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Watched on Thursday June 5, 2025.

It can’t compare to the mainline John Wicks, but the action and pacing keep things consistently entertaining and scrappy. It’s also maybe the funniest movie in this franchise, and it’s great seeing Ana de Armas go full-force as a white-knuckled action lead (even if the performance doesn’t have the raging bite I feel it needed).

For an apparently deeply troubled production, this came out pretty dang solid.

I like 28 Days Later for what was - at the time - a pretty refreshing innovation to the zombie genre, its portrayal of societal collapse, and most of the characters. But the obnoxiously shaky action and slight waste of Naomie Harris's character hold it back in my eyes.

Well, 28 Weeks Later sure doesn't fix the action. If anything, I swear it's even worse, downright incomprehensible most of the time! Not to mention the film's color grading can be a bit ugly on the eyes. But thanks to how it continues to show the brutality of this apocalypse in new ways, a memorable new main character, and a downright depressing ending, this still pulls through as a decent follow-up.

Danny and Michael Philippou have now established two things about themselves: they love film titles that are also commands, and they have zero qualms with putting innocent children in traumatic situations that would make Reagan from The Exorcist think she got off easy. The brothers’ last film, Talk to Me, established them as one of the most promising new forces in horror, and Bring Her Back is here to double down on that promise. The film is about two step-siblings Andy and Piper (Billy Barratt and Sora Wong) whose father (Piper’s biological father) is found dead. They’re put into foster care and taken in by Laura (Sally Hawkins), who seems sweet and understanding at first. But if you’ve seen any horror movie ever, you can guess that she has much darker intentions for these two.

Yeah, Bring Her Back isn’t the most groundbreaking horror film by any means, as it relies on a very familiar template and set of tropes. But it’s one of the very few I’ve seen that takes pretty much full advantage of every opportunity thrown its way when it comes to being a bleak, disturbing, touching story with complicated, heartfelt, and/or twisted character dynamics. Andy alone exemplifies that: he starts out sympathetic as a teen who loses his father and wants to look out for his younger, blind sister. But because of Piper’s blindness, he bears all the weight of actually seeing their father dead and suffering from PTSD. He nobly tries to keep her from knowing the harshness of his death, but he’s also irresponsible in shielding her from the truth.

But on top of that, he feels a real pressure to not let his trauma manifest because he’s being tested on whether he’ll be a suitable guardian for Piper once he turns 18. And that’s before he’s under the care of a woman who poses a secret threat to him and Piper, and who goes to despicable lengths to prey on every weakness she can find. Which is, in and of itself, upsetting because those lengths also include her growing closer to Piper and making him slowly feel sidelined, which is exactly how he felt as the nonbiological relative of Piper and her father, which subsequently puts him at risk of falling back into the terrible cycle he’d succumbed to before… or, at least, looking like he is.

Bring Her Back is all about these kinds of cycles, if the constant imagery of circles throughout the film didn’t give that away. It uses supernatural means to show how people put themselves and others in continuous traps of abuse and repeated mistakes, whether it’s deliberate on someone else’s part or, more often than not, the result of someone unwilling or unable to move on from past losses. Or, in Piper’s case, being kept in the dark from the full extent of those losses and therefore at risk of a manipulator, but still trying to hold onto some innocence even when the truth becomes undeniable.

Billy Barratt gives a very soulful performance that handles all these complications with such care. But Sally Hawkins is, unsurprisingly, the highlight with her insanely ranged performance as a pained, outwardly loving, but gradually terrifying presence. I also credit Sora Wong for doing so well in her first film performance, with her actual real-life blindness being a nice bonus to already solid work. Another child actor, Jonah Wren Phillips, plays Laura’s other adopted son who… well, let’s just say he really knows how to chew the scenery.

And like I said, the Philippous do not hesitate to put every character through absolute hell. Bring Her Back is as upsetting from an emotional perspective as it is with its use of blood, violence, and hellish imagery. All the typical ingredients you’d probably look for in a horror movie are here, but not in a “fun” way, especially when children are on the receiving end much more often than not. This movie throws nearly every form of abuse towards its characters possible, and it’s the kind of experience that makes it very easy to not finish your popcorn too early when you’ve suddenly lost your appetite. My audience was largely in morose silence when it was all over, but I could tell they were very much taken by it, whether in a good way or not.

For me, it was very much in a good way… even with all the recoiling and gasping I did throughout. With Bring Her Back, the Philippou brothers have firmly established that they have a freakishly strong understanding of how to seamlessly and relentlessly blend traditional horror with rich character stakes, without resorting to any cheap tactics (seriously, I think there’s one jump-scare at most in this). Piper is the one character whose perspective on everything I would’ve liked to see more of, but the film is mainly structured around Andy’s outlook in the first place so it’s not a big deal. This is still a strong contender for one of the year’s best films, and easily the best new release I’ve seen this May… not like that’s saying much.

2025 Films Ranked

Seeing this on IMAX was a wholly different beast. It’s worth the extra money for the submarine and plane sequences alone.

Anyways, yeah, I still think this is a great movie once you’re clear of the first hour. Until then, it’s not even bad, but it’s muddled. I can have enough of a crazy fun, tense as hell time with it to overlook the earlier bits that don’t quite work.

Ghost Trail is a spy thriller directed by Jonathan Millet, who also co-wrote it with Florence Rochat. The film starts in 2014 and follows Hamid (Adam Bessa), a Syrian refugee who endured detainment and torture at the hands of the Assad regime. Now, with that regime fallen, he’s a literature professor and part of a secret organization with the goal of hunting down its enforcers. On the top of his list is Harfaz, the very guard who tortured him, whom he suspects is a man he finds at his university (Tawfeek Barhom). His mission also requires collaboration with his partner Nina (Julia Franz Richter), whose approach to the situation conflicts with Hamid’s gut instincts.

Ghost Trail has a unique, important, yet uncommonly gentle voice that wants to leave the viewer with a lot of loaded questions concerning one of modern history’s darkest corners. It succeeds in that goal with a solidly made, respectably tactful, and occasionally well written movie, but I’d be lying if I said I was fully engaged the entire way through. It’s a decent movie with a great heart, but to twist a famous quote from Roger Ebert, I’m much more invested in what it’s about than how it’s about it.

Read why in my full review.

An episode of I Think You Should Leave stretched out way longer than it should be. It's funny for a bit, but the joke gets old near the end and doesn't have enough payoff to make it worthwhile.

This movie can bill itself as the last Mission: Impossible movie all it wants. These days, a movie actually being the last of its series is less likely than me getting a healthy amount of sleep at night. Nonetheless, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is the eighth entry in one of my favorite film franchises ever, the fourth film directed by Christopher McQuarrie, and a direct follow-up to 2023’s Dead Reckoning (which I never did a full review for like I promised… sorry 'bout that). The evil AI known as the Entity has ravaged the world, and with the key to its source code in their possession, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team track set off to track it down and seek a way to destroy the Entity for good.

I’d list off the other characters who play a part, but a) You know who they are if you’ve seen Dead Reckoning, and b) the movie itself doesn’t seem to acknowledge them half the time.

Yeah, so, the biggest knock I’ve been hearing against The Final Reckoning is that its first hour is really uneven… and yup, I agree. I know M:I movies are supposed to be complicated, but this one is trying to juggle the usual complicated technicalities with shoehorned recaps of the last movie, horribly spliced callbacks to other movies that mostly feel pointless (outside of one involving III that I really appreciated), filling you in on what's happened in between the last movie and this one, and jumping back and forth between past and present events within this movie. All while barely giving you any time to process what you're being told, except for when it drills information and stakes into your skull so much that you just want to shout, “I get it already!”

If The Final Reckoning is trying to cater to even the most casual Mission: Impossible viewers, fair enough. But the result will probably confuse them even more because of how sporadic the editing around these billion explanations is, and those who do already know what they need to know will just be fed up that the story can’t stay focused on what’s happening here and now. Characters that shined very brightly in previous films now feel almost like afterthoughts, especially Grace (Hayley Atwell) compared to Dead Reckoning. And Gabriel (Esai Morales), the returning human villain… well, he’s still not menacing at all. But I find him ironically hilarious as a complete and total schmuck. I frankly could watch him act like a bratty ten-year-old to Ethan all day… whether or not that was the intention.

Shoutout to Tramell Tillman, though. We basically have Mr. Milchick as a military captain, and his scenery chewing is all I could’ve asked of him.

But when the movie finally stops trying to overexplain the origin of each hair on each character's head or whatever, buckles down with the action, and hones in on the tension of its cataclysmic stakes, The Final Reckoning is everything I love about the newer M:I movies in particular. The editing hugely steps itself up in the middle especially by conveying how two different factions of the team coordinate themselves in such a precarious, likely doomed plan. You can follow what everyone is doing and why – at least the basics of it – and how everything is supposed to come together, in a way that keeps the momentum going even while cutting back and forth to capture the sheer chaos of it all.

The underwater sequence you see in the trailers, while not boasting any “traditional” action, makes the one in Rogue Nation look like training wheels. The film absolutely commits to such a tensely slow bit by playing it out almost in real time, never letting up until it absolutely needs to. These movies always know how to make such a theoretically ridiculous scene feel so plausible. Yet it’s still topped by a climactic plane chase, because rarely do I find myself laughing, stressing the hell out, and getting legitimately uncomfortable so consistently. It's not as flashy as the train sequence from Dead Reckoning, but it feels just as precarious, suspenseful, and stomach-churning.

Which brings me to something else I love McQuarrie’s installments for doing: taking themselves so, so damn seriously. This one in particular has by far the biggest stakes of any entry before it. As in, literal world-ending stakes, without hyperbole. Though the film again fumbles early on by trying so desperately hard to drill that in your head, I appreciate how hard you feel the unparalleled urgency through the acting, cinematography, score, and natural progression of extremely dour ethical dilemmas.

