Fighting the battles of 2025

Too similar to my 2024 wrap-up post? Here, you can have a look if you don't remember. 

Alex Garland's Civil War and Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another are, in many ways, speaking to the same divisions in the current American sociopolitical landscape. In fact, I referenced the former in my review of the latter. So is it a sign of progress that this one at least has a second identity as a comedy? 

Few of us were laughing this year as Donald Trump ran roughshod over the constitution and continued to flood the zone with so much scandal that it was not possible to meaningful prosecute him for any of it, and even in some cases, to remember it two weeks later. 

But One Battle After Another was the movie of the year -- not in my rankings but in the zeitgeist -- because it was the best of a lot of movies that are starting to try to deal with the very real form of fascism taking hold in the U.S. It's too soon to have gotten many/any films that were conceived of wholly after Trump won his second presidency, but art tends to reflect the times around it, mirroring what we're going through even when the timelines for its creation don't match up with current events. This was such a big year for cinematic attempts to topple fascism that by the end of the year, we were kind of rolling our eyes at them, since so many lazy versions were thrown at us in the hopes that we'd mistake them for vigorous ones. 

In everything from Wicked: For Good to Zootopia 2 to The Penguins Lessons to The Secret Agent to The Long Walk to The Running Man to The Assessment to The Electric State to Eddington to Tron: Ares to Bugonia, our dictatorial overlords were on the run, and so what if not all of those movies were good? Actually I do like most of those. The point is, if Trump can flood the zone with nonsense, filmmakers can flood the zone with reminders of the dangers of oppression and silence, and maybe eventually, it will sink through our first few layers and prompt action -- at least at the polls.

The real-world reminder of just what a fascist state looks like came most recently when an ICE agent, blissfully unencumbered by any fears of negative consequences to his person, shot an unarmed driver in the face, just because she happened to be actually protesting him or in proximity to those who were. That was actually one week into 2026. Which means we could get another post a lot like this one at the end of this year. 

Best and worst performers of the year

As usual I'm here to shine a light on people who happened to appear in multiple movies I liked, or multiple movies I disliked. "Appear" doesn't have to mean in front of the camera, though it usually does. Because getting a lot of work, and being good or bad in all of it, are the key criteria for inclusion, I'm of course not focusing on people who did one really awesome thing, or one really terrible thing. And I did have a pretty hard time coming up with both lists this year. It's a flawed exercise at best, and yet I can't quit it. 

Three who had a good year

Elle Fanning - There were few slam-dunk choices this year in the sense of actors or other movie collaborators who had multiple movies that were really high on my list. But I'm leading off with Elle Fanning because she's long been a favorite of mine, and 2025 showcased the range of her abilities, some of it quite unexpected. The unexpected part was how funny she was in Predator: Badlands (#5), which is not within the anticipated range of outcomes for a movie series involving a murderous alien that can cloak itself. Typically, there's nary a laugh in these movies, including the great one from a few years ago, Prey, another top ten movie for me. But Fanning, in the dual role of two different androids, made me laugh out loud several times as her legless character rides around on the back of the predator, kind of like a wisecracking C3PO to his Chewbacca. Her exact lines of dialogue are things I no longer remember, but in the moment they tickled me pink. Of course, this movie also requires her to play a more sinister android, the one you see above, and she's great at that as well. Fanning's second 2025 film was not one I was as high on as many people, some of whom just helped Sentimental Value (#49) nab a best picture nomination yesterday. I will say that her character was perhaps my favorite thing about it, and yes, I recognize it's strange to expend that sort of praise on the single American in a movie full of Norwegians. It's more what she does with this character that, again, surprised me. You expect her Rachel Kemp to be set up as a catty rival to the daughter (Renate Reinsve) of Stellan Skarsgard's film director, but Fanning has no interest in playing the role that way (which, it should be said, is also a credit to director Joachim Trier's take on the material). In fact, I found her final scene in the film to be incredibly touching, both as a further departure from the character a lesser movie would have given us, and as a look inside the insecure and broken parts of a successful Hollywood actress. Fanning is the best kind of successful Hollywood actress, continuing to show us her impressive craft without ever having to compromise on her choices. 

