There’s a movie called The Future by Miranda July where one of the characters freezes time via magic moon powers, only to realize that he didn’t actually stop the world from turning; he just disengaged from it and things kept on going while he kept himself in one place. Needless to say that the last three months have taken quite a bit out of me and my response to it all was to focus on literally anything else other than this website and writing reviews, but the world doesn’t stop just because you want to get off, so it’s time to try and get back on that horse before it’s too late. Yes, we’re doing the 2025 lists well after everyone has stopped caring, but I’ve got to start somewhere if I’m gonna get my momentum back, and talking about movies I’ve already talked about seems like a good way to get back into the groove of things! As usual, this is not a traditional Worst Movies Ever list, but is instead a space to offer constructive criticisms to movies I at least found interesting enough to offer my unsolicited advice. Let’s get started!
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Marty Supreme & The Smashing Machine
Perhaps I’ve said everything I needed to when I did my double-bill review of these two movies, but I think the complete shut out of Marty Supreme at the Oscars does add a little perspective to the situation. Sure, Josh Safdie seemed like the breakout star of the two with his film getting a mountain of nominations and superior box office returns, but at the end of the day, I don’t think it has the staying power of his earlier work when he was teamed up with his brother Benny. Conversely, while The Smashing Machine was, to my mind, the more interesting movie, it’s not all that surprising that it didn’t catch on with audiences and critics; lacking a strongly structured narrative and having very little to say by the end of it. With their powers combined, they made one of my favorite movies in the last decade, and perhaps it was inevitable that their first solo projects would feel lacking. I’m still rooting for them and I wouldn’t want them to be stifled creatively by feeling like they have to work together, but it’s clear that they still have a lot to learn from one another and these two movies do a great job of illustrating that.
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Black Phone 2
I really liked the first Black Phone movie, even if I didn’t get around to reviewing it, and I had high expectations for this one after seeing the fantastic trailer they release. Unfortunately, it’s another example of the trailer showing all the best ideas of the movie as its few interesting ideas are drowned out by its inconsistent writing. The script is both over-tuned and underweight as it tries to paint a Stephen King style tableau of interesting characters and richly detailed environments, but never builds enough narrative to justify the lore or gives its characters enough depth to carry its verbose dialogue. Add to that the utter lack of scares and it’s mishandling of its dream-like premise leaves us with a movie that clearly thinks highly of itself but fails to avoid some very obvious pitfalls. A script that aims high and doesn’t reach the mark should be better than one with lower expectations of itself, but that’s not quite what’s going on here; it’s closer to being pretentious than anything else. What this needed was to take the stick out of its butt and have some more fun with the premise. A little more violence and cheap jump scares, both of which are better than the underweight prestige drama we have here.
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Eddington
Ari Aster and I have not seen eye to eye on a lot of things, but I maintained a certain amount of respect for him. That is, until I saw this movie which has done quite a bit of damage to his image as a uniquely insightful filmmaker about challenging issues. Imagine taking the worst episodes of South Park, the ones where their utter lack of understanding is matched only by their confidence in everyone else being wrong, and trying to turn it into a prestige drama. There’s something rather repulsive about how far this thing misses the mark while being so self-assured that it’s being profound, and while a goofier movie may have gotten away with it, the pretense only adds to the frustration of seeing so much talent wasted on Z-tier internet hot-take from five years ago. Buried in the depths of this movie is an interesting character study about a guy falling apart at the seams, but in the hands of Ari Aster, it ends up smothered under a mountain of glib remarks and bad pretensions. Maybe he should just make slasher movies or gross-out comedies if he’s so intent on pushing peoples’ buttons, but I guess it’s not as much fun to sound like a Reddit edge-lord if you’re not doing it in a way that will convince some people that it’s worth taking seriously.
