The State of the Art: Movies 2025

Well. That's better. Last year, the slate of movies I saw wasn't bad, but nothing really captured my attention in a super-special way. Pop culture across the board left me in a sad state of sluggish ennui, but pretty much every category stepped up this year, which I'm immensely relieved by. Movies are no exception, because my favorite one of the year was incredible.

It'd be so easy for Sinners to just be another vampire movie. I almost just let it slip by, even as it was getting a tidal wave of positive word-of-mouth. It took some convincing from my husband and friends that 1) I could handle the gore level, and 2) I really, really needed to see this. They were right. Michael B. Jordan plays a set of twins who blow back into their small town after years away to open a juke joint with the help of their blues-playing cousin Sammie (Miles Caton) and other local friends. The twins reconnect with old flames (Wunmi Mosaku and Hailee Steinfeld), and while their opening night is wildly successful, their success draws negative attention of more than one kind. Sinners is fun and scary and beautiful and enchanting and unpredictable and sad. It's about love and music and racism and found family. It makes you root both for and against the villains (well, some of them). It's outstanding in every respect, right down to the shifting aspect ratios.

Let's get to the full 2025 list!

Sinners (A)
Twinless (A-)
The Naked Gun (B+)
Superman (B+)
Black Bag (B+)
Thunderbolts* (B+)
Wake Up Dead Man (B+)
Eternity (B+)
Drop (B+)
KPop Demon Hunters (B)
Materialists (B)
Hedda (B-)
Fantastic Four: First Steps (B-)
Splitsville (B-)
Megan 2.0 (B-)
You're Cordially Invited (B-)
Merv (C+)
The Parenting (C+) 
Kinda Pregnant (C+)

As usual, though, a lot of the year was spent catching up on movies from previous years. It bears a reminder that grades reflect how much I enjoyed watching these, weighed against how successful it was at achieving the level of quality it was going for. Long story, short: No, Tammy and the T-Rex wasn't angling for any Oscars, but it was a blast. Also, I'm not listing A Goofy Movie because while it was shown on a screen that my eyes were pointed towards, I was sleepy and...in a bit of an altered state, so I don't remember a single frame of it. Without further ado, here's the pre-2025 ranking!

Flow (2024) (A)

Promising Young Woman (2020) (A-)

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) (A-)

My Old Ass (2024) (A-)

A Nice Indian Boy (2024) (A-)

Bound (1996) (B+)

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024) (B+)
Conclave (2024) (B)

Dark City (1998) (B)

The Marvels (2023) (B)

Orion and the Dark (2024) (B)

North Avenue Irregulars (1979) (B)

Tammy and the T-Rex (1994) (B)

Twisters (2024) (B-)

Shag (1989) (B-)

The Commitments (1991) (B-)

Bagdad Cafe (1987) (B-)

The Assassination Bureau (1969) (C+)

Hair (1979) (C+)

White Chicks (2004) (C+)

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019) (C)

Superman III (1983) (D+) 

Highlander (1986) (D)

Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle (2020) (D)

The State of the Art: Television 2025

It can be difficult to identify what area of pop culture was the "best" in my tastes in a given year. Often, there's a year where, for example, there was one standout book that captured my heart above everything else, but movies as whole were better than my reading year. On the other hand, there can absolutely be years where one media type dominates. In 2022, the year's video games were so outstanding that I don't know if it'll ever be matched again. Well, it looks like we're in another of those years where one kind of entertainment dominates. 

This has been a wonderful year for television. I was able to watch a lot of shows this year, and that usually means a pretty standard bell curve of quality. In 2025, though, an unprecedented ten shows earned a grade in the A-range, the most of any year since I've been measuring. So, great year for TV. That must mean that picking an overall favorite must have been agonizing, right? Nope. Choosing the best show of the year was simplicity itself, because how could anything even come close to matching Long Story Short?

