Before getting into this year’s roundup, here are a few honorable mentions for movies that probably aren’t going to make a lot of best-of lists this year.
Saw Bugonia and it's a challenging film with stellar perfonances by Plemons and Stone. It's about searching for a reason outside ourselves for why we are disappointed and unhappy with our lives, finding a partial truth which becomes an obsession that drives us to extremes but only blinds us to the fact that is we who are both responsible and complicit in making things worse.
Stone's Michelle is the image of corporate power, indiference, and greed. She is treated like a celebrity, lives in a beautiful home, and is catered to by all who surround her. She is insulated from the consequences of the damage her corporation does. She is an Empress in whichever world she inhabits.
Plemons is a victim of sexual abuse. He's lost the love of the person he loved most, his mother, first to narcotic addiction and then to an experimental drug meant to cure it the adverse reaction to which has left her in a vegetative state.
In actuality, the Andromedans aren't as the deluded Teddy believes here to destroy us but rather to protect the life on the planet from us and to judge us. They have given us the opportunity to be good stewards but will demand the ultimate penalty if we fail.
Teddy's paranoid delusions cast him as both victim and savior. He feels concurrently impotent and all powerful. He is frustrated and filled him with a blinding rage. Rage against his life and rage at his inability to change it.
Like many conspiracy theorists he is incapable of critical thinking instead believing in wild notions which make him feel that he has special knowledge. With this knowledge only he can save the world. His single-minded pursuit of the demonic Andromedans leads him to torture and serial murder.
In essence, the story is really about the denial of our role in climate change and the pending disaster it fortells. It's about corporate power and it's complicity in the destruction of the planet and the quality of our lives. It's about how we cling to partial truths which inhibit us from dealing with real problems. Like the old song which ends the film we are caught in a circle of delusions both predictable but seemingly inescapable. When will we ever learn?
Lovely list, made even better by the fact that "Eephus" is absent. A truly terrible baseball movie that, like The Natural, seems to have a hypnotic grip on movie critics who seem hellbent on proving they have no feel whatsoever for the beauty of playing baseball.
Yeah, I have been somewhat flummoxed by the praise for EEPHUS. I kinda get it—it’s sad and elegiac and about the passing of time and the encroaching specter of death, etc—but I just didn’t like it.
Exactly. It's maudlin on its own terms. But if the aim it to remind us that time is undefeated and untied, at least pick a vessel for your message that doesn't require smashing the vessel to pieces to tell the story. A nice film about bridge or bowling would have served as well without all the treacly epigrams and other clumsiness.
The only one of the movies mentioned that I’ve seen so far is One Battle After Another and I guess I had the opposite view from Sonny’s. I hated the first 40 minutes and almost stopped watching it but then it started to get interesting for me and the last 2 hours were okay. I found the acting extremely good and the story was compelling enough for me to want to see how it ended. I also found it thought provoking, and I think I agree with the overall message, as I understood it. But overall I didn’t like it very much, and I think that’s because it just had a very dark, grimy feel to it, especially the first 40 minutes. Is it just me or are we going through a period where most of the movies being made exhibit a very dark worldview and a very pessimistic opinion of human nature? I mean, it’s understandable, given the current goings on, but I would like art to show us something to admire and aspire to once in a while.
Love this. And then, of course, he gave us the greatest PSA of all time: https://youtu.be/-VzSiilYSKs?si=vy5uMW__TVVNQesA. And if anyone is looking for a Christmas-Not Christmas movie to do a double feature with Metropolitan, might I suggest Female Trouble.
Saw “Marty Supreme” this last week and I just can’t say I liked it. I do think Timothée Chalamet deserves a Best Actor nomination, but Marty was SUCH a *profoundly* UNLIKABLE character that I found myself hoping the movie would end soon!
Really enjoyed Black Bag. Super tight spy Thriller, felt like a more serious, grown up Atomic Blonde, which I really enjoyed.
Eddington, Weapons, Sinners, and Bugonia are all next on the watch list.
One Battle After Another was very entertaining, but did leave me wanting more. I'm not sure exactly what more I was wanting, but it didn't deliver the hype for me that some people found. Did get a lot of good laughs though.
Working through Nuremberg right now, too early for my review, definitely some strong performances though.
We watched Eddington an I honestly did not understand what it was trying to say, and I am pretty good at picking up the plot and the message of a story line (old English major and all of that.) Disappointing.
Too much horror and too much violence for my tastes. Perhaps we could have a different zeitgeist in 2026. I didn't watch any of these, and I suspect the only one I'd watch is the Springsteen one. Although, maybe there's something to learn from Eddington.
I've only seen Bugonia and House of Dynamite so far, so there may be 2025 films that will blow me away, but Bugonia is firmly on my all time top 10 or top 20 lists. "Absurdist, black comedy, thriller" -- the genre I didn't know I needed! (Please let me know if you can think of others like that -- maybe Dr. Strangelove??)
