Hello again.
Hope your week is going well. It was my birthday on Friday and I got to spend it writing work emails, so that was a thrill. I ended up visiting my mom and having a really nice cake, but because I’m a little piggy I forgot to take a picture of the lovely cake before I cut into it. So I decided to take a picture the next morning but in the night her dog, the Potato, helped herself to a few bites. So just trust me that the cake looked nice and I would have shared it with all of you.
Because I appreciate you all and I may be some sort of egomaniac, I decided to have a my own birthday sale. For today only you can get 50% off everything in our webstore (excluding the shirts because I don’t know how to do that on Threadless). Just use the code LetThemEatCake! at checkout.
Speaking of our webstore, a few weeks back we told you all that we would be donating 100% of the money from all the sales in our shop for a week to support Immigrant Rights organizations. I am so happy to say you all really showed up.
Here is the receipt for our $1,200.00 donation to UNIDOS MN. They could still use your support so hit them up if you have some money burning a hole in your pocket.
In other news, my brother Mark has a new newsletter I think you would all be wise to check out. He is the founder of the long running and incredibly influential film festival Rooftop Films, the writer and director of the film APPROACHING THE UNKNOWN, the TV series YEAR MILLION, and a bunch of amazing short films. He’s also a pretty swell guy and has a cute dog who he might put pictures of in the newsletter. No promises tho.
In addition to all that stuff it is possible that he and I have been working on a new project together in secret for a few years and it will be announced soon. Very soon. I am so excited to finally get to talk about it and share it with you all. But in the meantime, see what Mark has to say.
As threatened previously, I wanted to go over my favorite TV shows and movies of 2025. Honestly, I thought it was a pretty great year for film and TV and I tried pretty hard to watch more “new” stuff. I spend a lot of time wondering how much an artist should be present in the cultural conversation. On one hand, I am always crushing on how much folks like Scorsese and Tarantino watch movies non-stop. On the other, when Neurosis said they don’t listen to any music ever because they don’t want to have influences, I thought that was the funniest shit in the world. For myself I tend to err on the side of wanting to know what people are saying and making. I’m not sure it’s beneficial to me in my role as artist, but I feel pretty confident it is beneficial to me in my role as a person.
FILM
My numbers were very solid or psychotic, depending on where you land on these things. By my count I watched 73 movies released in 2025. It turns out when a movie comes out isn’t as exact a science as one would think, but that seems a reasonable accounting. There was a lot of stuff that I really loved and at another time might have ranked higher or lower, but that’s how these things work, right? Your taste is just a snapshot of who you are at a moment in time. And I seem to be sort of a sad sack right now.
Some movies I loved that didn’t quite make the list- KILL THE JOCKEY, WAKE UP DEAD MAN, MAGIC FARM, THE MASTERMIND, BOYS GO TO JUPITER, THE BALTIMORONS, JAY KELLY, and COMPANION. All were a very good time. But here is my top 30 new movies of 2025.
#30. LURKER. Dir: Alex Russell
A wildly intense, uncomfortable, and mesmerizing look at the parasocial relationships that develop around celebrity. Anchored by some truly great performances, LURKER is the clever update of SINGLE WHITE FEMALE for the age of social media that I didn’t know we needed.
#29. THE SECRET AGENT. Dir: Kleber Mendonça Filho
From the jawdropping opening scene, I knew this movie was going to grab me by the throat and not let go. What I didn’t expect was that it would be so many different things at once, all pulling in different directions, and somehow still working. The story of a man on the run from Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1977 is somehow a tense thriller, a tragic love story, a surrealist comedy, and so much more. The wild cast of characters creates such a vivid world. I really loved Kleber Mendonça Filho’s BACURAU for a lot of the same reasons, but THE SECRET AGENT feels like the fully realized work of a true master.
#28. TWINLESS. Dir: James Sweeney
Two lonely men who meet in a grief counseling for people who lost their twins is such a good starting point for a story I think I was going to love this no matter which way it went. Thankfully it went a bunch of places I wasn’t expecting and rarely pulled its punches. At times hilariously funny, at times heartbreakingly sad, after TWINLESS finished I was left with a sort of nagging unease. I had this weird sense that there were things left unsaid in the film that I wanted to hear. I think now that’s just what a movie about loss is supposed to feel like sometimes.
#27. SORRY, BABY. Dir: Eva Victor
Honestly, thinking back on this I am not quite sure why it’s not much higher on my list. I only knew Eva Victor from the funny shorts she’d post on instagram or whatever so I had no idea what to expect here. What you get is maybe one of the most smart and compassionate films about trauma you will ever see. It is genuinely one of the funniest movies of the year. It is also one of the saddest. John Carrol Lynch’s character is such a thing of beauty it took my breath away. Anyone can make a movie that makes you cry. A lot of people can make one that makes you laugh. Doing both is rare. Doing them with such grace is really a magnificent feat.