This show was incredible. I shouldn't be surprised, since it comes from the minds that wrote and animated terrific shows like Bojack Horseman and Tuca & Bertie, but at the same time, those shows had a lot of fantastical elements. This show is just about a family and their interpersonal relationships, telling their stories while jumping back and forth in time. And it's amazing. It's laugh out loud funny, but can be heartfelt at the same time. It tackles issues as small as what to write in a congratulatory speech to ones as massive as how to handle the religious upbringing of your child. It's the most Jewish show I've ever seen, and that's saying something - at times it felt like it was spying on my own family's conversations. It's so good that editing this list of favorites has me wanting to watch the whole season for the third time.

But, like I said, while it was easily my favorite of the year, the year itself was no slouch. Let's get to the full list! 

Long Story Short (Season 1) (2025) (A)
Pee-Wee as Himself (documentary) (2025) (A)
Overcompensating (Season 1) (2025) (A)
The Studio (Season 1) (2025) (A-)
The Residence (Season 1) (2025) (A-)
Pluribus (Season 1) (2025) (A-)
Adolescence (Season 1) (2025) (A-)
Win or Lose (Season 1) (2025) (A-)
A Man on the Inside (Season 1) (2024) (A-)
Ghosts (America) (Season 1-2) (2021, 2022) (A-) 

Somebody Somewhere (Season 2) (2023) (B+)
The Devil's Plan (Seasons 1-2) (2023, 2025) (B+)
Black Mirror (Season 7) (2025) (B+)
Dark Matter (Season 1) (2024) (B+)
A Man on the Inside (Season 2) (2025) (B+)

Survival of the Thickest (Season 2) (2025) (B) 
Poker Face (Season 2) (2025) (B)
Great British Baking Show (Season 16) (B)
King of the Hill (Season 14) (2025) (B)
Bob's Burgers (Season 15-16) (2024, 2025) (B)
Fright Krewe (Season 2) (2024) (B)
Nobody Wants This (Season 1) (2024) (B) 
Grimm (Season 1-2) (2011, 2013) (B)
Haunted Hotel (Season 1) (2025) (B)
St. Denis Medical (Season 1-2) (2024, 2025) (B)
Harley Quinn (Season 5) (2025) (B)

Mythic Quest (Season 1) (2020) (B-)
Joey (Season 1) (2004) (B-)

Only Murders in the Building (Season 5) (2025) (C+)
Mid-Century Modern (Season 1) (2025) (C+)
The Four Seasons (Season 1) (2025) (C+)
Running Point (Season 1) (2025) (C)
Secret Level (Season 1) (2024) (C)

The State of the Art: Games 2025

In years past, I've often thought of myself as on a diverging path when it came to what the best games of the year are. Not that I thought the crowd had bad taste or anything; it's just that I always preferred whatever weird little indie I had discovered to any of the big releases everyone else was obsessed with. In 2025, however, the wisdom of crowds certainly asserted itself. While there were certainly still a couple of buried gems, I tended to enjoy what everyone else was playing, too. This year also had a lot of remakes, sequels, and spiritual successors, which makes it tough to categorize what constitutes a "new" game. Luckily, it's my list, so I can handle the taxonomy however I want. Yay! 

To that end, I've done splits in a couple of different ways before. I've done the favorite-released-this-year paired with favorite-played-this-year, and left-brained favorite paired with right-brained favorite. I can actually do both simultaneously this year. When it comes to right-brained favorite game released this year, it's got to be the runaway hit that took everyone by surprise.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 shares a lot of gameplay DNA with JRPGs, but its French style, along with its impeccably-voiced characters, gave it a really fresh take. Fun and gorgeous, with an Act I reveal that left my jaw on the ground, it far and away deserved all the accolades it's won. 

As awesome as Clair Obscur was, however, it was nowhere near the most fun I had this year. That honor goes to a left-brained game that I've already played. Two years ago, I mentioned The Roottrees Are Dead, a free-to-play browser game that I became obsessed with. It gained enough popularity for the creator to update it for release on Steam, with professional art instead of AI, actual voice-over, and tweaks to some of the story clues to make it more intuitive. Since I had such a great time with the original, I happily handed over my money to play the new version, and was delighted to discover that they've actually added content; the most welcome surprise of the year was diving into that sequel mystery.