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Captain America: Brave New World
I don’t think the MCU needs to go away as so many people are oft to say on the Internet, but it’s been obvious for several years now that Marvel Studios has had a tough time keeping everything on track; particularly in the wake of COVID which threw all their post-Endgame plans into chaos. Few films feel like they suffered from the growing pains more than this one which I still maintain is a lot better than it’s critical shellacking would lead you to believe, but is undeniably a deeply flawed movie. It doesn’t even feel like it belongs to this particular phase of the MCU as it doesn’t build up in any way to Doomsday, nor does it tackle any of the bigger themes and concepts that have defined the Post-Endgame era. That’s almost a mark in its favor as the generally more grounded tone and stakes could have been a refreshing change of pace from the multi-verse and planet destroying chaos of the last few films, but despite it’s much more simplified starting point, it ends up being a tired and convoluted mess; scraping the bottom of the barrel for new characters and reaching so far back into its own history that it feels alienating to anyone who hasn’t seen the seventeen year old movie this is ostensibly a sequel to. Doomsday is right around the corner with only a Spider-Man movie to finish setting the stage, and none of the recent entries have done a great job of building us up to this event. We’ll see if the Avengers brand has enough juice to get butts in seats, but entries like this are not helping the MCU’s case by any stretch.
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One Battle After Another
One Battle After Another is owned by Warner Bros Pictures
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
In the wake of its big win at the Oscars over Sinners, I think it’s fair to say that the problems with this movie extend fa beyond what’s contained within its runtime. We’ve certainly been here before where the Academy likes a movie to be about something far more than whether or not it does it well, and while I can’t say that this is completely devoid of good ideas and solid filmmaking, I found it to be rather insufferable. It feels like a Bizzaro-World counterpart to a Quinten Tarantino film; a movie with just as many awkward tonal shifts and uncomfortable appropriations of other cultures, only instead of being fun and celebratory in its utter tastelessness, we’re supposed to take this seriously. Not necessarily as heartfelt drama or a grounded exploration of current events, but the kind of thing that feels like it’s doing us a favor by elevating the shlock we’re all accustomed to. Sean Penn as a pervert goofball while also being a scary white supremacist authority figure is perhaps the most drastic of the film’s dalliances with genre blending, but we’re being pulled in so many different directions as the tone bounces back and forth between grindhouse sleaze and topical satire that it all comes off as bemusing rather than engaging. The one exception is the extended sequence of DiCaprio trying to make a phone call during an ICE raid which is one of the most interesting stretches of film I saw last year. The camerawork is masterful as it glides effortlessly between DiCaprio’s gormless bumbling and the horrific nightmare of being targeted by these thugs. It’s funny and heartfelt while staying anchored by Benicio del Toro’s wonderful performance as he directs DiCaprio and us as the audience through this challenging night. If the rest of the movie felt as pointed as that sequence, then I could understand why it ultimately took the top spot, but it’s sandwiched between some very bizarre filmmaking that I was simply unable to get in sync with. Perhaps that’s a me problem, but it kept me from loving this movie the way that so many others clearly did.
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War of the Worlds
It’s no surprise that the biggest punching bag of 2025 wound up getting a few jabs from me as well, but what is there even left to say about this mess? It’s terribly made despite having a decent budget, the scripting is utter nonsense despite working from a solid premise, and what few decent ideas and well executed moments there are in this are utterly drowned out by the overwhelming sense of corporate sleaze at the heart of the movie as the day is saved by a freaking Amazon drone. All of that has been discussed to death through various snarky reviews and YouTube videos, but what genuinely worries me about this is how it doesn’t feel like an outlier, but a vision of the future. Amazon as a film studio is an undisciplined mess that has no reason to get better because its parent company will always make money. This would be a regrettable state of affairs if they were just doing their little straight to streaming nonsense, but their acquisition of MGM and their ventures into other licenses means that the rot is likely to spread. We’ve certainly gotten success stories like The Boys, Invincible, and the Fallout series, but I can’t say that I’m excited to see what a Jeff Bezos version of James Bond looks like, nor what else they feel like they can throw on their service that was made with minimal effort to score a quick buck. If that’s the future we all have in store for us, then frankly, let the data-aliens take us now before we get an AI Sean Connery hitting on Lauren Sánchez Bezos.
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And that will do it for the movies of 2025 that didn’t quite hit the mark! Agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments below!
The Reviewers Unite 