With Eyes East

#24-#1

Oh, believe you me, I was tempted to compile one of those “Top 25 of 2025” lists, but I was having a hard time striking a balance between personal favorites and movies I thought were the best regardless of my own opinion, and alas, it was turning into a collection of the movies I’m always talking about here and on other blogs (does anyone need to hear me discuss Ghost in the Shell 2 ever again?). I would’ve liked to have crowned Lady Vengeance number one (spoilers!), but I’ve never known where to start with that movie. So, this is my top ten movies of 2025, and as far as the year goes, it was pretty solid, with a lot of interesting developments at the box office. A certain geeky strain of blockbuster would appear to be dying out (given the collapsing profits of superhero movies and the malaise around the most recent Jurassic Park) as another, even more cynical product continues its upward inferno-spiral (live-action Disney remakes). Meanwhile, we had headline after headline about the mid-budget blockbuster, from Sinners and Weapons to even Final Destination: Bloodlines. Specialty fare like KPop Demon Hunters and the rerelease of Revenge of the Sith – as well as the incursion of anime and high-profile foreign films – continue to blur the lines at the multiplex as we head toward the (next) end of cinema.

By the way, I have no doubt that Netflix’s acquisition of Warner Bros. will be destructive and likely cause the kind of industry ripples that’ll finally put me out of a job, after surviving the strike and the fires and the government defunding public media (long story), but box office analysts have been predicting the extinction of movies for years now. Things will cost more and the billionaires will get paid (not seeing the connection), but there’s always gonna be an audience for movies – and, I believe, for the theatrical experience. Just take the damn waiters out, please. You don’t need to order a hamburger during the opening scene of Gladiator II, you big jerk. Anyway, of course the joke here is that this top ten is a countdown of every newly released movie I saw this year (excluding 2024 holdovers like Ghost Killer and even Baby Assassins: Nice Days). And to that, here are some titles I missed but still intend to watch: No Other Choice, The Secret Agent, The Shrouds, Dark Nuns, Old Woman with the Knife, Tornado, Highest 2 Lowest, Primitive War, Red Sonja, Him, Resurrection, Havoc. Yes, Havoc. But boy, did I ever watch–

24) The Cleaner

Because I don’t want to give Eddington the distinction of even “worst movie of the year,” we’re kicking things off with a 2025 release that’s been forgotten a dozen times over, something called Cleaner or maybe The Cleaner. You know, I’ve always wished for a proper B-movie action pantheon for actresses in the style of Charles Bronson in the ‘70s, Schwarzenegger in the ‘80s, and so on. Junk like Death Wish III and The Running Man. Lots of fun! Unfortunately, when producers deign to make a woman-fronted action movie, it’s like a “big deal,” they overthink it, the movie bombs, and the actress never does action again. At least, that’s my read. As such, I may have found a hero in an unlikely place: Daisy Ridley, and that makes me kind of sad. I remember joking with a friend shortly after The Force Awakens about Ridley’s future, given the long-running Star Wars curse. “I think she’ll be fine,” we agreed, feeling like it was ludicrous to even insist. She shouldn’t have to be making B action movies, even if she’s staying in shape for Rey Skywalker: A Star Wars Story. Cleaner is my first Daisy Ridley action movie, and on the other side of it, I’m yet to properly assess her action star status because there wasn’t a whole lot of action in this one. So while Eddington and others were probably more painful viewing experiences, Cleaner commits the great sin of teasing something genuinely cool and not delivering. I’ll see you in the next one, Daisy.

