by Adi Stein

2024 felt like the stage being set for a future that is supremely exciting to me. To be clear, I ain’t talkin’ about Trump 2.0. To that I am taking a real “plug your ears and say blah blah blah blah blah” approach to that whole mess. No, I’m thinking past that. This past year I started an incredible new job working side by side with literal Nazi hunters, I loved my first full year in an incredible new marriage, and I got to see my wife crush the first two thirds of pregnancy! That’s right, people! Baby Stein dropping April 2025! Now, were there big lows this year? Of course. The aforementioned election takes the cake. But again, I’m not trying to focus on that right now. It’s the end of the year. It’s cold. It’s cozy. Let’s take a second to look back the video games, books, and movies that I loved in 2024… while we can before RFK Jr. gives us all polio- no. I’m sorry. This is fun. Let’s have fun. Things I liked! Go!

Vidya Games!

Honorable Mentions: Valorant, Final Fantasy XVI, Jusant, God of War Ragnarök – Valhalla DLC, Helldivers 2

The consistent throughlines for my top five games this year is that they all put mechanics first and often are best enjoyed in short bursts. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor takes the amazing and mind-numbing premise of Vampire Survivors and brings it to the dwarven mining world of Deep Rock Galactic. I really liked Vampire Survivors but I never fell in love with it, in part because of the art style and in part because of the lack of objectives. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivors solves both of those problems. I mean, don’t get me wrong. This isn’t the most impressive looking game in the world but it’s polygonal mining vibes are way more my speed. Most importantly, however, each round has specific objectives that keep you focused on completing the task at hand while you level up and destroy thousands upon thousands of bugs. It’s one of those games that easy to pick up and play but keeps you coming back for more after hours and hours. Strong recommendation and a great intro to the burgeoning “Survivor” genre.

Tinykin was my biggest gaming treat this year. I’d heard about it when it came out a few years ago and, after looking at gameplay and still images, it just did not appeal to me. But I heard so many great things about it that when it went on sale I made sure to pick it up. I played Tinykin between two big, beefy RPGs and it was the perfect palate cleanser. The premise is bizarre: You play as a shrunk down human who roams around an empty house picking up tiny creatures (Tinkyin) with special abilities that you use to navigate the world and complete objectives. It’s Pikmin meets Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. But what makes this game so fun is its moment to moment gameplay. Gliding around the world on a bar of soap and collecting 30+ Tinykin to literally throw at a specific problem just. feels. good. And at about six hours, this is not a game that overstays its welcome. Do yourself a favor and check it out. It’s just a good time.

The name speaks for itself. This game is 80’s neon VHS sci-fi and it’s awesome. RAD is a rogue-lite in which you explore a colorful, post-apocalyptic wasteland, suck up radiation to mutate into a creature with wild powers, and slug baddies with a baseball bat. I’ll be honest, it is not the best rogue-anything I’ve ever played. But it’s a serviceable one of those wrapped in awesome Double Fine packaging and I love it. The music is on point, the vibes are spot on, and the pause screen. Man, that’s just an incredible pause screen. RAD is a great example of how to harness creativity to execute on an awesome and specific vision. I loved my time with RAD and, if you like rogue-lites, I think you will, too.

I don’t think any game this year put as big of a smile on my face as Astro Bot. See, I’m a PlayStation guy through and through. I got a PS2 for my bar mitzvah over twenty years ag- wait. Oof. That just- that just knocked the wind out of me. Okay. Shake it off. Let’s try that again. I got a PS2 for my bar mitzvah over twe- nope. Can’t write it. I got my first console a long time ago and I’ve been in the PlayStation family ever since. Astro Bot is a love letter to that family. It’s a direct, uncut, pure shot of nostalgia right to the hippocampus and boy oh boy does it feel great. But nostalgia will only get a game so far. It has a killer soundtrack but, more importantly, Astro Bot plays so well. The platforming is tight, the powers are creative and fun, and the levels are expertly designed. I loved seeing all the little bots that referenced some of the most important games in my life and I loved the act of unlocking them in the first place. If you have love for PlayStation at any stage of its journey, this is a must-play game. It was damn near my #1, but then my wife reminded me of my hour count in the next game so…

