Dying is easy; comedy, hard.
Of course I was going to check this out-- Zach Cregger's Weapons was one of the more interesting horrors of last year, Barbarians one of the more interesting horrors before that.
Does it deliver? Save you the suspense: yes, but how it delivers is I submit the question to ask.
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.
22. 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.
21. 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.
20. 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.
19. 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.
Incoming
First things first: Weapons is easily the best horror in 2025 to date, an ingeniously written inventively shot and staged film written and directed by Zach Cregger, whose debut feature Barbarian was also an inventive ingenious horror released in 2022.
With that out of the way-- (WARNING: plot and surprise twists discussed in close and explicit detail!)
