Best Movies of 2025 #54-41

54. Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery

I also read the oral history Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock's Wildest Festival that came out this year so I was steeped in 90s music festival documentation. Usually a documentary has a bit at the end trying to justify why the subject matter was important. This movie is all end bit. 

53. Queer

I watched this months ago but I think the ayahuasca scene erased my memory of the rest of the movie anyway. That's not a detriment and it's the second top ten movie scene of the year:

52. Oh, Hi!

I'm sure people are saying the main character isn't sympathetic but it's a sitcom-y movie. These are the same people that complain that people are too mean to Jerry on Parks and Recreation. More importantly, this adds to movies I've seen with an exclamation point:

Airplane! 

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! 

Top Secret! 

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! 

¡Three Amigos! 

Mars Attacks! 

That Thing You Do! 

Baadasssss! 

Saved! 

Anvil! The Story of Anvil 

The Informant! 

SLC Punk! 

Viva Knievel! 

Zero Hour! 

Return of the Killer Tomatoes! 

Foodfight!

Gotcha!

Great Balls of Fire!

Machete Maidens Unleashed! 

Zapped!

Eaten Alive!

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Everybody Wants Some!!

Hail, Caesar!

Mother!

Silent Night Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!

Banned from Broadcast: Saiko! The Large Family

Salaam Bombay!

Yes, Madam!

1982: Greatest Geek Year Ever!

Jackpot!

 

Dig! XX

 

O Lucky Man!

Save The Dog! 

Oh, Hi! 

51. Spinal Tap II: The End Continues

For the record I rate the movies right after seeing them so this didn't get any extra bump after director Rob Reiner died. A completely good enough sequel.

50. Better Man

If you're a movie reviewer and you go with the angle that, actually, the fact that Robbie Williams chooses to be depicted as a chimpanzee isn't the most interesting thing about Better Man just give it up right now. Of course it's the most interesting thing about the movie. It's insane.

49. Jay Kelly

I know George Clooney didn't write Jay Kelly but it plays like his ode to being an elderly new parent.

48. Presence 

We got two Steven Soderbergh movies this year and somehow the haunted house one is the lesser one? 

47. Cunk On Life

This was the first 2025 movie I saw. From what I can tell people in the UK are tired of this lady's shtick but I, only just recently familiar with her shtick, am still on board.

46. Warfare

Just a straight up well-made re-enactment of a true event. If true crime re-enactments are still a thing on TV try to get director Alex Garland to do them, he's good. Plus you might get some A-list actors on them for a change:

 

45. Friendship

Encountering Tim Robinson on I Think You Should Leave first has left me permanently worried that he's going to go nuts in everything else I see him in. He mostly hasn't to the same degree. Still, he would be a bad choice for Jack Torrance in a Shining remake.

44. Universal Language: Une Langue Universelle

This was a recommendation from a podcast, from Alicia Tobin on Stop Podcasting Yourself. So now I can thank her for this movie and this moment that I listen to seasonally:

 

43. The Toxic Avenger

I was really looking forward to this one. The director made I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore, which was great. And I've been a fan of the original Toxic Avenger since my mom suggested we watch it 40 years ago. It turned out just fine and the scene in the fast food place is a top ten scene of the year. But it's not online so here's the original:

 

It's about the same. 

42. Vermiglio

One of those 107 70s movies I watched was The Tree of Wooden Clogs. Vermiglio is very similar. It's of course fine to make movies that are alike, especially if they're separated by 50 years, but I saw them within weeks of each other so your movie's bad.

41.  Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning

The previous one was my favorite movie of 2023. The first hour isn't good but great news! There's still 2 hours to go at that point. Everything after is pretty good. Take your pick if the submarine or airplane scene is the best. But it's one of them:

Best Albums of 2025

In the past I've looked at Best of the Year lists and picked my favorites from that because I don't listen to music anymore. Well, just like reading, I listen to music again! Except I only started the last week of September. So here are the best albums that came out since early fall.

