It’s my favorite time of year. It really is. It’s time to talk about the best and worst movies of 2025, and every year (for as long as I’ve been doing this, which is now 40 years) film critics like myself have to dig into our hearts and our guts and our brains and figure out which movies we loved the most. Forty years. I can’t believe it. March of 2025 marked my official 40th anniversary as a professional film critic. And yes (shameless plug here) to honor that milestone, I p

So it’s that time of year again. Time to sharpen the knives, crack the knuckles, and put together the lists: the best movies of the year and, of course, the worst movies of the year. I know people love to get mad about these lists. They love to argue, they love to scream, they love to send me emails that start with “How could you possibly...?” But listen: I’ve been a professional film critic for 40 years. March 5th, 2025 was my actual 40-year anniversary of doing this job for

[Get the exclusive video  version of these weekly reviews each Friday by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon !] My Film Critic pants are quite fetching; they are on, pressed, and ironed. I'm ready to review four new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, December 19th, 2025. 1) AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH I cannot properly quantify how much I despise the Avatar  movies. I truly can’t. My dislike for this franchise borders on the philosophical. These films

In honor of the new reimaging of Silent Night Deadly Night  in which Rohan Campbell  plays a killer Santa Claus , I put together a list of movies that feature some very unusual and, in some cases, some very scary Santas. Some are popular, some are familiar, some are weird, and some you haven't heard of. But I guarantee this: you do NOT want any of these Santas climbing down your chimney in the middle of the night. As insane as some of these Santas are, and as crazy as these

James L. Brooks is one of my favorite creators in the history of entertainment. The guy is a legend, and not just in movies, but in television, too. His work changed everything. He brought intelligence, dignity, and emotional honesty to the small screen at a time when TV was mostly filled with laugh tracks and clichés. You can put him right up there on the same shelf as Norman Lear , these are two men who took the medium of television and turned it into something deeper, sma

[Get the exclusive video  version of these weekly reviews each Friday by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon !] My Film Critic pants are quite fetching; they are on, pressed, and ironed. I'm ready to review four new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, December 12th, 2025. 1) ELLA MCCAY It has been fifteen years since James L. Brooks  made a film, and that is far too long to wait for one of the greatest writers and directors this country has ever