There is so much weight and so little humor in the presentation that you almost forget that, no shit, the world will be saved. It may be a foregone conclusion, but I always appreciate when films lean all the way into what the characters themselves are feeling. Especially when there are legitimately compelling, scarily believable reasons for so many factions to not trust each other and hotly disagree on what the right choices are.

Between Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning, I’d say Dead Reckoning is for sure the better overall film for how it treats most of its characters – still mad about Ilsa – and handles its exposition. But I’m not sure whether I personally enjoyed The Final Reckoning more or less because of how friggin real it felt. I’ll see it again, this time on IMAX (since I wasn’t gonna make the family I saw this with shell out extra money when they really don’t care about that). All I know is that, as baffling as some of its early choices get, I’m just glad this supposedly final chapter pulled itself together in the end. These movies have made for a fantastic ride, but it may be time for us to get off now.

Mission: Impossible Movies Ranked

2025 Films Ranked

I love director Trey Edward Shults, I love Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan as actors, and yes, I really like most music made by The Weeknd. I’m a fan of pretty much every major person involved in Hurry Up Tomorrow, as well as The Weeknd’s album of the same name, so I was really hoping that what conceptually seemed like a musician’s shameless promotional piece would wind up being one of the year’s biggest surprises.
But instead, it’s exactly what a lot of people would probably guess it to be, if they even had an idea in the first place.

Hurry Up Tomorrow, very loosely based on the eponymous album, is about a fictionalized, self-portrayed version of The Weeknd himself, Abel Tesfaye. Tesfaye is reeling after being left by his girlfriend due to his problematic behavior. While he continues succumbing to drugs, stress, and the loss of his voice (something that actually happened to him), he encounters a mysterious fan named Anima (Ortega), who slowly forces him to confront his past sins and toxicity. Keoghan is also present with somewhat limited screen time as Tesfaye’s manipulative manager.

Hurry Up Tomorrow treats itself as a bold, psychological deep dive into a popular entertainer. But the story, style, and messaging are desperately looking for an identity like The Weeknd scouring hallways in his Super Bowl show, and the audience is left with nowhere to go and nothing to take from it. Unless you count the appreciation of how much better his music is on its own compared to this. I can put up with a bit of ego, and I can even put up with style over substance. What I can’t tolerate, however, is when a movie that should be a slam dunk is this frustratingly empty.

Read my full review of the film here.

Watched on Tuesday May 13, 2025.

It is rare for any film franchise to go six movies without a single outright dud. It’s even rarer for a horror franchise to do that. Yet the Scream franchise is one of the very few that’s pulled it off over it’s nearly 30-year run. And while the 1996 original classic obviously deserves credit for kicking that off, nearly as much credit should go to the 1997 sequel Scream 2. This sequel properly continues the story of the original, lays even more crucial groundwork for its own sequels to play with, and establishes that the Scream formula can be replicated with the right amount of twists and turns.

Directed by Wes Craven, who also helmed the first movie (and the third and fourth), Scream 2 takes place two years after the original film. It features the return of Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott, now a college student attempting to move on from her former boyfriend’s Woodsboro murder spree as the now-infamous Ghostface killer. But when her university is attacked by a new Ghostface copycat killer – or killers – she again relies on Deputy Sheriff Dewey Riley (David Arquette), news reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), and fellow survivor Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) to stop the violence. All while this horror sequel lampoons and riffs on other horror sequels.

I briefly talked about this movie before, but now I've got a full review here!

Watched on Saturday May 10, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 10, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 9, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 9, 2025.

Thunderbolts* is the latest film in the long-running Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the first traditional one – as in, non-Deadpool – in a couple of years to be mostly well received. It also contains an ending that takes a very major swing… so major, in fact, that the ending’s success saves the entire project from being just another generic MCU movie, which is largely what it had been beforehand. That’s not to say the finale gets every single thing right, but when such a struggling franchise goes in such an unexpected direction, it’s worth highlighting at the very least. And, of course, having explained.

Thunderbolts* is about a group of shady, ragtag rogues and antiheroes including Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Red Guardian (David Harbour), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko). When they’re all brought together in a deathtrap by their supervisor, corrupt CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), they’re forced to work together to escape, only to discover Valentina’s plans have birthed an even greater threat for them to take down.

As for the nature of the threat, well… that’s where the film’s ending throws you for a loop. How? Let’s dive into the ending and why I believe it saves the entire movie!

Watched on Saturday May 3, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 1, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 27, 2025.

It seriously breaks my heart to call The Legend of Ochi a failure, because everything on the surface makes me want to love it so much. It’s a PG movie that doesn’t feel like it’s prioritizing children, it’s an original movie from A24, and it boasts the kind of stellar, expressive puppetry that almost any other studio surely would’ve just replaced with half-assed CGI. But beyond that, this is a fascinatingly botched mishmash of tones, sequences, and character motivations that feel like they were stapled together from three different versions of the script.

Willem Dafoe’s character thinks his daughter is kidnapped by the feared Ochi… but then he learns she came to his estranged wife willingly… but then he still thinks she’s kidnapped? And the brother knows this and tries to beat his blank-slate, interchangeable friends to her to accomplish… I don’t know what, exactly. Or I guess not, since he eventually returns to them… and he doesn’t tell them what’s really going on for… reasons, I guess? And people fear the Ochi because… why again? Because they’re wild animals? Who never show signs of willingly crossing into human territory? The daughter herself is bitten by the baby Ochi and then can speak to it… but then I guess it wasn’t the bite, rather that… her mother can also do it? Even though she left her when she was young… yet she recognizes her daughter somehow… yet their reactions to such a miraculous reunion are rather muted…

I’m sorry if that’s an extremely incoherent way to explain my thoughts, but I seriously can’t think of any other way to get across how wonky the writing is. But even with all that aside, the Ochi are not that interesting as fantastical creatures. Their behaviors are like any other wild animal, their supposed song-like way of communicating isn’t anything special, and their connection with humanity is shown in only the smallest of scenes that are meaningful because the movie says so. Speaking of songs, this is one of the most aggressively, obnoxiously whimsical film scores I’ve ever heard. It just doesn’t shut up, and it’s downright grating at times even on its own.

It's such a shame, because I truly love the old-school aesthetics of these environments and the practical way the Ochi are brought to life. The film is also not afraid to go long stretches without any dialogue, solely relying on actions and expressions to hold your attention. But unfortunately, The Legend of Ochi doesn’t use those tools to tell an entertaining or even coherent story, and I’m forced to hope that other, better movies make proper use of the approach it was going for.

2025 Films Ranked

I’m in the minority in saying I love 2016’s The ant. I’d go as far as to say it’s one of the most underrated movies of the 2010s for its gritty yet heartfelt story, unconventional structure, and representation of autism we rarely see in this form (as someone who grew up on the spectrum myself). At the same time, the idea of doing a sequel seemed a bit odd, even if director Gavin O’Connor was returning.

When it comes to interactions between characters, this is definitely more lighthearted than the first film. The dynamic between Christian and Braxton is the major highlight as you see these two hardened, very different, yet undeniably linked brothers get the bonding time they’ve been missing for so many years. Even the fact that their antics often veer into buddy comedy territory makes them much more heartwarming because… that’s just how siblings should be able to interact. I again see a bit of myself there since I have brothers who've witnessed the impact of my own autism, which I've felt has both helped and hindered my childhood connection with them.

The mission they’re going on is overall less compelling, but the end goal still leaves you feeling warm and fulfilled because of what it means for both of them, in of strengthening their bonds and just doing something positive in the world for once. The ant 2 maintains its predecessor’s tonal mix of sentimental and harsh, something I find many movies struggle to do this fluidly.

It also retains the complexity of how many moving pieces it juggles, many of which I straight-up could not keep up with when Christian was spouting them at such a rapid pace. (Meaning I just had to trust that what was being said made sense.) Most of the threads pan out, although the way Daniella Pineda’s character factors into the plot borders on extraneous when all is said and done.

Overall, I may not love this movie to the same extent as the original, but it’s a very satisfying sequel with a solid mix of heavy and fun that I greatly appreciated.

2025 Films Ranked

Not at all what I would’ve expected, but… eh, I respect the wildly different approach.

If you’re interested in this movie after seeing the first trailer, DO NOT WATCH ANY OTHER TRAILERS. They give away not just the film’s biggest hook, but several crucial plot developments. With that said, not talking about the big gimmick is going to make me sound overly vague… as if I wasn’t already prone to doing that.

I’m not gonna sugarcoat it: 2025 has been very meh for film so far. I’ve at least liked a majority of the movies I’ve seen, but I’ve only had enthused reactions to 2 or 3 of them. The rest either play it too safe or have too many obvious shortcomings, which has made the past few months a bit of a s that sense. And I feel like I’m not alone, because many reviews for Sinners seem to echo my sentiment of wanting something rich, unique, committed to itself, and original. And, better yet, they also share my opinion that Sinners is exactly what we’ve been looking for.

The film is a period piece horror/thriller starring Michael B. Jordan, who plays identical twins Smoke and Stack in 1932. They’ve returned to Mississippi after a gangster stint in Chicago to establish an underground juke t, recruiting their guitarist cousin Sammie (Miles Caton) and drunken pianist friend Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo). Also ing them are Stack’s ex-girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) and Smoke’s estranged wife (Wunmi Mosaku), who force them to confront their dubious pasts. All goes well on an opening night filled with soulful music, and rowdy celebrations… until they’re visited by evil forces that are beyond anything they ever imagined existing.

What are those evil forces, you ask? Well, that’s where the film’s biggest secret lies, or at least it would’ve been had the marketing stuck to its guns. What I can say is that Sinners really takes its time in getting to the primary conflict. For almost an hour, it’s much less a genre flick and more a gathering of fun, memorable, complicated characters, all of whom have sympathetic struggles that coincide with their personal sins.

