From the pandemic to the strikes to **waves hands around**, the last several years have been pretty brutal on the movie front.  And don’t even get me started on the absolute dumpster fire of finance and politicking that’s dragging down the entire industry within the United States (hoping other countries will pick up the slack, as Hollywood fizzles and power-brokers, hucksters, and streaming bleed out the art).  2025 brought things back, at least to a degree.  And I know I missed a whole bunch of potentially great films.  Annoyingly, many of them blocked by being on obscure streaming services or behind various paywalls I was unable or unwilling to scale.  Unlike 2024, I didn’t have to wait until October before I could assemble ten good movies.  So, that was nice.

Top 10 Movies

10.  Predator: Badlands – “Predator” (1987) is an 80s classic, and one of the great Arnold films.  I’m also one of those suckers who still believes in the potential of the Aliens/Predator cross-over universe (mostly as presented in the Dark Horse comics of the 90s).  AND I’m one of the few defenders of “Predators” (2010).  And I enjoyed “Prey” (2022), even with that absolutely unforgivably bad CGI bear scene (learn from “Jaws,” people).  Yet, I can’t say my expectations for this film were super high going into this, especially after “Killer of Killers” (2025), which I did not like.  But I found myself really enjoying it.  Elle Fanning’s manic pixie dream drone schtick was a bit much at times, but overall, I really enjoyed the film.  It’s exactly the kind of thing I’d like to see from the overall Alien/Predator shared universe.  Great cinema?  No.  Competently made, entertaining films are nice, too.  When watching “Alien: Romulus” last year, I thought about how it was exactly the sort of movie I want, except it wasn’t actually a very good movie.  “Predator: Badlands” is what I want AND was pretty good.

9.  Wake Up Dead Man – I think this might be my favorite of the Knives Out films so far.  Great cast.  Solid mystery.  A surprisingly nuanced handling of faith and the lack thereof.  And I’m telling you.  Get Josh Brolin, Thomas Haden Church, and Jeff Bridges in a movie to have a grizzled old beard off.  I hope Lukas Haas and Shane MacGowan were happy together, because their son, Josh O’Connor, seems to be doing well.  I know everyone hates Rian Johnson since he made the least awful movie in the most recent Star Wars trilogy.  But I still like his work.

8.  The Fantastic Four: First Steps – Where has this been for the last several years?  My favorite Marvel Cinematic Universe film in a while, reminding me of when the MCU was at its height.  I’m not even an MCU hater.  I enjoy a lot of the films, even when they don’t blow me away.  But this one was so much fun.  Not only that, but it actually tapped into the thing I’ve been ranting about for years.  You leave Reed Richards in a setting for a few years and it’s going to become a technological utopia.  I have a whole rant about how the X-Men & mutants, the Fantastic 4 & science heroes, and Doctor Strange & mystical monsters don’t belong in the same universe.  With the MCU’s whole Multiverse thing, they can finally make them make sense together…somewhat.  How are you going to have the Beast be hated and hunted for being a mutant, while the Thing is getting a bagel and chatting with the news stand guy?  Anyway, I really liked this.  And while I still think William Jackson Harper would have been a better choice for Reed Richards, I liked Pedro Pascal in the part more than I expected.  I thought the movie nailed the “First Family of Marvel” thing.  Honorable mention here for “Thunderbolts,” which was MUCH better than I expected and had a great message, and managed to have a resolution that was about more than punching the bad guy into an explosion.  It actually had superheroes being truly heroic, and I liked that a lot.

7.  Sinners – OK, I know.  Why is this so low on my list?  Folks absolutely LOVED this movie, and I’ve definitely seen it finish in most folks’ top 3.  And I mean, it is in my top 10.  I really enjoyed it.  There are scenes and sequences that I absolutely love.  Miles Caton is a revelation.  And Delroy Lindo is always a delight.  A great cast of supporting players, too.  In spite of my normal dislike of vampires, they completely make sense within the metaphorical context of the film.  I admit, I was disappointed when I saw the second trailer and it was revealed to be vampires.  The first trailer made me think it was going to be Cosmic Horror and cults, which is more my speed.  But really, the thing that keeps it from being higher on my list was that, at least for me, the film sort of meandered too often.  Sitting in the theater, I sometimes found myself checking my watch.  The pacing felt wildly uneven.

