Christian narrative devices underlines their power. Sure, Emilia Perez gives us an entirely different answer than what we Christians know to be true. But that reminds us how we so often try to fill “what’s missing” with society’s latest in-vogue “answer” rather than the truth found in eternity. But that itself adds, I think, a poignant pathos to Emilia Perez.
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