NOT having really focused on catching everything out there because — reasons — I did catch a few titles and of those these are the best.
Superman (James Gunn)
Not Gunn at his best but at his most straightforward, as if trying to reform. Still his take on the Big Blue Boy Scout is refreshingly sweet-natured, an antidote to the dark ‘n’ edgy superpowered bores that have lumbered out and put me to sleep in recent years. Plus, Nathan Fillion needs his own Guy Gardner movie and Krypto is such a good dog!
Quezon (Jerrold Tarog)
Yes, it’s not fair and balanced, and yes, it cuts a few (okay, a lot of) corners and bends a few (okay, a lot of) truths; to be fair, my biggest complaint about the film is that it doesn’t give in to its tendencies and turn into the full-fledged dance musical it keeps threatening to be. But Tarrog’s biopic is livelier than most, and a more flattering portrait of this beloved president as badass gadfly tweaking the nose of stuffed-shirt Westerners. Heroic? Not really, and thank goodness for that; heroes make me snore.
Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro)
Arguably Del Toro soft-pedals (not to mention sexes up) the more horrific aspects of the creature’s nature, but even so this is a handsome, beautifully mounted production of Mary Shelley’s great gothic novel. A struggle, definitely not Del Toro’s best (though it should have been), but I did end up liking it.
Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh)
Think Mr. and Mrs. Smith as written by John Le Carre, smart and sexy and subversive as hell. Doesn’t quite touch the kind of honest despair that Le Carre at his best is capable of, but it is finely crafted and finely acted (of course being a Soderbergh) and overall a fine time at the movies.
Mickey 17 (Bong Joon-ho)
The biggest slam against this film is that it isn’t Parasite; the best thing about this film is that it isn’t Parasite. Bong rarely if ever repeats himself, thank goodness, and here he turns out a startlingly large-budgeted production with wonderfully oddball virtues — not the least of which is Robert Pattinson’s most endearing performance ever (and, yes, I’ve sat through Twilight — over two hours of my life I’ll never get back).
Weapons (Zach Cregger)
Loved the ingeniously constructed script, the eerie imagery (the kids silent in the night like cruise missiles with their wings spread and their engines cut off, gliding towards their selected targets), the spiky interplay between Julia Garner as the beleaguered teacher and Josh Brolin as the beleaguering parent, and, above all, Cary Christopher’s delicate, eerily honest portrayal of a child in way over his head, in a situation he can barely understand let alone handle.
One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Arguably Anderson’s best work and the best adaptation of Thomas Pynchon to date (not that there are many), a hurtling juggernaut of a shaggy-dog odyssey of an epic chase across hundreds of miles of California landscape and dozens of ICE agents hunting generations of resistance fighters. On drugs. Leonardo DiCaprio gives the performance of his career and Sean Penn the most hilarious in the film (never knew walking about with a ramrod up your rear could be that funny) and Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti play the most inspiring rebels and Benicio del Toro is just, well, cool.
Cloud (Kurosawa Kiyoshi, 2024)
Talk about a genre bender, Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s film starts out as character study of an amoral techno creep, turns into a stalker/home invasion thriller involving the people the creep victimized online, turns into an efficient little shoot-em-up, ultimately turns into… something else. The year 2025 may be a fairly good year for horror, or films that barely qualify as horror, and this is easily my favorite.
Magellan (Lav Diaz)
Just when you think Diaz has sold out — a color film, and under less than three hours! — you look at Diaz and Artur Tort’s dusky candlelit imagery, the field after field of corpses the famous explorer leaves behind in his wake, and you say: “I would like this projected in 35 mm, please.” If Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland explored fascism’s latest manifestation in the form of thugs in uniform smashing down doors, Diaz reaches back centuries to depict the original fascist, an adventurer and monumental mass murderer who killed tirelessly for his royal patron’s benefit. “We work for his greed.” “That’s a good one, we work for his greed!” and they toast to the king’s greed.
It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)
A man named Vahid recognizes Eghbal, the prison interrogator who may or may not have tortured him a long time ago. What would you do if you were him? How would you do it? Who would you contact, how would you convince them to help and, conversely, what can they do to make you stop? And what would you say when faced with the man you’ve always dreamt, for years, of confronting? The proceedings are compelling, the emotions intense, but also, surprisingly, funny. One of Panahi’s best and one of the best films to win the Palme d’Or in recent years.