23) Eddington

This is a very long and uneventful movie born out of a time we’ve culturally decided to forget about (or which COVID made us forget about). It’s an intriguing premise, with pandemic tensions infecting an isolated small town, seen acutely in a battle between an anti-masker sheriff and a mayor of color (who’s trying to get an AI data center built). As we see, neither man lives up to his ideologies – adopted hastily and deteriorating into grift – and neither does anyone else, whether Black Lives Matter protestors or Antifa or whatever other key word the filmmakers plucked off of social media to engage with as incuriously as possible. While this almost Stephen King-like premise of a small town imploding never actually comes to a full-blown riot with all the catharsis of Do the Right Thing or Strange Days, nor the anarchic chaos of even First Blood, the movie was actually starting to win me back in its last hour, with a surprise gunshot that kicks off a largely unrelated movie. The fun doesn’t last, however, as Eddington spirals into dull nonsense both plot-wise and thematically. I can accept (if not necessarily appreciate) that a movie can dress up in a sandwich board with the text “Politics” and be provocative, even confrontational, yet still leave the conclusions to the audience, but the film turns on the idea that everyone is full of crap, and that’s just about the least interesting worldview an artist can espouse.

I recently read a blurb on a different top ten list, where Eddington had placed, and the note was something about how it pokes fun across the political spectrum (groan) and that Democrats could learn from this movie about why they lost the election. That’s obviously a different conversation, between adults and children who believe themselves to be adults, but what I especially don’t like is the idea which occasionally creeps into liberal Hollywood movies that liberal politics are something abstract, like a choice or an outfit we pick out of the ideology walk-in closet. Sure, for some people, it is a choice, but why should that be discouraged? Is their hypocrisy worthy of three-hour, rambling, tottering anti-cinema? This spike in my chest is exactly what I felt after Midsomar, an earlier of this director’s films, which seemed to be a peek inside the minds of the sort of liberal allies being satirized in Eddington. Early in that similarly overlong movie (I seriously don’t understand how Hereditary was so good), American tourists witness a foreign (European) culture do strange, violent things, and the audience asks, “Who are we to judge?” Jesus Christ, dude. I didn’t know “accepting people who are different” was such a horror movie for you.

22) Jurassic World Rebirth

This is one of those cases where it’s not even just a bad movie, it’s a production which I fundamentally do not respect, and that’s rare and weird. Jurassic World Dominion is a bad movie, but it is, in some ways, ambitious. I can believe that someone above the line on that set cared about what they were doing. Rebirth, directed by someone pulled in last-minute, was nonetheless greenlit before Dominion’s release. So, it wasn’t a reaction to that film’s negative critical reception (which impacted its box office returns not at all), and yet it was positioned as a soft reboot. Same continuity, but new characters, new storyline. Implicit in that is a promise that things will be different. From what, though? How do you even know what needs to change? The answer turned out to be “scale” (no, not “scales,” silly). Where Dominion was a globe-trotting adventure, this is a return to basics. Not in the way of the original Jurassic World, of course, but rather the maligned Jurassic Park sequels to which that movie was a breath of fresh air. That’s right: dinosaur island. Because that’s worked so well, not twice but three times now.

As a moviegoer, I’m not supposed to factor in this behind-the-scenes carnage. In practice, it’s more like “too soon,” but that’s hardly the case with dinosaur movies, being that there are so few these days. And besides, the evidence is on-screen. Jurassic World Rebirth feels like a movie built from the top down. The one moment I go back to when I think about it is the scene where a character is about to be attacked from behind by a velociraptor, and in one shot, the velociraptor is attacked by a different predator, all while the character in the foreground winces. A clever, stylish moment that is nevertheless a moment, not a set piece. It’s like a tableau, like a museum diorama. Something presented, not lived in. And there are real set pieces in the movie, but with one brief exception, they’re more oriented toward spectacle than suspense. The exception is when the girl is trying to inflate a raft while the T.rex slowly awakens nearby. That’s the space you have to play in. Otherwise, it’s just dinosaurs running around an abandoned worker village.

