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My ranking of all the movies I saw in 2025 is here on Letterboxd. I find myself rather apathetic about writing up most of that list here, since John already covered a lot of my top 10 and Colin’s list is basically my remaining watchlist from the last year. So, in honor of the Mildly Pleased Awards which are probably not happening this year, here’s a write-up of my favorite movies from last year that aren’t those eighteen.
2025 was a pretty good year at the movies for me, even if it didn’t seem like that great of a year for the industry as a whole. It probably speaks to that fact that I saw like 3 movies that I would’ve considered mainstream blockbusters over the course of the year. But as far as the types of smaller, more thoughtful films I like to seek out, there was plenty of good stuff to go around. I truly don’t know what to think of the increasingly bleak state of the theater industry, because this year I saw probably 75% of the movies I saw last year in theaters, and I’m not really sure what the point of movies are if not for the theatrical experience. Well, here are the movies that made me happy to go get lost in the dark of a half-empty theater.
The children are our future. At least, that’s what the 2025 box office would lead me to believe. Because when I think of 2025, the first thing that comes to mind is kids’ movies. I don’t know if there were more movies for the chillins this year, or if they just performed better than last year’s crop (the 2025 box office was a slight uptick overall), but I swear kids’ movies, and horror, are the only sure things these days.
Zootopia 2, A Minecraft Movie, Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon, KPop Demon Hunters, whatever the hell Ne Zha 2 is supposed to be, these are the films filling seats in today’s theaters. Oh, and Avatar, but that one’s for the child in all of us.
Now, there were two box-office breakthroughs this year (spoiler alert: they’re my number one and number three) that were original films and actually performed well. Yet I get the sense studios weren’t thrilled about that. Why else would they make such a concerted effort to downplay those successes? Studios want to pull the strings, so it makes sense they’d bristle at directors who claim full ownership of their art. The struggle is real.
I guess what I’m saying is the corporate fuckification of the movie industry feels more noticeable than ever, and it’s hard not to wonder what that means for theatergoing, if theatergoing will even exist in the coming years.
With that existential dread out of the way, let’s get into it!
As much as I enjoyed our journey through the world of ghost movies, I do have to wonder if I watched one ghost movie too many. Or perhaps I just chose the wrong ghost movie to end my series of reviews. Because if I had seen Presence when it was released in this January, one of theaters’ notorious down months for new movies, I probably would’ve found its brand of eerie minimalism refreshing. However, watching it after several other, more complex and ambitious ghost movies, something about it couldn’t help but ring a little slight, even if it is another prime example of Steven Soderbergh’s ability to be formally playful and compelling, even when working on a small budget. Continue reading
Every once in a blue moon, I like to revisit Letterboxd’s Top 250 Horror Movies, meaning the highest-rated horror films on the site. I consider myself a horror aficionado, but even I currently sit at a paltry 67%, that’s 168 out of 250 watched thus far.
After three posts where I struggled to even find anything resembling an interesting angle to write about, I conclude my Shocktober with a movie that overwhelmed me with too many options. Not one to lightly repeat himself, Edgar Wright’s return to the horror genre after Shaun of the Dead was highly anticipated, especially after a pandemic delay. Last Night in Soho was hyped up as a proper spooky story, without the comedy elements Wright was known for, as well as his first film with women as main characters instead of just love interests. Was that too much of a departure for him to handle? Yeah dude.
Ah yes, once again we turn ourselves to the world of Robert Zemeckis-produced spooky projects. I don’t know how we ended up in this pocket of Hollywood filmmaking in the ’90s and ’00s, but I guess the guy had his finger in a lot of pies and a lot of those pies were filled with ectoplasm. Today’s entry, Monster House, doesn’t feel so far removed from one of Zemeckis’s directorial efforts, The Polar Express, which had just come out a few years prior and used some of the same animation techniques. Much like that film, its animation doesn’t entirely hold up (though for different reasons). Still, luckily, it does have a slightly more enjoyable hook and screenplay that make it enjoyable enough in 2025. Continue reading
