Ocean Waves
By Daniel Loria
One Battle After Another | AMC Sunset Place, Miami, FL
There are two parts to One Battle After Another: a prologue about the exploits of the French 75, a ragtag group of radical far-left revolutionaries, and, after time passes, a movie about a father desperately chasing his missing daughter in the face of devastating danger. The prologue is so good that it lingers throughout the rest of the film, leaving hints of a would-be ‘70s-era political action-thriller in its wake. We leave Pat Calhoun and the French 75 and are left with Bob Ferguson, a burned-out soldier from a failed revolution. The only war Ferguson is fighting when we reunite with him is against his compromised memory and the extra pounds that suddenly accumulate and refuse to leave once you’ve raised a child. He’s so withered by years of recreational drugs and alcohol while in hiding, he’s unable to complete a single heroic act when it matters most. This is Leonardo DiCaprio’s best role since The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), though I suspect we may eventually look back at it as the best performance of his career.
The film barrels forward at a breathless pace, advancing so relentlessly that Ferguson has trouble keeping up and will fall out of entire segments of the story. On the other end of the chase is Sean Penn’s Colonel Lockjaw, a short-king Inspector Javert who hides his insecurities behind a muscle shirt two sizes too small. The set pieces, dialogue, and performances from supporting characters we encounter along the way are all equally unforgettable. The film’s climax, a chase sequence with four cars driving in a straight line on a desolate, hilly highway, has to be seen to be believed. It’s an instant inductee into the pantheon of most memorable car chases in film history.
There is so much more to say about One Battle After Another that any attempt at a concise appreciation like this feels hopelessly incomplete. I’ll leave you with this: It’s not hard to relate to Ferguson, bemoaning our inability to conform to, or our impotence in, a changing society we refuse to condone. Revolutions flame out, revolutionaries fade, but the love we have for those who make our life worth living is more powerful than any other force on this planet.
Eddington | AMC Lincoln Square, New York, NY
Ari Aster’s Eddington is the type of masterpiece that tends to be embraced decades after its release. It is the most caustic cultural critique of the United States since Lars von Trier’s Dogville (2003) and the sharpest social satire of American life since Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975). It’s no wonder the film proved to be so divisive when it first hit theaters.
The first two-thirds of the movie play like a slow burn thriller, albeit one without a true protagonist to anchor the story: Every character is either somewhat dislikable or dishonest, and often both. The ensemble is emblematic of the grifters that emerged during the pandemic in every facet of our daily lives. Everyone’s working a scam, whether as an orchestrator or an unwitting participant. Some of these hucksters are shamelessly self-aware about their rackets; others deceive themselves into believing their own self-affirming fables as a coping mechanism.
The movie goes off the rails in its final act—the slow simmer turning to a roiling boil—in a climax that embraces all the pandemic’s half-baked conspiracy theories at face value. The result is a fever dream fantasy of a finale, the film’s most overtly satirical passage. This is precisely where I suspect most audiences fell off the wagon. A simple-minded satire—bumbling, conservative sheriff squares off against progressive, small-town mayor—likely would have garnered greater accolades and recognition. Eddington isn’t interested in delivering such a facile parable. Instead, it is a cynical epic about how social media fueled the decline of our social fabric in the face of a global health crisis—and the cultural reckoning it engendered.
Daniel Loria’s Top 10 Movies of 2025
- One Battle After Another (P.T. Anderson, Warner Bros.)
- Eddington (Ari Aster, A24)
- The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Neon)
- Train Dreams (Clint Bentley, Netflix)
- Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie, A24)
- It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Neon)
- No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook, Neon)
- Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra, Mubi)
- Weapons (Zach Cregger, Warner Bros.)
- Warfare (Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland, A24)
Unforgettable Performances and Jaw-Dropping Musical Moments
By Chad Kennerk
Hamnet | AMC 9+CO 10, Denver, CO
Having the opportunity to experience Hamnet was the biggest gift of my moviegoing year. I think part of the magic of that movie is watching it with strangers in a theater. It really brought the collective moviegoing experience back to me in a way that I hadn’t deeply felt in a while. A room full of people collectively weeping was a great reminder of our own humanity, of what binds us together. The fact that movies like this can be made and released theatrically gives me hope for the art form. Chloé Zhao is a dreamweaver, and with Hamnet, she’s delivered another masterpiece. Jessie Buckley delivered the best performance of the year.