… let’s talk about Balatro. This game. This fucking game. Between my Steam Deck and my iPhone, I think I’ve literally put something like 500 hours into this game this year. It has hooked my in a way that few other games ever have. Now normally this section would be some long essay about the deep meaning behind my number one game this year or how the story made me feel the feels. Nope. Not this year. Balatro has no story. Balatro doesn’t care about my feelings. Balatro has only one goal: make the numbers go up. The game starts with a standard deck of cards and utilizes poker hands to reach a certain score each round. As the levels progress you can buy joker cards that modify your game, planet cards that level up the poker hands, and tarot cards that alter individual playing cards. Each round increases the target score you need to reach to move on and, thanks to the jokers and planets cards and tarot cards, your ability to reach that number gets wilder and more fun. There’s strategy behind how to pair jokers with poker hands or how to play joker cards with other joker cards or how to keep a plant in your bank so that it multiplies the value of a specific poker hand and so on and so forth. The possibilities are endless. After all the time I’ve put into this game, I’m still unlocking new cards and challenges. Balatro has me hooked. It’s fun, it feels good to play, and I hate it. I also really love it and I know I’m going to be coming back to it for a long, long time. Or at least for one more round.

Readin’ Books!

Note: Like years past, this list in not in order of least favorite to favorite. It’s in order of when I read the book. I don’t know why, but I have such a hard time ranking books. It feels weird to compare a biography of the inventor of the nuclear bomb with a fantasy novel about thieves. In any case, here are my favorite books that I read in 2024:

Honorable Mentions: Red Seas Under Red Skies and The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch

Educated by Tara Westover

The first book I read this year and maybe the most emotionally stirring. Educated is Tara Westover’s memoir about her isolated, isolating, and violent upbringing and the ways in which she escaped it and built a better life for herself. It’s a story about a family led by a madman, the damage that an unrestrained zealot can do to his children, and the power of those who escape horrible situations. It’s horrifying and empowering. Westover bravely and honestly shares her family’s truth with the reader. Hers is a family that is so far removed from my own yet so similar in many ways. It feels especially important now to get this window into a part of our country that is so foreign to me yet is also so vividly relatable.

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin K. Sherwin

Look, I’m a straight white nerd so Christopher Nolan is my jam. Oppenheimer was almost my number one movie last year. So when I heard ol’ Chrissy Noles talking about this book throughout the press cycle of that movie, I knew I was going to read it. And frankly, I loved it. This epic biography patiently details the life, work, and struggles of one of the most complicated men in American history. Bird and Sherwin do an excellent job of providing context for the great things Oppenheimer was trying to do and the realities of the impact he had. They don’t idolize him but rather say that he was an impressive man who did the best to meet the needs of his time, even as his results were often complicated at best. He did horrible things and stopped even worse things from happening. He was an American hero in that he fought for the ideals of America, even if it meant fighting against the people running it. Boy oh boy isn’t that a lesson we could use to learn in 2025.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

One of my best friends got me all three books in this Gentlemen Bastards series and I chewed through each and every one of them (the other two are the Honorable Mentions winners in this section). The Lies of Locke Lamora is the first in the series and it does a great job of laying the foundation for the series. This series is essentially fantasy Ocean’s Eleven and it is just a blast. The characters are fun, the world is expertly realized, and the story has all the right twists and turns to keep the plot hurtling forward. I gasped multiple times while reading this book, not because something was so disturbing but because the twist was so exciting! It was hard for me to decide which book in the series should end up on this actual list (Red Seas Under Red Skies almost won), but ultimately The Lies of Locke Lomara takes the cake thanks to Lynch’s breakneck pacing, fascinating characters, and confident world. This book is just a fun time.

The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro

As you can see, most of the books in this list are non-fiction. It’s my favorite genre because it helps give me context for the world in which I’m currently living. And in the case of non-fiction about American history, it more often than not shows me that this country has been crazy before, will be crazy again, and can survive more than it ever thinks it can. All of that being said, I’m still a relative noob to this area of the book world, and that was proven to me by the fact that I was just introduced to Robert Caro’s work this year with this book. This is the fourth book in what is planned to be a five book series about Lyndon Johnson by Caro and I have not read the first three. That being said, this book was enough to make me a big fan of Caro and begin reading his epic biography of Robert Moses (which might be the only book I read in 2025, clocking it at 1,200+ pages). Caro’s attention to detail is unparalleled, but what’s more impressive is how he doesn’t let those details bring down the pace of his storytelling. This book covers LBJ’s last moments in the Senate into his time as Vice President and into the beginning of his presidency. It covers, in essence, one of the most tumultuous moments in American history. I know things are wild now but just imagine the moment that LBJ became president: We were in the midst of a nuclear standoff with Russia, the world’s other greatest nuclear power. Russia had just deployed nuclear missiles off the coast of Cuba, just a couple thousand miles from the USA, and JFK had barely diffused the situation and averted nuclear holocaust. That same man is then violently assassinated in the middle of a very public drive, leading to a hurried and monumental transfer of power that in turn leads to a dramatic reprioritization effort in Washington, DC. This is the definition of high-stakes tumult. And our country made it through! Caro makes the reader feel like they are in the White House as JFK is making these calls and on the airplane as LBJ is sworn in. He takes these larger-than-life American icons and makes them feel real. He’s a master biographer and this book is about as much proof as anyone could need.