Smoke and Stack are two black men residing in the 1930s… So it should be very obvious why they’ve got the deck stacked against them. But they’re also relatively successful as crooked “businessmen” who’ve gotten their hands dirty but never cross the line to a point where you can’t be on their side. It helps that Michael B. Jordan imbues them both with his typical sheer force of charisma, and that he ensures they’re both similar to one another while having their own distinct identities, with Stack being the more loose-cannon of the two.

You know these two aren’t the most ethically upstanding people and that they’re often proud of it, but you also know that they’re in an environment that all but forces them to go below the belt to get what they need and want, and that they’ve made personal mistakes they clearly regret. Then you’ve got Sammie, performed in what is inexplicably Caton’s first ever film performance. He’s the most pure-hearted character of the movie, but his musical aspirations also run the risk of sending him down his own lifelong spiral, just by the nature of the profession. All of this is to say: Sinners is about people who constantly tango with the ugly side of life to achieve something fulfilling, righteous, and above all else, freeing.

Which is what makes it such a gut-punch when a whole different breed of ugliness comes crashing through their successes with the intention of tearing it to shreds. This is where Sinners enters the horror genre, and it does so in a way that’s perfectly build up yet explosively sudden. It was already a low-key crowd-pleaser with its likeable characters, engaging story, and infectious music-driven vibes, but when it kicks into the next gear, it’s a wild ride of violence, drama, and surprising humor that all mixes like a delectably dirty drink. The buildup is straight out of an urban scary folktale, and the payoff is just as gripping.

The horror elements themselves are very tried-and-true, but the way they’re incorporated into the story gives them a life all their own. I love the utter cruelty of what they represent, the mechanics that bring them to our characters, and how they reflect the worst potential impulses if some of these people did succumb to the darkness they flirt with. You get the visceral thrills and spills you’re hoping for in the moment, but writer/director Ryan Coogler’s rich, personal lens gives you plenty of layers to think back on afterwards.

Sinners is also, surprisingly, a spiritual tribute to music of the distant and even recent past. Sammie’s voice and guitar skills alone provide several highlights, including his standout performance in the juke t that is – okay, throw up the Martin Scorsese meme, because I’m gonna say it – pure cinema. It’s an entire journey within a single place, its own enriching, ethereal short film within the film that also doubles as the crux point of the whole story. You can tell this was Coogler’s major chance to convey the power of music on community and culture, but it’s also so bittersweet in hindsight when you know what this moment means for everyone shortly after.

And speaking of music, I am convinced that Ludwig Göransson is somehow the offspring of every type of composer from every part of the world, because how else is one man so versatile with the scores he creates? His work in this movie is gorgeously rooted in down-home blues, and then more contemporary R&B, and then classical swells, and it somehow all snaps into place as a unified, thick accent to the entire picture.

Sinners also has a bit of a mid-credits scene, though you don’t have to wait long at all for it. I say this to make sure no one reading leaves beforehand, as they’d be missing out on my personal favorite scene of the whole movie. It’s a perfect, powerful, haunting conclusion that keeps the movie going beyond your expectations to the very, very end. Sinners is the kind of all-encoming, imaginative, singular movie that I believe should win over a vast majority of moviegoers who are craving a memorable, exciting experience at the theater. An experience that isn’t just due to a bunch of memes, branding, or nostalgia, but because the film is just that damn good.

2025 Films Ranked

The Russo brothers’ previous two films both made my Overlooked and Underrated Films lists for their respective years.

This one will not.

Warfare has a tough challenge right from the beginning. In a medium with dozens of popular war films that have seemingly covered everything there is to cover about the subject matter, how do you make one that has anything new or distinct to offer? Well, a pretty good start is to bring in an actual war veteran to co-write and co-direct a brutal tribute to his fellow soldiers. That would be Ray Mendoza, a former U.S. Navy SEAL who served in the Iraq War. He earned a Silver Star for his actions in the 2006 Battle of Ramadi, during which he led wounded team to extraction after an enemy ambush.

Since his war days, Mendoza has had a successful career as a Military Advisor on films like Lone Survivor and Alex Garland’s excellent Civil War. Now, he helms his feature-length directorial debut… alongside none other than Alex Garland himself. Warfare is a recreation of the 2006 ambush and evacuation, in which D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai stars as Mendoza. Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn, Kit Connor, and Charles Melton are among the many who costar as other SEALs.

Head here to read my review of what makes this such an authentic, brutal, often disturbing look inside a real war veteran’s memory.

Solaris is a slow-burning, old-school, psychologically driven science fiction space movie. In other words, it should have been made for me. So why was this such a slog that I almost stopped watching at several points? It invokes amazing questions about how memory defines us, how malleable or unmalleable we are, and what we desire versus what we need, but they’re smothered by aggressively wooden performances and frustratingly casual reactions to head-spinning events. No one has any form of chemistry with each another, and there’s just as much time spent talking about what certain relationships and human emotions mean as there is trying to show us those meanings.

Instead, Solaris finds it more necessary to waste time on things like a pointless, protracted traffic driving sequence, a snowy village painting whose purpose is not worth its length, and excessive exposition dumps and monologues that, again, do way more telling than showing. Meanwhile, most “visitors” that have been literally recreated from crewmates’ conscious memories are seen for, at most, a minute or two, casting aside so many ways to play with the idea. Or, you have a pivotal character death that’s handled in one of the single worst, most inexcusably sloppy editing choices I have ever seen. And it’s yet another case where a fascinating psychological phenomenon is discussed instead of being actually portrayed.

I know this film is from the early 70s, but it tries so hard to flex itself visually when it ultimately looks… fine. It’s decent at building atmosphere through even basic shots like weeds in water or swirling vortexes, but there’s no sense of scale, even surrounding Solaris itself. It doesn’t even feel like we’re on a different world half the time. This may sound strange, but the blocking can be so wonky that a few shots make characters look like they’re teleporting from one part of a room to another. 2001: A Space Odyssey is four years older than Solaris, and it looks infinitely more impressive and otherworldly, so I can’t give director Andrei Tarkovsky much slack (despite him being on record as wanting to one-up that movie).

For as psychological as Solaris tries to get, it really goes no deeper than the swirling surface, mainly because the human touch is so sterile, stilted, and clumsy. It’s one of those films that seems to have been granted masterpiece status for its headiness and form, with total neglect for the actual writing, acting, and plot details that go underneath that form. It succeeds in making you think more deeply about human nature, but it fails at the most important thing a film is supposed to do: competent emotional storytelling.

A really fun, surprisingly tense retelling of about 40% of this guy's story.

Watched on Wednesday April 2, 2025.

I wanted to see this on April Fool's Day because why the hell not, and to be honest... I was disappointed. I was disappointed in fucking VelociPastor.

Yeah, it's clearly bad, but not in a way that's consistently fun for me. The acting is wooden but not atrocious. The filmmaking looks very amateur but not totally incompetent. The stupidity of the premise isn't funny enough to last more than a few minutes. Even a lot of the dialogue is just generically dumb, although it sometimes gets a laugh through a joke I think was intentionally tongue-in-cheek.

Maybe that's the problem: this was clearly made by people who know they're making trash, so I don't get any big laughs from its unintentional hilarity. But it's also not actively trying to be heinously incompetent to add to its own joke. It feels like someone just made a cheap little movie and gave it an eye-grabbing name to cash in. I'd rather watch a supercut version on the YouTube channel this feels made for than sit through the whole thing.

Samurai Cop is a 1991 buddy cop/action/thriller/romance movie. That description just goes to show what a wide range of genres it deftly juggles. Now, I don't care what any of you haters say: this is up there among the best action flicks of all time, including Lethal Weapon, to which it lovingly pays homage.

The film is about Joe Marshall (Mathew Karedas), an American cop assigned to take down a Japanese gang in Los Angeles. Thankfully, he’s nicknamed “Samurai Cop” for being fluent in Japanese and a master of the katana, which this movie teaches us means Japanese sword. Sure, he has difficulty actually pronouncing the various Japanese names in this movie, but that just shows how even the most experienced Japanese speakers aren't perfect at such a difficult language. It also highlights the complex dichotomy of his character, subtly represented by how his hair switches between real hair and a wig.

Yet Samurai Cop still accepts that both Eastern and Western cultures have their roles in the world. Joe, for example, lays into these son of a bitches, these motherfuckers, for not honoring the great American opportunities for legitimate business. And he does not kill his final opponent as is custom of a samurai, but sticks to his nature as a cop by sparing his life. Cops, after all, never needlessly kill people. It's not even just the Japanese culture that's honored. Joe's partner Frank (Mark Frazer) is black, a fact that is proudly and openly recognized at numerous points. Joe, for example, says his ass will be burned charcoal black. When Frank sensitively reminds him that it already is, Joe responds, "Right on!" He fully embraces diversity, adding to his heroic nature.

And sure, we have a big, strong, white man as the main hero, but Samurai Cop proves itself ahead of its time by deconstructing that archetype, having a nurse comment on Joe’s less-than-impressive "package" size. If the movie came out today, I’m sure the anti-woke mob would despise this scene and totally miss its nuanced commentary, especially considering Frank's own package is later deemed a "black gift." Oh no, god forbid we try to raise up the non-white deuteragonist in any way. Women are also shown as sexually forward and open to random flirtation, as opposed to their closed-off conservative nature from cinema generations prior.

The lack of exposure as sunlight incessantly floods the lens is a genius way to incorporate visual naturalism into the film, and what some may call jarringly abrupt cuts from intense violence to, say, a singing of "Happy Birthday" in a speedo reflect the double-edged sword (hey heyyyy!) that is the life of a police officer. Said realism translates to the action, which doesn’t burden itself with your typical “functioning” or “well staged” choreography and instead shows what raw, uncompromising brawls truly look like.

