{"id":202156,"date":"2026-01-15T08:00:47","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T13:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=202156"},"modified":"2026-01-15T10:44:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T15:44:04","slug":"december-2025-viewing-diary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=202156","title":{"rendered":"December 2025 Viewing Diary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marty Supreme<\/strong><\/em> (2025; d. Joss Safdie)
\nI have mixed feelings on this, especially the last scene, which is corny as hell. Not as corny as the last scene in Lady Bird<\/i>, but in its way even more obnoxious. Robert Towne would never. Granted, the movie is supposed to be obnoxious, but I rolled my eyes at that ending and yearned for the final scene of Five Easy Pieces<\/i>, which really stuck the landing and stayed true to what it was doing. That being said, I also enjoyed a lot of it. I don’t know. Like I said, mixed. <\/p>\n

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\nCome Closer<\/strong><\/em> (2025; d. Tom Nesher)
\nI reviewed for Ebert<\/a>. The lead character is obnoxious making this a tough slog. I love ambivalence and mess but …<\/p>\n

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\nThe Chronology of Water<\/strong><\/em> (2025; d. Kristen Stewart)
\nI can’t say enough good things about it and I tried to get at what the film was doing in my review for Ebert<\/a>. Amazingly, the goddess Lidia Yuknavitch herself linked to my review and said I didn’t write the review, I “inhabited” it, which is PRAISE INDEED. I need to see it again so I can absorb it more fully. Stewart absolutely crushed it, particularly in the film’s visual style and fragmented structure – there was a method to her madness. <\/p>\n

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\nChristmas, Again<\/strong><\/em> (2014; d. Charles Poekel)
\nI raved over this one when it came out back in 2014<\/a>. I watch it every year around Christmas. It hits such a sweet lonely New York spot. <\/p>\n

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\nNouvelle Vague<\/em><\/strong> (2025; d. Richard Linklater)
\nThis was in my top 10 for 2025. I’m sorry I didn’t do any year-end round-ups this year. I just couldn’t, what with the Frankenstein of it all. But don’t miss this one. It’s delightful and really captures beautifully the vibe of being young and impulsive and artistic, bringing to life the legend of what it was like when Godard made Breathless<\/i>. I love the style, the structure, the performances. It’s perfect.<\/p>\n

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Safe<\/em><\/strong> (1995; d. Todd Haynes)
\nMasterpiece. I saw it at the Angelika in New York when it first came out and walked out altered.<\/p>\n

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\nNaked Acts<\/em><\/strong> (1995; d. Bridgett M. Davis)
\nWhat a magical film: it came out in 1995 and sank like a stone, never to be seen again. Until Maya Cade, the creator of Black Film Archive, literally re-discovered it, finding a print of it, being blown away, contacting the director, hyping it up on all her socials until finally – in the last couple of years – the film was restored and re-released, even getting a theatrical run across the country. Thank you, Maya! It’s a wonderful funny film about a young actress who goes through a whirlwind of emotions when she is asked to play a nude scene in a movie she’s been cast in. It’s funny and smart and thought-provoking. Please see this. It’s a real slice of New York 1990s cinema. How many other forgotten films out there, waiting for someone curious and determined like Maya to bring them back into the light?<\/p>\n

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The Shrouds<\/strong><\/em> (2025; d. David Cronenberg)
\nThis was also in my top 10 of the year. <\/p>\n

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\nCaught Stealing<\/strong><\/em> (2025; d. Darren Aronofsky)
\nI’m not a big Darren Aronofsky fan – he’s so obvious – but this was a lot of fun. Like Marty Supreme<\/i> it was filmed in New York. This doesn’t happen much anymore, and I love it. Austin Butler, as the mama’s boy once-almost-pro-baseball-player bartender, is great. The whole thing is a chase. <\/p>\n

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\nWhen Marnie Was There<\/strong><\/em> (2015; d. Hiromasa Yonebayashi)
\nI hadn’t seen this. Lucy got the book for Christmas, and Jean and my nieces wanted to show the movie to me so we watched it together on a snowy cold day. We were all in tears at the end. We had a good discussion after. <\/p>\n

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Nuremberg<\/em><\/strong> (2025; d. James Vanderbilt)
\nThis was very well done, I thought. I can’t get enough of the Nuremberg trials and it’s been decades since I first got interested. It’s fascinating, the international cooperation that had to happen – awkwardly – and the whole question of collective guilt and who knew what and who was responsible for what – Russell Crowe is terrific. It’s one of those performances that provides psychological insights into what might have been going on with this guy. It feels real, like … huh, we’ve heard so much about Goring. If you know the story, you know Goring. Rebecca West wrote about him in her dispatches from the trial, trying to drill down into the nuts and bolts of his psychology. He was a charmer, disarmingly so. And so how does that operate, and what was it like to be in the presence of this monster? I wasn’t there obviously but I felt like Crowe didn’t so much have a “take” on the guy, as he has insight. <\/p>\n

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\nElvis<\/em><\/strong> (2022; d. Baz Luhrmann)
\nI don’t know what it is but this movie makes me so emotional, so much so I stay away from it. It fudges the chronology of some sections, which could be misleading to those who don’t know the real timeline – but what it DOES do is so important, in terms of insight (that word again). I was very emotional. It’s been a tough year. A tough couple of years. Elvis helps. <\/p>\n

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Marty Supreme (2025; d. Joss Safdie) I have mixed feelings on this, especially the last scene, which is corny as hell. Not as corny as the last scene in Lady Bird, but in its way even more obnoxious. Robert Towne … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2627,4],"tags":[2552,2665,1303,2546,2095,2558,2220,2345,2390,2656,446,2684,2498,2556,2292,328,483,2637],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202156"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=202156"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":202724,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202156\/revisions\/202724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=202156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=202156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=202156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}