Sinners | Regal UA Colorado Center, Denver, CO
The juke joint sequence in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, where walls fall down and barriers are literally broken, is a celebratory séance between past, present, and future. The screen itself becomes a portal into a rich cultural tapestry of music and dance woven into a singular communal moviegoing moment. It’s amazing to be in a theater, witnessing a film, and to realize you’re watching what’s going to become a classic. I found myself choked up by the synergy of everything that was happening visually and aurally during that sequence.
Blue Moon | Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, NM
Blue Moon is something of a one-man show in the way that Ethan Hawke, as lyricist Lorenz Hart, takes the audience by the hand and into his world over the course of one night in Sardi’s. It’s a tour de force for Hawke and a welcome return to the big screen for one of our best and most prolific filmmakers, Richard Linklater. I was out at the Santa Fe International Film Festival this year, where I had the pleasure of seeing this film with a crowd. We think of big blockbusters as a must-see moviegoing experience, but there’s something about watching a great, intimate drama with an audience that fills the soul.
Materialists | AMC 9+CO 10, Denver, CO
Celine Song continued to explore love’s contradictions in a keenly observed look at the modern realities of love and dating in the best date night movie of the year, Materialists. With an opening weekend that surpassed the entire domestic run of her feature debut, Materialists demonstrated how midbudget movies can still find financial and critical success in the marketplace. The romcom often gets relegated to streaming, but films like Materialists provide great examples of why romance is still magical at the movies.
Wicked: For Good | AMC Westminster Promenade, Westminster, CO
The anticipation leading up to Wicked: For Good had everyone from little kids to adults dressed in full costumes and decked out in pink and green. At my screening, the staff actually played the soundtrack from the first film in the auditorium, timing it so that when the soundtrack ended, Wicked: For Good began. At the height of “Defying Gravity,” audience members were fist-pumping the air. It really helped set the tone for the experience.
Chad Kennerk’s Top 10 Movies of 2025
- Hamnet (Chloé Zhao , Focus Features)
- One Battle After Another (P.T. Anderson, Warner Bros.)
- Sinners (Ryan Coogler, Warner Bros.)
- Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie, A24)
- Blue Moon (Richard Linklater, Sony Pictures Classics)
- Is This Thing On? (Bradley Cooper, Searchlight)
- Materialists (Celine Song, A24)
- Wicked: For Good (Jon M. Chu, Universal)
- Train Dreams (Clint Bentley, Netflix)
- Weapons (Zach Cregger, Warner Bros.)
Repertory Revivals and Communal Chills
By Rebecca Pahle
Purple Rain and Final Destination: Bloodlines | AMC Times Square, New York, NY
It’s hard to single out any single moviegoing experience as my favorite of the year, so I’ll do my best to separate them into two categories: repertory and new releases.
For repertory, let’s go back to March: an objectively bad month. Between the cold, the early sunsets, and the typically thin movie slate, it can be tough to get me out of the apartment … but I’ll do it for Prince. Or, rather, for Purple Rain, remastered for Dolby Cinema and returning to theaters for one day, Wednesday, March 5. I attended a sold-out screening at AMC Theatres’ Times Square location. While I’d like to point to a specific moment that had the audience cheering, honestly, the Dolby of it all had me so immersed that I think I spent the entire 1 hour and 51 minutes in a fugue state of Prince appreciation. Charisma like Prince’s deserves the best in cinema presentation … and I deserved a break during a weary week to revisit one of my favorite guilty-pleasure movies.
When it comes to new releases, I’m not afraid to admit that I love a stupid horror movie. And watching a stupid horror movie with an auditorium packed full of people who also love stupid horror movies … that’s the best way to do it. It’s how I saw Final Destination: Bloodlines. It is not how I saw The Monkey, which I only caught up with at home once it hit streaming. While The Monkey certainly has some of the trappings of a prestige horror movie, it is still (I say this with love) stupid. In a way, it felt like the films were in conversation with each other, each attempting to outdo the other with increasingly outlandish, Rube Goldberg-esque kill scenes. As I think back on the year in movies, mulling over standout scenes and unexpected cinematic delights, I can’t recall any of the set pieces from The Monkey off the top of my head. But Final Destination? Oh, buddy. The opening restaurant scene. The tattoo shop scene. The hospital scene. It was sweet, sweet carnage that the opening weekend crowd ate up. If I’d watched The Monkey in a movie theater, I think I would have liked it more. Watching it alone, at 2 in the afternoon, in my sweatpants…. Nah. Didn’t work. Horror is one genre that’s just better on the big screen.
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