[WARNING: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS]
here are all the movies i watched in 2025, accompanied by my thoughts. this list isn’t ranked or even ordered chronologically. it’s just some thoughts on each movie i remember seeing in 2025. i definitely saw more movies than this, so it’s not EVERY movie i watched all year - i don’t log them and this list was assembled from memory and ticket receipts. i’m also counting some from last December, just because they’re right on the cusp and i wanted to talk about them. i’m also not including any TV shows, which i guess is obvious.
MIDNIGHT RUN
an all-timer “yeah i’ll watch that!” movie. probably doesn’t belong on anyone’s top 10 but just a killer, high-quality road trip flick that’s always welcome on anyone’s TV screen. it’s a testament to how great Charles Grodin was that he outshines De Niro of all people in every scene. what a legend!!!
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: morality, but in a fun way
DO I RECOMMEND IT: it’s hard not enjoy this one
EDDINGTON
i put this off for a long time because i didn’t think i’d like it. well, i was wrong! i’ve long been unable to get past Aster’s edgy father-son short film from 15 years ago. i guess i was bracing myself for something more unbearable like Alex Garland’s provocative-for-provocation’s-sake nothing-ass Civil War or Men, but that turned out to be an absolute insult on my part to Aster. trying to do a Covid election satire in 2025 is going to set off every red flag I have, but this put some real work into engaging in the country’s frame of mind during that snapshot of time. it’s tough, it’s fair, it’s funny, and also nobody told me it turned into a Western by the end. if you’re worried about this one, don’t be!
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: 2020
DO I RECOMMEND IT: shockingly, yes
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER
big surprise: i really loved this. i think some people are hesitant about its politics but it feels to me like a really fun, tender, pulpy examination of what it means to be devoted to a worthy cause and all the ways the establishment can beat that fire out of you. there are some annoying bits, like mean caricature of a modern progressive that Leo argues with on the phone, and maybe the ending is a little sentimental… but it all comes together for me as a whole. Sean Penn is really wild in this movie. the final chase on the hilly road was a much-needed dose of that lens-nerd filmmaking that makes me sit up in my seat and cheer. have we seen a car chase that inventive since The French Connection or am i overselling it?
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: aging, inherited will, revolution
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yes! grow up!
LICORICE PIZZA
rewatched this one with Casey after seeing One Battle After Another, because they’d missed it. i remember being a little split on it after my first watch but my memories of it had been growing fonder and fonder over the years since it premiered. revisiting it, i’m a full-on evangelist for it: what a lovely, funny, tender study on what it means to be young. do you know how many movies there are about being young? too many! we don’t need any more! and yet PTA comes swinging with something punchy and fresh while still retaining all the requisite nostalgia that comes with the genre. i remember a lot of ink spilled over the “age gap controversy” in this film: moronic! the movie doesn’t work at all without that vague distance between Gary and Alana. it uses that tension beautifully, tugging and pulling at these two restless lovebirds who could just as easily star as the leads in a 1980s Rumiko Takahashi manga. a masterpiece!
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: youth
DO I RECOMMEND IT: it's great
MAGNOLIA
on twitter i said “PTA is a good filmmaker first and foremost because Magnolia is the most nothing-ass ‘everything’s connected!!!’ 20-year-old college kid idea for a movie and he still somehow made it incredible” - i’m right. this is a movie that should NOT work. it’s too ambitious, too emotional, too “about everything”... and yet it’s irresistible. the cast is a huge part of it, especially Tom Cruise who is giving some of his career-best work here, but it’s also just an electric movie made by a 29-year-old director with a lot of momentum and something to prove. the shot where the camera zooms in so far they need to attach a magnifying lens to the camera mid-shot??? that makes me want to stand up and jump!!!
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: too much
DO I RECOMMEND IT: you do gotta watch it
PHANTOM THREAD
a really funny dark joke of a love story - it’s almost a dare, an extended riff to see how blindingly toxic a couple can be portrayed before still convincing you in the end that they share a true, classic fairy-tale love with one another. i really love the foggy, washed-out look of this film - funnily enough, when i looked up who DP’d it i learned there WAS no credited DP, and his usual DP Robert Elswit publicly criticized the movie’s look.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: toxic love is love, too
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yeah
JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS
funny movie, feels ahead of its time. Parker Posey and Alan Cumming steal the show. i remember liking it as a kid but i didn’t appreciate it enough back then. in some ways its satire feels quaint now, in 2025… but it’s admittedly still really funny how many brand logos they plaster in each shot. also very fun how much we get to see the Sega Dreamcast logo specifically.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: commercialism, commodification, you get it
DO I RECOMMEND IT: sure
KONTINENTAL '25
i hadn’t seen Radu Jude movies before this one, about a bailiff evicting a homeless man who immediately commits suicide - my buddy invited us over to watch it as it had recently hit torrent sites. this one got me good. patient, cheap, and cutting. there’s a scene where two characters have a long talk on a public bench (one unbroken take, a signature), and we hear a loud music festival or something off in the distance the entire time. beautiful. we immediately watched more of his films (see below).
