As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Wicked??? (hopefully not Wicked.) All Quiet on the Western Front is the third film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here.

As a project for 2025, we at Spinning the Reel are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Wicked??? (hopefully not Wicked.) The Broadway Melody is the second film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here.

I watch a lot of movies every year. Just in 2024, my wife — Anna — and I watched over 350, with almost half of those being brand new releases. To help compensate for the deluge of new films, we try to focus our home viewing on little projects. Last year we decided to watch all of the Disney Animation Studio catalogue and Pixar features. We found it a cool thing to do together, a great way to fill in some blank spots and a dispiriting tour of the downfall of a studio once devoted to artistry that now puts out whatever the hell Moana 2 was. But I digress. This year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Wicked??? (hopefully not Wicked.)

Another year has come to a close and that means that it is again time to look back on the year in film. 2024 has been lamented in some corners as a relatively weaker one at the movies more broadly, with the release calendar altered significantly by the writing and acting strikes of 2023. Still, as with any other year in film, if you watch enough, 2024 brought an incredible wealth of brilliant cinema. So much so, in fact, that I have decided to expand this list to 15 films rather than the usual 10.