2025 In Review: It Ain't Pretty

Not much of a contest for
best picture I saw in a theater
this year.

I only saw 15 movies in the theater, a sad decline from 22 a year ago. Fifteen is tied for my fourth-lowest (non-pandemic) tally since I started journaling in the early 1990s. Four of those 15 were old movies, the eleven new movies I saw represent foremost, going to the movies socially:

• The Naked Gun reboot with Henry
• Fantastic Four reboot with the boys
• Superman with the boys + Kate and Barry
• How To Train Your Dragon remake with the boys
• Mission Impossible...8 ? (I think) with the whole family
• Thunderbolts with the boys
• A Minecraft Movie with the boys
• Paddington In Peru for Pete's birthday
• F1: The Movie with the Dads
• Nosferatu with Richard
• Deliver Me From Nowhere with Aaron

So, basically, I only saw new movies in the theater if my sons wanted to go. I should not be surprised- spectacles for kids is all they make anymore. This article in the NYT points out

"Studios used to give theaters an exclusive window of about 90 days to show new movies. That changed during the pandemic, when movies started to become available for digital rental or purchase after as little as 17 days. This eviscerated the incentive to see movies in theaters — especially dramas and comedies, which play just fine on living room TVs."

In 2025 I can feel the studios starving the theaters to feed their streaming services: I actively planned to see the new movies from three of my favorite directors on the big screen: Wake Up Dead Man, The Running Man, One Battle After Another, and also The Roses on the big screen... but they were all gone from theaters before I had a chance (or maybe, in the case of Wake Up, never arrived).

Regardless, all the good ideas for non-action-packed spectaculars aren't being made into movies, they're being made into TV shows instead. I know this because this Christmas break there were exactly zero movies I wanted to go see in the theater. 

My only hope for 2025 is that my local nonprofit theater, The Triplex in Great Barrington, Mass, just opened their fourth screen last month. With one more movie screening each day, maybe my chances of seeing a movie in the theater will improve in 2026?