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: hey why don’t we not evict people
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yeah
DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD
as much as i was struck by Konintental ‘25, i thought this Radu Jude film was even better. it follows an PA/wannabe-influencer as she drives around Bucharest filming injured employees to help her bosses cast one of them in a work safety video. she’s also filming bizarre Andrew Tate parodies with a face filter and nearly falling asleep at the wheel. while that’s all great stuff, it’s the second half that i really connected with: an almost-unbroken single take of the filming of this work safety video, complete with producers and directors painfully, maliciously coaxing the subjects to soften their story for the camera. this takes up almost half of the entire movie and it’s so utterly well-observed and mortifying.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: i think you can put it together from the premise
DO I RECOMMEND IT: absolutely
THE HAPPIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD
next we watched this much-older Radu Jude film about a young girl who won a free car in a big contest held by some juice company. it’s very much in the same vein as the second half of Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World in that it’s a painfully well-observed, nearly real-time depiction of commercial shoot day. we get to slowly watch this girl get crushed by her parents, the director, and every other force she comes in contact with on a day that was supposed to be a 1-in-a-million wonderful lucky break.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: luck, capitalism, image, adolescence
DO I RECOMMEND IT: 100%
CHAINSAW MAN - THE MOVIE: REZE ARC
i personally really loved the controversial(?) art direction of Chainsaw Man Season 1 but this is a good argument for something that skews a little closer to Fujimoto’s actual art style. this arc in particular never really stood out to me in the manga and i wondered why it was chosen to get the big screen treatment - after seeing it, i’m still not sure what people are connecting to here. but the animation is fantastic and it was a lot of fun to see in the theater. i’m more excited for them to adapt some of the later stuff, though.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: girls are evil
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yes. especially if you're 16
THE NAKED GUN (2025)
i’m not a big Loney Island guy and i didn’t think Pop Star was as funny as others seemed to think, so i wasn’t sure i’d be into a Naked Gun reboot from the same director. whoops! i was very wrong! this was SO funny. full of big swing jokes and big commitment to them - the extended snowman sequence really caught me off guard and had me laughing harder than anything else in the movie. some gags didn’t land for me, but that’s exactly how a movie like this should be. we’ve really been starved for some quality dumb comedy in the theater.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: gags
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yep
NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE
hands down the funniest new movie i saw all year in a shockingly-competitive year for it. maybe one of the very best new movies of the year, PERIOD. that said, it’s a niche target: this is a movie-sized episode of a short-lived zero-budget Vice series from almost 10 years ago. even if you’re not familiar, i urge you to watch this when you’re able. the premise is the same as the show: two bandmates who spend more time scheming than playing any music will try at any cost to get booked at The Rivoli, a completely unremarkable venue across the street from their apartment. Matt Johnson’s filmmaking always really inspires me - it’s all about retrofitting serendipitous man-on-the-street footage of their interactions with real unsuspecting people and building on-the-fly narratives around them that are so insane it feels impossible. the height of the stunts they pull off in this movie are truly unbelievable. the movie STARTS right off the bat with one of the craziest things i’ve ever seen in a movie and then has to continue on and somehow top it… and i feel it does. without spoiling any more, this movie is filled with commendable feats of “why-would-they-do-that” filmmaking never before attempted outside of the greats like Michael Cimino moving an entire town one inch to the left for Heaven’s Gate. often you’re wondering how they did something, and the answer is always just “they did it.”
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: filmmaking
DO I RECOMMEND IT: with every ounce of my being
HUSBANDS
big Cassevetes-head over here but i hadn’t actually seen this one before! what i HAD seen and grown obsessed with was the wild Dick Cavett show appearance to promote the film where him, Falk, and Gazzara drunkenly run circles around the host. like his other work, the movie is harsh, uncomfortable, and well-observed.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: masculinity, mortality, pain
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yes
THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY
i’d heard of this movie all my life but never really absorbed any actual details about it. i really thought it was about a magician or something. the cast alone sold me. a really great matt damon performance and an even greater philip seymour hoffman one. him muttering “Tommy, Tommy, Tommy…” has become a vocal tic in our home.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: gay people are tricksters
DO I RECOMMEND IT: it's fun
LITTLE NICKY
an absurdly-high-concept Adam Sandler movie, beyond even Click or Zohan - it’s really hard not to like this one, i feel. not everything lands, not everything has aged well, and it has Quentin Tarantino overacting as a blind priest, but that’s all part of the fun. i fell asleep partway through this rewatch but mainly just because i was very, very tired and comfortable.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: satan’s youngest son Little Nicky
DO I RECOMMEND IT: it's Little Nicky
HAIL, CAESAR!
