Tag Archives: 2025

Trevor Stucker’s Top 10 Movies of 2025

2025 has been an interesting year for the film industry. With every MCU film underperforming at the box office and Warner Bros. looking to sell to Netflix despite being the most successful film studio of the year, there aren’t many other years that turned out as unpredictable as 2025 was for films. Something that isn’t surprising is that there were a ton of excellent movies released in the calendar year. From blockbuster spectacle to indie dramas, so many films from this year are bound to make an impact on the future of filmmaking. There are some movies that could end up on this top ten list if I had seen them, including The Testament of Ann Lee, Resurrection, and The Voice of Hind Rajab. Out of the 200 movies I’ve seen in 2025, these ten made the biggest impact.

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Fallout Season 2 – TV Review

Fallout Season 2

  • Creators: Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Graham Wagner
  • Starring: Ella Purnell, Walton Goggins, Aaron Moten, Moisés Arias, Kyle MacLachlan, Sarita Choudhury, Kumail Nanjiani, Leslie Uggams, Macauley Culkin, Frances Turner, Dave Register, Zach Cherry, Johnny Pemberton
  • Eight episode season, six episodes watched for review

Grade: B

Nobody needed Fallout season 2 to hew closely to any of the pre-existing video games. In fact, the first season broke away almost entirely, telling a brand new story with brand new characters within the limitless sandbox that was available. Given the stinger at the end of season 1, it seemed that showrunners Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet were priming an adaptation of the “New Vegas” entry in the franchise. The magic of the series is that this new season is a faithful recreation of the game, for better and worse, while still trekking its own path.

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Avatar: Fire and Ash – Movie Review

Avatar: Fire and Ash

  • Director: James Cameron
  • Writers: James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver
  • Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Oona Chaplin, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, Jack Champion, Jamie Flatters, Britain Dalton, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss

Grade: C

It’s a worldwide event when James Cameron releases a new film. Not only does he push for original storytelling for the big screen, but he provides a spectacle that very few modern films offer. Whether it’s his Avatar films or Titanic, his movies bring people to the box office unlike any other filmmaker. Avatar: Fire and Ash is Cameron’s latest entry into the franchise, hoping to recapture the grand scale and universal storytelling of the previous two films. 

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Is This Thing On? Review

Is This Thing On?

  • Director: Bradley Cooper
  • Writer: Bradley Cooper, Will Arnett, Mark Chappell
  • Starring: Will Arnett, Laura Dern, Andra Day, Bradley Cooper, Christine Ebersole, Ciarán Hinds, Sean Hayes, Amy Sedaris

Grade: A-

You don’t need me to tell you that tragedy plus time equals comedy. This is essentially the formula for Bradley Cooper’s third directorial effort, Is This Thing On?, and it continues the actor-director’s streak of simple but effective character studies. But, rather than leveling up his production budget, Cooper has chosen to scale back and create a more intimate, personal story that still caters to his sensibilities as a storyteller.

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Top 10 TV Shows of 2025

2025 has been the best year for me of TV watching as any year in recent memory. Besides watching the shows below which comprise the Best of television in 2025, I was able to catch up on some series which had previously eluded me. I crossed a major blind spot off and watched The Sopranos for the first time. I watched the delightful, underseen and underappreciated cartoon Craig of the Creek. I finally caught up with Emmy darling Hacks (and enjoyed it as much as I expected, even if season 4 wasn’t my favorite). Between all of that, I made time to rewatch many of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons.

Regardless, I have no doubt that 2025 will go down as one of the great years for television, with amazing seasons from returning series like The Rehearsal and Stranger Things, great limited series like Adolescence, and new shows from previously established voices like Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s Long Story Short and Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus. Of course there were disappointments from previous critical favorites, like The White Lotus season 3, The Last of Us season 2, the final installment of Squid Game, and The Bear season 4, but those lows were few and far between in a great year for TV. As I said, my time spent with the boob tube was at its peak, but there were inevitably shows that still slipped through the cracks. If you’re wondering why shows like The Righteous Gemstones, The Diplomat, Nobody Wants This, Daredevil: Born Again, Fallout (which wasn’t screened in time for publication) et cetera, aren’t on this list, now you know why.

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Hamnet Review

Hamnet

  • Director: Chloé Zhao
  • Writer: Chloé Zhao, Maggie O’Farrell
  • Starring: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Jacobi Jupe, Noah Jupe, Joe Alwyn

Grade: A-

Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel Hamnet took a new approach to exploring the world of Shakespeare. Instead of focusing solely on the Bard of Avon himself, O’Farrell shone a light on his family—namely, his wife Agnes and his youngest son, Hamnet. The book explores the grief that befalls Hamnet’s family when he dies suddenly during a plague, and how that experience led to the crafting of one of Shakespeare’s most iconic plays, Hamlet. In the film adaptation, Academy Award winning director Chloé Zhao employs her signature naturalistic brand of filmmaking to add even more emotional depth to this fictional tale grounded in the history of one of our greatest storytellers. The film is an excellent complement to the book, staying faithful to the roots but branching out on its own artistically.

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Zootopia 2 Review

Zootopia 2

  • Director: Jared Bush, Byron Howard
  • Writer: Jared Bush
  • Starring: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Ke Huy Quan, Fortune Feimster, Andy Samberg, David Strathairn, Idris Elba, Shakira, Patrick Warburton, Quinta Brunson

Grade: B+

Zootopia was easily one of Disney’s biggest hits of the 2010s. Grossing over a billion dollars at the box office and winning the Oscar for Best Animated Feature over critically acclaimed films such as Moana and Kubo and the Two Strings (with both earning more Oscar nominations than Zootopia), it’s hard to find a bigger success than the 2016 Disney crime film. Because of that, Zootopia 2 had a lot of pressure on it to succeed, but somehow, the film manages to live up to expectations.

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Eternity Review

Eternity

  • Director: David Freyne
  • Writer: David Freyne, Pat Cunnane
  • Starring: Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller, Callum Turner, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, John Early, Olga Merediz

Grade: B

In recent years, romance films have failed to receive theatrical releases. Unless it’s an adaptation of a Colleen Hoover novel like Regretting You or It Ends with Us, the film will more than likely be released straight to a streaming service. A24 is looking to change that this year, with the recent release of Materialists as well as the upcoming film Eternity, a romance story following a heated love triangle between Miles Teller, Callum Turner and Elizabeth Olsen. 

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Left-Handed Girl Review

Left-Handed Girl

  • Director: Shih-Ching Tsou
  • Writer: Shih-Ching Tsou, Sean Baker
  • Starring: Janel Tsai, Ma Shih-yuan, Nina Ye, Brando Huang, Alvin Lin, Blaire Chang

Grade: B+

Recent four-time Oscar winner Sean Baker may be the carrot at the end of the stick that is Left-Handed Girl for cinephiles, but he’s a secondary force in director Shih-Ching Tsou’s delightful family dramedy. It’s easy to understand the duo’s collaboration; they co-directed Take Out in 2004, and have had a working relationship together on most of Baker’s projects in the intervening years. Baker’s sensibilities can be seen within the story (he’s the co-writer of the screenplay along with Tsou, and serves as the film’s editor), but the film is more than a triumph of good editing and writing.

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