Best Movies of 2025, #1: Superman

Is this a perfect movie? No, but I didn’t think there were any perfect movies this year, and this was the one I liked the best. This is the one I rushed to rewatch as soon as it was on Blu-Ray and liked it even more on a second watch.

The ending of this movie, watching the tape of his Earth parents, hit me like a cannonball both times I watched it. It’s very powerful, and my favorite movie moment of the year. I’m tearing up as I type this, in fact.

(But the movies biggest flaw was, once again, that it didn’t have something for everybody to do in the finale. The Daily Planet folks are flying around in a ship but they don’t go anywhere. This was fixable: Lex should have been operating Ultraman from hiding. Then the Daily Planet folks should have tracked him down and led Superman there.)

Storyteller’s Rulebook: There Are Always New Stories to Tell

The movie’s first twist, which I will now spoil, is that Superman belatedly finds out that his Kryptonian birth parents intended for him to conquer earth and to repopulate his species by taking a harem. I was impressed by this new take and wondered what comic it was from (presumably an Elseworlds graphic novel?) Imagine my surprise when I found out that it was original to the movie. It’s amazing that, after 87 years of Superman comics (with sometimes as much as 8 issues a month) (not to mention the daily comic strip and weekly radio and TV shows) no one had told this one.

Gunn had the choice of thousands of stories to adapt, but instead he asked, what is the worst thing that could happen to this hero emotionally. It also helps that it’s entirely logical his Kryptonian parents would have wanted this of him.

There have been a lot of character-similar-to-Superman-but-he’s-a-bad-guy comics in recent years (two of which, “The Boys” and “Invincible,” have been successfully adapted to TV), but no one had asked “What if the real Superman was supposed to be bad, but chose to be good because of his good Earth parents?” That’s an original take.

(I did find one source online claiming the storyline was from a comic, but I’ve read that comic and it’s really something very different, so I’m counting it as original to Gunn)

(Now of course, you’re probably thinking: Wait, Matt, doesn’t this obligate you to choose this movie when you get to 2025 in “What Should’ve Won that Could’ve Won”. This is when I tell you that no, you can’t go through my lists since 2011 and figure out what movies I’ll say should have won. The criteria are different. My picks will be surprising.)

New episode of A Good Story Well Told about The Brave Little Toaster, featuring Betsy Bird!

Jonathan Auxier and I welcome my legendary wife Betsy to discuss one of the weirdest movies ever made, Disney's direct-to-video epic The Brave Little Toaster. Is it oddly great, or just greatly odd?

Best Movies of 2025, #2: Marty Supreme

If I had to choose for Best Actor between Chalamet in this movie and Hawke in Blue Moon, I’d be mighty stumped. They’re such different performances, but equally great, in their own way. Hawke’s is a masterpiece of subtlety, but this is a masterpiece of intensity.

This is the tale of petty criminal Marty Mauser, who dreams of being world ping-pong champion in the 1950s, but his sleaziness keeps getting in the way. Yes, it’s the fourth movie we’ve looked at about a man who thinks, incorrectly, that by being a “great man” he’ll be able to get away with mistreating women. That’s the theme of the year!

Rulebook Casefile: Winning by Losing, Losing by Winning, and Everything In Between

When discussing F1, I talked about how, in great sports movies, the hero either wins by losing or loses by winning. And in this movie they actually say something like that out loud in the dialogue! But is that actually true of this movie?

Marty thinks that by intentionally losing in an exhibition match, he will win the chance to compete in the main tournament, but then he finds out he will never be allowed to compete in the tournament, so he decides to win the exhibition match, and does so. Then he seems to have grown as a person, and goes home to take responsibility for his child and girlfriend.

So he’s supposed to win big by losing small, then loses the chance to win big, then wins small instead. But even then, he’s pissing off his benefactor by winning the exhibition round, and losing his plane flight home …only to win the support of the American military, getting him another way home.

So yes, the emotions are complex enough to qualify as literature, not just entertainment. But I kind of wish he had lost the match, admitted that he’s not the best, and that realization had led him home to take care of his girlfriend and kid.