what a film!!! criminally maligned in the Coen catalogue, this one’s a winner from every angle. Clooney’s so funny as usual under their direction, and so many incredible moments (Tatum’s dance number, Ehrenreich’s Bugs Bunny moment with Fiennes) come together to form a really vibrant love letter to a bygone era of filmmaking by way of Burn After Reading.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: Old Hollywood
DO I RECOMMEND IT: for sure
BRANDED TO KILL + TOKYO DRIFTER
i first learned about Seijin Suzuki through Lupin the Third, where he took over directing one of the 1980s movies (Legend of the Gold of Babylon) after Mamoru Oshii was kicked off the project for ideas that were “too avante-garde” (these later led to the incredible Angel’s Egg.) it was there i discovered Suzuki was only directing this film because he was in the middle of being blacklisted by the Japanese film industry. Branded To Kill is the movie that got him blacklisted, or rather Suzuki’s war against the studio to get it released is what did it - the movie is really gorgeous yakuza pulp with some really incredible butterfly-related imagery, and i can see why it would have scared the suits in 1967. Joe Shishido’s big cheeks are insane and i was stunned to discover they were the result of some ill-advised plastic surgery. while i really enjoyed Tokyo Drifter as well, Branded To Kill left a much bigger impression on me.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: getting blacklisted is the coolest thing you can do as a filmmaker
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yep
RE-WIND + LOVE LETTER IN THE SAND
two films from a small handful by Hisayasu Sato that Vinegar Syndrome put out this year on some really lovely Blu-Rays. i’d heard of his stuff before - violent erotica 90s pink-film exploitation stuff - and was excited for a reason to finally watch them. Love Letter In The Sand especially worked for me, but both were great and i’m excited to watch more. i understand the comparisons to Cronenberg - he’s very much operating on a similar wavelength here. i also wonder if there’s any connection between the metal baseball bat murders here and Satoshi Kon’s Paraonia Agent, but that’s probably just a superficial connection.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: perversion is the easy answer
DO I RECOMMEND IT: if you’re down to watch some stuff that’s at least 30% sincere pornography
CALIFORNIA SPLIT
just two healthy guys gambling as much as humanly possible! i really love the abrupt ending - it’s simple and pointed and a really smart way to close things out. Altman the god. i read the George Segal complained to Altman because Elliot Gould was acting circles around him - he’s right! but it really works in the movie’s favor.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: enablers
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yep
THE HUNT
kind of a bad movie in the sense that it’s about exploring a really dumb conservative fear: what if a good, innocent man was accused of being a pedophile by a child? but look, despite everything i still think this is a solid flick. maybe that’s all because of Mads Mikkelsen, i don’t know. the ending is great. Another Round is better, though, yeah.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: reputation
DO I RECOMMEND IT: not really, but if you love Mads it’s one of his best
FRIENDSHIP
i love Tim Robinson - not just on a comedic level; i’ve been lucky enough to collaborate with him many times and he’s always been very supportive of my work. so i’m very happy to say that i really, really enjoyed this movie. when we saw it in theaters, the experience was almost soiled because the crowd was laughing TOO much - it felt like they were laughing just from seeing Tim’s face. maybe that’s the curse of his level of pop culture reverence, but it didn’t stop me from having a great time. it’s a stressful examination of a very specific kind of empty, tortured suburban white man and the tragically victorious ending brought it all home for me. the extended scene of Tim and Connor O’Malley arguing in the garage is so funny and an improv masterclass - i kind of wish their bit about gen-pop in Arkham Asylum made it in.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: america makes you empty and unsociable
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yeah
WEAPONS
this worked better as a comedy for me than it did as a horror, which is all well and good. i had a great time. i think it dropped the ball on what it wanted to be about, which is that the first third of the movie is absolutely about school shootings and the last third of the movie is all about witches. i think ultimately it settles on just scratching the surface of some hot-button themes like child abuse, corrupt police, the unhoused, and gun control… and while i would normally be annoyed by a movie not digging deep enough, this movie at least remembered to be Fun the whole time.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: not following through on its own ideas
DO I RECOMMEND IT: i do, as a comedy
BRING HER BACK
i guess these filmmakers are controversial? maybe because they started off as YouTubers? i liked both of their movies so far, this one a little more. i wish it had gone for the bleaker ending, to be honest, but there’s some stuff in here that i still squirm a bit thinking about. i swear to god, there’s a part in this movie that caused someone in our theater to start dry-heaving, laughing, and apologizing in embarrassment all at once until he had to run out of the theater. like Weapons, it also seems to be very concerned with child abuse and witchcraft, though i think Sally Hawkins’ performance here deserves more praise than Amy Madigan’s as Gladys in Weapons.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: child abuse, i suppose
DO I RECOMMEND IT: i do
BLOW OUT
very fun premise but not as good as i was hoping. i saw the ending coming and it certainly ties the whole movie together with a nice bow, but i also thought it was cornier than it was clever.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: finding the perfect scream
DO I RECOMMEND IT: eh
THE CONVERSATION
coincidentally very similar premise to Blow Out but head and shoulders above it as a film. this was a great time. Hackman’s fantastic here.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: guilt
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yep
THE GODFATHER
would you believe i’d literally never seen this before this year? pretty good!
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: the American dream
DO I RECOMMEND IT: you don’t need ME to recommend it
THE FRENCH CONNECTION
i’ve been late to Friedkin - it took until his passing for me to really dive into his catalogue. this one i didn’t get to until this year. looooved it, big surprise. when people talked about how great the car chase in this movie was, i didn’t know how NOVEL it was. nobody clarified that they’re only one car in this chase. anyway, they’re all right. one of the best car chases put to film, and one of its only real contenders is from another Friedkin movie (To Live And Die In LA).
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: the chase
DO I RECOMMEND IT: big time
THE BIG CHILL
this had a fun cast and always looked like a good time, but boy did i hate this one. it only got worse and worse. what an annoying movie!