Mark Hamill - Speaking of long-time favorites, this is my longest time favorite, considering that Star Wars was the first film I ever saw in the theater. (I may have seen a Disney movie before then, but as far as I remember it, it was Star Wars.) So I had to honor Hamill for his interesting supporting work in two 2025 films that I liked quite a bit, both of which happen to be adaptations of Stephen King stories -- especially since I don't know how many more chances the 74-year-old is going to get at this sort of honor. The first is The Life of Chuck (#14), which isn't going to get a lot more year-end love from me as it fell outside my top ten and isn't something I've otherwise been writing about. Here Hamill plays the grandfather to Chuck as a boy, in scenes that play out of chronological order from several different time periods of the boy's life. It was the sort of role that made me appreciate what an interesting career Hamill has had, from being destined for the sort of career Harrison Ford did end up having, to becoming a man primarily known for voice work, to playing the kind of sturdy grandfather figure we see here, as though he'd been playing grandfathers his entire career. There's nothing particularly outstanding about the work other than how it completes the package of the ambitious whole of Mike Flanagan's film. Although I thought Hamill could have been used a bit more in The Long Walk (#58), it provided a great reminder of the range that, again, we never imagined Luke Skywalker might have. From a kind Peter Falk type in Chuck to a sadistic military leader in Walk, Hamill reminds us that he spent the middle of his career as a villain, voicing the Joker on the Batman animated series. And sure we hiss this figure who is the embodiment of a fascist government that puts on a competition to walk its competitors into the ground, but it's not because Hamill has left him with only the single dimension of villainy. We appreciate the way Hamill has given this malevolent man the nuance to make him human. After starting out more myth than man, Hamill has been playing complex humans like this for the length of a surprisingly durable career.

Emily Mortimer - I don't look back at 2025 and think "What an Emily Mortimer sort of year that was!" But the fact remains, she was in two movies that finished in my 21 to 30, and in one of them, she had a role that went beyond just being an actor. In the other, I didn't even realize it was her at first, which is how seamlessly she fit in. So when I was looking into Sally Hawkins, to see if she had this kind of good year based on her performance in Bring Her Back, I came to realize that Hawkins had actually bowed out of the Paddington series prior to Paddington in Peru (#29) -- and that she was replaced by, you guessed it, Emily Mortimer. Apparently this did not make some Paddington fans happy, but the fact that I didn't notice the change was a good sign of how well Mortimer fit into the Paddington world. And since this was actually my favorite of the three Paddington movies -- sorry to those of you who are gaga for Paddington 2 -- Mortimer now has a weird claim within the series that, at least for me personally, Hawkins does not have. Her role is very small in Jay Kelly (#30), such that I barely even remember it within the context of the film. But that's because she's doing something different on here, namely, she co-wrote the movie with Noah Baumbach. Now this is not in my top five Baumbach films of all time, but it's a lot better than some Baumbach movies that displeased me over the past decade or so, such as The Meyerowitz Stories and Mistress America. I have one friend who hates this movie, but darned if its cumulative impact didn't get me -- and in that way we can credit the writing. In her first feature writing credit, following only work on two TV series, Mortimer gave us a poignant contemplation of how we can mispend our lives without realizing it -- even if we are not famous Hollywood actors. "If done well," I wrote in my review, "these stories should make us think of our own lives, our own regrets, as you don't have to be an internationally known celebrity to have casually neglected your children until the point it's too late." In 2025, Mortimer took two things that had previously already been good -- the Paddington series and Noah Baumbach's career -- and added something to make them better. Not bad for an actress who, at age 54, should already be closing up shop, by the usual standards of Hollywood. 

