December 2025 [29-31]/ January 2026 [1-4]
Friendship, Wildlife, Montana Story, Relay, One Battle After Another, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Bones and All, 12 Years a Slave, I'm Still Here
- Friendship [2024] - 17
Film debut of both writer/director, Andrew DeYoung, and comedy area man, Tim Robinson, Friendship is one of those movies that I just don’t get. I don’t get why it exists, I don’t get what its purpose is, and I don’t get who it’s for. I’ve seen bits and pieces of Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave, and they’re funny enough, but Friendship takes a lot of that “humor” to a very different, a very long, and a very un-funny place. I tend to avoid this genre in a general sense but, even when I do wander into it, I can generally tell who I’d recommend one of these to, even when they aren’t for me. Friendship, landing itself as my 3rd worst watch of 2025, has no such saving graces, and only manages above a 10 because there were about 17-seconds of the experience that did, in fact, make me chuckle.
- Wildlife [2018] - 82
Being that I was very prompt in ranking everything I watched this year, I know where these next few movies fell… So you also get to know, which is exactly everything you ever wanted.
Wildlife is a mostly excellent and somber look at the difficulties of family life, and the struggles that can break it. While I wish a little more of this was told from a fixed perspective, and I think it likely the book it’s based delves more into certain character attitudes I found a little annoying or capricious, the heart of the story is well told and executed through some reliably great performances from Jake Gyllenhaal, Carey Mulligan, and the up-and-coming Ed Oxenbould. Landing itself at #71 of my year — just ahead of Sing Street and just behind Heat — Wildlife is not without its hiccups but, when it focuses its vision on a particular moment, it shines exactly as it intends to.
- Montana Story [2021] - 82
Finishing slightly ahead of Wildlife at #66, Montana Story takes on a similar setting involving difficult family dynamics, but chooses a darker twist and a different approach. Instead of a family struggling with finances and risky job choices, Montana Story deals with a family largely estranged from itself coming together during the death of their patriarch, revealing secrets and pulling back the veil of why they all split along the way. The overall story and journey of Montana Story are great, as are the performances, particularly that of Haley Lu Richardson in the seat of “catalyst for the tale’s largest secrets”. While, similar to Wildlife above, I wanted a little more out of certain moments, there’s certainly nothing wrong with anything Montana Story does, and, for being an early professional work from the team, it certainly weaves an interesting, touching, and difficult basket that leaves me hopeful for all they create next.
- Relay [2024] - 75
Written by debut Justin Piasecki, and directed by Hell or High Water’s David Mackenzie, Relay is one of those movies that’s interesting in both con-cept and con-text, but not terribly memorable once it’s been con-watched. I’m impressed by most anything that’s even vaguely entertaining from debut creators and, with that lens on, Relay is an excellent showing for the new writer. It’s fairly tight, it’s mostly well paced, and, though it’s a little transparent, the journey is fun enough to munch some snacks and send some texts to on a weekday morning. Thrillers are tough for me in general, as they tend to be a bit shallow and heartless — generally more interested in the moment-to-moment rhythms than crafting impactful stories —, and Relay certainly doesn’t do anything special in that department, thus landing it in my #118 slot on the year. Nothing particularly wrong with the film… Just also nothing particularly right with it either.
- One Battle After Another [2025] - 90
My final watch of the year, 2025’s most loudly critical darling [maybe next to Sinners, my #55], One Battle After Another has “The Oscars” written all over it… And for good reason. Paul Thomas Anderson is no stranger to epics, weird storytelling, or auteur approaches to pieces that don’t really care if you like them or not, because they know what they are. Here, he’s done it again; making something both extremely self assured and highly tuned to be exactly what he wants it to be… And I really loved it. While that wasn’t the case with his previous release, Licorice Pizza, One Battle After Another has the sort of breathless, complex, and thoroughly engaging story that I really tend to love, and is so good that it makes me want to revisit Licorice to see if I maybe just missed the point at the time. From cinematography to score, this is a movie that’s had award frenzy around it since pre-release, and will likely carry much of that momentum through March, when the big ceremony is. Finding itself in my #13 spot on the year, One Battle After Another can only be described as “anaerobic” because, once this plot gets its legs pumping, it simple does… Not… Stop.
- The Miseducation of Cameron Post [2018] - 70
Starting off 2026 with a movie I vaguely recalled, but didn’t remember anything about: The Miseducation of Cameron Post is about a teen girl sent to be tortured for being gay a conversion therapy camp in rural Montana called, “God’s Promise”. This is a great premise for a movie and features some excellent performances from smatterings of the cast, but the story itself just doesn’t deal with its subject matter very well. While I think that it communicates everything it wants to, The Miseducation of Cameron Post is so lighthearted and breezy when it comes to almost all of its plot points that it’s easy to miss the impact of the film’s conclusory line:
“How is teaching us to hate ourselves not emotional abuse?”
I really want to read the book this is based on, because I’m sure it deals with some of these themes more deftly, but the film is just “fine enough” and something I’ll likely accidentally rewatch again in another few years trying to remember anything at all about it.
- Bones and All [2022] - 86
You don't think I'm a bad person?
While I intended to start with year with a rewatch, this was the one I’d meant for it to be; my #4 of 2022: Bones and All. It’s always interesting to go back and watch your favorites, especially ones you’d only watched once before, because things always kind of shift, and the original glossy look you remember is almost never quite exactly right. Life circumstances change, stances on issues change, emotional states change; everything around you so heavily influences your experience with the media you consume, that watching the same something several times over the years can yield vastly different results. Though I’ve given this a lower rating the second time around [86 vs 96], I still think the core messages hidden behind Bones and All’s cannibal façade are heavy, meaningful, and so different from its source material that both can [and should] be enjoyed entirely separate from one another.
All I think is that I love you.
- 12 Years a Slave [2013] - 94
Shuffling now into something I’ve meant to watch for uh… 13 [dammit] years, 12 Years a Slave is an incredibly difficult film, and one that everyone should watch. A biographical tale, 12 Years a Slave tells the story of Solomon Northup, a man tricked and kidnapped into slavery from with Washington D.C. itself in 1841, and then made to suffer the injustices and torture of American slavery for 12 years before being rescued. Winning 3 — nominated for 9 — Oscars, 12 Years a Slave is both an epic of survival, hope, and perseverance, as well as a biting condemnation of a past this nation tries to cover and forget more and more each day. Brought incredibly to life by a stunningly large cast of names too long to paste here, 12 Years a Slave is a movie with both something to say, and the knowhow to say it. Definitely get this one on your watchlist if you haven’t already.
- I’m Still Here [2024] - 82
Nominated for 3 of the Big-O awards, I’m Still Here takes us on the journey of Eunice Paiva’s life as she strives to raise a family and find her husband — expatriate and dissenting politician Rubens Paiva — who’s been black-bagged by a hostile Brazilian dictatorship in 1971. The story is a grand epic, spanning 45-years, as Eunice fights for truth from her government, indigenous rights, and lives with the forever fact that, no matter what they say or release or admit, there will never be any truly confirmable knowledge as to what happened to either Rubens or anyone else disappeared during those years. A very strong and compelling story, we all know my struggle with biopics at this point, and I can’t help but want a documentary on this subject, rather than a drama. Why does this one ping me in that way and the above 12 Years a Slave didn’t… Who knows. But here we are.
Happy start to 2026 y’all,