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: what if Husbands was about baby boomers and way worse
DO I RECOMMEND IT: nah
CONSTANTINE
Casey insisted i watch this. it’s really fun but maybe hard-carried by its cast, Shia LeBeouf notwithstanding (what the hell was that post-credits scene lol?!). a killer final act. it’s unreal how cool Constantine is and how good Keanu is at nailing it. i’m considering the opinion that he’s never been used better.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: being so cool Satan is in love with you
DO I RECOMMEND IT: hell yeah
BIRTH
one of my very-favorite first-watches of the year - it was the only Glazer movie i hadn’t seen, and it’s also his most traditional work. that doesn’t stop it from being an absolute one-of-a-kind banger, and part of that is due to the unhinged bravery of this script. what if a little boy came to you and told you he was your dead husband? the script really is a masterpiece - it’s such risky subject matter and it’s at risk of falling apart at any second, but it never does. it only tightens further and further and builds to an absolutely tragic, plausible ending. it’s hard to pick a favorite Glazer film as i love all four dearly, but this one might be the most impressive for how straightforward, simple, and prickly it is. a shockingly sympathetic movie. probably the best Nicole Kidman has ever been, and i love her.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: infantilism, the terror of wanting something so bad you ruin your life
DO I RECOMMEND IT: absolutely, yes yes yes
CONTACT
maybe the most mad people on twitter have EVER been at me is when i made a jab at this movie: “how pathetic of us as a species to write a movie like [this]. how humiliating to write a movie about how much the godlike aliens will love us” - i had no idea how defensive people would be about that sappy, sentimental cornball ending. the real tragedy is how good the movie is right up until that point!
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: what if aliens were our dad
DO I RECOMMEND IT: i like MOST of it
THE CARD COUNTER
it took me a long time to get to this considering how much i loved First Reformed. this one’s pretty good - not as strong as First Reformed, sure, but i think it puts forth good effort trying to unravel the psyche of a soldier who worked at Abu Ghraib. the ending is its most interesting moment, but it’s hard not to be unnerved by the stellar choice of fisheye-lens during the Abu Ghraib flashbacks.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: torture, in every sense of the word
DO I RECOMMEND IT: if you’re in the right mood
MASTER GARDENER
this Schrader did NOT hit for me. i don’t really know what it was going for - or rather, i do, but it didn’t feel like it landed on the mark. i think there’s something here, and something worth exploring in a white supremacist sincerely being led to change his beliefs… i just don’t think this script really found its truth.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: growth, tending to an idea, keeping something alive
DO I RECOMMEND IT: not really
EASTERN PROMISES
very sick movie, a very real kind of cool. this is the kind of movie college kids watching Boondock Saints THOUGHT they were watching. Viggo is sooooo cool in this lol, i love that his character’s one big fuckup is revealed in the twist to actually just be another perfectly smart thing he did, no big deal, everything’s fine and he’s still cool. extremely funny part of the movie is when the Scotland Yard officer is trying to pull him off the case and then Viggo reveals his tattoos showing he’s essentially a Made Man now, which is way too good an opportunity to pass up, and the officer is just soooo annoyed at how good Viggo is at his job. love it when Cronenberg does some crime pulp.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: loyalty, maybe?
DO I RECOMMEND IT: big time
GODZILLA VS BIOLLANTE
eye-candy in every way, and a really compelling Godzilla movie. i haven’t seen THAT much Godzilla, so all i can say is that i know this one comes highly-regarded and i feel it lives up to that reputation. unforgettable puppets and suits in this.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: man VS nature, and also Godzilla VS Biollante
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yeah
28 DAYS LATER
i had never actually seen this before, aside from the opening scene back in college - i’m not sure the context or why i only saw the start of it. anyway, this was a blast. i’m an Alex Garland hater but this one works for me. Christopher Eccleston steals the show and plays a very compelling villain, which is probably contributing to most of my affection for the film. his delivery of “You killed all my boys” is really fantastic, even funny. the real star of the show though is the filmmaking - i really love the cheap cameras they shot this on. but maybe the editing has aged a bit.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: don’t show monkeys war footage
DO I RECOMMEND IT: sure
28 WEEKS LATER
turned this off about halfway through. an ENORMOUS dip in quality from the first one.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: who cares
DO I RECOMMEND IT: no
WALK HARD
still an absolute masterpiece. the extended cut is 3 hours long - insane for a parody movie - but it doesn’t wear you out at all. Tim Meadows stands out amongst a very talented cast but of course John C. Reilly is the one who makes this all work. never before or since as anyone committed so seriously to the bit, and all in service of a very funny, very cutting script that completely decimated an entire genre. and the songs are shockingly good! secretly apatow’s best work, even if only as a writer.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: Dewey Cox has to think about his whole life before he plays
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yeah baby
THE DIRTIES
this has gotta be the best school shooting movie ever made. filmed in real high schools with real students going about their day in the background of shots, the veneer of realism and constant jokes lower your guard for a scary-effective study of the early-2000s young male loner. the subject matter is a great match for Matt Johnson’s filmmaking-style and you can see some of the groundwork being laid for all his other work here. a chilling, unforgettable ending. Johnson’s filmmaking style is very inspiring to me and it reminds me of contemporaries like Louise Weard - their work makes you feel like you can go out right away with the first camera you find and make something great as well. one of the few genuinely interesting (and funny!) examinations of school shootings i've seen.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: isolation
DO I RECOMMEND IT: big time
OPERATION AVALANCHE
another Matt Johnson flick, not as strong as The Dirties or Nirvanna but still a worthwhile watch. the realism here is strained because this time around it’s a period piece set around the 1969 moon landing. there’s some good stuff here and some more impressive filmmaking (including some stunts regarding filming on location at NASA) but i feel it’s missing something to really say.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: you can film at NASA if you trick them
DO I RECOMMEND IT: sure
CASTRATION MOVIE ANTHOLOGY i. TRAPS
