5. You Do Not, In Fact, “Have to Hand it to Qanon”
What’s it about: Two conspiracy-addled cousins abduct a pharmaceutical CEO, believing her to be an alien. A battle of wills ensues between the CEO and the man who believes she’s the key to saving humanity from alien occupiers.
Last time I saw Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone collaborate (I still haven’t seen Kinds of Kindness, sorry Emma and Yorgos), the film created a gothic fantasy Lisbon so gorgeous I became a little afraid to visit actual Lisbon lest it fail to live up. This time Yorgos and his team managed to put that level of set deign into creating a whole-ass house that absolutely looks like someone moved into the grandmother’s house pre-filled with tchotchkes. Jesse Plemmons is great and absolutely unsettling as a man so deep into a conspiratorial rabbit hole that no amount of counter-logic can pull him out. The best comment I’ve heard on Emma Stone is that she’s nailed the “liberal land acknowledgement smile,” as that is spot on; she’s nailing the faux-woke capitalist attitude, someone out to say all the right things while still chasing that bottom dollar.
It’s also got a lot of subtle reflections on modern perils: that people get so lost in online conspiracies that say you can’t trust anyone on the outside, making it extremely hard to pull them out; the feeling of powerlessness in the face of corporate greed driving Earth of a cliff that leads people to these conspiracies; and it’s impossible to hear Plemmons list off the physical signs that someone is an alien and not hear the so-called “transvestigators” shouting that every woman who’s too buff, too tall, too sharp of features must be trans because they “can always tell.”
And then hoo golly the ending, I did not expect this film to go where it went.
Films of 2025: I have it at #12, over No Other Choice but under the latest Benoit Blanc mystery, Wake Up Dead Man.
Best Pictures: I’m gonna say #35, under Titanic and over CODA. Over CODA feels right but over the most successful film in the history of the medium doesn’t.
4. Shakespeare in Loss
What’s it about: Will and Agnes meet, fall in love, and must overcome familial disapproval when find they need to get married in quite a rush. Years later, they’ve had one son and two daughters, but Agnes feels Will’s true purpose is in the London theatres, meaning he’s away when sickness strikes the household, and young Hamnet doesn’t make it. Grief shreds Agnes, while Will pours it all into a play about a moody Danish prince out to avenge his father.
Well just to rip off a band-aid, this is not “The shocking true story of.” This is no more the actual story behind the writing of Hamlet than Shakespeare in Love was the real story behind Romeo and Juliet. That said, it’s a powerful and gutting story of love and loss and grief and acceptance. Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal play the hell out of the early stages of Agnes and Will’s love, and then Buckley and little Jacobi Jupe absolutely tear your heart out in the second half.
What’s a little extra clever in the telling is that I’m 90% certain you don’t hear the name “Shakespeare” until the last 15ish minutes of the movie, when Agnes and her brother are trying to find Will’s London apartment. What this does is strip the bulk of the story of the weight of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE and allow us to focus on the passion and grief of Agnes and Will. Sure it’s not exactly hidden that this Will is that will, it’s right at the heart of the premise, but Will the Playwright is absent from most of the narrative, leaving Will the Husband and Father.
It’s a gutting story, but in the final moments, as Agnes finally gets all the way into Hamlet, Jessie Buckley managed to break and heal something in me at the same time.
Films of 2025: Way up at #9, over The Naked Gun and under our next movie about a writer trying to exorcise family issues through his newest work.
Best Pictures: I’m beginning to question a handful of my rankings in this region but I think, I think we’re looking at #26, under Parasite and over The Departed, but seriously have I overvalued Anora? I have to rewatch it this year anyway, we’ll see.