5. The Rubber Teeth Talk by Daisy The Great

4. Backroads by Samara Cyn

3.  Pl*net F*tness by Pacing 

2. Swallow the Knife by Sir Chloe

1. Vice City Magic by Mustard Service 

Best Movies of 2025 #67-56

67. Hedda

Some critiques of this movie said it changed too much from the Ibsen play. I have the advantage of not knowing a single thing about the Ibsen play. After watching, I don't know if they should have made it closer to the play but they should have made it further away from this.

66. Marcella

An informative documentary about Italian cook Marcella Hazan that isn't especially cinematic. It made me want to try the Roast Chicken with lemons. Also, I like how they mention multiple times about removing the onions from her tomato sauce before serving. Get outta here onions!

65.  Last Breath

Cliched movie about the true story of a deep-sea diver whose electron transport chain is interrupted when oxygen isn't there as a final electron acceptor! Thrillingly, his cells resort to anaerobic means to generate ATP, but it's not efficient!

64. Novocaine

I saw a documentary years ago about people that aren't able to feel pain. It's also tied to your sense of urinary and bowel urgency so they had to set timers to remember to go to the bathroom. I can't remember if Novocaine, a movie about a man who can't feel pain, addresses this. Five stars if it did.

63. Heart Eyes

Sometimes a movie combines two things, like rom-com and slasher, disguising the fact that it's doing neither very well. That's fine, it works for M&M's and it sort of works for Heart Eyes.

62. The Materialists

This is only a rom-com so it's all laid bare. The movie suggests that women will throw themselves at you only for the fact that you're tall. I can assure them that there's some other factor that cancels out tallness but I'm not going to explore what it might be.

 61. War of The Worlds

This is on a lot of lists of worst movies of the year. I was entertained. Maybe not in the way the makers planned but you know I've always rejected authorial intent!

60. Superman

This is the first James Gunn movie I haven't been crazy about. He may be lost to DC like we lost Peter Jackson to Lord of The Rings or Florida to Burmese Pythons.

59. Drop

Not the best 2025 horror movie in a tower restaurant but firmly in the top two 2025 horror movies in a tower restaurant. 

58. The Hand That Rocks The Cradle

Maika Monroe plays Rebecca De Mornay. Upgrade. Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays Annabella Sciorra. Upgrade. Raul Castillo plays Matt McCoy. Downgrade. The kid is Mileiah Vega playing Madeline Zima. Remains to be seen.

57. The Shrouds

Imagine making a movie dealing with the death of your wife and some doofus on the internet says it was fine. 

56. Megan 2.0

People didn't like that they went more comedy/action this time around. Maybe they also didn't like Terminator 2 or Silent Night, Deadly Night 2. 

 Sometimes you have to switch it up!

Best Movies of 2025 #80-68

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once again I'm ranking every movie I saw from this year, starting from the bottom. So "Best" might not be the right title at this point. I don't want to say Worst, however, and I don't feel like the onus should be on the movie. These are the Michael Made The Wrong Choice Movies of 2025.

80. Ash

I have a disability to think ahead in a movie. When someone calls a movie predictable the best I can do is, after the fact, think, "yes, I suppose it was". I have anti-anticipation syndrome. It's a problem. But I was so far ahead of Ash that I knew no animals were harmed in the the making of this movie.

79. The Long Walk

Just like two years ago the second to last movie is a horror film a lot of people like. But The Long Walk holds your hand too much in telling its story and I'm just not into that kind of PDA. I like a movie that puts its hand in my back pocket so its touching my butt but also, kinda not?

78. Death of a Unicorn

I don't know if anything worked in this movie. In fact, it's shockingly high on this list and we just started. But I like what I wrote about the Skinamarink and The Long Walk parallel so DoaU gets some bullshit grade inflation.

