2025 in movies

Looking back at this list, movies in 2025 were unhinged. Full of morally ambiguous characters looking to find answers within broken, or ass backwards systems. Where 2024 looked more at character psychologies, 2025 highlighted the environments were are subjects to

1. One Battle After Another

American Girl fading in to cap off this movie was the perfect, well earned cherry on top of this epic, vivacious and twisted, saga of an American family. Tears welling up inside, the pre chorus starts and you're just like damn.. in any other movie this might be kinda cheesy but, right now, I'm totally here for it.

One Battle After Another is this incredible viewing experience of going on a long, dark and terrible adventure; but never feeling like work. The film does all of the heavy lifting for you, it is totally engaging in all facets: historical context, narrative structure, character relationships, detours into comedy and play. Its just easy to be part of this world for 3 hours. And that takes serious craftsmanship. You could make the argument that it doesn't push the boundary -- in that it might not take a huge political stance or execute a cinematic miracle. But, as someone in my viewing group said, in a way this story is about the everyman, just doing their part in something greater, in a world filled with the same friends, family, foes, antagonists, that we all deal with. Which doesn't take away from its importance.

Big, big fan!

2. Marty Supreme

If you can get past our protagonist being an irredeemable sadistic narcissist, which you should, you will love Marty Supreme. In a movie where kind heartedness and empathy is like finding water in a dried up well, it’s somehow still too easy to get behind this character.

Timothy Chalamaladingdong… he just kills it. It worries me how much of him is in Marty, I know he’s made comments at awards shows describing how passionately he dreams of being one of the greats. I’m sure he will be, or is already, who’s to say.

I feel like this character is more his speed than someone like Paul Atreides in Dune; he’s great in both obviously — but his ability to play frenetic, compulsive, and fiery is so much more fun.

The script shines. I love how the genre marketing is a total bait and switch. Love all the zany side characters. Love the theme of the pursuit of greatness at great cost, tunnel vision, narcissism, the 50s.

It’s unique in that I don’t mind that every other character in the movie was written only to be trampled, manipulated, tricked, or used by Mr. Marty, to fulfill his financial and suppressed emotional needs. He gets to everyone, the greatest salesman, the rizz god, giver of snake oil. The script doesn’t give many other characters agency or voice, which would be a problem if Chalamay wasn’t so goddamn convincing

3. Sinners

Electric blues with loose, chunky, string plucking and gut slashing baselines overtop a metaphorical western vampire Jim Crow nightmare? A classic ‘get the gang together for the heist’ first act climaxing into a banger blues performance spanning time, space, and the fabric of human existence then transcending into a chaotic blood bath of a romantic comedy thriller infused with real conflict put into action by the darkest sides of human nature?Now that’s a movie for 2025

4. Warfare

That opening scene was the perfect way to intro us to this group of guys and build the rapport the carries through the movie. So fun.

Ray Mendoza / Alex Garland, these guys are crazy. They know how to make warfare cinematic and simultaneously snappy, sparing, and ultra efficient in their story telling. Not a wasted second in this one.

The sound design was a highlight for me, between the flash bangs, exploding IEDs, and gunfire, it’s so immersive.

I just don’t see how you can’t enjoy it, a 90min war movie, that’s emotional, action packed, cinematic, gripping, and most importantly written using only ‘the memory of those directly involved’.

Two claps and a Bravo

5. Eddington

Not gonna sleep on this one even though I should. I had a ball of a time. It was loco, a bit nuts, triggering, funny, topical, close to home, very Ari Aster without the same existential dread leaving the theatre as Hereditary or Midsommer.

It obviously wins some points for being the first ‘blockbuster’ Covid movie to hit theatres. There’s just so many things to say in a movie about Covid still. It’s overwhelming. The movie is overwhelming. It nails whatever sense of frenetic panic and frenzied chaos that came out of the summer of 2020. We all went insane, but also reality was insane. And it’s time to laugh at it a little bit, and reflect on it; in a way other than sitting at the dinner table asking your friend “oh so you were back at home for Covid?”