Look, I get why so many people write off Samurai Cop as some disastrously awful film. Its many layers of commentary and deconstruction were probably not suited for an unprepared early 90s audience. Today, however, in an age where sociopolitical rights are more at the forefront than in decades, perhaps this misunderstood classic has a place for those who are just willing to listen.

I know many of this movie's themes surrounding incel culture and toxic masculinity have been tackled in similar ways before. But there's something really powerful about how Magazine Dreams portrays such an overwhelming contrast between its central character's hulking frame and (sym)pathetically fragile personality. Plus, there's the cyclical nature of his and other men's downward spiral, and the ouroboros-like nature of how larger systemic abuse and masculine self-worth toxically feed off each other. It's this generation's answer to Taxi Driver, giving that kind of story a relevant update while disturbingly revealing how many troubles from that era still persist today, maybe even worse than ever.

The whole thing with Jonathan Majors is a conversation all its own when it comes to separating art from the artist. Honestly, I was debating whether or not to see the movie at all with that shadiness going on. But from a purely "objective" standpoint, I'll just say it: this is an all-time great performance. His character, Killian Maddox, is terrifying, darkly funny, but just relatable enough where you're begging for him to not succumb to his cripplingly awkward and/or psychopathic nature. At first I thought the ending to his story was too abrupt and went nowhere. But the more I think about it, the more I appreciate it as a reflection of how even when some people think they've had a grand inner redemption, they're still stuck within their core trappings.

It's such a terrible shame that Magazine Dreams had to be saddled with what turned out to be a controversial lead and further delays due to the strikes, because it otherwise would've for sure had end-of-the-year awards hype that I would have considered fully earned. But at least it's out now, in a case where late is certainly better than never.

2025 Films Ranked

Okay, Blumhouse. What in the world are you doing by putting the embargo for The Woman in the Yard hours before its release date? You had me going in thinking this horror movie must be a total disaster, and that you desperately wanted to hold back an inevitable Rotten Tomatoes score of -400% as long as possible. Imagine my surprise, then, when this turned out to not only be good, but an excellent family drama and one of the most emotionally effective films I’ve seen so far this year.

The setup is very simple: Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler) is recovering from a car crash that killed her husband (Russell Hornsby) and left her handicapped. She and her two children (Peyton Jackson and Estella Kahiha) mourn in their new, somewhat unfinished rural farmhouse. During a power outage, a strange, black-cloaked woman (Okwui Okpokwasili) appears on their lawn. Just… sitting there, giving a vague, ominous warning, while this troubled family’s fractures begin to grow dangerously large as a result.

Even before the whole embargo situation, I really didn’t have many expectations for The Woman in the Yard, and those expectations had plummeted by the time I walked in. So, it’s possible I may be overhyping it because of how much it sured that low bar. But when just thinking about it immediately takes me back to that uncomfortable feeling I had in the moment, I have to think there’s more to it than that.

Read why in my full review!

Nosferatu was originally a 1922 film that essentially ripped off the story of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and it was remade in 2024 by Robert Eggers. Though Eggers grounds his version in old-school gothic horror, he also puts the story through a more modernist lens when it comes to its lead female character. That lead character is Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp), who possesses a mysterious connection to the occult that has plagued her since childhood. In 1838 , a vampire named Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) seeks her out due to her traumatic past with the monster.

The connection between Ellen and Orlok is the core heart and driving force of Nosferatu. It plays a prominent role in any iteration of Dracula, but this remake takes it to an entirely new level, especially when it comes to the sexual nature of Ellen as a character. There’s surprisingly a lot to unpack in regards to the choices she makes, how she feels about herself and Orlok, and how the world around her may have played a part in shaping her personality and sexuality. So… let’s do the unpacking.

Go here for my breakdown of Ellen Hutter in Nosferatu!

Girls & Gods is a new documentary that seeks to ask a very simple but very loaded question: can feminism and religion coexist? We follow Inna Shevchenko of the Ukrainian FEMEN collective as she meets up with various priests, rabbis, religious feminists, and other tangential activists, asking them blunt and hard-hitting questions about how they view religion from the perspective of a woman.

Read more in my full review!

Ash starts as a pretty grounded space thriller with a focus on the characters’ humanity and moral conundrums, but it slowly transitions into the kind of pulpy, cheesy, neon-soaked horror that would feel right at home in the 80s or 90s. I can’t decide whether I fully vibe with that shift or find it too over-the-top, but it certainly kept things interesting when I was growing a little bored. There’s some really good stuff here; the performances are all strong, and the grainy, darkly colorful cinematography is refreshing to see in a space movie. Plus, it doesn’t try to play too coy with reveals you could probably see coming… well, except for one, which I called before dismissing it as too clichéd and pointless. Whoops.

There’s a mixture of The Thing, Alien, Annihilation, and even a little 2001 going on here. Not just in the look, but in what it says about humanity reaching out into the unknown and trying to claim it as theirs, while ultimately finding themselves the ones who are changed. It doesn’t do much with this well-worn territory, but the fusion of different angles is at least a somewhat unique experience. If only it could fully commit to that 80s aesthetic instead of relying a bit too much on some dodgy CGI. I’m pretty sure there’s a mix of practical and digital effects, but the latter make the movie look cheap, and not in a fun way.

Ash is not going to do well financially. For one thing, it hasn’t been marketed almost at all, at least not from what I’ve seen. But even if it was, it’s using a few too many tired sci-fi/horror tricks without always ironing out their reasons for being. Which is sad, because this film is not afraid to go big and crazy, and it throws back to a style of filmmaking in the genre we don’t typically get. It can be a chaotic WTF of a movie, one whose high points make the experience worthwhile. But it’s the latest of many movies so far this year that couldn’t lock itself down to fully realize its ambitions.

Regardless, shoutout to the synth-heavy music from director Flying Lotus. This is honestly my favorite score of the entire year so far. Does it always match the movie’s tone? No, but it’s a banger anyway.

2025 Films Ranked

Opus is really frustrating because I’d love nothing more than to see a successful, biting knock against celebrity and stan culture. But it uses that commentary as nothing more than a skin for your basic horror movie about a character who goes to an isolated place and slowly realizes it’s a psychotic cult. True, having John Malkovich hamming it up as the cult’s most prolific member helps, but it’s not enough to salvage the whole thing from tedium.

The final ten minutes are by far the most interesting part of the whole movie. So much so that I think they should have been the focus of this story. Imagine if, say, the first half of Opus was Ayo Edebiri going to and then escaping this cult, and then the rest of the movie was about the aftermath and major pitfalls that come with her own newfound celebrity status, with all the already-included wrinkles given the chance to fully blossom. I think that would’ve been a much more fascinating movie with a lot more to say.

But as is, Opus is competently made but has very little to offer in freshness or even memorable moments.

2025 Films Ranked

I’m sort of surprised Novocaine got such underwhelming returns at the box office, but I also get it. Sure, the whole main-character-can’t-get-hurt gimmick is enticing, but there’s very little else about the movie at face value that looks any different from any other hidden badass or save/avenge-the-girl action flick. But the amount of heart Novocaine manages to get out of its generic structure surprised me.

I truly hadn’t thought about how being immune to pain would actually make you more scared of the world, but it makes sense when Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid) explains why. He’s tried to live his life as emotionally numb as he is physically numb, and mixing that motivation with Quaid’s performance gives way more mileage to your investment than you’d expect. The damsel-in-distress aspect is also not what you think it is, and I appreciated the arc given to Amber Midthunder’s character as well.

The action’s really well shot, gnarly, and wince-inducing, yet not so ridiculous that Caine feels truly invincible. As a dark comedy, Novocaine gets some really solid laughs in its dialogue and brutal slapstick without compromising the emotional beats. Ray Nicholson is gleefully psychotic as a villain, the pacing’s good until a slightly overlong climax… Yeah, this is just a nice, solid action movie. I can’t really think of much more to say. It’s nothing remarkable, but it should make for a fun night.

2025 Films Ranked

This is a complex, talk-heavy film that’s packed with sharp one-liner after sharp one-liner, with cinematic beauty oozing out of nearly every frame despite it mostly taking place in a few rooms. It’s neat to watch Samuel Spade (Humphrey Bogart) navigate his way through a situation that should have ended with him dead in a ditch at multiple points, while riding the line of moral corruptibility for either the sake of truth, pure greed, or probably a combination of both. The ending also hammers home the almost comical cynicism that got him as far as he went.

But that’s as far as I could say: it’s neat. It’s interesting. Nothing really more than that. It’s impressive that all these moving pieces could be juggled so well, but it requires so much mental dedication to keep track of every thorough explanation, every character’s mindset, every blazing fast development and conversation… And the payoff isn’t quite worth the effort for me. The Maltese Falcon itself is the most MacGuffin of MacGuffins to ever MacGuffin, so it’s not like I’d ever be that invested in who gets it or why. Especially with Spade’s casual indifference to major events and forced romance with Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) that’s meant to be the heart of the story.

On a more objective note, there’s seemingly an entire scene missing in which Brigid explains to Spade what the falcon is and how it involves her. This really threw me off: Spade suddenly seems to know about the falcon’s existence and that Brigid is connected to it, despite no prior scene that establishes this information for him. I haven’t heard anything about some incomplete cut of the movie being out there, so… am I missing something?

I get why The Maltese Falcon is considered an influential classic. It’s good, and I actually watched it twice in a row, just to make sure I knew how I felt, considering how often I got a bit lost in the weeds the first time. But even after those two viewings, its convoluted coldness just left me cold in the wrong way.

