🍿 One Battle After Another (2025) was, I imagine, the best movie I will have seen this year. I went into the theater not knowing anything about it except that it is a PTA movie starring DiCaprio, and for the first few minutes I had to orient myself on whether it was set in the present day or the 1970s — initially because of the subject matter, but mostly because of the (beautiful, unforgettable) cinematography that resulted in more than one iconic scene. Should I remind you that I see the late 1960s/early 70s as the pinnacle of American movie-making? This is as firm a recommendation as you will get from me to go see a movie.

🍿 Weapons (2025) brought me back hope that Americans still know how to make movies. It is a simple story well told, which trusts the audience to make the appropriate inferences — important for a competent horror — and has an overarching point to make on the bias towards normalcy. Will re-watch!

🍿 Civil War (2024) was not a story about the United States, current events or politics, but rather about war correspondents and their not-at-all-healthy relationship with work. It could have been set anywhere; for added emotional hit — and to highlight the absolute pointlessness of the job — it takes place in and around the stretch of land from New York City to Washington DC.

Journalism is the focus, but of course the inhumanity of man towards man also shines through. Murders are plentiful and senseless. You are never sure who is on which side in any particular set piece, and if indeed there are any sides. The only thing anyone is sure about is that the dictator is circling the drain and that his fall is a matter of days.

This is where the movie can’t escape its Americanness. Couldn’t the same story have been told about something even more petty? Don’t many real-life war correspondents go through worse ordeals for smaller stories? At the end of the day — and take of this what you will — my war-torn Balkan heart found the movie too optimistic, though it tried to put on a veneer of cynicism. For true bleakness, try Lepa Sela Lepo Gore (1996) (eng. Pretty Village, Pretty Flame), a nihilist masterpiece that an inattentive viewer may confuse for a dark comedy.

🍿 The Hobby: Tales from the Tabletop (2024) was not as focused as I would have liked. It had a dash about board game designers, a splash of podcasters and YouTubers in the space, a good dose of the tabletop world championship, some pieces on players' ever-expanding personal collections, and so on, and so forth. All important, all shot in the modern, pleasing documentary style. Of course, when equal space is given to everything the message can only be “board games good”. Fine, but not exactly masterwork cinema.

🍿 May God Save Us (2016) was incredibly hard to watch, with the worst of human nature on full display and no positive characters whatsoever. Maybe you have to be more exposed to Catholicism to appreciate it?

🍿 The Body (2012) was the perfect puzzle-box thriller in which the myriad of small details that tickled your brain for not being quite right or made sense throughout the movie finally click in place minutes before the end and before you know it you want to watch it again. Which I will!

🍿 K-Pop Demon Hunters (2025) picked up just enough of the Sony Animation Studios' better instincts to be watchable even to people like me, who are not exactly fans of the K-pop genre (neither the music nor the art style). That team continues to trounce Pixar and lead the way in animation.

🍿 Thursday Murder Club (2025) felt oddly flat for a British murder mystery with an A-level cast. I can think of two reasons why: Chris Columbus’s sense of pacing doesn’t sit well with me — “Home Alone” was the last time he hit his target — and Thomas Newman’s scores tend to be lethargic. Too bad.

🍿 Black Bag (2025) was a breath of fresh air: sleek, well-written, well-acted, well-executed, vintage Soderbergh.

🍿 Heretic (2024) was a low-budget, high-suspense portrayal of a psychopathic Hugh Grant, and unlike his prior attempt it just flew by even at 110 minutes run time. The movie has four actors, a few set pieces and no highfalutin' special effects: kudos to A24 for still making them this way.