Honorable mentions*: Benicio del Toro (One Battle After Another, The Phoenician Scheme), Julia Garner (Wolf Man, Weapons, minus Fantastic Four: First Steps), Keke Palmer (Good Fortune, One of Them Days, minus The Pickup)

* - One or more of these might have made my main list, except I can't expend 300 words on someone who had a bad movie mixed in with the good -- preferably not even as an honorable mention, though beggars can't be choosers. 

Three who had a bad year

Paul Rudd - Paul Rudd works for me in everything. He didn't work for me in anything in 2025. In fact, he so didn't work for me that he appeared in three different films that didn't work for me, two of which saw him as the prospective prey of large, vicious creatures, only one of which is traditionally considered large and vicious. That last is the worst of his 2025 films for me, Anaconda (#169), in which for the first time I found Rudd's character actually unlikable. The movie's only been out for a month so it may not be right to spoil it already, but sending his friends into a dangerous jungle to make a movie he doesn't have the rights to make was just a bridge too far in terms of my rooting interests in him not becoming snake food. This idea was there on the page, it just wasn't there on the screen. Then there was the idea that was never even on the page, it was only on the t-shirt -- you know, that t-shirt you've seen where a majestic unicorn is impaling someone through the chest with his horn. That t-shirt seemed to be the only inspiration behind Death of a Unicorn (#139), a film I wanted to love that just sat there and did nothing for me. I'm not sure in what way I expected this to be glorious, but the movie missed the mark on any attempt to reach that neighborhood. But I was probably most disappointed not to get on the wavelength of Friendship (#149), especially since I consider myself a certified lover of Tim Robinson's I Think You Should Leave and consider Ben Stiller's The Cable Guy a foundational text. I wanted to be the guy who shook my head in sympathetic yet mildly superior pity at the plebes who didn't get what was so funny about this movie, but instead, it was me who didn't get it, and Rudd's inconsistently portrayed character was a big part of that. Maybe Tim Robinson is best in the small doses of three-minute sketches, since the gaps of silence between laughs were deafening here. Even one of the most charming ageless wonders in Hollywood can have an off year, and Rudd certainly had it in 2025. 

Eva Longoria - Anyone who had been missing Eva Longoria got their fill of her in 2025. Truth is, she never went away -- but you had to see the right things in order to find her. Or in 2025, the wrong things. And I really don't like to include her here because I watched season 4 of Only Murders in the Building only a month ago -- which was not from 2025 in addition to not being a movie, so it can't count here in her favor -- and really enjoyed her playing herself in that season. But the truth is I saw three Eva Longoria movies that came out in 2025 and not a one of them finished higher in my rankings than #156. The first was the worst, and by that I mean, the worst of the year. In War of the Worlds (#184), she plays one of the characters impossibly captured on one of the screens in front of an inert Ice Cube -- inert both physically and emotionally -- who sees an alien invasion through an ever-changing live stream of video feeds, many of which have no logical cinematographer. I won't get sidetracked on a rant about all the terrible things in War of the Worlds, but obviously the failure of the movie is not the fault of one of its supporting characters. That theme continues with the Christmas movie Oh. What. Fun. (#172), where Longoria has the small role of a TV talk show host modeled after Oprah, who gives hope to the main character (Michelle Pfeiffer) that she might win a mother-of-the-year contest. Again, guilt by association with this truly garish Christmas movie that was, sadly, the only Christmas movie released in 2025 that I watched during the Christmas season. And I don't actually remember her role in the "best" of these films, The Pickup (#156), which was, I suppose, a mostly inoffensive buddy action movie on one of the streamers, of which there were so many in 2025, this one starring Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson. I'm sure I enjoyed Longoria's presence in it well enough, as she really has maintained that effervescence that she always had back in her glory days. But the movie was mid as hell. Since Longoria does keep popping up in several projects a year, a pretty good feat now that she has turned 50, maybe I'll have better luck randomly avoiding them rather than randomly hitting them in 2026. 

