2025 at the movies: The good, the underrated, and the meh
The Oscars are three days away, so there’s time left to ponder: Will host Conan O’Brien joke about his unheralded acting work in GMA’s Sanggang Dikkit? Will Timothee Chalamet’s unfortunate trashing of opera and ballet shut down his nominee chances? Will Michael B. Jordan’s Sinners win at the SAG Awards double up his? And will Jessie Buckley’s madcap turn in The Bride! make people forget her more sublime work in Hamnet? Last year’s movies revealed quiet revelations, unexpected wonders, and some overbaked turkeys. Here’s a recap.
One Battle After Another. PT Anderson’s love letter to revolution, with man-out-of-time hippie dad Leo DiCaprio trying to rescue daughter Chase Infiniti from racist psychopath Sean Penn, who has the full might of US military behind him. Vivid characters light up all the dark corners here (hello, Benicio!) in a movie that reflects the age of ICE, but also a growing call for the will to fight back.
Hamnet. With a nod to Joyce’s Ulysses, Chloé Zoe’s Hamnet posits that the young Danish prince of Hamlet was actually based on the author’s deceased son. Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley deliver every shade of joy and anguish in a film where grief is transformative and transportive.
Sentimental Value. Joachim Trier resurrects Stellan Skarsgard in a complex (non-villain) role as a famed director filming a new script inspired by his estranged actress daughter (Renate Reinsve)—but instead casting American actress Ella Fanning to play it. The emotional gaps between people here are huge, mountain-like. Tragic and haunting, but filled with a longing to find peace.
Train Dreams. Joel Edgerton’s Robert Grainier plants wife Felicity Jones and daughter in an Idaho log cabin while hunting railroad work in this tone poem based on a Denis Johnson novella. Loss rears its head, and Grainier becomes a luminous shell, living out the remaining decades of life trying to grasp the edges of meaning that his buried emotions can only dimly discern. Amid director Clint Bentley’s stunning natural exteriors, this is the kind of movie they stopped making in the ‘70s.
Frankenstein. We got three sci-fi/horror nominees this year, and Benicio del Toro’s gothic take on Shelley’s monster is probably the most sumptuous. Jacob Elordi rises above all the psychological rewrites (and Oscar Isaac’s scenery chewing), delivering a monster we feel for as much as Boris Karloff.
Bugonia. Emma Stone will do anything for director Yorgos Lanthimos, even shaving her head to stop alien transmissions in this reimagining of Korean sci-fi Save the Green Planet! Stone and Jesse Plemons pull out the stops; the ending twist is too Twilight Zone, but there’s no question there’s a singular vision behind all the madness.
Sinners. Props to Ryan Coogler for crafting a metaphorical vampire film about race that works: Two Michael B. Jordans set up a Mississippi blues joint that is beset by cracker vampires who feed on musical tradition as much as blood. Is it all about the Hollywood system? Let the metaphors wash over you and enjoy the ride.
Marty Supreme. Loosely based on a real character, Josh Safdie’s picaresque screwball comedy leads us through a series of kinetically charged mishaps and misfires, dragged along by a flawed, relentless ping-pong master (Timothée Chalamet) who, in the end, just wants bragging rights. Best opening and closing use of Tears for Fears soundtrack music ever.
The Secret Agent. As absurdist as Catch-22, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s political thriller throws Wagner Moura in the middle of a brutal Brazilian military dictatorship, tracking down proof of his mother’s existence and drawn into a resistance movement. Full of surrealistic ‘70s touches, and a fondness for Altman and De Palma, it’s a bit too in love with its own style—but that last, blank expression from Moura is as haunting as the fluorescent night-time glow of a long-ago past.
F1. It made money.
The underdogs
Black Bag. Steven Soderbergh’s best in years is a concise thriller constructed around the marital bonds of MI5 agents Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett, the theft of a MacGuffin viral program, and a list of in-house suspects who are as messy and neurotic and paranoid as any other office space in real life. Great fun.
Blue Moon/Nouvelle Vague. Richard Linklater gave us a twofer last year: Ethan Hawke shining as fading songwriter Lorenz Hart in Blue Moon, sitting on a neighborhood barstool, ruminating on one-way love, desire, and ruined writing partnerships. Meanwhile Linklater’s love letter to French cinema Nouvelle Vague puts us on the set of Jean Luc Godard’s 1959 Breathless, with an inscrutable storm cloud of a director (Guillaume Marbeck) lording it over Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch) and Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin) in period-lit Paris.
No Other Choice. From Old Boy director Park Chan-wook comes an acid-tinged, neon-lit black comedy about Korea’s economic anxiety. Lee Byung-han takes desperate measures to win a job running a paper factory, and we follow him like a Hitchcockian murder suspect until the very end.
Sorry, Baby. Writer/director Eva Victor’s wry reaction takes us through a sharp little script that touches on sexual assault, suicide, and the meaning of life.
The Mastermind. In 1970s Framingham, Massachusetts, unemployed carpenter Josh O’Connor plots out a successful art heist and then watches everything go wrong in Kelly Reichardt’s studied period piece in which not much actually happens, but you’re still mesmerized.
Weapons. Perhaps only Zach Cregger could balance horror and humor in such perfect measure. The jump scare meets the jump laugh, as 17 kids go missing one night in a small Pennsylvania town, and the local schoolteacher (Julia Garner) becomes the prime suspect. Amy Madigan’s creepy presence feeds on the proceedings like a tune you’ll long wish to forget.
The Overrated
Fantastic Four. Despite its cast and budget, this felt less like a solid rebuild of the Marvel Universe and more like a retread.
Superman. While it’s refreshing to see DC have fun at the movies for a change, there may be way less super-substance here than first meets the eye.
Materialists. A disappointingly muted take on modern romance from Celine Song, with too-scripted lines coming from jaded Dakota Fanning (and few takers for Chris Evans).
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. Not just because Nebraska was Springsteen’s dullest album, but because I just can’t take biopic imitations anymore (sorry, Jeremy Allen White).
Jay Kelly. In which George Clooney tries to validate the existential struggle of being a “movie star” while Adam Sandler acts rings around him, and director Noah Baumbach just lets the whole sentimental thing run on and on.
The Phoenician Scheme. Possibly Wes Anderson’s least cohesive, slapdash plate of whimsy yet.