Which, by the way, is still great in theory. But unlike in The Lost World and even Jurassic Park III, the art direction for this one is off, more in line with an Alien prequel. And another thing – no, just joshin’. I could probably summon the inner strength to bitch about this movie for hours, but that would almost give it legitimacy, like it’s part of a conversation, and it simply isn’t. It’s a pop-up store. A bunch of executives erected this rickety thing and made a lot of money, and now it’s gone. It wasn’t meant for us, really, and it was naive to have ever thought otherwise.

21) The Hand that Rocks the Cradle

If I didn’t know this was a remake – of a movie from the time of the more famous Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction – I’d have no idea why it was made. It’s about a mother, Caitlyn, who hires a nanny, Polly, and Polly is a little off. She does things like frame Caitlyn as a bad cook and disobey instructions, you know, regarding the handling of children, and Caitlyn – while rightfully suspicious – handles each incremental trespass with disproportionate panic, at least, considering her audience. It reminded me of how the mom in the movie Orphan had a DUI, so nobody believed that their newly adopted kid was actually a 30-year-old murderer. But isn’t that way more interesting? Now they’re making a third Orphan, set even further back in time! Nothing particularly crazy happens in The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, and it really seems like the big reveal at the end should’ve been information we had up-front. Apparently, we did in the original. But if you’re like me and wanted to see Mary Elizabeth Winstead vs. Maika Monroe, you… mostly got it. Maybe when they get around to The Guest II, Winstead can take up Dan Stevens’s role. Hard to say who’s hotter. Did he die in that movie, or did he do a Michael Myers and disappear?

20) KPop Demon Hunters

There’s this weird thing that happens sometimes when forces external to a movie can encourage a second look. I was so sure, while watching KPop Demon Hunters, that it was a children’s movie with a less persuasive moral resolution than your average 2000s-era Pixar or Dreamworks lark. It wasn’t that the artistry was cynical but rather the artist’s tools. It only looks the way it does because that’s how every animated movie looks at this moment, and it’s only wearing K-pop like a skin despite being a decidedly Asian-American story (which is not to say that Asian-Americans aren’t a part of K-pop). But it moves fast and doesn’t get bogged down on character or world-building, elements which do seem pat. Like, sincerely. Not every movie needs these things.

Now, KPop Demon Hunters was already popular by the time I watched it, and then it just got more popular. And more popular. The fictional K-pop group Huntr/x was charting higher than any real-world girl group. Every K-celeb I follow on Instagram was grooving to the music and challenging themselves with the insane high notes of “Golden.” And there were memes on top of memes and erotic fan art (sent to me by others, I swear) and not one whiff of offense taken to “Derpy Tiger.” How far we’ve come, eh, Hasbro? The ironic thing is that I love the idea of this movie, which is only one or two ticks off the premise for Baby Assassins – my big story of 2025. Badass K-pop idols? Yes, please. I also love its success, and sympathize terribly, being hopelessly captivated by countless K-pop acts. The movie itself, though? Just didn’t do it for me.

19) Orang Ikan

Billed as the blander, more accurate “Monster Island” here in the States, this is a monster movie that comes up short on the monster. It’s got the “island” part covered, though. And it’s too bad, because it’s basically like the Creature from the Black Lagoon woke up on the wrong side of the lagoon and needed to rip some heads off. Good! But he does that, like, once.

18) Wolf Man

What a woofer! Apparently, the idea of a wolf man is irresistible to Hollywood but impossible to get right. The 2025 incarnation feels like a sidestep to the problem, being more of an interpretation of the familiar lore. The lycanthropy is both an infection and a metaphor, altogether being what I imagine people don’t like about “elevated horror.” It’s not a terrible setup, with a man struggling to protect his family from his own wolf transformation, but it’s too bare bones in execution, as if afraid to engage with any of the ideas in service of a slick, minimalist presentation. This makes the pretty cool werewolf-on-werewolf fight choreography all the more unexpected. Honestly, I don’t hate the wolf man design here. As much as I prefer the Crinos form (allow me to push my glasses back up), I admit I’m not passionate enough about the creature to lament its absence.

