2025 in movies you might watch
4th annual movie bracket: MAN v. MACHINE // week one highlights from MSPIFF
My goal with this newsletter is to write about new films as they reach general release, along with some seasonally appropriate commentary on other cinematic events and interests. This week, instead of reviewing A Minecraft Movie, we’ve got reports from the Minneapolis-St.Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF) and the roll out of the 4th Annual Movie Bracket (!). This newsletter comes out every Wednesday, which this week actually means Wednesday. Please enjoy - and if you do, consider sharing it with a friend.
Important announcement, important announcement, this is important: announcing the official theme of the 2025 MOVIE BRACKET. Every year we make a 64-film NCAA-style bracket based around a vague theme. Anyone who wants to can fill out a bracket and then vote in a series of high-stakes polls over the month of December to determine the winner. This year, the theme is:
We’re pitting 64 movies against one another in which a MAN (i.e. a human or otherwise anthropomorphized biological entity of indiscriminate gender) takes on a MACHINE (i.e. a machine). The regions are: VEHICLES, ROBOTS, COMPUTERS, and CONTRAPTIONS (basically anything that is definitely a machine but doesn’t fall into one of the other three categories). Below are the initial lists, also available in print in the very-rare MAN // MACHINE zine (find one at Boneshaker Books in Minneapolis or, if you really want one, message me and I’ll mail it to you):
Data-minded readers will notice that there are more than 64 films on these lists. Don’t worry, we’ll pare them down over the course of the year. I’m sharing the long list so you can start watching, arguing, assessing - and maybe even enjoying.
In November, we’ll release the official bracket. In December, we’ll start official voting. What is the point of this? I don’t know, it’s something to do. The winner is almost always upsetting.1 The owner of the winning bracket receives a bottle of the beverage of their choice.
In the past we’ve done this through a chaotic mixture of email, texting, Google Forms, and paper. This year we’re going to try it through Substack. So - if you were on the email list in the past and you want to keep getting updates, the ideal thing for you to do would be to subscribe. Here’s a button:
(You don’t need to sign up for Substack. You don’t need to give me money. You just have to put in your email address if you want to receive emails.)
In the meantime, I would love feedback about this list. Did I exclude your favorite movie? Did I include something that doesn’t belong? What is the definition of “MACHINE” anyway? Leave a comment or email me or DM me on Substack if you can figure out how to do that.
I think this activity creates a vague sense of community and is fun. If you have too much of that in your life already then I’m happy for you. If you want more, I encourage you to sign up.
MSPIFF, which I’ve learned is pronounced “em-spiff,” is underway, and lots of good stuff is happening over on St. Anthony Main. I’ve never been to a festival before and have no idea how to interact with anyone, so I’ve just been going to movies that seem cool and leaving it at that. People talk about audiences booing and giving standing ovations and such at these things, but that doesn’t seem to happen here. The most exciting thing I’ve seen so far was when a lady sitting next to me started taking notes on her cellphone and the guy behind her kicked her chair.
Miguel Gomes, Grand Tour (premiered at Cannes, 2024; coming to Mubi April 18).
Grand Tour certainly has a lot going on - enough for people to clap at the end and for me to feel dumb. It's a movie that benefits from knowing about the production, which might explain its Best Director win at Cannes. Filmed during the pandemic, Gomes directed his principles on Portuguese soundstages while sending out three separate cinematographers to shoot on location across Asia. That's technically impressive, and once you figure out what's going on it makes an interesting point about cinematic Orientalism - but if you go in unfamiliar it feels a bit like someone telling you about their recent multi-country vacation to Asia. There's plenty to love: a karaoke performance of "My Way" that ends in tears, a surprisingly touching puppet show about where chicken eggs come from, the most effective surprise injection of an operatic aria since Happy Feet 2. But despite the rush of languages and the 16mm scenery, the focus is a love story between two English people that we're never given good cause to care about. Is the point that any Westerner’s trip to Asia ultimately amounts to processing our boring, selfish selves against a backdrop that we can't help but exoticize? OK, great, but I already sit through two hours of that every time a friend comes back with 300 cellphone pictures from Bangkok. Rumor has it that I might be going to Japan next winter, so maybe I too will get the opportunity to Orientalize half the world for the benefit of my own personal development. I don’t think I’ll make a movie about it.
