Logan is back to wrap up 2025 with a Top Five in Film.
For a few years now, I’ve been avoiding compiling a Top 10-type of list and instead just written about all of the films I watched in that given year. Primarily, that’s been because I haven’t watched more than about fifteen films in a year in a very long time. Not in 2025, though.
This year,r I went to the theatre almost 60 times from February to December and watched another dozen or so movies at home. Don’t worry, I’m not about to write something about the seventy-five films I watched.
What happened? Well, for starters, I found myself in a relationship. With someone who loves movies, no less (she says, “I want to see that” every time we see a new trailer, it’s adorable). So, nearly every weekend for eleven months, we went to see a movie. Sometimes we saw two. One weekend, I think we even watched four. The second part of that was finally signing up for AMC’s A-List subscription, which more than paid for itself.
The really great thing about it is that I wound up seeing a lot of films I wouldn’t have forked over money for in 2025. I don’t know if you’re aware, but the superhero content was lacking last year. Without her, I probably would have gone to see ten films, with four of them bearing a Marvel or DC brand. The bad part about it, though? All of those movies you’re seeing on critics’ (respected or otherwise) end-of-the-year lists…yeah, almost none of them truly landed for me.
Sinners was definitely an incredible achievement. Michael B. Jordan delivered TWO brilliant performances in a year where most movies didn’t even have one. The music was wonderful, and the whole movie looked astonishing. But that ending really threw me out of it. Speaking of two performances by one guy; Mickey 17 has been roundly forgotten about, and while I didn’t love all of it, Robert Pattinson deserves to at least be mentioned in the conversation.
One Battle After Another has something to say, and Benicio Del Toro might deliver the best supporting performance of the year. But the movie spends so much time dwelling on things I was so uninterested in (like what turns Sean Penn on…) that by the time we got to the what should be called “Bob and Sensei go on an adventure” portion of the film, I was checked out. Equally so on obvious Oscar-bait films like Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere and Smashing Machine. Good performances in meandering movies from all actors involved.
I thought Caught Stealing was a fun flick that couldn’t decide on a tone, which ultimately killed the vibe. I’m coming around a bit on Austin Butler though, and the supporting turns in the movie (especially Liev Schrieber and Vincent D’Onofrio) are truly remarkable. And while there are parts of Weapons (both horrific and comedic) that will stick with me for a very long time, it also lost me with its inability to firmly establish a tone. But, it does highlight some truly special performances from folks like Julia Garner (who is also the best thing about Fantastic Four: First Steps), Alden Ehrenreich (best performance of the film and a wholly underrated actor), and Amy Madigan (give her all the flowers).
Some other notable performances from 2025 for me? The entire cast of Thunderbolts*. It was the best thing Marvel produced this year, and even though the script was messy as hell, it’s worth the ride for all of them. Bugonia has a slew of standouts as well, but none more so than first-timer Aidan Delbis. The single most heartbreaking delivery I saw on screen this year. Then there’s Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, who we saw in Predator: Badlands as Dek, the main Yautja. He’s under a ton of effects work, and I know there are people who would argue that makes his performance less valid, but there was also an Avatar film this year, and I think his work tops anything in that. It should be getting talked about more.
I have a few more honorable mentions for the year, but I’ve delayed long enough. Here are my Top 5 Films of 2025!
5. The Long Walk
If it weren’t for picks #3 & 4, this list might have just been Stephen King adaptations and a superhero flick, and if I’d stuck to films I watched in theatres it still might have been. There’s only so much I can say about this one, because it’s a film that I think needs to be experienced not relayed. When King wrote the story it was an allegory for watching his friends and peers get drafted into a war that shouldn’t have been. Today there’s so many facets of life in this country you could ascribe it as a metaphor to that it’s heartbreaking. The point remains, the youth are being asked to carry more weight than the previous generation. It offers no resolution, no real reward, no redemption and no hope for a better tomorrow. And right now that is what anyone with any empathy and moral compass is seeing every day.
