Every year way too many truly great movies come out to ever talk about in a Top 15 List, so here's a lot of other movies I have something to say about.
Plus all the other stuff, then 2025 is finally over:
Honorable Mentions:
Kohuko, dir. Lee Sang-il
Fun fact: this is the most successful live action Japanese film of all time. It only released for a brief window in the US, I made a point to see it at the Angelika ASAP when it came out. The plot involves two boys who are raised into a storied kabuki actor family, one of the noble bloodline, the other an adoptee. The conflict arises when the newcomer, Kikuo (Sōya Kurokawa as a child, Ryo Yoshizawa as an adult) proves to be much more talented than his brother, Ryusei (Keitatsu Koshiyama as a child, Ryusei Yokohama as an adult). In this art form, you are not just a son, you actually inherit a mighty name, and these two fight like Biblical brothers for their father's blessing.
Then there is the gender complication. Kabuki theater still does not allow female actors. Female parts are played by men. Kikuo and Ryusei are both masters of the feminine side of the production, finding themselves as brothers, rivals, and even tragic lovers on stage. I'm reminded a lot of the novel and film, Farewell My Concubine, set in the similarly mono-gendered Peking Opera. Kohuko is a very pretty movie, a great big family epic of people chasing the mastery of art at the expense of all else.
I'm going to shoot out a stray bullet for a movie I disliked to catch: Kohuko is a better movie about the loneliness of the superstar than Jay Kelly.
Black Bag, dir. Steven Soderbergh
What if George Smiley was not a cuckhold and instead actually had a great marriage? What if he was an all-time wife guy, and he set out great dinner parties where his guests were emotionally manipulated to the point of stabbing each other? Soderbergh's version of George, surname Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is a fashionable middle age sex symbol together his spy wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett). When Kathryn is suspected of being a double-agent, George finds himself suspecting everybody and everything of double-crosses, infidelity, and in the case of his boss, Arthur (007 himself, Pierce Brosnan) reckless corruption. Black Bag might be a little too complicated: there's three couples all screwing each other, plus in lesser importance an espionage plot that I barely understood when I saw the movie and have since completely forgotten.
Heterosexual life goals in this one.
The Phoenician Scheme, dir. Wes Anderson
I couldn't quite solve this one. Wes Anderson might defeated me finally. His film's land, "Phoencia" is clearly meant to be Palestine/Israel. We get a map at one point of a region that is unmistakably the Negev Desert, and is full of Biblical Allusions: "Solomon Coast", "Melchizedek Desert", "Valley of Nebuchadnezzar". Religion is extremely on this movie's mind: we keep cutting to a black and white heaven, with Bill Murray stunt-casted as the Big G. The rich mid-20th century industrialist Zsa Zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) pulls his daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton) out of convent to accompany him on his hair-brained scheme to achieve a vast infrastructure project in the Middle East. Liesl finds all the sinning and sleaze of capitalism to be an annoying temptation, not to mention the attention of Bjørn (Michael Cera), a goofy Scandinavian entomologist. The entire West is united in stopping Korda's plans and destroying his empire, it is a confusing series of heists and campers and intrigues. Ultimately, Korda's scheme is about his own lost father and achieving a legacy that transcends wealth.
However, what does any of that have to do with all the Biblical shit? Is this Anderson's Evangelion where all the references are just to sound cool, weird for weirdness's own sake?! My best read is that Korda finds a kind of faith as his daughter loses it. I struggled for a week trying to write a full review on this one and could never work it out. You win, Wes. If anybody has a good essay on The Phoenician Scheme and what its doing with faith, I'll happily read it.
The Phoenician Scheme is still very funny and is Anderson doing his thing. We end with the Korda family totally penniless and happier for it. Zsa Zsa working in a greasy spoon diner, smoking a cig and doing the books by hand. You can just not be a billionaire, turns out. It is not the end of the world to live as a person.
Frankenstein, dir. Guillermo del Toro
Frankenstein missed the list because I hated the digital "Netflix-look" of this movie in parts. It is really bad in the opening in the Arctic, where we are in MCU-territory of empty void un-reality. Eventually the movie is set more during the day in handsome European parlors and castles, so Frankenstein does find itself. I can forgive an ugly start if the movie finishes well.