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain rules. I know I’m waaaaay late to this party on this one, but I’m just starting to get into his work now and he seemed like a really cool guy. Maybe not a good guy, but definitely a cool guy. I’ve been watching Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and read his article “One Day – and One Night – in the Kitchen at Les Halles” in the New Yorker, so I finally decided to pick up his most well-known book and it was just a blast. Bourdain is the ultimate example of someone who writes the way they talk. This book was like spending a few hours hearing wild stories directly from the man himself. Kitchen Confidential hasn’t aged well in a lot of ways – it’s at times incredibly misogynistic, overly graphic, and generally uncouth – but that’s part of the appeal and it, in many ways, reminds me of how fun it was to work in the restaurant business. The patterns he describes in the lifecycle of most restaurants, the character types he nails in his depictions of their staffs, and the intensity of the atmosphere that he conjures bring me right back to my Saturday night shifts at packed restaurants. It’s fun, gross, wild, and I miss it far more often than I would have expected. This book is like a cocaine-laced rollercoaster that won’t stop until it’s ready to stop. I’ve never done cocaine and I hate rollercoasters, but somehow this book is exactly my speed.

Cinemaaaaaaa

Honorable Mentions: Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Trap, A Complete Unknown, Janet Planet

#5: Wicked: Part I

Like a lot of millennial musical theatre nerds, I have strong memories of seeing Wicked on Broadway with my family. “Defying Gravity”, “Popular”, and “For Good” are songs that I grew up with. So I approached this movie with cautious excitement (the trailers were not doing a great job of instilling faith in me). The caution was unnecessary but the excitement was well deserved. This is an exceptional movie musical, capitalizing on nostalgia, for sure, but also bringing new ideas and true awe to the piece. For starters, it’s just a very pretty movie to look at. The colors pop, the costumes are lush imaginative, and the sets bring back a sort of “old Hollywood” grandeur that I love. And that’s just the dressing. The real power of this movie is in the two central performances from Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. Grande is hysterical, with perfect comedic timing and a clear love for her character. Erivo is breathtaking, giving us the new standard for “Defying Gravity”. Her voice gives Elphaba depth, nuance, and power, showing us her vulnerabilities and strengths simultaneously. She alone is worth the price of admission. But it’s all of these parts combined that make this movie one of the best I’ve seen this year. In an era of big-budget movies in which spectacle and bombast have been defined by Marvel’s comic-book movies, it’s awesome to see my other nerdy half show everyone what the big screen can really bring.

#4: The Zone of Interest

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is The Zone of Interest, a quiet, moving, and deeply disturbing movie about the Holocaust. As a Jew, I have seen my fair share of “Holocaust movies” – heck, there’s arguably another next on this list. Often times, these movies focus on the pain and suffering of the Jewish people. Rarely does it focus on the perpetrators. This is what makes The Zone of Interest so chilling. The movie follows the family of the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, who lives right next door to the genocide being executed in Aushwitz. And I mean literally right next door. There is but a single wall separating them from the gas chambers and crematoriums in which over one million human beings were slaughtered. But we never see those killings. We occasionally hear some screams or gun shots, but the movie is solely focused on the seemingly unremarkable lives of the Höss family. They have birthdays, go swimming in their pool, pick flowers, and live otherwise normal lives. The juxtaposition of the banality of their day-to-day lives with the horrors being committed mere feet away is deeply disturbing and profound. It’s a movie that serves to remind us that even the worst parts of humanity are still human. And in reminding us of that, it asks us to think about how we ourselves are monsters. Humans have a terrifying ability to accept monstrous behavior. The Zone of Interest asks us to pay attention to the evils we’re living side-by-side with and it demands that we hear those screams, whether we like it or not.