Rachel Brosnahan - Let me start with a completely irrational bias against Rachel Brosnahan. I have never watched a minute of her show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, but I got the impression there was something too clever by half about that show that made me skeptical about the value of its lead performer -- especially since I didn't know her from anything else, and I guess I'm prone to snap judgments about things that involve a lot of hype but that I'm not a part of. Unfortunately, in the first year I really grappled with her film career, she did nothing to disabuse me of that notion. I didn't love the opening argument between Lois and Clark in Superman (#181) the way some people did, but I was open to the particular spitfire energy she brought to the role. By the time the movie had totally devolved for me, which happened pretty quickly, she's flying around spaceships and blending into the movie's chaotic wallpaper, something worthier of spitting out than calling spitfire. (As I mentioned yesterday, I hate to side with Superman haters who are on the opposite side of the political aisle from me, but at least we dislike the movie for different reasons.) But the Lois Lane here is woman of the year compared to the retrograde, and very brief, role she plays in the truly odd spy movie The Amateur (#170). Retrograde in what way? Well, spoiler alert, she gets fridged! Did you know wives still got fridged to help fuel their husband's quest for vengeance in movies made in 2025? Apparently they do, at least in this one. Rami Malek's unconvincing performance as a "normal guy" -- Malek can never play a normal guy -- was more to blame for the failure of this movie certainly than Brosnahan, and yes, it's possible there are people in my honorable mentions who are more deserving of this third spot. But I felt I could better explain why Brosnhan didn't work for me in her movies than why they didn't work for me in theirs, or at least that's what I'm telling myself now that I've written this. (And besides, I didn't think it was fair to dump on either of Ice Cube's terrible movies, Anaconda and War of the Worlds, a second time after I let those movies have it with Rudd and Longoria.)

Dishonorable mentions: Ice Cube (Anaconda, War of the Worlds), Brandon Sklenar (The Housemaid, Drop), Ayo Edibiri (Opus, After the Hunt) 

The year I stopped liking animation

Do you know what's been a constant about my movie lists for about a million years in a row? And yes, I realize that is approximately 999,970 more years than I've been doing this.

I have an animated movie in my top 25, that's what. At worst my top 40. 

Do you know what my highest ranking animated movie in 2025 is? 

It's Predator: Killer of Killers, all the way down at #69. 

Now you might say this is just because I didn't watch as many animated movies as I have in some years. That's true. But I did watch four others and they are all lower than that: Elio (#96), KPop Demon Hunters (#107), Death Does Not Exist (#116) and Zootopia 2 (#117). 

So even with two of those five being adult-oriented animation, I still could not hit on anything I really loved. (Killer of Killers is quite good, but it just got steadily pushed down as the year went on.)

And the ones I did skip?

Dog Man - If I had kids a few years younger, we would have gone to this. 

Plankton: The Movie - I think there were at least two Spongebob movies this year. I don't do Spongebob.

Smurfs - I completely forgot there was a Smurfs movie this year.

The Bad Guys 2 - We did see the original (and I didn't care for it), but again, my kids have moved on. 

And then some other stuff for babies, as there always is.

So I guess the question is, did my tastes change, or did my kids' tastes change? Or are the animated movies just not good anymore?

Actually this sort of seems to be the year animation went international. I saw one of those in KPop Demon Hunters, but I did not see the year's highest grossing movie, Ne Zha 2, in part because of its length. But on that international front, you know they were digging deep when niche stuff like Demon Slayer: Kinetsu No Yaiba the Movie gets nominated for a Golden Globe. At least Chainsaw Man: The Movie - Reze Arc, which someone reviewed for my site, didn't make the cut.

So my 2025 in animation is probably a combination of all of the above factors. What remains to be seen is whether I can get my love back in 2026. I guess one of the first up will be Goat. We'll see how it goes. 

A year without tears

I don't cry in a lot of movies, but there are almost always one or two each year that get me. And more often than not, I end up making that movie my #1 of the year. (It's happened twice already in the 2020s, in any case.)

But 2025 was a dry year. 