a film that reminded me how much i love making movies. Louise Weard says she often handed off the camera to whoever on set “had the least experience”, which is one of the more exciting director choices i’ve heard of in ages. there’s a shot where Louise’s character is blowing someone and the camera keeps getting pushed across the floor below them into closer and more uncomfortable angles, complete with the messy on-camera audio as it gets shoved into her feet. choices like these are alone to catch my attention, but the subject matter is just as rich. Act 1 unflinchingly follows a confused young man we can assume is the subtitular “incel superman” as he slowly alienates himself from everyone in his life. this is juxtaposed provocatively with Act 2, which follows Louise as the toxic and anti-social Traps and offers an honest, painfully-lived-in account of her struggles and the struggles of those in her immediate social circles. long, testing shots linger on nude bodies and un-simulated sex acts in an attempt to force the viewer to become intimately acquainted with the trans experience, if they aren’t already. it’s sharp, hostile, cheap filmmaking and i really loved it.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: replying to posts on 4chan
DO I RECOMMEND IT: it's very good
BATTLE ROYALE
i had the pleasure of showing this to Casey, who had never seen it before. i think i knew what they were expecting, because it has the reputation of a shallow college kid’s favorite movie… which, you know, fair. it IS that kind of movie. but it really does have so much more going on. a lot of that is thanks to Takeshi Kitano, whose performance grounds the movie in something much more sad and affecting than the gratuitous violence would lead you to expect. anyway, this was a big hit on rewatch. it had been a long time since i’d seen it, and i’m happy it holds up.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: the loss of innocence (a classic)
DO I RECOMMEND IT: definitely
A DIFFERENT MAN
this was actually pretty stupid, i thought. i was hoping for more. i thought Adam Pearson was the standout and i think there’s a better movie in there somewhere. i didn’t get all the praise for this.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: it’s what’s inside that counts (boring)
DO I RECOMMEND IT: nope
TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME
this was the year i finally finished Twin Peaks, and that meant getting to watch this for the first time. let me be clear: this IS Twin Peaks. every second of the first two seasons before this movie, those are just a prelude. it baffles me that this movie was ever controversial - it cuts right to the bone and lays bare with excruciating honesty everything at the core of what made Twin Peaks tick. to follow up the honestly-quite-bad and very silly Season 2 of the show with something so furiously, angrily real… it’s one of the coolest things i’ve seen from a TV series. this is Lynch unflinchingly examining Laura Palmer as the real, breathing human we never got to fully see in the show - there, we were always seeing Laura from the perspective of others, but here we are fully locked into Laura’s POV from beginning to end and it is very, very hard to watch. the fact that this came out in 1992 astounds me - it’s so prescient, so clear, and so sympathetic to what it means to be a young woman. after this, i also watched The Missing Pieces (shockingly valuable for what’s effectively a Deleted Scenes reel) and The Return (as great as everyone said it was.)
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: collective abuse
DO I RECOMMEND IT: mandatory viewing
BLUE VELVET
in revisiting all of these movies, i’m finding myself having the most fun getting to think about Lynch’s work again. i think his stuff gets under my skin more than any other director on this list - Blue Velvet is part of that. it’s a movie full of big, crazy, scary, and strange moments - including an insane performance from Dennis Hopper - but the really unique thing about it is how much it stays with you afterwards, like you’ve been permanently dirtied from the experience, just like Kyle MacLachlan’s character. you can’t go back. there’s something lurking.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: perversion
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yes
INLAND EMPIRE
if there’s any Lynch movie where you totally understand why it didn’t make any money, it’s this one. and yet i think it’s my favorite piece of filmmaking on his part. no other movie looks or feels like this one does - at times it feels like you’re really witnessing an evil force through the screen. the cheap digital cameras, the creaky performances, the rabbits, the way things always seem on the verge of making total sense… i love this movie. Lynch’s work always wrings a real feeling out of you. your body reacts.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: a woman in trouble
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yes
WILD AT HEART
a cuter, sweeter Lynch film with some killer supporting performances by Diane Ladd and Willem Dafoe. worth it just to see Nicolas Cage directed by Lynch.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: Willem Dafoe's fake teeth
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yep
MULHOLLAND DRIVE
as good as movies get. Naomi Watts is so perfect in this - i think her wide eyes are the first thing i picture when i recall this film. so many individual and unique scary moments are packed in here, and again the supernatural elements all feel just within grasp, like your body understands them before your mind does. this movie makes perfect sense to me, i feel, but it’s not to be verbalized.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: silencio
DO I RECOMMEND IT: definitely
DAVID LYNCH'S DUNE
i’ll start by saying i like this much more than Villeneuve’s interpretation, the sequel to which i couldn’t even finish. watching this for the first time was so funny because for 90% of it, all i could think was “why does anyone not like this movie?!” - and then the last 10% hit and you immediately understand. it gets a lot of momentum going and then it’s forced to rush through its ending, which isn’t even really an ending - i’m sure this was a painful experience for Lynch, but there’s still quite a lot here to love.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: stay away from franchises
DO I RECOMMEND IT: sure
CLOUD
before this, i’d only seen Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s horror films Pulse and Cure - i knew going in this wouldn’t be quite the same but i was still caught off guard as it turned into an extended warehouse shootout for the last third. i think it’s very timely material: a dropship scammer gets attacked by his victims, who have banded together in retribution. there are plenty of interestingly-baffling moments, like our “hero” being rescued by his shockingly-competent and loyal Todd-from-Breaking-Bad-esque intern, and i appreciate that i really never knew where this was going.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: capitalism makes aliens of us all
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yeah
A NEW LEAF
