2025 was a year I had certain ambitions for and unfortunately life and my own terminal inability to manage time seemed to intercede. Some of that was the changing nature of my work obligations and some of that is my adjusting to life as a quasi-film critic instead of just a guy who spouts off about movies online. Not that it was all disappointment, not by a long shot. I attended many screenings and two different film festivals as media, was able to appear on a couple of podcasts, wrote pieces for Perisphere, got to write the screening notes for one of my all-time favorites, and published what has become one of my favorite now-annual pieces: The Best of Hardboiled Crime.
Something new for 2026 that I'm trying out is my first newsletter. The blog isn't going away, but I wanted a format that feels more casual and somewhere I can write about crime fiction in a more general way. I've already written a welcome letter that has some thoughts on the three film adaptations of Donald Westlake books that were released in 2025. Check it out here and I hope you'll subscribe.
Watching Trends - 2025 was one of my lightest recent years in terms of number of movies watched. Shy of the 365+ I typically hit. I think I was burning out mid-year, but I seem to have recovered in November and December while I was mainlining new releases both for my Hardboiled list and so that I could effectively participate in the Minnesota Film Critics Association awards. Per usual my most-watched genre according to Letterboxd was "drama" followed closely by "crime." Other than an oddball year crammed with French film, I typically watch many more films from the USA than any other single country. Despite this, my most watched actor was (again) Hideo Murota. I attribute this largely to a slew of 80s yakuza movies I watched towards the beginning of the year (several of which I intend to cover in an upcoming volume of Apache Revolver). My most watched director this year was David Lynch. Like many film fans, I spent a chunk of 2025 revisiting Lynch films, art, music, and writing. I'm not remotely unique in how Lynch's work influenced me, but the loss of his presence in the world is still profound.
Theatrical Experiences!
Every year I essentially compliment the Twin Cities on the depth, breadth, and engagement of our local cinema scene by recounting some of my favorite theater going experiences. I'd say, if anything, that's only improved over the last year. The number of cool screenings going on in any given week can be overwhelming and the more popular series are selling out weeks and even months in advance. It can be frustrating (the Super Spook Show Spectacular sold out in minutes and I missed it completely) but I don't think I'd have it any other way. If anything, it offers growing opportunities for other people and venues to get involved. Recently there's been news of Chicago's Music Box Theatre acquiring our beloved Heights Theater which I am hoping is a healthy sign of its longevity. There's also teasing of Vinegar Syndrome opening a storefront in Minneapolis which could prove to be a sorely needed lynchpin for the local physical media crowd. Film can be an odd place to build community, you spend a lot of time in dark rooms not talking to or looking at anyone else, but it does happen thanks to so many dedicated folks willing to put in this great work.
I Knew Her Well (1965) - Every year as part of the Italian Film Festival there is a repertory screening at 11am on a Saturday and I think each year that screening has made it to this list. This year was no exception as we were treated to Antonio Pietrangeli's I Knew Her Well starring the positively luminous Stefania Sandrelli. This is a film I knew of but had never seen before and what an absolute joyous and heartbreaking theatrical experience it is. Equally stunning and devastating with gorgeous location work and an incredibly astute incorporation of pop music that precedes film trends for the next decade (I made a youtube playlist if you want to check out some killer tunes). If somehow you are not already in love with Sandrelli, you will be after viewing this.
