Welcome to my 15th annual movie blog in which I scribble some thoughts about my favorite films of the year. Once again, filmmakers who previously had made my lists appear again. Once again my list doesn’t differ dramatically from other lists & those being celebrated during award season. I’m not sure if my taste is becoming more mainstream or if the mainstream is becoming more like me.
Just a top 10 this year. I just didn’t have the time
to expand it with top lists in specific genres. Though it was once again an amazing
year for the Horror genre. Thanks ahead of time to all of you who were looking
forward to this list. You know who you are.
Check out my Letterboxd page for my 'next' 5 favorite films of 2025 as well as a number of other, interesting lists I've made.
Without further ado, may I present:
My favorite feature films
This list is in order
All my reviews are spoiler-free
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER
This might be Paul Thomas Anderson’s best film. I
think it’s certainly, objectively, 2025’s best as well & is my favorite of
the year. The subject matter couldn’t be more on America’s pulse or fit more
aptly into its cultural Zeitgeist. Every performance is outstanding. The film’s
tone is interesting in how it blends comedy & drama in surprising ways
through scenes that in another director’s hands wouldn’t work without P.T.A.’s
nuanced writing style & experienced instinct. I saw this in Prague’s IMAX
cinema, which allowed the amazing cinematography to shine in all its glory. It
felt like I was in the car on those rolling hills & breathing that American
SW desert air I’d recently experienced for the first time during my vacation
last summer. I hope P.T.A. finally wins his long-deserved Best Director Oscar.
I’d love to see Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood on that stage holding a
long-deserved statue as well.
WEAPONS
I saw this last summer with my brother during my US vacation,
kind of a tradition he & I have about catching horror films in the cinema
together when we can. And in the same cinema where we’d caught LONGLEGS a year
before. WEAPONS is my favorite horror film of the year, though not the most
frightening or disturbing. I just love this story & how the filmmakers
decided to tell it. I loved its PULP FICTION-style’ of non-linear storytelling,
the individual character chapters & how it reveals necessary plot elements out
of chronological order, but in a thematically momentous way. I’m happy Pedro
Pascal’s departure allowed Josh Brolan to give his gravitas to his role. Julia
Garner & Benedict Wong round out their non-Marvel team-up to perfection.
And my god, Amy Madigan’s role as Gladys deserves her Oscar nomination (her 2nd)
& I hope a win. Like director Zach Creggor’s previous film, 2022’s
BARBARIAN, WEAPONS is a modern horror masterpiece on its own, as well as one of
the most entertaining films of any genre I saw last year.
EDDINGTON
The experience of seeing this film where I did greatly
increases my appreciation of the event. It was my first & so far only visit
to an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. My longing to see a film, any film, or even
experience a festival of some kind at one of their locations stems from all the
way back to the early 2000s when Ain’t It Cool News was my Internet browser
homepage. Although I didn’t go to their original Austin, TX location, my good
friend ‘Em,’ who I visited in NYC last summer, surprised me by taking me to
their downtown Manhattan location to see this film. I had no idea it was that
cinema. I was descending an escalator a couple of floors beneath a towering
skyscraper when the sign of the cinema came into view. And I could hardly
contain my excitement.
Director Ari Aster’s 4th feature shares a
number of elements with his previous, 2023 psychological comedy BEAU IS AFRAID
& also stars Jaoquin Pheonix in the lead. There is some familiar Coen
Brothers-type dry humor at work that makes you uncomfortable to laugh at, but
is surely intended. This ‘Covid Western’ story unfolds in constantly unexpected
ways & accomplishes something quite surprising. Giving us joy in
empathizing with emotionally realized characters that aren’t reduced to
‘caricatures’ of many who weren’t behaving intelligently during the pandemic
and also on the right of America’s political spectrum. The ‘refusing to wear
masks’ crowd, as it were. And watching Pheonix’s character pave his road to
Hell sailing on a wind of good intentions was pure enjoyment. This is also a
fantastic double-feature with ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER.
SENTIMENTAL VALUE
I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to finally watch
this. Most showings in Prague didn’t include English subtitles for all the
Norwegian spoken, which is throughout. But this is a film that sticks with you.
Had I seen it even 8 months ago, I’d have re-watched it closer to posting this
list to refresh its abstract & sometimes ambiguous themes. Every
performance is so nuanced that every gesture, every facial expression, eye
contact or lack thereof, subtle glance & body language expresses more than
the words in the script can convey. To the point that what isn’t said, but
‘written’ on the characters’ faces say more than any dialogue ever could. I was
often reminded of the perfection demanded by Ingmar Bergman’s best characters along
my journey through this very emotional family drama. Norwegian Director Joachim
Trier is no stranger to my lists. 2021’s THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD &
2017’s THELMA both made my lists in those years. I’m kind of a sucker for films
about films & I am a sentimental fool, so these aspects combined was a
sure-fire success to be one of my favorites of the year. This just might be
Trier’s masterpiece to date.
SINNERS
It is my intention to actively not mention the plot of
any film on this list in any detail that might affect your experience of seeing
them for yourself. Coming in as blind as you choose. But I need to tread into
that territory with this review a bit. I need to mention that this is,
essentially, a horror film. But mostly in a way similar to how Peale’s 2017’s GET
OUT is also of the genre. Despite both not including ‘traditional’ elements of
that genre in terms of what tropes we’ve come to expect of it for most of their
runtimes, the social implications of the characters’ circumstances in both
films & our understanding of their implications, are what enhance the
horrific tone of both films’ setting. And in both, the setting is almost a
‘character’ itself. Especially in the current cultural zeitgeist of hyper-fixation
of various aspects, causes & effects of types of social injustice. And if
one is not sympathetic to or knowledgeable of the unspoken but omnipresent
weight of the larger ‘world’ both of those films exist in, neither are likely
to have such a heavy impact on an audience as it did me. And by a
record-setting number of Oscar nominations (16 in total – beating the previous
record of 14), it seems many were able to ‘read between the lines’ of what these
films put on the screen.