#26. PAVEMENTS. Dir: Alex Ross Perry
Full disclosure- for a few of my teenage years Pavement were arguably my favorite band. They felt smart, and cool, and important, and probably most importantly, they felt like they hated being those things. So I was really nervous about a documentary about Pavement because I don’t think I wanted to know more. But that’s not what PAVEMENTS is. It’s not trying to shine a light on what once was. Or not really. It’s a love letter to it. It’s making fun of it. It’s reminding you that the thing that was once so much smarter and cooler than you still is. This documentary that centers on the band, the movie about the band, the musical inspired by the band, and the museum exhibit of the band, quickly blurs the line between what’s real and what isn’t. In doing so it reminds you that maybe you shouldn’t take shit so seriously and just enjoy the things you love while they’re around. It’s fucking beautiful and so obnoxious.
#25. CLOUD. Dir: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
If you’ve seen Kurosawa’s other films like PULSE or CURE in some ways you’ll know what to expect here. And by that I mean it’s going to get real fucking unhinged and removed from reality and somehow keep you right there with it. A violent thriller? Yes. A funny satire of modern capitalism? Also yes. Following an ebay reseller as he alienates everyone around him and eventually becomes the scapegoat for all the world’s problems, this movie literally never did what I expected and I loved it for that. And that last scene? Still thinking about the fearlessness it takes to put that in your movie.
#24. FRIENDSHIP. Dir: Andrew DeYoung
At this point either you’re a Tim Robinson person or you’re not. To me, I THINK YOU SHOULD LEAVE is the best sketch comedy show of the last decade. DETROITERS is among the best sitcoms of the last decade. THE CHAIR COMPANY is the best… whatever the fuck The Chair Company is. Point being, this movie was firmly made for me. There is nothing subtle about FRIENDSHIP, this ode to male loneliness, but somehow it’s maybe Tim Robinson’s most subtle project to date. I walked out of the theater thinking it was fun. 2 days later I was telling people I loved it. 6 months later I find myself thinking about it all the time. And the Subway scene is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
#23. SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE. Dir: Jalmari Helander
I love the first SISU a lot. A movie that wears its influences on its sleeves so completely, a movie that has almost no pretension or delusions about what it is, a movie that knows there is joy in just doing one thing really well. So when they announced more SISU I was already all in. This one does make the fatal flaw that so many “simple” stories make, which is trying to go bigger in the sequel. Simplicity is what we came for the first time. We’ll come back for it. But even with the few missteps were it tries to outdo the first film, SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE is a pure joy. Hyper-violent. Absurd. Funny as hell. Badass. I loved every minute.
#22. SINNERS. Dir: Ryan Coogler
People way smarter than me have already told you why SINNERS is so good. Me, I’m a sucker for anyone who can do genre work that makes the people who turn their nose up at genre work take notice. But more than that, I love a movie that handles every element with a level of craft that feels rare. The world building and setup in Sinners is so exceptional you are almost annoyed when the plot begins to move the story forward. The performances and writing are so good you fall in love with the characters instantly. The themes and big ideas are so well done you can just feel that you’re watching something important but it never talks down to you or pulls you out of it. But the thing I keep coming back to about this movie is how it is so much bigger than the sum of its parts. It’s ideas we’ve seen before, themes we’ve heard, even characters we sort of met. But it is all done on such a higher level that literally none of that matters. This is a masterclass in execution and deserves all the love it gets and then some.
#21. SENTIMENTAL VALUE: Dir: Joachim Trier
Boy was I not prepared for this. I’m a big Joachim Trier fan so I probably should have been, but nope. Maybe I’m just getting to that age/pretension level where art about art starts to hit really hard. But there was something about seeing a film about a family of artists who had their family torn apart by their passions, and them trying to use those same passions to fix them… It just felt so painfully honest and confessional. And it felt so pointed. Obviously we all know Stellan Skarsgård is going to just takeover a movie, but Renate Reinsve is truly captivating in this. I think the nicest thing I can say about this movie is there are multiple scenes where I found myself holding my breath.
#20. ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL. Dir: Rungano Nyoni
In some ways I don’t exactly know how to talk about ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL. There are things in this movie that are alienating and off putting and I don’t know if that is directorial choices or my lack of familiarity with Zambian culture. But all that only further drives home how amazing this movie is when it begins to show you things that feel so universal, so human, and so honest. The film follows a young woman who finds her uncle dead on the side of the road and stays with her as his funeral unfolds and overtakes her life. The family secrets, the lies, the carefully hidden facts and deeply buried wounds, all come to light. And just as telling in how much they devastate is how much they don’t. There are scenes that will make you tremble with rage. It truly feels like a level of honesty bordering on too much. But that’s where the power of the film lies. It opens a door that should no longer be closed and asks you which side you want to be on. A staggeringly powerful film.
Well this took longer than I wanted and took up more space than Substack wanted so I guess there will be a Part II coming up. Oops.
My buddy, comic writer Paul Allor, just had a fun little stay in the hospital. And this is America so now he has to make tough choices about paying rent and eating food.
And go buy some of his comics!
In the next year you might read a comic I wrote which has a lot of references to Napoleon in it. You’ll think back to me posting this song and wonder if I was listening to a lot ofAbba because I was writing about him, or if I was writing about him because I was listening to Abba.
Honestly I don’t know the answer. This video rules.
That’s it for me.
Stay safe. Take care of each other. Going to go eat another piece of cake now.
-Matthew Rosenberg
NYC 2/9/26
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