And del Toro makes big art design swings with this one: Mia Goth has this blue headdress that makes her look like a Final Fantasy heroine. This is the Hot Frankenstein That Fucks. Do I mean the monster or the doctor? Yes. The 2025 version of Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) has a hat cocked sideways and long curly hair. The monster is played by Jacob Elordi in made-up like a marble statue, all lines and muscle. We get a scene of Victor lovingly cutting through a dead man's thigh. Fetishes for days here. Mia Goth has dual roles as the love interest for both Frankensteins, Elizabeth, and also plays Victor's mom. Paging Dr. Freud.
Eddington, dir. Ari Aster
Ari Aster might just be too much for me at this point. I came away from Beau is Afraid thinking it went too far and was too hopeless. Then Eddington is The Year 2020: The Movie, talk about unrelenting misery.
A small New Mexico town is torn apart by the big news of the day: Covid, police violence, and worse than anything else, the internet. Eddington ends on a final shot of a newly-built data center, just in case you missed who the real killer was. Unfortunately that is a little too vague, and you could easily come away from Eddington thinking it was an unfunny parody that wants to Both Sides away the issues of the unfortunate year in question. This is the movie where a teenager, Brian (Cameron Mann) goes from budding leftist to being reborn as a conservative lifestyle influencer, where the real money is. Hysterical internet conspiracy theorists happily sell out to big tech. The shitbag sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) never listens to anybody, and gets exactly what he asked for. Indeed what he deserved.
Maybe in twenty years we'll come back to Eddington and recognize the genius of it as social commentary. For now, the problem with Eddington is that 2020 never ended, we're still there. I've never sat in a movie theater and felt more like I could just be scrolling my Reddit feed and get the same experience. We need to live in another time and another space before Eddington can fully work.
The Long Walk, dir. Francis Lawrence
The other great Stephen King movie of 2025. I mean, sorry, the Great Richard Bachman Movie of 2025, a totally unrelated author. Silly mistake.
One good rule of a King/Bachman adaptation per the magnificent Just King Things Podcast is that you need to be unfaithful to the material, the more unfaithful the better, actually. The Long Walk might break that rule by sticking close to King's vision. Though the original novel is great, it's pretty very short and horribly bleak. Fifty boys take part in a death competition to walk from the Maine border to as far as they can go until their legs fail them. You stop, and you get shot. Francis Lawrence understood the subtext perfectly. This is not Hunger Games without the high fashion, it is not Stand By Me with an edge, The Long Walk is a war movie, specifically a Vietnam movie. This is a bunch of adolescents saying goodbye to their Moms to fight a cause they don't believe in, to break their bodies and spirits slowly for their country. This movie has a great cast, you don't want things to go badly for these guys. Then they do. This one is a real bummer.
I think I'd get about 30 miles personally before I take my bloody exit.
The Testament of Ann Lee, dir. Mona Fastvold
Broadway has poisoned my mind. I hear “musical about the female founder of the Shakers” and I imagine Amanda Seyfriend as Ann Lee in an anachronistic rap battle against John Wesley. (“Method-DISS!” mic drop) Instead The Testament of Ann Lee uses what are reported to be authentic Shaker hymns from the 1800s as the spine of its music and lyrics. Well, that and the guttural rhythms of the entire congregation in ecstatic religious trances. Ann Lee sounds like no other musical you’ve seen on stage or screen, it is a bold experiment by composer Daniel Blumberg. The movie is reverential and respectful to its inspiration: its world of the Shakers are a movement of monastic craftsmen and craftswomen who share a communal, utopian vision of life without the pain of gender and sex. Something unique and special is built, and the power of this religious community is both inspiring and terrifying. What if the faith you desired was also Gaspar Noe’s Climax? Hot Sacred Feminine That Doesn't Fuck?
On the other hand... I could really use some cheesy Andrew Lloyd Webber shit. Some of these songs are wonderful, such as ‘Hunger and Thirst’, which is both an “I Want” song a moment of profound, powerful theophany. Our heroine is enraptured by an answer she has searched for her entire life, and is reborn from it. That is one of the best scenes of all of 2025. Many songs on the other never really get started. God is great and all, but could somebody please throw on a guitar riff and get some chorus line kicks going?
…Oh wait, both of those things actually do happen in The Testament of Ann Lee, never mind.
