K Sawyer Paul

Previously: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020

See: My Personal Interpretation of Star Ratings ⭐

You can always follow me on Letterboxd, the only good social network, for reviews as I see them.

Emotionally great ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Movies

• ‎Look Back (2024) *cries* you can’t even get a job in art anyway.
• ‎Sweet Smell of Success (1957) Felt like I should give this a rewatch in 2025 just to refill my cup on protagonists with not one shred of principle to their name.
• ‎Mickey 17 (2025) A really touching love letter to Moon, Red Dwarf, Hitchhikers, and the Republican Party.
• ‎Superman (2025) 1A Punch Man.
• ‎Sinners (2025) I experienced an—as real as I know—out of body experience during the entire runtime.
• ‎Before Midnight (2013) I put Before Midnight on my watchlist in 2013, thinking I’d get around to it when the time was right.
• ‎One Battle After Another (2025) I love stories starring cool people with interesting grasps on their principles, where the cruel blend of personal choices and institutional circumstances place them in a constant flopsweat panic, in a plane of existence where where anyone can get shot in the head and die any second, except for that one antagonist who simply cannot be killed with conventional weapons. One of the great American fiction genres.
• ‎The Apartment (1960) “Ya know, I used to live like Robinson Crusoe; I mean, shipwrecked among 8 million people. And then one day I saw a footprint in the sand, and there you were.”

Technically great ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Movies

• Nosferatu (2024) Big day for rat perverts.
• ‎Metropolitan (1990) “The most important thing to realize about parents is that there is absolutely nothing you can do about them.”
• ‎To Be or Not to Be (1942) “I hate to leave my country in the hands of a ham.”
• ‎Conclave (2024) Competence porn for gossip.
• ‎The Phoenician Scheme (2025) Del Toro takes such a beating in this movie you’d think he was auditioning for a Buster Keaton flick.
• ‎Divorce Italian Style (1961) You could probably tell people this is a new Wes Anderson flick and just release it in theatres again.
• ‎KPop Demon Hunters (2025) “Yeah my husband’s really into that” my wife out loud to everyone over the last two weeks.
• ‎The Naked Gun (2025) I feel pretty lucky to get to see a Naked Gun in theatres.
• ‎Ghost in the Shell (1995) “I guess once you start doubting, there’s no end to it.” A movie worth watching at 13, 21, 35, and 42.
• ‎Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle (2025) Technically it’s one of the most impressive anime I’ve ever seen. Demon Slayer’s storytelling method of stopping the intense action scene for episode-length multi-layered flashbacks is still its greatest weakness. I’m at the point where I know they’re coming and try to enjoy them for what they are—and damn if the flashbacks here aren’t incredible by themselves—but even I find them exhausting and unwelcome in the moment.
• ‎Hard Boiled (1992) Watching it again in 2025, I’m amazed how impressive the action still is. Do you lose track of the body count ten minutes in? You do. Does the moral compass of the police seem totally broken? Absolutely. What was the bad guys’ plan, anyways? Still unsure. Who cares. The guy with the eye injury had a moral code, right? I think? Anyways, tequila and soda, rock and roll.
• ‎Come September (1961) It might be the recency bias, but this charmer might become one of my favourite 60s romcoms. Come September has a lot going for it: The setting and actors are all gorgeous. The script is witty. Everyone wants something and can’t get it until they become a better person. And, of course, it easily hits all my prerequisites for a good romcom: plenty of miscommunication, meddling, and making out.
• ‎Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc (2025) If you read the manga and thought “I’d enjoy the bomb devil kicking my ass” I have great news for you, they’re showing this in 4D theatres. Ow.

Acceptable ⭐⭐⭐ Movies

• ‎I Love You Again (1940) “The doctor says I should have a drink every fifteen minutes”
• ‎The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) I can’t be the only one who read the script as almost nothing but innuendo, right? Everyone in this movie is just so physically near one another and always willing to take this conversation somewhere more comfortable.
• ‎Hundreds of Beavers (2022) Bugs Bunny cinematic universe.
• ‎Mortal Kombat (1995) 35mm at the Revue in Toronto. That first “MORTAL KOMBAT” scream before even a frame of film is a great table setter.
• ‎China Moon (1994) They say Kyle’s name out loud forty five times.
• So Long at the Fair (1950) The plot really is gaslight gatekeep girl boss. One of my favourite mystery subgenres is “that person you definitely know is real never existed.” This is a good one of those, and the twist at the end is legitimately shocking.
• ‎Draculas Daughter (1936) What a great, unserious movie. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Terry Pratchett somehow went back in time to write it. This is a movie where the main protagonist goes on long rants about real, hard science, but also owns a hypnosis machine.
• ‎Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971) A real “I support trans rights and trans wrongs” movie if there ever was one.

Notes 📝

This isn’t an exhaustive list of movies I saw this year, because that probably wouldn’t be very fun to read. But if you want them, check out my Letterboxd Diary.

Letterboxd remains pretty undefeated as a tracking service. I wrote about it in comparison to ones I use for other mediums, and how none really compare.

Despite watching 72 movies this year, my watchlist also grew. There’s 110 films on there as of this blog post. That’s not bad. I don’t mind it at all when there’s a ton of movies to look forward to. More-so with films than any other medium, it’s not a backlog, but a wine cellar.

There’s 11 movies from 2025 in that watchlist: Pillion, Hedda, Splitsville, No Other Choice, Sorry, Baby, Honey Don’t!, Black Bag, Nirvanna The Band the Show The Movie, and Frankenstein. Any of them could have been my favourite movie this year if I’d gotten to them (and it probably would have been Nirvanna).