4. The Shark is Broken
This one might be a cheat, but it’s on Letterboxd, so I’m counting it. Among many other things, 2025 brought a newfound appreciation for Jaws. Partly because it’s my partner’s favorite film (her birthday was completely Jaws themed), and partly because this year marked its 50th anniversary. I happened to see BroadwayHD, a small streaming service that allows you to stream Broadway shows, had The Shark is Broken available, so I signed up for the free trial and we settled in for another night of Jaws goodness. I thought I was going to get a fun look at some behind the scenes stories and reenactments of some of the notorious goings on that have only been hinted at or talked about. And while there’s plenty of that here, what I wasn’t prepared for was Ian Shaw becoming his father. It was like watching a ghost come back to life. We came for the exaggerated stories about the making of Jaws, but we left understanding that even the making of that film was the story of a man wrestling with the demons of his life.
3. Wake Up Dead Man
Rian Johnson has an uncanny ability to strike at the heart of the times we’re living in with his series of Knives Out films. This third outing of Benoit Blanc sees the detective investigating the murder of a Deacon, played by Josh Brolin, presumably at the hands of a former boxer turned priest, played by Josh O’Conner. Nothing is what it seems, everyone’s a suspect, and the cast is STACKED. The mystery is a lot of fun, the solution isn’t too far fetched and even though most of them don’t have much to do, all of the performances are intriguing. Brolin, O’Conner and Daniel Craig do get to shine extremely bright, however, which can make something like Andrew Scott as a flailing writer trying to recapture his old glory start to feel superfluous. Johnson wisely leans in to O’Conner though, and the end result is a story that does more than make you smile and keep you guessing. It tackles the damage religion (not faith) can inflict upon a community.
2. The Life of Chuck
This movie is narratively a mess, and I can see why it hasn’t resonated with a lot of people the way some of Stephen King’s other non-spooky tales have. And while it’s no Shawshank Redemption or Stand By Me, or even The Green Mile, I think it deserves to at least be in the conversation. As someone who is still dealing with the death of a loved one, constantly wrestling with his own trauma and often desperately hoping that in the end he will have made a positive difference, if only within his own little world, this film landed on me in a big way. There are some mysteries from the original story that it definitely fumbles, and they’d probably have done better to leave them out altogether, but I think that actually adds to the realness of the movie. In life there usually aren’t answers to the strange circumstances we can find ourselves in, and there’s no way for us to truly know the impact we have on others. What truly matters is making the best of the time you’re given, and stopping to enjoy the music any time you hear it.
1. Superman
Sure, there wasn’t a ton of quality superheroing this year, but that almost doesn’t matter when you get the best live-action portrayal of Superman in over 45 years. This is the only film I watched twice in 2025, and I think I enjoyed it even more the second time. All of the characters pop, the action is thrilling and, well, even thinking about Krypto makes me smile. As a dog-owning, comic-book-loving nerd, am I biased? Hell yes I am. Doesn’t change the fact that this movie is so fun, so heart-warming, and so much of who and what we should all strive to be, that it is absolutely my favorite film of the year.
I want to wrap up with a few more things that really stood out for me in 2025, cinema wise at least.
First, horror films in general. I’m not the biggest fan of the genre, so the fact that I saw more horror films that I actually liked this year than maybe any other year of my life is notable. I think Black Phone 2 retroactively made the first film better (that may just be because I didn’t like the first one), The Monkey was equal parts scary, satirical and weighty, Clown in a Cornfield had less weight but was no less fun and effective and dealt with mob mentality in an interesting way, Final Destination Bloodlines dealt with generational trauma with a lot of campy death and destruction, and Megan 2.0 was more fun than people know (because no one saw it). There were just as many that I just didn’t love, but none that I downright hated.
Finally, Pluribus was the absolute best thing I watched all year. I’d have happily forked over money to see each episode in a theatre every week if that had been possible. Every frame of that show was artfully put together, every second riveting, even when absolutely nothing was (seemingly) happening. I know it was the most watched thing on Apple TV and I still don’t think enough people have seen it. It ticked every cinematic box I have and looked better than every film I watched last year.
That’s it for 2025. I’m looking forward to what 2026 is going to bring, on the big screen at least. The real world looks like it will continue to be a disaster. Here’s hoping we all make it to Doomsday.
