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 April 2025! You can view the full list by clicking the image below. What a hell of a month.
1. There Will Be Blood (2007)
It’s a bit embarrassing to admit the amount of obscene blind-spots I have for movies still, even 3 years down my cinephile journey. Paul Thomas Anderson and his films were one of my biggest blind-spots going into 2025, and knowing that the release of One Battle After Another (2025) was coming later in the year, I watched as many movies of his as I could. I had only seen Punch Drunk Love (2002) and Magnolia (1999) prior to this, and absolutely adored both of those movies, so I was excited to cross such a classic off my list. I had no idea what I was in for. Ready for this? This was my first ever Daniel Day-Lewis! How unbelievable is that? He absolutely blew me away as the ruthless oilman Daniel Plainview. I recently published an article on Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, and slightly addressed the recent comments made by Quentin Tarantino about Paul Dano’s performance as Father Sunday. I couldn’t disagree more with his take. I really can’t imagine another person acting opposite to DDL in this role. Part of Paul Dano’s whole thing is having a punchable face (see: The Batman (2022). His character forcing Daniel Plainview to chant something as painful as “I HAVE ABANDONED MY CHILD!!” to a congregation of townspeople he employs is completely believable due to their chemistry together.
To speak to Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance, it is one of the singular best performances I have ever seen. I grew up around oilmen like Plainview through my grandfather being a company-man, and met many oil barons (albeit the modern versions) as a child. You can feel their ruthlessness hidden behind each word, and they always find a way to reveal their narcissism in a way that always brings you down after an interaction with them. I believe that spirit is perfectly captured by Daniel Day-Lewis. It really is unsettling how good he was at capturing the immediate distrust you feel when an oil baron starts speaking.
Last but certainly not the least about There Will Be Blood (2007): Paul Thomas Anderson’s direction. This was meticulously shot and technically crafted in ways we haven’t seen since James Cameron’s Titanic (1997). Every frame in this movie could be a mural in either a western saloon or opposite the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. The oil explosion, the vast ocean, and the suffocating scenes inside the mines just consume you whole. Hats off to you, PTA. This is a masterpiece
2. Battle Royale (2000)
It can be said that Kinji Fukasaku’s film Battle Royale (2000) is one of the most influential films of the 21st century. Battle Royale was movie that I know I’d seen at some point as a teenager back in the day, but watching it this year I found myself surprised with how much I had forgotten. It is a sci-fi action horror movie that depicts the Japanese government as authoritative, teen-hating fascists, and decide that in order to cull these teenage delinquents and scare them into submission, one class of high school students must fight to the death every year.
Battle Royale has influenced countless young adult novels all around the world, such as The Hunger Games, Divergent, or The Maze Runner. The best of those easily lies with The Hunger Games, a franchise that is on it’s way to its 6th film after over a decade of box office success. That being said, however, I would argue none of these films go nearly as far as Battle Royale does in terms of violence. The closest recent film we have to Battle Royale in that regard is Francis Lawrence’s adaptation of The Long Walk (2025). Battle Royale itself is a kinetic force that doesn’t stop once it starts rolling. It is full of complicated characters with their own backstories and personal motivations for killing who they do. In that regard, it feels like a more personal film compared to the others listed above. These are classmates killing each other, rather than people from various districts or states being pulled from a jar of names. It is a brutal film that demands your attention from the get-go. It is excellent.
3. Possession (1981)
I cannot remember what led to watching this on a random Monday evening this April, but for some reason, my wife and I sat down and put on Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession (1981). It is a harrowing film, and one of the greatest horror films I have ever seen. Isabelle Adjani, who plays Anna and Helen in the film, is a force of nature that everyone else in the film wishes they could keep up with. The standout scene of the film, of course, is Anna’s breakdown in the tunnel. It is a deeply unsettling look at a broken marriage during the Cold War, but you can never quite fully look away. I don’t want to say much about this one, just watch it if you haven’t. One day I will have that gorgeous 4k UHD.
4. Sinners (2025)
Ryan Coogler’s highly anticipated Sinners (2025) took the world by storm upon it’s announcement, and was our first big “event” film of 2025. The film stars Michael B. Jordan in his best role yet, which in fact is a double role where he plays the twin brothers Smoke and Stack. There are standout performances in every nook and cranny of this film, with Hailee Steinfeld as Stack’s scorned lover, Mary, newcomer Miles Caton as the preachers son, Sammie, and Jack O’Connell with his demonic performance as Remmick, a vampire. One of the most powerful performances in the movie, yet not often mentioned, is Wunmi Mosaku as Annie. Michael B. Jordan and Coogler are firing on all cylinders here.
Sinners was my top film of the year for most of the year after it’s release. It was eventually dethroned by Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing (2025), which I had an absolute blast with, and then that was quickly dethroned by Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (2025). Upon a guaranteed rewatch before the Oscar season is in full swing, I can see it moving farther back up my best films of 2025 list. It is a beautiful film that shows the power that music can have over a community, and how it helps heal the wounds of the past while looking forward to a brighter future. The past, present, and future music scene is of course the magnum opus of Coogler’s career at this point, and Miles Caton’s performance as Sammie during that scene remains one of my favorite for the entire year.
You can’t talk about Sinners without mentioning the real meat and potatoes of the movie: the vampires! Remmick’s introduction of fleeing the Native American vampire hunters was one of the coolest things I have seen all year. I want a spin-off film of just the Native American vampire hunters after this. The homage the movie pays to my personal favorite horror film, The Thing (1982), is also one of the best scenes of the entire year, when the surviving group has to prove they are human by eating pickled garlic. Towards the end of the movie, there are multiple sequences that cemented this as one of the best of the decade. One of which is Smoke mowing down an entire chapter of the KKK, which was cathartic for both the audience and Smoke’s character. The other is the post-credit scene, where Stack and Mary as their preserved, vampirised selves visit an aged Sammie decades later, who has become a famous jazz musician. Sinners is one of the best movies in recent years.
And that concludes April’s Recapsmas for 2025! Thanks for reading.
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