#3: A Real Pain

A Real Pain feels like a movie that was custom made for me. It’s a character-driven dramedy about two (very different types of) neurotic Jewish cousins who go on a Polish heritage tour to see where their recently deceased grandmother was born and the horrors of the Holocaust that she escaped. Jesse Eisenberg (also the writer and director of the film) plays one cousin, David, and Kieren Culkin plays the other, Benji. David has a wife, a kid, a job, and is about as uptight and stressed as they come. Benji has no job and no family, aside from his mom. He’s incredibly charming and charismatic but also maybe bipolar and is prone to manic episodes in which he lashes out at everyone around him. As the trip progresses, we learn more about both of them, their relationship with each other, their relationships with their grandmother, and why they came on this trip. It’s a move that is often laugh out loud funny and always moving. Culkin is incredible, creating a character that is so effortlessly lovable and maddeningly frustrating. He’s a free spirit to a fault, the kind of person that you want to learn from but can’t be around for two long. He’s the most watchable character in any movie I saw this year. I see a lot of myself in David, though. He knows that he’s uptight but he doesn’t want to be. He looks at Benji and wishes that he had that carefree attitude while also wishing that Benji would get his shit together and appreciate the pure miracle of his existence. This is a movie filled with pain – individual pain, family pain, generational pain, and communal pain – but it approaches all of that pain with lots of love and a great sense of humor. And isn’t that just the most Jewish take on pain possible?

#2: Inside Out 2

I almost could not have expected less going into Inside Out 2. The first movie is one of my favorite movies of all time and I never felt there was a need for a sequel. It’s a creative and moving exploration of growing up and feeling the feels. It spoke to me in a way that almost no movie before it ever had, and I didn’t see how it could be expanded on in any meaningful way. But then those bastards at Pixar figured out the perfect way to represent anxiety, one of the major emotions that has dominated my life. If you’re not familiar with these movies, I’ll try and catch you up as quickly as possible: They largely take place in a young girl named Riley’s head, where her emotions are anthropomorphized and running the show. Inside Out introduced us to Joy, Anger, Disgust, Fear, and Sadness and Inside Out 2 follows them again while introducing us to Ennui, Embarrassment, Envy, and, most impactfully, Anxiety (we meet Nostalgia for a second before she’s ushered off and told she’ll be needed in a few years). Anxiety is an overpowering character. She shows up and swiftly hijacks the controls, dictating what Riley does and how she reacts to the world around her. What is so powerful about this representation of anxiety is its focus on how anxiety comes from a place of love and care. The character Anxiety is operating the way that she’s operating in an attempt to protect Riley and make her life better. She’s trying to anticipate the dangers that Riley will face and she’s doing her best to prepare for all possible contingencies. There is a beautiful scene towards the end of the movie where Anxiety has completely spiraled out of control, moving so quickly that it appears as though there are thousands of her at once. In the center of this literal tornado of Anxiety, she is fiercely gripping the controls to Riley’s mind. Joy tries to break through the tornado to help calm Anxiety down, and it’s clear that Anxiety doesn’t want to be this way but she doesn’t know how to let go. She’s moving at lightspeed but also completely still, barely able to move her eyes to face Joy as tears begin to fall from her face. This scene meant the world to me. It is the single best representation of anxiety that I have ever seen in any medium. There have been so many moments in my life in which anxiety has dominated my behavior and dictated how I react to the world around me. It has felt completely overwhelming, at times completely controlling my life and, in turn, making my life feel out of control. Inside Out 2 shows this beautifully, but it also shows how joy can help give perspective.

#1: Anora

Much like my favorite movie from last year, Past Lives, this movie came out of nowhere for me. This is a little gem of a movie that I watched one trailer for and went on to go see on the recommendation of my mother-in-law. It ended up being my favorite movie that I saw in 2024. Not only that, but Anora might be the most energetic and energizing movie I’ve seen in a long time. It follows the titular character (she goes by Ani), a stripper/escort living in Brooklyn, who meets a young (he says he’s 21) son of a Russian oligarch, Vanya, who, in turn, buys more and more of her time. After a week of sex, drugs, fun, and exclusivity, he proposes and they elope in Las Vegas. When his parents find out about the marriage, they ain’t too happy and send some men to make sure it gets annulled. It’s a story that sounds darker than it is. There is definitely hurt and sadness in this movie, don’t get me wrong, but the movie left me invigorated thanks to the central performances given by Mikey Madison as Ani and Mark Eydelshteyn as Vanya. They are both so joyful and full of life and it’s impossible not to catch their energy. When they’re having a good time, I was having a good time. When they were high, I felt high. When they were lost, I felt lost. These are two standout, contagious performances that give this movie an incredible sense of life and spirit. I also have to give a shoutout to Yura Borisov as Igor, who gives such a beautiful, genuine, and at times hysterical performance as one of Vanya’s dad’s henchmen charged with keeping an eye on Ani. At its core, though, Anora is a movie about love and loss and money and sex, but most importantly it’s a movie about living life to the fullest. None of these characters are just trying to get by. None of them are letting life happen to them. Every single character in this movie is trying to make the most of their situation. Every one of them are grasping at fun and joy and love with everything that they have. And because of these infectious performances, I’m going into 2025 wanting to do the same. Anora was the best time I had at the movies this year and it’s easily my favorite movie of 2024.