3. Selling Your Trauma Dump to Netflix
What’s it about: After their mother’s passing, actress Nora Borg and her sister Agnes are reunited with their estranged father, acclaimed director Gustav Borg. Gustav has a new script he’s hoping Nora will star in, that seems to be about his mother’s suicide, and which he plans to shoot in their family home where she did it, but doing a film together is way more reunion with her father than Nora’s current mental state can handle. Enter Hollywood actress Rachel Kemp, who struggles to fill Nora’s shoes while Agnes begins to suspect this story is about a different family trauma than they assumed.
This doesn’t go for the heartstrings quite so aggressively as Hamnet did but it’s still remarkably effective. Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgård manage so much subtle unspoken pain as they try to navigate a relationship neither of them knows how revive, and only one of which seems invested in that. They manage to convey decades of trauma in their first few scenes together.
And also of note is what Elle Fanning is doing as Rachel Kemp. Rachel is wrong for this role. First of all it was never meant to be filmed in English, but just in general, she’s not getting it. It’s an impressive line Fanning is walking, where Rachel does not seem to be without talent, she’s just slightly yet noticeably whiffing it. Where her arc is concerned, the most crushing line would have to be Gustav saying “Let’s try one… without the accent.” He’s trying to be gentle but oof, rough.
In the end, we get a beautifully shot sequence of learning what’s worth holding on to and what to let go of, and the benefits and costs of doing so. Nothing is what they thought they wanted, but maybe they’ve come to the place they need to be. Beautiful and bittersweet, and when we see a scene from one of Gustav’s movies (starring a young Agnes), it might be the best and most harrowing single-shot take I’ve seen this year.
Films of 2025: One notch above Hamnet at #8, just under the pro-shoot of George Clooney’s stage production of Good Night and Good Luck, or if you don’t count that KPop Demon Hunters.
Best Pictures: I think 25th, under Rocky but over Parasite.
2. Panic! At the Prohibition Disco
What’s it about: Deep in the segregated south, young Sammie Moore dreams of being a blues musician, to the chagrin of his preacher father, and gets his first big show as his twin cousins Smoke and Stack come back to town with a bag of money and a truck of purloined liquor, looking to open a blacks-only juke joint. The only issues: lower profits than the twins were banking on, the constant lurking danger of the Klan… and the Irish vampire building a horde and wanting to claim Sammie’s once-in-a-generation musical talent for himself.
Alternate:
This movie is amazing. The performances are all rock solid, most notably but hardly exclusively Michael B. Jordan as both Smoke and Stack, who get some colour coding to tell them apart but you barely even need it after the first scene, it’s never confusing which one Jordan is playing. This movie scored three nominations in acting categories, one behind Sentimental Value and our next entry but ahead of eight of the other nominees, and it still doesn’t feel like enough.
Also the songs, obviously, go extremely hard. The vampire hoard doing a group singalong of “Rocky Road to Dublin” blew up the entire internet, and is only the second best number in movie.
I don’t know, it’s so good on just about every level, from the script to the cast to the set design to Ryan Coogler’s shot designs, that I neither know where to start discussing the movie nor where I’d end. It has but one flaw; there are a few times, over the course of the film, when Coogler repeats a piece of voice-over narration because he doesn’t trust us to have remembered it from 20-30 minutes earlier. That’s it, that’s the one flaw. Everything else, knocked out of the park.
(Okay also between this and the Black Panther movies maybe he can ease up on mid-credit scenes that are the actual ending of the movie, you can just wait until you’ve actually finished the movie to start the end credits, but that is such a minor quibble)
Look. There is a reason that Ryan Coogler, as a storyteller, is the one person who managed to get a Marvel movie nominated for Best Picture, and this isn’t a corporate gig, this is his passion project, and it’s paid off huge.
Films of 2025: That one flaw slipped it down to #2, over my beloved Superman from James Gunn, and given where we are on the list there’s really only one thing that can be above it, isn’t there.
Best Pictures: #13, over fellow Halloween monster prestige pic The Shape of Water but under On The Waterfront, sorry Sinners but that one was a game changer.
