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Movies

Best Films 2025

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Okay, readers, let’s talk movies. Quentin Tarantino is a director who many film critics consider one of the best of all time. I saw his first two films before I said, “You know what, not for me.” I skipped his next seven. But for some reason, I couldn’t resist his tenth one, which came out in 2019 (but I finally got around to seeing it in 2025). I’ve always thought that he celebrates bloody violence gratuitously.

In 1992, a friend of mine said that I had to see this low-budget indie film by this new director called “Reservoir Dogs.” It was hilarious! And edgy! And cool! What was not to like? Well, for starters, I couldn’t listen to the song “Stuck in the Middle with You” by Stealers Wheel for about a decade without thinking about that scene. It was too much for my fragile soul! Then in 1994, my lovely new bride Jen and I were in our hometown for a holiday, and a friend of hers said that we just had to see the first big-budget film by Tarantino called “Pulp Fiction.” It was hilarious! And edgy! And cool! What was not to like? Well, let’s see, do I enjoy seeing people get their heads blown off in the backseat of a car? I do not. Anyway, it led to a lively discussion back at Jen’s friend’s home, while I attempted to figuratively wash my eyeballs of what I just sat through. (Incidentally, Jen’s friend, after a short career as an engineer, abandoned her previous life and became a nun. Am I saying that seeing “Pulp Fiction” drove her to join a convent? I’m not saying it didn’t.)

For the next few years, I spent a lot of time in theaters. Jen was in school, my evenings and weekends were free, and I had a few co-workers who wanted to hit the movies every weekend. I was trying to be open-minded and expose myself to things I wouldn’t normally see, but in 1996, after sitting through the Coen brothers’ “Fargo,” I had the realization that I could appreciate that a film is well made, well written, and award worthy, but that didn’t mean that I was going to like it or even that I needed to see it. So I started sitting out Tarantino films. And David Lynch films. And every other Coen brothers movie. (Not to my liking from their filmography: “Blood Simple,” “Miller’s Crossing,” “Fargo,” “No Country for Old Men.” Up my alley, though: “Raising Arizona,” “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” “Inside Llewyn Davis,” “Hail, Caesar!”)

But a funny thing happens when you decide to rule out whole swaths of films based on their genre or reputation: you become close-minded. You become the type of person who, when discussing their taste in music, says, “I don’t like rap,” or “I never listen to country.” And you miss out on a lot. So I’m trying to balance my viewing choices, keep an open mind. I’ll sit through “Get Out,” for example, with my eyes half covered. But I’d rather watch a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie.

Anyway, the list. Reminder: These are the best films I saw last year, not necessarily the best films to be released last year. I watched 49 total, or 1 every 7.45 days. Embarrassingly, I didn’t see a single film in a theater; these were all streamers (or, on rare occasions, DVDs checked out from the library). Here we go:

1. “The Ballad of Wallis Island,” 2025 comedy/drama directed by James Griffiths, starring Tim Key, Carey Mulligan, Tom Basden, Sian Clifford, and Akemnji Ndfornyen. Key stars as Charles, an eccentric resident of a remote British island who convinces the two members of a one-time indie folk duo, McGwyer Mortimer (Basden as Herb McGwyer and Mulligan as Nell Mortimer) to reunite for a concert on Wallis Island, for hundreds of thousands of pounds each. There’s some mystery as the film goes along: who exactly will they be performing for? And where is the concert venue, if this is a tiny island with a tiny little general store? And what’s Charles’s backstory? And there is some unresolved romance between McGwyer and Mortimer, even though Nell brings along her husband. A quirky, funny, heartwarming little film that had me guffawing at scenes; Key and Basden in particular together are the perfect funny man and straight man. Highly, highly recommend. (That’s two highlys!) Plus the soundtrack of original songs feels like a real band from the 2000s/2010s.