After the Hunt, dir. Luca Guadagnino
Much like Eddington, After the Hunt might be just too timely to succeed. It was one of the best-shot, best performed movies of the year, and nobody really wanted After the Hunt right now. You bring up the issues this movie is grappling with and people want a clear answer of the film's position on the subjects. People want something they can easily agree with, versus a complicated uneasy slow burn. After the Hunter is a sex politics thriller, a chess match between a Yale Philosophy professor, Alma (Julia Roberts) and her abused student, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri). The battleground is #MeToo social media horror, with the world demanding, as many critics did, an easy black and white, good vs evil dynamic out of what is a snarl of many messy incestuous people. Our Lydia Tar-esque professor juggles her own ego and relationships while her student is a talentless flatterer whose entire project is plagiarized. Meanwhile everyone is flirting with everybody else, every relationship is terrible, except for Alma and her wonderful husband, Fredrick (Michael Stuhlbarg). We all deserve to have a warm, supportive Michael Stuhlbarg from a Luca Guadagnino movie in our lives.
The thing is, After the Hunt only barely acknowledges how this entire melodrama takes place on the Titanic. Trump's re-election is mentioned in passing, and the entire system of collegiate humanities programs is in peril. People in power have decided we don't need Philosophy Departments anymore, those questions aren't useful to them. You either agree with what they want the answer to be, or you are erased.
Maybe this movie would have been even better if it went the Eddington route and Alma ends the film a full-blooded reactionary, with plastic surgery and a Youtube channel about college grievances. I bet she finds a good job with Bari Weiss' CBS.
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, dir. Rian Johnson
Another really solid Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) mystery/comedy. This new one is set in a Catholic Church so is all about the raging battle between the negative faith of the J.T. Vance hateful Trad Caths and the positive faith of good works and uplift. There's a great scene where Blanc details all the many ways Catholicism has failed him and people like him, then the good priest of the movie, Father Jud (Josh O'Connor) responds with his own vision of what his God can offer. When Blanc speaks, the Church fills with shadow as he rages bitterly, and Jud somehow pulls light out of the air with his own worldview. He has to interrupt the crime solving to spend hours with a woman dealing with her mother's illness. Good for him.
I did wish the actual solution to the murder involved faith more heavily, where the audience and Blanc are tested to believe in something. Instead it is just a Locked Door Danganronpa-style affair. Could've been set anywhere about anything really. Still, Wake Up Dead Man is a very good One of These.
One Battle After Another, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
I think this movie is really good. It could not have been more timely for 2025. Some movies were too raw, One Battle After Another actually was the right movie for the time and what people needed to hear. This is exactly the kinds of horror we see people suffer day after day with our government's unending recklessness, and some heroes stand up and fight back in their own way.
My problem is that I hate Leonardo DiCaprio in this movie. He's going for Jeff Bridges and can't do it. It one of the worst performances of the year. Also, the Thomas Pynchon novel, Vineland was better than this movie. It had ninjas and a cult of depressed ghosts.
Fight or Flight, dir. James Madigan
A burnt-out blonde-tipped Josh Harnett gets on an international flight to locate a hacker wanted by his shadowy government bosses. Then it turns out the flight is full of super assassin guys. This is a really fun and really simple good time action movie. I am fully down for various versions of wacky Josh Hartnett trying to escape from places now.
Best Performances of 2025:
There's a least a million of performances I'd like to shout out, this is no real order:
Tonatiuh as Molina in Kiss of the Spider Woman
Oona Chaplin and a lot of CG as Varang in Avatar: Fire and Ass - This movie is bad, but Varang alone makes it the best Avatar movie. Finally this franchise is as horny as it always needed to be.
Jessie Buckley as Agnes in Hamnet - Another movie I think was terrible, and yet, had one really great performance in it.
Jai Courtney as Tucker in Dangerous Animals - I am stunned that Jai Courtney could be good in any movie. Where was this all these years??
Amy Madigan as Aunt Gladys in Weapons
David Johnnson as Peter McVries in The Long Walk
Amanda Seyfried as Ann Lee in The Testament of Ann Lee
Sally Hawkins as Laura in Bring Her Back
Jessie Plemmons as Teddy in Bugonia
Julia Roberts as Alma in After the Hunt
Michaal Cera as Bjørn in The Phoenician Scheme
Margaret Qualley as Honey in Honey, Don't! - I like the accent. ...I'll confess there may be some biases at work here... I may have a giant crush...