77. Love Hurts

I resolve to stop watching movies early in the year just to watch a current movie. The beginning of the year will now be used to catch up on older movies. Like how I watched 107 movies from the 70s this year.

76. Marshmallow

Nobody makes sense in this movie so the whole time you're thinking either there's a revelation that makes it make sense or it's all dumb. But even if there's a revelation, was it worth it to be frustrated that whole time? Huh Marshmallow, was it worth it?

75. The Naked Gun

I've seen this on some best-of lists. People say you need to see a comedy in the theater because the laughter around you will heighten the experience. I don't know, I tend to agree with Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa who said, "The laughter of fools is the pronouncement of madness".

74. F1: The Movie

I was one of the few to dislike Top Gun: Maverick very much and now there's this. It's enough to strike fear in my heart whenever I hear director Joseph Kosinski's name, if only I could commit it to memory.

73. Clown in a Cornfield

Ha, take that Jason Kaczynski. Your movie is one marissa-michael blog unit worse than a movie called Clown in a Cornfield (to be sung to the tune of Girlfriend in a Coma).

72. AJ Goes to the Dog Park

After watching The Naked Gun I tried out this micro-budget ZAZ-type comedy. The amateur charm makes it slightly better. I amuses me that a lot of the bad reviews for this movie are from people that went to the same "mystery movie" showing thinking they might be seeing, as one person says, something like the new Jurassic World movie. It's like what Fernando Pessoa said: "Despondency follows those whose only hope is [for dinosaurs]".

71. KPop Demon Hunters

People like this too. I like to supply a second opinion so you can be informed. I had a problem with the story, animation and songs. Some people accepted those elements. 

70. Found Footage

I had a problem with The Watchers because it used the trope of someone walking away from a place only to find themselves back there. Scary[sarcastic]! This otherwise mediocre movie gets extra points for making fun of that by having the characters try different methods of beating it. In one, they try spinning in circles while walking away. It made me laugh. That makes it Movie Scene of 2025 #10.

69. Becoming Led Zeppelin

I don't have any special interest in Led Zeppelin. Neither, it seems, does Led Zeppelin. It's understandable they would be bored telling their story yet again but it didn't help sell their music to me. Someone once described skateboarding as an activity requiring the most skill for the least payoff. Led Zeppelin is the skateboarding of music.

68. John Candy: I Like Me

I'm tired of biodocs where the general tone is sadness. I don't need slow, treacly piano music in a movie about a comedian. Yes he died young but who wants a movie about someone's life that's mostly about their death? It feels like what the poet Pessoa said, "My life: a tragedy booed off the stage by the gods after only the first act". No, I mean it. I made up the other ones but that one was real!

Best Books of 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You read that right, I started reading books again in 2025. And since books are the lowest art form after music, TV and film I'm going to tackle them first. 

5. The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A Memoir by Neko Case

Neko Case's memoir is really not interested in rock and roll stories. She mentions things like releasing her first album and being nominated for a Grammy far after the fact. It's more about how she was so poor growing up she ate potato flakes out of the box for dinner.

4. Say Everything : A Memoir by Ione Skye 

I love a memoir. Sorry. I love: A Memoir. There's a point in this book where Ione Skye is dating Anthony Kiedis while making eyes at Ad-Rock, her brother Donovan Leitch is dating prettiest-celebrity-in-the-world Susanna Hoffs and her mom is seeing Warren Beatty. What is this family?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

This book keeps mentioning how cold it is but it's also constantly raining. Talk to me about cold when it's under 32 Fahrenheit, Australian writer Charlotte McConaghy.

2. Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser

The subtitle doesn't convey how this is about all the lead we poured into the atmosphere and how it causes aggression and may have led to an uptick in serial killers. How about Murderland: How Lead Led to Ted: The Bundy/Plumbum Conundrum. Why does nobody let me name books?

1. Heartwood by Amity Gaige

I read this because it involves the Appalachian Trail and I like hiking and woods. That strategy worked well so next I'm looking for a book about my second favorite thing: news bloopers.

