Larry's Summer Movie Awards 2024

All movies all the time with unconventional categories from an unconventional mind

I’ve never claimed to be a film critic, historian, or an even remotely thoughtful viewer with great taste. Okay, this is most likely a lie I should get out in front of right away since there are probably multiple hours of me making egregious claims to the contrary, trying to interject my opinion on whatever I’ve watched amidst the literal (tens of?) thousands of hours I’ve spent podcasting about clothes over the past nearly nine years since that fateful day I picked up my first mic. Point is, I’m a cinephile *barfs* in the truest sense of the world: Simply put, I love movies. Yep, Larry likey flickies.

As a consumer all I could ever really promise to do is consume and, oh boy, consume I do, at a somewhat alarming rate. Counting rewatches, I’m at 203 for the year at the time of writing this and since I enjoy writing considerably less than I do vegging the fuck out, and since I know myself these awards realistically took me the rest of the week to finish, let’s call it. Not that I consider watching movies a sport or a competition or anything, I just operate as a guy who leaves it all out on the field (read: couch) thanks to a pure love of the game and if this love is but the tiniest bit infectious, well, then I’ve played my position and done my part to honor the gods of the silver screen I choose to worship for a frightening amount of my free time. Is it a valid hobby? Is it an acceptable lifestyle? Should I be embarrassed? What about publicly shamed? Don’t know. Don’t care. And please, for the love of all things sacred, don’t answer. I’m nothing if not transparent, so now that I’ve got all that vice-like baggage off my chest—which to be crystal pales in comparison to even the slightest nefarious Hollywood shenanigans because if nothing else this lady doth protest too much—how about we to get into the awards *coughs* recs *coughs* because this is Substack after all and that’s why you’re here because lord knows you’re paying good money for somebody else to do the hard work for you and you already know I’m a worker, at least when it comes to this shit specifically.

The criteria, parameters and “rules” for Larry’s Summer Movie Awards 2024 are simple: If I watched it this summer and thought it merited any mention whatsoever I reverse engineered a category to shoehorn it into this list. Naturally, as judge, jury and executioner, I fudged the numbies and moved the goalposts as necessary because I didn’t watch a single thing while traveling for damn near the entire month of June (fyi this is the opposite of a flex). Most of these 20ish movies are old, or, rather, they did not come out this summer, let alone this year. Of course I am a box office supporter, but you don’t need me to tell you that Challengers is the best movie of the year that proves that behind ever great man is a much more evil woman, or how Furiosa is George Miller’s finest comedic work to date, or how The Bikeriders coulda been white trash Goodfellas but worse, or how Glenn Powell’s Twisters press junket fits filled in an entire generation of guys on an entire different generation of guys who used to get their jeans creased either intentionally or against their will no thanks to a rogue dry cleaner. Also, maybe you caught wind of an indie darling called Dune: Part Two. Was that in the spring? Whatever, bro. Argue with your mother.

My goal here is to put you onto something new, something you haven’t seen or maybe heard about, so you can cut out the middle man, which in most people’s case is panhandling on the timeline, asking your followers what to watch the next time you’re bored, opening up a pandora’s box of two-way street main character syndrome and reaping the mounds of dog shit you yourself sowed. Nah, we getting straight to the source: raw, uncut, never stepped on zoovies injected right into your fucking facial. Thankfully, there’s a lot of you reading this right now, so I don’t expect to blow everyone’s mind out of their asshole, but maybe you’ll get an opinion or two validated or, better yet, pissed off.

Rest in paradise, Dick Allen. You’re the blueprint, brother. Without further ado, let’s crack open some envelopes and hand out some well-deserved hardware. In no particular order…