2025 in Review
The stuff I consumed this year, for better and for worse
This piece is not going to have any real rhythm or flow to it, it’s just a big pile of end-of-year stuff. I’m adding to it little by little throughout the end of the year, collecting thoughts on all the things that got me through 2025: The movies I watched, the music I listened to, the books I read.
Before I jump in: A piece of housekeeping to do as we head into the new year.
I’ve created accounts on a few of the social media apps, with the simple goal of building an audience & expanding my readership. The other day, I was asked if I was a “content creator” now… I shuddered.
No, I replied. I’m a “writer who posts.”
I don’t think you become a “content creator” unless the writing takes a backseat to everything else. The writing will always be first for me. The posting is just a means to an end.
If you would like to support me and my writing (I appreciate those of you who already have), this is one of the biggest things you can do. Following, liking, and sharing my work means so much to me, and each individual action helps me immensely.
Here are links to my social media accounts.
Additionally, you guys should connect with me on Letterboxd, Serializd, and Goodreads. I love staying in touch with friends and family by seeing what everyone is watching and reading.
No matter the medium, I look forward to connecting with all of you in 2026.
Movies
One Battle After Another
dir. Paul Thomas Anderson (2025)
The problem I had with One Battle After Another was that I simply liked it too much. I had big plans on writing about it, but once I saw the film, I just couldn’t be interesting. The fatal flaw with a lot of criticism in the modern day is that it is simply too polarized. People who like a thing stand in one corner with their team’s jersey on, and people who hate the thing stand in the other corner. I try not to do that, but it would have turned into that. PTA is my favorite director, Leo is one of my favorite movie stars, I agreed too much with the politics of the film, so when it came to full reviews, I sat that one out.
I will say, if you still haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. I’ve spoken with people who loved it, people who hated it, and people who thought it was just okay. None of those people have regretted seeing the film, and it has served as a tremendous conversation-starter in all cases. It’s funny, it’s exciting, it’s controversial, there’s something for everyone and it’s definitely worth a watch. My favorite new film of 2025.
Sinners
dir. Ryan Coogler (2025)
If One Battle After Another had not come out this year, I would be calling Sinners my favorite new film of this year. I remember hearing about this film at the beginning of the year and thinking sure, that sounds fine. Ryan Coogler was a director I respected, but his prior three films were Creed and the two Black Panther films. I’m not the biggest superhero guy and I thought Creed was solid, but those just didn’t inspire a huge amount of excitement regarding his newest.
This one absolutely blew me away. The easiest comparison for this film is From Dusk Till Dawn, but where that one was a fun, twisty vampire film that leans into a group full of archetypes, Sinners has a more interesting cast of characters and far more emotional weight to it. The story is richer, the environment more immersive. I love Dusk Till Dawn, and Coogler’s film was the better one by a good distance.
Immediately upon leaving the theater, Sinners felt like an immediate entry into the pantheon of great genre films.
The Lord of the Rings
dir. Peter Jackson (2001-03)
Okay, so here we have begun the trio of comfort-movie entries. This was wild year for me personally, and I found myself rewatching these films over and over. Nothing gets rid of anxiety like the extended editions’ hour in the Shire. In particular, I leaned on Fellowship of the Ring, which is just such a beautiful film.
I’ve also been reading the books, and I find myself appreciating a lot of the changes that Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens made when adapting the book into a screenplay. You often hear people complaining about how much the movies changed from Tolkien’s words, but I can’t help but think the movies are made better by a lot of these alterations.
Some examples:
Tom Bombadil is interesting in the book, but in the film would have killed the momentum and urgency of Frodo and Sam’s escape from Bag End.
Helm’s Deep is only a few pages in the book. On film, it’s arguably the greatest battle sequence ever. Making it the climax of The Two Towers is the most cinematic thing they could have done.
On the topic of Helm’s Deep, it’s awesome that Legolas slides down the stairs on his shield while he shoots Uruk-hai with his bow and arrow. Sure, it’s action movie bullshit, but it’s awesome.
I appreciate a 4-hour film that has a big denouement, but including the scouring of the Shire would have been too much. It’s the kind of thing that works in a book, but on screen would just make the film drag.
The Shawshank Redemption
dir. Frank Darabont (1994)
Entry #2 in the comfort-movie trio. What can I really say about this one?
Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’
Signs
dir. M Night Shyamalan (2002)
I think I watched this at least five time this year? A lot of people say Shyamalan’s best is either Unbreakable, Split, or The Sixth Sense, but Signs will forever be my favorite.
There’s not really a classic M Night twist. There’s not one tour de force performance. It’s a well-made drama disguised as an alien invasion movie, and it has a lot of things to say about faith, family, and forgiveness. It does in in a way more akin to Spielberg than a standard Christian film studio, and that’s part of the reason I think this movie is his best. Signs could have easily come across as hokey and cheap, but instead it is genuinely tense and earnestly sweet. That is a fine line to walk, and only the best do it this well.
Shyamalan has never consistently kept up this level during his career, but when he peaks, it’s all-time stuff.
Lightning Round
Happy Gilmore 2: Bad
Novocaine: Fine
Borderline: Atrocious
The Monkey: Disappointing
Love Hurts: Awful
Death of a Unicorn: So, yeah, this was a bad year at the movies, huh?
Don’t let me be too negative. This was unequivocally my least prolific year as a moviegoer that I’ve had in a really long time. It was a busy year for me, and there were a lot of films I just haven’t gotten to see yet. Weapons is still on the watchlist, as is Bugonia and Eddington and The Phoenician Scheme.
From what I’ve seen, this was a poor film year with a few standouts, but I have to admit ignorance. I’ll probably look back on 2025 a little more positively at some point in the future, or maybe all these other movies will let me down.
Books
During the past year, I didn’t read single book that was published in 2025. More than any art form, I feel absolutely no urgency to read new books right when they hit the shelves. A lot of films deserve a big-screen experience that demands immediate viewing, television is such a discussion-based medium, and music is arguably the most timely of all the art forms. Books are more like paintings. Writers are more famous after they’re dead (I picked a hell-of-a line of work).
The Newer Stuff
The newest books I read this year were a trio of Taylor Jenkins Reid novels, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Malibu Rising, and Carrie Soto is Back, as well as Jen Beagin’s Big Swiss.
All of Reid’s work is in some way an examination of stereotypes. In Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo this is done best. That one is a really beautiful story of a golden era movie star’s life in Hollywood, and it’s funny, heartbreaking, and scandalous. It’s my favorite of Reid’s (with Daisy Jones & The Six as a close second.)
Malibu Rising is fun and kinetic, but not quite enough to make up for the lack of nuanced characters or emotional weight. The novel is not completely paint-by-numbers, and there are a few touching moments, but there’s far too much telegraphing for it to remain truly engaging. You’ve got your standard tomboy sister who, you guessed it, turns out to be gay, and you’ve got your I wonder who starts the fire? Could it possibly be the wildcard father who has ruined everything else in these kids’ lives? Yep, it certainly is. (That is the big tease of the prologue, I wonder who started the fire? And then it’s plain as day from a mile away.)
Carrie Soto is Back is just a bland sports novel. Not much to say there. Boring characters, far too much description of individual tennis points. It reminded me of a football “novel” I wrote in the third grade where I just summarized every game of an imaginary Atlanta Falcons Super Bowl-winning season. I read this in the wake of seeing Challengers, a film that made me forget most fictional things about sports are not very good.
Big Swiss was my favorite newer read of the year. It tells the story of Greta, a 45-year old woman who finds work transcribing sex therapy sessions. She becomes fascinated by one patient whom she refers to as “Big Swiss”, and one day, recognizes her by voice at the dog park. Greta introduces herself, using a fake name, and the two begin a friendship, that quickly becomes a sexual relationship, that is built on a more than just a lie. It’s an awesome book that is hilarious, blunt, and morally complex.
The Secret History
by Donna Tartt (1992)
This book came recommended by multiple friends who sold it by calling it a “modern classic”. I was weary, because praise like that so easily disappoints, especially when people are telling you how important something is. What I’ve learned, from experience, is that “important” is usually code for a ham-fisted piece of entertainment that beats you over the head with its message and says something so blatantly obvious that you wonder how the rest of society seems to just be learning about it for the first time.
The Secret History was not that. Not even close. Instead, the expectations set by my friends were met and exceeded by quite a bit. This was a novel that stuck with me long after finishing it, both because of what was on the surface, and the themes that rose up after pondering the book for a while.
