Pop Culture Quarterly Report: Quarter One 2025

Seeing as I see so many movies most people will never see or even know exist and most really aren’t good enough or bad enough to talk about at length, I decided to truncate my monthly movie review and broader pop culture article series into a quarterly report. In the first three months of 2025, I saw forty-two movies in theaters. Only one of which was genuinely terrible, which I’ll get to shortly. I have already seen ten movies in theaters in April (somehow,) and at least four or five of those movies are currently in my top ten of the year, so this quarter will only include a top six (because I decided to start making my top ten or so after already seeing a few movies in April.)

My top six 2025 movies based on releases I saw through the end of March:

• The Rule of Jenny Pen
• Opus
• Companion
• Locked
• The Monkey
• Novocaine

Currently, three movies have dethroned The Rule of Jenny Pen. It is what it is. Movies in April have been fantastic relatively. I have seen the worst movie of the year so far in April as well, but that’s an issue for July Russell. I will now list every movie I have seen in the first three months of 2025, by month, in order. I will elaborate on them as I see fit.

JANUARY

The Fire Inside

The Damned

Better Man

The Last Showgirl

Den of Thieves 2: Pantera

Wolf Man

One of Them Days

Flight Risk

Presence

Nickel Boys

Companion

Love Me

FEBRUARY

Valiant One

Dog Man

The Brutalist

Love Hurts

Heart Eyes

Captain America: Brave New World

Paddington in Peru

Becoming Led Zeppelin

My Dead Friend Zoe

The Monkey

The Unbreakable Boy

Last Breath

Ne Zha 2

MARCH

Novocaine

Mickey 17

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (extended edition)

I’m Still Here

The Rule of Jenny Pen

Magazine Dreams

Opus

Black Bag

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie

The Penguin Lessons

The Alto Knights

Snow White

Ash

Locked

Death of a Unicorn

A Working Man

The Woman in the Yard

I imagine most of you reading this haven’t heard of half of these movies. I love movies. I love seeing new movies more than almost anything. I am at the theaters at least twice every week, one of those times to usually see at least two movies before I head home. I can’t truly judge a movie until I see it in full, even if I suspect it will be awful. My bladder has been trained, so I can’t recall the last time I had to leave to pee in the middle of a movie in theaters in my entire adult life. You will also notice I was somehow still seeing Oscar-nominated flicks by March. Distribution was especially awful for I’m Still Here, which might have cracked my top eleven of 2024. On streaming, I saw two 2024 movies that cracked my top ten. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (even better than The Wild Robot) and A Different Man. Those are essentially the only two movies I watched outside of theaters worth talking about, although I did watch thirty-three movies outside of theaters in the first three months of 2025. I did see Flow on Max, which somehow won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, and watched some movies I have wanted to see for years, but does anyone really care about the latter? I doubt it.

Most of the movies I saw were OK, on “The Meh Plateau” I have discussed previously. The worst, by far, by the end of March was Snow White. As I have already said, something I saw in April beat it out for worst movie of the year, but, again, that’s for the next quarterly report. Snow White had atrocious CGI, additional backstory that was awful, original music that was mostly dreadful outside of a fun new villain song, reworkings of the classics in the original that were incredibly terrible, and an origin for her name that was laughably horrendous. In the original and the story it was based on, she is named Snow White because of her fair alabaster skin. Since world class idiot Rachel Zegler (who does have a nice voice) is playing her in this, the reason is really dumb. She was born during a snow storm. That’s just so painfully dumb. Gal Gadot’s villain song is the only thing I actually enjoyed about the movie. They make the prince a “loveable” rogue thief for the people, a commie Robin Hood type, which is just so dumb. Not even a prince of any persuasion. Their love story is somehow even less developed than the original movie even though they spend more time on it. The origins of her parents also adds nothing to the movie. And the original music is mostly just so bad. The message of the movie is also awful. Gal Gadot’s Evil Queen is shown having no problem with murder or capital punishment, which makes the poison apple part of the movie just dumb. Why not just kill her? They never justify this. Ever. The CGI on the dwarves is awful. Peter Dinklage deserves all the ire for that. There is also another group of seven, a group of bandits in the forest, led by the love interest. Technically eight if you count him, but whatever. One of them is a dwarf actor, so it’s not like they were opposed in totality. I believe the CGI dwarves were added after already filming most of the bandit scenes. Virtually all of those bandits are given essentially zero characterization. There are way too many named characters in this movie. You will not remember all of them. Because why would you? This movie bombed for good reason. It is awful. I didn’t expect it to remain my worst movie of the year, and it hasn’t. But avoid it just the same. It isn’t even worth streaming for free on Disney+.