2. “Past Lives,” 2023 drama directed by Celine Song, starring Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, and John Magaro. Perhaps the most moving film I saw last year. Lee and Yoo are Na Young and Hae Sung, childhood friends in Seoul, South Korea, who get separated at 12 years old when Na’s family moves to Canada. They go on with their lives, Na changing her name to Nora and becoming a writer, while Hae Sung finishes his military service and school. Eventually, they track each other down and have an online relationship that hints at romance but never quite gets there. By the time they meet in person, 24 years since they had been children, Nora has moved to New York City and married Arthur (Magaro), and the tensions of the past and present play out. I suspect that the film would have had a different ending if the director and studio (A24) had wanted to please audiences more. A bittersweet romance.

3. “Train Dreams,” 2025 drama directed by Clint Bentley, starring Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, William H. Macy, and Kerry Condon. With perhaps the lamest movie title on this list (they couldn’t think of anything catchier and zippier than “Train Dreams”?!?), this was the rare movie I saw as soon as it came out, albeit on my couch at home. Robert Grenier (Edgerton) is a railroad construction worker and seasonal logger; the movie covers his whole 80-year lifespan and takes place in the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the twentieth century. He marries, they have a child, he continually leaves his land and cabin behind to make a better life for his family, but nothing but tragedy ensues. This is an “environmental” film in that it touches on how connected or not we are to the natural world around us.

4. “Cha Cha Real Smooth,”2022 comedy/drama directed by Cooper Raiff, starring Cooper Raiff, Dakota Johnson, Leslie Mann, Vanessa Burghardt, Evan Assante, Brad Garrett, Odeya Rush, and Raul Castillo. Raiff is a young talent whose second film impressed me so much that I tracked down his first one, “Sh!thouse,” which really belongs here as a tie. In “Cha Cha Real Smooth,” Raiff plays Andrew, a recent college graduate living with his mother (Mann) and stepfather (Garrett). When forced to attend a bar mitzvah with his younger brother, he befriends a young mother named Domino (Johnson) and her autistic daughter (Burghardt) and saves the party from ruin. This leads to his becoming an in-demand party DJ, even though his drinking and his immaturity get him into trouble. He develops a romance with the decade-older Domino, although she has a fiance. The raw, emotional vulnerability of Raiff’s character in this film and in “Sh!thouse,” where he plays a struggling college student, is refreshing and a joy to watch.

5. “Jay Kelly,” 2025 comedy/drama directed by Noah Baumbach, starring George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, and Grace Edwards. Baumbach is one of my favorite directors; this film is slightly different from his others in that it feels like a Clooney vehicle more than a Baumbach film. Clooney portrays Jay Kelly, a successful actor who comes across as superficial and smarmy (it’s a very meta film with Clooney’s real life, even including scenes from his actual movies in a career-spanning retrospective). He learns from his long-suffering manager, Ron (Sandler), that the director who launched his career has died. After a run-in with a former roommate who felt that Clooney stole his shot at stardom (Crudup), Jay decides to travel to Europe ostensibly to collect a lifetime achievement award at a film festival, but actually to keep tabs on his daughter who is leaving for college. This is many things at once: a roadtrip film, a buddy comedy, and a father-daughter drama, among others. It’s a chance for Kelly, and Clooney, to take measure of his life and wonder if the family and friendship sacrifices that he made were worth the success.

6. “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” 2019 drama directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margaret Qualley, Austin Butler, Margot Robbie, and Emile Hirsch. This is the Tarantino film that finally brought me back. I had heard enough about it to be curious as to how he portrayed the Manson Family, late 1960s Los Angeles, and a shocking crime that had haunted me ever since I read Vincent Bugliosi’s true-crime book Helter Skelter at a much-too-young age. DiCaprio is fading actor Rick Dalton, looking to extend his career after Hollywood falls out of love with Westerns. Pitt is his longtime stunt double/gopher, Cliff Booth, whose long list of personal failings put him at odds with hiring stunt coordinators. Dalton lives next door in the Hollywood hills to actress Sharon Tate and her husband, director Roman Polanski. We see Dalton’s story intertwined with the looming threat that Charles Manson and his followers present. I had read that Tarantino wanted to give the Manson Family’s victims a proper alternative version of what he wished would have happened; it was a cathartic if bloody last few scenes. Pitt absolutely deserved his Best Supporting Actor Oscar. I had fun looking up how historically accurate the film was and which characters were real or based on real actors. The scene of Cliff Booth challenging Bruce Lee to a fight still makes me laugh.