6.  Train Dreams – Speaking of meandering.  But in the case of “Train Dreams,” the slow, meditative pacing is part of the film’s whole point.  A look at life, love, memory, loneliness, tragedy and loss, all in the beautiful and harsh American west during the early 20th Century. 

5.  O’Dessa – A post apocalyptic musical adventure?  What in the “Rock & Rule” is this?  This is the kind of weird little film I’d have stumbled across in the video store back in like 1988 and would have absolutely fallen in love with.  I know the world moves on, things change, some things are lost and some gained.  But I genuinely think the loss of the video store is one of the saddest things, and something that young folks are truly missing out on.  

4.  Parthenope – I caught this Paolo Sorrentino movie on the last day of the year and it instantly leapt to my top five.  Sorrentino’s filmmaking is just something else.  Visceral, heady, beautiful, garish, ethereal, and bawdy.  It’s life, baby!  He returns to his home town of Naples in this exploration of a woman’s strange adventure through life, starting in 1950 and moving through the latter half of the 20th Century.  Her many adventures are strange, magical, grotesque, and transcendent. 

3.  One Battle After Another – What an odd film.  Is it too long?  Probably.  Does it have some confused messaging?  Sometimes.  Is it way funnier than it seems like it should be?  Absolutely.  Something you won’t hear me say often…if ever again… Was Sean Penn good in this?  He was.  And it’s got the second of two great Benicio del Toro performances I saw this year. 

2.  The Brutalist – I’ve said it before.  I’ll say it again.  The Oscars can suck it.  For so many reasons, but in this case, specifically, they can suck it for their obtuse and arbitrary rules.  I live in a major market, and “The Brutalist” wasn’t available here until mid January of 2025.  I don’t care if it played for a week in some L.A. theater so it could be in contention for a 2024 Oscar.  This is a 2025 release.  It also held my number one spot on my list for much of the year, only finally falling to number two after a good deal of thought and reflection on what I’d seen over the year.  I really loved this movie.  It felt “cinematic” in a way that a lot of contemporary films don’t.  It was challenging and uncomfortable, but also beautiful and compelling.  As pretentious as it is to say, it felt “important.”  It felt like I was watching a classic.  People crap on the film all the time, but I absolutely love “The English Patient” (1996), which I also felt was like a call back to the grand, sweeping films of someone like David Lean.  That’s how I felt watching “The Brutalist.”  It’s sure as hell not going to be to everyone’s taste.  But it was to mine.  And it was great seeing Guy Pearce get a really good role to dig into.  Far too often, especially in American films, he isn’t given a lot to do.  But this was a good one.  I also really loved the score.  A few years ago, I saw “The Childhood of a Leader,” which left me sort of scratching my head.  But at the time, I said, “this is a director I’ll be keeping my eye on.”  Well.  Here we are.

1.  The Phoenician Scheme – Am I a film bro basic bitch?  Maybe.  What can I say?  I am Wes Anderson’s target audience.  I said this about David Lynch, and I say it about Anderson.  I feel like he’s making movies meant specifically for me.  If you like his particular style of doll-house cinema, then you should enjoy this one.  Spiritually, it’s more like “The Grand Budapest Hotel” (2014) than say “The French Dispatch” (2021).  And while I don’t think it’s as good as the former, I did really, really like it.  I gather box office doesn’t really mean much for Anderson.  Something about a billionaire patron or something.  Hey, if a billionaire is going to actually use their money for something worthwhile instead of hoarding it or trying to reinvent the train but terrible, then I guess…cool?  

Best Supporting Actress:  Wunmi Mosaku in Sinners
Runner Up:  Felicity Jones in Train Dreams

Best Supporting Actor: Michael Cera in The Phoenician Scheme
Runner Up:  Benecio del Toro in One Battle After Another

Best Actress:  Felicity Jones in The Brutalist
Runner Up:  Sophie Thatcher in Companion

Best Actor:  Adrien Brody in The Brutalist
Runner Up:  Benecio del Toro in The Phoenician Scheme

Best Director:  Wes Anderson for The Phoenician Scheme
Runner Up:  Brady Cobert for The Brutalist

Best Score:  Daniel Blumberg for The Brutalist 

Almost There:

Every year there are movies that I like or that I saw some major potential in, but didn’t quite stick the landing.  They’re still worth talking about.

The Monkey – I hope Oz Perkins has a long career.  I don’t necessarily want to watch all of his movies, but I want him to keep making them.  With “The Monkey” he tries his hand at Horror/Comedy and…I enjoyed it.  It’s not perfect and the tonal whiplash is WILD.  But I laughed really hard a few times.  He seems to have inherited some of his father’s macabre sense of humor (man, I wish “The Last of Sheila” (1973) had been a bigger success).  