Sadly, my impression of Leigh Whannell as a director is impacted, having never gotten around to his critically-acclaimed Invisible Man. Instead, I jumped from Upgrade (which I really didn’t like) to this one, a truly bizarre little horror movie. It might be called “Wolf Man,” but you know, it feels less like an attempt at a definitive tale than something that might happen in a pocket of the world where werewolves exist. A contained thriller with one location and four characters, with a bit more gruesome imagery (body horror!) than something like A Quiet Place but nowhere near the tension or suspense. There was just enough here for an episode of Masters of Horror or part of an anthology movie like V/H/S. As a feature film, it’s not the most engaging thing.

17) Ash

As far as 2025 goes, Ash was the only time I was alone in the theater. Off of a cool-looking trailer promising Dead Space-like sci-fi/horror with Eiza Gonzalez in a long-overdue lead role, I was totally dialed-in. I didn’t become undialed until around the middle, probably, when I realized that nothing particularly interesting had really happened, and nothing would until the very end. It’s a trippy movie presented out of sequence, as Gonzalez’s astronaut character pieces together the mystery of why all her crewmates are dead. Upon the mystery’s resolution, I’m not sure why the movie was presented this way, and the hyper-stylized flourishes of director Flying Lotus only exacerbate a needlessly confusing script. However, Eiza Gonzalez does battle a Necromorph, effectively, with a futuristic flamethrower, and that was awesome. Also, Iko Uwais is in this (a sentence you can say about a lot of his Hollywood movies).

16) Companion

Marketed like “the next Barbarian” with a minimal, teasing trailer and words like “from the producers of Barbarian,” Companion is, alas, no Barbarian. Nor is it like Weapons, both of which are difficult to define, genre-wise. Companion, on the other hand, is achingly familiar. It’s the story of how things go wrong when robot is girl, but it’s not exciting or gripping like Ex Machina. Not terrible by any means, but nothing to add to a surprisingly overcrowded subgenre.

Maybe not so surprising.

15) Ballerina

Not much to say about this one. I think the fundamental difference between Ballerina and its forebear John Wick is how each character is, well, characterized. John is a silent badass, and we believe in him partially because he’s played by Keanu Reeves but mostly because he’s doing incredible things. The character in Ballerina is similarly capable but disappointingly moral. By giving her more, she becomes plainer. She achieves rather than redefines archetype. And an action movie can have the best action in the world, which the John Wick movies kind of do (I know it’s cool to hate on them, so call me a codger if you must), but it’s all flashing light and color without the foundation of character and story. Case in point: this movie has a flamethrower duel, and I think I yawned.

14) Death of a Unicorn

I like to think that 2025 was the year that “eat the rich” officially died. Not only did “the rich” win in real life, but I also saw a movie poster for something called Coyotes with Justin Long, which appears to be a movie about killer coyotes, and the tagline is “eat the rich.” What? Anyway, the undoing of Death of a Unicorn might be its feints toward social satire, as it never blends the commentary and the monster mayhem as effectively as is suggested by the very premise. In this movie, a lawyer accidentally runs over a unicorn on his way to a meeting with his wealthy clients on their isolated estate, and when he arrives, the one-percenters want to monetize the mythical beast against the protest of the lawyer’s daughter and the arrival of the unicorn’s beastly, vengeful parents. Absolutely great setup for a knowing B-movie on the order of Tremors or Gremlins, but this one doesn’t evolve past the setup. It uses the terms of its premise as a crutch, relying on broad archetypes, but it’s in service of making a well-understood point rather than building character. The level of gore is also surprising, and borderline unfun, which I didn’t see coming. Unicorn power!

