I’m really not sure why they made this Kiss of the Spider Woman. There's already a novel and a film and a musical. Did we really need this movie musical?
Jennifer Lopez is fabulous and perfect for this part, so no shade at all to JLo's magnificence. I adore her.
But why bother doing the musical version of Kiss of the Spider Woman if you’re going to cut most of the songs that have emotional impact? There is just no point to a Kiss of the Spider Woman movie without “Over the Wall”, “You Could Never Shame Me”, “Dear One” (which is included in a tiny way but not in a way where it can affect anyone), and especially “The Day after That”, one of the most emotionally impactful songs Kander and Ebb ever wrote.
Even "She's a Woman" is ruined because it takes place in the movie within the movie instead of being a song that Molina sings. He sings it "in character". It makes no sense, and so it has no emotional impact.
This musical cuts itself off at the knees because it forces all the songs to be diegetic. They can only be there if they exist in the fantasy/musical world. The most recent Color Purple had a similar issue. It’s just so stupid. It pretends the real world doesn't have music. The real world is supposed to be "real", "gritty", "serious". But this doesn't work either because there is only a minimally marked contrast between the art direction for the real world sequences and the art direction for the movie-musical sequences. So it isn’t as if one feels real and the other is marked as artificial. The “real world” in this Spider Woman still looks like a musical.
I loved Jennifer Lopez in “Where You Are”. It’s the only good number in this movie. The rest of this… I have no idea why they bothered if they weren’t going to do the songs. We already have a movie version of Kiss of the Spider Woman; it came out forty years ago, and it's much better than this.
Cast: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Javier Bardem, Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies, Kim Bodnia, Sarah Niles, Will Merrick, Joseph Balderrama, Abdul Salis, Callie Cooke, Samson Kayo, Simon Kunz, Liz Kingsman
This is great. It hits every beat it needs to. The sound is amazing. The script is perfect Hollywood nonsense, but it cleverly avoids most of the worst traps. And this movie has Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem and Kerry Condon. So the acting is just fuckin stellar. All three are absolutely pitch perfect. Damson Idris is great in the Miles Teller part. Sarah Niles is wonderful. The whole thing just sings. And, sure, it’s a retread of Maverick. I mean, yeah fine: it’s mostly about the same thing and it’s mostly a similar script, and the director’s the same, and it’s giving older-guy-bucks-the-system-and-blesses-the-young-people-with-his-wisdom. But I didn’t care one bit. I saw this on a gigantic screen and it felt like I was on a ride the whole time, and this rocked. Great score, great soundtrack, great editing. I was into it. Now, I have heard a great many complaints about the fact that this got a Best Picture nomination. I am baffled by these complaints. In the first place, F1 is very good. In the second place, F1 is appreciably better than Frankenstein. I defy anyone to tell me that Guillermo del Toro's movie is better than Kosinski's, and yet no one is complaining that Frankenstein made it into one of the Best Picture slots because it's a drama and not a genre picture like this one is. (In fact, to my mind F1 is better than Bugonia and Hamnet, too.) In the third place, the reason we have ten Best Picture nominees is exactly for movies like this. The ten slots were designed so that the Academy would make room for genre movies like this one. The Dark Knight was the reason for the change back in 2009 when it missed out on a nomination; then they switched to ten and action movies have consistently benefited and been included. To give just a few examples: District 9 (2009), Inception (2010), Hell or High Water (2016), and most significantly Black Panther (2018). In any case, I'm kind of baffled by anyone saying this movie doesn't deserve its slot. It absolutely does. It's one of the most fun movies of the year. To my mind, Kosinki scored again.
Cast: Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Scott, Jonah Lees, Simon Delaney, Patrick Kennedy, Giles Surridge, John Doran
I am going to tell you right now that when I saw the trailer I said "Oh no. Absolutely not. This looks horrible." But then my friend Greg told me I needed to watch it, so I went to the theatre and... this is utterly surprising. It’s very, very theatrical and it’s mostly just lots and lots of talk, but it works its way under your skin and it winds up being quite moving. This movie will be especially poignant for theatre people, of course—since it’s about the opening night of Oklahoma! from the perspective of Lorenz Hart, the lyricist and former writing partner of Richard Rodgers who didn’t work on the show. But there is honestly a great deal to enjoy here, and Ethan Hawke is pretty wonderful. I want also to note that some gay men I know have complained about the way the film, in their view, transforms the gay Lorenz Hart into someone who spends the entirety of this movie trying to get close to Margaret Qualley's character. I guess this might have bothered me if I believed in such a thing as sexuality, but, well, I don't. Blue Moon is based on real correspondence between Hart and that character, and in any case the film is quite clear that Hart is gay. I say go see this movie. It's a mannered, overly talkie theatre thing, and it's great.