Both of these games had stiff competition. Ghost of Yotei was a terrific sequel to Ghost of Tsushima that gave Clair Obscur a run for its money, and Unheard - Voices of Crime was neck-and-neck with The Roottrees Are Dead as my favorite mystery game. Any and all of these games would get a strong recommend from me. I also had a good time with some new tabletop games -- Earthborne Rangers and Here to Slay in particular -- but as for video games, let's get to the loosely-ranked list!

The Roottrees Are Dead (updated)
Unheard - Voices of Crime
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Ghost of Yotei
Blue Prince
Botany Manor
Dispatch
The Lamplighters League
The Case of the Golden Idol
Metaphor: ReFantazio
Age of Wonders 4
Date Everything!
Robocop: Rogue City
Indika
Vampire Therapist
The Outer Worlds 2
Type Help
Open Roads
Little Problems: A Cozy Detective Game
Tactical Breach Wizards
Wanderstop
Avowed
Medium
Viewfinder
As Dusk Falls
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage
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The State of the Art: Books 2025

As a year, holistically, 2025 has been terrible. For society, that is. I can't claim a lot of personal tragedy, but I'm certainly attuned to how bad things are in general. Normally, when things are dour like this, I turn to bright, cheery music or upbeat movies. Books, however, are where I go to wallow. Nothing enhances a bad mood like a grim or pensive book. As always, I looked over the year's offerings to see if I could identify a "theme": 

2019: "Anywhere But Here"
2020: "Dealing with Loss"
2021: "What We Owe to Each Other"
2022: "Look Behind the Curtain"
2023: "Stay In Your Lane"
2024: "The Ones Who Are Overlooked"

In 2025, to my initial point, it appears that I'm embracing this downbeat year with a theme of "The End". Whether it's suicide, pending apocalypse, an apocalypse that has already happened, war, revolution, or murder, the books I read this year tended to focus on humanity reaching the end of the road, in one way or another.

I didn't read as much as I'd have liked in 2025, but the good news is that I achieved my evergreen resolution to make sure that I'm reading books by authors from a wide spectrum of races, genders, sexual orientations, and nationalities. That's always something to celebrate. There was a lot of genre-hopping, too. From sci-fi to mystery to non-fiction to fantasy, I had a little of everything this year. So what earned the top spot? Let's get to the list!

Sea of Tranquility (Emily St. John Mandel) (2022) (A)

Lincoln in the Bardo (George Saunders) (2017) (A-)

Cuba: An American History (Ada Ferrer) (2021) (A-)

She Who Became the Sun (Shelley Parker-Chan) (2021) (A-)

Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths (Natalie Haynes) (2020) (B+)

The House in the Cerulean Sea (TJ Klune) (2020) (B+)

When the Moon Hits Your Eye (John Scalzi) (2025) (B+)

Landline (Rainbow Rowell) (2014) (B+)

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires (Grady Hendrix) (2020) (B+)

Starling House (Alix E. Harrow) (2023) (B+)

Gardens of the Moon (Malazan Book of the Fallen #1) (Steven Erikson) (1999) (B)

The Restaurant of Lost Recipes (Hisashi Kashiwai) (2014, translated 2024) (B)

The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands (Sarah Brooks) (2024) (B)

Someday, Maybe (Onyi Nwabineli) (2022) (B)

Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone (Benjamin Stevenson) (2022) (B)

The End of the World as We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King's The Stand (edited by Christopher Golden, Brian Keene) (2025) (B)

We Used to Live Here (Marcus Kliewer) (2024) (B)

What If It's Us (Becky Albertalli, Adam Silvera) (2018) (B-)

They All Fall Down (Rachel Howzell Hall) (2019) (C-)

The City We Became (N.K. Jemisin) (2020) (abandoned)