Some Other Movies That Aren’t On the Best of 2025 List

Avatar: Fire and Ash

• This movie is 3 hours and 15 minutes long, but it feels like 6 hours because of the uneven pacing. There’s a big action setpiece 2 ½ hours in that really feels like the end of the movie, but then the movie doesn’t end. Instead, it slows way down again for some whale meetings, then finally ends in another rousing climactic battle.
• Here’s my big problem with this movie: At the beginning, the bad guy is searching for Jake Sully, but then several hours into the movie, he shows up at Sully’s village with a bunch of gunships and demands they hand him over. Why not do that at the beginning of the movie? What’s changed? Did they not know he lived in this village before? I think they did, if I remember the second movie correctly. Couldn’t you have cut out 90 minutes here by getting to this point more quickly?

Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning

• This movie was clearly harmed by the studio panicking over the last movie not doing well at the box office. They didn’t pay off things that were set up in that movie because they worried that no one had seen it.
• I’d hate to say this movie should be even longer, but the biggest problem is that there are no great set pieces until the submarine an hour in. They needed to either add some great stunts to this section or cut it way down. The previous movie ended with them saying “Now we’re ready to get the key from the submarine”, so why couldn’t this movie have just started with that?
• The number one writing lesson to take from this movie is that you shouldn’t make the team too big in an action movie, because you’re going to need to craft an ending in which everybody makes a crucial contribution to victory. (As The Scorpion King did so well.) This movie needlessly added four members to the team, but the finale was basically Tom Cruise saving the world single handedly, while Benji, Grace, and the other four new cast members had to run around trying to make themselves useful. The previous seven movies did a better job and keeping the team small and everybody’s contributions crucial.

Fantastic Four: First Steps

• This movie was a lot of fun, and, as with most Marvel movies, it helps if you vaguely love but don’t actually know much about the characters. In this case, as a big fan of the comics, it bugged me too much how out-of-character they are.
• Johnny is a Reed-level super-genius who saves the day by translating an alien language based on knowing three words? Ben is an even-tempered guy who hates to say “It’s Clobberin’ Time”? Sue doesn’t know not to fly in the third trimester? Phoebe on “Friends” knew that!
• I liked it enough that I hope they keep making them, but ultimately this movie is not on the list.

Okay, enough complaining, let’s get to some movies I liked better...

New Episode of A Good Story Well Told on Beau is Afraid, featuring James Kennedy!

We’re back! And James Kennedy is back! Longtime readers will remember that James and I ran a podcast called “The Secrets of Story Podcast” for many years until it ended a while ago. Well now he’s back as a guest on my new podcast, “A Good Story Well Told” with Jonathan Auxier! In this season, we invite on guests to make a case for critically derided or commercially overlooked movies, and hoo-boy has James delivered on both fronts, with Ari Aster’s deeply personal Beau is Afraid. Will he be able to win over Jonathan and I to this bizarre epic (which Aster described as “A Jewish Lord of the Rings”)? Check it out to find out! Here it is on Spotify and here it is on Apple Podcasts:

Not on the Best of 2025 List: F1

This movie is astoundingly bad, surely one of the worst ever nominated for Best Picture. As I watched it, I kept thinking, “These men are risking their lives for such silly little races in such silly little cars?” But then I realized that I had just showed my son Ford vs. Ferrari, and I love that movie. Isn’t that also about men risking their lives for silly little races? Why did I have such a different reaction? SPOILERS for both movies.

• First things first: in Ford vs Ferrari, the cars were less silly-looking.
• More importantly, FvF was a true story, and a period piece, both of which help. It may be a silly way to risk your life, but these are real men who really did it, so they don’t have to convince us that such a thing could or should happen. It really did.
• I think it helps that Christian Bale does in fact die at the end of FvF, as opposed to both racers in F1, each of whom get injured in horrific crashes but return to happily finish out the season. In FvF, I felt like I was being forced to grapple with the “why should they do this?” question, whereas in F1, I felt like I was the only one asking it, which infuriated me.
• I’ve said before that, in the best sports movie, the hero either loses by winning (Downhill Racer) or wins by losing (Rocky). In the main climax of FvF, Bale wins by losing, agreeing to lose the race because he’s overcome his arrogance (then he dies in an epilogue) F1 is a very simplistic winning-by-winning story without a shred of artistry or literary value.

We’ll be discussing that distinction again with a movie that is on the list.

Not on the Best of 2025 List: One Battle After Another

Huh? What? This? Really?

Once again, I am baffled by the response to a popular year-end movie. But this time, it isn’t like Everything Everywhere All at Once. In that case I said, “Well, I don’t get this, but I can see why, if I did, I might think it was really awesome.” One Battle After Another is not a case of me not getting the movie. I get it. I just found it really lackluster and off-putting.

This movie is way too bland and way too long, with a big nothing of a performance from DiCaprio. I had read going in that this movie had one of the great car chase scenes of all time. So blah. It was nothing.