Special Shout outs!

As you have seen (if you’ve made it this far), there was a lot of great storytelling that I enjoyed this past year. In addition to the aforementioned games, movies, and books, these three pieces brought a lot of joy, insight, and (the best kind of) drama into my life in 2024. I strongly recommend you check out all three.

Double Fine is one of my favorite video game developers of all time. They are a studio known for putting creativity first, and it shows in their games. This documentary series follows the development of their latest game, Psychonauts 2, from the early days of their crowdfunding campaign for the game through Double Fine’s eventual acquisition by Microsoft. This is a series that is frequently brutally honest in the ways it shows and explains the pains of collaboration in a creative field, but it’s also inspiring for that exact same reason. This is the second documentary series covering the development of a game at Double Fine. The first series, Double Fine Adventure!, was a go-to watch for me when I needed help getting creatively inspired. This series, with its high highs and low lows, is even more impactful. If you’re interested, you can watch the full series for free on YouTube here.

When I was first told about this show, I thought it sounded like the grossest, most opportunistic, most voyeuristic thing I could imagine. The show follows a number of real-life couples as they work through very real issues with a real, highly acclaimed couples counselor, Dr. Orna Guralnik. The couples know that they are being filmed, but this is not like a trashy Bravo reality TV show (that’s next on this list). The cameras in the therapist’s office are hidden so they are given the chance to be more honest and vulnerable than they might otherwise be if a camera was in their face. This leads to some of the most compelling, heartbreaking, and insightful television I’ve watched in a long time. It’s consistently moving and inspiring. Multiple times during most episodes, my wife and I would pause and talk through our own feelings about what was being discussed. Not every couple in the show makes it, nor should they, but each one of them taught me something and strengthened by own relationship with my wife. I’m immensely grateful for their bravery and honesty.

VPR, baby. V. P. R. This show entered my life the way many trashy reality shows enter my life: My wife was watching it, I walked into the living room and stood there with my arms crossed, watching for a little. She kept watching, I walked into the living room and sat down to watch the last quarter of the episode with her. She kept watching, I heard the theme and came in. I said, “Let’s just watch one more,” and she said, “Honey, we have to go to bed.” This show has me and it has me good. To be clear, it’s garbage. It’s trash candy mind-mush and it’s not worth your time. But also you have to watch it. It’s the definition of a Bravo reality TV show. It’s about a group of people working in a tacky LA restaurant. They are the worst people in the world and they’re constantly fighting and celebrating and cheating and yelling and it’s just a great time. This show also has something genuinely worthwhile to say about apologizing to people you hurt. Couples Therapy was a real and moving look at conflict resolution, but Vanderpump Rules gave me a much clearer roadmap for the Jewish concept of teshuvah, or repentance. These people emotionally hurt one another time after time, but many of them really own up to the pain they’ve caused and do their best to make up for it. We all have a lot to learn from Stassi Schroeder. But not from Jax. No one should learn anything from Jax. He’s a monster. God I love this show.

Well, there you have it! All the games, books, movies, TV, and trash that made me laugh, cry, think, and relax in 2024. I hope you found at least one thing on this list to try out in 2025. Look, it’s gonna be rough. We’re gonna have to find joy and love where and when we can. Sometimes that will be in our family, sometimes in our friends, and sometimes in the media that we enjoy. I’m personally excited to introduce my son to classic video games and Indiana Jones. No matter what Trump 2.0 looks like, I’m sure my kid is gonna make 2025 my favorite year yet.

Pixel Theory Blog

Adi's Top Games, Books, and Movies from 2024

Vidya Games!

Readin’ Books!

Cinemaaaaaaa

Special Shout outs!