2024 hasn’t been a red letter year for the human race. War, polarization, and despair are all on the rise, and 2025 isn’t exactly set up for success. Fortunately, entertainment continues to be the number one doctor recommended band aid for your all consuming existential dread, and the past year has been generous with the quantity, if not necessarily the quality, of distraction. 2024 saw the rise of Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney into stardom, the passing of a few Hollywood legends like James Earl Jones and Donald Sutherland, the explosion of AI, and the comic book movie remains in a cruel, agonizing state of artificially prolonged life as studios continue to invest and lose money in the dying genre in hopes of reviving its glory days. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the news and choices, however, let the Magellans at the Movies sort it out for you into a few convenient lists of the best and worst of 2024! Happy new year and let’s get it started with a bang!

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As 2024 breathes its last, wintry breaths and minds turn towards all the resolutions that need prompt breaking, let us take a moment to draw near to loved ones, be they romantic or platonic, and reflect on the rock upon which the Hallmark church has been built. What is it to love? What virtue is there in affection? What does it demand of us? Think on these questions and deepen your understanding of what the Greeks referred to as agápē, érōs, philía, philautía, storgē, and xenía. If that all sounds too hard, however, just pop Love Actually in and call it a day. While less enlightening than an in-depth philosophical journey, the watching of Richard Curtis’ 2003 holiday rom-com is by far the more popular option, and it’s not hard to see why. Love Actually hails from a different era of film, when cinema was more sincere and postmodernist irony was only just beginning to rise from its infernal cradle. High art it is not, but it’s the kind of undemanding, sugary treat that greets life optimistically and with a corny joke or two- aaaaand Elliot’s out. I jest, of course, no one yet knows what the moviegoing Magellans think of this movie, but that’s all about to change on today’s new episode! If you want to use the podcast as cover while you declare your love to your best friend’s wife, we won’t judge you (much), but make sure you rewind to the start and listen to the whole thing after you’ve finished betraying your buddy’s trust. Contact us/Requests/Questions: MagellansMovies@gmail.com

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Everyone knows that zombies aren’t what they used to be. If anything, a decaying, shambolic corpse is probably the perfect metaphor for the genre as it exists right now: decrepit, feeble, and limping slowly towards nowhere in particular. There was a time, however, when zombie fiction was almost as popular as movie westerns were in their day, and that time, of course, was the early 2000s, inarguably the worst period of culture since the 1510s (your poetry sucks, Henry VIII). That’s not necessarily to say that zombie media was a reason for that decade’s irritating obsession with film grain and infuriating hatred for colors that are not gray, but it may go some way towards explaining why, as aesthetic tastes shifted, certain genres like comic book films or crime fiction survived the jump while zombies did not. Zombie stories, after all, are pretty gray, grainy affairs that aren’t built for much tonal variation, with the notable exception of Shaun of the Dead, a horror-comedy zombie flick directed by Edgar Wright. Shaun of the Dead is remembered fondly by many viewers for its humorous take on the walking dead, but how fondly will Nathan and Elliot look on it? That, my friend, is the question we set out to answer today on our brand new episode. Grab a pint, throw on your headphones, and wait for this whole thing to blow over with the soothing tones of your favorite hosts. Contact us/Requests/Questions: MagellansMovies@gmail.com

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