I also want to bring up the comparison to Rodriguez’s 1996
FROM DUSK TILL DAWN to further dip my toes into the realm of plot territory. To
play Devil’s Advocate for a moment, both it and SINNERS didn’t need to dive so
deeply into the horror elements in their last act. Some might even argue that
both would have been ‘better’ had they not. But I am a horror fan. And I
actually wish both films had taken an even deeper dive into the blood &
gore. Both a lot earlier in the plot & a lot more often. And that is my
only criticism of both films. Because every aspect of Ryan Coogler’s direction,
every performance, especially the double role of Michael B. Jordan, is
master-class. The cinematography is perhaps the best I saw all year, overall.
The music, sound editing & editing – superb. And the fact that this IS a
horror film makes all those accomplishments all the more amazing.
TRAIN DREAMS
This film was completely shot in the Pacific
Northwest, which is where I’m from, & is my ‘spiritual home.’ U.F.O.s haunt
the skies, sasquatch roam the endless forests & if you’re not careful, you
might stumble through the Lynchian curtains of the Black Lodge if you stray off
a beaten path. My mother’s father was a ‘woodsman.’ He felled many a tree &
bore the scars of how that labor impacts you. Trains in this film represent both
tools of connection & destruction. The progress & wealth earned by
their expansion were built on the backs of the men & women who sacrificed
their health & sometimes, too many times, their very lives without ever
tasting the sweet fruit of that success. And TRAIN DREAMS is as haunting as a
train’s whistle, heard off in the distance, like the faint scream of every lost
soul who built its rails. Director Clint Bentley tells a story that transforms
all that into poetry & a meditation on how we shouldn’t forget that there
is also beauty in it. He reminds us of the respect we should have for those who
shouldn’t be forgotten. And leaves us with an ending so unexpected &
surprising, you’ll jump online just like I did to look up the same thing. Let
me know if you did or if I’m wrong.
HAMNET
I’ve read 3 books dedicated to the question ‘was
Shakespeare a real person?’ All concluded ‘absolutely, yes.’ And none of them claim
he was a black Jewish woman, like an absurd recent book suggests. Director Chloé
Zhao’s magnificent film makes Billy’s wife the main character. I suppose you
could call Agnes a witch, though I’m not sure how historically accurate that
is. Actress Jessie Buckley’s performance as Mrs. Spear Shaker just might earn
her an Oscar. This is quite a sad film, about death & loss. And the
relationship between that death & the play it partly inspired is also true.
But the film does play with the timeline a bit to suggest that these 2 events
were closer together than the actual 3 years of separation. So I can’t say you’re
going to learn a lot about Shakespeare’s family’s lives by watching this film. Though
it does a great job of recreating the type of living conditions they lived
through at the time. The film’s biggest triumph is making the daily lives of
these characters more interesting than the play you know is eventually coming. This
is a perfect double feature with TRAIN DREAMS in terms of themes & tone. And
its ‘art as healing’ theme is strikingly similar to SENTIMENTAL VALUE, making
that another perfect double feature. And if you’ve got any tissues left after
watching that, that box should be empty after HAMNET, which is why I’m happy I
watched both films at home.
NO OTHER CHOICE
My favorite Korean filmmaker, whose films I’ve enjoyed
for over 2 decades now, shows no signs of slowing down. The film’s title is
more of a question than a statement. Here we have a black comedy, commenting on
how technology & the flaws of Capitalism are shrinking the need for humans
in the workplace. Actor Lee Byung-hun, who you might recognize from SQUID GAME,
gives a career-best performance as a patriarch desperately trying to save his
family’s livelihood & the desperate measures he decides to take (or not) in
an increasingly strangling world. Director Park Chan-wook is a master of composition,
working with his cinematographer & musical composer to constantly surprise
the audience with creative sequences unlike anyone else in the business. I called
his 2022 masterpiece DECISION TO LEAVE his ‘VERTIGO,’ & the comparison to
Hitchcock is once again apt here. But it’s not all depressing, indeed there are
a number of hilarious moments, accentuated by the drama of the scene, that make
this film one of the most entertaining I saw all year. And the one with the
sharpest social commentary that will certainly leave a mark.
BLUE MOON
BLUE MOON feels more like a play. It’s basically told
in real time & in a single location. Ethan Hawke plays ‘Larry’ Hart, the
amazing lyricist of over 500 original songs & the former partner of Richard
Rogers, with whom he wrote 28 stage musicals with, before Rogers would go on to
work with Oscar Hammerstein & change the musical world forever. The evening
of our film is about Rogers’ first work done without him, the classic OKLAHOMA!
And ‘Larry’ slowly watching his career slip away. And it’s as hauntingly
beautiful & poignant as the title’s song. I’m a sentimental fool & I
identify strongly with the character Hawke so brilliantly brings to life. Director
Richard Linklater brings the past to life so vividly if feels like you were
really there & are now a part of history. Though for ‘Larry,’ ultimately a
sad one.
NOUVELLE VAGUE
NOUVELLE VAGUE is a film I once had a long evening in
a bar with an old friend conceiving ourselves. I wanted to tell a story of the filmmakers
of the French New Wave & show the making of one or some of their films. This
story is about the making of Godard’s 1960 film BREATHLESS. And all the French
masters make an appearance. It takes us back to that hyper-creative moment in
history when French cinema was about to take over the world – again. And
everybody is cast brilliantly. Linklater has made many films that are my
favorites of their years. And in 2025 he did it twice. The man is a genius.
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