Hamnet (#148), one of my final viewings of the year, had a chance to dampen things up a bit. That is, if I did not consider it overwrought and emotionally manipulative. Not only did I not get close to crying, I didn't even really feel sorrow. The title character's death scene is kind of like something out of a demonic possession movie, and since it comes only halfway through, it's timed poorly within the narrative to make the tears happen. By the time the movie actually ends, we've been living with Chloe Zhao's attempts to make us cry for almost an hour.

Did the exhausting year that it was just ring me out? Or is this just proof of how difficult it is to actually pull this off? 

I only cried once in 2024, in Wicked, and in 2023, when my #1 was also not a weepie, there were three movies in my top five that pushed me to the brink of tears -- and whether I squeezed out any salty ones or not, I count that as an emotionally rich year.

That emotional richness didn't find me in the movies of 2025. Much as I loved my top ten -- maybe a little less than I usually love my top ten -- none of them had me wavering between misty and dry eyes. I liked them for different reasons than that they penetrated through to my emotional core.

If there was one thing that I could have seen happening, it was spectacle tears for Sinners (#2), during "the scene" -- because I was just so thrilled by what Ryan Coogler had decided to do, and what he was currently in the processing of pulling off. But I can't lie -- I didn't actually cry.

Given the paucity of examples -- even when my #1 of 2021 and 2022 made me cry, they were among the only ones those years -- I do suspect it's just because that's the hardest thing in movies to do. I said as much in the opening paragraph of my review of Hamnet ... and I only mentioned it in the review because of how hard Zhao was trying, not how close she came to succeeding. 

Ranking the directors with two 2025 movies

In my "three who had a good year" and "three who had a bad year," I'm usually looking particularly hard for directors who made more than one movie in the just-completed year. That relieves the segment from just being a way to talk about actors who happened to be in movies I liked or didn't like. This year, I had so many options on that front that I actually specifically excluded those directors from consideration in the above segment, just so I could talk about them here.

That's right, there were five directors who directed two movies I saw in 2025, and if I'd done my due diligence and watched the other two movies beyond Sex that were released by Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud -- there were called Love and Dreams, and might have been hard to come by unless I'd also seen them at MIFF -- then I would have also had one who directed three. 

So without any further ado, here is how those five ranked, from highest average of their two films to lowest. 

1. Richard Linklater 
Movies: Blue Moon (#27), Nouvelle Vague (#31)
Average: 29
Comment: Yes I paid $14.99 to rent Blue Moon as my final viewing this week ... and it was worth it. A director making two movies in the same year is even more impressive when they are as different as these two are, and still both well within the top 20% of my rankings.

2. Dan Trachtenberg
Movies: Predator: Badlands (#5), Predator: Killer of Killers (#69)
Average: 37
Comment: On the surface this is the opposite of Linklater in terms of range ... until you consider how different these two Predator movies are from each other, and from the previous films in the franchise. I mean, the predator isn't even consistently definable as either a villain or a hero across the two movies.

3. Osgood Perkins
Movies: The Monkey (#17), Keeper (#165)
Average: 91
Comment: Perkins wins the "range of outcomes" award here. When I loved The Monkey like I did, I was all ready to declare Perkins "back" after Longlegs was my worst movie of 2024. Then last week I saw Keeper and it was ... not good. 

4. Steven Soderbergh
Movies: Presence (#100), Black Bag (#143)
Average: 121.5 
Comment: I'm not sure why people were falling all over themselves talking about how clever Black Bag was ... unless this is just my dislike for spy movies rearing its head again, which wouldn't surprise me. I loved the concept of Presence, I just wanted more from it in the final analysis. 

5. Paul Feig
Movies: The Housemaid (#121), Another Simple Favor (#160)
Average: 140.5
Comment: When did the director of Bridesmaids become Hollywood's preeminent purveyor of overheated domestic thrillers involving catty women? That is a major step backward. His average would have been even lower except that The Housemaid did some things in its second half to win me back a bit ... before ultimately leaving me cold by the end. 

Ten best non-2025 movies

Once again this year, listing alphabetically the ten best movies I saw in the previous year that were not released in the previous year.