Harry and Tonto (1974) - I am wildly enthusiastic about Art Carney's cinematic output from the 70s through the early 80s and Harry and Tonto is objectively his finest performance of the lot. We had the profoundly good fortune to see this sadly obscure classic on glorious 16mm thanks to local heroes, The Cult Film Collective. The print was a television edit, which I didn't realize going in, but it didn't diminish my enjoyment of it. Some of the coarser language and sequences were cut, however I was surprised to see at least one scene improved by a trim. Harry & Tonto remains a thoughtful, humane, melancholy, and terribly funny portrait of lives in transition. It also provides a triple threat of cinematic urban time capsule goodness - capturing parts of New York, Chicago, and LA in the 70s. I was very honored to have written the printed program that CFC distributed to attendees. I think the piece was solid and (thanks to CFC) the programs looked really terrific.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) - I remembered being distinctly dubious when I went to see Ang Lee's epic hit when it opened. I considered myself some kind of Hong Kong cinema aficionado and was NOT impressed with various Hollywood attempts at importing Wuxia stylings (please forgive my youthful ego). Also, Lee hadn't done anything like a martial arts film so what was I to expect? The film shut me up so quickly and I was both chastened and became an ardent champion of it to anyone who would listen. It had been many years since I revisited
Tiger so while watching it as part of
MSPIFF, I was very much reliving that same thrill during the opening brawl between Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi. I couldn't help but think how deprived we are of action this virtuosic since the balance has tipped towards digital effects even in Asian cinema. What a joy to see action and adventure at this scale shot on film even in digital projection.
As a fitting bookend to the screening, I was able to attend a Q&A with the man himself, Ang Lee. He spoke for around an hour with a moderator and I feel like I could have listened to him all night. Lee was incredibly humble about what he's been able to achieve and yet not overly demure. He's clearly passionate, perceptive, and possessed of a certain eloquence though he constantly deprecates his English. Great event and I was very grateful to some of my fellow MNFCA folks who waved me over to a good spot
A New Leaf (1971) - A film I absolutely adore and playing on 35mm at
The Trylon, it doesn't get much better. I initially saw all of Elaine May's films on my own at home so I'm never quite sure how her thorny, uncomfortable approach to comedy will play with an audience.
New Leaf positively destroyed with the crowd I watched it with - the Grecian nightgown bit nearly brought the house down and it's one of those deeply cathartic experiences that keeps your love for public moviegoing alive. As an aside, I took my mother to this and she thought it was the best thing she'd seen in quite some time.
The Howling (1981) - We caught this at the Prospect Park Nitehawk theater while we were in Brooklyn. This was a screening co-hosted by the
Brooklyn Horror Society and
The Twisted Spine. We'd been to other BHS screenings before and The Twisted Spine is a horror lit. imprint that has since opened a brick & mortar horror/dark lit. bookstore. This particular screening featured an introduction by actor and horror author
Nat Cassidy who we got to meet briefly afterwards. All of that is cool and one of the many reasons we prioritize getting out to films while we're in NYC.
The Howling is also very cool with a fantastic cast and brilliant creature effects. I hadn't seen in a decade or more so this was a terrific way to revisit.
Tough Guys Don't Dance (1987) - Shown at Emagine Willow Creek as part of their
Genre Brain Melt series, Norman Mailer's arch neo-noir has a legendary reputation for being a "bad" movie. However, I've always found it to be an absurdly entertaining, outrageous double shot of cocaine and booze fueled crime melodrama. This was my first time seeing
Tough Guys in a theater or with anyone else, period, and I thought it played like gangbusters. Laughter, gasps, and cheers punctuated the positively bonkers audio mix that you get such a visceral sense of in a theater. My wife said this was the best movie she watched that month and I think she was right.
Ozone (1994) - Another visit to the Trylon, this time thanks to the lovely people at
Trash Film Debauchery. Ultimately, my shot-on-video sympathies will always be with the real weirdos who shoot braindead dronescapes that should not exist, but I don't know how you can't be impressed with the technical acumen on display in J.R. Bookwalter's
Ozone. A crime/sci-fi/horror mashup with effectively goopy Cronenberg-ian body horror, zero budget cenobites, underground gladiator fights, and a solidly charismatic performance from James Black. There is some primitive CGI that I find largely unfortunate, but the excellent physical effects, lighting, and camerawork more than make up for it in my book. I should note that it still feels like a rare treat to see SOV insanity on a big screen with an audience. My original exposure to
Ozone and most of the genre has been a solitary pursuit and it's nice to be laughing and wincing with other weirdos.