Just one of the many things I liked about Bugonia was that I was never sure whom to root for -- who was the hero? Who was the villain? I can remember films where I sometimes liked the bad guy/gal so much that rooted for them instead of the character you're intended to sympathize with. And there films I have disliked because I disliked all of the characters. But nothing quite like Bugonia.
I also thought the two main characters were sort of fun house mirror versions of some current, troubling social archetypes, at times more sympathetic than expected, and at other times, less so, than one might think.
I think House of Dynamite is worth seeing even though it has a lot of flaws. I should check to see if you did a standalone review.
I wanted to add how great the portrayal of the Hasidic community was in Caught Stealing. The writing captures the conflict between deeply held religious traditions and the pressure American capitalism has to entice people to betray those values while engaging in the self-deception that they are still adhering to them. The performances of Liev Schrieber and Vincent D'Onofrio are so rich and in turn evoke both the absurd humor and the threat these characters embody.
I'd forgotten about that Aronofsky movie; will check it out (Requiem still in my top 5 of all time). Like your take on 28 Years! Yep, Black Bag was great. Can't wait to watch Weapons.
But...
I must be the only person that isn't ga ga over Sinners. No doubt, a good movie, but I never would have guessed it would end up #1 on so many top N lists. Too contrived. Whereas something like Get Out really respected the horror genre and kept with it, Sinners felt like it was an add-on, a gimmick. Frankly, as much as I like horror, I feel like this movie would have worked better just sticking to the approach in the first half. (I felt the same way about Full Metal Jacket, if that makes any sense.)
Thanks for your comment: I haven't seen Sinners yet, in spite of the reviews, because I can't bear to watch horror films. Now I know that I ***may*** be able to enjoy it without my blood pressure shooting up to dangerous levels. Perhaps that's one of the reasons it's popular?
Hmm, well, maybe. Rest assured, or not in your case :), there is definitely some horror going on. It just shows up late in the movie.
Heh, maybe you can just watch the first half. As I alluded to above, the initial story (and the historical setting) is very solid. Could have just kept going on that thread.
I will definitely bail or fast forward if it gets to be too much!
Someone said recently, or I saw recently, that Full Metal Jacket was really three films. I saw it too long ago to remember why that could be the case, but it sounds like you might agree?
Yep. It's been a while, but the first part is basically all about the dehumanizing effect that boot camp has on the recruits. I thought that was the best part.
BTW, per your comment above, I also liked House of Dynamite, although agree it wasn't perfect. Hurt Locker was very good, I thought.
For dark absurdist stuff, yep, def see Dr. Strangelove. George C Scott is quite funny in it. Have you seen The Menu? Brazil? Being John Malkovich? In Bruges?
If you also like funny-absurd, Repo Man, Buckaroo Banzai and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead are lots of fun.
Thanks so much for the recommendations -- I have not seen most of these yet, only Dr. Strangelove and Brazil. Brazil was one of my favorite films for a long time -- I need to rewatch it. Not enough hours in a day: I also want to watch or rewatch everything by Rob Reiner...
Have you watched any film from Paul Schader's trilogy: First Reformed, The Card Counter, and Master Gardener?
Ha, same here re: Brazil. Although I rewatched it a couple years back and I have to say not quite as good as I remember it. But still pretty decent. Time Bandits is still pretty decent, as well. (Again, very silly, but fun.)
"Have you watched any film from Paul Schader's trilogy: First Reformed, The Card Counter, and Master Gardener?"
Heh, no, like you I have a long list. I'll go move 'em up the list. :-)
On your rec, over the break we have watched Black Bag, Presence, Eddington, Train Dreams, and started Sinners last night. All great! Need to talk my wife into It Was Just An Accident.
Also looking forward to Marty, Nuremberg, Springsteen and Sirat just as soon as I can get my hands on the.
Thanks for turning me onto Warfare. It's a very difficult film for many to Grok. But I can see how it's trying to make a serious and believable war film that might not be outright anti-war but at the very least is extremely sober in it's presentation. I can imagine young men in the future watching it and not being dissuaded from joining the military but getting a more complete picture at what can happen on a mission other than glory.
Glad to see F1 got an honorable mention. It's a blockbuster done right and Pitt is a fucking movie star, truly one of the last. I saw Eddington on a flight and was surprised.
Saw Bugonia and it's a challenging film with stellar perfonances by Plemons and Stone. It's about searching for a reason outside ourselves for why we are disappointed and unhappy with our lives, finding a partial truth which becomes an obsession that drives us to extremes but only blinds us to the fact that is we who are both responsible and complicit in making things worse.