7. “Wind River,” 2017 crime drama/thriller directed by Taylor Sheridan, starring Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Gil Birmingham, and Graham Greene. This is another one of the films on my list that I would have passed on viewing in previous years. By now, everyone knows Sheridan as the creator of “Yellowstone,” and this film is in line with his neo-Western storytelling. The story: there’s a murder on the Wind River Indian Reservation, of a young woman found frozen in the snow by Cory Lambert (Renner) a US Fish and Wildlife Service agent, while he is out hunting predatory wolves around a rancher’s property. The nearest FBI agent available, Jane Banner (Olsen), is young and unprepared for the weather and for the cultural complications of dealing with the Arapaho tribe, local police, and tribal police. This is one in a string of recent unsolved murders of young Native American women, and Lambert (who we find out is himself a grieving father) promises the woman’s father (Birmingham) that he will take care of whoever did this to her. Run-ins with security guards at an oil-drilling site, and who has jurisdiction over the crime, lead to an explosive showdown. Olsen and Renner are particularly good as a duo working together under pressure, and I like that Sheridan sticks with the main story and doesn’t add a romance layer to this.

8. “Will & Harper,” 2024 documentary directed by Josh Greenbaum, starring Will Ferrell and Harper Steele. In 1995, Will Ferrell joined the cast of “Saturday Night Live” the same week that Harper Steele was hired as a writer. They became friends and eventually writing partners at SNL and for films that starred Ferrell. In 2022, Ferrell received an email stating that Steele was coming out as a transgender woman and wanted to let her friends know. This documentary follows Ferrell and Steele’s cross-country road trip from New York City to Los Angeles, stopping along the way to visit Steele’s childhood home in Iowa, and there are meetups with SNL alums such as Kristen Wiig, Tim Meadows, Will Forte, and Molly Shannon. It’s emotional at points and (not surprisingly with Ferrell) filled with humor. Many viewers will see the film through the eyes of Ferrell, not initially comprehending what his longtime friend has been going through but wanting to learn and be as supportive as he can.

9. “The Penguin Lessons,” 2024 comedy/drama directed by Peter Cattaneo, starring Steve Coogan, Jonathan Pryce, Bjorn Gustafsson, Vivian El Jaber, and Alfonsina Carrocio. This is one of those amazing “based on a true story” films, and home video during the end credits proves it. In the mid-1970s, Englishman Tom Michell (Coogan, always entertaining) arrives at an exclusive boys’ school in Argentina to teach English, exactly at the moment when a coup occurs, and a military junta is installed. As the government clamps down on dissenters, pulling people off the street and “disappearing” them, Michell struggles to teach his students, some of whom are children of leaders on both sides of the violence and chaos. When the school is shut down briefly, Michell takes a vacation to Uruguay and comes upon a beach where penguins have been killed by an oil spill. He rescues one by bringing it back to his hotel and then makes the decision to smuggle it back to Argentina. It’s perhaps an oversimplification of the deep, disturbing issues in the country at the time, but it’s a sweet film that hints at a broader commentary on the dangers of militarizing the streets of a country and suppressing freedoms.

10. “Oh, Hi!,” 2025 dark comedy directed by Sophie Brooks, starring Molly Gordon, Logan Lerman, Geraldine Viswanathan, and John Reynolds. I’m generally not a “dark comedy” fan because that usually means, “Oh, no, we accidentally killed the male stripper, and now we will hilariously cover it up!” (Actual plot of a movie.) I had Jen watch this one, and I had to keep telling her, “Don’t worry, it doesn’t end as badly as you think it will.” I don’t want to give away the main plot point here, but: lovebirds Iris (Gordon) and Isaac (Lerman) are taking a romantic weekend trip to a rented farmhouse in upstate New York. When he states that he believed they were casually dating and not in an exclusive relationship, she loses her mind and goes to great lengths to convince him that they’re a perfect match. I thought it was very funny and unique, and I wasn’t sure where things were headed.

