Below is the list of movies I’ve seen this year, very roughly sorted by how much I enjoyed them (least favorite at the top, favorite at the bottom). Commentary included for select movies.
Going forward, I’m going to chunk these by 30 movies at a time
- Stalker (1979)
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Mr. And Mrs. Smith This movie made no sense. If I didn’t know the actors were married in real life, I’d never have believed it. A few cool action scenes do not save this trainwreck.
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Live and Let Die This felt like at least two separate movies, and the first one was wildly bad.
- Johnny Dangerously (1984)
- True Romance (1993)
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Metropolis (1927) I found myself constantly asking, “Wait, how did they do *that effect?”. Visually, the movie is stunning. Thematically, I felt like it went off the rails in the second half, and the final message and ending sequence felt like a return to status quo in a way that is strictly worse for everyone involved*.
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Snatch A more complicated retelling of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It looses something in its ambition. Too many characters and plots to easily track, but Brad Pitt is very fun.
- Planes, Trains, And Automobiles
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Austin Powers: Goldmember Better than the second, not as god as the first.
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Side Effects (2013) The more I think about this one, the more it grows on me.
- On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
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Hundreds of Beavers Some pretty good looney tunes style hijinks. There’s a reason most looney tunes skits are 100 minutes long.
- Deadpool and Wolverine
- The Illusionist (2006)
- Nope (2022)
- Puss In Boots (2011)
- Rocky (1976)
- ¡Three Amigos! (1986)
- La La Land
- (Rewatch) Close Encounters of the Third Kind
- Sonic The Hedgehog 3
- My Neighbor Totoro
- Sinners
- Top Secret (1984)
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Steve Jobs (2015) Some phenomenal choices by director Danny Boyle, and the script neatly avoids the issue many biopics have, where the tension and reality diverge to become uninteresting or fizzle out. The movie ends when the tension does, at effectively a random point. How do you take a script that’s mostly people talking and make it interesting? Either business or stakes. This film utilizes both, as well as some fascinating visuals. The hallway satellite scene is inspired work!
- Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
- Frankenstein (2025)
- Molly’s Game
- (Rewatch) National Treasure
- The Marvels (2023)
- The Spy Who Loved Me
- Puss In Boots: The Last Wish *Brilliants film, though I wasn’t a fan of the lower frame rate and different animation styles during action sequences.
- The Fabelmans (2022)
- Monsters University
- Le Samouraï (1967)
- (Rewatch) Raiders of the Lost Ark
- Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
- The Naked Gun (2025)