🎬 Movies I’ve Seen (And Written About)

A little story: I was 14, it was 1AM, and my parents were out of town, when I first grew to love the idea of movie-making. I’d accidentally stumbled onto the Lord of The Rings Making Of Documentary. I was incredibly moved by how much effort went into even the smallest details and shots that lasted 3 seconds. Location scouts spent weeks finding the perfect places. Background actors spent hours getting ready in armours the costuming team had spent months making. The foley artist spent days finding the perfect way to enhance the swing of a mace. I was struck by how much cinema was a labor of love for hundreds of people. However, the craft of storytelling in movies perhaps goes uncelebrated more than that of writing.

Your Name {S}

I cannot claim that Your Name is a flawless movie. A couple critiques: it meanders a bit in the second act, the secondary characters are pretty one-dimensional for the most part, and the musical montages may go on a bit too long.

I don’t care. Your Name is my favourite movie of the year.

It takes a dead simple trope— two teenagers find themselves in a freaky Friday body swap— and yet finds a way to wring surprises out of this premise. As the story spins and the tension builds, I find myself completely enraptured. By the end of the second act, I was bawling. The movie overwhelms you not with despair or tragedy, but hope. You hope against hope that these crazy kids might make it after all. You rage against fate on their behalf, hoping it gives them just one more chance to make their dreams come true. Alongside this— incredible animation, voice acting, and a score from RADWIMPS.

Maybe it’s just the movie I needed to see in 2025. For me, it really doesn’t get better than KimiNoNaWa.

12 Angry Men {S}

I will be the first to admit that I wasn’t looking forward to seeing a black-and-white movie. Nor was the idea of 12 guys talking in a room for an hour very exciting to me. Foolish of me! 12 Angry Men is a marvel. I was riveted from start to finish. A compelling set of characters on a jury, chasing the question of whether to declare a man guilty, with a perfect ending. It deserves its pedestal as one of the best of all time— and is an oldie I’d wholeheartedly recommend to anybody.

The Shawshank Redemption {S}

The Shawshank Redemption is IMDB’s highest rated movie of all time, which made me quite excited to watch it. Indeed, it is close to a perfect movie: you’d struggle to find a plot thread left dangling, a shot out of place. Yet, by the end, I found myself a little underwhelmed: this is the most beloved movie of all time? Perhaps no movie could have lived up to my sky-high expectations.

Regardless, the acting is fantastic, the script tight, and the cinematography gorgeous despite being set in one of the hardest settings to make beautiful — a prison. I expect that this movie will get richer as I get older, and I look forward to seeing it again in another 5 years.

The Thing {S}

The Thing is a horror movie from 1982 that has aged shockingly well. It follows a group of research scientists in Antarctica and their encounter with “The Thing”— a creature that consumes and imitates people. The quintessential Ten Little Murder Victims movie, it had me enraptured from start to finish. I didn’t get a single twist right either, but each of them was unsurprising in retrospect. The best horror movie I think I’ve ever seen!

Spirited Away {S}

The best compliment I can give Spirited Away is that it is a movie that feels like it has always existed. If you told me this was a famous children’s story from the 1800s, I’d immediately believe you. There’s a timelessness to it — the story, the dialogue, the animation— that is impossible to aim for and can only be stumbled upon by masters of the craft.

I didn’t grow up on Studio Ghibli. This usually doesn’t make me very emotional—but watching Spirited Away was the first time I was sad to not have a chance to show this to a younger me. I think it had a good chance of sniping me into making animation my dream job. Spirited Away is the kind of movie that makes you fall in love with movies all over again.

Coco {S}

If not for Ratatouille, Coco would be my favorite Pixar movie. About music’s ability to span life and death and the importance of remembering the past and being remembered, Coco might as well be playing Pull Arushi’s Heartstrings Bingo. The journey the song “Remember Me” takes throughout the movie always brings me to tears. The story is also steeped in Mexican culture in a way that I think is impossible to divorce from the movie itself — and it makes for a beautiful multilingual delight.