Films that just missed the cut: “You Hurt My Feelings,” “All Together Now,” “Wicked Little Letters,” “Shiva Baby,” “The Climb,” “Bros,” “I Like Movies,” “The Tender Bar.”

Movies

Best Movies I Saw in 2024

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It’s Oscars weekend! Which can only mean one thing: I bloviate about the best movies I saw in 2024, regardless of whether they were released that year. Fun fun! This was another year in which I did not see anything in a movie theater. Very sad; I miss the filmgoing experience. Streaming services make it easy to stay home and watch flicks, but some movies made specifically for streaming services land with a thud. (Examples: “A Family Affair,” “The Instigators,” “Wolfs,” “The Family Plan,” “Me Time,” “Family Switch.” Basically anything with “Family” in the title.) I won’t get into the “why” of it, but to me, one reason is that many of us are going to watch whatever is new on Netflix/Prime/Max/Paramount Plus/Hulu/Peacock etc., quality be damned. “Hey honey, there’s a movie with Mark Wahlberg murdering people while a baby is strapped to his chest! It’s a comedy!”

Anyway, the plan for 2025 is to get me to a theater. Let’s do this! My lovely wife Jen doesn’t have the time or the interest, so hit me up, readers! I’ll buy the snacks. (Who are we kidding? I’ll smuggle in the snacks.) Okay, here’s my list:

  1. The Holdovers,” 2023 comedy/drama directed by Alexander Payne, starring Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and Dominic Sessa. I believe this film will hold up over time. It’s a less cloying “Dead Poets Society” (which I loved). Set in 1970, the film takes place over Christmas break at a New England boarding school, where classics teacher Paul Hunham (Giamatti), whose life has not worked out how he had hoped, has to chaperone for the “holdovers,” students who can’t go home for the break. He’s joined by a cafeteria worker (Randolph), who is dealing with deep pain and loss, and troublemaking student Angus Tully (Sessa in his debut film performance). Like anything Alexander Payne makes, humor and heartbreak go hand in hand.

2. “My Old Ass,” 2024 comedy/drama directed by Megan Park, starring Maisy Stella, Percy Hynes White, Aubrey Plaza, Maddy Ziegler, and Kerrice Brooks. This is very much a Gen Z film (not the only one on my list). It has a strange conceit as its premise: Stella (in her film debut) portrays Elliott, a teen on the cusp of leaving her small Canadian cranberry-farming community for college. She and her friends decide to camp out on an island and take mushrooms; while her friends (Ziegler and Brooks) have relatively expected hallucinogenic trips, Elliott is visited by the 39-year-old version of herself (Plaza), who gives her advice on how to change her life for better outcomes. What young Elliott does with the advice is where the problems lie. Low-key, moving, and funny; I look forward to more films written and directed by Park

3. “Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in Two Pieces,” 2024 documentary directed by Morgan Neville, with interviews of Steve Martin, Martin Short, Jerry Seinfeld, Adam Gopnik, Tina Fey, Diane Keaton, and many others. You should read Martin’s memoir of his stand-up career, “Born Standing Up,” if this movie interests you. Part 1 of this doc focuses on what the book did: Martin’s childhood and how it shaped his meteoric rise to becoming the first comic to fill arenas, and his decision to walk away from stand-up at age 35. Part 2 is about him looking back on the next chapter of his life, up to his two-man revue with Short and their hit show “Only Murders in the Building.” For anyone who likes to see how a creative mind works.

4. “His Three Daughters,” 2023 drama directed by Azazel Jacobs, starring Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen, Rudy Galvan, Jovan Adepo, and Jay O. Sanders. A moving film about three women who come together as their father Vincent enters hospice care. Lyonne is particularly good as Rachel, the daughter who has taken care of Vincent in his apartment for the past several years. Tensions any family deals with are heightened as the sisters wrestle with guilt, resentment, and judgement over who has and has not pulled their weight, and what that means for them moving forward. Somehow, Jacobs finds humor in the darkest moments.

