for @inverse.com I ranked the top 15 sci-fi movies and tv shows of 2025, from anti-fascist Star Wars to a miserable woman who has to save the planet and even an underdog Predator, here's the best science fiction of 2025: www.inverse.com/entertainmen...

reading Derrida in between rewatching episodes of STRANGER THINGS, I contain multitudes

MARTY SUPREME aka THE TORTURED PING PONG SOCIETY is incredible, a screwball sports thriller about the horrible exuberance of youth and the cascading consequences of betting it all on greatness. Chalamet’s best performance. Even at two and a half hours, exhilarating.

I wrote about the wonderful Siskel & Ebert for its 50th anniversary at @ebertvoices.bsky.social, along with a deep bench of incredible writers. Reading through these made me emotional: www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/...

I'm still reeling from IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT, Panahi's queasy thriller about how authoritarianism dehumanizes not only through horrible living conditions, but by pushing the persecuted to be the worst versions of themselves in pursuit of something like justice.

turning WUTHERING HEIGHTS, a wonderful novel about cycles of abuse and selfish and horrible people, into an erotically charged "greatest love story of all time" style pop-adaptation seems like it was designed just to irk me personally

THE RUNNING MAN is a sloppy bore. Action is cut to pieces, the plot is all lazy contrivance and if you Pepsi Challenged the movie nobody would know it was directed by Edgar Wright. It slips by with a low hum of entertainment value. I didn't expect much, but it was worse than that

really loved DEATH BY LIGHTNING. it's a thrilling study of our American Project, where a Wambsgansian Raskolnikov pathologizes his failings into a mission to murder a president, whose ascendance captures the folly and power of politics. but most crucially: it has all of the boys.

PLURIBUS is amazing. It feels like the classic speculative sci-fi of the 1960s, with Gilligan using his genre setup to provocatively explore nothing less than the nature of consciousness and what makes us human. Every scene is a discovery. And yes, Rhea Seehorn is extraordinary.

PREDATOR: BADLANDS is a good time, playing as an episode of STAR TREK where a Klingon is stranded with a chirpy android, full of images right out of the gamerbrained sci-fi desktop wallpapers circa 2008. Many will love this, but I'm just so tired of movies looking so fucking gray

the CHAINSAW MAN movie is terrific, a heart-fluttering, shark-riding, tragicute romance-action movie that subverts anime/manga romance tropes while delivering exhilarating multi-art-styled action. poor Denji. basically the platonic ideal of what I want one of these to be.

had fun with BUGONIA, a wily dialectic between a maybe-alien's “let’s have a dialogue” corporate speak vs a conspiracist's magical thinking. IE, another movie about the fall of communication across class and ideology. doesn't add up to a ton, but Plemons and Stone fucking rock it

I adored RESURRECTION, Bi Gan's möbius stripped cinedreamworld where he celebrates, mourns and reclaims the fading forms of film history with his signature style that expands and compresses time in dazzling ways. We dream to hold on to what's been lost. One of the best this year.

woke up to the happiest news I’ve read in a while: after almost ten years without a 15/70 IMAX screen in Chicago (and driving hours away to Indianapolis for it) we’re finally getting one back in the suburbs. losing my mind right now lol from: variety.com/2025/film/ne...

It’s interesting and actually a little heartening that both Adam Driver and Kit Harrington cared so much for their characters after a much maligned finale in their respective franchises they tried creating a sequel themselves as a way to keep exploring that character.

WAKE UP DEAD MAN is terrific, with Rian Johnson spinning a devious, gothic-infused churchbound murder musing on how to live with our sins. Easily the best puzzle-box mystery of the three. Craig is a delight, but Josh O'Connor is once again sensational. A great time!

THE SECRET AGENT is incredible, a stirring, playful and affecting hauntological thriller on how we try to hold onto memory — our own, our cultures, our art, and how that search shapes them all. In this film of forgotten things, Wagner Maura is the heart. One of the best this year

can someone recommend me their favorite spooky book

I wrote about ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER and how PTA uses armed revolution as a means of exploring dadhood, compromise and the struggles of aging in a world that never seems to change. It's one of the best movies this year: nextbestpicture.com/in-one-battl...

just saw ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER for a third time last night and it’s actually ridiculous how it only gets better, faster, richer and more emotional with each viewing. think it’s time I finally admitted it’s a masterpiece.

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER is an exhilarating gauntlet of American psychosexual paranoia and fight, where PTA pivots from years of Bad Dads into musing on a father's place to raise the next generation after his own already failed. A triumph, and an all-timer California movie.

heard there’s a new @hitfactorypod.bsky.social about Saving Private Ryan in which @brendanhodges.bsky.social mounts a defence along the lines of this thread

now seems like a good time to say I just flew to Boston where I’ll be seeing ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER in Vista Vision and dual laser 1.43. getting to the point where the hype feels dangerous.