October 8 – or October H8te as I’ll call it – is not a complete picture of the massively disturbing, uncomfortably complicated conflict that’s being addressed. It focuses exclusively on the problems that stem from pro-Palestine protesters who take their cause too far or use it as an excuse for long-held antisemitism. It also traces links between Hamas itself and some of the roots of the most outspoken and hate-filled hatred towards Israeli and Jewish people. This is all very, very important to address, and I like this documentary purely for being a voice for this particular perspective. I’ve long been confused by the relatively low ongoing outrage towards Hamas and how little attention is drawn to the victims – living, dead, and missing – at their hands.

The problem with October H8te is that it makes almost no note whatsoever of the rational anti-Israel sentiment. As in, the anger that’s geared towards the country’s history and excessive retaliation, as opposed to its people, decent religious participants, or the aspects of its culture that aren't inherently harmful. It makes the same mistake that those on the other end of the extreme spectrum do: acting like this is a black-and-white problem with one right answer. That’s not to say it shames anyone for being critical of Israel at all. It simply doesn’t address where those criticisms come from. If you’re going to wade into these waters, you have to know where everyone is coming from and respond to them properly.

Still, for what it suggests about the very unsavory motivations and structural poisons that are exposed by the pro-Palestine camp’s horrible etiquette – the most disarming one being the molding of a figurative political spectrum into a looping shape – I appreciate October H8te’s existence and am glad I heard it out. It’s a bleak but necessary reminder of the many victims and pained survivors who seem to have been ignored, and the irresponsible hatred that’s making America feel like more of a regressive nation than ever before.

If you’re genuinely upset that I didn’t give this 0.5 or 5 stars, please consider leaving your bubble where every problem has a clear right and wrong answer, and stop latching yourself onto an extreme side just to feel important.

2025 Films Ranked

Watched on Thursday March 13, 2025.

So, when you direct and co-write not only a Best Picture winner, but one of the most wildly celebrated films of the 21st century… how do you follow that up? Bong Joon-ho’s answer seemed to be to throw everything and the kitchen sink at his newest film, the sci-fi dark comedy Mickey 17. Based on the Edward Ashton book Mickey 7 – apparently 10 more Mickeys were needed for the big screen – the film sees Robert Pattinson as Mickey Barnes, who blindly takes a job in space as an “Expendable” to escape a loan shark with his friend Timo (Steven Yeun). Little did he know that said job consists of lethal assignments that kill him, only for his body and memories to be “reprinted.”

Mickey goes on a mission, dies, gets reprinted, and so the cycle goes. However, on the prospective colony planet Niflheim, his 17th iteration miraculously survives an attack by the native “creeper” creatures, returns back to his ship… only to find the next Mickey, Mickey 18, has already been printed. The two quarrel for dominance while also avoiding detection and punishment at the hands of Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), the disgraced Trump stand-in – uhh, rather, totally non-specific politician – who runs the space colony. Naomi Ackie also stars as Nasha Barridge, a security agent and Mickey’s romantic partner who’s a bit too okay with her boyfriend having two versions in her life.

As you could tell, Mickey 17 has a lot of moving parts to discuss. Pattinson is obviously the star of the show as two Mickeys, disappearing as the Mickey 17 we mainly follow: a meek, somewhat pathetic, Tom Hardy-accented person who’s in way over his head and has come to bitterly accept his fate of perpetual death. The best parts of the film are when it shows just how disposable he is and what extreme, torturous experiences he goes through in the name of progress. The fact that he can be killed and brought back gives him the opportunities that no other “test subject” could have in finding vaccines, scoping out potential colonies, etc.

The film never really dives into the impact this progress has or how right/wrong it is to put one man through so much for the benefit of greater humankind, but it’s obvious – one might say painfully so – that Marshall isn’t doing it for noble purposes. With most of this material relegated to the first half-hour, Mickey 17 opens strong in catching you up with this person’s current situation, and it does so in a delightfully mean-spirited, darkly humorous way that gives the film its biggest distinction from other sci-fi of its kind. Though it does so with a narration from Mickey that persists throughout the film, during scenes that would have hit harder if they were instead allowed to speak for themselves in a somewhat slower manner.

When Mickey 18 finally shows up, Pattinson again excels at playing two very different versions of Mickey, with 18 being far more aggressive and hostile. And, of course, the effects of having two versions of the same actor in the same frames are totally seamless, to a point where you rarely even think about it. It’s odd, then, that the very existence of Mickey 18 barely matters in the grand scheme of things. If he was cut from the film entirely, most of the plot would play out exactly the same, with only one exception in the finale. And it’s not like Mickey 17 explores anything such as why these Mickeys came out so different or how it feels for either one to interact with a clone of himself.

Instead, Mickey 17 needs to spread its screentime around to things like the relationship between Mickey and Nasha, or the loan shark’s hunt for Mickey and Timo, or the corrupt antics of Marshall and his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette), or the creepers and their conflict against the crew that pretty much hijacks the entire last third of the film. These are all really good setups, but the movie doesn’t seem to know where to go with all of them. The idea that this colony has become a cult of Marshall’s followers, for example, and that they left a withering Earth to indulge in their selfish nature instead of fixing their planet’s problems, is an incredibly clever mirror to what’s going on in American politics especially. But it’s just the backdrop, never anything more.

And yes, Ruffalo is playing Donald Trump here. From his expressions to his voice, there’s no doubt about it. Now, mocking Trump is always encouraged, but this doesn’t exactly give Marshall his own unique character, and the critiques never go any further than saying that this type of person is bad. Especially in the third act where, again, the whole plot shifts to a very basic conflict between the humans and the creepers. It’s all surface-level commentary we’ve seen done to death: the corrupt leader dismisses these animals as savages while the noble hero tries to reason with them to save the day. Other Bong Joon-ho films like Snowpiercer and Parasite have never been subtle with what they’re saying about society, but they at least have more to say that actually stands out in people’s minds. Mickey 17 is just not that clever or deep once it gets into the “meat” of the story.

But while it’s not very interesting to think about, it’s at least always great to look at. Mickey 17 doesn’t see an ounce of Joon-ho’s visual style falter in the slightest. Everything about this spaceship looks incredibly lived-in and grimily realistic, but not in a way that clashes with the cartoonish nature of most of its characters. The manic, borderline psychotic energy is therefore that much more tangible, which is expected from Uncut Gems cinematographer Darius Khondji. This is a spectacle through and through, especially when it takes the audience out to the depths of this harsh alien planet. It isn’t even close to the biggest scale you could find in sci-fi, but it’s shot to feel like it is, backed up by strong visual effects on the very memorably designed creeper creatures. These guys will likely stay with you as much as anything else. Mickey 17 reportedly cost $118 million to make, and thankfully that money is very much on the screen.

So, you’ve got quite the mixed bag here. One that offers a lot of great possibilities but rarely ever fully delivers on them in the long run. I for sure came out of Mickey 17 feeling overall positive thanks to Pattinson, the initial stretch, the look and feel of the movie, and the twisted, grisly sense of humor. There’s been no clear compromise in Bong Joon-ho’s vision, and he’s such a talented director that even a flawed vision manages to be reasonably entertaining and refreshingly unique. But whether it reaches the great heights it’s aiming for is another question, and as the saying fittingly goes for a space movie, his work floats among the stars instead of hitting the moon.

2025 Films Ranked

The 97th Academy Awards are over, and there were winners, losers, and frustrated speech givers. I recap the biggest highlights of the 2025 Oscars right here!

Well, yet another Academy Award ceremony is coming up tonight. And thankfully, we've got a really solid lineup of 10 nominees. I may not think they're all among the year's best, but there's a decent range of sizes and genres. But how would I rank them from worst to best? And since I never shared my thoughts on Emilia Pérez specifically, what do I think of that movie? (Spoiler alert: you won't have to read the article very long to find out.)

Read on to see me rank all 10 2025 Best Picture nominees, from worst to best!

The performances, many laugh-out-loud moments, urgent pacing, and brief windows into the cycle of debt and the isolating nature of capitalism within communities, all make One of Them Days far more entertaining than its very generic plot would have you believe.

2025 Films Ranked

For 95% of My Dead Friend Zoe, you're led to believe that something happened in the main character's past in a certain way. But in the last 10 minutes, you're given new information that recontextualizes everything you've been seeing. My gut reaction was that it's a really clever, powerful reveal that elevates what was already a decent movie. But on the drive home, I started realizing that the main character's ultimate takeaway and moment of "catharsis" from the reveal has some... iffy implications, at the very least. Or rather, they're implications that could be avoided if they're really looked at and analyzed as we truly follow this woman's newfound path to truly grapple with what happened. But we can't do that, because this is the end of the movie. So we don't have time to go into those needed conversations. In other words, My Dead Friend Zoe sacrifices a more nuanced, less murky portrayal of its subject matter for a third-act twist.

Considering this was inspired by the writer-director's real-life loss of army friends, I'm not about to say he doesn't know about what's being portrayed here. I would just say that, on top of writing and tonal shifts that are effective but not always the most fitting of what they represent, this creative choice results in a less-than-smooth transition from his head to the screen.

Watched on Monday February 24, 2025.

I forgot what it feels like for my favorite movie of a year to have no Oscar presence whatsoever (let alone be the frontrunner for BP). I’d say this makes the race less fun if I wasn’t wholly entertained by the shitshow that is this year’s Oscar campaigning.

I really didn't know if I was going to like The Monkey as the dark comedy it supposedly is. My experience last year with the Terrifier movies still has me questioning whether I can find humor or sick pleasure in people being horribly maimed anymore. But the movie nails the comedic timing, peppering the kills with hilarious cuts, over-the-top reactions, and imagery ludicrous enough to be funny while not so grisly looking that it’s too real. It's a sadistic portrayal of out-of-control death, hammered home by characters' vain ability to direct the titular monkey at its source.

