Nightjohn (Charles Burnett, 1996)

The fruit of the tree of knowledge

Charles Burnett's Nightjohn (1996)-- about the perils of slaves learning to read in the early 19th century South-- succeeds in transforming the for-the-whole-family TV-movie (Hallmark Channel produced, Disney distributed) into something more unsettling (screened this for my students back when I was teaching at-risk youths, and one of the most common responses was: "This was on the Disney Channel?").

"Wuthering Heights" (Emerald Fennell, 2026)

Doddering Heights

(WARNING: story and plot twists discussed in explicit detail!)

Wouldn't condemn Emerald Fennell's "Wuthering Heights" for taking liberties with Emily Bronte, but would condemn the film for making such weak tea out of her novel.

Agreed the Byronic protagonist should be darkskinned-- though every Heathcliff in most every adaptation has been white (Olivier, Fiennes); agreed taking out Hindley is a grievous wound (combining the man who adopts Heathcliff with the man who most hates Heathcliff makes for a veddy confusing character); agreed cutting out the novel's second half truncates much of the story's power (though most every version including the classic 1939 William Wyler adaptation does just that)-- Fennel coulda woulda shoulda but didn't and if we hew to the principle that adaptations must have leeway for the art to breathe life in another medium then she didn't haveta.

What I do find unacceptable is the softening of the main characters. Emily's Catherine to put it bluntly is a bitch, Emily's Heathcliff a sonfabitch, and their relationship has a strong whiff of incest about it (implied but never stated that Heathcliff is likely Mr. Earnshaw's bastard child-- and Catherine likely his half-sister). I'd even object to Fennell's turning Nelly (Hong Chau) into an underhanded villain, tho there are hints here and there-- the crucial scene in the novel when Heathcliff eavesdrops (why didn't Nelly warn Catherine?) comes to mind. I've heard criticism that the whole course of the novel depended on such a little thing-- a man listening and leaving at just the right moment-- but truth of the matter is anything could have split the two up: a punch in the gut, a slap in the face, a trivial spat. Catherine and Heathcliff are what you'd call 'compelling'-- characters you'd love to read about in a gothic novel but hell to actually live with day to day. They're so stubborn they'd find the slightest excuse to fight; they're their own worst enemies. Shifting the blame on Nelly as Fennell does absolves them of what they've done to each other, lessens the tragedy of their relationship.   

Hamnet (Chloe Zhao, 2025)

To mourn or not to mourn

Chloe Zhao's latest-- adapted by Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell from O'Farrell's well-regarded 2020 novel-- is a tearjerker, most people will agree. The question one might ask: does it earn our tears, or are we overindulging?

Saving Private Ryan vs The Thin Red Line

Battle of the Best Pictures: The Thin Red Line vs. Saving Private Ryan

Spielberg is master of a narrow emotional range, that of a child in suburban America. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET the Extraterrestrial, even parts of Jaws, Poltergeist, the underrated 1941 all reflect this. More, he has the child's pleasure in toys, and in motion for the sheer pleasure of motion. His films move, and that is no small thing; they are “movies” in the fullest sense.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (Nia Dacosta, 2026)

The numbing of the beast

Saw The Bone Temple and thought it far better than the first movie. No, I'll go further: in my book the best by far 28...Later movie to date. No, I'll go even further; best film of the entire franchise, and yes I haven't seen the as yet nonexistent third installment-- calling it here and now, a year or so early. 

No-- backtrack. I'll go even further than that: Bone Temple is the first movie in the entire franchise that I actually like. 

It Was Just An Accident (Jafar Panahi, 2025)

We have ways of making you talk

Give Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi this much credit: he shoots what he sees. Intrigued by the look on a young girl's face, he made The Mirror (1997), about a child acting in a film production and the sudden plot twists she introduces in both the film and her life. Seeing how women are treated in Iran, he made The Circle (2000), a series of interlinked stories about different women, and Offside (2006), about a group of young women determined to see the World Cup qualifying match between Iran and Bahrain-- even if women are banned from attending. 

The Circle, Offside, and the crime drama Crimson Gold (2003) helped earn Panahi a 6-year prison sentence and 20-year filmmaking ban; he responded with This Is Not A Film (2011), and the surreptitiously shot Taxi (2015). He was arrested and imprisoned again in 2022 for following up on the arrest of a fellow filmmaker, and his response is this film-- about former prisoners and how they react when meeting their former prison interrogator.   

Best Films of 2025

Best of 2025

Not having really focused on seeing everything out there because-- reasons-- but did manage a few titles. This list can and will change while I'm still playing catch-up.

20. Eddington (Ari Aster)

Starts off terrific as a New Mexico version of Bernard Tavernier's Coup de Torchon with Joaquin Phoenix in the Philippe Noiret role, then devolves into yet another vast conspiracy theory a la The Parallax View only with a lot more firepower (yawn) and a lot less atmospheric menace. 

19. Sinners (Ryan Coogler)

The first forty minutes, where different folks come together as a team and raise up a juke joint, are some of the most glorious storytelling of 2025; the rest-- not so much. 

18. Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie)

Basically Uncut Gems with ping pong paddles. This Safdie brother's first solo outing confirms several things: that setting their stories in the past helps settle their frenetic helter-skelter filmmaking; that Adam Sandler is a far better actor than Timothee Chalamet; and that Masaaki Yuasa's Ping Pong: The Animation is a more detailed more honest more inventive treatment of the sport.

17. Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater) 

Another of the director's valentines to filmmaking, this time French. If I don't actively dislike it that's because I'm constantly amused by the casting (the actor playing Godard has the man's attitude roughly right, but the actor playing Jean-Paul Belmondo can't even approximate his gunpowder charisma). If I don't actively like it that's because 1) I could just watch the movies themselves and read about the gossip in the many accounts and biographies available, and 2) I mention a better celebration of the joy (and agony, and history) of Filipino filmmaking later in this list.