In-Review: July 2024

Has Summer 2024 Brought You to the Movies?

Jul 31, 2024

∙ Paid

Back in May, Hollywood was terrified about the box office returns this summer. Movies like The Fall Guy and IF didn’t exactly signal a strong start. But now that we’ve hit August, it hasn’t looked so bad. We weren’t going to have a culture bomb like Barbenheimer (the one-two punch of the two best commercial and best-reviewed movies of 2024 in one day is something that will likely never be replicated again). But Summer 2024 has some success stories for Hollywood.

Inside Out 2 has become the highest-grossing animated film of all-time beating out Frozen 2. That’s weird to even type out because of how culturally embedded Frozen is, but families came out in droves for Inside Out 2. Not only does this show Disney/Pixar that families will come to the theaters for the “right” animated movie, but it also shows them that sequels are still where the money is. Let’s hope that’s not the only lesson Disney takes away.

Other success stories have been Neon’s Longlegs which is now the highest-grossing indie horror movie in North American history. Certainly, it speaks to the quality of the marketing campaign that Neon used for the movie, but also the quality of the movie itself. While I haven’t seen it yet, I’ve heard comparisons to Se7en and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure, two fantastic movies to be compared with. Universal’s Twisters exceeded expectations too, having the biggest opening weekend for a disaster film in North America ever. Wouldn’t be too surprising to see another entry in the Twister franchise now.

One of the biggest stories of the box office summer was always going to be Deadpool & Wolverine. Given its tracking, the question going into its opening weekend wasn’t whether or not it’d be successful, but how successful. It opened with the 6th biggest opening weekend of all time with $211m and was easily the biggest weekend for an R-rated movie. When I went to see the movie during the day on Friday, I saw families with young children going into the movie, so this was one R-rated movie that played like a family movie. Bizarre. It’s also the biggest July opening, the biggest opening of 2024 thus far, and the biggest launch since Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021.

Heading into 2024, I thought the release schedule for the year looked lackluster. Fewer massive hits and fewer products to get excited about. Turns out there were just enough movies to bring audiences to the multiplexes this summer.

Now for the big question. Has this Summer brought you to the movies?

Here are the movies I caught up with in July:

Podcast

My cohost Evan Crean and I discuss Legacy Sequels on the podcast. What exactly is a Legacy Sequel? You might have already seen a few without even knowing what they were. Click, listen, and hear Evan and I talk about some of the best Legacy Sequels.

Home Video Releases

With the Criterion Collection sale now over until November, I wound up with a few titles from the sale. Purchases included:

Anatomy of a Fall
All That Breathes
Risky Business
Perfect Days
Le Samouraï

One of the bigger sets I got this month (courtesy of Warner Bros.) was the Rocky: Ulitmate Knockout Collection. This new box set includes Rocky - Rocky Balboa (6 movies) and two director cuts (Rocky 4 and Rocky Balboa). Gone are the authoring errors that plagued the earlier Rocky 4K box set. This is the set Rocky fans were waiting for all along. While I wouldn’t say that this set is the definitive set (Warner Bros. could presumably box the Creed trilogy with this box set someday), this is probably the best that the original Rocky movies will look and sound on home video, and for that reason alone, it earns my recommendation. Let me offer my rank on the Rocky movies below:

Rocky
Rocky III
Rocky II
Rocky IV
Rocky Balboa
Rocky V

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