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 August 2025! You can view the full list by clicking the image below.
1. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
I caught Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950) during its Fathom re-release in theaters this year. It was such a classic that we’d never seen before, so what better way to experience this for the first time than at the theater? It is a surprisingly intense psychological thriller that blew me away. I wont spend too much time on this because it’s Sunset Boulevard. It’s amazing. Gloria Swanson, you will always be a star. Also this meant the entire world to my wife and I because the very next day we finished Twin Peaks: The Return having no idea the role this film would play. IF YOU KNOW YOU KNOW!!!
2. Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)
I am counting David Lynch’s 2017 masterpiece, Twin Peaks: The Return, because he calls it an 18-hour long movie. I have decided I will be doing some Twin Peaks posts sometime in the new year, so again, I won’t say much other than it was a wonderful, terrifying, unsettling, frustrating, and satisfying conclusion to the series for me. It really is one of the greatest things I have ever seen and I can’t wait to talk about it more later.
3. Weapons (2025)
Zach Cregger’s WEAPONS (2025) was one of the most fun and talked about horror films of 2025, and I think it is one of the best of the decade so far. It’s tense, scary, funny, and completely ridiculous. Julia Garner delivers a great performance as the paranoid manic pixie dream girl Justine, who is an elementary school teacher who is blamed by her community for the disappearance for all but 1 child in her class. Josh Brolin also shines in this movie as Archer, a grief addled conspiracy theorist determined to find his son, who is in Justine’s class. There is a great child performance in this movie that has gone forgotten in the wake of Jacobi Jupe’s heart wrenching Hamnet performance, and that is Cary Christopher as Alex, the sole student that remained after the disappearance. Finally, we have the showstopping performance from Amy Madigan as Aunt Gladys. This is a great ensemble movie with other fantastic performances in every corner of the film, but this group has remained my favorite among them all. I don’t want to get deeply into spoiler territory, but this movie is a real treat. Cregger directed the indie hit Barbarian back in 2022, and if you enjoyed that movie, you’ll love this one. To me this was definitely more refined and had a much better script overall than Barbarian, if we’re comparing them.
4. The Wailing (2016) (Also Known as ‘Goksung’ or ‘Gokseong’)
I can’t remember what compelled me to watch Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing (2016) this summer while having covid, but I think it’s safe to say that Hwang Jung-min performing an absolutely insane ritual as Il-gwang had something to do with healing me. The Wailing is a horror-mystery-supernatural-thriller that absolutely blew me away and you should know as little as possible about it before going into it. That being said, I want to take the time to say this really quick. One of the biggest criticisms I see about this movie is the length. Why on earth would that ever be a problem for a movie of this scale and magnitude? What kind of “my steak is too juicy” ass take is that? This is an absolute masterpiece without a single moment wasted. Come on now. Get real.
And that concludes August’s Recapsmas 2025! Thanks for reading and Happy New Year! The 12 Days of Recapsmas will continue into 2026, see you then!
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