Karan Kandhari, Sister Midnight (premiered at Cannes, 2024; supposedly coming to theaters “soon,” which might mean May).
Karan Kandhari’s directorial debut Sister Midnight also has too much going on, but it makes up for that with style, energy, and a phenomenal performance by Radhika Apte. She's been in a lot of what appears to be the Hindi-language version of Netflix slop, but hopefully the festival success of Sister Midnight leads to more opportunities for the world to see what she’s got. She's on camera for 80% of the movie and never gets boring, spitting out one-liners, unexpected thrashes, and more disgusted facial contortions than a high-school health class. I’m not sure I could spoil the plot if I tried: it's the story of an arranged marriage that doesn't go well, and the designation "horror comedy" is accurate. Karan Kandhari took 20 years to make this film and it seems like it - too many ideas crammed into too little space without enough narrative control to establish where exactly we're going. But focus is an acquired skill, and the more innate ones - composition, rhythm, management of stop-motion goats - are on full display. An American distribution company picked this up in December and Kandhari is already on to his second Iggy Pop-themed production, so keep these guys on your radar.
Tumpal Tampubolon, Crocodile Tears (premiered at TIFF, 2024; no American release date).
Another directorial debut, and, in ways that I won’t spoil, one similar to Kandhari’s. This time the bad relationship is between mother and son, and it takes place at an Indonesian crocodile zoo. The sheer number of crocodiles employed by this movie is insane: the credits went too fast to count, but I’m sure it was upwards of 30. That Tampubolon pulls that off without resorting to CGI is reason enough to seek this one out. Crocodile Tears opens with a shot of the main character masturbating while staring at a wall and shortly cuts to him spooning with his mother, so you know we’re headed for Freud-y waters. I don’t know if it says anything about overbearing mothers that hasn’t been said before, but it’s a beautifully shot psycho-thriller that walks a tight line between pathos and horror without drowning in either. It’ll hit home for lizard owners and people with mommy issues alike. I’ve got to assume that’s a fairly sizeable Venn diagram, so the fact that this still doesn’t have U.S. distribution yet seems like a big miss.
Andrew DeYoung, Friendship (premiered at TIFF, 2024; coming to theaters May 23).
Our culture is in a pretty different place since the last time an iconic comedy came out (which was maybe The Hangover? No wonder people are all a mess2) but Friendship has the potential to be a “milk was a bad choice,” “whatever I want to do, gosh,” “my wife” type of movie. See it at your first opportunity because our culture’s ability to ruin things has been radically optimized since 2009. I’ll probably write more when it comes out in May, so I’ll hold off for now. It’s as funny as people say it is. It’s capable of creating clickbait-y “state of male friendship” content. In that it safely plays out the common anxiety spirals of American men, it probably provides opportunities for public healing. I don’t know, I’m not good at predictions - maybe this will whiff it and go nowhere. But if we can get it together to act like a proper society for a minute, this could be 2025’s best shot at monoculture.
Thanks for reading this week’s installment of life is disappointing. If you found this newsletter slightly less disappointing than the rest of your life, consider liking, commenting, pledging me money (thanks!), or subscribing. Subscribing will get you exactly what you get here but sent to your email inbox. I’ll be back next week with more news from MSPIFF and some Easter-themed rambling about Robert Bresson.
Past themes and winners. 2022: SEQUELS - Rush Hour 2; 2023: MOVIE BRATS - Jurassic Park; 2024: FOOD MOVIES - Spirited Away.
I ran this thought experiment by a few people and there was some agreement that the most recent blockbuster to break our 15-year comedy drought was Barbie. I’m not sure if I classify Barbie as a pure comedy, but that makes me wonder if “pure comedy” just means “crass movie made by boys.”
I can’t believe you forgot ghost in the shell!!