Movie of the Year

Movie of the Year: Best of the Year 2025
Best Horror Movie of the Year
2025 Horror Movies and the Fight to Crown a Champion
The world of 2025 horror movies is a battlefield, and in this episode of Movie of the Year, Mike, Ryan, and Taylor wage war over which film deserves to stand above the rest. Instead of assembling a list or reading off favorites, the panel builds a brutal bracket to determine the best horror movie of 2025 — from studio monsters to indie nightmares to streaming shocks.
This isn’t just a celebration — it’s a confrontation.
Sixteen titles enter.
One claims the crown.
What Horror Means in 2025: Defining the Genre
Before the eliminations begin, the panel confronts the evolution of horror in 2025.
Is horror now:
a metaphor for social collapse?
a space for spiritual terror?
a conduit for bodily dread?
Or simply the movie that makes your heart race and palms sweat?

2025 horror movies refuse to stay in one lane.
The conversation traces how audiences now crave:
original horror films over sequels
daring stylistic swings
unpredictable stories
atmosphere over explanation
new monsters and mythologies

This episode takes seriously the project of defining what horror in 2025 feels like.
The 16 Films Competing for Best Horror Movie of 2025
This year’s bracket includes a mix of theatrical releases, streaming originals, and buzzy festival darlings hoping to break through.
The contenders for best horror film of 2025 include:
Sinners (religious terror with real teeth)
The Ugly Stepsister (fairy tale dread reimagined)
Good Boy, a streaming sleeper hit with claws
The Monkey, a Stephen King adaptation built for nightmares
Frankenstein, prestige monster cinema reborn
Death of a Unicorn, indie black magic meets satire
Bring Her Back, folk horror with bite
Wolf Man, classic creature feature updated
Weapons, conceptual terror from filmmakers pushing boundaries

The 2025 Season Begins with the Oscar Draft
Movie of the Year is back with a brand-new season, and there’s no better way to kick things off than with our first-ever Oscar Draft 2025. Hosted by Cassie, this episode sees panelists Ryan, Mike, Greg, and Taylor engage in a deadly serious competition to predict which films will dominate awards season.
Each drafter is tasked with assembling a roster of films they believe will rack up the most Academy Award nominations—across any and all categories—once Oscar morning finally arrives. It’s prediction, strategy, taste, and fortune-telling rolled into one.
The Taste Buds are back, and this time they’re playing for keeps.
Draft Rules: How the Oscar Draft 2025 Works
To ensure fairness—and maximize tension—the draft follows a snake format, meaning the order reverses each round.
Key Rules:
Drafters select movies, not individuals or categories
Any film is eligible—first half, festival darling, delayed release mystery, whatever
No two panelists can draft the same film
Five rounds total
The winning team is the one whose final slate earns the most nominations when the Academy announces them

Every pick is a bet—on the movies themselves, their campaigns, their distributors, their word of mouth, and even the voters’ unpredictable tastes.
Prediction vs Taste: Two Ways to Play
One wrinkle that defines the episode: panelists must decide what kind of drafter they want to be.
Do you swing for awards-season favorites blessed with early buzz?
Or gamble on late-breaking discoveries nobody else notices yet?
Some draft with spreadsheets and precedent. Others reach for films they want to see recognized. Every strategy has holes—and every smart pick someone else was eyeing can change the entire board.
Stakes, Tension, and Oscar Bloodsport
Unlike the usual Movie of the Year chaos, this one is deadly serious.
No bit is too small, no argument too granular, and no accusation too petty.
Ryan, Mike, Greg, and Taylor:
block each other’s picks
steal films out of sheer spite
argue over festival credibility
negotiate control of the board
and, occasionally, wonder if they’ve made a catastrophic mistake

With no immediate winner declared, the true victor won’t be revealed until Oscar nominations are announced.
Which makes the waiting—and the trash talk—that much sweeter.
Bonus Conversation: The State of the 2025 Race
Between picks, Cassie guides the panel through the critical questions that define this year’s awards landscape, including:
Are we preparing for a heavyweight Best Picture category?
Does streaming still have power?
Are studio campaign budgets shrinking—or...