Now, to talk about the movies I really enjoyed. The Rule of Jenny Pen is a horror thriller movie from Shudder (who also did Late Night with the Devil) that takes place in a New Zealand retirement home. It stars Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow. The rest of the cast is filled with nobodies, presumably sourced locally in New Zealand. Not for everyone, obviously, but I adored the acting. It sort of ends three times in that there were two previous moments they could have cut to credits and been fine. But didn’t. One would have been a very dark ending. They went for a happier type ending, the just desserts style ending. I don’t want to spoil it. I went in mostly blind. I think I saw the trailer for this once but didn’t realize that until John Lithgow showed up.

Opus is an A24 movie starring that lady from The Bear and John Malkovich along with some other character actors. A melding of music and film that I greatly enjoyed. Three original songs were made for the movie. I did buy them on iTunes. A movie I saw in April that is currently, as of April 16^th, my favorite film of the year had fifteen original songs. A musician who hasn’t released an album since like the late ’90s reemerges with a new album and invites like five people to hear it before it is officially released. He seems to run a cult. You can imagine where it devolves from there. Again, a movie not for everyone.

Companion has Jack Quaid and one of the women from Heretic last year, as well as some other actors, like the fat guy that isn’t Matt Berry from What We Do in the Shadows. A really good sci-fi horror movie that spoiled way too much in the trailers and the movie poster. I won’t spoil it here, but avoid any of the trailers if you can. It works better if you don’t know one of the twists revealed by the end of the first act that is very clearly spoiled. It doesn’t ruin the movie, but I was noticing the hints to it throughout the first act.

Locked is what happens when a rich old dude with way too much time on his hands decides to become a very hands-off vigilante. Pennywise decides, out of desperation, to steal a car. He picks the worst possible one as vindictive old man Anthony Hopkins with nothing left to lose decides to turn an SUV into a personal torture chamber for that thief with a heart of gold. It is very intense and anxiety-inducing for most of the run time. The climax is as ridiculous as you’d expect it to be, and the ending is quite funny.

The Monkey is so much better than Longlegs. Osgood Perkins made both. The ending of Longlegs just kept bothering me. Also, it took itself far too seriously. This movie does not appear to have a serious bone in its body. It takes the concept of a Stephen King Satan monkey very, very goofily. Flippant even. It is an incredibly dark comedy with some horror Final Destination like moments, although the Rube Goldberg machine death traps are much quicker in this movie. Satan ain’t messin’ around like Death does in the Final Destination films. A blast if you don’t take it seriously whatsoever.

The last movie I will talk about here is another Jack Quaid movie, Novocaine. Both of his movies were Monday mystery preview screenings, hilariously enough. Both movies seemed to also make money, which is seemingly rare for that program. Best action movie of the year so far, although there hasn’t been many to really talk about. I don’t expect it to remain as such, but it was fun nonetheless. I think this may have already dropped out of my top ten by this juncture, but it almost surely will by the next quarterly report. A definite bit of fun, though. Cool using that illness I first heard about on House, M.D. as the basis for an action movie hero premise.

I also watched a lot of TV. Reacher and Bosch: Legacy both came back, the latter for its final season (ten total for the Harry Bosch character,) although the finale is dropping tomorrow as of this writing. Both excellent dad-targeted television programs that are awesome and underappreciated, although Alan Ritchson has like five movies currently in production. I think he’d be an excellent Sgt. Rock in the DCU. Do a WWII war movie with superpowers. And put him at the center. Bing bang bosh, low budget, make money. I watched some other stuff, of course, but outside of The Floor and Daredevil: Born Again, not all that much to say. Both of those shows are fun. The season finale for the latter came out yesterday as of this writing. I did want more cameos, but the set up is there. Spider-Man got a reference but did not show up at all. And I didn’t expect it.

I played more Peglin and Vampire Survivors and nothing else worth talking about. Peglin just dropped like 15 new achievements this week as of this writing, so I am gonna be a very busy boy trying to get those done. I have since filled out the Bestiary outside of a few cards. There is a meter for each mob which I have maxed out for all of them, but have not gotten the cards, which are random and hard to grind, for like five of them.

Ninja Sex Party is awesome, so I saw them in concert with TWRP as well as a separate concert where I saw Robert Cray, one of the most underrated blues musicians of all time. Both excellent concerts. Dan Avidan has an acoustic covers album releasing later in April, so more on that in the next quarterly report. As well as the soundtrack album I purchased for my current favorite movie of the year (as of this writing.)

And that’s everything. I hope you enjoyed the greater freedom I have with this formulation.