13) One Battle After Another

Intermittently amusing, this event movie coming from a master filmmaker feels like a hollow exercise in style and details. It’s too high-minded for the discipline of dramatic release or thoughtful comedy but too puerile to say anything substantive. A unique kind of disappointment for me, because I wasn’t so much stirred by its trailer but saw all the positive buzz, up to and including the dangerous label of “best film of the decade.” There’s enough to chew on, like the mirroring of the rebels and the fascists with their secret societies, and the generational differences between revolutionaries – and less-than-generous avenues to take with each (a both-sides thing? And would an even old-school freedom fighter really dislike pronouns?) – but not enough excitement to animate me. Not a lot of memorable visuals despite a great camera, and characters more interesting as the movers of an interesting world than as players in an unfolding plot. Sean Penn’s performance was the highlight, and I appreciated in concept Leo slip-sliding around the frame but found his character to be exhausting in practice. People are rarely at their most engaging when they’re high.

I was also shocked by how similar this movie was to Eddington, between the desert setting, a character shooting a big machine gun, and the play with politics that doesn’t ultimately commit to a perspective. And again, that’s not the end-all of storytelling, where ambiguity and paradox thrive, but it kind of is in politics, especially these days. I can totally see that someone might look at this movie the way I look at last year’s Civil War (a movie more interesting than the way its creator Alex Garland talks about it), with value beyond where it lands on the ideological spectrum. I didn’t identify that value in either Eddington or One Battle After Another, and I was deflated by both.

A runner-up for favorite movie quote of the year: “Daddy-daughter games? Daddy-daughter games?”

12) Nobody 2

As much as this is the movie that broke the camel’s back for me on the renaissance of Hollywood action, it’s still a diverting good time. This is roughly where the list starts to turn from bad to good, though we’re not quite there yet.

11) Predator: Killer of Killers

2022’s Prey was a great movie – one of my favorites – and a promise. It was Predator vs. Native Americans, so surely we’ll someday see Predator vs. Vikings, Predator vs. Samurai, and Predator vs. WWII. Well, that’s exactly what we get in Predator: Killer of Killers, but with two strings. One, it’s animated. I’m not a huge fan of the visual style, but I’m also not too chuffed by the prospect of animating something that works so well in live-action: practical effects, rubber monster suits, and in the first movie, the spectacle of the human physique. Two, aren’t we kind of blowing our wad here? In some way, this movie is like an insurance policy against the likelihood we never actually get Predator vs. Vikings and so on, but I hope it didn’t guarantee we never get those movies. Especially since – and this is the important part – it’s fine, but not nearly as satisfying as its 2025 counterpart.

10) Black Bag

Here’s part two of an earlier entry on the list, as we have a Michael Crichton-flavored techno-thriller written by David Koepp, but unlike Jurassic World Rebirth, this one isn’t dumb as bricks. In fact, part of the disappointment around its mild box office returns was that audiences weren’t showing up for truly adult-oriented fare. This was a thinking man’s thriller, you see. And true enough, I did not see this in theaters, but it’s been my policy to miss every Steven Soderbergh movie that comes out. It’s no secret that he’s one of the best and most interesting American filmmakers out there, but man, he cranks ‘em out so fast I can’t keep up. I’m still trying to figure out if Traffic was really good like I think or racist like I heard once. Maybe his last film to break into the mainstream was the excellent (and, of course, prescient) Contagion, which was a true-blue procedural. Black Bag is similar in that way, a game of spies where spies try to figure out who among the spies is a spy. I mean, it’s good, but I’ve never been much of a spy guy, and I think the problem is that it never feels like more, in scope or complexity, than a modern TV show. I mean, Michael Fassbender was playing a spy on the show Agency at the same time. So, if you’re wondering why people didn’t show up for this movie, it’s because they’ve been watching it at home for the past ten years.

Unfortunately, we’ve entered the top ten with a movie I liked but wasn’t crazy about, and that’ll pretty much continue through till number three. It was a good movie year, and these are still better numbers than I ought to ask for. Looking at the 2024 post, it was a similar story.