It’s interesting that all four of the “problematic great men neglecting their kids” movies (Hamnet, Sentimental Value, Jay Kelly and this) end with the great man being professionally celebrated. It would be interesting if at least one of them admitted that great men, for all their other faults, are sometimes just not that great.

Best Movies of 2025, #3: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

This is an astoundingly good movie. Apparently Josh O’Connor has been acting for a while, but I wasn’t familiar with him, and I found his performance here astonishing. He steals the movie from Daniel Craig, which takes a lot of doing, because Craig is once again great as detective Benoit Blanc.

In both of the first two movies, Blanc helps a poor woman-of-color navigate a community of wealthy white assholes. I was expecting the same the third time out. How on Earth was I to guess that it would be a story about helping a decent (white, male) Catholic priest navigate a crappy congregation? It’s a shocking swerve away from what seemed to be the heart of the franchise, but it works beautifully.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: Create Unique Obstacles

In the movie’s best scene, Blanc and Jud the priest are racing against time to try to solve the clues, when suddenly they hit a roadblock: The person who has promised to help them needs pastoral counselling before she gets off the phone.

Everything screeches to a halt as Jud listens to the woman’s problem and helps her with it, while Blanc’s eyes are rolling out of his head with frustration.

You really have to read the text of all three movies carefully to figure out that Blanc was probably kicked out of the house by a religious mother for being gay, giving him good reason to reject religion and have little sympathy in this situation, but he’s a good detective and knows this is not the time to press his case. And he’s found one priest he can approve of enough to respect his process.

(I kind of wish the movie had been a little more clear that this was what was going on with Blanc and not made us scratch for it, but if you do the work, it’s very rewarding.)

There are all sorts of obstacles you can throw in your heroes’ way, but the best are ones that are unique to this one hero’s values and commitments.  Only Jud would be stopped in his tracks here, and we love him for that.  

Best Movies of 2025, #4: Weapons

I don’t usually see horror movies, but the trailer for this was so good that I couldn’t resist and I was very happy with what I got.  All the children but one from a third-grade class run out of their homes at 2:17 am, and still haven’t been seen again a month later, when most of the action takes place.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: Tease That You’re Not Going to Solve the Mystery

We begin the movie from the teacher’s perspective. Everybody blames her, but she has no idea what’s going on, and she’s snapping under the pressure. Here’s one reason why this section works: Hollywood movies have gotten artier in recent years, and you almost believe they won’t ever explain what happened to the kids. You’re watching it and thinking, “Is this ‘The Leftovers’? Are we never going to know?” (After all, the poster flat-out lies and says “They never came back.”) Keeping that possibility open just makes it all the more gratifying when everything does fall into place, and all mysteries are gradually revealed. (It’s okay for posters to lie.)

Storyteller’s Rulebook: Wring Out the Juice

You’ve got a juicy idea for a movie, but what’s your in-point? As it turns out, there is one character who knows exactly what’s going on: The boy who didn’t run away. He was forced by a witch to help kidnap all the missing kids and they’re in his basement.

This poor kid is a very interesting character. He’s so interesting, that the natural tendency would be to focus the whole movie around him. But the brilliance of the movie is to give us several other POV characters first (starting with the teacher, then an obsessed parent, then a cop, then a criminal, etc.) only getting to the boy well into the second half.

This mystery is so juicy that many characters have interesting reactions, not just the boy (who ultimately saves the day). It would be a shame to deny us the perspectives of those who don’t know what’s going on, or give the truth away too quickly.

Rulebook Casefile: Have Them Do Something Clever (Even Awful Things)

The boy has been ordered by the witch to bring home an object from each classmate so she can take control of them all. We see him sitting at his desk scanning the other desks, focusing in on the objects some of his classmates have …but they don’t all have an object. We don’t support what he’s doing, but now we’re worried he won’t succeed. Then he sees it: Every kid has decorated a piece of art to go on their cubby. He just has to remove all of those. We’re relieved: He’s solved his problem cleverly. (And now all of the kids are literally cursed.)

