Reviews

2025 comes to a close, and like that, I find myself putting together a list of the movies I liked the most from the past 12 months. Every year, I struggle to put together my top 10, 20, 25, whatever number, due to the number of movies I really enjoyed and the movies that I have yet to see for

"I Like Me's" sincere portrait of the late John Candy will be an illuminating and nostalgic experience for anyone familiar with the classic 80s funnyman, but there are a few more quality options for those looking for good documentaries in 2025. Here are three more I found while preparing my UFCA ballot earlier this year:



2000 Meters to Andriivka (R)



Mstyslav Chernov's

I Like Me (3 stars out of 4)



Few actors in the 1980s felt more larger than life than John Candy, who parlayed early stardom in the Canadian sketch show SCTV into a host of leading and supporting comic roles in films throughout the decade.



"I Like Me" shares Candy's story a little over thirty years after his unexpected passing in 1994,

Sorry, Baby (R)



Put simply, even though the subject is anything but simple, "Sorry, Baby" is the story of a young woman trying to reconcile her experience with sexual assault. Agnes (Eva Victor) is a professor at a small liberal arts college who was assaulted as a graduate student by a PhD candidate at the same school. The storyline skips back

Superman - 3 stars out of 4



I still remember the first time my family rented movies. We were getting together with another family down the block, and for the event my parents picked up three VHS tapes along with a VCR to play them on. The titles? Disney's "Pete's Dragon" (for the kids), Blake Edwards' "10" (for the adults), and

Sinners - 3 stars out of 4



The mythology of the blues tells the story of a musician who meets the devil at a deserted crossroads to sell his soul in exchange for a supernatural ability to play the guitar. Most often the story is tied to Robert Johnson, a legendary bluesman whose work in the 1930s is considered fundamental to

"Marty Supreme" 3 stars out of 4



(You always want to at least try to evaluate a film on its own merits, but there's no escaping context. And it's especially hard to separate a movie from the other films you're watching around the same time. So with my excuses firmly in place...)



If "Rental Family" was one of my favorite movies

It might be odd for anyone who knew me growing up to hear that animation is one of the film genres I struggle with. Having spent most of my childhood drawing various Transformers and Star Wars characters before transitioning to recreations of Michael Jordan and more "grown up" subject matter in high school, I definitely have an appreciation for the

Ever since my weekly review count slowed down a few years back, November and December have become catch-up time as I look for potential selections for my annual UFCA ballot. (In my defense, many of the contenders aren't made available until the end of the year, anyway.) Among the various categories, non-English language films is a genre that requires extra

There is an argument to be made that the vast majority of documentaries contain some form of ethical issues, whether it be the filmmaker's bias, how the subjects are represented and compensated, or being accountable for how it impacts its subjects and viewers. This is what makes Predators one of the most interesting and layered pieces of journalistic filmmaking to