Original Screenplay: Mehdi Mahmoudian & Jafar Panahi & Shadmer Rastin & Nader Saïvar(all 1st time nominees)
International Feature: France (Emilia Pérez, Les Misérables, Mustang, A Prophet, The Class, Joyeux Noël, Les Choristes, Amélie, The Taste of Others, East-West, Ridicule, Indochine, Cyrano de Bergerac, Camille Claudel, Au Revoir Les Enfants, Betty Blue, Three Men and a Cradle, Entre Nous, Clean Slate, The Last Metro, Une Histoire Simple, Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, Madame Rosa, Cousin Cousine, Lacombe Lucien, Day for Night, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Hoa-Binh, My Night at Maud's, Stolen Kisses, Live for Life, A Man and a Woman, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Sundays and Cybele, The Truth, Black Orpheus, Mon Oncle, Gates of Paris, Gervaise, Forbidden Games, The Walls of Malapaga, Monsieur Vincent)
Cast: Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi, Hadis Pakbaten, Majid Panahi, Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr, George Hashemzadeh, Delmaz Najafi, Afsaneh Najm Abadi
This is my favorite film of the year. It's absurdly funny and deadly serious at the same time. The ending is incredible. Mostly, though, I think I was struck by the film’s portrait of people living with difficult memories, of surviving violence and learning to do the next day’s activities—falling in love with someone, buying pastries, listening to your mom complain about you, helping a neighbor. Panahi's beautiful film manages this without sentiment and always with an eye on what these people have gone through at the hands of an unrepentant state. Un Simple Accident, of course, won the Palme d'Or, so I guess it doesn't need a Best Picture Oscar, Directing Oscar, or even an International Feature Oscar or a Screenplay Oscar. But it sure would have been well deserved. This movie is so good. In fact, while we're here we should say that the International Feature nominees this year are all stellar, with four of the five getting more than one Oscar nomination. It's really a banner year for the Academy's attention to international movies.
Oof. This film is decidedly in conversation with Ari Aster's Eddington and Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle after Another, and while I think Bugonia is interested in ideas similar to those films, it's not nearly as interesting as those movies. In fact, I thought this was weirdly boring—I guess rather like having a conversation with a conspiracy theorist… or an apologist for fascism. It felt to me like being forced to listen to a racist or a conspiracy theorist's opinions for two hours (an activity I decidedly do not enjoy). Bugonia goes around in circles tracing loop after loop, and we hear the same things over and over, watch the same scene again and again. I think maybe there’s supposed to be dramatic tension at certain points, or suspense, maybe? I didn’t feel any of that. Actually, I have a feeling this was supposed to be funny, but I didn't do any laughing. This was not pleasurable to watch. A man a few rows in front of me was snoring loudly. As a rule I also dislike Emma Stone, and this might have had a good deal to do with my antipathy toward this. She just never seems like a real human person in her movies—which, I suppose is perfect for both Lanthimos in general and this film in particular. But I do wonder if I would have liked this movie better with a different actress than Emma Stone as the lead. It's possible, but I doubt it. I think the screenplay is just really boring. So much talking! No Oscars for Bugonia on the big night. Stone just won two years ago (for the second time), but more importantly both Jesse Plemons and Yorgos Lanthimos missed out on nominations, so that means that this movie—despite its nomination for Best Picture—clearly didn't connect with Academy voters as much as other films, even some of the other films with four nominations.
Cast: Moura, Carlos Francisco, Tânia Maria, Robério Diógenes, Roney Villela, Gabriel Leone, Alice Carvalho, Hermila Guedes, Isabél Zuaa, Geane Albuquerque, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Thomás Aquino, Laura Lufési, Isadora Ruppert, Igor de Araújo, Ítalo Martins, Udo Kier
This is one of my favorite films of the year, and it almost was #1. It's a taut political thriller with a fantastic cast. Wagner Moura is wonderful. The best part of this, though, is Mendonça’s beautiful approach to memory and nostalgia. His shots are filled with ghosts (he has a great documentary called Pictures of Ghosts that functions as a companion piece to this), and his characters feel their histories pumping in their veins even if they can’t remember them or find their records. I love Mendonça's films, and I'm so glad that the Academy is finally recognizing his work. Go see this movie.
Cast: Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, Nathaniel Arcand, Clifton Collins Jr., John Diehl, Paul Schneider, Kerry Condon, William H. Macy, Will Patton, Alfred Hsing, David Paul Olsen, John Patrick Lowrie
This is so beautiful and simple and smart. It has a kind of Terrence Malick feel to it without the Malickian screenplay habits. And it's filled with memorable, gorgeous performances. In fact, I think Joel Edgerton only just missed out on his first (and long overdue) best actor nomination. Edgerton is a wonderful actor, and these awards bodies need to pay more attention to his excellent work. Most importantly for the big night, though, is the cinematography. Adolph Veloso really captures something here, and I think everyone expects him to take home the trophy. It's worth saying, also, that films like Train Dreams and F1 (we'll get to that in a day or two) are the reason we have ten slots for Best Picture these days. The point of having a category with ten nominees is so that a small picture that won't win best picture (and a big budget action movie that won't win best picture) can get recognized as one of the best movies of the year. And Train Dreams really is that.