I imagine a common complaint will be something like this movie is “trying to do too much at once” to which I say captures the exact psychology of everyone trying to keep up with whatever the fuck was happening back then.

I think Pedro Pascal is becoming the new Sean Bean, which I like; I’m super down for him to exit movies less than half way through

“Son, are you fucking retarded?”

6. Weapons

On one hand it’s infuriating to try not to think too logically about how ridiculous this plot is and how it could never realistically play out this way. But on the other hand I have so much fun watching the insanity play out and having no idea where it will or could go.

Weapons was way more ambitious a project than Barbarian. But Cregger has proven once again he’s got the stuff. It’s almost the evolved structure of Barbarian, where the number of perspectives has multiplied and the characters are even richer and fleshed out; but the “stop and go, stop and go” action gets a reprise.

I’m genuinely curious to see what Cregger comes up with next because I really see a lot in common with these two movies, and yet they each individually feel earned and unique, I wonder if he can continue to employ this structure and still make something that feels different.

Also if Cregger wants a floating machine gun in his movie so be it, no questions here

7. Die My Love

Jennifer Lawrence energy channeled into this deeply depressed mother going through a psychotic break is a character I did not expect to connect with as deeply as I did. It was fascinating to watch and felt genuinely fresh and new on film.

I think the haze of psychosis induced memories/fantasies/visions Grace experiences, and we get to see, is the perfect combination of confusing and telling. The same as our dreams often are when we wake up.

I think this movie closes with a dogmatic confidence, leaving you mouth agape thinking “fuuuuuuuuuuuuck”, while also leaving a tidy trail of clues to make sense of how things unraveled, while also leaving you with a handful of questions

There’s so many good moments, things to read into, wonder about. The night sequences were beautiful. Rob Pattinson, Sissy Spacek equally impressive.

8. No Other Choice

My two cents:

1. Wildly entertaining, gripping, and fun story

2. I kept feeling like I’d seen this movie before.

Parasite, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Sorry to Bother You, The Menu, White Lotus

Obviously I’m casting a really wide net into this genre, but I could see the elements from each of these movies present in the ideas of No Other Choice. E.g. Class oppression taken to a breaking point (parasite), complicity of violence in the face of lost dignity (Nicole Kidman, killing of a sacred deer), absurdism to show power imbalance (sorry to bother you)

I think this one uniquely focuses on the way the working class struggles internally through forced competition with each other for resources. Though parasite does this too between the two parasitic families, but not to the same extent.

But truthfully I think this is just a really popular genre around the world because it’s a direct reflection of how we all feel about our reality. What it shares with other films in the genre didn’t take away from the experience I had viewing it

Great performances, great music, great story!

9. Bugonia

I like when Emma Stone says “Thank you so so much Tom” to all her subordinates. I reminds me of when a granola girl says “thank you soooo much” when she gets her Frappuccino at Better Buzzed Coffee.

Q/A section:

Q: Vic did you fall asleep during this movie

A: Yes I did

Q: were you in a bad mood yesterday
A: yes I was

Q: did you like the movie?

A: I liked it, but I didn’t love it, but I also didn’t see the whole thing. I think where it fell short for me was knowing where it was going to go, it made the task of getting there feel slightly tedious. I do kind of feel like it could be trimmed down. Perhaps even be a short film, like a section of Kinds of Kindness. Maybe it originally was, it even has the exact same cast, maybe Lanthimos just thought there was enough there to make a feature.

Q: why are you doing this review in the form of a q&a

A: I have no idea

I’m stealing this thought from another review but the Don character is so interesting because without him this movie would feel so morally confused and ungrounded, kudos to that actor and the writing team for recognizing the Emma jesse combo of chaos would simply be too unhinged

10. Train Dreams

The equivalent of a Bob Ross motion picture. This one absolutely got me in my feels. Aside from the stunning, rich shots of the great outdoors, there were some dialogue sequences by the fire that captured me. The matte black darkness of the sky, outlining the face of Joel Edgerton, as his face aglow from the soft kiss of firelight, as he internally contemplates his existence exchanging words with a fellow human. The film created a mood that I wanted to sit with, to stew in and ponder, and I appreciate my time with it.