Sinners {A}

My god, were people in love with Sinners this year. I wasn’t on the early train for it, but everyone in the world and their mothers told me to go watch Sinners, so I did. I was not disappointed. First is the enjoyment of watching Michael B. Jordan gun down KKK members with a machine gun. Below that is a clever story about culture, appropriation, and selling out. I particularly liked its fresh use of vampires: how appropriating culture makes you a vampire, living a half-life only in the shadows, how the cost of selling out means you’d never feel truly alive, even if you get everything you want. There are also Irish jig dancing vampires.

There’s one scene about a third into the movie — a musical number— that literally made my jaw drop when I first saw it. A perfect encapsulation of the power of music to connect us to our pasts and our futures. Sinners is the best movie released in 2025.

Saving Private Ryan {A}

Saving Private Ryan is really two movies in one— the first 20 or so minutes, which are one of the best war scenes put to film, and then the rest of the movie, which is… good. Most of the movie is a slow journey getting familiar with a cast of soldiers who die meaningless deaths. The most noteworthy aspect of the movie to me remains its refusal to give you complete resolution as it draws to a close — quite like war, even when it’s over, you’re left with fulfillment tainted with melancholy.

Memento {A}

I’ve already seen most Nolan films, and enjoyed Oppenheimer last year. Memento, one of Nolan’s firsts, has most of his strong suits: non-linear storytelling, intricate foreshadowing, a strong core message about the main character’s fundamental decisions. His weakest suit— a lack of personality in the main character, love interest, or side characters— is masked well by the main character’s amnesia and the love interest’s lack of being alive. I really enjoyed it!

Fight Club {A}

You had to feel 90s ennui to understand some movies, I think — and Fight Club is one of them. The story is about two guys who start a “Fight Club” and gather men to come brawl on the weekends and feel strong together… with a clever third-act twist.

Like American History X, I find Fight Club to be a sad example of a movie’s aesthetic being adopted by that which it was trying to criticize. Independent of that, Fight Club is a sharp critique of a lack of community for men, a lack of purpose, and the rise of toxic masculinity… if you were to look behind Brad Pitt’s abs.

It’s rare, I find, that a movie can resist the bluntness of message that comes with making a clever action flick— no one yells “I WANT TO BE VULNERABLE AND EARNESTLY CONNECT WITH PEOPLE!” before punching someone’s teeth out. But you get that they might.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind {A}

Would you forget a past love to forget the pain that they caused you? Would you let yourself fall in love again, despite knowing the pain that awaits you?

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the story of a recently-single Jim Carrey electing to undergo a sci-fi memory deletion procedure to forget his badly ended relationship— except, is that really what he wants? A beautiful movie, told through a compelling cinematic lens.

However, I found myself wondering if the premise could be pushed further — how do our experiences change who we are? What do we become once you take them out? It almost makes me crave a sequel to this rich idea! Regardless, I’d recommend this make-up/break-up romantic comedy to everyone.

K-Pop Demon Hunters {B}

What did you say? You’ve finally got the songs out of your head? But are you going up, up, up it’s our moment you know together we’re growing gotta be gotta be golden woahh n—

I loved K-Pop Demon Hunters on the first watch— a clever, beautifully animated movie suitable for all ages with catchy songs. Then its meteoric rise made me a bit more cynical, and I recently rewatched it with a more critical eye. Nope! Still a delight, and it deserves all the love being showered on it. I love seeing passion projects take off, and it is obvious to anyone watching that KPDH is a labor of love.

Wicked: For Good {B}

I loved Wicked, the musical, and was shocked by how enjoyable the first movie was. With that said, I was dreading Wicked: For Good— the second half of the musical is its weakest part in nearly all dimensions. The core plot of animal welfare is dropped entirely, the plot details come way too fast to actually land, and the ending feels unearned. For Good doesn’t cure all these ailments, but goes a long way towards patching them up.