Best Movies of 2025, #5: Sinners

This movie is very similar to the Tarantino-penned From Dusk Till Dawn: Our characters gradually congregate at a roadhouse, and then the movie makes a very late switch from crime into vampire horror. So why is it so much better? The most obvious reason is that Tarantino didn’t just write that one, he also starred in it (shudder). This movie also reminded me of Tales From the Crypt Presents Demon Knight, which may seem damning, but is actually high praise coming from me.

Like K-Pop Demon Hunters, this was a good movie made great by having great music. I don’t envy the Academy members that have to choose between these songs.

What’s the Matter With Hollywood: Don’t Put Important Plot Elements Mid-Credits!

My friend and I saw this with an interesting crowd, a few weeks into its run. One rowdy group had clearly seen the movie already in the theater and had come out to see it again, and I enjoyed their enthusiasm. Another saw it by himself and was maybe annoyed by the other group.

Then we get to what seems to be the end of the movie and the credits start to roll, and the guy seeing the movie by himself gets up to leave, and the group that had seen it before started yelling out to him, imploring him to stay. He ignored them and left anyway. Then, just after he left, the credits stop and we get the mid-credits sequence, set in the ‘80s! This is the actual ending of the movie, and it is indeed hugely important.

Hollywood, stop doing this. Marvel earned the right to get us to stay for mid-credits and post-credit sequences, but that was a one-studio-only thing! If it’s not a Marvel movie, assume that people will leave after the first credit. Don’t have hugely important stuff happen after that.

Best Movies of 2025: #7 Sentimental Value and #6 Jay Kelly

I’ll discuss these two together because they’re so similar, but I thought one was clearly better than the other. These are both movies about an aging movie-artist who must face the fact he has neglected his two daughters and now he has to try to forge a relationship with them in their adulthood.

But, unlike the Academy, I clearly preferred Jay Kelly.  In Jay Kelly, George Clooney really tries, in his stumbling, deeply flawed way, to be a better father, but it’s too late, and he completely fails to win his daughters over. In the end, he gets acclaim as an artist, but he now knows it’s hollow. That felt real and painful. As a father, this movie really moved me.

In Sentimental Value, Stellan Skarsgard remains a raging asshole and his daughters nevertheless totally cave at the end because they realize he’s such a great artist. Despite the fact that he treats them like dog feces the entire movie, one submits herself and the other submits her son to his new magnum opus. That felt like a power fantasy on the part of the filmmakers. As a father, this one just pissed me off.

Wouldn’t it have been possible for some attempt at growth in Sentimental Value? Like maybe he does force himself to sit through one of his daughter’s plays? Like maybe he begins to realize he shouldn’t have given his ten year old grandson Irreversible and The Piano Teacher on DVD? (A joke you only get if you’re familiar with the content of those movies.) It was an interesting “Portrait of the Asshole as an Old Man”, but not as interesting as it would have been if he had at least a shred of inner turmoil.

Sentimental Value is the more artistically made movie (I’ve always liked the filmmaker and highlighted one of his early movies way back in 2010), but Jay Kelly was so much more human and heartfelt and, thus, painful. Watching Clooney try and fail is so much more interesting than watching Skarsgard not try and succeed anyway.

It is true that the daughters have meatier roles in Sentimental Value (I’m not sure they were Oscar-worthy, though) but, the meatier they are, the more frustrating that they just morally collapse. As a writer or a moviegoer, there’s only so much you can respect characters who, in the end, show no self-respect.

Best Movies of 2025, #8: Hamnet

As with Nomadland, this is a beautifully-shot movie filled with well-observed little moments. It’s certainly hard to believe this writer/director also made The Eternals in between.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: Culture Changes

The most shocking thing about this movie, of course, is what it tells us about how much the cultural conversation has transformed in the 28 years since Shakespeare in Love was released. That movie (which I like a lot) was a frothy concoction, saying, “Oh, those great men who cheated on their wives, weren’t they such delightful little scamps?” In this movie, even though there’s no indication here he was adulterous, the theme is clearly, “Fuck the great men, what about the wives and children who deserve our real sympathy??” As it turns out, this question, too, can create great movies.