Cast: Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A'Zion, Kevin O'Leary, Tyler the Creator, Emory Cohen, Fran Drescher, Géza Röhrig, Abel Ferrara, Penn Jilette, Sandra Bernhard
This is tons of fun. It's a non-stop ride of bad mistake after bad mistake (in the vein of the other Safdie Brothers movies). This one feels much more fun than Good Time, Uncut Gems, and The Smashing Machine, and I think a lot of that is the way that Chalamet is able to enjoy himself and project his own pleasure through the difficulties of the character. Marty is a fantastic character, and he's played beautifully here. Which is to say that I don't normally think we associate what Chalamet is doing in this movie with "acting" as such, but I think he's doing an incredible amount of work here that doesn't come across as "honesty" or "vulnerability" or whatever else we might associate with good acting. He's, well, a star. I hope he wins Best Actor. The film has stumbled in recent days with various negative campaigning aimed at it, so I think it is probably not winning any other Oscars, but I'd still like to see Timmy take this one. I also think it should win casting. This is a kind of genius casting job. I think putting Géza Röhrig in that orgy scene with the honey was flat out brilliant. Ok also... that honey scene. Can we talk about it?
Adapted Screenplay: Guillermo Del Toro (The Shape of Water, Pan's Labyrinth)
Supporting Actor: Jacob Elordi (1st time nominee)
Cinematography: Dan Lausten (Nightmare Alley, The Shape of Water)
Production Design: Tamara Deverell (Nightmare Alley) & Shane Vieau (Dune: Part Two, Nightmare Alley, The Shape of Water)
Original Score: Alexandre Desplat (Little Women, Isle of Dogs, The Shape of Water, The Imitation Game, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Philomena, Argo, The King's Speech, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Queen)
Cast: Oscar Isaac, Elordi, Christoph Waltz, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Charles Dance, David Bradley
Beautiful production design—or as a friend recently said "most" production design—and lots and lots of sumptuous, jewel-toned light. The costumes are gorgeous, the music is pretty, but this movie is fairly boring. I thought Oscar Isaac did good work in this, and David Bradley is great as the Creature’s friend, but the film itself just doesn’t have anything to add to the Frankenstein narratives we already have. Elordi is, of course, cheating by campaigning in the supporting actor category, but the Academy didn't seem to mind it here the way they minded Paul Mescal's category fraud (see below). Elordi is a rising star and everyone seems to love him. He's made a bunch of movies that have done well recently, and he's working hard, so I guess that pushed him over the edge here. I am a little baffled by this, but, then, I'm also baffled that anyone liked this movie. For something so shiny, it manages to be quite dull.
Cast: Buckley, Paul Mescal, Joe Alwyn, Emily Watson, Jacobi Jupe, Noah Jupe, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Olivia Lynes, David Wilmot, Justine Mitchell
My friends Kody and Dayne have been dragging me for weeks for liking this movie as much as I did. But I found this to be a beautiful meditation on grief. I liked all of the early stuff with the Agnes and Will falling in love, too. I think the real issue for me is that I just love Hamlet, so I loved all the little touches of it throughout the script – goodbye, goodbye, goodbye and other small places where it appeared. The problem with Hamnet is that it is too committed to grief and mourning; it plays this same note way too long. And you might say, yes, well, that's how grief works, but Sirāt is a film that has a similar meditation on the losing of a child, and it works much better. And when I think about it more, Hamnet is doing something as silly as giving us an origin story for an intellectual property we all love—like this is Becoming Jane Austen or something like that. Will Shakespeare reciting "To be or not to be" was way overboard. (I say this as someone who still really liked the film!) And another thing. The film really stumbles at the end. Whoever decided to use “On the Nature of Daylight”, that same Max Richter song from Arrival and Shutter Island, is a fool. In fact, I'm surprised it didn't disqualify Richter from getting his first Oscar nomination. Using old music like that is a big no-no for the Academy. Having that song at the end of the movie immediately pulled me out of the film—it belongs to a wholly different world—and of course I already know it, so rather than the ending of Hamnet feeling unexpected and new, the film moves into familiar territory. Not smart. There’s so much good stuff in this movie, though, and once I bought into the fiction of it (this does not accord with theatre history at all), I enjoyed myself. I guess I should say one more thing about Paul Mescal standing just off the medal stand over there. He's pretty great in this movie—I think he's pretty great in everything, honestly—but he attempted true category fraud. He (or his management) thought the supporting actor race was less crowded than the best actor race, and he was right about that, but it's a hard sell to say that he wasn't the lead actor in this film no matter how good he is in it.
Will win: Actress
Could win: Adapted Screenplay, Production Design, Casting
Every year I post about each of the films nominated for Oscars—this year there are 35 features plus 15 short films (exactly the same as last year). Usually, I see all of them except for the documentaries (I am just not that interested in documentary film; I'm not sure why), but I'm also going to do myself a favor and skip the live-action short films. As a group they tend to be terrible every single year, and then for some reason the worst one usually manages to win.