The Heartbreak Kid and Mikey & Nicky are two absolute all-timers for me, but i’d never seen Elaine May’s A New Leaf before Vinegar Syndrome put out an edition with cover art by Michael DeForge, whose work i love dearly. that combination was enough of a push, and this turned out to be well worth my time. a dark, funny movie about a selfish, spoiled Walter Mathau realizing in terror that he’s fallen in love. it’s a magic kind of script that concocts a world where the fairy tale ending is somehow the very worst thing that can happen to its protagonist.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: love comes for us all in the end
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yep
THE SHROUDS
as far as modern Cronenberg goes, i didn’t love this as much as Crimes of the Future… but it’s hard to deny how tapped-in this one feels. every bit of Vincent Cassel’s GraveTech empire feels too uncomfortably plausible, as sci-fi as it is. i’m curious to know what the TV version would have been like.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: grief by way of big tech
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yeah
SORCERER
this year we had the pleasure of showing this one to some friends we knew would love it. four broken men driving two broken trucks full of rotting dynamite across the jungle… it really is one of the craziest movies ever. i don’t know how Friedkin filmed this, and i would never want to film a movie like this myself, but i’m so glad he did. i love how bleak it is - all this effort, all this work… and it’s not even for a noble cause. it’s just more muck. i love it.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: you’re not getting out, no matter how hard you work
DO I RECOMMEND IT: hugely
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
it’s easy to forget that this movie, the quintessential dad-on-the-couch pick from the previous century, really is one of the best movies ever made. it does everything right. it covers so much ground and builds to such an enormous crescendo over the course of its 3 hours that it feels like you’ve read an entire book, or watched an entire season of TV. it gets away with being both Cool AND Good. it’s the secret grandfather of every Badass Anime Character you’ve ever enjoyed. Clint Eastwood casually lighting the cannon fuse with a cigar is one of the coolest things anyone has ever done. and the conceit really is as simple as the title says: here’s three different types of guys, and they’re gonna square off. if you’ve still never seen it or have otherwise written it off, i hope you’ll give it a try. it’s one of my favorites.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: morality, but in a cool way
DO I RECOMMEND IT: always
THE FIRST SLAM DUNK
we sometimes host anime nights at our place, and this was the first watch of this year. this is a movie that makes you believe sports are real. this is a fresh adaptation of the final game in Slam Dunk, a hit manga from the 90s. the framing is clean: the movie shows you the most exciting basketball game ever played interspersed with flashbacks of some of the players, primarily focusing on Ryota. it’s melodramatic, it’s beautifully animated, it’s heartbreaking, it’s heartwarming, and it will absolutely get you off the couch jumping up and down with excitement. it’s everything you could ever want out a popcorn anime flick. there are some really incredible filmmaking choices near the end, especially once the final countdown clock timer starts ticking away.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: basketball is real
DO I RECOMMEND IT: big time
ANGEL'S EGG
we screened this at a particularly low-attended anime night, which made for an interesting mood - it’s a quiet movie that really asks you to look inward and get lost in your own thoughts, and when you have a group of people over to watch it things tend to remain pretty quiet after the movie ends. i love some of the excruciatingly long takes here, especially the ones where you know what’s coming. not long after our screening, this got a 4K remaster and some theater screenings! so exciting.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: hope dies
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yes
PATLABOR 1 + 2
two of the finest animated films of all time. another anime night watch, the first one really bowled over everyone who hadn’t seen it. these works function beautifully even without the context of the show they’re based on - a lot of people were asking me if they should the show as well, which is always a tough question because the answer is yes but it’s also very different than what Oshii’s doing here - it’s a lot like his Urusei Yatsura movie, Beautiful Dreamer, which takes an established franchise and uses it as a jumping-off point to blow everything up and hone in on some of the most surprising, interesting elements of the work. Patlabor 1 features so many amazing choices, from the villain dying in the opening scene to the giant Ark structure being built in Tokyo Bay to the fisheye lens shot of the word “BABEL” projected across a character’s face. some of my favorite scenes are of the pair of investigators searching through the city’s rubble for leads on the antagonist. and then, of course, there’s the second movie - just as good, and maybe even hitting higher highs with scenes like the city continuing on with their day to day under martial law.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: if you die first, nobody can stop you
DO I RECOMMEND IT: oh yeah
TEKKONKIKREET
Taiyo Matsumoto, the mangaka whose work is being adapted here, is maybe my very favorite comic artist. this movie, unfortunately, does not make a great case for him. the animation is gorgeous and it’s trying some very big things with its artificial camera movement, but the manga’s script is unfortunately contorted in some very sloppy ways so as to make the story difficult to follow or care about. i feel it emphasises all the wrong things, and when i first read the manga i was struck by how much more i liked everything once it was on the page. i think director Michael Arias has his heart in the right place, and hopefully his upcoming stop-motion adaptation of Matsumoto’s Sunny (my genuine favorite comic) will hit the right notes for me.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: those two boys ARE the city
DO I RECOMMEND IT: read the manga instead
AIM FOR THE ACE: THE MOVIE
when i first finally decided to check out Aim For The Ace, a 70s shoujo masterpiece about high school tennis, i was knocked on my ass by what should have been obvious: Hideaki Anno’s excellent Gunbuster starts off as a DIRECT parody of this story (it was even right there in the series subtitle, “Aim For The Top!”). what we have here is an extremely potent recipe for melodrama: a ditsy, carefree girl with no apparent athletic skills is hand-picked by the mysterious, hot Coach to join the varsity tennis team, much to the chagrin of the team’s elegant star player. much energy is spent on how torturous this experience is for the girls - all of these expectations and pressures made all the more agonizing by the Coach’s refusal to elaborate on his choice. this is a story all about the emotions, and Dezaki’s adaptation proves he really, really understands the source material. between this and Dear Brother, he may have been a teenage girl in disguise.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: being a high school girl is the hardest thing in the world
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yes!