Actually, stage productions are the lowest art form. I saw no stage productions this year. 

Best Movies of 2024 #10-1

Movies not watched in time to make the list are Nutcrackers, which very well might be the new bottom. Hot Frosty should have leaned more into it or away from it. It had a leaning problem. Evil Does Not Exist does not make the top ten. Blink was a fine documentary and Lee is not the best war photographer movie of the year.

10. Rebel Ridge

Jeremy Saulnier first appeared on this blog 13 years ago with his debut movie Murder Party at Bad Movie Night. His following movie Blue Ruin was my favorite movie ten years ago. Green Room seems to be a fan favorite. And then he made a wolf movie. Well, he's back. Seventh best scene is the opening:

9. Green Border

Not to be confused with the Green Room sequel Green Boarder, this is a very serious movie that's incredibly well-made. So I don't have to pretend to like a movie because of its "importance".

8. Challengers

A lot has been made about how Gen Z doesn't like sex scenes in their movies. So we get this sexy movie without much sex. But some harrowingly explicit tennis.

7. Arcadian

My favorite horror movie of the year that was most dismissed as a Quiet Place clone. I see it as an interesting Quiet Place tweak, like those cool alternate Sigourney Weaver clones in Alien 4.

6. Kim's Video

Others also called this documentary "a mess" and the director "annoying". That's true but the subject matter was too interesting to matter. 

5. The Coffee Table

Siskel and Ebert would say the criteria for a thumbs up was if you would recommend the movie to a friend. I wouldn't recommend The Coffee Table to anyone. The tension comes from someone having to deliver the worst news in the world that will destroy the other person. Oh, and it's a comedy. Thumbs down, I laughed a lot and was horrified.

4. His Three Daughters

I loved Carrie Coon, I loved Natasha Lyonne and now I love Elizabeth Olsen. I have so much love to give. So scene eight I'll call the laughing scene is from The Coffee Table. It's not out there right now. Scene nine is the monologue at the end of this movie that's a spoiler. To make up for the lack of videos here's a picture:

3. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

I'm not doing this on purpose. I don't mean to rock the boat. I'm nothing if not a team player. But Furiosa is better than Fury Road. 

2. Love Lies Bleeding

What else would you expect from the director of quiet, religious psychological thriller Saint Maud than a "hilarious, bloody film noir" made by "a lesbian intellectual addicted to steroids" as John Waters called it.

1. Hit Man

Richard Linklater's Everybody Wants Some!! was my favorite movie of 2016 (and it's better than Dazed and Confused, I can't stop doing this) so I wasn't blindsided by the rise of Glen Powell this year. They reteam here for a gentle rom com with some murder. Sorry Green Border, you should have had more wacky costumes. And one of the top ten movie scenes of 2024, the notes app scene:

Best Television of 2024

1. Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Is the key for good TV taking a mediocre movie and turning it into a show? Let me see, there's Buffy. And... you know I'm not coming up with anything. I needed a third example for it to be a thing. Nevermind.

2. Hacks

Hacks, of course. is based on 1995's Hackers, a movie that brought together Jonny Lee Miller and Angelia Jolie. Which is weird because Mr. and Mrs. Smith brought together Jolie and Brad Pitt. 

3. English Teacher

And English Teacher comes from the early Brad Pitt movie Cutting Class.

It's the movie that brought together Brad Pitt and Jill Schoelen.

4. One More Time

This is a Canadian show I liked that has no connections to actual show business.

5. The Bear

The Bear is a bizarre take on Babes in Toyland with Jill Schoelen and a man she started dating, Keanu Reeves. They changed the setting to Chicago from Cincinnati even though the movie has the famous song:

To bring it all around Keanu Reeves met Winona Ryder on Bram Stoker's Dracula (What We Do In The Shadows) and Winona met Angelina Jolie on Girl, Interrupted which was adapted into Ted.