This year with the enormous amount of political turmoil in our country and the ascendance of fascism in the U.S., it feels so stupid to be posting about movies. And for that I apologize. The state is murdering its own citizens in the streets, and I'm here to talk about Diane Warren... it's frivolous; I admit. But I write about politics in other places—I write about state violence, prison, racism, homophobia, and torture—and we all need an occasional break from thinking about the end of US American democracy. (Fucking gerrymandering, by the way, is anti-democratic; the fact that we just accept it as a political exigency is totally absurd. People should be represented in the government. The United States purports to be a government by the people and for the people. I live in a district that has been so viciously and cynically gerrymandered that I have no representation in Congress. It's a helpless state of affairs that serves the self interest of a political ruling class instead of the people.)
In any case, I'm gonna post about the Oscars as usual. It makes me feel less alone, and crossing these movies off my list makes me feel like I can accomplish something in a state where I am nearly powerless because of the corruption of my government.
This is a good year. I will have more to say about this as we go through the nominees, but the Academy did really well this year, I think. My top ten for 2025 looks much closer to the Academy's than last year, and part of the reason for that is that the Academy's nominees look much more international than usual. This is due to the much more international Academy—an excellent state of affairs. My own list is always going to veer more international than the Academy's, and it's always going to be a good deal gayer, too, but that's a whole other story.
One thing I fundamentally believe, however, is that the Oscars are a jumping-off point for discussion rather than the final word on anything... So let's discuss!
I will go film by film discussing each movie individually rather than by category—beginning with the movies most beloved by the Academy this year. If the nominee has been nominated for Oscars previously, their previous nominations will be listed next to their name in parentheses. This year's nominees are:
Sinners
16 nominations
Picture
Director: Ryan Coogler (1st time nominee)
Actor: Michael B. Jordan (1st time nominee)
Original Screenplay: Coogler (1st time nominee)
Supporting Actor: Delroy Lindo (1st time nominee)
Supporting Actress: Wunmi Mosaku(1st time nominee)
Film Editing: Michael P. Shawver (1st time nominee)
Cinematography: Autumn Durald Arkapaw(1st time nominee)
Production Design: Hannah Beachler (Black Panther) & Monique Champagne (1st time nominee)
Original Score: Ludwig Göransson (Oppenheimer, Black Panther)
Costume Design: Ruth E. Carter (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Black Panther, Amistad, Malcolm X)
Casting
Sound
Visual Effects
Makeup & Hairstyling
Original Song – "I Lied to You": Göransson (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) & Raphael Saadiq (Mudbound)
Cast: Jordan, Miles Caton, Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O'Connell, Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Benson Miller, Lindo, Li Jun Li, Yao, Lola Kirke, Peter Dreimanis
This is a record-breaking number of nominations, as I'm sure you've heard by now. Part of the reason for this is the new Oscar category for casting, but more important is that Sinners garnered nominations in all the below the line categories as well as its three acting nominations. This is is an unusual state of affairs. More typically, a film that everyone loves will do great below the line (think Avatar or The Fellowship of the Ring) without having any real support from the acting branch. In fact, this is what most everyone expected of Sinners but then here we are, and it crushed the competition on the morning of the nominations. I loved this movie, and I think it deserves all of its accolades. It's a bit of an unusual fit for Oscar, but I think what Ryan Coogler has proved so beautifully is how rich a genre picture can be. This is a full-out vampire revenge adventure–suspense thing. It's a delight from start to finish, and yet it feels like a prestige picture, even though its main goal is entertainment. This is is Coogler's incredible strength as a filmmaker, and I'm here for it. Most of the film's nominees are first-timers—including Delroy Lindo, Michael B. Jordan, and Coogler himself. The old-timers here are Ruth Carter and Ludwig Göransson, both winning previously for another Coogler film. I can't say enough good things about this movie. It's not the Academy's normal fare, but I'm so glad it's here. For this reason, and because of this enormous, record-breaking shakeup, I think this movie is going to pull ahead and win Best Picture.