9) Sinners

I remember seeing the trailer for this one in theaters a few times in a row – second only to The Black Phone 2, which I got real sick of – and telling myself, “This is the kind of movie I’d like to be watching but there’s no way I’m gonna actually watch it.” The image of Michael B. Jordan as a Prohibition-era gangster is what really caught my eye – and there were two of him! But I opted out because I was already seeing too many new movies, though I certainly had a chance when it was becoming one of the biggest stories of the year. The sticking point? Well, like Nomak, I hate vampires, and I’m sure I’ve discussed it before. I might say that the creature requires the right, usually gothic framing, and as such, I loved last year’s Nosferatu to death (or undeath), but I also really loved the miniseries Midnight Mass, which takes place in Jerusalem’s Lot or thereabout. And like the Netflix show, Sinners is my favorite kind of genre story: one that builds up to the monster carnage with actual character work. The script features a web of complex relationships, set up in almost each instance with a two-hander scene of lived-in history and economical, affecting drama. So, when I say that the trouble comes as it usually does with the vampires, this time it’s not just because they’re a lame monster with lame rules, but because the careful, compelling setup doesn’t pay off in the stake-and-fire action. The movie seems to stop when the conflict is introduced.

Still, Michael B. Jordan gives one of the best performances of the year, and he’s flanked by amazing talent like Delroy Lindo and Wunmi Mosaku. It’s also a really nice-looking movie, which doesn’t exoticize the past with color filters but touches it up enough to not look like the garish cosplay of low-budget historical epics. And one of the more unusual credits I noticed was Ludwig Göransson as an executive producer, in addition to doing the music (he’s worked with director Ryan Coogler since Fruitvale Station). It made me think of seeing Martin O’Donnell sitting in on creative meetings for the early Halo games, that every ingredient of the project should feel born out of a creative core, but of course, Sinners is specifically about music (and on a similar wavelength as KPop Demon Hunters). I didn’t really know what to make of its themes, nor its centerpiece “history of music” sequence, but it’s clearly coming from a filmmaker who’s bringing ideas to Hollywood rather than television experience, fanboy cred, or whatever else is churning out the titles we saw earlier in this list. And what a great ending. I mean, I enjoyed the mid-credits stuff, but Smoke’s revenge on the Klan members was a thing of beauty.

8) Mickey 17

I’m sympathetic to the idea that this movie is kind of exhausting to think about, and maybe a surprise for moviegoers who know Director Bong for Parasite first (and not even the Netflix-distributed, widely-seen Okja). It’s got dark comedy and earnest sentimentality applied in improper proportions, but it’s another of the year’s great performances, here surrounded by intricate world-building and all moving with a dizzying, propulsive abandon. So, why was Mickey 17 one of the box office stories of the year – not the good kind – inspiring commentary about directors going from the Oscar stage to a vanity project? First, that’s an absurd narrative if you take a look at Bong’s filmography, as the scope of his movies has regularly expanded and contracted. It’s just that he treats his big-budget blockbusters as seriously as smaller, artier fare like Mother and Memories of Murder. Honestly, I think it’s that Mickey 17 is too goddamn French, despite technically being less French than Snowpiercer. But if there’s anything American audiences have historically enjoyed, it’s Luc Besson movies and Alien: Resurrection, and that’s roughly the zone this one inhabits.

7) Warfare

An experiment to see if the technical aspects of film can recreate an especially painful memory for its Navy SEAL co-director, Warfare doubles as a thought problem for the medium of film altogether: Does a movie always say something? However driven by clicks, the discourse inspired by Warfare leaned boringly in the realm of “Is it an anti-war movie or not?” and then, “Is a truly anti-war movie even possible??” Warfare is exactly what it looks like: a recreation of a real-life battle which took place in Iraq in 2006 using the language of film rather than a documentary. We only learn as many moral or sociopolitical lessons as the soldiers who lived and died that day. If you think that means it’s inherently pro-military, I think that’s an uninteresting view. For me personally, the Iraq War is what permanently damaged my ability to fully identify with this country, but that doesn’t invalidate the people who lived it, nor their stories. Putting all this aside, Warfare ranks so highly here because it’s a fascinating experiment and a satisfying example of competence porn. It’s also a who’s-who of up-and-coming stars, like Joseph Quinn, Charles Melton, Noah Centineo, and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, all making Will Poulter look like the old veteran. Mark Kermode was quite impressed that this movie and Death of a Unicorn released almost simultaneously, featuring wildly divergent performances by Poulter.

