2025 certainly was not a bad year in cinema, but I also found many films did not move the needle. Some films were major disappointments. And then, as always, there were the dregs. These five films were, save for one exceptional case, the least enjoyment I got out of film-watching this year.
The Electric State
Many hands have already been wrung over the supposed price tag of this little ditty from the brothers Russo. It is an exacerbating factor in the film’s already negative reception (How could it be this bad and this expensive?) It is a blemish that is difficult to ignore, certainly. If one manages to, they will still be left with a highly derivative wanna-blockbuster that would feel far past its expiration date had it come out 25 years ago. And given what it looks like, the Russos should be glad that this Netflix release was spared the travesty of being blown up to theatrical screen sizes.
A Minecraft Movie
I wrote about A Minecraft Movie, but I don’t even remember the experience of doing it. Looking back at the words, the film doesn’t come back to me in any tangible way (probably because the film looks like an artificial mess). But I think I was right when I said this: A Minecraft Movie is not the nadir of anything. To call it that would be to give it too much credit. It is merely sloppy and ugly-looking. The people behind this—I can only imagine—had dollar signs in their eyes so big that they couldn’t read the script. That, or they simply didn’t care to recognize the large voids where character, reasonable plotting, and wit should’ve been.
Fixed
Armed with animation legend Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack) and Jon Vitti (a former writer for The Simpsons), Fixed should have been eating good in the adult animation department. Instead, it is an 80-minute slog splattered with sub-preteen levels of humor so crudely constructed that the jokes rarely comprise basic setup-punchline structure. That is assuming you agree with me that the word “balls” isn’t a setup and an insert shot of dog testicles isn’t a punchline. The vast majority of the film is this exact thing.
Flight Risk
A dead-on-arrival black box thriller from Mel Gibson starring Mark Wahlberg as a balding psychopath. None of it sticks, and it is hardly even enjoyable as a faux pas. An unhinged Wahlberg should at least register as bad enough to be unintentionally funny, but it doesn’t. The entire exercise is a bore.
War of the Worlds
Sorry. This is embarrassing. I’ve made a terrible editing mistake. This is on the wrong list. War of the Worlds is a master stroke. It is the most fun I had watching a movie this year.
So how did it end up at the very bottom of my 2025 list? Is it the complete lack of nuance through which this film revises its source material to the modern day? Is it the lack of geographical substance caused by every performer acting in complete isolation from one another, leading to some of the funniest Ice Cube reaction shots imaginable? Or is it the utter lack of integrity proposed by the film’s decisive climax, in which the corporate overlord that distributed the movie (Amazon) is the in-world savior of humanity? I don’t know. What I do know: War of the Worlds is the funniest film of 2025.
As always, thanks for reading!
—Alex Brannan (Letterboxd)
CineFiles Movie Reviews 