Will win: Picture, Original Screenplay, Score, Costume Design
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson(Licorice Pizza, Phantom Thread, There Will Be Blood)
Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio (Once upon a Time... in Hollywood, The Revenant, The Wolf of Wall Street, Blood Diamond, The Aviator, What's Eating Gilbert Grape)
Adapted Screenplay: Anderson(Licorice Pizza, Inherent Vice, There Will Be Blood, Magnolia, Boogie Nights)
Supporting Actor: Sean Penn (Milk, Mystic River, I Am Sam, Sweet and Lowdown, Dead Man Walking)
Supporting Actor: Benicio del Toro (21 Grams, Traffic)
Supporting Actress: Teyana Taylor(1st time nominee)
Film Editing: Andy Jurgensen (1st time nominee)
Cinematography: Michael Bauman (1st time nominee)
Production Design: Anthony Carlino (Babylon) & Florencia Martin (Babylon)
Original Score: Jonny Greenwood (The Power of the Dog, Phantom Thread)
Cast: DiCaprio, Chase Infiniti, Penn, Del Toro, Taylor, Regina Hall, Wood Harris, Tony Goldwyn, D.W. Moffett
This has been the frontrunner for many months, and it probably still is the frontrunner—the love it received from the acting branch is evidence of that. It's also just flat out great, though this film, like Sinners, is also basically a genre picture. This is a shoot out, action–comedy thing that feels very unlike, in the first place, a film that the Academy would normally like and, in the second place, unlike a typical Paul Thomas Anderson film. (The truth is, though, that Anderson surprises us constantly, switching without any seeming effort between comedies and very serious art-house fare.) This is one of my favorite movies of the year, and I think its timeliness (the fascist cops on the street rounding up protestors and trying to find immigrants) makes this movie feel like it just understood the year 2025 in a way that doesn't usual seem possible in the cinema. My main gripe about this film is that the white supremacists in it are too silly. It is true that white supremacists are absurd, of course, but they're also deadly, and because Anderson's film is a comedy with a very silly group of white supremacists as its chief antagonists, it feels like it doesn't quite take this fascist agenda quite as seriously as it ought to. I expect this to do very well on Oscar night. I don't think it will win Best Picture anymore, but I think Anderson will and should win Best Director. It's his fourth nomination, and he's earned it.
Will win: Director, Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actress
Could win: Picture, Actor, Film Editing, Score, Casting
Original Screenplay: Trier (The Worst Person in the World) & Eskil Vogt (The Worst Person in the World)
Supporting Actor: Stellan Skarsgård(1st time nominee)
Supporting Actress: Elle Fanning (1st time nominee)
Supporting Actress: Inga Ibsdotter Illeaas (1st time nominee)
Film Editing: Olivier Bugge Coutté(1st time nominee)
International Picture: Norway (The Worst Person in the World, Kon-Tiki, Elling, The Other Side of Sunday, Pathfinder, Nine Lives: the Story of Jan Baalsrud)
Cast: Reinsve, Skarsgård, Illeaas, Fanning, Andreas Stoltenberg Granerud, Øyvind Hesjedal Loven, Anders Danielsen Lie, Cory Michael Smith, Catherine Cohen
This movie is so good. It’s about family in a way that is decidedly unsentimental, despite its title, and it gets at ties between family members that don’t really make sense but repeat or resurface. It’s about trying to tell a story or find the words for feelings or intuitions that don’t have words for them. In many ways, it's also a movie about a house, or at least it tells its story from the perspective of the house. It's a brilliant stroke of writing. I am sorry that Joachim Trier standby Anders Danielsen Lie's part was too small to sneak him a Best Supporting Actor nomination (and Stellan Skarsgård is decidedly committing category fraud running as a supporting actor). The fact that this did so well with the Academy is wonderful Trier has been making excellent (maybe even perfect) movies for a long time, and it's great that people are catching up to that! I don't think this can win anything on the big night except Supporting Actor (although it may also get International Feature). But almost everyone here is a first-time nominee, and they're all gonna just be happy to be there.
Will win: Supporting Actor
Could win: Original Screenplay, Editing, International Feature
Elio was so damn cute. I was grinning from ear to ear for most of this. It's imaginative and fun and playful, with absolutely delightful characters.
I suspect some are tiring of hearing about this, but I argued in my book Love Is Love Is Love and I say all the time that Pixar movies (and most animated movies in general) are about the queer child and about parenting, and... Elio is no exception. The two queer children at the film's center are misunderstood by their parents, who have trouble connecting with them and can't figure out what to do with their very strange kids. This is usual for a Pixar movie—cf. Inside Out and its sequel, Turning Red, Luca, Soul, Elemental, etc.—but what is different about Elio is that although parenting is in focus here, the experience of the child is much more important to the narrative. The parents are still the heroes in this, but what I love about Elio is that it articulates the way the child wants to do more, to be more, indeed to be an adult or not be treated like a child.
Perhaps disappointingly, Elio is also deeply invested in the biological family rather than (as I also discussed in Love Is Love Is Love) the chosen family politics that permeate films in the 1990s. But this is not too big of a deal, and the film tries to strike a balance between friendship and family that I appreciated.
In any case, this is really really fun and super charming. And I adored little Elio and little Glordon.
P.S. The name Elio puts me in mind of the young Elián González, whom the U.S. treated as an alien. More importantly, perhaps, the film riffs on "aliens" and US Latinos in a clever but not overtly political way. This is a film in which the US Americans in the film are Latinos and the "aliens" are somewhere else.