Ironically, it's when The Monkey gets more "dramatic" and is edited more like a straightforward horror movie that it becomes borderline tedious. Osgood Perkins can clearly direct horror, but when he's trying to layer it with an undercurrent of irony, there are stretches where you're not invested even during scenes where you're seemingly supposed to be. It's trying to take itself kinda seriously, but also kinda not... it's an in-between that doesn't always land. Plus, it just drives by roughly half of what look like its zaniest kills, when it again could have gone full-force and embraced itself as an unfeeling, nihilistic comedy.

The Monkey is far better at making a joke out of pure, exploitative cruelty than other bloodbaths I've seen, so it's not an outright loss. I just wish it went into full camp territory, which may have ironically gotten me to care more about its interesting story about people learning to live with their twisted fates. A fun enough time in the moment, even with occasional bouts of monotony.

2025 Films Ranked

Watched on Wednesday February 12, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday February 11, 2025.

Featuring my favorite movie from each director. I just made some major updates to this list, so it'll take some time before the directors are "ranked" again. Until then, I'm just sorting the movies by alphabetical order.

I may still be forgetting some directors, as well as not realizing certain films were made by the same person.

• 12 Angry Men
• 1917
• The ant
• Alien
• Aliens
• Alita: Battle Angel
• American Made
• Annihilation
• Antlers
• Antz

...plus 112 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Favorite to least favorite, NOT necessarily best to worst.

1. Sinners
2. Bring Her Back
3. Magazine Dreams
4. The Woman in the Yard
5. The ant²
6. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
7. The Surfer
8. Presence
9. Love Me
10. Girls & Gods

...plus 24 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Long Day's Journey Into Night
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• The Great Gatsby
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• The Outsiders
• Dead Poets Society
• FernGully: The Last Rainforest
• Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey
• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

This is, as far as I can , every movie I watched in my childhood, which I'm defining as everything up to the start of high school. I know teens are "technically" still children, but high school is the point where I veered away from kid-friendly media and into more adult stuff. Plus, it would feel really strange to count something like The Hangover as a childhood movie because I saw it when I was 15. O_o

• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
• The Wizard of Oz
• Pinocchio
• Dumbo
• Bambi
• Cinderella
• Lady and the Tramp
• One Hundred and One Dalmatians
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
• The Sound of Music

...plus 128 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Each entry includes a note stating what scene got me.

• It's a Wonderful Life

  As soon as they start singing Auld Lang Syne.

• The Breakfast Club

  When Brian reveals that he once thought about suicide.

• The Color Purple

  The ending reunion.

• Die Hard

  When John and Al see each other and just know who the other is.

• Dead Poets Society

  "Oh Captain, my Captain!"

• A League of Their Own

  Dottie and Kit reuniting in the present.

• Saving Private Ryan

  "Have I lived a good life?"

• Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

  Spirit's return home.

• Bruce Almighty

  When Bruce says to God that he just wants Grace to be happy.

• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

  Frodo's final goodbye as he leaves.

...plus 31 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Man, I love having movie theaters back.

• Thomas and the Magic Railroad

  Obviously I haven't seen the movie in … well, twenty years. But the theatrical experience holds a special place for being my very first one. Sure, having it be a more memorable/better movie would help, but my first is still my first.

• Shrek 2

  This was the first animated movie where I felt a sense of maturity in watching it, for how it presents itself especially compared to the first film. And being in that theater added to this feeling. EDIT: Count this twice after I got to see its 2024 re-release.

• The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie

  My childhood series, in movie form, on the big screen. That was a sensation impossible to duplicate.

• The Dark Knight Rises

  Despite having only seen The Dark Knight months before this, I was so blown away by it that the hype for this one was still through the roof for me, making sitting down and watching it in theaters all the more riveting.

• The Heat

  Large family gatherings usually result in seeing some comedy in theaters, and this was easily the best one we'd ever seen in such gatherings.

• Interstellar

  If you've read my piece on this movie, you already know what made this one so special. EDIT: I also got to finally see it on IMAX for its 2024 re-release, even bringing my best friend along for him to fall in love with it too!

• Avengers: Age of Ultron

  It may have disappointed me when leaving, but the buildup and many great moments among a crowd of fellow fans still made it a great time at the theater.

• Jurassic World

  I saw this with a friend who's an even bigger fan of the series than me, so we proceeded to squee with utter fanboy joy throughout, especially that climax, where I literally turned to him and shouted, "THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME!!!"

• Star Wars: The Force Awakens

  Need I explain why? The buildup in driving there, the countless fans packing the lobby, the excited yet respectful audience, the fact that I ended up loving the movie … plus it was my first ever big-screen Star Wars experience, and was the day before I finished a six-month long internship. So yeah, it was an amazing night, the best night in theaters I've ever had.

• Captain America: Civil War

  There's always a sense of community going into an MCU movie, but this one was on another level.

...plus 62 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

See the notes for links to my longer editorial-style pieces.

• Parasite

  Why I Don't Love Parasite

• Interstellar

  Interstellar: A Cinephile Awakened

• Blade Runner 2049

  Blade Runner 2049: A Beating Heart in the Hollywood Machine

• Avengers: Endgame

  Why I’ve Grown Tired of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

• Tenet

  UNRAVELING TENET GNILEVARNU

• Ghostbusters

  Ghostbusters 1984 vs. 2016: My Unpopular Preference

• The Power of the Dog

  Why Subtlety in Film is Overrated

• CODA

  Why the Oscars Are Taken Too Seriously

• The Dark Knight Rises

  Why The Dark Knight Rises is Great

• 2001: A Space Odyssey

  Why Science Fiction is the Best Film Genre

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

He's one of my favorite actors (actors, not human beings!), so why not rank the many movies of his I've seen? Favorite to least favorite, not best to worst! And because I like almost all of these movies, the ones at the bottom are just there by default!

• Top Gun: Maverick
• Mission: Impossible – Fallout
• Jerry Maguire
• American Made
• Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
• Edge of Tomorrow
• Born on the Fourth of July
• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
• Mission: Impossible
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning

...plus 8 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Doesn't mean they weren't great. I may just have a stronger stomach, or was bracing myself more than I had to. Basically this list is a flex of how badass I am, lol.

• Dracula
• Freaks
• Straw Dogs
• A Clockwork Orange
• The Exorcist
• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
• Suspiria
• Hellraiser
• Pet Sematary
• Candyman

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I rank the scores of my favorite film composer, from any movie that I’ve seen. Scores he co-composed with others count.

1. The Lion King
2. Interstellar
3. The Prince of Egypt
4. Kung Fu Panda
5. Kung Fu Panda 2
6. A League of Their Own
7. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
8. Dune: Part Two
9. The Dark Knight Rises
10. Inception

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

One film per series.

1. Blade Runner 2049
2. The Dark Knight
3. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
4. The Empire Strikes Back
5. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
6. X-Men: First Class
7. Spider-Man 2
8. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
9. Shrek 2
10. Top Gun: Maverick

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

It's debatable whether some of these are truly horror, but I choose them based on how I myself see them.

• Psycho
• The Birds
• Rosemary's Baby
• Night of the Living Dead
• Halloween
• Alien
• The Shining
• The Thing
• The Fly
• Misery

...plus 17 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Favorite to least favorite, not best to worst.

1. Shrek 2
2. The Prince of Egypt
3. The Wild Robot
4. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
5. How to Train Your Dragon 2
6. Kung Fu Panda
7. Kung Fu Panda 2
8. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
9. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
10. How to Train Your Dragon

...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

It's very uncommon, but every once in a while I feel one way about a movie initially, only to later have a prominent change in opinion, for better or worse.

• GoodFellas

  Initially thought it was awful, now I think it's just okay.

• The Lost World: Jurassic Park

  Initially thought it was just fine, now I think it's a great sequel.

• Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace

  Initially thought it was good and underrated (but flawed). Now I think it's bad (but not awful, and I still really like it for nostalgia).

• Mulholland Drive

  Initially despised it, now I think it's really good.

• Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith

  Initially thought it was a great film, easily the second-best Star Wars movie. Now I think it's simply good but very flawed.

• The Last Airbender

  Initially I was fine with it because it was less cartoonish than the show (and I was in my teenage "animation is only for kids" phase), but later I realized that it was still pretty bad.

• Moneyball

  Initially found it boring, now I'm old enough to actually get it (and being a Statistics graduate helps as well).

• Whiplash

  Initially was angered by it, now I think it's brilliant.

• The Amazing Spider-Man 2

  Initially loved it (possibly from low expectations), now I just think it's okay.

• The Martian

  Initially thought the comedy bogged it down, now I think it makes it fresh.

...plus 7 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The qualifications for a movie's inclusion here are very loose. But if I feel I'm in a small enough minority, it counts.
"

<a href="boxd.it/20ltC">A list for the opposite concept</a href="boxd.it/20ltC">

• Meet Me in St. Louis
• Seven Samurai
• The Searchers
• Bullitt
• Straw Dogs
• Solaris
• Picnic at Hanging Rock
• The Omen
• Suspiria
• An American Werewolf in London

...plus 18 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The qualifications for a movie's inclusion here are very loose. But if I feel I'm in a small enough minority, it counts.

• Cannonball

  It's harder to tell the consensus with this being so obscure, but it seems to be mixed to negative from what I can gauge.

• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
• X-Men: The Last Stand
• Spider-Man 3
• Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
• The Last Airbender
• Spectre
• X-Men: Apocalypse
• The Book of Henry

...plus 17 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Christopher Nolan is my favorite director. So why not rank his movies?

Favorite to least favorite, NOT best to worst!

1. Interstellar
2. The Dark Knight
3. Oppenheimer
4. The Dark Knight Rises
5. The Prestige
6. Memento
7. Inception
8. Dunkirk
9. Batman Begins
10. Tenet

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Personal favorite to least favorite, NOT best to worst. Which means the ratings don't determine the order. Which means I can do stuff like put The Happening above Knock at the Cabin because it's infinitely worse but so much fun to watch.