5. “A Good Person,” 2023 drama directed by Zach Braff, starring Florence Pugh, Morgan Freeman, Molly Shannon, Celeste O’Connor, and Chinaza Uche. I delayed seeing this film, having a general idea of the challenging subject matter. Pugh is Allison, a musician who causes the deaths of two people in a car accident. Subsequently, she struggles with drug and alcohol addiction while her mother (Shannon) alternately coddles and pushes her to get help. If you have any experience with addiction, you half cover your eyes through this movie, hoping that each scene is rock bottom but knowing there’s more to come. She seeks help in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, only to be reunited with Daniel (Freeman, in what could have been a cliched role but not in his hands), a family member of one of the car-accident victims. We think he’s being the bigger person by befriending her, until we hear his own back story. Braff wrote and directed a film that you want to talk about with someone after viewing.

6. “Somebody I Used to Know,” 2023 romantic comedy directed by Dave Franco, starring Alison Brie, Jay Ellis, Kiersey Clemons, and Danny Pudi. A cringeworthy comedy about going home again. Brie (who co-wrote the film with her husband Franco) is Ally, who returns to her hometown in Washington state to lick her wounds after her reality TV show gets canceled. While staying with her mom (Julie Hagerty in a scene-stealing role), she runs into her old flame, Sean (Ellis). She accidentally invites herself along to his engagement party, and then to his destination wedding, and finds herself competing with his bride Cassidy (Clemons). So many awkward moments! A great supporting cast (Pudi, Hayley Joel Osment, Amy Sedaris, Sam Richardson, Zoe Chao). It’s “My Best Friend’s Wedding” with nudity and punk music.

7. “The Map of Tiny Perfect Things,” 2021 romance directed by Ian Samuels, starring Kyle Allen, Kathryn Newton, and Jermaine Harris. This film follows Mark (Allen), who is caught in a time loop a la “Groundhog Day,” repeating the same day of high school over and over. He perfects the day, hoping that this will jolt him out of the loop, to no avail. He eventually notices that a girl, Margaret (Newton), is suffering from the same fate, and they decide to make out a map of the best little things happening in their lives. As they come closer to solving the science of getting back to normal, they have to answer the question: Is what lies in the future actually better than being stuck in a perfect day forever?

8. “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” 2022 musical biopic directed by Eric Appel, starring Daniel Radcliffe, Evan Rachel Wood, Toby Huss, Rainn Wilson, and Julianne Nicholson. I have to confess I was a Weird Al fan back in the day (by which I mean the 1980s because I am that old). This film is the only logical way to do a Weird Al biography: a bizarro, untethered from reality parody of Yankovic, with Radcliffe playing an Al whose father forbids him from playing the accordian and hanging out with polka lovers, and who dates Madonna, murders Pablo Escobar, and is upset because Michael Jackon’s song “Beat It” was actually a parody of Al’s “Eat It.” Hilarious and stupid.

9. “When You Finish Saving the World,” 2022 drama directed by Jesse Eisenberg, starring Julianne Moore, Finn Wolfhard, Jay O. Sanders, and Billy Bryk. Eisenberg is generating awards-show praise for his “A Real Pain,” and if you like that, you should check out his directorial debut. Wolfhard plays Ziggy, an Indiana teen who lives in the same house with his parents (Moore and Sanders), but they have no idea what he does with his time (mostly YouTubing music to an increasingly larger following). Ziggy is a loner at school. His mom, Evelyn (Moore), runs a domestic abuse shelter and develops a surrogate-son relationship with a resident to replace the estrangement of the son she actually has.

10. “Bottoms,” 2023 comedy directed by Emma Seligman, starring Rachel Sennott, Ayo Edebiri, Kaia Gerber, Marshawn Lynch, and Ruby Cruz. This Gen Z over-the-top satire of high school life for queer kids follows Edebiri and Sennott as Josie and PJ trying to navigate a school that worships the football team and marginalizes anyone who is different. The principal and teachers are openly hostile to the girls (remember, this is a comedy), and Mr. G (Lynch, the retired football player) agrees to be the faculty sponsor for their fight club, which is actually just a chance for them to get physical with other girls. Josie and PJ end up trying to save the day when their football team faces their biggest rival. I had no idea where this movie was going. And that’s a good thing.