6) Friendship

The trailer for Friendship was so compelling that I finally got around to revisiting Tim Robinson, who I’d seen here and there but never really “got.” Like Tim Heidecker, he represents a kind of comedy that you almost have to meet halfway. You have to know that Heidecker’s doing satire at the same time he’s doing a standup routine, and Robinson’s comedy requires even more explanation. I might watch a sketch from I Think You Should Leave and it’s not until seeing a comment just quoting a line back that I realize, “Oh, yeah, that is funny,” and then, “That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.” Or read. And what a year to get into Tim Robinson – watching all of I Think You Should Leave and most of Detroiters – because his HBO show The Chair Company, co-created with Zach Kanin, reaches similarly hysterical “I can’t believe what I’m seeing” heights. Friendship, however, directed by Andrew DeYoung, hits the cringe nerve harder. It was a whole-body cringe, at several points.

The basic premise is that Robinson’s character Craig is befriended by a handsome, charismatic neighbor, Austin (Paul Rudd), who has interesting hobbies and a friend group. But after an embarrassing incident, he’s exiled by Austin and the group, and schemes to either get back into their good graces or recreate what he once, fleetingly, had. The scene where he invites to his basement a bunch of coworkers who don’t like him and tries to show off his own interesting hobbies (just ideas swiped from Austin) is brutal. Unfortunately, for providing us such a unique atmosphere and an irresistible hook, Friendship doesn’t fully justify the nearly two-hour runtime. I think the best point of comparison is to 2019’s The Lighthouse, which also felt too long and too painful, but it’s probably on purpose in each case. Take that for what you will, but instead of directly recommending Friendship, I’d recommend I Think You Should Leave, and if you like that, you’ll want to see this.

Friendship also features my quote of the year, a one-word quote, and it’s said a few times within this exchange, where our hero Craig is pointing a gun at his former friends:

CRAIG: You! Who the hell are you? You guys got a new guy?! There’s a new guy? What’s your name?
JIMP: Jimp. I got two twin girls.
CRAIG: “Jim”?
JIMP: No. “Jimp.” It’s like “jump…” with an “I.”
CRAIG: “Jimp”?
(Craig puts the gun down)
CRAIG: I’m sorry. This is fucking insane.

5) Frankenstein

In this edition of 2024’s Nosferatu, we have another classical interpretation of a ye olde horror storye, from a passionate filmmaker who’s been thinking and tinkering at it for years. The realization of “Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein” is truly no surprise in the end, being a gorgeous, sweeping melodrama with sympathy (and possibly romance) for the monster. The funny thing about del Toro is that we tend to focus so much on his subject matter, as the foremost genre filmmaker working today, that we might overlook the technical qualities which have remained consistent over the last twenty-plus years. His camera always moves, and it’s very generous, choosing not to obscure the supernatural element in shadow, nor the colorful, complex production design. Now add falling snow, and you’ve got one of the prettiest movies of the year. It’s not just gothic, it’s Mia Gothic. In still frames and promotional material, Frankenstein looked a bit gaudy, but I think that owes to the film’s heightened, almost theatrical reality. It’s not shooting for verisimilitude or historical immersion – a marked difference from Nosferatu – but in creating a world that can properly house the original mad scientist and his tragic creature.