I’ve heard Wicked called the “classic Shonen anime trope of two bros having an unbreakable timeless bond, and the love interest is also there”… for girls— and that’s perfect, really. No other single element comes close to how delightful Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are together, and that in itself is worth the price of admission.

Wonka {B}

This has been the year of Timothée Chalamet in many ways, but I’ll admit to never being his biggest fan. He’s a great actor, but has he got it? This movie convinced me that he might. Wonka follows the origin story of the Wonka from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Hugh Grant as the Oompa Loompa works shockingly well. It’s a great little musical, with excellent use of a cover of “Pure Imagination” recontextualized by the plot around it.

Django Unchained {B}

Take Inglourious Basterds, swap Adolf Hitler for slave owners. Yes, it is fun to see White Slave Owner Leo DiCaprio get what he deserves (a bullet in the chest). It is beautifully shot, and well-acted — with Sam Jackson delivering a late entry to his list of career-best performances. I just wish it had more to say (or that I could hear better what it was trying to say).

Inglourious Basterds {B}

Here’s an embarrassing fact — I don’t “get” Tarantino. I like that his movies are about the underdog(s) getting some well-deserved vengeance on racists and murderers and Nazis… but is that all it takes to make a movie worthy of being called “some of the best ever made”?

I found that Inglourious Basterds could never settle on a tone — it started with “competent goofs take on the Nazis” and ended with “goofs were pointless to the plot and stumbled into a win”. I wish I’d had a chance to root for them. Shout out to Christoph Waltz though, who was a highlight in both Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained.

Kiki’s Delivery Service {B}

Kiki’s is a simple story of growing up and finding your place. Like all Ghibli films, it charmed me from start to finish. I also enjoy that they made the main character a bit of a hot mess. That one scene with the cat in the third act broke my heart— what a willingness to take large swings in a kid’s movie. Beyond that, what remains in memory is an unfailing fondness for my time watching this.

Blair Witch Project {B}

As always, I must give due credit to a movie that starts its own genre— here, the “found footage” genre. I found Blair Witch Project hard to look away from when I first watched it, and was sad to realize how little I’d thought of it since. This really is my primary criticism: I wish it had a slightly bigger budget and could leave slightly more of an impression. For what it is, what an achievement to be proud of. I’d recommend this OG to any horror movie fans.

American Psycho {B}

American Psycho is one of the movies I recommend for understanding 90s ennui— the other being Fight Club. It captures the emptiness and meaninglessness of being a working man in the 90s well. This time, though, we focus on the finance-bro scene in New York, where everyone cares for the best restaurants and the best business cards, but is blind to so much more. Christian Bale plays a scarily convincing murderer in Patrick Bateman. It critiques the finance-bro subculture harshly through the lens of Bateman’s “perfect life”— though this isn’t limited to just finance, and can be applied to all kinds of subcultures, like my very own TechBroScene.

Past Lives {B}

I have mixed feelings about Past Lives. The movie spins around one idea: as an immigrant, split between two cultures, which one is “more you”?— told through the main character’s relationships with two people in her life. Small moments like language barriers and cultural faux pas add up until the final scene of the movie, which feels cathartic and sorrowful for both the characters and the viewer. Yet, it feels to me that a topic so rich still remains underexplored by the end of the movie — “who are you” defaults to “who do you choose”, when really there are so many interesting questions of “what did you give up”, “what did you keep”, “what embarrasses you to admit about your decisions” and more.

Ocean’s 11, 12, 13 {C}

So, I finally saw the quintessential heist movies, and I understand why people love them. I devoured them all over the course of a couple of days. To develop a unique style that is still referenced and parodied 25 years later is a testament to how fun these movies are. The first one also features an excellent romance between Clooney and Roberts, who have fantastic chemistry. Each of the movies has a fun core (except the third, which is indeed the worst of the bunch), and they’re just a good time.

