The Best :)
What the Space Melt Cinema team watched and loved in 2025
Every year they make movies! And every year, the three of us head to the theaters like pigs to the slop trough. Oink oink, bitch! Here at Space Melt, we’re just nerds trying to watch as many movies as possible. This year, it seems like all of us had pretty broad tastes, which we were forced to work towards after Nick correctly noted how often Monty was recommending “movies where a guy fights a cop.”
This was a banner year for Melt, with packed screenings such as The Raid, Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight, and Drop Dead Gorgeous; Matt Farley visiting us for Don’t Let The Riverbeast Get You!; our first charity screening (The Long Goodbye), and Emily going into psychosis during the Philadelphia Film Festival. We showed movies we’ve only dreamed of screening and popped up in several new venues this year. We did our first press and after a year of talking about it, Emily actually made some merch (releasing soon). We can’t wait to keep melting with you, whether at our screenings or here on Substack. In the meantime, here are, in no particular order, the five best new movies and five best first time watches for each of us this year. Happy new year, and see you at our next screening !
THE NEW
Monty (nice mustache man)
Eddington - I don’t think this is a perfect movie; I guess Ari bites off more than he can chew. But goddamn, does he chew. Amazing stuff. The “Fireworks” slap? Scene of the year. Eddington also felt like an intentional box office bomb: I don’t think anything that was seemingly tailor-made for approximately 700 people with Jacobin subscriptions and is about May 2020 is going to do well at the box office. Love it. Also completely vindicated in real life.
Final Destination: Bloodlines - I love the Final Destination movies for capturing the ambient anxiety of getting on a plane, riding an escalator, or dining at a revolving restaurant tower: what if this insane chain of events happened and I get killed in a hilarious and humiliating way? I already can’t sit in a MRI machine without having a panic attack. Bloodlines showed that I am 100% validated in my fear. Plus, there’s a scene of a fat, annoying child being squished into goop by a falling piano.
Superman - Fuck you, I had a BLAST. Gen-X freak out James Gunn made a Superman whose most significant weakness is getting cancelled and called out for his harems on “the internet”. First blockbuster movie about the evils of cancel culture from a middle-aged man. A Superman who fucks. Colorful, silly nonsense. I loved this stupid movie and I hope it made 10 trillion dollars (editor’s note: it did not).
The Testament of Ann Lee - Almost unclassifiable—part musical, part religious epic, part Tumblr mood board, all a wildly entertaining and unique experience. I cheered when there was a metal riff during a scene when they are at sea, dancing on the ship’s deck.
No Other Choice -I’ve talked about my feelings on this movie in a prior Substack, but let me repeat myself: No Other Choice is a perfect movie about the horrors and comedy of unemployment. Three hours of a searing critique of capitalism mixed with some Looney Tunes-ass sequences. It might be my favorite Park Chan-Wook movie yet.
Honorable Mention: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. It feels shameful to include this as a honorable mention, but Superman lecturing a bald Nicholas Hoult about how punk rock it is to have feelings was truly an indelible image. Jokes aside, I believe this to one of the most stressful and hilarious movies I’ve seen all year. While much ink has been rightfully spilled about how it portrays motherhood, If I Had Legs is a searing depiction of anxiety. From the tight frame of the camera, the never ending barrage of crisis, and the sense that nothing ever will get better, Mary Bronstein constructs an unpleasant cinematic journey. I felt a relief once the credits rolled. But I loved every second of this. Watch this with your family.
Emily (!)
I saw four of these films during the Philadelphia Film Festival and will not have much to say that’s new, but here we go:
It Was Just An Accident - After getting into a number of Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s films this year (highlights include The Circle and Taxi), this ending up my favorite movie of the year is a nice cap off. The first film Panahi made after coming out of prison focuses on a group of people trying to decide what to do after possibly recognizing their former torturer from jail. This is a moral thriller that I couldn’t look away from even with it being my fourth movie I saw that day, and had some of my favorite acting of the year. Discussed more here.
The Testament of Ann Lee - Most unique first half of a film I’ve seen in a long while! Variety called it one of the worst of the year, I say they have no appreciation for the clear, Mamma-Mia-honed talents of Amanda Seyfried in a little musical. Any movie where Christopher Abbot shows up is going to be a freaky little time. Discussed more here. In the meantime, we at SMC cannot wait for that soundtrack to drop, as I would not stop singing it on the way home.
La Grazia - A very divisive film in that you will either really love it or really hate it, as a number of Sorrentino/Servillo collaborations are. Turns out I love an old man walking around beautiful sets and feeling grief while EDM plays. I wrote about this much more thoughtfully here and there is a much more recent and better trailer for it here.
The Secret Agent - I had missed this at the Festival this year and only saw it four days ago, so call it recency bias if you wish. Jonah did great coverage of this movie here and when watching, I kept thinking about what he had told me about how lived-in the performances all felt. Each character felt like they had a real backstory, a real life, which emotionally connected me to the film even more. It felt like I had spent the last 2.5 hours reading a novella recommended to me by a friend, probably because I’ve had multiple friends tell me this is their favorite of the year.
