There are still a half-dozen movies I’m trying to watch before finalizing my year-end list, so in the meantime, you get this list about top surprises and disappointments of the year. I have seven of each that deserve mention this year. I do this because movie expectations are an interesting thing. I try to limit them, but you can’t avoid them completely.
The following is ranked so that we get to the biggest surprises and biggest disappointments at the bottom. Rankings are based on the gap between how much I expected to enjoy it how much I actually did. So you won’t see Oppenheimer on here because I already expected not to like it and was right.
First a list of minor surprises:
- You Hurt My Feelings
- Blue Beetle (yes, I actually expected this one to be pretty good and it was)
- Knock at the Cabin
- A Haunting in Venice
- Saw X (still not great, but better than expected)
- Joy Ride
And a list of minor disappointments:
- Dumb Money
- The Boy and the Heron
- Saltburn
- The Creator (I expected this one to be pretty mediocre, then there was a wave of ecstatic early reviews from some of my friends, so I raised my expectation, and it ended up basically where I thought it would be all along)
- El Conde
- Totally Killer
7. Disappointment: Wish
The marketing for this movie had my expectations low, but I really wanted to be proved wrong. After all, how could Disney possibly put out a bad movie as the signature film of their 100-year anniversary year? Well, they did. It was watchable but one of the least memorable Disney movies I’ve ever seen.
#7 Surprise: Missing
I expected Missing to be pretty good, but it exceeded my expectations. From the time it came out in January until April, it was my top movie of the year (the year was so strong in the back end that it’s now out of the top 20 but still excellent). Yes, the plot doesn’t make that much sense, but the concept made for a gripping thriller that had me enthralled.
#6. Disappointment: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
I kept expectations measured, and skipped it in theaters when the reviews came in. But it just has to be said: this might be the most soulless, lifeless movie I’ve ever seen. And knowing how life-filled the classic movies—1 and 3—are made this fact all the more crushing. A very bad film made terrible by lack of personality.
#6 Surprise: Reality
This movie quietly slipped on Max back in the spring with little fanfare (it seems Zaslav wanted to bury it, but that’s just my hunch). I had no expectations for it, but I also definitely didn’t expect to see Sydney Sweeney give one of the year’s best performances, which she most definitely does. I highly recommend watching it if it slipped past you.
#5. Disappointment: The Son
Florian Zeller’s follow-up to 2020’s incredible The Father is horrific, slow, offensive and unhelpful mess of a movie. From performances to concepts, it’s just trash. I rank it LOWER than The Flash. The only reason this doesn’t have the top spot is that lack of Oscar buzz for it proved to be a canary in the coalmine, so that by the time I saw it in June, I was already pretty sure it wasn’t going to be good. But there was no predicting how bad it could be.
#5. Surprise: It’s a Wonderful Knife
I’ve seen this appear on many people’s worst of the year list. I understand that, but I loved it. It’s a strange concept executed well, but more than that, it’s just really, really queer. The basic message of this film is that queer love can topple predatory capitalism, and I’m always on board for that idea. It’s not going to land for everyone, but I had a lot of fun with it.
#4. Disappointment: Killers of the Flower Moon
I usually don’t like Scorsese movies very much, so when this came up a year ago, I had no anticipation for it. But then that trailer was so good! And I started reading the book and it was so good! I could see a possibility where Scorsese and co made smart choices leading to a sharp and powerful adaptation. They didn’t do this. It was very long, very slow, and very dismissive of Native people. I left the theater feeling like I’d wasted 4 hours, which I had.
#4. Surprise: John Wick 4
I’d never seen a John Wick movie until I sat down to watch 4 and I was really impressed. The action was precise and compelling especially toward the end. It was a bit long pushing 3 hours, but I only felt that length in the middle, and some of that lull was needed to set up the finale. This is what the end of your story arc should look like, even if we will keep returning to the universe of John Wick.
#3. Disappointment: No Hard Feelings
I wrote a whole thing about how disappointed I was in this movie. But in short, I thought there was potential for big laughs reminiscent of the 2000s comedies I love so. It did provide some laughs, but they came with too much baggage and mismanagement of economic realities. Definitely one of the most disappointing films of the year.
#3. Surprise: Asteroid City
I’m not much of a Wes Anderson fan, though I like his old stuff focused on American idiosyncrasies. I was cautiously optimistic it might be decent, but I had been that way about The French Dispatch, too, and that movie was quite bad. So even though I expected this one would be decent, I wasn’t expecting it to be one I would see twice in theaters or be in legitimate contention for my favorite Wes Anderson movie. But as far I’m concerned, this strange film about the fraught nature of art and the precarity of the human condition is easily among his best work. And it’s so dang funny!
#2. Disappointment: Poor Things
As we neared release date following the move out of September, I got a little nervous. I’d seen the same trailers for months, and one of them focused on Emma Stone talking about the movie, not the movie itself. So when I saw the movie, I had braced for disappointment and maybe even something problematic—a friend of mine had compared it to Blonde, which is a dark omen to invoke—but I wasn’t prepared for how problematic. I fully acknowledge that my shock blinded me to other things the film might be doing, but until more people admit that, “hey, we need to talk about this!” the film can be, in my mind, nothing but disappointing.
#2. Suzeme
I knew nothing about this movie, and I loved every minute. It moved me deeply and left me thinking how I should watch more anime. It’s a powerful story of friendship and loss that, to me at least, worked a lot better than The Boy and the Heron. Check it out if you missed it. It’s a wild ride of unexpected twists and turns and fancy.
#1. Disappointment: Renfield
Yes, this was even more disappointing than Poor Things because there was no warning. All signs pointed to this delivering the goods. The trailer was excellent, the cast was stacked (Awkwafina notwithstanding), and the premise was the kind that Nic Cage fans had been begging for for years. How do you mess this one up? Well, you make it boring, excessively focused on police, and not as darkly comedic as it should have been. This had dark horse favorite/ 9 out of 10 potential and I left the theater as disappointed as I’d been in a movie in a long time (I think I gave it a 5/10).
#1. Surprise: The Killer
In 2020, acclaimed David Fincher made a movie called Mank. It’s just horrible, about as bad as a movie can be short of being problematic in some way. Since then I also saw fan favorites like Panic Room and Zodiac, and hated them. I’d even watched a good essay about The Social Network that highlighted how what I like about that film is mostly the Aaron Sorkin influence. I was fully ready to go “yeah, Fincher just isn’t really for me” and move on.
But then I got the chance to see this in a cool indie theater before it hit Netflix so I went with it. And it’s just about as good as any movie Fincher has made. It had the same finely tuned sense of irony that made Fight Club work so well but adapted for our modern times. Like with Wes Anderson, I often feel that Fincher makes movies that don’t say much, but The Killer is an effective treatise on labor and how everything trends to monotony and meaninglessness. It does this while probing gently at a central figure shrouded in steely mystery. It’s a very good movie, methodical and surgeon-like in its precision. Sometimes it’s fun to be wrong.
So there you have some surprises and disappointments of the year. Feel free to find me on Instagram (@Caoilfhionnscollection) and share your surprises and disappointments of the year. I’ll be back soon with my top movies of the year list, and a preview of what’s to come in the next year!