The biggest problem with this movie is tone. Every performance feels like it’s in a different movie. We start with Teyana Taylor, who has apparently been told she’s in a Roger Corman or Russ Meyer movie (“This revolutionary is one red hot mama who’ll get you hard before she takes you down!”) Then you get DiCaprio doing a dinner-theater Big Lebowski and I just can’t reconcile the two. Sean Penn and Benecio Del Toro are both fine, but again, don’t feel like they’re in the same movie, and it’s hardly the best performance either has given (Del Toro is so much better in this year’s The Phoenician Scheme)  Chase Inifiniti seems like a promising newcomer if you put her in a better movie. 

Longtime readers of my year-end lists will remember that I loved The Master and Licorice Pizza (and of course I loved many of his early films) but I don’t love every Paul Thomas Anderson movie, and this definitely seemed to me to be one of his duds.

I suppose if I had to take a lesson from this movie, it’s that anyone can do an American remake of a great foreign film without securing the rights, if you just change and update enough elements. The basic premise here seems to be: “Remember how great The Battle of Algiers was? What if we did an American remake, except in this version, everybody sucks? (And it’s kind of a comedy except not really.)” My answer to that question is, “I’m not interested,” but this movie has been a great success with critics and many moviegoers, so I guess that it was a good idea to base a movie around that question. Find another great old movie and do the same!

Intro to Best Movies of 2025 and Not on the List: Highest 2 Lowest (And a Bit of Meddler, Too!)

Hello! Sorry I’ve been gone for a while. I do intend to return to “What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won” after we’re done with this series, but it’s really hard to do it knowing I just have five readers who commented. I had sort of decided that if I didn’t get at least ten I would just peter out, but I guess I’ll summon up the effort to continue, as I would like to turn it into a book at some point.

So, in the three weeks leading up to The Oscars, it’s time to look at the Best (American) Movies of 2025. As usual, I’ll start with what I didn’t see: I saw eight of the Oscar nominees, but I didn’t see Bugonia (violence against women) or Secret Agent (I can’t take movies about fascism right now. And anyway, it’s not American.). I hear they’re both great. I also intended to see but never got around to Is This Thing On?, Nouvelle Vague, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, The Mastermind and Black Bag, among others.

Now, also as usual, we’ll spend the first week looking at things that are Not on The List.

Not on the 2025 List: Highest 2 Lowest

I’ve written about Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low as an underrated movie, though that was a bit of a stretch, as it’s fairly well known and highly regarded. I just wanted to write about it at the time.

It’s the story of a millionaire who gets a call that his son has been kidnapped, only to discover that they actually kidnapped his chauffeur’s son instead, but they demand the money anyway. In the second half, the police get involved and catch the kidnappers.

I loved that movie so much that I tracked down the American police procedural book it adapted (“King’s Ransom” by Ed McBain, one of the “87th Precinct” series) and I loved that so much that I then read most of the 55 books in McBain’s series. I then recommended one for adaptation in the short-lived column I wrote for Scriptshadow.

Finally, in preparation for watching this movie, I decided to check out the first adaptation of “King’s Ransom,” which was an episode of the short-lived “87th Precinct” TV show in 1961. (Nancy Reagan plays the millionaire’s wife!) So now I’ve read the book twice, seen the TV adaptation once, and seen the Japanese adaptation many times. I’m ready to see, finally, the first American feature adaptation of this very American book.

This movie was completely ignored by the Academy, which is understandable, because it has serious script problems, but it’s very well directed by Lee and I would have liked to see him get a nod.

The big problem with this movie is the era in which it was made. Cops are out of fashion. So this is an anti-cop movie. But how do you adapt an Ed McBain book and not have cops as the heroes??

The solution is to have Denzel Washington as David King realize the cops are not going to solve the case, and go out and solve it himself instead. Well, that doesn’t work.

But here’s the thing: I think there’s a way that could have worked. And the movie almost got there.

There’s a rich tradition of movies where a civilian realizes that he can’t rely on the cops and has to solve this himself. But it’s always tricky to pull off. The hero needs a lot of motivation to make that choice.

In this movie, unlike all previous versions, the chauffeur has a criminal record, and I like that change. This naturally causes the cops to wonder if he’s concocted this whole scheme himself to bilk his employer/friend out of millions of dollars. That’s a good wrinkle to add to the story.

But that never pays off. They never arrest the chauffeur. In the movie, Denzel finds a good lead, but the cops are uninterested for no good reason, so Denzel picks up a gun and goes off to do it himself. If they had confidently arrested the chauffeur, then it would be much more believable that they would be totally uninterested in new leads, and it would have genuinely felt like it was all up to Denzel now.

Or just let the cops be the heroes again.

(Of course, you would still have the problem that it’s ridiculous that 70 year old Denzel could beat up 36 year old ASAP Rocky, but that could just be rewritten to involve a gun instead of fists.)

