2024 is over and 2025 is here. In this episode, I’ll take a look at the movies, books, and music that are coming out this year that I’m excited about. 
2024 was not a great year for movies. Of the movies that are most likely to be nominated for Best Picture, I’ve seen exactly one – Dune Part Two. I’m about a third of the way through the A24 catalog with a goal of seeing every movie they’ve released so, at some point (when I have three hours to spare) I will see the Brutalist. I do want to see Conclave but haven’t had the chance yet. If Anora wins, I will also look forward to seeing it – I’ve seen Red Rocket and Tangerine, two of Sean Baker’s earlier movies, and while I wouldn’t say that I enjoyed them per se, I think he is a very skilled and subtle filmmaker with something to say. They’re both longshots but I enjoyed Juror #2 – a meat and potatoes morality story about the break between law and justice and The Substance – which I thought was one of the best movies of 2024 even if the ending didn’t work 100% for me. Probably also could have been cut by about 10 minutes but otherwise will definitely be one of the most memorable movies of the year. It’s a movie about addiction and loneliness swaddled in body-horror armor. It also makes interesting choices and eschews the easy and predictable for something weirder and more honest. I’m not a big horror fan but between Nosferatu and The Substance, I thought The Substance was hands down a better movie. 
On the popcorn side, the list wasn’t much better. I saw exactly two of the Top 10 Blockbusters of the year (Dune Part Two and Deadpool and Wolverine). I have no interest in watching any of the other movies; the only one of which that was not a sequel was Wicked (which is the first of a two-parter).
Suffice it to say, I’m hoping things get better for the movies in 2025. However, at a cursory glance at the upcoming slate for the year, my hopes are not high. 
What looks good? The Superman trailer came out and it looks solid. James Gunn directed the Guardians of the Galaxy series, the first of which is still one of the better MCU movies. I hope that it “resets” the DC universe movies and they can use its success to relaunch a series of slighter less grimdark films moving forward. It also probably wouldn’t be the worse thing in the world for them to take a Star Wars – go away for a while and come back only after doing significant pre-production. I did see that Gareth Edwards is doing a Jurassic Park / World movie – which I find depressing. Of the two new batch of Star Wars movies, Rogue One, while it had its problems, was very impressive visually and hands down a better movie than the first of the sequels. I feel that Edwards being tied to this dying franchise is a step backwards, artistically speaking. I guess it could be worse – there’s a new Smurfs movie coming out (were you missing the Smurfs?); at least he’s not directing that.
One of America’s best directors, Stephen Soderberg, has two movies coming out, one – Prescence – sounds interesting. Paul Thomas Anderson has a movie that may or may not be adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland coming out in the Summer. 
Nic Cage is in a movie called The Surfer – saw the trailer. If you like Nic Cage going crazy, this looked like a much more grounded Mandy or Willy’s Wonderland, I would recommend checking this out when it gets released. 
Other than that? I have to be honest – it looks like a year full of sequels and continuations of franchises with not a lot to recommend. Every year something comes out that flies below the radar and I’m hoping that there are more than a few of these in 2025 because, for me, the slate looks pretty slim. Pixar, which has a track record that is better than most, has Elio coming out and I think it looks pretty weak. F1, the new Brad Pitt movie, also doesn’t interest me BUT I do hope that it’s successful, if only because I think that Joseph Kosinski (see prior episode) getting more shots at high quality block buster fare is a good thing.
A quick aside – I used the free weekend of Apple TV plus that was offered a few weeks back to check out the service. I had never used it before. I wasn’t crazy about the interface and I was surprised of how little that was actually on the platform for $10 per month. It’s been out nearly six years and there really isn’t a ton of content to recommend. I ended up watching Beastie Boys Story (fine), Girls State (okay but worse than Boys State), a documentary on 9/11 (pretty good), the first season of Smigadoon (fantastic), and CODA (probably the worst best picture winner of the last 25 years. More on this next episode). My overall conclusion? There’s some interesting stuff on the streamer but not enough to warrant the price tag. I honestly don’t understand why Apple is in the streaming business. Which brings me to one of my hopes for the new year.