ONE PIECE: BARON OMATSURI AND THE SECRET ISLAND
not the best One Piece movie to use to introduce the series to newcomers (that would be Film Gold, which best recreates the recipe for a plausible standalone arc from the series proper), but it is one of the most visually striking. Mamoru Hosoda is doing some incredible work here, and the story slowly moves from big, bright, and carefree to something very dour and interestingly unpleasant. for a series whose strength lies in its big, colorful cast, it’s certainly a big choice to whittle that cast down to just the lead and strip him of any reason to laugh for the last third of the movie. i think the movie’s worth really does lie in its willingness to stand apart from series conventions and fan-service cameos - it’s One Piece as the exception that proves the rule to its own formula.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: my nakama will never abandon me, and i will never abandon them
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yep!
AFTER HOURS
a real delight and a very special Scorcese. there are a lot of movies like this, set in real time and full of little episodic vignettes, but this one really does it best.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: you don’t belong here, yuppie
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yes
THE DEER HUNTER
one of the best movies ever made. Walken is hypnotizing in this - has another actor ever looked so convincingly traumatized? DeNiro is extremely well-cast here, maybe the best he’s ever been used. before i’d ever seen this, i’d been told that they’d kept a real bullet in the chamber for one of the Russian roulette scenes (the story went, of course, that they’d checked to make sure it wouldn’t go off in the scene) - i don’t know if i believe that, but this is a movie with performances so visceral you can see why such a rumor has taken off.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: we ruined our boys
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yes
MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER
this comes close to dethroning The Long Goodbye as my favorite Altman - like a lot of his movies, i just love the experience of being immersed in this one. the revolutionary sound mixing is surely a big part of that, but it’s also just such a lived-in world. as good as an Old West love story could ever be. Warren Beatty plays McCabe as such a lovable as a scheming, charismatic fool and his romance with Julie Christie is so earned in its brief time - they have that kind of unforgettable movie star chemistry you forget you missed until you see it again, and their characters are so lovingly-written that it feels like two close misfit friends have found each other, and it warms your heart knowing they might be okay together. it leaves you truly rooting for them, even if you can see what’s coming. simple stuff, maybe, but when it’s done so effectively you remember its power.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: finding each other, however briefly
DO I RECOMMEND IT: absolutely
MOULIN ROUGE!
i bounced off this movie HARD when i was younger, but Casey talked me into trying it again as we were staying in an AirBNB in NYC recently. i was much more charmed by it this time around. Nicole Kidman is great and Jim Broadbent is so much fun but Richard Roxburgh as the Duke really steals the show.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: jukebox medleys
DO I RECOMMEND IT: maybe you’ll change your mind like i did!