Who the heroes and villains are is always changing in the public mind. In the time I was selling screenplays, I wrote some early scripts about awkward guys who couldn’t get laid. When I started, that was still seen as an inherently sympathetic trait. Then the cultural conversation shifted, and such men began to be regarded as villains, or at least creeps. So much for those screenplays.

Culture changes, and novelists/playwrights/screenwriters (Hamnet has now been a book, a play and a screenplay, all quite successful) have to change with the times. Always ask yourself, who are the new heroes? What undervalued perspectives are now valued? Who can I celebrate that wasn’t celebrated before? And who can I no longer celebrate?

Best Movies of 2025, #9: Blue Moon

The songwriting team of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart has broken up, and Rodgers has split off to write “Oklahoma” with Oscar Hammerstein instead. Now, on the night of the “Oklahoma” premiere, Hart (an amazing Ethan Hawke) nurses his wounds and plots his comeback.

The biggest knock on this movie is that it really should have been a play, as it’s all set in basically real time in one sprawling location. It surely started off as a play, but the movie came together first. But if you’re willing to overlook that, the movie is wonderful.

Rulebook Casefile: Let Their Irrepressible Character Shine Through

Hart crashes the “Oklahoma” celebration with one goal in mind: Convince Rodgers to work together again, preferably on a Marco Polo musical. To that end, he’s more than willing to lie about liking “Oklahoma,” which he actually despised.

At first the plan goes well, and he fawns praise over “Oklahoma”, which gets Rodgers to break off from the group and hear about Marco Polo. But the entire time Hart is pitching the new project, he just can’t help himself, and he keeps taking almost-involuntary digs at “Oklahoma”.

Finally, he lays it on the line and asks Rodgers (the always wonderful Andrew Scott) what musical he would make if he didn’t have to worry about commercial appeal. Rodgers looks Hart dead in the eye and says: “Oklahoma,” which they both know is the ultimate slap in the face to Hart.

This whole movie is about Hart’s irrepressible character traits, both good and bad. That’s always a good way to write: Give your hero a reason to repress what they are, and then let it come shining through (sometimes disastrously).

Best Movies of 2025, #10: The Stranger Things Finale in theaters

Certainly, my favorite moviegoing experience of last year (Well, technically, I didn’t see it until January 1st of this year, but it was released December 31st) was the theatrically-screened “Stranger Things” finale. I don’t care what anybody says: In the theater, this was a triumph. It felt, for one glorious moment, like the rebirth of monoculture. For the first time since COVID, I was in a sold-out movie theater with everybody having the time of their life. Applause burst out more than once. This is what moviegoing is supposed to feel like.

But, somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew the backlash was coming. I thought, “This is great, but not all-things-to-all-people great, and people love to hate on TV finales, so the public, who are so excited and happy right now, will inevitably turn on this, too.”

But I was able to suppress those thoughts and just enjoy the hell out of myself while I was there.

SPOILERS: I liked most of the things that people later turned on. I liked that no one died except (probably) El. I liked that there was almost an hour of epilogues, giving each character a satisfactory and well-earned send-off. I liked how none of the teen couples end up together, because high school couples staying together is pretty much never a good idea.

Yes, I agree with some of the criticisms. It’s fairly silly that they killed so many soldiers with no consequences. (I think that the season should have been rewritten so that they didn’t kill anybody. But I do think they kind of gave themselves an out by only having them kill soldiers in the Upside Down, which was all wiped off the map, so all evidence was gone.) And I, too, wonder how on earth they squared things with Delightful Derek’s parents (Between them and the Weavers, it wasn’t a good season to be a Republican! I think hatred of modern Republicans may have seeped into the writer’s room!)

But ultimately, I just loved this wrap-up to this great show. I loved how the series both began and ended with Mike being a great Dungeon Master. I loved how Dustin did exactly what Eddie said he should do at graduation. Is season 5 my favorite season of the show? No, that would be season 3, but I think that this was one of the few shows with no fundamentally-weak seasons. It’s a great show and I’ll miss it.