Mahmood Bakri (To a Land Unknown),Gael Garcia Bernal (Magellan), Frank Dillane (Urchin), Colin Farrell (Ballad of a Small Player), Harry Melling (Pillion), Shia LaBeouf (Henry Johnson), Lee Kang-sheng (Blue Sun Palace),Billy Magnussen (Violent Ends), João Pedro Mariano (Baby), Josh O'Connor (Rebuilding), Abou Sangaré (Souleyman's Story), Albrecht Schuch (Peacock), Toni Servillo (La Grazia), Denzel Washington (Highest 2 Lowest), Ben Whishaw (Peter Hujar's Day), Yoshii Ryōsuke (Cloud), and Yoshizawa Ryō (Kokuho), whose films I haven't seen yet.
Deragh Campbell (Matt and Mara), Emma Corrin (100 Nights of Hero), Jodie Foster (A Private Life), Gelmine Glemzaite (Drowning Dry), Andrea Bræin Hovig (Love), Dakota Johnson (Materialists),Diane Lane (Anniversary), Carey Mulligan (The Ballad of Wallis Island), Elizabeth Olsen (Eternity), Tessa Thompson (Hedda), Tessa Van den Broeck (Julie Keeps Quiet), and Alexi Wasser (Messy), whose movies I have not yet seen.
I’m really not sure why Bill Condon and company made this. Jennifer Lopez is fabulous and perfect for this part, but why bother doing the musical version of Kiss of the Spider Woman if you’re going to cut most of the songs that have emotional impact? There is just no point to a Kiss of the Spider Woman movie without “Over the Wall”, “You Could Never Shame Me”, “Dear One” (which is included in a tiny way), and especially “The Day after That”, one of the most emotionally impactful songs Kander and Ebb ever wrote.
This movie musical cuts itself off at the knees because it forces all the songs to be diegetic. In other words, the songs can only be there if they exist in the fantasy/musical world. The most recent Color Purple had a similar issue. It’s just so stupid. This conceit even ruins "She's a Woman" (obviously my favorite song in the musical), because in this film, it's not song by Molina himself but is sung by his avatar in the fake-ass movie he's describing. (Never mind that this song would make no actual sense in that movie.)
What’s worse is that there is only a minimally marked contrast between the art direction for the real world sequences and the art direction for the movie-musical sequences. So it isn’t as if one feels real and the other is marked as artificial. The “real world” in this Spider Woman still looks like a musical. Which means that this little rule about songs needing to be diegetic à la Chicago doesn't even matter.
I loved Jennifer Lopez in “Where You Are”. She comes out in full Chita Rivera drag, with the white tuxedo jacket, and she just looks incredible. It’s the only good number in this movie.
The rest of this movie… I just am not sure why they bothered if they weren’t going to do the songs.
1. What did you do in 2025 that you'd never done before?
Lots of small things and not too many big things. But I think that's good. Small changes eventually make for drastic life alterations. Going to Ciudad de México in February was probably the biggest highlight in terms of things I've never done before, but I also made many new dishes, went to St. George Island Brewfest for the first time, fasted for 72 hours, and learned a lot about what I am capable of doing.
2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
At the new year last year I made a deal with myself that I would do less work for my employer, that I would work out more regularly, and that I would spend more time traveling and visiting friends. I did all of these except for the part where I work less for my employer. Somehow I seem even to have increased that amount of work. I don't think this will happen next year—I'm on sabbatical for five months—but I need to get better at that work–life balance everyone talks about.
For 2026 I resolve simply to say yes to more things. When people invite me to do things, I need to start saying yes more and more often.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.
5. What countries did you visit?
Mexico City in February was absolutely amazing. And in September I went to Vega Baja in Puerto Rico, which was also amazingly restful. (Yes, I know that Puerto Rico is a colony in the United States empire.)
6. What would you like to have in 2026 that you lacked in 2025?
Greater peace of mind and more of an ability to relax.
7. What dates from 2025 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
October 15—The Violate Man: Male/Male Rape in the American Imagination was published by Vanderbilt University Press.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Really nothing can compare to having The Violate Man come out this year. It's an enormous personal achievement, and in many ways it's a huge weight off of my shoulders. I've been working on the research published in The Violate Man since some time around 2008 or 2009. Perhaps a third of this was written as my dissertation in 2012. Since then I've worked at shaping my thinking on the topic of male/male rape into a book manuscript. I've probably told many people this story, but the book has had a lot of trouble finding an editor willing to work with me on publishing it. Its subject matter has been difficult for a lot of people. Gianna Mosser, my editor at Vanderbilt has been a true collaborator and mentor on this book, and I feel extremely grateful to have her working with me on this book.
The book won a publication subvention award from the American Society for Theatre Research this year, and I'm excited for any awards that might come its way, but mostly I just want people to be able to read this book, into which I've put so much energy, time, and care.
9. What was your biggest failure?
I am decidedly a failure at romance at the moment. I am a very introverted and private person, and I just am not interested in letting anyone else in further than a friend. I really like friendship, actually! Maybe I don't want anything more. This has been disappointing for others in my life, including—occasionally—me. I have definitely tried, though, which is why it counts as a failure.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I did not.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
At a farmer's market in Northampton this summer I bought a fig tree. Hopefully it survives while I'm in California for three weeks, but I expect it will. The woman I bought it from said "It could live in your trunk for two weeks!"