Logan is back to wrap up 2025 with a Top Five in Film.
For a few years now, I’ve been avoiding compiling a Top 10-type of list and instead just written about all of the films I watched in that given year. Primarily, that’s been because I haven’t watched more than about fifteen films in a year in a very long time. Not in 2025, though.
This year,r I went to the theatre almost 60 times from February to December and watched another dozen or so movies at home. Don’t worry, I’m not about to write something about the seventy-five films I watched.
What happened? Well, for starters, I found myself in a relationship. With someone who loves movies, no less (she says, “I want to see that” every time we see a new trailer, it’s adorable). So, nearly every weekend for eleven months, we went to see a movie. Sometimes we saw two. One weekend, I think we even watched four. The second part of that was finally signing up for AMC’s A-List subscription, which more than paid for itself.
The really great thing about it is that I wound up seeing a lot of films I wouldn’t have forked over money for in 2025. I don’t know if you’re aware, but the superhero content was lacking last year. Without her, I probably would have gone to see ten films, with four of them bearing a Marvel or DC brand. The bad part about it, though? All of those movies you’re seeing on critics’ (respected or otherwise) end-of-the-year lists…yeah, almost none of them truly landed for me.
Sinners was definitely an incredible achievement. Michael B. Jordan delivered TWO brilliant performances in a year where most movies didn’t even have one. The music was wonderful, and the whole movie looked astonishing. But that ending really threw me out of it. Speaking of two performances by one guy; Mickey 17 has been roundly forgotten about, and while I didn’t love all of it, Robert Pattinson deserves to at least be mentioned in the conversation.
One Battle After Another has something to say, and Benicio Del Toro might deliver the best supporting performance of the year. But the movie spends so much time dwelling on things I was so uninterested in (like what turns Sean Penn on…) that by the time we got to the what should be called “Bob and Sensei go on an adventure” portion of the film, I was checked out. Equally so on obvious Oscar-bait films like Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere and Smashing Machine. Good performances in meandering movies from all actors involved.
I thought Caught Stealing was a fun flick that couldn’t decide on a tone, which ultimately killed the vibe. I’m coming around a bit on Austin Butler though, and the supporting turns in the movie (especially Liev Schrieber and Vincent D’Onofrio) are truly remarkable. And while there are parts of Weapons (both horrific and comedic) that will stick with me for a very long time, it also lost me with its inability to firmly establish a tone. But, it does highlight some truly special performances from folks like Julia Garner (who is also the best thing about Fantastic Four: First Steps), Alden Ehrenreich (best performance of the film and a wholly underrated actor), and Amy Madigan (give her all the flowers).
Some other notable performances from 2025 for me? The entire cast of Thunderbolts*. It was the best thing Marvel produced this year, and even though the script was messy as hell, it’s worth the ride for all of them. Bugonia has a slew of standouts as well, but none more so than first-timer Aidan Delbis. The single most heartbreaking delivery I saw on screen this year. Then there’s Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, who we saw in Predator: Badlands as Dek, the main Yautja. He’s under a ton of effects work, and I know there are people who would argue that makes his performance less valid, but there was also an Avatar film this year, and I think his work tops anything in that. It should be getting talked about more.
I have a few more honorable mentions for the year, but I’ve delayed long enough. Here are my Top 5 Films of 2025!
5. The Long Walk
If it weren’t for picks #3 & 4, this list might have just been Stephen King adaptations and a superhero flick, and if I’d stuck to films I watched in theatres it still might have been. There’s only so much I can say about this one, because it’s a film that I think needs to be experienced not relayed. When King wrote the story it was an allegory for watching his friends and peers get drafted into a war that shouldn’t have been. Today there’s so many facets of life in this country you could ascribe it as a metaphor to that it’s heartbreaking. The point remains, the youth are being asked to carry more weight than the previous generation. It offers no resolution, no real reward, no redemption and no hope for a better tomorrow. And right now that is what anyone with any empathy and moral compass is seeing every day.
