At a time when everything here on Earth is just a little too much, the new movie Project Hail Mary arrives as pure, unapologetic escapism.
And not the empty kind, either. The smart kind.
The kind where the stakes are enormous, the science is weirdly fascinating (though not always accurate), and the jokes land hard enough that you forget for two-and-a-half hours that the news exists.
The kind that’s literally and figuratively out of this world.
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There’s something almost admirable about The Bride! — a movie so aggressively weird that you can’t accuse it of playing things safe. Unfortunately, admiration isn’t the same thing as enjoyment.
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Frankenstein riff definitely shows vision. And Jessie Buckley once again proves she’s one of the most interesting actors working today. But the movie itself? It’s a chaotic, overcooked take that’s ultimately more exhausting than entertaining.
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Between Everybody Wants Some!!, Top Gun: Maverick, and Hit Man — okay, fine, and Twisters, too — it seemed like Glen Powell was finally, deservedly, breaking through with mainstream audiences, and a bright future lay ahead for him.
Alas, between last year’s The Running Man and the new How to Make a Killing, it’s looking like the actor’s star may have already burned out.
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Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the new “Wuthering Heights” adaptation comes in like a cold wind off the moors so strong that it immediately rips your shirt or bodice wide open. Writer/director Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel is a hot take on a story that has always been about obsession, repression, and desire curdling into something feral, only now it’s a bit more dangerous.
In other words, if you’ve ever read the novel and thought, “I wish this story was hornier,” congratulations: This movie is for you.
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I gained weight this year.
A bit of it. More than I expected to.
And I know this because I watched it happen.
Last year, when I spent all that time in Florida, I didn’t eat as much. And when I did eat, I generally ate better. Smaller portions. Healthier foods. I also got a little bit more exercise, just from walking more and having lots of nervous energy. As a result, when I weighed myself at the end of 2024, I’d lost about 20 pounds. I looked better. I felt better. (All things considered, of course.)
So, I decided to conduct a small experiment: On January 1, I began documenting my weight at the start of every month, just to see if I could keep it off.
Suffice it to say, things went in the opposite direction. And, if I’m being totally honest, not only did I put all the weight I lost back on, I actually gained a little more, too.
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Every December, frequent moviegoers like me fall into the same familiar ritual: looking back at the movies we saw and ranking the ones that made an impact — for better or for worse.
There’s no real science to this; it isn’t about “the best films according to an algorithm” or awards-season prognosticating. It’s just about calling attention to the movies that stuck with me, the ones I couldn’t wait to discuss afterwards, that I’m still thinking about weeks or months later.
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Here is a list of every new movie I saw this year, along with the grade I gave it. Films are listed in the order in which I saw them.
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With so many movies released in any given year, there are bound to be a few gems that slip through the cracks.
Eephus is one of those films you probably didn’t hear much about when it played in theaters earlier this year (if it even made it to your town). But it’s available to watch digitally, and you should do yourself a favor and check it out. Especially if you ever played little league or on a town team (at any age), or you’ve ever considered yourself a baseball fan.
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I almost didn’t write this blog post. I almost didn’t have to. That’s because a recent article in The Guardian by Liz Pelly called “This Spotify Wrapped season, don’t outsource your love of music to AI” kind of said what I was already going to say.
In the article, Pelly writes that the annual Spotify Wrapped campaign — part curated lists of most-listened to tracks and artists, and part marketing campaign for Spotify itself — “nudges listeners away from deep consideration and towards accepting a corporate-branded scorecard reflecting a very specific perspective on musical value. It encourages music fans to believe that the records they streamed the most must be the ones they liked the most, which is surely not always the case.”
She’s right.
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Song Sung Blue is a movie for anyone who thought Deliver Me from Nowhere needed a few more hit songs. While the film about a Neil Diamond tribute band isn’t exactly a downer, like the Bruce Springsteen film is, it’s not entirely the upbeat entertainment the trailers and commercials promise, either.
It’s got a soundtrack that’ll make you sing like a guitar hummin’, though. And that’ll be more than enough for some viewers.
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Martin's Musings 