Carrie (2013, Kimberly Peirce) - During my October of horror remakes, I never would have guessed that one of them would elbow out many other worthy candidates to make this list, but the ingredients of Carrie came together for me in just the right way to make that so. 

Fail-Safe (1964, Sidney Lumet) - One of my three five-star non-2025 movies made it in just under the wire among my final viewings of the year, as the kid who grew up with WarGames as one of his favorite films was terrified by this one, mostly for its sheer plausibility -- and that unforgettable final montage of images. 

I'm Still Here (2024, Walter Salles) - The only 2024 best picture nominee I didn't rank last year ended up being worth the wait, with an unforgettable look at the casual malevolence of an oppressive Brazilian government kidnapping its citizens. 

Lake Mungo (2008, Joel Anderson) - A found footage horror movie, still resonating with me in 2025? I can't even remember all the reasons I was so taken with this one, but it reminded me of when this genre was once a goldmine of potential chills. 

The Lion in Winter (1968, Anthony Harvey) - When I wrote about this I called it "Shakespeare for dummies," but I meant that in the best possible sense, as I was struck dumb by the performances and the Shakespearean-lite language used to bring this part of British history to vibrant life. 

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979, Werner Herzog) - Make that two horror remakes among my best ten movies not released in 2025. Herzog's visionary retelling of this familiar tale is a triumph of cinematography and score. 

Poetry (2010, Lee Chang-dong) - This was on my radar due to a recommendation by Filmspotting guest host Michael Phillips way back at the time it was released, and finally seeing this intimate portrait of a Korean woman fighting the onset of Alzheimer's and a truly shockingly behaved grandson, I found it well worth the wait. 

The Right Stuff (1983, Philip Kaufman) - The best previously unseen film in my Understanding Editing series, this filled in a long-time blind spot for me as a Gen-Xer, as apparently many of my compatriots were regularly watching it on cable. I can see why they adored it, and it surprised me by also being very funny. 

Shoah (1985, Claude Lanzmann) - Yes I watched this 566-minute Holocaust documentary all in one day on June 21st as my 7,000th movie of all time, and it packed every bit of the wallop I expected it to pack. 

Yi Yi (2000, Edward Yang) - It took me some time to embrace Yang's nearly three-hour movie about a contemporary Chinese family, which had eluded my attempts to watch it for a quarter century, but by the end, this too was well worth the wait. 

Statistics 

Here's how many movies I saw, and what sort, by the numbers. 

Movies by star rating on Letterboxd: 5 stars (1), 4.5 stars (17), 4 stars (38), 3.5 stars (35), 3 stars (33), 2.5 stars (23), 2 stars (17), 1.5 stars (10), 1 star (7), 0.5 stars (3)

The big difference from last year is the jump in 4-star movies, from 27 to 38, allowing this to be the first year that something other than 3.5 stars was my most number of rankings. I think this is consistent with me starting to think of 3.5 stars as not a strong enough rating for a movie I enjoyed quite a bit, when it really should be. I'll have to work on that. 

Movies by source: Theater (50) (6 by advanced screening), Netflix (31), Amazon Prime (21), iTunes rental (18), Airplane (17), Amazon rental (14), Screener (11), MIFF (7), Disney+ (7), AppleTV+ (6), Stan (1), Kanopy (1)  

The big difference was a dropoff from 44 to 31 in movies watched on Netflix, so obviously I made up for that in other areas, since I saw seven more movies overall. In fact, rentals through Amazon made up the entire difference as this was a new means of acquiring VOD for me this year, where I'd previously relied almost exclusively on iTunes. I guess that means 14 more movies I sought out intentionally rather than having Netflix serve them up to me passively?

Total new movies watched in the year: 288
Total rewatches: 47
2025 movies seen more than once: 7 (Together, Sinners, Echo Valley, Companion, The Monkey, One Battle After Another, Resurrection)

Another name for ...