4. The Shark is Broken
This one might be a cheat, but it’s on Letterboxd, so I’m counting it. Among many other things, 2025 brought a newfound appreciation for Jaws. Partly because it’s my partner’s favorite film (her birthday was completely Jaws themed), and partly because this year marked its 50th anniversary. I happened to see BroadwayHD, a small streaming service that allows you to stream Broadway shows, had The Shark is Broken available, so I signed up for the free trial and we settled in for another night of Jaws goodness. I thought I was going to get a fun look at some behind the scenes stories and reenactments of some of the notorious goings on that have only been hinted at or talked about. And while there’s plenty of that here, what I wasn’t prepared for was Ian Shaw becoming his father. It was like watching a ghost come back to life. We came for the exaggerated stories about the making of Jaws, but we left understanding that even the making of that film was the story of a man wrestling with the demons of his life.
3. Wake Up Dead Man
Rian Johnson has an uncanny ability to strike at the heart of the times we’re living in with his series of Knives Out films. This third outing of Benoit Blanc sees the detective investigating the murder of a Deacon, played by Josh Brolin, presumably at the hands of a former boxer turned priest, played by Josh O’Conner. Nothing is what it seems, everyone’s a suspect, and the cast is STACKED. The mystery is a lot of fun, the solution isn’t too far fetched and even though most of them don’t have much to do, all of the performances are intriguing. Brolin, O’Conner and Daniel Craig do get to shine extremely bright, however, which can make something like Andrew Scott as a flailing writer trying to recapture his old glory start to feel superfluous. Johnson wisely leans in to O’Conner though, and the end result is a story that does more than make you smile and keep you guessing. It tackles the damage religion (not faith) can inflict upon a community.
2. The Life of Chuck
This movie is narratively a mess, and I can see why it hasn’t resonated with a lot of people the way some of Stephen King’s other non-spooky tales have. And while it’s no Shawshank Redemption or Stand By Me, or even The Green Mile, I think it deserves to at least be in the conversation. As someone who is still dealing with the death of a loved one, constantly wrestling with his own trauma and often desperately hoping that in the end he will have made a positive difference, if only within his own little world, this film landed on me in a big way. There are some mysteries from the original story that it definitely fumbles, and they’d probably have done better to leave them out altogether, but I think that actually adds to the realness of the movie. In life there usually aren’t answers to the strange circumstances we can find ourselves in, and there’s no way for us to truly know the impact we have on others. What truly matters is making the best of the time you’re given, and stopping to enjoy the music any time you hear it.
1. Superman
Sure, there wasn’t a ton of quality superheroing this year, but that almost doesn’t matter when you get the best live-action portrayal of Superman in over 45 years. This is the only film I watched twice in 2025, and I think I enjoyed it even more the second time. All of the characters pop, the action is thrilling and, well, even thinking about Krypto makes me smile. As a dog-owning, comic-book-loving nerd, am I biased? Hell yes I am. Doesn’t change the fact that this movie is so fun, so heart-warming, and so much of who and what we should all strive to be, that it is absolutely my favorite film of the year.
I want to wrap up with a few more things that really stood out for me in 2025, cinema wise at least.
First, horror films in general. I’m not the biggest fan of the genre, so the fact that I saw more horror films that I actually liked this year than maybe any other year of my life is notable. I think Black Phone 2 retroactively made the first film better (that may just be because I didn’t like the first one), The Monkey was equal parts scary, satirical and weighty, Clown in a Cornfield had less weight but was no less fun and effective and dealt with mob mentality in an interesting way, Final Destination Bloodlines dealt with generational trauma with a lot of campy death and destruction, and Megan 2.0 was more fun than people know (because no one saw it). There were just as many that I just didn’t love, but none that I downright hated.
Finally, Pluribus was the absolute best thing I watched all year. I’d have happily forked over money to see each episode in a theatre every week if that had been possible. Every frame of that show was artfully put together, every second riveting, even when absolutely nothing was (seemingly) happening. I know it was the most watched thing on Apple TV and I still don’t think enough people have seen it. It ticked every cinematic box I have and looked better than every film I watched last year.
That’s it for 2025. I’m looking forward to what 2026 is going to bring, on the big screen at least. The real world looks like it will continue to be a disaster. Here’s hoping we all make it to Doomsday.
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