Films that just missed the cut: “I Am Chris Farley,” “Flora and Son,” “Love at First Sight,” “Theater Camp,” “Raymond & Ray,” “Meet Cute.”

Movies, Oscars

The Best Films I Saw in 2023

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I know it’s March, and I know I usually do some end-of-year posts, but things got a little away from me this winter (does the word “hibernation” mean anything to you? It does to me). Also, I was having tech problems with my computer and my website, so bear with me if anything goes off the rails. So, let’s finally get down to summing up my 2023 film faves.

Quick reminder: these are the best movies I saw in 2023, not Oscar predictions. Some were released in 2023, some were from the previous century (that makes it sound so long ago, but remember that I am also from the previous century), and some were about the early days of Hollywood (looking at you, “Babylon”). Here goes:

  1. Rosaline,” 2022 comedy/drama directed by Karen Maine starring Kaitlyn Dever, Kyle Allen, Sean Teale, Isabela Merced, and Minnie Driver. This comedy is built around a minor character from Shakespeare’s original play: Rosaline was a cousin of Juliet’s to whom Romeo was to wed, but instead he fell for Juliet. So the premise here is, Juliet asks her cousin to help her pair up with Romeo, so Rosaline pretends to help but actually wants to do everything she can to thwart Romeo and Juliet’s romance (because she thinks she’s Romeo’s true love). It’s a modern take with modern dialogue. No great revelations here, besides “be careful what you wish for” and “love blooms where you least expect it.”

2. “The Lunchbox,” 2013 drama/romance directed by Ritesh Batra starring Nimrat Kaur, Irrfan Khan, and Nawazuddin Siddiqui. This Indian film takes place in Mumbai, where a lonely housewife attempts to spice up her marriage by cooking amazing lunches for her husband. A little cultural backstory is needed: thousands of home-packed lunches are delivered by bicycle, motorbike, and train across the city by various couriers. Somehow, the housewife’s meal gets misdirected day after day to a different man (the late, great Khan as Saajan), and a note-passing relationship ensues. Meanwhile, widowed soon-to-retire Saajan is training a co-worker to replace him, and his initial hesitation to get closer to him or anyone undergoes a change because of his budding pen-pal romance. This was a bittersweet look at how someone recovers from grief and gets on with life.

3. “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” 2018 documentary directed by Morgan Neville. Neville examines the life of Fred Rogers and his long-running PBS children’s TV program, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. If you grew up watching the show or had children who did, Rogers’ kindness and big heart in real life won’t surprise you. It’s a fascinating look at Rogers’ upbringing, his philosophy on producing valuable programming for children, his outlook on life, and his legacy. Years ago, I read a memoir called I’m Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers, by Tim Madigan. This doc reinforces what Madigan had to say about Mr. Rogers, which was that you really need to see this film or read that book to see what it means to be a decent human being and an example for all of us.

4. “Love, Gilda,” 2018 documentary directed by Lisa Dapolito. Built around the audiotapes and diary of Gilda Radner, this doc explores the too-short life of one of the all-time greats from “Saturday Night Live.” Radner was an original cast member whose long struggles with an eating disorder and then with ovarian cancer she shared publicly at a time when many did not. I remember her death (at age 42 in 1989) as a shock; what I had forgotten until I saw this doc was how off-the-wall she was on SNL and so willing to get uncomfortable for a laugh.

5. “Dunkirk,” 2017 war film directed by Christopher Nolan, starring Harry Styles, Fionn Whitehead, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, Barry Keoghan, Tom Hardy, and Kenneth Branagh. There’s another big-budget Nolan film that is dominating Oscar talk this year (hint: it starts with an “O” and ends with a “ppenheimer”). This war movie focuses on the rescue operation on the beaches of Dunkirk in May 1940, when German troops pinned Allied troops. Every vessel that could float was called to service to evacuate around 330,000 Allied soldiers. Styles is particularly good as a soldier who is just trying to do what it takes to survive.