Movie of the Year: 1971
The Devils
Why The Devils (1971) Still Provokes
In this episode of Movie of the Year, Ryan and Mike confront The Devils, Ken Russell’s incendiary historical drama that remains one of the most controversial films ever made. More than fifty years after its release, the film continues to shock and challenge audiences—not simply for its imagery, but for its ruthless examination of power and religion as intertwined systems of control.
Set in 17th-century France but unmistakably modern in its fury, this 1971 production exposes how institutions weaponize belief, morality, and fear. The conversation centers on why its reputation for scandal has so often eclipsed its intelligence, craft, and relevance.
Guest Spotlight: Brian Eggert of DeepFocusReview.com
Joining Ryan and Mike is special guest Brian Eggert, editor and lead writer at DeepFocusReview.com. Brian brings a historically grounded, analytical perspective that helps reframe the movie beyond its notoriety.
Brian discusses Ken Russell’s place in 1970s cinema, the long history of censorship surrounding the film, and why its critique of power and religion feels increasingly urgent today. His insight clarifies why this work endures not as shock cinema, but as a rigorously argued piece of political art.
Power and Religion as Systems of Control
At its core, this film is about power and religion—and how faith becomes an instrument of domination when fused with political authority. What begins as a case of alleged demonic possession in Loudon evolves into a portrait of institutional violence, where truth is irrelevant and spectacle is essential.
Ryan and Mike, with Brian’s input, analyze how religious authority operates alongside the state. Confessions are coerced, belief is staged, and punishment is public. Spiritual language masks political intent, turning faith into theater and theater into violence.
Russell and Jarman: Cinema Built to Confront
One of the most radical elements of the movie is the collaboration between Ken Russell and Derek Jarman. The pairing of Russell and Jarman produces a visual world that rejects period realism in favor of aggressive symbolism.
The episode breaks down how this partnership:
replaces historical authenticity with stark modernist design
uses white, brutalist architecture to deny comfort
transforms religious iconography into provocation
employs excess as both aesthetic strategy and political critique

This is not cinema designed to immerse—it is cinema designed to unsettle.
The Citizens of Loudon and Collective Responsibility
Beyond its powerful figures, the story is deeply concerned with the citizens of Loudon. Crowds gather, whisper, watch, and ultimately participate in the machinery of destruction.
Ryan and Mike explore how the film portrays moral panic as a communal process. Fear spreads socially. Violence becomes normalized. The narrative suggests that institutional cruelty only succeeds because ordinary people allow it to happen. The townspeople are not just victims of authority—they are active participants in its enforcement.
Sex, Blasphemy, and the Machinery of Scandal
Much of the controversy surrounding this work stems from its...

Movie of the Year: 1971
The Panic in Needle Park
Why Panic in Needle Park Still Resonates
In this episode of Movie of the Year, Ryan, Greg, and Mike revisit Panic in Needle Park (1971), an unflinching and immersive portrait of addiction, intimacy, and desperation etched into the grit of New York in the 70s. The film’s stark realism and emotional rawness turn what might have been exploitation into something astonishingly human — and absolutely unforgettable.
The Taste Buds explore how Schatzburg’s shots and the fraught dynamics of Bobby and Helen place Panic in Needle Park among the most honest depictions of addiction and dependency in American cinema.
SCHATZBURG’S SHOTS: Cinematic Realism Without Artifice
Director Jerry Schatzberg crafts Panic in Needle Park with a visual language that refuses escape. Rather than offering stylized glamour, Schatzburg’s shots are observational and immersive — handheld, close, and relentlessly present. These techniques force viewers into the characters’ world, where discomfort isn’t cinematic but immediate and visceral.
The Taste Buds discuss how Schatzberg uses tight framing, real location shooting, and a documentary-like approach to blur the line between performance and lived experience — making addiction feel as suffocating onscreen as it must in reality.
Bobby and Helen and Al: Love, Dependency, and Collapse
At the emotional core of the film lies the complex, destructive relationship of Bobby and Helen. Bobby and Helen’s relationship is not romanticized — it’s transactional, codependent, and shaped by survival on the margins. Al looms as both enabler and inevitability, a reminder that escape is always temporary.
Ryan, Greg, and Mike explore how the film treats love and addiction as mirrors: Bobby and Helen cling not to hope, but to each other because they have nowhere else to turn. The cycle of dependency becomes the story’s most heartbreaking theme.
New York in the 70s: A City That Sees It All
Few films capture New York in the 70s with the same unvarnished clarity as Panic in Needle Park. The city is at once backdrop and silent character — indifferent, worn, and sprawling. Parks, streets, and subways become interchangeable landscapes of desperation and anonymity.
The Taste Buds discuss how Panic in Needle Park uses real locations to root its story in a specific urban moment — a New York fraught with economic hardship, social upheaval, and the grinding anonymity that shapes these lives.
Guest Spotlight: Mark Searby — Scholar, Podcaster, and Al Pacino Expert
This episode features special guest Mark Searby, a seasoned film critic, broadcaster, and author with deep expertise in character-driven cinema. Mark is best known as the host of All About Al: The Pacino Podcast, a series dedicated to exploring the film, television, and stage career of Al Pacino. The show offers in-depth discussions with critics, scholars, and collaborators about Pacino’s work and influence. Acast
Mark is also the author of Al Pacino: The Movies Behind The Man, a comprehensive guide to Pacino’s filmography that examines the actor’s artistic evolution — from his breakout performance in Panic in Needle Park through classics like The Godfather and Dog Day Afternoon. Apple...

