The 12 Days of Recapsmas continues! For the uninitiated: over the last few years, I have kept a list of my 4 favorite first-time watches for every month of the year, and end up with a great way of seeing my favorite 48 movies of that year. This will be a recurring series on Anatomy of a Film, where I break down my favorite discoveries for the year. Let the 2025 recap continue with our four favorites from February 2025! You can view the full list by clicking the image below.
1. Blue Velvet (1986)
Where to begin with David Lynch’s Blue Velvet…
The first time I watched this movie, I truly was appalled at how graphic the content was. By the time I got to Blue Velvet this year, I already had a few Lynch movies under my belt such as Dune (1984), Eraserhead (1977), and Mulholland Drive (2001). Lynch was still, in my mind, an unapproachable auteur who made insane films. 2025 as a whole definitely changed my perspective on Lynch following his death, and it all started with Blue Velvet. I now see Lynch as one of my all time favorite directors, up there with Ishiro Honda, Cronenberg, and Kubrick. The toughest part of the movie for me, and probably most people, is when Frank Booth (portrayed by Dennis Hopper) shows up at Dorothy Vallens’ (portrayed by Isabella Rossellini) apartment and sexually assaults her. After that moment, I felt paralyzed with terror any time he was on screen. It’s a movie that became frozen in my mind for days after the first time I watched it, and ended up revisiting it about 2 weeks after my first viewing.
The film jumped from 4 stars (which I gave it for how uncomfortable and hollow I felt after seeing it for the first time) to 5 stars due to having built up some shielding for the psychic damage this movie intends on inflicting the viewer with the first time. Now, Dennis Hopper’s performance is one of my favorites from any Lynch project. Frank Booth is one of my favorite villains in cinema now due to his chaotic nature and how sickly hilarious he is. The film also features Kyle MacLachlan’s home-from-college voyeuristic psycho Jeffrey Beaumont, Laura Dern’s teenage optimistic dreamer Sandy Williams, and the woman of the evening, Isabella Rossellini as Dorothy Vallens. Rossellini goes through so much throughout this film as Dorothy and delivers one of the most devastating performances put to film. This is the movie that finally made Lynch and his particular writing style click with me, and start both my wife and me down a wonderful David Lynch journey throughout the year. I’ll be writing more about Lynch in a different Recapsmas 2025 post, so keep an eye out.
2. Cure (1997)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure is another movie that wormed its way into my head and still hasn’t left after that first viewing. It’s a Japanese horror-mystery-psychological thriller that builds such a tense atmosphere that the film genuinely feels dangerous to watch. At any moment, you feel like you can fall under Mamiya’s spell. It’s a fantastic horror movie that you should watch while knowing as little as possible about it. Koji Yashuko (portraying Detective Takabe) delivers an absolute knockout performance alongside Masato Hagiwara (portraying Kunio Mamiya) who is terrifying any time he is on screen.
3. Vertigo (1958)
We are back on day 2 of Recapsmas 2025 with another Hitchcock! I don’t have anything new to say about this movie at all, but I will say that I couldn’t have had a more incorrect assumption about this movie than when I was first watching it, which was that this was Hitchcocks worst romance in a film so far. That was until Kim Novak’s Madeline said “If you lose me you’ll know that I loved you and wanted to keep on loving you.” Her delivery on that line just floored me. It’s Vertigo! I don’t know how it took me 25 years to finally watch this masterpiece.
4. I’m Still Here (2024)
We have finally arrived at what was my number one for movie of the entire decade for most of this year. Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here stands instead now as one of the most underrated movies of the decade, as conversations around it seem to have fully stopped after the Oscars aired this year. This was a powerful yet shattering biopic about the Paiva family during the 70s fascist dictatorship in Brazil. Rubens Paiva (portrayed by Selton Mello) was a former politician who was disappeared by military death squads. The story follows what happens to the Paiva family before, during, and after his disappearance, from the perspective of Eunice Paiva (portrayed by Fernanda Torres). I have only seen this movie once, and am not sure how I would handle a rewatch. It is a heartbreaking film, and couldn’t be more relevant today. The current Trump regime is currently engaging in the same fascist disappearance tactics seen in this film. You follow Eunice into hell and back trying to find out what happened to her husband. Walter Salles captures spiritual torment like no other, and Fernanda Torres delivers a performance that is guaranteed to make you sob. This should have swept every award this year.
Well, that caps off day 2 of Recapsmas! Tomorrow will be a full day of watching movies with Now You See Me: Now You Don’t and Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, so expect day 3 later on in the week. Thanks for reading!
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