Features

Ranking Every Movie of 2025 (sort of)

Jeremy BeckFeatures
Cassandra Naud in Influencers; Sophie Thatcher in Companion; Brad Pitt in F1; Sydney Sweeney in The Housemaid; Margaret Qualley in Honey Don't

Yesterday, in unveiling my list of my favorite movies of 2025, I bemoaned the future of Warner Bros.—how it was likely to be acquired by either Netflix (which would be bad) or Paramount (which would also be bad). Well, later that day, Netflix announced that it was refusing to match Paramount’s latest bid, meaning David Zaslav and Larry Ellison will soon meet in the moonlight and lock horns and drink each other’s blood or perform whatever rituals are required when demonic billionaires finalize a disastrous sale. It’s a terrible outcome that bodes poorly for the fate of cinema.

But that’s for the future; right now, we’re still focusing on the (very recent) past. I perform this exercise annually, “ranking” all of each year’s new movies but really just dividing them into discrete tiers. It’s partly designed as a personal recordkeeping mechanism, but it might also serve those of you who are interested in checking out recent releases and want to know where to find them (I append streaming data next to each title, along with the director’s name). Read More

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In the Testament of Ann Lee and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Religion Gets Musical

Jeremy BeckFeatures
Amanda Seyfried in The Testament of Ann Lee; Ralph Fiennes in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

All movies compel suspension of disbelief, but the musical demands an extra dose of willful credulity. In real life, people don’t break into choreographed song-and-dance routines, so appreciating the genre requires accepting the form’s heightened surreality. It’s an act of faith—a gesture of surrender to a higher power whom you trust to guide you through the inexplicable.

This means that musicals about religion create a kind of feedback loop, reinforcing their characters’ spirituality—the belief in the unseen, the quest to convert others through vigorous performance—via their staging and technique. As (ahem) fate would have it, two recent releases toy with this idea, even if neither of them conforms to classical conventions of how movie musicals are meant to operate. Read More

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In Jay Kelly and 100 Nights of Hero, Storytelling Is the Story

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Maika Monroe in 100 Nights of Hero; George Clooney in Jay Kelly

Movies aren’t folktales. They don’t change over time, like myths relayed around a campfire. But they are nevertheless ideal vehicles for telling stories, and their unique form allows them to explore the process of how we perpetuate fiction. Last weekend featured the arrival of two films that are very different in structure and style, but which both wrestle with the metatextual relationship between artist and audience. It’s a subject that sounds academic but proves, at least in these two instances, to be awfully entertaining.

Jay Kelly is named for its main character, a man who is less a famous actor than a megawatt celebrity. Entering his 60s, he’s been captivating ticket-buyers for decades, working in a variety of genres—action flicks, mature dramas, romantic comedies—yet always brandishing his singular screen presence. He is handsome, eloquent, charming. I should probably mention that he’s played by George Clooney. Read More

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Deliver Me from Nowhere, Blue Moon, and the Pleasures of the Biopic Performance

Jeremy BeckFeatures
Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon; Jeremy Allen White in Deliver Me from Nowhere

The biopic-to-Oscar pipeline isn’t what it used to be. Sure, slathering on makeup and adopting a pronounced accent is probably still the safest way to catch the Academy’s eye; of the past 10 ceremonies, seven have awarded at least one acting trophy to someone playing a celebrity or historical figure. (You could quibble about including 2015 in this tally, since Leonardo DiCaprio, Alicia Vikander, and Mark Rylance and all won statuettes for portraying people who are real but not exactly embedded in the popular imagination.) But it’s hardly a sure thing. Last year, for example, Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, and Monica Barbaro all received Oscar nominations for playing famous musicians in A Complete Unknown, but they all lost to competitors portraying fictional characters (in The Brutalist, A Real Pain, and Emilia Pérez); two years prior, Austin Butler’s flashy reincarnation of Elvis Presley succumbed to Brendan Fraser’s obese writing teacher, a person who wasn’t real in any sense.

Still, the biopic star turn remains appealing to the Academy, and for reasons beyond its membership lazily equating dutiful impersonating with great acting. There is undeniable pleasure in watching a performer trying to embody a renowned individual, using the inherent falseness of their craft to achieve a semblance of truth. Last weekend saw two new releases featuring actors playing 20th-century artists. One of these depictions is conventionally satisfying; the other flirts with the sublime. Read More

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Splitsville, Twinless, and the Offbeat Romantic Comedy

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Dakota Johnson in Splitsville; Dylan O'Brien and James Sweeney in Twinless

It’s been a rough two decades for the romantic comedy. Twenty years ago, the summer box office was already showing signs of intellectual-property creep, but nestled amid the Star Wars prequel and the Batman origin story and the Steven Spielberg and Tim Burton remakes were two smash-hit original rom-coms: Wedding Crashers and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. (You could also throw in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, depending on your level of genre pedantry.) In 2025, you need to scroll all the way down to #18 before finding a single romantic comedy, Materialists (and calling that one a rom-com is a bit of a stretch); at a modest $37M, it’s the only rom-com of the year to scrape its way past $3M domestic.

Were studios just waiting to unleash their laugh riots until after Labor Day? Whatever the reason, last weekend saw the release of two new comedies that, while not strictly adhering to rom-com conventions, nevertheless serve as a welcome change of pace for anyone exhausted by all of the comic-book adaptations and animated sequels. Neither exactly set the box office afire, which is a shame, given that one of the pleasures of a well-made romantic comedy is the joy of experiencing collective laughter and heartbreak with fellow patrons. That, and both of these happen to be pretty good. Read More

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