The Films of 2025

[Mr Sausage]

The Monkey (Osgood Perkins)

I can see why Perkins made this movie. Longlegs is the coldest, loneliest film in a career full of cold, lonely films, a grotesque shout of despair whose brief moments of comedy were there seemingly to make you feel even worse. I loved it. But Perkins clearly felt like he had to exorcise that experience with an out-and-out good time, taking the brutal reality of loss and grief in a world of random pointlessness and turn it into a glib splatstick comedy.

It's just...Perkins has no lightness to him. So the comedy is arch, heavy, and winking. And while this did amuse me for maybe half an hour, I finally grew tired, especially once we entered the present day and a silly plot emerges. I'm thinking Perkins isn't the best at constructing plots. If the film had stayed in the childhood section like the movies it's taking influence from, it might've been an ok time. But even then, there's only one joke here, really.

I wasn't even particularly struck with the visual style, which is weird as Perkins is primarily a stylist. I'm guessing he reined himself in. The movie still looks good; it just doesn't suggest the guy who made The Blackcoat's Daughter and Longlegs.

Perkins' weakest effort. I think he'd benefit from a writing partner, someone who can bring more narrative and character heft while Perkins constructs the style and themes.

[The Curious Sofa]

I was pleasantly surprised by Leigh Wannel's Wolf Man, which is considered a disappointment after Upgrade and The Invisible Man, and received middling to negative reviews. And while it's not quite in the same league as those two, it's still a pretty effective, pared down to the essentials moster movie.

Like with his take on The Invisible Man, he puts his Universal Monster in a domestic setting to up the stakes, this time giving him a wife and daughter. The setup is similar to the 1941 film, with the protagonist returning to his ancestral home (here a lush, yet sinister Oregon forest, shot in New Zealand, rather than a soundstage representing Wales) after the death of a close relative.

What Wannel takes from the original is the sense of tragedy of the wolfman's loss of humanity, which here takes its cue from Cronenberg's The Fly. Some thought the set up takes too long, but I was on board for the slow burn and establishing the respospsebilty a father has to his daughter keep his daughter safe, is important in the context. Wannel also gives us an update of the original Universal werewolf make-up, more human than many later cinematic werewolves and quite effective here.

This is atmospheric, beautifully shot, has a great score by Benjamin Wallfisch and I the set pieces are tense and suspenseful when they arrive. I actually found this quite scary, especially the opening sequence, though from the rieviews I gather many felt differently about the scares. There is an elegant conceit where the camera cicles at 180 degrees,

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taking us from the POV of the wife and daughter to that of the transforming husband, who begins to perceive his surroundings as more animal-like, with his family becoming alien to him, turning into monsters from his perspective.

The acting is good, maybe Julia Garner is overqualified for the damsel in distress role (especially since the father-daughter relationship is more central), but it still helps to have a capable, likable actor in the role. As someone who had a similarly difficult relationship with his father, I thought Christopher Abbott did an excellent job as someone who is still processing the trauma of the relationship with his father, being aware of what kind of father he should be.

Wannel remains one of the better directors in the genre, and even if unlike his Invisible Man, the movie lacks ambitions to make any bigger statements, this is also clear here. I already thought this about his directorial debut, the 3rd Insidious movie, which I was the best directed in an otherwise poor bunch (I've rarely seen an uglier looking horror movie than the first film that franchise)

[alacal2]

Memoir of a Snail. Weird and wonderful claymation from Adam Elliot. I shall never be able to listen to John Denver's 'Country Roads' in quite the same way again

[The Curious Sofa]

Check out Heart Eyes if you enjoyed Christopher Landon's films. Although he is only one of three credited screenwriters here, his fingerprints are all over it. It's another high concept genre mash up where one half is a slasher film, in this case the other half is a Norah Ephron style romcom. The writing is snappy and the romcom half really works without taking away from the horror elements, there are some suspenseful set pieces and the kills are gnarly.

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Where it falls down a little is in the resolution, when it becomes a convoluted Scream style wrap up where the killer(s) is/are unmasked and provide exposition while trying to kill off our protagonists.

Otherwise this is good fun all the way.

[hearthesilence]

Technically Atom Egoyan's Seven Veils is almost two years old now, having first played in 2023 at TIFF, but it's opening at Quad Cinema this weekend.

As much as I love his early films, I haven't kept up with his work at all, and The Sweet Hereafter may very well be the last one I saw. I wasn't sure what to expect, but the opening minute just blew me away - I immediately wondered why so many stopped paying attention when he was clearly a great filmmaker still able to put together such brilliant moments.