The Gorge is ... Echo Valley
Jay Kelly is ... The Actor
Avatar: Fire and Ash is ... One Battle After Another
The Roses is ... Splitsville
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You is ... Die My Love
Oh, Hi! is ... Sorry, Babe
Oh, Hi! is ... Honey Don't! 
The Old Guard 2 is ... Death Does Not Exist

Discoveries

A$AP Rocky (If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Highest 2 Lowest)
Chase Infiniti (One Battle After Another)
Eva Victor (Sorry, Baby)
Alfie Williams (28 Years Later)
Kathleen Chalfant (Familiar Touch)

Welcome back 

Pamela Anderson (The Naked Gun)
Orlando Bloom (Deep Cover)
Aziz Ansari (Good Fortune)
Amy Madigan (Weapons)
Cameron Diaz (Back in Action)

Farewell

Udo Kier (The Secret Agent)
Julian McMahon (The Surfer)
James Ransone (Black Phone 2)
Tony Todd (Final Destination: Bloodlines) 

and of course

Rob Reiner (Spinal Tap II: The End Continues) 

(We lost plenty of others in 2025, some of whom were memorialized already on this blog, but these were the ones who actually appeared in 2025 movies.)

Lighting round

Highest ranked best picture nominee: Sinners (#2)
Lowest ranked best picture nominee: Hamnet (#148)
Best picture nominee I haven't seen: Marty Supreme 
Film that should never have been a best picture nominee: F1
Sequels I'm glad were not rubber-stamped as best picture nominees: Wicked: For Good and Avatar: Fire and Ash
Appearing in the most best picture nominees: Kerry Condon (F1, Train Dreams)
Most deserving Oscar nomination for acting (female): Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
Least deserving Oscar nomination for acting (female): Jessie Buckley, Hamnet 
Most deserving Oscar nomination for acting (male): Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
Least deserving Oscar nomination for acting (male): Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein (though I thought he was good)
Sophomore directing effort that lost me: Celine Song, Materialists (#178)
Sophomore directing effort that won me over: Danny and Michael Philippou, Bring Her Back (#20)
Most surprising director: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, Freaky Tales (#42)
Least surprising director: David Ayer, A Working Man (#176)
Low ranking I'll get the most guff about: Superman (#181)
Low ranking I'll get the least guff about: War of the Worlds (#184)
High ranking I'll get the most guff about: Together (#1)
High ranking I'll get the least guff about: Sinners (#2)
Best reboot: The Naked Gun (#19)
Worst reboot: Superman (#181)
Best umpteenth movie in a series: Predator: Badlands (#5)
Worst umpteenth movie in a series: The Conjuring: Last Rites (#168)
Biggest surprise: Wolf Man (#15)
Biggest disappointment: Mickey 17 (#175)
Worst title for a good movie: A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (#24)
Best title for a bad movie: Clown in a Cornfield (#173)
Best head of state: Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister
Worst head of state: Donald Trump (no film listed)
Most heads of state: Idris Elba (A House of Dynamite, Heads of State)
Best movie featuring a revolving restaurant: Final Destination: Bloodlines (#28)
Worst movie featuring a revolving restaurant: Drop (#162)
Best movie named after a Bloom County character: Steve (#93)
Worst movie named after a Bloom County character: Opus (#138)
Best Stephen King adaptation: The Life of Chuck (#14)
Best Stephen King adaptation about walking or running: The Long Walk (#58)
Worst Stephen King adaptation about walking or running: The Running Man (#166)
Best outcome for a dog in a horror movie: Good Boy
Worst outcome for a dog in a horror movie: Together
Most syllables: Vulcanizadora 
Fewest syllables: Him
Best movie with a season in the title: When Fall is Coming (#99)
Worst movie with a season in the title: I Know What You Did Last Summer (#163)
Title that best describes my ranking process: Highest 2 Lowest
Title that second best describes my ranking process: A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
Title that describes how I feel at the end of my ranking process: Last Breath

One more formal wrap-up post tomorrow with my annual portmanteaus post, then a deep-dive into my #1 movie, set to drop on Monday my time.