HALF OF BABY DRIVER
while we were at that AirBNB, i also decided to try revisiting Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver, which Casey had never seen. it was a huge disappointment for me at the time and nothing has changed. we had to turn it off halfway through. this thing’s a mess.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: fall in love with a girl who reminds you of your dead mom
DO I RECOMMEND IT: no
REPO MAN
for a long time, my only frame of reference for this movie was Martin Starr quoting it to Adam Scott in the first episode of Party Down. this year i thought i should finally fix that, especially since i learned Harry Dean Stanton features heavily. i didn’t expect this to be as a goofy as it was, but it all works. i think the best stuff centers on Emilio Esteves joining up with the titular repo men and settling into their appealing, devil-may-care lifestyle - i especially loved their rivalries with other repo crews and their habit of racing/crashing into each other in their repossessed vehicles. i was shocked to see that the Criterion edition comes with an entire comic drawn by the director. very fun, cheap flick.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: the life of a repo man is always intense
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yeah
SONATINE
one of my favorite movies ever, and i think Takeshi Kitano’s best. very few movies are able to pull off the nihilist melancholy on display here without coming off as annoying or unearned. part of it is Kitano’s trademark motionless acting, which is so still yet suggests a very deep well of dark thoughts beyond the eyes. (whenever he actually smiles, it’s almost scary.) but it’s also the script, which is structured in such a way that it takes you a moment to realize it’s suddenly shifted from standard yakuza fare to become a more lighthearted beach hangout movie for a while now. i loved showing this to Casey as well as some other friends - it’s always a hit.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: a man made empty
DO I RECOMMEND IT: with all my heart
HANA-BI
this is good, and i love it, and i love the paintings, but at the end of the day i always felt like this was a little too sappy for its own good. i know this is a fairly bleak movie still, but i much prefer Kitano when he isn’t leaning so much into sentimentality.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: you can always take up painting
DO I RECOMMEND IT: watch Sonatine or Violent Cop first
CURE
whenever i think about this movie, i’m struck by how much i like the title. i think it really does some good work framing the movie, which feels like it’s always a few bad moves away from feeling like a lesser Fincher ripoff. it sidesteps all those worries, though, and rides on a powerfully dour atmosphere all the way to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it ending that really sells the whole thing. i love the video tape and the phonograph - very scary stuff that does a great job at grounding the supernatural elements.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: evil
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yes
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 1+2
i’d never seen these before, somehow. the first one does kind of have that Hollywood magic - i think the sets and costumes are the stars of the show, and this type of blockbuster really is a bygone relic now. Captain Jack’s introduction stepping off the sinking ship really is perfect and it’s the kind of succinct character piece a Marvel movie would kill for. the second movie was a bit of a drag but Bill Nighy’s a ton of fun once he shows up, and the setpiece with the swordfight on the spinning water-wheel is worth the wait.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: rides can be movies
DO I RECOMMEND IT: if you can stomach Depp in 2025
CAUGHT STEALING
i’m a BIG-TIME Darren Aronofsky hater but this looked different enough and Matt Smith looked fun enough in it that i was willing to give it a shot. unfortunately there’s actually not a whole lot of Matt Smith in it and while the script does take some bold turns, none of them really pay off and the whole thing keeps building unnaturally in a way that makes Austin Butler’s character feel less and less real the further it goes. the emphasis on the cat’s role in all these antics called to mind last year’s much-mocked Argylle and while i’m sure that one’s much worse than this, i still think this one was a huge stinker. (i did love Matt Smith’s increasingly-growing forehead bruise.)
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: committing to a shocking character death needs to actually buy you some pathos
DO I RECOMMEND IT: no
WAKE UP DEAD MAN (KNIVES OUT 3)
this was a LOT better than the second one because it actually seemed to have something to say, and it found some nice moments of kindness in between all the antics. it’s helped by its very likeable lead in Josh O’Connor. at the end of the day it really is just fun to watch a big cast solve a big mystery with a big budget and that’s why i’ll probably keep watching these until he stops.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: Catholicism is obviously bad but it can also still be good
DO I RECOMMEND IT: if you like these, it’s one of the better ones
THE BEAST
i’m a year late to this one but i really liked it - the bad-internet-buffering editing near the end was really effective and got me genuinely scared. i liked the goop and i liked the budget-friendly Crimes of the Future-esque futurescape. George MacKay’s incel character had me worried for a bit, and while it doesn’t feel like a particularly well-observed take on that type of guy, i thought it bought the story some very good tension.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: dehumanization
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yep
CRUISING
this one feels like a miss for Friedkin, despite it being absolutely worth your time just for the authentic glimpse into the late-70s S&M/leather scenes. i think the ending can only be read as “Al Pacino was so homophobic he had to kill a gay man”, which i have a hard time grappling with as either very stupid or very pointed. obviously there’s a lot up to interpretation here, which is the right move. while i do think Pacino is interestingly-cast as a guy who can’t comfortably grapple with homosexuality, i don’t know if this movie is really on to anything all that interesting. let me know if you think i’ve completely misread this one.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: what if you had to be gay for a little bit
DO I RECOMMEND IT: maybe, if you're interested
28 YEARS LATER
i’ll start with what i liked: the return to 28 Days Later’s cheap digital visuals. i like the Rudyard Kipling poem, which is better than this whole movie. i liked the Swedish guy, and i liked Ralph Fiennes covered in iodit, and i liked the conceit with the pathway to town through the tide. but as a movie about fathers and mothers, about death, about Ralph Fiennes building a tower of skulls and defining “memento mori”, about Jodie Comer having to act confused until the last minute, about a kid kissing his mother’s skull and saying “I love you, mum” - i don’t know. the ending was definitely a big swing and i was into it.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: Brexit
DO I RECOMMEND IT: eh
EVIL DOES NOT EXIST
we liked Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car so we decided to give this one a watch, too - i knew nothing going in except the title. the movie really clicks into focus during the town hall meeting where the citizens start to very calmly stand their ground against the invading forces of a glamping venture. there’s a metaphor it lands on with whether or not deer would ever attack humans - i think there’s a lot to chew on there, and i was glad the ending went for something challenging after 90+ minutes of a fairly grounded, pleasantly-straightforward script.
WHAT DO I THINK IT'S ABOUT: the deer will fight back
DO I RECOMMEND IT: yes