1. Unbreakable
2. The Sixth Sense
3. Split
4. Glass
5. The Happening
6. Knock at the Cabin
7. Old
8. The Visit
9. Trap
10. The Last Airbender

These are NOT ranked "best to worst", but personal favorite to personal least favorite. (Which means the ratings don't determine the order.) I say that for every list, but it’s ESPECIALLY true with how nostalgic I am for this franchise.

1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
3. Star Wars
4. Return of the Jedi
5. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
6. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace

   SERIOUSLY, nostalgia's a hell of a drug.

7. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
8. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
9. Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones
10. Solo: A Star Wars Story

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

What versions would you recommend? (I didn't include all of them because of how many there are, but if one isn't here that you think I'd like, let me know that as well.)

• A Christmas Carol
• A Christmas Carol
• Scrooged
• A Christmas Carol
• A Christmas Carol

1. Alien
2. Thelma & Louise
3. Gladiator
4. Prometheus
5. The Last Duel
6. The Martian
7. Blade Runner
8. Gladiator II
9. Alien: Covenant
10. Exodus: Gods and Kings

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

***Please note that I haven't watched a majority of these since childhood (as denoted by a lack of a star rating), in which case I'm ranking them based on memory and/or sentimental value. Also note that I'm very indifferent to the Disney formula in general. In other words, this is the least reliable Disney ranking ever from a non-fan of the studio.

1. Pinocchio
2. Fantasia
3. Bambi
4. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
5. Zootopia
6. Treasure Planet
7. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
8. Moana
9. The Fox and the Hound
10. Lilo & Stitch

...plus 17 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Mission: Impossible – Fallout
• Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
• Mission: Impossible
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
• Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
• Mission: Impossible III
• Mission: Impossible II

Not "Best to Worst", but Favorite to Least Favorite. (Meaning the star ratings don't determine the order.)

1. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
2. Avengers: Infinity War
3. Guardians of the Galaxy
4. Captain America: Civil War
5. Black Panther
6. Ant-Man
7. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
8. Iron Man
9. Ant-Man and the Wasp
10. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

...plus 22 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Favorite to least favorite, NOT necessarily best to worst.

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once
2. Oppenheimer
3. Mass
4. Top Gun: Maverick
5. Challengers
6. Spencer
7. The Zone of Interest
8. The Menu
9. Monster
10. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

...plus 40 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

This is what I would nominate for the Academy Awards out of everything I saw in 2023. There are a few highly acclaimed films that I haven't been able to see, and obviously many more than most of us will probably never know about. But out of every movie I managed to catch, this is what I'd choose. As usual, I haven't seen enough to properly weigh in on the documentary, short film, or international categories.

If you're sick of being angry at the Oscars, now's your change to be angry at me! :-D

* = My choice for the winner
** = My winner pick and also screw the Academy for not nominating this /lh

BEST PICTURE:
Anora
Challengers*
Conclave
Dune: Part Two
I Saw the TV Glow
Juror #2
Memoir of a Snail
Nosferatu
The Substance
The Wild Robot

BEST DIRECTOR
Coralie Fargeat - The Substance
Dune: Part Two - Denis Villeneuve
Jane Schoenbrun - I Saw the TV Glow
Luca Guadagnino - Challengers*
Sean Baker - Anora

BEST ACTOR
Adrien Brody - The Brutalist*
Izaac Wang - Dìdi
Nicholas Hoult - Juror #2
Timothée Chalamet - A Complete Unknown
Timothée Chalamet - Dune: Part Two

BEST ACTRESS
Ariana Grande - Wicked
Demi Moore - The Substance
Fernanda Torres - I'm Still Here
Lily-Rose Depp - Nosferatu
Mikey Madison - Anora*

BEST ING ACTOR
Bill Skarsgård - Nosferatu
Brian Tyree Henry - The Fire Inside
Guy Pearce - The Brutalist
John Earl Jelks - Exhibiting Forgiveness*
Karren Karagulian - Anora

BEST ING ACTRESS
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor - Nickel Boys
Felicity Jones - The Brutalist
Joan Chen - Dìdi*
Katy O'Brian - Love Lies Bleeding
Margaret Qualley - The Substance

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Challengers*
I Saw the TV Glow
Juror #2
Memoir of a Snail
The Substance

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Conclave
Dune: Part Two*
Inside Out 2
Nosferatu
The Wild Robot

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Flow
Inside Out 2
Kensuke's Kingdom
Memoir of a Snail*
The Wild Robot

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Challengers
Dune: Part Two*
The Girl with the Needle
Nosferatu
The Substance

BEST FILM EDITING
Better Man*
Challengers
Flow
I Saw the TV Glow
Stopmotion

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Boy Kills World
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Lisa Frankenstein
Wicked*

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
Dune: Part Two
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Here
Late Night with the Devil
Wicked*

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
A Different Man
Lisa Frankenstein
Nosferatu
The Substance*

BEST SOUND
Civil War*
Dune: Part Two
The Girl with the Needle
Nickel Boys
The Substance

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Challengers**
Dune: Part Two
Flow
Nosferatu
The Wild Robot

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
Compress/Repress - Challengers
Leash - Babygirl
Mi Camino - Emilia Pérez
Sick in the Head - Kneecap (I haven't seen the movie but I listened to all eligible songs and it's one of the best.)
Kiss the Sky - The Wild Robot*

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Alien: Romulus
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Better Man
Dune: Part Two*
Terrifier 3

• Dune: Part Two

  Best Picture
  Best Director
  Best Actor
  Best Adapted Screenplay*
  Best Cinematography*
  Best Production Design
  Best Sound
  Best Original Score
  Best Visual Effects*

• The Substance

  Best Picture
  Best Director
  Best Actress
  Best ing Actress
  Best Original Screenplay
  Best Cinematography
  Best Makeup and Hairstyling*
  Best Sound

• Challengers

  Best Picture*
  Best Director*
  Best Original Screenplay*
  Best Cinematography
  Best Film Editing
  Best Original Score**
  Best Original Song

• Nosferatu

  Best Picture
  Best Actress
  Best ing Actor
  Best Adapted Screenplay
  Best Cinematography
  Best Makeup and Hairstyling
  Best Original Score

• The Wild Robot

  Best Picture
  Best Adapted Screenplay
  Best Animated Feature
  Best Original Score
  Best Original Song*

• Anora

  Best Picture
  Best Director
  Best Actress*
  Best ing Actor

• I Saw the TV Glow

  Best Picture
  Best Director
  Best Original Screenplay
  Best Film Editing

• Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

  Best Costume Design
  Best Makeup and Hairstyling
  Best Visual Effects

• The Brutalist

  Best Actor*
  Best ing Actor
  Best ing Actress

• Flow

  Best Animated Feature
  Best Film Editing
  Best Original Score

...plus 28 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Ranked by how much I personally like each movie, not necessarily from best to worst.

So like, Madame Web is higher than objectively better films because I enjoy it more than those, lol.

1. Challengers
2. Dune: Part Two
3. The Wild Robot
4. The Substance
5. I Saw the TV Glow
6. Nosferatu
7. Civil War
8. Memoir of a Snail
9. Anora
10. Boy Kills World

...plus 81 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Oppenheimer
2. The Zone of Interest
3. Monster
4. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
5. Godzilla Minus One
6. Fair Play
7. Bottoms
8. Anatomy of a Fall
9. Saltburn
10. Poor Things

...plus 78 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Not best to worst, but favorite to least favorite (so the ratings don't determine the rankings).

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once
2. Top Gun: Maverick
3. The Whale
4. The Woman King
5. The Menu
6. Soft & Quiet
7. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
8. The Northman
9. Glass Onion
10. Bodies Bodies Bodies

...plus 75 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Favorite to least favorite, not best to worst.

1. Blade Runner 2049
2. Prisoners
3. Arrival
4. Dune: Part Two
5. Dune
6. Sicario
7. Enemy

These are the films that I was most excited to see leading up to their releases at the time.

1. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
2. The Dark Knight Rises
3. War for the Planet of the Apes
4. Avengers: Endgame
5. Dune: Part Two
6. Captain America: Civil War
7. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
8. Dune
9. X-Men: Days of Future Past
10. Glass

...plus 25 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Not "best to worst", but personal favorite to personal least favorite.

1. X-Men: First Class
2. X-Men: Days of Future Past
3. Deadpool 2
4. Logan
5. X-Men: Apocalypse
6. The Wolverine
7. X-Men: The Last Stand
8. Deadpool
9. X2
10. X-Men

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Favorite to least favorite.

1. Jurassic Park
2. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
3. Jurassic World
4. Jurassic Park III
5. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
6. Jurassic World Dominion

Favorite to least favorite (so ratings don't determine the order).

1. It's a Wonderful Life
2. Die Hard
3. How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
4. Miracle on 34th Street
5. Joyeux Noel
6. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
7. Green Book
8. A Christmas Carol
9. A Charlie Brown Christmas
10. The Nightmare Before Christmas

...plus 29 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Favorite to least favorite, not best to worst. (So the ratings don't determine the rankings.)

1. The Dark Knight
2. The Dark Knight Rises
3. Joker
4. The Batman
5. Batman Begins
6. The Suicide Squad
7. Zack Snyder's Justice League
8. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
9. Wonder Woman
10. Shazam!

...plus 17 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Scream
2. Scream
3. Scream 4
4. Scream 2
5. Scream VI
6. Scream 3

Favorite to least favorite, not necessarily best to worst.

1. Aliens
2. Alien
3. Prometheus
4. Alien: Romulus
5. Alien: Covenant
6. Alien Resurrection
7. Alien³

Favorite to least favorite.