6. “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret,” 2023 comedy/drama directed by Kelly Fremon Craig, starring Abby Ryder Fortson, Rachel McAdams, Elle Graham, Benny Safdie, Kathy Bates, and Echo Kellum. Based on Judy Blume’s beloved young adult novel, they don’t make many movies like this anymore, meaning ones that deal with big topics (religion, race, girlhood) in a loving way. Would it help to read Blume’s book before seeing this? Not necessary. But for those of us GenXers who grew up with Blume, this felt like a time machine back to our childhoods. Compare to the next movie on this list, a modern take on similar topics.

7. “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah,” 2023 comedy/drama directed by Sammi Cohen, starring Adam Sandler, Sunny Sandler, Dylan Hoffman, Sadie Sandler, Samantha Lorraine, Jackie Sandler, Idina Menzel, and Sarah Sherman. Similar to the previous film on this list, this is a coming-of-age story of a girl named Stacy (Sunny Sandler, playing daughter to real-life dad Adam and sister to real-life sister Sadie) struggling with boy problems, FOMO, and the awkward two-step of one foot in childhood and one in adulthood. Loved how this movie captured the diversity that exists in modern Judaism and the challenges young kids face when pressured to celebrate their bat and bar mitzvahs with over-the-top parties. Adam is particularly relatable as a dad who can’t seem to tune into the right frequency with his kids, and Sherman is hilarious as the cool, young rabbi.

8. “No Hard Feelings,” 2023 comedy directed by Gene Stupnitsky, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Andrew Barth Feldman, Laura Benanti, Natalie Morales, and Matthew Broderick. This one gave me the biggest laughs in 2023. Lawrence portrays Maddie, a thirtysomething bartender/Uber driver in the Hamptons who, through her own bad decisions, finds herself without a car or a job and at risk of losing her childhood home. She gets hired by wealthy parents to “date” their 19-year-old son Percy (Feldman) in exchange for a car, in the hopes of giving Percy experience before he heads off to college. So cringe, as the young folks say. I think people are afraid to make raunchy movies like this for fear of offending; thank goodness Stupnitsky and Lawrence did because (even though it’s not for everyone) I still laugh thinking of certain scenes. This one stayed with me, in a good way.

9. “Wham!,” 2023 documentary directed by Chris Smith. Talk about being the perfect audience for a movie: When I was 13 years old, my siblings and I went to see the massively successful but shortlived pop duo Wham! in concert on their first and what turned out to be only US tour. Imagine my shock when I wore the concert T-shirt to high school my freshman year only to find out it wasn’t cool to be a Wham! fan. That’s a story for another blog post. Similar to the Radner doc on this list, much of the film uses voiceover from the late George Michael and his bandmate Andrew Ridgeley to tell the story of their quick rise to fame from danceclubs in the UK to massive worldwide success, and then their just as quick disbanding after just 5 years and 3 studio albums. This film focuses mostly on that time and not Michael’s solo career. Much of the story is in Michael’s struggles with self-confidence, weight, and the challenge of when and if he should be open about his sexuality. I went back in time with this film.

10. “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” 2022 action/comedy directed by Tom Gormican, starring Nicolas Cage, Pedro Pascal, Lily Mo Sheen, Ike Barinholtz, and Tiffany Haddish. Bizarre film about an actor named Nicolas Cage played by Cage who is taunted by his younger, more successful self (also played by Cage with help of CGI to make him younger). When his film career stalls, Cage agrees to take a large sum of money to hang out with a billionaire in Majorca (Pascal). The plot turns ever more ludicrous as the CIA extorts Cage to spy on Pascal’s character, Javi, convinced that he is an arms dealer. Javi also has Nic reading a script he wrote for an action film involving drugs, arms, and kidnapping, and it all turns very meta. Highlights include Cage playing a heightened version of himself (if that’s possible) and an argument over the greatness of the film “Paddington 2.” It’s all too hard to explain.

Movies that just missed the cut: “Hustle,” “Ghosted,” “Babylon,” “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” “The Machine,” “Feast of the Seven Fishes.”