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
New Yorkers came through this year and elected Zohran Mamdani to be their mayor. It was maybe the most hopeful thing to happen in 2025.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Another appalling and depressing year in US American politics. I don't understand how most of these people live with themselves or look themselves in the mirror. The people who made me the most embarrassed this year were the craven Republicans in Congress, who seem to operate without any principles whatsoever aside from racism and the prospect of achieving personal wealth and power.
14. Which charitable organizations did you give to?
I also donated money to help some students and former students in need.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Katie and Nick's wedding in May.
Cookie week at the New York Times.
Being able to do the doctoral hooding for my student Rebecca Curran.
The American Society for Theatre Research annual meeting in Denver.
Doing a 72-hour water fast with Dayne and Garrett.
16. What song will always remind you of 2025?
"Golden" from K-Pop Demon Hunters, of course, though it's definitely not my favorite song from the movie. That would be:
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Happier.
b) thinner or fatter? Thicker but not fatter.
c) richer or poorer? Richer.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Writing, honestly. My job right now—especially as the editor of the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism—means reading the writing of other scholars multiple times. This just doesn't leave much time for me to be doing the writing I'd like to be doing.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
I spent way too much time on Snapchat in 2025. But I am not quite sure if I wish I were spending less time doing it, so this is an oblique answer to the question. I'm getting something out of Snapchat, I guess...
This Snapchat thing is super weird. Somehow, in the last 5 months, I've amassed more than 15,000 Snapchat followers. They're mostly there for teacher–student fantasies, I think. There is also just an enormous contingent of people who compliment me on my physique and my chest. This feels good. I've been self-conscious about my body forever—I think this has a lot to do with Christianity and shame and "the mortification of the flesh" and all that. (Christianity really really fucked me up. I don't recommend it.) But back to Snapchat: I think the weird thing is that I try to be genuine and honest with everyone, but with the number of people messaging me, that's just not really possible. Anyway, it's a new, weird world for me. I've even considered doing OnlyFans and trying to make a little money at it.
20. How did you spend the Winter holidays?
I've been in Southern California for the last week or so, and I'll be here until January 6. It's been very, very relaxing.
21. Did you fall in love in 2025?
I did not.
22. How many one-night stands?
Only a couple. This was a real fail this year.
23. What was your favorite TV program?
I did not watch Heated Rivalry, but I will, I will; it's too gayportant not to. The problem is that this is the time when I need to catch up on movies. I will check out these hockey pucks in the new year.
I try to avoid tv as much as possible.
There was a lot less of it on tv this year, but—as with 2024—I kept current with all seasons of Drag Race. This year that meant: Canada's Drag Race season 5, RuPaul's Drag Race season 17, RuPaul's Drag Race: Tournament of All Stars (season 10), Drag Race France: All Stars, Drag Race Brasil season 2, Drag Race Philippines: Slaysian Royale, RuPaul's Drag Race UK series 7, and Drag Race España temporada 5. The best of these were All Stars France and Slaysian Royale. Unfortunately, both US seasons were a bust this year, despite there being some amazing drag on them. The worst of these seasons, though, was decidedly Brasil—what a mess.
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Not really. But if you don't return your shopping carts at the grocery store, you are jumping to the top of that list. And I truly believe there is a special place in Hell for the people who are listening to stuff or watching videos on their phones without headphones in shared public spaces.
25. What was the best book you read?
Two different novels by Álvaro Enrigue: You Dreamed of Empires, an amazing retelling of the first encounter between Moctezuma, Malintizin, and Cortés that I flat-out adored; and then because I loved that so much I got his earlier book Sudden Death, which is a kind of insane tennis match involving Caravaggio, the history of tennis, the conquest of México, the execution of Anne Boleyn, and a clear path between Mexican artists working with feathers and Baroque chiaroscuro.
Pascal Quignard's gorgeous All the World's Mornings, which was recommended to me by my friend Joe. I also loved Alan Hollinghurst's Our Evenings.
I also read some great plays this year: Nick Green's Casey and Diana and Cliff Cardinal's play William Shakespeare's As You Like It: a Radical Retelling. And I read about 20 French tragedies from the 17th and 18th centuries. I didn't love all of those, but it was very exciting to read to the side of the usual French canon.
So many fun times with my friends in Tallahassee. A brilliant new colleague who joined me teaching our PhD students (honestly it's so hard to get good people; I can't tell you how happy I am).
29. What did you want and not get?
A mandoline. I'll buy one soon.
But honestly it's worth saying that I have most of what I want. I think part of what it means to be happy is to want what you have. There is a great deal I could complain about, but I would rather delight in the things I have been given.