Stone's Michelle is the image of corporate power, indiference, and greed. She is treated like a celebrity, lives in a beautiful home, and is catered to by all who surround her. She is insulated from the consequences of the damage her corporation does. She is an Empress in whichever world she inhabits.
Plemons is a victim of sexual abuse. He's lost the love of the person he loved most, his mother, first to narcotic addiction and then to an experimental drug meant to cure it the adverse reaction to which has left her in a vegetative state.
In actuality, the Andromedans aren't as the deluded Teddy believes here to destroy us but rather to protect the life on the planet from us and to judge us. They have given us the opportunity to be good stewards but will demand the ultimate penalty if we fail.
Teddy's paranoid delusions cast him as both victim and savior. He feels concurrently impotent and all powerful. He is frustrated and filled him with a blinding rage. Rage against his life and rage at his inability to change it.
Like many conspiracy theorists he is incapable of critical thinking instead believing in wild notions which make him feel that he has special knowledge. With this knowledge only he can save the world. His single-minded pursuit of the demonic Andromedans leads him to torture and serial murder.
In essence, the story is really about the denial of our role in climate change and the pending disaster it fortells. It's about corporate power and it's complicity in the destruction of the planet and the quality of our lives. It's about how we cling to partial truths which inhibit us from dealing with real problems. Like the old song which ends the film we are caught in a circle of delusions both predictable but seemingly inescapable. When will we ever learn?
Is Nuremburg on the short list for 2025 films? I think it should be reviewed.
Lovely list, made even better by the fact that "Eephus" is absent. A truly terrible baseball movie that, like The Natural, seems to have a hypnotic grip on movie critics who seem hellbent on proving they have no feel whatsoever for the beauty of playing baseball.
Yeah, I have been somewhat flummoxed by the praise for EEPHUS. I kinda get it—it’s sad and elegiac and about the passing of time and the encroaching specter of death, etc—but I just didn’t like it.
Exactly. It's maudlin on its own terms. But if the aim it to remind us that time is undefeated and untied, at least pick a vessel for your message that doesn't require smashing the vessel to pieces to tell the story. A nice film about bridge or bowling would have served as well without all the treacly epigrams and other clumsiness.
The only one of the movies mentioned that I’ve seen so far is One Battle After Another and I guess I had the opposite view from Sonny’s. I hated the first 40 minutes and almost stopped watching it but then it started to get interesting for me and the last 2 hours were okay. I found the acting extremely good and the story was compelling enough for me to want to see how it ended. I also found it thought provoking, and I think I agree with the overall message, as I understood it. But overall I didn’t like it very much, and I think that’s because it just had a very dark, grimy feel to it, especially the first 40 minutes. Is it just me or are we going through a period where most of the movies being made exhibit a very dark worldview and a very pessimistic opinion of human nature? I mean, it’s understandable, given the current goings on, but I would like art to show us something to admire and aspire to once in a while.
Sonny 🤜🤛 John Waters
A.) Yes, and also B.) my favorite piece of covid-era art is the poster Waters did for the NY Film Festival back in 2020. I have a framed copy in my living room. You can see it here: https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/john-waters-nyff-poster-almodovar-jenkins-scorsese-godard-1234584354/
Love this. And then, of course, he gave us the greatest PSA of all time: https://youtu.be/-VzSiilYSKs?si=vy5uMW__TVVNQesA. And if anyone is looking for a Christmas-Not Christmas movie to do a double feature with Metropolitan, might I suggest Female Trouble.
Saw “Marty Supreme” this last week and I just can’t say I liked it. I do think Timothée Chalamet deserves a Best Actor nomination, but Marty was SUCH a *profoundly* UNLIKABLE character that I found myself hoping the movie would end soon!
Strong UNCUT GEMS vibes, for sure; unlikable protagonists are always a tough sell for some audiences.
Really enjoyed Black Bag. Super tight spy Thriller, felt like a more serious, grown up Atomic Blonde, which I really enjoyed.
Eddington, Weapons, Sinners, and Bugonia are all next on the watch list.
One Battle After Another was very entertaining, but did leave me wanting more. I'm not sure exactly what more I was wanting, but it didn't deliver the hype for me that some people found. Did get a lot of good laughs though.
Working through Nuremberg right now, too early for my review, definitely some strong performances though.
We watched Eddington an I honestly did not understand what it was trying to say, and I am pretty good at picking up the plot and the message of a story line (old English major and all of that.) Disappointing.
Too much horror and too much violence for my tastes. Perhaps we could have a different zeitgeist in 2026. I didn't watch any of these, and I suspect the only one I'd watch is the Springsteen one. Although, maybe there's something to learn from Eddington.
Thanks for the rundown, though, Sunny.