Movie of the Year: 1971
Duel
Why Duel Still Defines Steven Spielberg
In this episode of Movie of the Year, Ryan, Greg, and Mike hit the highway with Duel, the 1971 television movie that announced the arrival of Steven Spielberg as a filmmaker to watch. Long before Jaws turned Spielberg into a household name, Duel showcased his instinctive command of suspense, visual storytelling, and cinematic geography.
Though made for television, Duel feels relentlessly cinematic. The Taste Buds explore how Steven Spielberg transformed a simple premise—a man pursued by a truck—into a nerve-shredding examination of fear, pride, and survival, and why Duel remains one of the most influential thrillers of the 1970s.
Steven Spielberg’s Duel: The Blueprint for a Legendary Career
Viewed today, Duel plays like a rough draft of Steven Spielberg’s entire career. Even at this early stage, Spielberg demonstrates the techniques that would come to define his work:
crystal-clear visual storytelling
tension built through movement rather than dialogue
empathy for ordinary protagonists
action staged with escalating precision

Ryan, Greg, and Mike break down how Duel anticipates Spielberg’s later films, from Jaws to War of the Worlds, in which everyday people confront overwhelming, often mechanical forces. Duel is not just Spielberg’s breakthrough—it’s his mission statement.
Duel, Masculinity, and the Fragile American Male
At the center of the film is Dennis Weaver’s David Mann, a character whose name underscores the film’s obsession with masculinity. Spielberg presents masculinity not as strength, but as something brittle—constantly tested by humiliation, fear, and wounded pride.
The Taste Buds analyze how Steven Spielberg uses the relentless chase to strip Mann of social niceties and self-image. Each confrontation with the truck becomes a confrontation with his own identity, forcing Mann to decide whether masculinity means dominance, endurance, or simply surviving long enough to escape.
This uneasy portrait of masculinity would echo throughout Spielberg’s career, particularly in his depictions of anxious men pushed to emotional and physical extremes.
America as a Hostile Landscape in Duel
Few films capture the anxiety lurking beneath the promise of America’s open spaces as effectively as Duel. Spielberg transforms highways, diners, and gas stations into zones of menace, where authority is absent and help never arrives.
Ryan, Greg, and Mike discuss how Steven Spielberg’s vision of America in Duel reflects a growing cultural unease: freedom becomes isolation, mobility becomes vulnerability, and technology becomes an anonymous threat. The truck itself is never humanized—it’s industrial, faceless, and unstoppable, embodying a uniquely American nightmare.
Guest Spotlight: Eric Vespe (Formerly Quint) from The Spiel
This episode features special guest Eric Vespe, a veteran film journalist and podcaster with decades of experience covering cinema and genre filmmaking. Eric is formally known to many longtime film fans as Quint, the byline he used during his...