30. What was your favorite film of this year?
This is still likely to change—I have about 60 films on my list to see—but as of the December 30 and until I see tonight's movie, my top ten is:
31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 44. My friend Matt met me in Clearwater Beach, FL and we drank and relaxed on the beach and talked and ate crab. Matt had also set up a surprise where our friend Walter walked into the bar we were in on my actual birthday, and we all had dinner and lots of laughs and nonsense. It was glorious, and I had the best time.
32. What new recipes did you make this year?
The best cookie recipe of the year was Dan Pelosi's Dark 'n' Stormy Cookies, which are amazing. I'm so happy he invented them and I made them (twice).
I've been cooking a lot from Ixta Belfrage's book Fusão, it's a Brazilian fusion cookbook. And I've been making a ton of different bean dishes, as I work toward eating less meat.
I post a lot of food content on Instagram. I am not sure what I'll be making more of in this next year, but I look forward to more East Asian and South Asian food I think.
33. What were your cocktail obsessions?
I drink a lot of Manhattans still. I think it's just so much easier—no lemon juice to squeeze and no shaking. Just a perfect Filthy cherry and that excellent mix of bitters, Whiskey, and Vermouth.
34. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
An H-Mart in Tallahassee.
35. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2025?
Polo after polo.
36. What kept you sane?
I have two standing dates every week now. My bar trivia team (Michael, Meredith, and Jason) meets for Professor Jim's Trivia every Tuesday. And my movie club (I call it Unseen Movie Club but I don't know what everyone else calls it) meets every Thursday to watch something none of us has seen before. This is a real recipe for sanity.
37. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Gianmarco Soresi
38. What political issue stirred you the most?
Ongoing genocide in Palestine. The ongoing refugee crisis in the Mediterranean. The resurgence of fascism in the United States.
This is the same as last year because this is what voters everywhere overwhelmingly seem to like. It's horrible.
This year we can add: the federal government sending military troops into US cities, the US committing piracy in international waters, the bombing of Venezuelan boats, and the Supreme Court's truly criminal and lawless shadow docket.
I like this map Tesla sent me that shows where I charged my car in 2025.
39. Whom did you miss?
My friend John, who I didn't get to see in 2025 because he's over in Spain while I'm in Los Angeles.
40. Who was the best new person you met?
Not the first time I met him, but it was my first time really getting to hang out with Jonathan Shandell this year, and he's great.
41. Tell us a valuable life-lesson you learned in 2025:
I think most of what I learned this year is about teaching. With the crazy advancements in Large Language Models, teaching has become a very new business. I can no longer really trust that students have written what they say they've written, which means I can no longer trust that they've read what they've said they've read or learned any of what I was hoping they might take away from the lessons I've planned. At least at home—in the classroom I can mostly trust that they're there with me, thinking alongside of me. But this has really pushed me in new directions in terms of thinking about why I teach, and why I want them to learn. I've been doing this a long time, so this isn't completely new, but I've realized more and more that this is for them and what I'm working to do is give them tools and ideas and new ways to think about things. It's my responsibility to do that. It's also my responsibility to make learning enticing so that they might want to learn what I have to teach them. The challenge here is that I have to know very, very well why it is that I think they need what I have to give them. We can't take anything for granted any more. This has made me even more confident about my teaching, because I have also had to reckon with and be quite sure about the value of what I have to offer.
42. Share an important quotation from 2025:
This is from Avgi Saketopoulou's book Sexuality Beyond Consent.
"If the perverse underwrites all sexuality, rather than ask perversity to account for itself, we might, instead, ask after docile, tame, and subdued sexualities that may suffer from having lost their footing in the perverse."
I've been thinking a lot this year about what we don't know about each other and about ourselves. I was watching the movie Weapons recently with my sister and my niece (who loves horror movies and talked me into this), and I was struck by a scene in which Josh Brolin's character is dreaming and he begs his mute son to talk to him.
It's the queer child, I said to my relatives who looked at me quizzically. We demand that the child tell us what's going on with him because we cannot fathom what is happening inside the child. We cannot understand his thought processes or desires. This is all children, of course, not only the queer child. And the reason Weapons works so well is that it is indeed very possible that a group of children made some sinister (or indeed harmless) plan to all go do something that the adults in their lives simply cannot fathom. The desires of the child are opaque.
But also this is true of all of us, even ourselves. We don't actually understand ourselves either. In Sexuality Beyond Consent Saketoupoluou writes, "I do not know you. And neither do you." and I think about that all the time. I don't actually know myself very well at all, despite all the navel-gazing I've done (including these annual blogs!). I think this line of thinking has underwritten most of my intellectual work this year. I want to think more about what I am capable of that I haven't yet discovered, and this means also pushing myself toward doing things that I have decided are "not me". Docility and rootedness have worked for me for a while, but I wonder what else there is to discover or put pressure on within the opacity of the self (that is, my self).
P.S. If you have your own annual report or if you have anything to say about this one, shoot me a text or a DM. I'd love to hear from you.
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