Weapons {C}

I am not a horror movie girl— but Weapons was a real delight. Three parts horror, one part laugh out loud comedy, and one part an exploration of how communities lash out and crumble when their children are hurt— I enjoyed Weapons on all fronts it offered. It also features the F-bomb delivery of the year by Josh Brolin, and I’d recommend watching the movie for that alone.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery {C}

I wish I loved “Wake Up Dead Man” as much as I wanted to. I love whodunits, and all the ingredients are here: Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc continues to delight, both Josh O’Connor and Josh Brolin deliver fantastic performances, and Glenn Close needs to be cast in more comedies, stat. But this star-studded cast is not enough to mask the hollowness of the mystery at the core.

I once heard an excellent insight, which I’ll paraphrase here: “In a whodunit, everyone’s done something, even though there is only one person who did the murder.” Unfortunately, most of the cast was too one-dimensional to even care about what they’d done, much less suspect them of being the culprit. While I do enjoy the heart of the movie in considering the place of religion in modern society, I wish it was surrounded by a more compelling movie.

Amadeus {C}

I came in ready and excited to love Amadeus. I am no prodigy, working in an industry with many prodigies— I looked forward to art that explored this! “Skilled enough to recognize greatness, and to know that you don’t have it”, as the protagonist Salieri says, comparing himself to the titular Mozart. While it’s an enjoyable film, I came out unsatisfied with its exploration of its core concept, and its decision to instead focus on the character drama of Salieri trying to tank Mozart’s career and Mozart’s nonchalant attitude to life. It is so low on this list because of how much its lack of curiosity about its central conflict frustrated me.

Much like the priest who listens to the story and then, shell-shocked, walks away: the movie had not much to say in the end.

F-1 The Movie {C}

Long-term followers of Arushi’s hyperfixations would know that I went through a bit of an F1-racing phase in 2024. This gave me a real love/hate relationship with F1 The Movie. I love nothing more than a classic underdog sports movie, and Brad Pitt does a great job playing a loveable jackass has-been-but-also-what-could-have-been. There’s a romantic subplot that ends up being adorable instead of annoying, in part because the actors have great chemistry. It is, however, insane how many things they get wrong while being directly sponsored by F1 itself. The fictional team would’ve been sold for parts by the end of Race 2.

Erin Brockovich {C}

I’m shocked that PG&E didn’t sue the hell out of the studio making the movie! While the story itself is nothing special— a single mom of two finds herself fighting for justice against a large corporation using her unique skills and charm— the execution was stellar. There is a romantic subplot that I found to be done incredibly well, which painted the main character in an imperfect light… and was willing to not walk it back. That’s such a rare feature that it immediately elevated the movie past most biopics for me.

The Intern {C}

Another joyful watch that didn’t leave a large impression on me. The idea of a widowed septuagenarian becoming an intern in the new world of technology is as much of a fun romp as it sounds— and I did appreciate the lack of leaning into “old man doesn’t understand computers” hijinks. Instead, the movie focuses on the relationship between the main character and the CEO of the company he joins, and their blossoming friendship. Simple? Yes. But if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Music & Lyrics {C}

Come every December, I get my romantic comedies queued up — this year’s new entry is Music & Lyrics. I was shocked to realize I knew some of the songs from the movie, like “Pop! Goes My Heart”— a pastiche of 80s synthpop and crazy hairdos. The core flaw, unfortunately, is that Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore have basically no chemistry together.

The Thursday Murder Club {D}

The idea of retired professors, CIA officers and nurses solving cold cases together is as delightful as can be. However, the movie underdelivered for me. The actors do well, and there is a scene around the protagonist’s husband that is fantastically tense — but I can’t seem to summon anything else to say about the movie, which is criticism enough.

Friendship {D}

Weird A24 movie of the year. It definitely got a few laughs from me, but I didn’t really get it.

Carry On {D}

Put it on during Christmas. Had one clever plotline with a suitcase swap. Otherwise a massive blurgh of a movie. Save your time, don’t watch it.