The Movies of 2025: Q1
March 24, 2025 - My Life
There are a couple problems with the end-of-year lists I generally write up. Firstly, they're so damned long that each individual entry has to be short to keep the blog post from becoming a novella. The other issue, especially with things from early in the year, is that by the time the end of the year rolls around, I've mostly forgotten anything I may have wanted to say about it. And so I'll be writing today about the four notable films I saw in the first quarter of 2025.
The Last Stop in Yuma County
While it isn't the kind of film I'd generally enjoy, I really liked The Last Stop in Yuma County. It reminded me very much of a Coen Brothers movie thematically, because like in A Simple Plan, things just do not go well for anyone, and tend to continually get worse. But the characters were so good, and the suspense plays out so well that I'd watch this film again without reservation.
The premise? In a small diner, out in the middle of nowhere, a small group of travelers ends up stranded because the gasoline delivery is running late, and there's nowhere else nearby to fuel up.
The kicker? Amongst those stranded are a couple of incognito bank robbers, mid-getaway.
Captain America: Brave New World
As I'm sure you know if you read my blog with any regularity, I love all the Marvel movies and I watch each one pretty much as soon as it's out. I went into the latest Captain America film without much in the way of expectations, and it was... meh.
I'm sure it was largely a result of the film being delayed and rehashed due to the pandemic, but it wasn't up to the quality I've generally come to expect from Marvel Studios.
My thoughts? I love Tim Blake Nelson, and I think he did a fine job with his character. He was likely the best thing about the movie. I love Giancarlo Esposito too, but his character felt so poorly tacked-on, likely added in rewrite number twelve. And I like Harrison Ford just fine, but it's a damn shame that William Hurt wasn't still alive to finish his character's arc. The writing was the film's biggest downfall. Let's hope Thunderbolts* is better than this was.
The Gorge
I really didn't know what to make of The Gorge before it came out. It looked a bit dumb. The girl from The Queens Gambit and the guy who played Reed Richards in that awful Fantastic Four movie guard some kind of demon pit. I put it on in the background.
I don't know if it was because I went in with such low expectations, but I liked it. The creatures were interesting, and the reveal smelled more like Annihilation than Phantasm. For my money, the scariest thing in the gorge is what he falls onto immediately upon arrival. Brief, but insanely creative and horrifying. If you haven't made time to watch this action film which edges on horror, I recommend it.
Mickey 17
I should have realized when I saw that the film comes from Bong Joon-ho, the director of Parasite and Okja, but Mickey 17 ended up being a bit goofier than I'd expected. It's still decent science fiction, but the goofy is certainly present.
Mark Ruffalo swings hard with a serious character, the politician slash cult leader leading a group of space colonists onto a new world. Mickey, fleeing a loan shark, unwittingly signs on as an "expendible". It turns out that this means he's repeatedly left to die and "re-printed" from a 3D printer capable of producing human bodies. The commentary on how much value society places on human life is hard to miss.
Robert Pattinson plays Mickey with an odd voice affectation that matches the films odd tone well, giving us the feel that Mickey's 17th iteration is perhaps a bit defective.
While not the best movie of the year, it's entertaining.