As you might have noticed, I watched a decent amount of new releases in 2025. I also haven’t checked anything out in December, so to cap off the year we’re doing a best of list: Da Flammys! It’s like the Oscars, get it? Please ignore that it sounds way closer to The Grammys, that’s just a coincidence. Anywho, please enjoy this excuse for me to talk about eight of my cinematic highlights of the past year.
Oh and also, I’m limiting myself to one award per release. Otherwise I’d just be rambling about one specific movie for the entire length of the post. This means that some of these picks are uh, a bit of a stretch. You’ll see what I mean in a second.
Best Singular Scene
Sinners – You Know The One
Dancing around spoilers here, but I think that anyone who has seen the movie knows exactly what I’m talking about. I’ve never experienced a moment in a movie theater as surreal and beautiful as what happens here. The way the visuals and audio blend together is just sublime. Seeing it in IMAX was completely breathtaking. Goddamn, what a cool moment.
Best Actress
Emma Stone – Bugonia
I’ve seen Emma Stone in four separate things this year, and I think she’s my favorite actress at this point. She’s so good at bringing an element of humanity to otherwise really weird / difficult roles, and her portrayal of an extremely competent and in control CEO placed in a terrifying situation that renders her completely powerless in Bugonia hinges entirely on that skill. Again, no spoilers, but you spend the full movie pondering a specific question about her character, and the only reason it works is because of this performance.
I really gotta check out Poor Things.
Best Actor
Joaquin Phoenix – Eddington
Eddington stands out as the most divisive thing I’ve seen this year, largely due to the extremely political nature of the film and how unafraid it is to paint an uncomfortable picture. You spend most of the runtime following the actions of a character that does truly despicable things, but Phoenix manages to make you still root for him just a little tiny bit, before everything fully spirals. It’s a bonkers role, and I struggle to think of any other actor that could pull it off.
Best Use Of Paul Walter Hauser
Americana
This is just an excuse for me to talk about how much I liked Americana. Believe it or not, there are 3 different movies that could’ve won this and I saw all of them within about a month of each other. In Fantastic Four, Paul is wasted as an unremarkable side villain. In The Naked Gun, Walter is an underutilized supporting goofball. In Americana, Hauser carries the entire damn movie at times. There’s something about the vulnerable earnestness he brings that I just love. There’s only one guy on the planet that I’d want to play a sad, right-handed cowboy named Lefty, and it’s the Notorious PWH.
Best Cinematography
Steven Soderbergh – Presence
This entire movie is shot in first person from the perspective of a spooky ghost floating around a house while it watches a family drama unfold. It absolutely rules. There’s also like, a million mirrors or reflective surfaces in the house for Soderbergh to avoid showing himself in as he stumbles around filming. Massive congrats to him for not messing that up.
Best Director
Wes Anderson – The Phoenician Scheme
I spent the first fifteen minutes of this movie with my mouth agape, just completely awestruck by the images in front of me. This is a goddamn film. It feels paradoxically massive; larger than life, but still intimate. Some scenes look like they’re straight out of a stage production, others like they’re from a completely different dimension. I don’t have the words to accurately describe why I love this so much, so instead you get a list of some of my favorite bits:
- The entire opening, including the credits
- Benecio Del Toro meeting his daughter (How can a set look this cool???)
- Everything Michael Cera does
- Bryan Cranston and Tom Hanks playing Basketball
- Benedict Cumberbatch tearing a ladder in half
- The cozy closeness of the kitchen at the end
I spent like 50% of this movie thinking “You can do that???” to myself. It’s art and I love it.
Best Reminder Of How Much Of A Little Baby I Am
Weapons
I made it through both Presence and Sinners without peeing my pants in the theater. But if peeing your pants is cool, Weapons made me feel like Miles Davis (I think that’s the most forced joke I’ve ever typed, I’m sorry). I need to watch it again now that I know where it’s going, so I can actually look at the screen instead of staring at my hands clenched together in my lap while trying to find the willpower to stay seated. Great movie, horrible time for me specifically.
Best Picture
One Battle After Another
So this would’ve completely swept these awards had I not made an arbitrary rule to prevent it from doing so. Every single thing about this movie is perfect. The performances are all outstanding, the story and the way it’s told is sublime, the visuals are breathtaking, the audio is brilliant, etc. It’s on my Letterboxd top 4, unseating Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which is just about the highest praise I can give it. It’s the exact kind of film that we need more of in the world, and I really hope that Paul Thomas Anderson keeps making stuff like this for the rest of my life. Ocean Waves.
Alright! That’s it for the year! I totally haven’t watched 10 other movies that I’ve been saving for a big post or anything. There’s no way that I’m going to finish that up soon. Nope. Not at all. Happy Holidays!
Flamoctapus 