1. My Two Dads: Anarchy
What’s it about: Once upon a time, about six months from now, explosives expert Bob Ferguson and his one great love Perfidia Beverly Hills were part of American revolutionary group the French 75, which put them in the crosshairs of the fascist army colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, no that is his actual name. When Perfidia gets caught and names names to protect herself, Bob and his and Perfidia’s daughter Willa are forced into hiding. Years later, once Willa is a teen and Bob a burned out paranoid stoner, Lockjaw returns, having some suspicions about Willa’s parentage that might compromise his candidacy for a group of white supremacist elites. As Lockjaw pursues Willa, Bob must… okay he is trying his best but he is very out of practice, Willa might need to save herself a little.
This is the longest Best Picture nominee (by a whopping two minutes), but you’d never know to watch it. It clips along at such a steady pace that it felt quicker than Train Dreams, which is an entire hour shorter. It never lags, even phone calls play out like Fast Saga action beats, and it matches Sinners for the amount of Oscar worthy performances jammed into every scene. It managed four nominations, tying Sentimental Value, and it still doesn’t feel like enough, although there are fewer glaring omissions than Sinners.
And it is also often incredibly funny. Don’t let the sometimes dark subject matter fool you (Lockjaw covers up his search for Willa by launching, essentially, an ICE raid on her city), this is the second nominee that’s actually a farcical comedy cosplaying as a high-stakes drama. Maybe you thought the second one was Train Dreams, I doubt I described that one well. But unlike Timothée Chalamet, Leonardo DiCaprio seems entirely aware that he’s in a comedy, and leans hard into it. Bob trying to call in to connect with the resistance might the the funniest scene of the year outside of Naked Gun or maybe Fackham Hall.
Also the commentary may be subtle, Paul Thomas Anderson isn’t trying to hammer home one message, but he does form a quilt of many small insights that add up to “Ethnostate fascism is terrible for everyone, including the people trying to make it happen, even if the people doing it wave the right flag and enjoy NASCAR.” We have:
- The chaotic cruelty of mass deportation raids
- The fact that not even the fascists want to live in the world they’re trying to build, between Lockjaw’s demonstrable attraction to black women and that said raids inconvenience the wealthy elites who’d counted on immigrants for cheap labour
- How quickly the fascists will turn on one of their own the second they’re inconvenient
- The inherent danger of militarized police, ask Brazil how well that worked in the 70s
- And most importantly, that the real resistance to all of this is to build communities and look after each other, because no other help is coming. The French 75 tried their best but Benicio del Toro’s Sensei St. Carlos does more good just building an underground railroad to escape immigration raids.
It’s an excellent movie that is entirely of and for the current moment of the world, with potentially career-best performances from DiCaprio and Sean Penn, while newcomer Chase Infiniti holds her own against both of them (her lack of a nomination is the most glaring omission; was Kate Hudson really that good in the Neil Diamond Tribute Band Biopic?). And it’s a legit blast to watch. The first time I wondered how far into the movie I was, it turns out there were at most ten minutes left. That’s much better than Maestro or The Irishman, where it turned out I wasn’t yet halfway through and was utterly despondent.
Also I appreciate this one even more after The Secret Agent, which is like if One Battle was entirely about one of the French 75 who didn’t escape Lockjaw’s purge, but had the same runtime and also nothing happens.
Films of 2025: Right at the top, #1, best movie of the year, even if in my heart of hearts I maybe still like Sinners more?
Best Pictures: I’d currently place this at #10, under Spotlight, which has similarly key messaging, and over Argo, which maintains the same thrilling pace.
I’d be hesitant to say there was a bad movie in the lineup this year. Not like Maestro or Emilia Perez or King Richard. One movie that didn’t work for me, one that might not work for you if you can’t tolerate Kevin O’Leary, and one I absolutely did not get, but hey, could be worse. Could be Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Much like last year, there are several I’d be fine or even happy to see win. Which will win? Guess we’ll find out.
Until next time.