1. The Shining
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. Paths of Glory
4. A Clockwork Orange
5. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
6. Full Metal Jacket
7. Eyes Wide Shut

Personal favorite to least favorite, NOT best to worst (so the ratings don't determine the order).

Also, Monsters Inc. is only so low because I don’t much of it, and therefore have little personal attachment to it.

1. The Incredibles
2. Finding Nemo
3. Coco
4. Toy Story 2
5. Ratatouille
6. Finding Dory
7. Toy Story
8. Inside Out
9. WALL·E
10. Luca

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Purely personal. Restricted to one movie per series/franchise.

1. Interstellar
2. Blade Runner 2049
3. Everything Everywhere All at Once
4. The Dark Knight
5. The Empire Strikes Back
6. Jurassic Park
7. The Breakfast Club
8. Annihilation
9. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
10. The Shawshank Redemption

...plus 65 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Oppenheimer
2. The Zone of Interest
3. Anatomy of a Fall
4. Poor Things
5. Past Lives
6. The Holdovers
7. Barbie
8. Maestro
9. American Fiction
10. Killers of the Flower Moon

Favorite to Least Favorite, not Best to Worst.

1. Jurassic Park
2. The Color Purple
3. Saving Private Ryan
4. Schindler's List
5. West Side Story
6. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
7. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
8. Jaws
9. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
10. Raiders of the Lost Ark

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

What I would nominate out of everything I saw in 2023. There are still some popular favorites that I haven't been able to see, but for the first time, I feel like I've seen enough for me to fill up all five slots in the categories (ten for BP). Though I still haven't seen enough to properly examine the documentary, short film, or international categories, so I'll be omitting those.

I try to be as impartial as possible when I do these, but they're still based on subjective opinions. So, I'm genuinely interested what you'd choose! Anything in here you strongly agree or disagree with? :-)

* = My choice for the winner

BEST PICTURE:
Anatomy of a Fall
Bottoms
Godzilla Minus One
The Iron Claw
Monster
*Oppenheimer
Past Lives
Poor Things
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
The Zone of Interest

BEST DIRECTOR
Anatomy of a Fall
Beau is Afraid
Monster
*Oppenheimer
The Zone of Interest

BEST ACTOR
Alden Ehrenreich, Fair Play
Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
Ryunosuke Kamiki, Godzilla Minus One
Barry Keoghan, Saltburn
*Cilian Murphy, Oppenheimer

BEST ACTRESS
Phoebe Dynevor, Fair Play
Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall
Carey Mulligan, Maestro
*Emma Stone, Poor Things
Margot Robbie, Barbie

BEST ING ACTOR
Robert Di Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
Sōya Kurokawa, Monster
*Milo Machado Graner, Anatomy of a Fall
Jeremy Allen White, The Iron Claw

BEST ING ACTRESS
Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple
Viola Davis, Air
Rachel McAdams, Are You There God? It's Me Margaret
*Da'Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
Madeleine Yuna Voyles, The Creator

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
*Anatomy of a Fall
Bottoms
Fair Play
Monster
The Iron Claw

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Godzilla Minus One
Landscape With Invisible Hand
*Oppenheimer
Poor Things
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
*Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. (No other animated film I saw is even worth getting nominated imho.)

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Beau is Afraid
John Wick: Chapter 4
Maestro
Saltburn
*The Zone of Interest

BEST FILM EDITING
Anatomy of a Fall
Beau is Afraid
Missing
*Oppenheimer
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
*Barbie
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3
Polite Society
Poor Things

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
*Barbie
Beau is Afraid
Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3
John Wick: Chapter 4
The Zone of Interest

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
Barbie
Evil Dead Rise
*Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3
Poor Things
The Color Purple

BEST SOUND
Beau is Afraid
Maestro
No One Will Save You
Oppenheimer
*The Zone of Interest

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Landscape With Invisible Hand
Oppenheimer
*Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
The Super Mario Bros. Movie

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
"Am I Dreaming?" - Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
*"I'm Just Ken" - Barbie
"Live That Way Forever" - The Iron Claw
"Steal the Show" - Elemental
"What Was I Made For?" - Barbie

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Godzilla Minus One
Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning
Oppenheimer
*The Creator

• Oppenheimer

  *Best Picture
  *Best Director
  *Best Actor
  Best ing Actor
  *Best Adapted Screenplay
  *Best Film Editing
  Best Sound
  Best Original Score
  Best Visual Effects

• Anatomy of a Fall

  Best Picture
  Best Director
  Best Actress
  *Best ing Actor
  *Best Original Screenplay
  Best Film Editing

• Barbie

  Best Actress
  *Best Costume Design
  *Best Production Design
  Best Makeup and Hairstyling
  *Best Original Song (x2)

• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

  Best Picture
  Best Adapted Screenplay
  *Best Animated Feature
  Best Film Editing
  *Best Original Score
  Best Original Song

• Beau Is Afraid

  Best Director
  Best Cinematography
  Best Film Editing
  Best Production Design
  Best Sound

• Poor Things

  Best Picture
  *Best Actress
  Best Adapted Screenplay
  Best Costume Design
  Best Makeup and Hairstyling

• The Zone of Interest

  Best Picture
  Best Director
  *Best Cinematography
  Best Production Design
  *Best Sound

• Godzilla Minus One

  Best Picture
  Best Actor
  Best Adapted Screenplay
  Best Visual Effects

• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

  Best Costume Design
  Best Production Design
  *Best Makeup and Hairstyling
  Best Visual Effects

• The Iron Claw

  Best Picture
  Best ing Actor
  Best Original Screenplay
  Best Original Song

...plus 23 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Favorite to least favorite, not best to worst.

1. Evil Dead II
2. The Evil Dead
3. Evil Dead
4. Army of Darkness
5. Evil Dead Rise

Favorite to least favorite, not best to worst. (Ratings don't matter.)

1. Grave of the Fireflies
2. Spirited Away
3. Kiki's Delivery Service
4. The Tale of The Princess Kaguya
5. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
6. Princess Mononoke
7. My Neighbor Totoro
8. The Wind Rises
9. Howl's Moving Castle
10. The Boy and the Heron

Favorite to least favorite, NOT best to worst. Need to make that especially clear here.

• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Favorite to least favorite (NOT best to worst), with my favorite film of each trilogy being chosen to represent it. Each has a note stating my personal favorite to least favorite of each trilogy.

If anything isn't here, it's because I either haven't seen the whole trilogy or forgot about it.

I also don't count any MCU trilogy because they require watching other films in between to get a coherent story.

1. The Dark Knight

   The Dark Knight
   The Dark Knight Rises
   Batman Begins

2. The Empire Strikes Back

   The Empire Strikes Back
   A New Hope
   Return of the Jedi

3. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

   Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
   War for the Planet of the Apes
   Rise of the Planet of the Apes

4. Spider-Man 2

   Spider-Man 2
   Spider-Man
   Spider-Man 3

5. Unbreakable

   Unbreakable
   Split
   Glass

6. Toy Story 2

   Yes, I'm counting it even if Toy Story 4 exists.

   Toy Story 2
   Toy Story
   Toy Story 3

7. Before Midnight

   Before Midnight
   Before Sunset
   Before Sunrise

8. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

   Fellowship of the Ring
   The Two Towers
   Return of the King

9. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

   How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
   How to Train Your Dragon 2
   How to Train Your Dragon

10. Kung Fu Panda

    Kung Fu Panda
    Kung Fu Panda 2
    Kung Fu Panda 3

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Check out my Loud and Clear article for more details!

1. Spider-Man 2

   Pretty much everything is either as good or better than the first. More importantly, it advances the story and characters so perfectly and gets to the core of what it means to be Spider-Man. The most well-rounded and enjoyable of any Spidey film to date, and sadly the last one that I've ever considered excellent.

2. Spider-Man

   It's goofy as hell, sometimes to a fault. But it's got a ton of heart, a resonant story, lovable characters and settings, and action that surprisingly gets heavy towards the end. A great way to start everything off.

3. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
4. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

   At its best, it's an innovative, emotional, and brilliant experience. But some tonal and stylistic choices do more harm than good. It's grown on me quite a bit, and I appreciate the great stuff a lot more than I dislike the bad.

5. Spider-Man: Far From Home
6. Spider-Man 3

   The weakest of the trilogy for sure, but still retains a lot of the charm and memorability, mixed in with somewhat uneven but still compelling themes of inner demons and pride. I think it's really over-hated. I just posted an old piece defending it.

7. Spider-Man: No Way Home

   Brings some of the most unexpectedly poignant material in any Spider-Man movie, but also some of the flimsiest and most forced. Overall, the film works and has a ton to love, but the gigantic cracks at the seams stop it from holistically being anything more than acceptable.

8. The Amazing Spider-Man

   This one just ... exists to me. It's got great acting, a decent tone, and well-done action, but its story is all sorts of bland and the filmmaking kind of standard. As middle-of-the-road as these movies get.

9. Spider-Man: Homecoming

   The high school stuff is captured perfectly and there's a lot of charm and good humor to be had. But the motivations are so unclear and the sense of danger so lacking that it feels overall shallow. Far from the best, but still good. See my Letterboxd review for more detail.

10. The Amazing Spider-Man 2

    Its highs are much higher, but the lows are subsequently much lower than TASM1. While it's the worse film, I like it more due to the strengths of its themes and characterizations. Messy and inconsistent, but much more memorable.

Favorite to least favorite, not best to worst.

1. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
2. Aliens
3. The Terminator
4. Titanic
5. The Abyss

   I've only seen the extended cut, so that's what I'm ranking here.

6. Avatar
7. Avatar: The Way of Water

• Fantastic Planet
• The Lord of the Rings
• The Man Who Planted Trees
• My Neighbor Totoro
• Akira
• Only Yesterday
• Ghost in the Shell
• A Bug's Life
• South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
• Chicken Run

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.