M3GAN 2.0 – I didn’t like “M3GAN” (2022).  I didn’t understand the disproportionate love the film got when it came out.  I had zero interest in a sequel.  Yet, I kept hearing odd whisperings on the wind.  Intriguing things that folks mentioned in passing as the sequel sort of flopped and folks seemed to really not like the direction it went in.  Eventually I was intrigued enough to watch it, and I ended up really enjoying myself.  Instead of a pretty dull retread of “Child’s Play” (1988), it’s more of an “Ex Machina” (2014) meets “The Terminator” (1984), with a slightly tongue in cheek bent.  Much more my kind of thing.  

Superman – I’m on record.  I’m not, nor have I ever been, much of a Superman fan.  I absolutely LOVE the graphic novel All Star Superman.  But otherwise?  Meh.  I don’t even like the Richard Donner movies, and I never really did.  I liked this movie.  It’s easily my favorite Superman movie.  It’s also probably the portrayal of Superman that most closely aligns with the one seen in All Star Superman.  That probably doesn’t hurt.  As Mark Waid says in the introduction to volume 2 of that graphic novel; “gods achieve their power by encouraging us to believe in them.  Superman achieves his power by believing in us.”  There’s a lot of darkness in the world and a lot of people trying to drag humanity down.  It’s good sometimes to be reminded that it doesn’t need to be like this.  We can do the right thing.  We can save that squirrel.  

Video Discoveries:

Honestly, I didn’t watch a ton of films (by my standards) this year, and I re-watched a lot, between trying to revisit movies I hadn’t seen in years or decades, to viewings of some comfort films.  Plus, I no longer have access to TCM, so I haven’t been catching a lot of old gems, either. 

Freaky Friday (2003) – I never saw this the first time around.  I just remember the trailer being kind of annoying, and on TV constantly.  But you know what?  It’s pretty good.  I haven’t seen the original film since I was a kid, but this version was fun.

Sampo (1959) and Ilya Muromets (1956) – Two Soviet era Fantasy films from the other side of the Iron Curtain.  I’d seen cut-up & redubbed versions of both films on Mystery Science Theater 3000, but I’d never seen the original films, with subtitles.  Both are gorgeous, lavish, and surprisingly well crafted.  It’s amazing what a good transfer will do for a film, too.  I’m reminded of “The Crawling Eye” aka “The Trollenberg Terror” (1958), which MST3K also did.  The version they watched was a truly terrible transfer and made the movie look awful, but a good, clean version I’ve got on DVD is actually pretty darned good.  Whatever the case, I’m going to try to watch some more Russian Fantasy films of that era.  Can’t fault them for looking cheap, that’s for sure.  

Crossroads (1986) – After watching “Sinners” I was finally compelled to check out this one.  My dad used to talk about it a lot, but I was never really into the Blues, and though I was a huge fan of “The Karate Kid” (1984) when it came out, I can’t say I was a huge fan of Ralph Macchio.  Anyway, I watched it, and dang.  It was really good.  I wasn’t quite done with my sweaty music in the South watching, and followed it up with “Angel Heart” (1987), an old favorite of mine.  Those three films make for pretty good companions.  

I missed a pile of movies this year.  Especially international films.  I know there are a bunch I very much want to check out.  Between bad timing of releases, a lack of video rental stores, and the absolute turd sandwich that is streaming (I pay for NetFlix, but can’t watch “28 Years Later” on there because I don’t pay ENOUGH?!), I think I’m just going to have to live with missing a lot of stuff.  And I still can’t justify Shudder, though more and more they’re snapping up all the really cool looking genre films, not just the lowest of the low Horror that they seemed to specialize in for a while.  

Top 20 Films

20.  The Silent Planet

19.  Wicked for Good

18.  Elio

17.  The Monkey

16.  M3GAN 2.0

15.  Jay Kelly

14.  Superman

13.  Thunderbolts

12.  Companion

11.  Frankenstein

10.  Predator: Badlands

9.  Wake Up Dead Man

8.  The Fantastic Four: First Steps

7.  Sinners

6.  Train Dreams

5.  O’Dessa

4.  Parthenope

3.  One Battle After Another

2.  The Brutalist

1.  The Phoenician Scheme

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