Last week, which spanned the end of one year and the beginning of another, and also marked the end of my long winter vacation, I watched 8 movies:
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- Rose Byrne is exceptional in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, which smartly keeps you completely trapped inside her character’s point of view and her depression—to the point that for most of the running time, you don’t even see, only hear, the child she shares many of her scenes with. It’s not an especially fun movie, but that’s kind of the point.
- Holiday would be just pleasantly forgettable, were it not for the added charms of Hepburn and Grant. It’s not the best of their pairings, but it’s very entertaining nonetheless.
- Dwayne Johnson is genuinely good in a The Smashing Machine, but with all due respect to Mark Kerr, the movie never truly makes a good argument for why his story needs to be told. A late-credits title card comes close, when it suggests that Kerr and others like him built a sport that hardly remembers their names, but should, but the movie itself is so adamant about avoiding cliches that it’s told at such a distance and barely scratches the surface.
- The Key isn’t either star William Powell or director Michael Curtiz’s best, but the two combined make it worth watching.
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- I take no pleasure in saying this, but Spinal Tap II: The End Continues was one of my least favorite movies in 2025. That’s a shame, not just because of my fondness for the original, or sadness over director Rob Reiner’s untimely death, but because I think it’s heart is in the right place. But the fact remains that the movie did not make me laugh even once.
- Terror of Mechagodzilla does exactly what it says on the tin. Most of what it says is written in Japanese, however, so I’m not entirely sure I have it translated right. It’s all a bit goofy, which I think is honestly how I prefer kaiju films of this era.
- You could do a lot worse than Cary Grant and Jean Arthur in a Howard Hawks movie, as Only Angels Have Wings makes very clear.
- Sholay is tonally all over the map, but that seems very much by design. It’s bold and silly and a lot of fun.
I also rewatched the Before Trilogy—Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight—even though I’d rewatched the middle film just last year. They remain delightful and thoughtful and worth rewatching. I also rewatched Mike Flanagan’s first movie Absentia, which feels very much like the crowdfunded debut film that it is, but also works exceptionally well, with smart direction, good acting, and an intriguing premise.