Vincent Cassel as David Cronenberg in The Shrouds
Sōya Kurokawa and Ryo Yoshizawa as Kikuo in Kokuho
Sean Penn as Colonel Lockjaw in One Battle After Another
Michael B. Jordan as Elijah "Smoke" Moore in Sinners
A Different Michael B. Jordan as Elias "Stack" Moore in Sinners
Hailee Steinfeld as Mary in Sinners
Miles Canton as Sammie "Preacher Boy" Moore in Sinners
Jack O'Connell as Remmick in Sinners
Wunmi Mosaku as Annie in Sinners
Jayme Lawson as Pearline in Sinners
Omar Benson Miller as Cornbread in Sinners
Delroy Lindo as Delta Slim in Sinners - No I'm not done praising Sinners yet.
Li Jun Li as Grace Chow in Sinners
Yao as Bo Chow in Sinners - Okay, now I'm done.
...
Anyway, let's stop being positive, I got trash to take out:
I don't do a Worst List because I really do not watch that many bad movies and even the bad movies I see are usually bad in uninteresting ways. But we should remember some stuff that sucked.
Him, dir. Justin Tipping
Apparently Monkeypaw Productions lost the bidding war for Weapons, so this is what they got instead. Rough.
I do not know if the version of Him that I saw in theaters was the one Justin Tipping intended to release. It feels incomplete in the worst ways. And this should have been a slam dunk... err touchdown, because I love football, I rode and died for my Broncos this season, and I'm aware that football is deeply fucked. It's bad. You could make any number of great horror movies centered around football and the militaristic sacrifice it demands of people. This sport is body horror and you can work with that. Instead Him is about nothing. A lot of random things happen that may or may not have been hallucinations, it does not matter. There was a great Ken Russell-esque mindbender here, that maybe a skillful editor could still resurrect. Instead it's a mess. This movie is a bunch of random stuff and for no reason at all, we're just at the ending. Nothing I've seen in the movie that proceeded gave me any reason to believe the hero would choose what he chooses.
Sure, it's great to behead billionaires (in a movie) but this was not earned. It wasn't scary, it made no sense in the worst ways, Him did not have that dog in him.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba The Movie: Infinity Castle Part 1, dir. Haruo Sotozaki
This was not actually a movie. It is part of a trilogy adapting the final manga arc of Demon Slayer, so what you got for your ticket was not in any way a complete plot. It is three fight scenes over 155 minutes, none of which are related to each other. That would be fine, Ufotable is bringing the goods with incredible animation and great action. Unfortunately this is also a movie that it full of exhausting melodrama, involving secondary and tertiary characters who are barely relevant. The one battle that matters involves the main hero, Tanjiro (Natsuki Hanae) fight one of the main vampire/demon heavies, Akaza (Akira Ishida). Most of that fight ends up being hours of the most unbelievably bland and empty tragedy for Akaza's backstory. You think he's had enough sad material to justify himself, and they keep laying it on thick. It almost becomes parody at one point. I wanted to walk out. It took me everything to not scream at the top of my lungs: "PLEASE SHUT UP AND JUST FIGHT AGAIN. SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
This is all the worst trends of Demon Slayer as a franchise, at least on TV you skip the bad episodes. It has only been getting worse since it's high point, Mugen Train. I'm going full Bleach on this entire property now, I think I'm done. I'm rooting for the demons, I hope they kill all the heroes. I am convinced that humanity was a mistake. We are no longer allowed to have feelings after this miserable display.
Mission Impossible: Whatever, I Don't Care, dir. Christopher McQuarrie
I already wrote about this one. Tom Cruise needs to get over himself. I rewatched Eyes Wide Shut recently, great Christmas movie, and Cruise needs to get back to playing sleazy assholes again. You are not the savior of all cinema, dude.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps, dir. Matt Shakman
In fairness, the new Captain America was a lot worse and a lot less interesting. But I was way more disappointed by Fantastic Four. The low-budget Oley Sassone version from 1994, the one Roger Corman never actually released, is still the best Fantastic Four movie. Go watch that instead, I think its still on Youtube.