It was a bit of a rollercoaster after that. As the narrative details piled on, I began to wonder if it was too much. When we get the first glimpse of the central character's father's work, I wondered if the film had fallen apart into self-parody. But the film was shot full of humor and had outrageous moments that were meant to be that, and not just to the audience but people within the film, and to my surprise, all the disparate elements did gradually pull together. Even the one subplot that seemed extraneous for much of the film eventually fell into place. It may have seemed a bit messy, but everything did move towards a similar purpose: about a creative life that came out of childhood trauma, and how the effects continued to lead to more damaging situations, from the relationships to be had to the creative endeavors entwined in those relationships. It also looks at how those traumas get processed in the work and the sense of ownership one has when so much of one's life is in said work.

It's probably not Egoyan's best film, and I'm not sure I'd call it a great film, but it reminded me of the risks, the boldness and the idiosyncrasy I missed in so much of this year's more feted narrative films - not just risks in filmmaking but the filmmaker's willingness to go deep into something painful and unpleasant.

[therewillbeblus]

First look at Joaquin Phoenix in Ari Aster's EddingtonShow

[cantinflas]

Point Cloud

[The Curious Sofa]

In a surprising turn of events, the initial reaction to Disney's live action remake of Snow White, probably the film with the worst pre-release buzz since Cats, has been mostly positive.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie ... 236164458/

[Monterey Jack]

The early "reviews" from paid shills -- er, established critics -- who get wined and dined by The Mouse at lavish premieres must always be taken with a grain of salt. I'll wait for "real critics" to chime in.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

I highly recommend looking at that Snow White article just to see the names of the sites the "buzz" is coming from: Future of the Force, the DisInsider, We Love Physical Media, and Christopher Rates It.

[spectre]

The Future of the Force person slammed it, but otherwise, yeah – they've clearly been handpicked from smaller outlets (or "the enthusiast blogosphere", to put it more specifically/kindly).

[thirtyframesasecond]

But, but, but it stars a Hollywood Walk of Famer.....

[hearthesilence]

"Walk of Famer," LOL

[The Curious Sofa]

And yet, the actual reviews for Snow White that are out now are mostly middling rather than outright hostile. From the negative buzz and hideous looking CG dwarfs I was expecting a Cats-style disaster. The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, IndieWire and Roger Ebert are postive and most of the others are "not as bad as feared".

Just to clarify, I have no interest in watching this, but I have been intrigued by the heated debate around the film. If this had been the next Cats, I might actually have been tempted to watch it.

[brundlefly]

Now we can move on to legit casting gripes, like how did Disney think a typically adorable live-action moppet could compete with a CGI Stitch?

[diamonds]

I'd like to put in a strong word for Carson Lund's Eephus, which I found superlative. It's the latest release under the Omnes Films banner, a loose filmmaking collective that has gradually been gaining steam in recent years. As much as I'd like to lavish praises on committed American independents, Omnes's track record with me hasn't been great; I wasn't impressed by Jonathan Davies's Rivette-indebted Topology of Sirens (although, fans of Trenque Lauquen may want to give it a look), and I found myself constitutionally incapable of appreciating just about anything in Tyler Taormina's Christmas Eve in Miller's Point, which provoked something close to an allergic reaction. (Lund served as the cinematographer on both of these films, and Topology at least looks quite pretty.)

But Lund's turn in the director's chair is something else entirely. Eephus is among the most impressive and formally assured debuts I can think of in recent memory, perhaps even longer. Lund juggles so many things here—a teeming character ensemble, with multiple competing dialogs and speech on a carefully layered soundtrack (à la Altman); a series of lightly comic behavioral observations, varied and arranged along a delicate tonal slide; a documentary study of a place in changing light; and of course an actual baseball game, with all the staging that entails—without recourse to conventional dramatic frameworks, and he pulls it all off beautifully. All while avoiding pat reassurances, familiar arthouse rigidity/airlessness, or really any sports movie clichés. Eephus is quite funny and entertaining, but it has a thematic richness, breadth, and philosophical perspective that is unusual (to say the least) in the current American cinema.

The film deserves a much longer post down the line, but I wanted to get the word out early while there's still an opportunity for perhaps some people here to see it in theaters. (Should it make a difference to someone on the fence about seeing a baseball movie, I have no attachment to the sport whatsoever and I was bowled over. I also can't imagine fans of the game coming away disliking it.) I hope it does well and that Lund can make more films. Based on this, he's a very promising talent.

[spectre]

Heard about this in recent weeks on the Chapo Trap House podcast (whose hosts and various friends seem to be involved in the production) and had no idea whether to take the recommendation with a grain of salt. So this is encouraging to read, diamonds.

Wonder if it’ll be making it down to Australia in any capacity.

[therewillbeblus]

I went into Eephus fully prepared to love it. I tend to appreciate films of its ilk already, but it's set in my area and features familiar archetypes, giving it the opportunity to feel a bit more personal. Unfortunately I found it pretty painful to sit through - that kind of listlessness needs a better structure of character interaction or something to earn its attitude. I dunno, I just couldn't get on its wavelengh.

