In a year with not much horniness, the sexiest movie of 2025 is a spy couple verbally sparring for 90 minutes

New on the site! Our Best of 2025 issue continues, with @dodgyboffin.com on Steven Soderbergh’s BLACK BAG

of joy, of art!

Gus Van Sant has a new movie, Dead Man's Wire. You probably haven't heard of it. But you should seek it out. It's a brilliant movie that speaks to where we are right now, but is also a worthy successor to the 70s classics it emulates. Funny, surprising, compassionate. Big screen if possible.

I know the news is awful and you might be Top Ten List-ed out … but there are some good entries here, and I wrote about my top ten rewatches of the year and why they hit me so hard!

there is no definitive year, and so, what a joy to be among such a disparate set of interpretations and inclinations

Top ten first-time watches is up on @brightwalldarkroom.com :)

For @brightwalldarkroom.com’s Best of 2025 staff lists, I cheated and made a list of my 25 Favorite Films Of The 21st Century. Sorry to be so insufferable. www.brightwalldarkroom.com/2026/01/07/b...

New today! Our reflections on the best movies and first watches of 2025, featuring @eccantwell.bsky.social, @frankfalisi.bsky.social, @franhoepfner.bsky.social, @dodgyboffin.com, @russellnichols.bsky.social @abigailoswald.bsky.social, @chadperman.bsky.social, @aheartofgould.bsky.social & more

everyone talkes about the work of Gordon Willis in ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, for good reason. but I also love the rigorous, oppressive geometry of THE PARALLAX VIEW.

RIP Dark Prince Béla Tarr.

JAWS (1975) dir. Steven Spielberg/AFTER HOURS (1985) dir. Martin Scorsese cinematic parallels

Since it's now streaming on the @criterionchannl.bsky.social, here's my @brightwalldarkroom.com essay on SUMMER OF SAM--Spike Lee's vulgar, hallucinatory spume of crippling male fears and lurid lusts that acts as a gnashing vivisection of maladjusted masculinity. 🎨: @bturnerinfo.bsky.social

The more we engage with the arts outside of film, the deeper our relationships with film can be. I loved researching and writing this essay and I hope you enjoy reading it

Same. Goosebumps

This was a great episode about the movie I’ve seen the most in a theater (7 times on 2 continents).

Always a good idea but UM THIS WEEK IS A GOOD ONE

"We are all slowly suffocating on the dust of this country, on the oxygen-less air of American exceptionalism. No one is coming to drill us out." - @eccantwell.bsky.social on Billy Wilder's ACE IN THE HOLE

Ride Away, and Go Rewatch THE SEARCHERS - @sarahshachat.bsky.social

"Simply put, it’s a work of art. Less simply, SPEED RACER is a work of Cubist art." - @bcwallin.com

We get into: young PTA & the New New Hollywood, sincerity and good listening, Fiona Apple as PTA’s Polly Platt, we desperately want a Tom Cruise coconut cake, life imitating art, Melora Walters’ enigmatic smile, the bleak prescience of Seduce & Destroy, how to pace a 3+ hour runtime, and more.

"We can’t wait for someone to approve of the stories we wish to tell, can’t allow a suit to tell us there’s no market for it. We have to take matters into our own hands, have to do the hard and unglamorous work, have to grin and bear it and just fucking do it." - @carriecourogen.bsky.social

still gets me every time

Genius editor Thelma Schoonmaker is 86. I love her definition of editing: ‘Editing is really like plumbing a good deal of the time. You put two things together, and a current runs through it.’

evergreen

What we commend as ‘real’ in life as in film—and perhaps in Scorsese’s films in particular—we might call gritty, dark, or uncompromising; THE AGE OF INNOCENCE proposes otherwise. What could be more violent than a life sculpted by compromise?”

“The Spook Who Sat By the Door is a pipe bomb on the video store shelf, a gasoline-filled wine bottle in your DVD cabinet, a vicious bit of malware streamed through hijacked plutocrat satellites.”

“Twin Peaks: The Return was, without question, the most satisfying television experience of my adult life.” Beautifully written. I look forward to people analyzing and rethinking this show forever. I still think they were in our world at the end. Or one other dream away from it.

"As I watched Twin Peaks: The Return each week, I couldn’t help but recall the words of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky: “The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.”

“At its core, HIGH NOON is a parable about civic abandonment, the inherent danger in waiting for the moment to act and discovering that no one will stand beside you—a quality which makes it an apt tale for our current political moment.”

“A Woman Under the Influence is a story about love: loving others so intensely you lose yourself, loving an idealized version of someone else, loving the past, loving the idea of love. It’s also a story that asks if love can grow & change over the years, can withstand betrayal.”

Steven Soderbergh’s 2025 Viewing Log

Thin Man study. 2024. Graphite and Prismacolor Verithin white pencil on Strathmore toned gray paper. 11"x17" SOLD. I still want to do a full-color poster of this with all the copy. I really love this piece and had a ball working on it.

This is about A Woman Under the Influence but it is also a lot about saying fuck corporations, be uncomfortable, make independent art—even if it doesn’t pay off in your lifetime

Angela Bassett in Strange Days appreciation post

Halfway through the decade! What are your favourite films each year so far? 2020: Promising Young Woman 2021: Shadow in the Cloud 2022: Vesper 2023: Nimona 2024: Orion and the Dark 2025: Train Dreams

A brand new episode of The BW/DR Podcast is ready for your ears! Not only is this Veronica & producer Eli’s final episode, it’s also our 4th annual "Cruisemas" show—so please join us as we revisit PTA's blank check big swing MAGNOLIA (1999) and reflect a bit on the end of an era 🥹

Back in June, I tagged along with the legendary Mira Nair for an afternoon canvass in Richmond Hill. Production delays (by yours truly) kept this from coming out during the election, but we wanted to share this one with you for the holidays. I hope you enjoy it - this is one of my favorites.

🗽

It cannot hurt that his mother is Mira Nair

who is that you hear screaming? it is me, I'm the one who is screaming. many thanks to ashley judd for sharing with me her memories of working on michael mann's HEAT; at @vulture.com: www.vulture.com/article/ashl...

A brand new episode of The BW/DR Podcast is ready for your ears! Not only is this Veronica & producer Eli’s final episode, it’s also our 4th annual "Cruisemas" show—so please join us as we revisit PTA's blank check big swing MAGNOLIA (1999) and reflect a bit on the end of an era 🥹

remember that people like to see them in theaters with actual real theatrical windows, especially mid-budget films that need a little time to grow via word of mouth which used to be a thing

keep me sane

Be projected, god willing

In 2026, movies will _____________

Thank you for another year of letting us do this, and for supporting this work. It literally couldn’t happen without so many of you subscribing, and we never take that for granted. It’s been a shit year for most everybody, but at least we still have movies and writing and art 🖤 See you next year!

"I want to go dancing."

One of my favorite things I did this year was talk to Abel Ferrara for @brightwalldarkroom.com about life, death, drugs, redemption, his films, and the World Series. (Artwork by @bturnerinfo.bsky.social) www.brightwalldarkroom.com/2025/11/03/a...

Please have Elizabeth write things for you next year, she’s beyond great & the easiest person to work with & has unique angles and ideas on just about everything!