Thanks for this list! I have been eying a few of these so this gives me extra incentive
I've only seen Bugonia and House of Dynamite so far, so there may be 2025 films that will blow me away, but Bugonia is firmly on my all time top 10 or top 20 lists. "Absurdist, black comedy, thriller" -- the genre I didn't know I needed! (Please let me know if you can think of others like that -- maybe Dr. Strangelove??)
Just one of the many things I liked about Bugonia was that I was never sure whom to root for -- who was the hero? Who was the villain? I can remember films where I sometimes liked the bad guy/gal so much that rooted for them instead of the character you're intended to sympathize with. And there films I have disliked because I disliked all of the characters. But nothing quite like Bugonia.
I also thought the two main characters were sort of fun house mirror versions of some current, troubling social archetypes, at times more sympathetic than expected, and at other times, less so, than one might think.
I think House of Dynamite is worth seeing even though it has a lot of flaws. I should check to see if you did a standalone review.
I liked House of Dynamite! I discussed with Tom Nichols earlier in the year here: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/tom-nichols-this-is-what-the-end
I wanted to add how great the portrayal of the Hasidic community was in Caught Stealing. The writing captures the conflict between deeply held religious traditions and the pressure American capitalism has to entice people to betray those values while engaging in the self-deception that they are still adhering to them. The performances of Liev Schrieber and Vincent D'Onofrio are so rich and in turn evoke both the absurd humor and the threat these characters embody.
Great list, thanks for putting it out!
I'd forgotten about that Aronofsky movie; will check it out (Requiem still in my top 5 of all time). Like your take on 28 Years! Yep, Black Bag was great. Can't wait to watch Weapons.
But...
I must be the only person that isn't ga ga over Sinners. No doubt, a good movie, but I never would have guessed it would end up #1 on so many top N lists. Too contrived. Whereas something like Get Out really respected the horror genre and kept with it, Sinners felt like it was an add-on, a gimmick. Frankly, as much as I like horror, I feel like this movie would have worked better just sticking to the approach in the first half. (I felt the same way about Full Metal Jacket, if that makes any sense.)
Thanks for your comment: I haven't seen Sinners yet, in spite of the reviews, because I can't bear to watch horror films. Now I know that I ***may*** be able to enjoy it without my blood pressure shooting up to dangerous levels. Perhaps that's one of the reasons it's popular?
Hmm, well, maybe. Rest assured, or not in your case :), there is definitely some horror going on. It just shows up late in the movie.
Heh, maybe you can just watch the first half. As I alluded to above, the initial story (and the historical setting) is very solid. Could have just kept going on that thread.
I will definitely bail or fast forward if it gets to be too much!
Someone said recently, or I saw recently, that Full Metal Jacket was really three films. I saw it too long ago to remember why that could be the case, but it sounds like you might agree?
Yep. It's been a while, but the first part is basically all about the dehumanizing effect that boot camp has on the recruits. I thought that was the best part.
BTW, per your comment above, I also liked House of Dynamite, although agree it wasn't perfect. Hurt Locker was very good, I thought.
For dark absurdist stuff, yep, def see Dr. Strangelove. George C Scott is quite funny in it. Have you seen The Menu? Brazil? Being John Malkovich? In Bruges?
If you also like funny-absurd, Repo Man, Buckaroo Banzai and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead are lots of fun.
Thanks so much for the recommendations -- I have not seen most of these yet, only Dr. Strangelove and Brazil. Brazil was one of my favorite films for a long time -- I need to rewatch it. Not enough hours in a day: I also want to watch or rewatch everything by Rob Reiner...
Have you watched any film from Paul Schader's trilogy: First Reformed, The Card Counter, and Master Gardener?
Ha, same here re: Brazil. Although I rewatched it a couple years back and I have to say not quite as good as I remember it. But still pretty decent. Time Bandits is still pretty decent, as well. (Again, very silly, but fun.)
"Have you watched any film from Paul Schader's trilogy: First Reformed, The Card Counter, and Master Gardener?"
Heh, no, like you I have a long list. I'll go move 'em up the list. :-)
On your rec, over the break we have watched Black Bag, Presence, Eddington, Train Dreams, and started Sinners last night. All great! Need to talk my wife into It Was Just An Accident.
Also looking forward to Marty, Nuremberg, Springsteen and Sirat just as soon as I can get my hands on the.
Oh that’s good to hear! Glad you’re enjoying them.
Thanks for turning me onto Warfare. It's a very difficult film for many to Grok. But I can see how it's trying to make a serious and believable war film that might not be outright anti-war but at the very least is extremely sober in it's presentation. I can imagine young men in the future watching it and not being dissuaded from joining the military but getting a more complete picture at what can happen on a mission other than glory.
It's not didactic but I also think it's pretty clearly anti-that-conflict.
Glad to see F1 got an honorable mention. It's a blockbuster done right and Pitt is a fucking movie star, truly one of the last. I saw Eddington on a flight and was surprised.