Last year I saw 29 movies, and this year I saw 23. This is a drop, but I wonder if this year I will see a drop in my viewing habits overall given how busy I was.
I saw 8 new movies (last year it was 4), and 15 older movies streaming/on a plane. All 8 of new movies were in a movie theater, which means I more than doubled my movie-theater going this year, which was a goal of mine.
Our annual Christmas movie marathon around a series or theme was movies about using technology to edit out painful memories, or, more broadly, imperfect memories (we watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, After Life, and Marjorie Prime). Our Halloween movie was Practial Magic; our Valentine’s Day movie was You’ve Got Mail.
My rating system for new movies uses stars and equates as follows: 1=bad, 2=ok 3=really good 4=great.
This year I did a new thing: review all the movies on Letterboxd as I went along, so I’m including those reviews here as well.
My favorite new movies (4 stars) this year were:
Life After
Wake Up Dead Man
Runners up (3.5 stars):
Freakier Friday
Wicked: For Good
Rental Family
My favorite old movie I saw for the first time:
My Old Ass
My favorite old movies I loved seeing again:,
Clueless
Hannah and Her Sisters
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The (Not-So) Big List (now with reviews!):
New Movies in 2025 I Saw in Theaters or Streaming:
Captain America: Brave New World **1/2
I could follow it, which is always a plus for me with Marvel movies. In general, I really hate long mid-movie action scenes that feel like the climax, so the scene in the Indian Ocean was pretty brutal. Otherwise it was a decent movie that had a lot of underdeveloped moments.
Superman ***
I enjoyed this movie although it was a little intense for me, as it was related just enough to real world events to cause me anxiety. And I don’t like seeing buildings fall. But the actor playing Superman was great and I always love anything with Superman/Clark’s relationship with Lois and with his parents (both sets). The scenes with Lex’s team also furthered my conversations around what it means to see or not see the army following the bad guy’s orders.
Life After ****
This is an intense movie but also a beautiful, engaging, and important movie about disabled lives, how we value them and care for them. It’s a look at how governments find disabled lives disposable and burdensome and how the right to die can be used to push disabled people to consider death instead of actually giving them options to live. Canada is already doing this and it’s chilling that this is where we could be headed. The film focuses on one woman who unsuccessfully brought a right to die case to court in the 80s as well as other disabled people who made use of assisted suicide, considered it, or were pushed to consider it. There were echos of the Terry Schiavo case for me, which I hope will one day be looked at differently through this lens.
Fantastic Four: First Steps **1/2
Fantastic 4: First Steps really solidified for me that what I care about in stories is character relationships and tensions within those relationships. And this movie had none of that. I just wanted a character relationship (not necessarily romantic) to root for. I also think I needed more origin story even though I know they were trying to avoid that.
Freakier Friday ***1/2
I had such a good time watching this movie. The people behind it knew and loved the original and built on it in the best way. I loved how everyone from the original cast came back too. My only wish is that we could have seen a little more of the two teens as Tess and Anna. I know Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan are the stars and I did want to see as much as I could of them, but I do like their characters too.
Wicked: For Good ***1/2
I enjoyed the second part I think because even though it was basically the second act of the show it felt new to me still in a lot of ways. Not just because of the added songs, which were just okay, but because how everything was expanded and all the visuals. Some of the sillier stuff in the act stood out a little more, and I wish I really liked the new songs, but other than that I thought it was just as good as the first one, if not better. The second act is all plot, and that gave it more forward momentum for me than the first movie, which I felt dragging in parts.
Wake Up Dead Man ****
I was so excited to finally see a Knives Out/Benoit Blanc movie in the theater, and Wake Up Dead Man did not disappoint. I have become such a fan of Rian Johnson’s work over the last couple years, from the previous two films to his show Poker Face. I love not only the mystery aspect but the homages to musical theater, specifically Sondheim, and even more specifically Sondheim’s mystery film The Last of Sheila. I love figuring out the parallels and what the musical theater references might mean. That’s just a small part of the movie though, the story itself has a lot to say about our current world.
Rental Family ***1/2
This was such a sweet movie about a weird phenomenon. Brendan Fraser plays an American actor in Japan who gets hired to play people’s relatives when needed, and when a mother hires him to play her young daughter’s estranged father so that she has a better chance of getting into a good school, a bond inevitably starts to form. It’s easy to judge the mother for doing this to her daughter, and I definitely did, but the people who do the hiring are just as desperate as the actors needing work. The movie walks the weirdness of the premise line well as it becomes about lonely people looking for connection.
DVD/Streaming this year:
Highlander **1/2
My partner is obsessed with the 90s Highlander TV show right now so he wanted to show me the 80s movie. Highlander was actually a lot more enjoyable than I was expecting. An interesting, fantastical story and some great shots, all filmed on location in NYC and Scotland. Some weird bits too.
You’ve Got Mail ***
Fun to revisit, especially for the late 90s tech and NYC scenes. Parker Posey is great as always, and there are so many fun cameos. I’ve always loved some of the writing for Meg Ryan’s character Kathleen Kelly. But hate how he’s in power over her the entire time. I’d love to see a version of the Shop Around the Corner story in which she’s the one who finds out who he is first.
Persuasion **1/2
I actually didn’t review this one on Letterboxd, but I found it cute although very different from the book, which I was reading concurrently.
A Little Night Music (New York City Opera, 1990) ***1/2
I enjoyed watching this production even though I have seen others live with amazing actors. The woman playing Desiree was good, and I enjoyed seeing Danielle Ferland as Fredericka. I’m glad this exists but nothing beats being in the room with this piece.