[hearthesilence]

I was also intrigued by Richard Brody's rave review (and also the fact that Frederick Wiseman is apparently in the cast). otoh I didn't have anything close to the effusive reaction Brody's given to a few other recent films that I saw, so I remain a bit skeptical. I'll probably see this when I'm not so busy with other commitments, but we'll see.

EDIT: I forgot, FWIW Brody is a diehard Mets fan and seems to follow baseball religiously.

[Never Cursed]

When Alex Garland said he was "not planning to direct again in the foreseeable future" all the way back in April, he didn't say he wasn't planning to co-direct. So: Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland's real-time Iraq war film Warfare (NSFW).

Deadline's brief review (no spoilers) absolutely ran this over the coals, and made it sound of a piece with Garland's other work (pejoratively). I can't remember the last time I paid any attention to one of their reviews, but I'm kind of shocked at how unkind they were unwilling to be to a director who has seen a lot of acclaim in the past. Most other published notices for the film are positive, too, so theirs particularly stands out.

[Never Cursed]

Ron Howard's Eden bought by Vertical Entertainment for a late August release. Pretty bad omen for the movie given its cast and the amount of money spent on it. I have to imagine no one else wanted the thing even a little bit if it ultimately went to Vertical.

Meanwhile, as the rumor circulates that the Michael Jackson biopic will be a two-part film and will have to move to 2026 owing to reshoots, A24 has moved up Benny Safdie's The Smashing Machine to October 3, the date that the MJ movie had previously occupied. Sounds very amenable to a TIFF-like venue.

[Matt]

The old middlebrow stalwarts are really having a tough time of it these days, huh? Ron Howard's latest getting bought by what's essentially a streaming service clearinghouse, Clint Eastwood being unceremoniously dumped by Warner Bros., Robert Zemeckis's last film coming and going with barely a ripple, Woody Allen's career essentially dead.

But Ridley Scott improbably keeps grinding out one poorly-reviewed studio hit after another.

[Never Cursed]

I think the solution to this question is no more complicated than that Ridley Scott is the closest thing we have now to a Michael Curtiz or later-period Raoul Walsh or Henry Hathaway, a pure workhorse whose dedication to getting the thing in on time and under budget overwhelms any other directorial concern and allows him to stay working on expensive projects in spite of his age. (I only wish he was as slick as Curtiz or Walsh). You’re right, of course, but everyone else you name except maybe Howard has too much of a particular viewpoint to function in that same role. (Though funnily enough, their mainstream relevance all ended for different reasons - Eastwood pissed off a studio exec, Zemeckis made one too many bombs, Howard woke up one day to find his style of filmmaking completely irrelevant and outdated, and Allen became persona non grata for essentially political reasons). I feel like even Eastwood, one of the ultimate efficiency directors who a decade ago was making the same kind of films as are now still entrusted to Scott, is too individualistic and interested in tearing down American founding myths to be given the reins when there’s 50 or 100 million at stake. Even Spielberg doesn’t get to do that anymore unless it’s his 100 million (which he has, so it’s fine).

[Red Screamer]

I was surprised at how great Tardes de soledad is. The only other Albert Serra I’ve seen to this point is La mort de Louis XIV and this one has similar focus on heavily repetitious ritual and a minimal, textural style. But despite(?) this being a documentary, Serra’s form is so much more precise and robust here, giving his approach more of a sense of purpose. I was excited to see, for example, how drizzly weather or a new toreador outfit would (ever so slightly) change an upcoming bullfight from the previous one. Another major asset of the film — particularly because I have a fresh memory of the droning faux-historical dialogues of Louis XIV that drag down the non-Léaud scenes — is the performances. The toreador is fascinating in his transformations from his inscrutable blankness, somewhere between athlete-zone focus and zen spiritualism, to his baroque cock-strutting in the ring. His team, in a way, is even more fascinating: in awe of their unresponsive leader, aggressively passionate about the sport, and not really in control of their rapid-fire comments which veer between hype-up, mysticism, and, uh, an obsession with testicles. The limo scenes of them together surely best those in Holy Motors, Cosmopolis, or take your pick, for how they capture glamorous loneliness and entourage dynamics. I’d also say that, even with the arthouse minimalism, it succeeds as a close-up sports movie more than Zidane, un portrait du 21e siècle. That is, if you can manage to take bullfighting as a sport.

[Never Cursed]

This is not a movie that I would ever normally seek out or pay money to watch, but apparently some theaters in worldwide markets received (similar to Cats) bad DCPs of A Minecraft Movie featuring an earlier version of the film with unfinished visual effects in many scenes. There exists an HD bootleg of this same version out there.