Fucktoys (2025) - This was my first year attending the
Twin Cities Film Festival as a badged press member (which was very gracious of the organizers) and I was fortunate to see a wide variety of films including some local premiers of films that are now very much in the major awards conversation. However, my favorite screening was for an independent first time feature that hasn't yet been seen by wider audiences. Annapurna Sriram wrote, directed, and stars in
Fucktoys; a surreal journey/quasi-road trip movie that feels very much like a spiritual successor to John Waters or Gregg Araki. Stylistically impeccable with the bayous, motels, and strip clubs of Trashtown rendered in luminous 16mm photography. It features a host of fun set pieces as well as boasting a library of cinematic references. The cast is great: Sriram and co-star Sadie Scott look fantastic, have real chemistry, and are very funny while Damien Young as Robert nearly stole the whole movie for me. I'm not going to pretend that this is the strongest narrative I've seen; the actual plot beats are straightforward and
Fucktoys is happy to meander on its journey. However, the cinematic traditions Sriram is pointing to also feature more than their fair share of digressions and cul-de-sacs. My hope is that Sriram's debut gets snapped up either with the right distribution deal or maybe a boutique physical edition so that it can find the audience I know it will have. Either way, I'm definitely interested in seeing what Sriram does next. This is exactly the kind of movie you hope to see at a film festival so I'm glad I took a shot with it.
Night of the Juggler (1980) - It's so incredible that this revered genre obscurity not only received a 4K restoration and was released on some fine physical media editions, but also played in cinemas all across the country this year.
Juggler is everything you could hope for in an NYC crime film from this era: gritty location footage, viscerally kinetic action, instantly memorable character actors, and some solid undercurrents tackling gentrification and various tensions/interests afflicting the city at the time. Watching the 4K at home was a small revelation compared to the gnarly YouTube rip I'd seen before, but seeing in the theater with an audience was tremendous. Someone give me the chance to host
Juggler paired with
Cops and Robbers for a "Cliff Gorman pulling off capers in Central Park" double header.
The Mystery of Chess Boxing (1979)/Shaolin vs. Lama (1983) - Once again the Twin Cities were graced with the presence of the mighty Dan Halsted (of The Hollywood Theatre) and he brought two absolutely smokin' kung-fu barnstormers on 35mm. I'm not sure what there's left to say about
Chess Boxing, but I did my best to celebrate Joseph Kuo's no bullshit approach to martial arts filmmaking in a piece for
Perisphere.
Shaolin vs. Lama was new-to-me, but it delivered on weird characters, phenomenal fighting/training sequences, and one of the strangest finales I've seen in a kung-fu film. Most important to me, though, was seeing these with a hot, raucous audience. When those final frames of
Chess Boxing hit and the crowd goes apeshit? That's pure movie magic.
The Silent Partner (1978) - In a last minute addition to the list (New Year's Eve!), I once again have to hand it to the Cult Film Collective for rolling out a lovely 16mm print of Daryl Duke's Canuxploitation Christmas Crime Classic. I haven't seen
Partner for a few years and honestly it only improves upon rewatch. Knowing the general plot beats beforehand doesn't do anything to diminish the building tension as Elliott Gould's awkward but nervy bank teller battles wits with Christopher Plummer's icily menacing bank robber. I was also really impressed with how well the film seemed to hold up to the smaller 16mm aspect ratio; you miss some of that epic 70s Toronto landscape but holding tight on those marvelously expressive faces works for this kind of movie. I always feel terrible that Duke got the boot partway through the film because he refused to shoot the infamous aquarium scene. I love that bit and getting to witness a sold out crowd squirm during it was damn well worth the price of admission.
So that's it for 2025. It's hardly my worst year and yet I'm not sad seeing it go. As always, I'm so grateful to you for reading this or anything I've worked on and I wish you good health, a modicum of sanity, and great film watching in the coming year. See you at the movies!
Enjoyed this post? Never miss out on future posts by following me