The Age of Adaline ** 1/2
This movie is part of our immortal series (along with Highlander, Orlando, Tuck Everlasting), and while this wasn’t the greatest movie it was nice to see an immortality story that was just like, what if this happened to someone? What would their life be like? There is no antagonist or major climactic event really, just a woman trying to have a life despite having to hide all the time. Complications arise in the form of a love interest who is more like a stalker, and I wish he had been better and I had been rooting for that relationship more.
Aftersun ***1/2
I read this screenplay a couple years ago but never saw the movie, so I finally watched it on one of my flights. It’s amazing how I felt like I had seen it from reading the screenplay. It’s a beautiful movie about a very particular age, the tween years for girls when you are still a kid but are fascinated by what teens are doing. So it’s coming of age but also about the father-daughter dynamic as she is on a trip with her father, who is only in his early 30s.
Frozen **1/2
I thought this would be a good red-eye movie. It took me a while to get into it, as the first half was kind of slow for me, but in the last half it picked up. I was also surprised how little Elsa was in this movie given how prominent a character she became post-film, but it was really Anna’s story. Also, it was interesting to see how songs were used slightly differently and even more like musical theater in this new age of Disney animation. And I liked that little snow man.
My Old Ass ****
I really loved this movie, definitely one of my favorites of the year so far. It felt so authentic, focusing on an 18-year-old girl the summer before she leaves her family farm for college. It was also very queer in a way that felt true to how an 18-year-old would be exploring her queerness while still making queerness the default. There’s also a fantasy/sci-fi element of visits from her older self from the future, and a theater favorite Maria Dizzia plays the mom.
Clueless ****
I have seen Clueless many times (including last year) but I wanted to watch it this year for the 30th anniversary. I first saw it when it came out 30 years ago and it was our micro generation’s movie. What I love most about it is that everyone in it is so nice. They may have some selfish motives sometimes, but everyone is friendly and helping each other out. The worst person is Elton (and he is pretty bad) and I guess Amber, but she is more annoying than a mean girl. It’s a nice contrast to Mean Girls, the next micro generation’s movie 9 years later.
Practical Magic ***
I agree with reviews that this movie has a lot of weird tonal shifts and I had a few questions while watching, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it afterwards. I know there are men in this movie (including a very bad abusive one) but I barely remember them. This movie might as well have been all women. From the two aunts to the two main witches to the two daughters to the two women who work the shop to the women who form the coven, I just loved all the feminine energy. I can’t believe I never saw this growing up in the 90s, I guess I was a year or two too old for when I would have watched a movie like this. I’m now ready for the sequel!
Hackers ***1/2
I was delighted to find out that this is a movie about high schoolers, which made what would have been silly with more adult characters really fun. Some really interesting characters that could have been types but were not. And a realistic NYC apartment with a mom sleeping on the couch while giving her son the one bedroom! Enjoyable and glad I finally saw this.
Hannah and Her Sisters ****
My mom and I watch this every year on Thanksgiving weekend, but I get something new out of it each time. Holly is obviously the best character and has the best wardrobe, and not sure who is worse, Elliot or David (the guy who hits on both April and Holly). Frederick is obviously also horrible but his speech about watching television is probably my favorite monologue. I love how the different plots feel separate but they’re all entangled, and ultimately it’s a movie about how time changes people and the situations that feel like they’re forever are not. An old delightful movie is enough to pull you out of a bad phase. This is also the movie I rely on to launch me into the winter season in NYC, as there are so many scenes of the characters in winter clothing and warm coats. It makes me fall in love with New York more than any other Woody Allen movie, even Manhattan, because it shows New York full of abundance: book stores overflowing with books, apartments full of tchotchkes, Thanksgiving dinners full of people you don’t know but seem like they repeat year after year.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ****
At first I wasn’t sure if this film would hold up. I list it in my top 5 favorite movies but I haven’t seen it in years. Well, it’s definitely still in my top 5. Somehow I’m so invested in this doomed relationship, the non linear format perfectly expresses the content (content dictates form!), and the turn moment when Joel decides to call it off was just as thrilling as ever. It was also fun to watch a movie I used to watch frequently but then again after a gap. So much came back to me immediately and yet many moments still felt fresh. This is still such a beautiful film even over 20 years since I saw a screening on my college campus that had a Q&A afterward with director Michel Gondry.
After Life ***1/2
After Life a fascinating premise: when you die you are told you must pick one memory from your life to relive for eternity. The dead have a few days to pick this memory, and those who work at this processing center, which just looks like a big old house, will help them choose. This was so Thornton Wilder to me, and one can see how much he was influenced by eastern culture. As the film progressed we learned more about the people who worked at this processing center and how they were all connected. The film’s slow pace did put me to sleep at times but that is just the pace of the film and I wouldn’t change it. A film to see multiple times to get all the nuances, much like Wilder’s plays.
Marjorie Prime **1/2
I have always been curious about this film since I loved the play so much when I saw it in 2015 and recently saw it again on Broadway. It works much better as a play. The film loses the play’s energy with the typical filmic sequences, but it was so wonderful to see Lois Smith’s performance of Marjorie captured on film. I also loved June Squibb but Smith was my first Marjorie from the off-Broadway production, and I fell in love with her performance. The supporting cast, all great actors, feel very detached in this version, although in a way that sort of works for Tess. It was also interesting to see how the film slightly expanded the world of the play, which takes place in one room—seeing the beach and Marjorie’s home health aid, for example.