I hope that in 2025 the streaming market will begin to consolidate and / or die. The reason? I want to see the streaming services turn to physical media in order to give us the ala carte model we were promised in the 90s. It angers me (see my episode on the Walled Garden) that companies are able to produce art that I can’t purchase without having to sign up for their subscription service. If your business model depends on people signing up and then forgetting they did, there’s something wrong. I realize that many people didn’t use Redbox for streaming video but I loved having a vendor agnostic service. I’ve used Fandango a couple of times but I don’t like the interface of the video feed – there’s no fast forward 15 minutes, so you have to click and drag the cursor on the timeline BUT I did find a new V/H/S movie I can check out – V/H/S Beyond. 
Before we check out the second half, a word from our sponsor.
If the movies let me down in 2025, at least there are books.
The Talent by Daniel D’Addario sounds pretty interesting. Per Time, “The Talent follows a group of actresses on the awards-show trail during an especially fraught season. The five women—the grande dame, the ingénue, the great thespian, the long shot, and the former child star—must confront their rivalries, anxieties, and insecurities if they wish to take home a little gold man on Hollywood’s biggest night.”
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. I’ve read a short story collection by Graham Jones and enjoyed it. He’s put out several novels and has been growing in stature as a horror novelist over the years. The summary of this one – “A historical horror novel that follows a Lutheran priest who transcribes the interviews of Good Stab, a Blackfoot vampire, haunting the fields of the reservation seeking revenge.” Sounds like Salem’s Lot with a twist. This is set to come out in March.
Ann Patchett is one of my favorite contemporary authors. Last year’s Tom Lake wasn’t one of her better books, IMO, BUT she did blurb something that looks interesting – Patrick Ryan’s Buckeye. The blurb? “Buckeye is a glorious sweep of a novel, full of love and war and the perilous intimacies of smalltown life. It’s funny and tender, realistic and strange. Patrick Ryan has long been one of my favorite writers. I have a feeling that with this book he’s going to be everyone’s favorite writer.”
Joe Hill is also someone who is hit or miss for me. I enjoyed his short story collection and Heart-Shaped Box but was mixed on The Fireman. King Sorrow looks to be his first foray into Fantasy. From The Today website, it’s about “A group of outsiders [who summon] up a dragon to get revenge, not realizing they’re entering a bargain they can’t win.”
I’ve never read an Anne Tyler novel before – Her The Accidental Tourist has been on my shelf for a while – but her newest looks interesting. Per Goodreads, “Three Days in June…a photorealistic literary snapshot of the life of Gail Baines, mother of the bride, in the days just before and after her daughter’s wedding. Things get weird.”
On the music side, there is very little that I’m looking forward to – part of this is that it’s still too early to get release dates for any albums that are being released after the second quarter of the year. The other part is that, there just isn’t much that looks exciting to me. The biggest thing – and I think this cements my middle-ageness – is probably the re-issue of Wilco’s A Ghost is Born, which I believe is coming out on CD and Vinyl in February. I’m hoping for a digital release, because that’s how I listen to music 99% of the time these days. If I don’t get it, I may have to buy it on vinyl. 
Before we go, I just wanted to say, to everyone who has been impacted by the fires in Los Angeles, you are in the thoughts and prayers of millions of Americans. Here’s hoping that the fires can be quickly put out and the healing and rebuilding, either in LA or elsewhere, can begin.
I also wanted to note the passing of David Lynch – a visionary filmmaker. If anyone hearing this hasn’t seen Muholland Drive or Blue Velvet, I would highly recommend both. 
Thank you for listening to this episode of Elegant Ramblings. Next episode, I’ll be doing my ranking of all Oscar Best Picture winners of the last 25 years. I want to revisit (nearly) every movie, so that episode probably won’t be out until the end of February / beginning of March. I hope to have it out before the Oscars. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard, please consider liking and subscribing to the channel on iTunes or YouTube. Hope you enjoyed. Bye for now.