A IMHO: The Year in Movies
I expect that 2025 will go down as a disappointing year for the movies. It seems as if Hollywood does not consider a film marketable unless it is another Marvel extravaganza or a ghastly horror spectacle. And with the impending acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery by Netflix (assuming Paramount does not succeed with its hostile competing offer), the movies are likely to get smaller and smaller, dominated by ad-interrupted streaming services marketed to those who prefer insular isolation to actually being among other people in a communal experience in front of the “Big Screen.”
There were notable exceptions of course. One Battle After Another, Thomas Paul Anderson’s tragi-comic epic that depicts Leonardo DiCaprio as a disillusioned former revolutionary who languishes in a bathrobe while smoking weed and being pursued by manic long-time nemesis Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn) and trying to protect his putative daughter from the consequences of his past actions. Despite its disappointing box office, it is the one movie that is sure to be remembered from this year.
Eephus may be my favorite movie of this year. Like the game of baseball and life itself, nothing much happens during the last weekly contest of a group of aging men trying to hold onto their childhood fantasies amidst the fading sense of community in a small New England town. [Warning: do not watch if you think sport mostly involves massive human beings bashing each other’s brains out on Sunday afternoons].
Other films of note include an under-appreciated Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag in which Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender play a married British spy couple, one of whom just might be a traitor. Nice to know that there are still movies made for adults. Sentimental Value, Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s saga of two sisters trying to deal with their estranged father, a fading film director played by Stellan Skarsgard, in the wake of their mother’s death. Nouvelle Vague is Richard Linklater’s fictional version of the filming of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless. Not for everyone, but a must see for film junkies and Jean-Paul Belmondo fans.
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F1 was a blast for Formula 1 and Brad Pitt fans, but while I enjoyed Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, most fans of the Boss couldn’t stand to see him in a dark, depressive period in his life, saved from childhood trauma by counseling. A shoutout nonetheless for Jeremy Allen White for his understated portrayal of an artist in psychological turmoil. And Spike Lee brought us Highest 2 Lowest, a remake of a 1963 Kurosawa thriller, in which the always outstanding Denzel Washington plays a record executive who believes his son is kidnapped in a case of mistaken identity.
I didn’t mention Sinners, which is on most critics’ “Best of the Year” lists because I just don’t do vampires. Nor Ari Aster’s Eddington, the first and probably last of the big Covid epics, in which Joaquin Phoenix and Pablo Pascal battle over mask mandates, Black Lives Matters and past loves. Only in America can a pandemic lead to unspeakable violence.
I still look forward to seeing Blue Moon, the sad tale of the composer Lorenz Hart’s alcoholic demise, La Grazia, Paolo Sorrentino’s latest depiction of the complexities of Italian politics, anchored by the inimitable Sorrentino stalwart Toni Servillo (Il Divo, The Great Beauty, Gomorrah) and Marty Supreme in which Timothee Chalamet plays a 1950s table tennis hustler (opening on Christmas Day).
But just yesterday I saw the movie that undoubtedly moved me the most: You Got Gold: A Celebration of John Prine, the one of a kind country-folk songwriter who managed to compose both the saddest and funniest lyrics in musical history. Prine’s songs portrayed real life better than anyone. Sam Stone, about a disillusioned war veteran hooked on drugs, Hello in There (loneliness and old age), Angel From Montgomery (an old woman who life has passed by) and Paradise (a lament to his father’s Kentucky hometown destroyed by coal mining) are his best known and most poignant songs.
The film is a recording of a memorial concert in 2022, after Prine’s death from Covid. Performances by his closest collaborators, Bonnie Raitt, Brandi Carlisle, Lucinda Williams, Jason Isbell, Kasey Musgraves, Bob Weir and Dwight Yoakam highlight the movie. Lesser known younger performers (I’m With Her, War and Treaty) are evidence that Prine’s legacy will continue.
You don’t need to be a Prine fan to enjoy this movie, but you will be after you see it. And don’t forget to bring your handkerchief.