Anyway, it’s still a well-directed movie and worth checking out, but this fundamental script problem basically wrecks it.

New Episode of A Good Story Well Told: Girls Just Want to Have Fun, featuring special guest Grace Lin!

Can a quickie movie adaptation of a song, which didn’t even have the rights to use Cyndi Lauper’s version, actually be a good movie?? Superstar author Grace Lin makes the case, and Jonathan Auxier and I are here for it!

Here’s the link on Spotify or listen here on Apple Podcasts: 

New episode of "A Good Story Well Told" on Hook, with special guest Lindsay Eager!

In this episode, Jonathan Auxier and I welcome our first ever guest, Lindsay Eager, to make the case for Hook, Steven Spielberg’s 1991 movie about a grown-up Peter Pan! Will she be able to convince us that it’s unfairly maligned?  Check it out here on Spotify or here on Apple: 

What Should've Won That Could've Won: We're a third of the way done! (And please comment Hello!)

Hi everybody!

Well, time has been flying and now we’re a third of the way done with What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won, at 33 movies in! I thought we should take a moment to look back on the project so far. I also wanted to check in to make sure people are out there reading the series, because nobody comments on blogs anymore. If you’re out there, are you enjoying the series? Anyone still around from when the series began back in 2012 and surprised to see it start up again? Are there any picks that infuriated you that you’re still smarting about? How about the ads, are they funny and worth doing? If you’re reading these, please post a comment below to say hi!

And if you’re new to the blog, welcome!  This is a series called What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won where I declare which movie should have won the Oscar for Best Picture for each of the Academy’s first 100 years.  Below, you can click on each line and link to a post where I go through each movie and explain what the nominees were, how hard my decision was, who made the movie, what the story is, whether my pick got any nominations or wins, why it didn’t win (if it lost), and, finally, 4-6 reasons why is should’ve won (or did win).  

• 1928: What Did Win: Wings, What Should’ve Won: The Crowd
• 1929: What Did Win: Broadway Melody of 1929, What Should’ve Won: Applause
• 1930: What Should’ve Won and Did Win: All Quiet on the Western Front
• 1931: What Did Win: Cimarron, What Should’ve Won: City Lights
• 1932: What Should’ve Won and Did Win: Grand Hotel
• 1933: What Did Win: Cavalcade, What Should’ve Won: I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang
• 1934: What Should’ve Won and Did Win: It Happened One Night
• 1935: What Should’ve Won and Did Win: Mutiny on the Bounty
• 1936: What Did Win: The Great Ziegfeld, What Should’ve Won: Modern Times
• 1937: What Did Win: The Life of Emile Zola, What Should’ve Won: The Awful Truth
• 1938: What Did Win: You Can’t Take It With You, What Should’ve Won: Holiday
• 1939: What Did Win: Gone with the Wind, What Should’ve Won: The Wizard of Oz
• 1940: What Should Have Won and Did Win: Rebecca
• 1941: What Did Win: How Green Was My Valley, What Should’ve Won: Citizen Kane
• 1942: What Did Win: Mrs. Miniver, What Should’ve Won: To Be Or Not to Be
• 1943: What Should’ve Won and Did Win: Casablanca
• 1944: What Did Win: Going My Way, What Should’ve Won: Double Indemnity
• 1945: What Did Win: The Lost Weekend, What Should’ve Won: Scarlet Street
• 1946: What Did Win: The Best Years of Our Lives, What Should’ve Won: It’s a Wonderful Life
• 1947: What Did Win: Gentlemen’s Agreement, What Should’ve Won: Black Narcissus
• 1948: What Did Win: Hamlet, What Should’ve Won: Fort Apache
• 1949: What Did Win: All the King’s Men, What Should’ve Won: The Third Man
• 1950: What Did Win: All About Eve, What Should’ve Won: Sunset Boulevard 
• 1951: What Did Win: An American in Paris, What Should’ve Won: A Place in the Sun
• 1952: What Did Win: The Greatest Show on Earth, What Should’ve Won: High Noon
• 1953: What Did Win: From Here to Eternity, What Should’ve Won: Roman Holiday
• 1954: What Did Win: On the Waterfront, What Should’ve Won: Rear Window
• 1955: What Should’ve Won and Did Win: Marty
• 1956: What Did Win: Around the World in 80 Days, What Should’ve Won: The Court Jester
• 1957: What Did Win: The Bridge on the River Kwai, What Should’ve Won: 12 Angry Men
• 1958: What Did Win: Gigi, What Should’ve Won: Vertigo
• 1959: What Did Win: Ben-Hur, What Should’ve Won: Some Like It Hot
• 1960: What Should’ve Won and Did Win: The Apartment

New Episode of A Good Story Well Told on Real Steel!

Jonathan Auxier and I continue our Guilty Treasures series, where we (or guests) make the case for critically maligned works! This episode, can Jonathan convince me of the value of the Hugh Jackman robot-boxing movie Real Steel?