Re Kimmel, it's important that Disney has left itself an out--it is a "suspension," not a cancellation or firing. What happens in the next two days--reaction within the company but also in the press, in the industry, in Washington, among consumers, and on social media--may affect how this plays out.

we'll see how it does at the box office but with ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER apparently being a rousing, action-packed commercial movie, it has to be studied why the studio thought they should market it as a zany slapstick stoner thing instead of a gripping, relevant action-comedy

the fact the DEMON SLAYER movie is on pace to potentially out-earn FANTASTIC FOUR is as good reflection of the shifting cultural tides in the last ten years as I’ve seen. nobody would’ve thought this was possible not long ago, crazy stuff I reviewed it for NBP: nextbestpicture.com/demon-slayer...

I’m watching SAVING PRIVATE RYAN again and knowing Spielberg didn’t shot list the opening 25 minutes and in fact blocked and shot it on the fly is a little like finding out Beethoven made up Symphony No. 3 on the spot

really enjoying the mad science of ALIEN: EARTH, where corporate overlords use technology to control us (especially children), as Timothy Olyphant does xeno-mischief. It’s also one of the best and most “cinematic” looking shows recently, with actual lenses, grain and halation:

I wrote about Zach Cregger's Rorschacian horror epic WEAPONS for @nextbestpicture.bsky.social, unpacking its cauldron of themes, the divided discourse, and what it means to be "about" something: nextbestpicture.com/weapons-the-...

some friends attend annual spiritual retreats to reconnect with our uncertain cosmos. I just see 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY on 70mm at the @musicboxtheatre.bsky.social once a year.

🚨new byline 🚨 for @letterboxd.social I went long celebrating King Hu's wuxia masterpiece A TOUCH OF ZEN, his swashbuckling action epic that's also a powerful, transcendent meditation on reality –– and our place in it. Very proud of this one! letterboxd.com/journal/a-to...

bumping -- would love it if you gave this one a read

New today on the site! “Consider how THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS revolves around vision. Not only perception, but empathy and hindsight, and the non-empirical prick of intuition, where vision exceeds the reach of training.” - Veronica Fitzpatrick (art by @bturnerinfo.bsky.social)

I saw the AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH trailer and besides being some of the most beautiful footage I've seen all year, struck by the real sense of doom and rage––fist fights inside of cosmic volcanoes, heroes terrified, huge aerial battles. And I'm pretty sure I know who's going to die.

I liked FANTASTIC FOUR most when brainy heroes solved problems with family discussion and stretchy-arm chalkboard equations instead of Big Smash, and the cosmic stuff is terrific. The rest is rushed and labored, but it's the rare MCU to treat its characters like real human beings

more on FANTASTIC FOUR later but wow Matt Shakman really loves INTERSTELLAR

uh oh I liked EDDINGTON, aka NO COUNTRY FOR WOKE MEN, where Aster dreamcatches every partisan paranoia into a suburban absurdist nightmaria with mask jokes. this isn’t both-sidesing so much as restaging the insanity of the 2020s to riotous extreme. some surprisingly solid action!

last thing I'll say about THE ODYSSEY tickets is I've been wondering if, besides eventizing the movie, it's to help 15/70 theaters bankroll fixing projectors and hiring staff. all that was a (costly) nightmare on OPPENHEIMER, and this is a possible solution to that problem.

Yeah, THE ODYSSEY is going to be massive. A year out tickets crashed the AMC and the Indiana State Museum websites. I got tickets for Friday, but this was by far the most challenging experience scoring seats here in the ten years I've been going. a billion dollars incoming

realizing INCEPTION is 15 years old

SUPERMAN is an interesting case study of Gunn trying to "mature" as an artist but can't quite shake his core impulses: dysfunctional families, cosmic weirdness, and a weirdly mean spirited arc towards a female character for no real reason. Weird for a movie allegedly about hope!

I mostly enjoyed SUPERMAN, a wild, splash-paneled modernization that confronts the core of who he is and his burden of goodness. Until Gunn turns it into a messy Guardians-lite romp that handwaves those ideas for routine speeches about hope. Ugly as sin. Corenswet *is* Superman.

watched SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE for the first time recently and did not expect the entire plot to revolve around how much Superman wants to fuck Lois Lane. very good movie!

both AVATARs are the best dinosaur movies since 1993

yeah, THE ODYSSEY looks incredible. close to the visual style of DUNKIRK alongside the mythic menace of OPPENHEIMER, with Nolan is using Homer to grapple with the nature of myth, truth and storytelling. there's something eerily threatening about the footage. I couldn’t be more in

I wrote about what 28 YEARS LATER teaches us about death, love and co-existence for @nextbestpicture.bsky.social, unpacking Boyle and Garland's digital provocations and disarmingly emotional horrors. One of the best movies of the year: nextbestpicture.com/lessons-from...

it’s so beautiful

guy who pulls a TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN and starts putting DEATH STRANDING 2 on top ten movies of the year lists

headed back to the beach