4) Predator: Badlands

My most anticipated movie of the year, Predator: Badlands might as well be called “the next Predator movie,” because I’m always gonna be excited for that. Ironically, my alternate title fits Badlands the least, being a conscious hard swing, away from the sci-fi/slasher formula into the wider canvas of action-adventure. With its focus on the interlocking ecosystem of an alien planet, this is like a jump from The Terminator to Avatar. And so, Badlands was never gonna match expectations set by Prey, whose “woman versus monster” setup was as appealing as movies can be, but it’s the best possible execution of its bold premise, with the very best payoffs a blockbuster can provide.

3) A House of Dynamite

Our final procedural of the night (I assume night has fallen since you started reading this), and one that encompasses a wide range of procedures! Directed with characteristic intensity by Kathryn Bigelow, this is a speculation of what happens inside the situation rooms and command centers when a nuclear weapon of unknown origin launches against the United States. In other words, it’s the American Shin Godzilla.

2) Weapons

While maybe not the number one item, Weapons is without a doubt the most fun I had at the movies this year, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since August. Unlike even Bong Joon-ho’s own entry on the list, it’s a thriller very much like Parasite, with an unpredictable, unfolding plot that deploys enough scares along the way that it’s truly best enjoyed in a crowd (and of course, by knowing as little as possible going in). It’s also the entry that excited me most about the medium of film, that a horror movie can be scary and accessible, funny and dramatic, and with ideas under the hood rather than bold across the page. There’s something almost magical about it, that a high-concept idea could pop into a writer’s mind and survive the machinery of production and marketing to arrive intact and fulfilled on screen. It shouldn’t work, but it’s directed within an inch of its life, juggling tones and pushing slowly into dark corners. A fairy tale told from a different perspective – or multiple perspectives – making for a roller coaster experience, Weapons is the first 2025 movie I’d recommend, to anyone.

1) 28 Years Later

Time may not be kind to 28 Years Later, as it’s only the first act of a three-film story which could ultimately disappoint, but if I know anything about its writer Alex Garland, man, that third act is gonna be nuts. Weapons is probably the safer number one, or Baby Assassins: Nice Days – alas, a 2024 release – but I really fell in love with this movie. Like A House of Dynamite, it’s an exercise in ideas and imagery that I already really like, even if I’m only slightly more fond of zombies than I am of vampires. Maybe what really won me over is that I got a Predator spine-rip, something not guaranteed by modern Mortal Kombat movies or even Predator sequels! The emotional father-son journey through a surprisingly beautiful post-apocalypse (Garland’s a big fan of the Last of Us video game, and director Danny Boyle makes some of the most visually striking movies ever) gives way to a sensitive reflection on death and nature to breathtaking dramatic ends, anchored by incredible performances. As ever, Ralph Fiennes is the standout, even among impressive work by Jodie Comer and newcomer Alfie Williams, but I have to tip my hat to Aaron Taylor-Johnson, an actor I’d written off after his cardboard turn in 2014’s cardboard Godzilla. He imbues a durable post-apocalyptic archetype with pathos and complexity, the embodiment of the isolated British Isles under quarantine (he would’ve voted Leave and regretted it later).

Perhaps a byproduct of its nature as an introductory act, the start of an unexpected journey, its actual plot structure is wonky. It’s got two acts, neither of which build toward a climax. This leaves 28 Years Later as an inverted action thriller, which starts loud – the image of Jamie and Spike running from the “Alpha” on the flooded bridge against the cosmic night sky is absolutely gorgeous – and ends quietly, with a mournful whisper. And then loud again for its infamous, ludicrous coda. It’s a bit of a crowded January with No Other Choice (finally), a Hard-Boiled rerelease (already got the ticket!), and Avatar: Fire and Ash (I’m doing it), but rest assured, I’ll be seated for 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. I can’t believe it’s so soon.

And that brings us to the end of the end of the end. Sometimes I watch a movie and think, “It’s nice not to write anything about this.” Only a truly insane or inspiring individual would log all their opinions on everything all the time.