Magellan - Epic in each and every way, I hope this makes it to US theaters soon. Wrote my review of it here.
Honorable Mention: I saw Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning at the AMC Fashion District Dine-In with Monty the day after our wedding. Some of our friends got us three months of AMC membership as a gift and this allowed us to be served those chicken finger platters as soon as we walked in the door. I was worried that I would be lost as there are at least 4 MI movies I haven’t seen. No worries, they spend the first of the nearly three hours playing flashback clips and doing exposition. The Nicole Kidman AMC intro played followed by Tom personally thanking me, Emily, for coming to the theater to watch this film. Not a great movie, but a great moviegoing experience. This is why movie theaters can never die.
Nick (It’s Nick!)
This year was a laugh for me, I had a lot of joy and genuinely good times. Some of these picks are a bit of a stretch, and I still haven’t seen No Other Choice yet (but let’s just say I agree with whatever Monty said).
Anyway, allow me to present: the year of the laugh. Whether you’re naturally a joker or just in need of a chuckle, hopefully a few of these recommendations help. And if they don’t well, we screened Hellzapoppin’, Drop Dead Gorgeous, and Don’t Let the Riverbeast Get You! this year. We did our part. Meet us halfway.
The Naked Gun - Let’s kick this off and let everybody know I am a genius. What do you want me to say? I liked the coffee gag. I just watched Un Chien Andalou, not like you care. I’ll play the fool.
Eephus - Really great stuff. Baseball is and always will be torture. In general, liking anything will ruin your life. But how can you not be romantic about baseball? This movie is full of throwaway jokes and every guy I talked to after (and there were a lot of them) had a different favorite.
Friendship - This is my exact fear. I worry about this every day. As a man who loves to commit a faux pas, I genuinely fear that one day I’ll let it spiral and absolutely ruin me. Unlike Robinson in The Chair Company, it’s really hilarious to watch a man who cannot talk himself out of anything. It’s almost like a Safdie Brothers movie, watching a comedy of errors spiral into something so sinister and nerve-wracking.
Eddington - Wow. I felt genuinely happy seeing all the COVID brainrot guys I kept tabs on finally get a movie. It really reminded me how overconfident and paranoid people were at the same time. Not a pleasant or comfortable watch, but neither was living through it. Most of the characters play like slapstick figures, and it’s fascinating to watch what happens when you put a phone in front of people already spiraling.
Weapons - Yeah, I’ll admit this is a bit of a reach for my year of the laugh. Fair enough. But did you see how many hot dogs those guys were eating? It rides a great line between campy and silly and deeply uncomfortable. Also, my fiancé loves to do the Weapons Run just to piss me off, which honestly helps.
Honorable Mention: I told Emily to never let me forget how good I felt when we walked out of Sinners. I was trying to do chin-ups in the bathroom of the Bourse. What a rush!
THE OLD
Monty
Peppermint Candy (1999) - I didn’t know much about Korean history when watching this, but I think about it maybe once a week, and the memory of it leaves me feeling sad in all the right ways. Beautiful picture.
Stroszek (1977) - I just loved this movie. Herzog knows how to capture middle America, a good preview of when I visited North Dakota this year.
Drunken Master II (1994) - The final 20 minutes of this movie, where Jackie is fucking up dudes left and right in the factory, left me speechless.
Ed Wood (1994) - I’m not going to endorse Johnny Depp here, but this is a hell of a movie. Making movies is beautiful!
The Train (1964) - I feel like I’ve brought up this movie like once a month since I watched it, beast mode of a WW2 picture. It’s 2.5 hours of Burt Lancaster shooting Nazis and trying to stop a train behind occupied France. And they blew up an actual train yard!
Honorable Mention: You know that feeling you get when you go to watch your friends band play and it’s maybe 5 people standing around excited for their buddy to play some music? That feeling of community and friendship is best distilled in Matt Farley’s Local Legends (2013). I could have watched this for 10 hours. It really captures the joy of a guy and his friends just coming together for a creative project after a 9-5. Inspiring stuff!!!
Emily
Shin Godzilla (2016) - No, one of the other leaders of Melt is not ghostwriting this for me. In 2025, I made an active effort to watch as many of the movies in the Godzilla and Friends universe as possible, in a better effort to understand the tastes of Monty (husband, likes movies where smash and big noise, born in the 1980’s) and Nick (business parter, friend, owner of a Godzilla tattoo). I’ve been watching most of them chronologically and honestly, having a blast. The original Godzilla would be in this spot if I hadn’t seen it in 2024. In the last year I’ve watched 15 different Godzilla films, leading to Ishiro Honda to be my most watched director of 2025 and all of my most watched actors to be the people that are the rotating cast of almost every Ishiro Honda movie. I broke this chronological effort to see Shin Godzilla in theaters with Monty, who had told me this was his favorite Godzilla movie. This movie, mostly focused on the logistics of the disaster relief and government response to our reptilian frenemy, made me sit and apply the logistical framework of government overreach to all Honda movies I’ve seen since. Will this end up my favorite movie of the universe? Unclear, but for now it stands in for my ongoing experience of bonding with my co-directors.