It was a good idea to teleport us back to the 1960s and Silver Age comic wonder. However, Fantastic Four never does anything with it. The brilliant thing about Captain America being a frozen man out of time is that he's a Greatest Generation FDR hero living in our failed neoliberal - if not actively fascist - present. He has a historical perspective. I did not get any of that from this Fantastic Four. It all feels safe, uncontroversial, and has as much to say about our present and our past as Captain Marvel had to say about the 1990s. Which was fuck all. Worse, these heroes' powers are not shown well. This is a bad Fantastic Four movie. You should, at some point, come up with reasons why these heroes are cool and imagine fun things they can do with their powers. In the age of Monkey D. Luffy, you can't think of anything for Mister Fantastic to do??
There's a scene where the planet eater Galacticus comes to New York City and happily rips out a chunk of Battery Park with his big ol' hand. The difference between a great movie and a forgettable movie is right here. He should have eaten that dirt! Instead he dumps it on the ground and walks forward for a dull fight scene.
Thank goodness Superman was good.
Materialists, dir. Celine Song
What if a rom-com did not have romance or comedy in it? Celine Song went out and consciously made Rich People Problems: The Movie, and unfortunately I cannot find it in me to care. Sure, you're a still a person with feelings and desires if you can afford to live on the 200th floor in a tower in Manhattan, but also, maybe you do not deserve to have literally everything. Materialists presents a world where the ultra-ultra-rich can choose their partners like a menu and can spend fortunes to find exactly their specific desires with boutique dating services. And the movie never really makes a stand here. This is either awful excess or actually a lovely way for our betters to connect. Pick a lane.
I like Dakota Johnson as the lead, Lucy. Celine Song can film the heck out of a movie, there's actually a really good sequence where our heroine and her poor actor boyfriend, John (Chris Evans) crash a wedding. One of the big twists is that Lucy's other boyfriend, the wealthy Harry (Pedro Pascal) had surgery to make himself taller. I don't even understand why that is a problem.
This is the kind of movie you can puzzle over for years. I bet there will be Materialists reappraisals at some point. I think it is a mess. Sometimes writers never work out the problem of their material. Also, this subject matter should not exist, and this entire class of people need to learn to live with a lot less. Go work in a kitchen like Zsa Zsa Korda and be happy with that.
Top 15 Movies of 2024, Revised List
2024 had really good movies. Damn.
I have a Letterboxd account now, you can go follow me there. Looking back at 2024, I've decided that Trap and Madame Web were so much fun it should have made the list. These lists are constantly shifting and evolving, and are completely arbitrary anyway. The Brutalist sure lost a lot of power the moment that AI story came out, huh?
Top 15 Movies of 2026, Wildly Inaccurate, Highly Ignorant and Foolish Guesses:
Every year I do a guess as to what the best movies of the next year might very well be. 2025 had a surprisingly successful 7/15 correct rate, nearly half right. And three more movies ended up being honorable mentions. However, my predicted No. 1 was a complete dud, I didn't like Mickey17 at all and have nothing to say about it.
Anyway here's the 2026 guesses:
15. Artificial, dir. Luca Guadagnino - I'll see anything Guadagnino puts out and I'm likely be one of the few to actually like this movie. However, this is about Sam Bankman-Fried and modern big tech bro AI, and frankly... I don't know if any filmmaker will make me want to watch a movie about this kind of bullshit. Unless its an exploitation movie where they all get eaten by albino cannibals with chainsaws for hands.
14. Coyote vs Acme, dir. Dave Green - Been waiting long enough, dammit.
13. Flowervale Street, dir. David Robert Mitchell
12. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, dir. Nia DaCosta - I still haven't seen it, no spoilers.
11. Werewulf, dir. Robert Eggers - There, wulf.
10. Wuthering Heights, dir. Emerald Fennell
9. Supergirl, dir. Craig Gillespie - Somehow Guardians of the Galaxy returned.
8. The Bride!, dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal
7. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, dir. Gore Verbinski
6. Godzilla Minus Zero, dir. Takashi Yamazaki
5. Behemoth!, dir. Tony Gilroy
4. Disclosure Day, dir. Stephen Spielberg - Awful name for a movie. Awful.
3. Mother Mary, dir. David Lowery
2. Dune: Part 3, dir. Denis Villeneuve - DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNE!!
1. The Odyssey, dir. Christopher Nolan
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