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My Favorites of the Year: 2024 Edition

On the year that was.

Valerie Ettenhofer

Valerie Ettenhofer

— 3 min read
My Favorites of the Year: 2024 Edition
Yuval Abraham in No Other Land (Yabayay Media/Antipode Films), Jessica Gunning in Baby Reindeer (Netflix), Ethan Herisse in Nickel Boys (Amazon MGM Studios), and Liam Óg "Mo Chara" Ó Hannaidh in Kneecap (Sony Pictures Classics)

On the year that was.


As with most of my 2024 writing projects, I got too in my head about my year-end post – and too distracted by all our everyday horrors – to deliver it on time. After a month spent highlighting, linking, reformatting, editing, rewriting, and chopping out large chunks of this list, I decided to scrap the whole thing and go for something simpler (and more wonkily formatted, sorry).

The quotes featured are all from my past newsletters, which you can find here. Though the songs and podcasts listed are all new to me (or in the case of the songs, newly stuck in my head), I confess I also listened to a lot of last year's favorites, too. If you want information about where to find any of the below titles or have questions about them, just ask – I'm extremely happy to help. Finally, if a list is short, it's because I don't feel that I did everything I could to maintain my status as an authority on that subject this year, so I know a few substantial titles are missing because I missed them. Still, I hope you like it. May 2025 be the year of throwing out everything that isn't working for us, and holding close to the things that do.

I Had A Weird Year: Some Chaotic, Incomplete Favorites From A Period of Unprecedented Change
My Favorite Films of 2024: 1. Challengers 2. Nickel Boys 3. No Other Land 4. Saturday Night 5. I Saw The TV Glow 6. The Substance 7. Trap 8. Kneecap 9. Heretic 10. Better Man
On No Other Land: “No Other Land is harrowing and infuriating, but it’s also intimate, lovely, and poetic in its portrayal of the lives of the families who have endured decades of mistreatment at the hands of Israeli forces.”
My Favorite Shows of 2024: 1. Interview with the Vampire 2. Baby Reindeer 3. The Diplomat 4. True Detective: Night Country 5. Evil 6. Hacks 7. The Franchise
On Baby Reindeer:“The show is incredible in its brutal honesty; it’s based on a true story, and the painstakingly introspective scripts often frame protagonist Donny as nearly as unlikeable as his own violent stalker...it’s dark, upsetting, taboo-shattering, and riveting.”
My Favorite Non-New Release Films Watched in 2024: Wendy & Lucy (2008), Kong: Skull Island (2017), The Stepford Wives (2004), Tampopo (1985), Monica (2022), Society of the Snow (2023), Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)
On Kong: Skull Island: “Kong: Skull Island rocks in the silliest way possible. It’s a movie that asks, ‘What if the story of the Vietnam War could be told via giant monsters and Samuel L. Jackson?’ It’s a film that takes visual inspiration for everything from Apocalypse Now to WWE matches. It’s work of cinema in which every death scene contains multiple layers of irony, monsters look dazzlingly great…and the genre varies wildly between generic action, gnarly survival horror, and goofy comedy.”
My Favorite Podcasts Heard in 2024: 1. The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast 2. Ghost Story 3. On Our Watch: New Folsom 4. You Must Remember This: Charles Manson's Hollywood 5. The Legend of Swordquest 6. Hysterical 7. The Confessions of Anthony Raimondi 8. Hush 9. Pod Watcher 10. Just King Things
On Ghost Story:“The podcast Ghost Story gripped me for a full day recently…It’s a well-crafted and well-rounded hybrid series that’s part family history, part ghost story, part true crime. It’s also as much about family legacy, cultural Britishness, and the impenetrability of confirmation bias as it is about actual ghosts.”
My Favorite Songs on Repeat in 2024: 1. HOT TO GO - Chappell Roan 2. This Must Be The Place - Talking Heads 3. TEXAS HOLD EM - Beyonce 4. Pink Pony Club - Chappell Roan 5. The Greatest - Raleigh Ritchie 6. I've Been Waitin' - Lil Peep, ILoveMakonnen, and Fall Out Boy 7. The Last of the Real Ones - Fall Out Boy 8. Rock DJ - Robbie Williams 9. Lunch - Billie Eilish 10. I'm on Fire - Bruce Springsteen
A photo of me and james throwing peace signs in our car. The caption says: I started learning to drive on the opposite side of the road (and car) in July, and Chappell Roan's songs quickly became the soundtrack to every trip we took.
My Favorite Books Read in 2024: 1. They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us (Hanif Abdurraqib), 2. Ghosts of the British Museum (Noah Angell), 3. The Safekeep (Yael van der Wouden) 4. Anita de Monte Laughs Last (Xochitl Gonzalez), 5. Othello (William Shakespeare), 6. Yellowface (R.F. Kuang), 7. Happiness Falls (Angie Kim), 8. Hear My Sorrow (Deborah Hopkinson), 9. James (Percival Everett), 10. SubUrbia (Eric Bogosian)
On Ghosts of the British Museum: “It’s a phenomenal read that’s full of fascinating pieces of history, humane ghost stories, and clear-eyed indictments of colonialism and the spiritual rot of its institutions. You don’t have to believe in haints to check this book out – it’s truly one of the most fascinating nonfiction works I’ve ever read.”
My Favorite Things I Worked on in 2024: 1. Immigrating to Scotland 2. "Doctor Who Showrunner Says the Show Should Be As Big As Marvel" 3. "Mini Daily Action Items For People Who Are Broke, Busy, Overwhelmed, or Abroad" 4. "The Jinx: Part Two Review: HBO Docuseries Returns as Riveting and Questionable As Ever" 5. "Every Netflix Original Series That's No Longer On Netflix" 6. Letterboxd's Four Favorite Films (Directed By Women)
A photo of me, nearly asleep, hugging an Ikea shark in bed. The caption says: "I spent most of the year (including the time you probably would've expected me to be watching all the acclaimed TV shows you wish were on this list) like this.

2024 was a year of extreme highs and lows for me. My mental health dipped scarily, my physical health was weird, the state of the world was grim, and I continued to question my sense of purpose within the drastically degrading journalism landscape. At the same time, my personal life, family bonds, sense of stability, and energy as an activist are all in a better place than they ever have been. There was so, so much joy in my life in 2024.

Every one of you helped me get through this year just by showing up to talk about what we’ve been watching, reading, and loving - let’s get each other through 2025 the same way.

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