Most notably, it’s wildly impressive that this book retains its tension through almost 600 pages despite revealing the murderer in the book’s prologue. This is a book that, like a great Columbo episode, is not at all interested in weaving some Agatha Christie-style whodunnit, but instead focuses on what drives a person to kill, and the ways that the guilt of killing both eats away at and changes a person. From the opening page we know who the victim will be and who the killers are, and yet few books have kept me as intrigued from front to back as The Secret History.
On the Road
by Jack Kerouac (1957)
In a year where I went on an adventure, met a bunch of crazy new people, and was constantly running out of money, what better book to read than the one about a guy going on an adventure, meeting a bunch of crazy new people, and constantly running out of money?
I will say this: I’ve been broke in my life, but I’ve never been fill-up-my-tobacco-pipe-with-the-cigarette-butts-I’ve-collected-in-the-street broke.
Music
Magpie
Peach Pit (2025)
This was my favorite album of the year, and it helped that I saw Peach Pit live in Atlanta over the summer. This album is not Peach Pit’s darkest, but it’s arguably they’re heaviest thematically. “Did You Love Somebody” is one of those songs I find myself skipping often, not because I don’t like it, but because it hits too hard and resonates too much. You know you’ve written a great sad song when it’s getting skipped 90% of the time it pops up on Spotify.
Additionally, the title track is one of my favorite new rock songs I’ve heard in a long time. Perfect show-opener.
Burnout Days
flipturn (2025)
If not for Magpie, this would probably hold the title of my favorite album this year. I find flipturn to be endlessly listenable, and this album may be the epitome of that. Every track hits the ear just right. There’s no one song that reaches the heights of “August”, and that is part of the reason I like Magpie a tad more, but Burnout Days has no misses.
Man’s Best Friend
Sabrina Carpenter (2025)
Carpenter’s lyrics have always been a little silly and I recognize that I’m not really the target audience for her work, but I was surprised by how much I found myself enjoying this album. The songs are well-written, positively catchy, and not too overproduced.
2024 Late Arrivals
There were two albums I was a year behind on, but in 2025 they gave me two of my favorite new artists.
Charm by Clairo and Romance by Fontaines D.C. were on constant repeat for me this year. I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to these, but to correct the record, Romance is now my favorite album of 2024, and Charm is a close second.
Bob Dylan
Yeah, just the entire discography of Bob Dylan. He was someone I had just never done the deep dive on until this year. I knew “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” because of Guns ‘N Roses and I knew “All Along the Watchtower” because of Jimi Hendrix and “Hurricane” because of Dazed and Confused, but this year was the first time I ever sat down and listened to Highway 61 Revisited or Desire or Blonde on Blonde from front to back.
I think the thing I appreciate most about Dylan is just how prolific he is. I’d kill to put out as much stuff as he does. I’m working on a book idea right now that has been gestating for a solid two years and I’m still in draft mode. Dylan would have three books written in that time if he were in my shoes. I know that not everything of his sticks, but there has to be an immense freedom in being that consistently creative.
My personal favorite Dylan album is Infidels. I don’t know what it is about the sound of that one, but I’m hooked on it. Also, going back to the point of his prolificacy, I love that after a run of great albums, and then a lull period, and then another great album, and then another lull period, Dylan produced yet another great album 20 years into his career. A lot of artists have a hot period and then a coast period. Some artists are hot, get one lull, then have a late-career resurgence. Dylan, however, just keeps powering through. He’s been creatively up and down so many times that you lose count. I love that no matter how much critics and journalists want to write a definite narrative on the trajectory of his career, he adamantly refuses to play along.
It’s a shame the biopic about his early career, A Complete Unknown, was so boilerplate and milquetoast, because Dylan is a far more interesting character than critics and writers have ever made him out to be.
To 2026!
Some stuff I have in the works for the early part of the year:
A big review of the entirety of Stranger Things (Once the finale hits)
Essays on the filmographies of Quentin Tarantino, PTA, & Wong Kar-wai
A bevy of reviews. If I read it or watch it or listen to it, I’m probably going to write at least a little something about it.
Thanks to everyone who has made 2025 such a great year on here. I look forward to another trip around the sun with all y’all!