A Man and a Woman (1966) - This movie is doing everything you’ve seen French New Wave do before while also playing a more complex game of emotional chess than other films of the romance genre at the time. We start with the basic ingredients of a 60’s French film: the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen (Anouk Aimée), risky behavior from a chain smoking man, a stunning soundtrack your coolest friend is playing at a present day dinner party, suicide. Throw them into a plot about two widowed single parents falling in love with each other. Ok, that plot sounds a little Disney Channel for my taste. However, something that this film focuses on is the immense love that both leads had and still have for their late partners. I’ve seen many movies with the second chance love trope that completely gloss over the past partners, or play it for a few scenes then move on. This film not only emphasized how these other relationships were worth having, but explored how having those relationships complicated their ability to move on. I don’t feel I’m doing this justice, and it’s not readily available on streaming, but if you get a chance to see this film, get in the nearest race car and drive thousands of miles to do so.
My Son My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009) - This movie was covered extensively by Monty earlier this year so I will not harp on it, but know that the day we screen this will be a highlight event of my side hustle career. This was a big Herzog year for me as I explored one of my favorite directors in depth. Grizzly Man, Stroszek, Aguirre were all considered for this list, but nothing could beat the absolute joy I felt watching Michael Shannon in this for the first time. This is also the reason Udo Kier is my highest rated actor on Letterboxd.
Perfect Days (2023) - Beautiful in story, visuals, music, all of it. Originally, Wim Wenders was hired to create a series of short films highlighting some of Tokyo’s new redesigned public toilets. He instead turned it into a feature about a man whose job is to clean said facilities. Wenders has spoken about how much of the film does draw inspiration from Yasujirō Ozu, a director I adore for how his films create moments of mundane beauty in everyday vignettes. A movie I recommend to everybody from my very picky dad to people I’m meeting for the first time, Wenders takes influence from Ozu while making something entirely his own.
My final pick is a tie between Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) - You cannot make me choose between two of the campiest performances I’ve ever seen.
Honorable Mention: I spent some time digging into a lot of the Letterboxd best rated lists this year, especially the best short films. This journey led me to World of Tomorrow (2015), a 17-minute sci-fi short by Don Hertzfeldt. What started as me dicking around on YouTube ended with me crying to a cartoon toddler named Emily (real recognize real). This was nominated for an Academy Award in 2016 for Best Animated Short and can be watched here. I, too, would travel through time and space to get to view my mom through the eyes of my toddler-self again. Also, if you’re reading this, hi mom!
Nick
Popeye (1980) – I get that I can be wrong about this, I feel like I had to bite my tongue a few times when people rag on Popeye. I just think it was neat and the songs came out like a jump scare. I think Popeye is deeply uninterested in pleasing the viewer. It feels so lived in and chaotic. And fellas, don’t get me started on Olive Oyl humuna humuna humuna ouchie mama ouwgha.
Open Doom Crescendo (2022) - A zero budget dystopian epic that is shot entirely in some Montreal construction site; sometimes director Terry Choi’s dog is just in the background messing around. This movie is so ramshackle and goofy, but I think in the sincerity of it all you can really fall in love. To be honest, I only bought this blu-ray when I was on Golden Ninja Video buying Heard She Got Murdered for Matt Farley to sign and the cover looked really cool. And now it is one of my favorite movies of all time. Isn’t that neat?
Speed Racer (2008) - I saw a close friend give this move five stars on Letterboxd three days in a row. I knew what I had to do. Holy shit, Speed Racer is absolutely nuts. I think Popeye and Speed Racer are somewhat similar, they both reject realism in favor of committing to total world logic, but I think Speed Racer can be a lot more visually chaotic. This year I am rejecting irony and can appreciate something magical.
Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974) - I think in general, you should watch more movies about two women who are up to no good in a confusing timeline. There’s Celine and Julie Go Boating, Mullholand Drive and I imagine countless others. Oh! and Daisies. If it helps, I know Lynch was in fact a big fan of this.
Holy Flame of the Martial World (1983) - I had to include a martial arts movie on this list. The true fan of martial arts cinema, Reel Nomadic, put this on for Monty and I one night and I was blown away. This movie never slows down and is so visually inventive in its fights, set design and gags. At the end of an era for the Shaw Brothers, they decide to try the next logical step: produce a movie with a bunch of lasers, skeletons and slapstick martial arts.
Honorable Mention: My yearly rewatch of Duck Soup (1933) really hit this year. Space Melt’s beloved illustrator Noah and I watched this one night and it was a really nice time. I feel like I am usually showing this to an uninterested family member or getting insecure when my fiancé is tired and isn’t laughing hard enough. But watching this and laughing like Paulie Walnuts whenever Harpo does that handshake routine was a really nice moment.
Also, while I have you did you know Gregg Araki directed an episode of Riverdale. No shit. It’s in season 2, look it up.
