the leftovers!
an abbreviated 2025 wrapped, plus all the stuff I forgot
Hi chickens,
The week between Christmas and New Years is feeling as haunted as everyone always says, in a way that’s half good and half like I’m floating somewhere outside my body. I’ve spent my days taking bubble baths in the new tub that’s a little too deep so I have to hold my arms up high in order to not get my book wet, eating Lofthouse cookies half at a time, drinking upwards of three iced coffees per day, walking outside in my mini Uggs and complaining when snow inevitably touches my bare ankle, mainlining novels intended for middle schoolers, neglecting my PT exercises, and reluctantly whittling down my embarrassingly huge book collection that currently lives in my parents’ new basement. They’re nice enough to let me store most of my collected treasures here, since they know I love my used books like I will love my own children (?) even if I haven’t had the chance to read most of them yet — the unread ones are special because they hold the potential to be life-changing, even if only a small percentage of them actually will be. Like Schrodinger’s cat.
I debated making this post a “best of 2025” list across categories, but I feel like I’ve already said my piece about all of the things I’d want to talk about. Instead, I want to cover off on what I missed. The great things that slipped through the cracks, the things I didn’t think too much of at the time but have found bits and pieces of still bumping around in my brain, however many months later.
But since I’d like to imagine you must be begging for my Best Of, I’ll just make it quick. Like a psychopath, I made a Letterboxd list ranking all the new releases I saw this year (screenshot below). Regarding TV, the best two shows of the year were The Pitt and Heated Rivalry (I mean it). Regarding music, there was no Glee Cast on my Spotify Wrapped this year, miracle of miracles, but in its place were several entries from the Hairspray soundtrack, so don’t go thinking I’ve matured!
Now that that’s been dealt with, onto the crumbs.
Movies!
A Complete Unknown (2024) / dir. James Mangold
The first new release I watched in 2025, and one of only two total films (the other is One Battle) that I’ve seen twice in theaters. Despite knowing almost no Bob Dylan songs going in, and precisely nothing about his personal life, I absolutely adored this. It’s wonderful getting to hang out for two hours in 1960s Manhattan and Newport, Rhode Island (currently the two places I call home, though they weren’t when I first watched this movie!). The music is fantastic, Timmy is unexpectedly convincing in his portrayal of Dylan without ever leaning into Impression territory, and all of the supporting performances (Ed Norton and Boyd Holbrook especially) are slam dunks. Had me ambling around all January listening to “Like a Rolling Stone” and shaking an imaginary tambourine.
Modern Romance (1981) / dir. Albert Brooks
An anti-romcom that’s both perfectly emotionally calibrated and nausea-inducing, starring Albert Brooks as a neurotic, jealous film editor who can’t decide whether his perfectly lovely girlfriend is The One. Watching this is kind of like watching a car crash in slow motion, but I loved it. And I liked the poster so much I bought a huge version of it and hung it above my bed, so!
Chasing Amy (1997) / dir. Kevin Smith
Perhaps the most divisive on this list, and certainly not one I expected to still be thinking about months after I watched it. The basic plot of this movie is that comic book artist Ben Affleck falls in love with a lesbian (played by a wonderfully squeaky Joey Lauren Adams), and you can probably make some educated guesses about how it proceeds from there. But as many ways as this movie stumbles in its white-man attempts to explore queerness from an outsider’s perspective, it’s also a surprisingly honest look at sexual fluidity and reckoning with one’s identity. It’s one of those movies where I can’t totally decide what I think about it, but the fact that I’m still thinking about it at all says a lot. And as a person from Massachusetts I’m legally required to love all Ben Affleck movies, particularly those where he gets to deliver gut wrenchingly romantic monologues.
Drinking Buddies (2013) / dir. Joe Swanberg
Catnip to my very particular sensibilities — mumblecore, love rectangles, cabin trips, Chicago, facial hair. Olivia Wilde plays an infuriatingly not-like-other-girls brewery employee to perfection, and Jake Johnson has a great beard. Anna Kendrick is here as well, and I’ve recently decided I would defend her with my life (her performance of “Ladies Who Lunch” from Camp is probably my most-watched Youtube video of the year). A quiet little relationship sketch, full of dirtbags and soaked in beer. Just how I like them!
Companion (2025) / dir. Drew Hancock
I’m hesitant to say too much about Companion, lest any lucky bastards among you have gotten this far without seeing the trailer that SPOILS THE BIGGEST TWIST, but even if you have seen that godforsaken trailer, please be assured there are surprises left in store. There’s a bright, bright future ahead for Antler Queen Sophie Thatcher, and Jack Quaid (equal parts charming and smarmy) is perfectly used. Tightly constructed, great performances, 97 minutes, best title card of the year.
Honorable Unmentions
Griffin in Summer (2024), Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025), But I’m a Cheerleader (1999), Go (1999), Boogie Nights (1997)
Books!
My Education / Susan Choi
In a stalemate with Nathan Hill’s The Nix as my favorite book of the year. Brilliantly inverts many of the hallmarks of the illicit-affair-with-professor genre while still maintaining what makes that genre so fun to read. Smart, sexy, foul-mouthed, and deeply entrancing, with many of the best sentences I’ve read all year.
Caucasia / Danzy Senna
A rich, haunting coming-of-age story about two biracial sisters who are separated Parent Trap-style after the nasty divorce between their passionate, erratic mother and studious father, both of whom have shadowy pasts as political renegades. There’s a stretch of this book set in New Hampshire that is the single most vivid and accurate depiction of rural New England I’ve ever read. Tremendous in a way that bubbles right underneath the surface. I will be rereading this.
The Animators / Kayla Rae Whitaker
Follows the rise and fall of the creative partnership between two artists (and best friends) who create an indie-smash-hit animated film about one of their fucked up childhoods. While it shares a lot of DNA with Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (another book I loved), it has a wonderfully distinct anger and grittiness to it. It left me in the unique kind of fog that happens when a book reflects some of your thorniest qualities back onto you.
Over Easy and The Customer is Always Wrong / Mimi Pond
2025 is officially the year I rekindled my love of graphic novels, which I’d forgotten were also made for and available to adults. Mimi Pond’s illustrated accounts of her time working at a diner in Oakland in the 70s are funny, vibrant, and heartbreaking, and I felt deeply attached to their eccentric cast of characters. There are a few visuals in here that will be sticking with me for the long haul.
Hot Air / Marcy Dermansky
It has yet to take me more than two sittings to crush a Marcy Dermansky book, which are always quick, wry, weird, and deeply addictive. Hot Air follows a divorcée on a boring date that is interrupted by her former summer camp fling, now a billionaire, crash-landing his rented hot air balloon into the pool in her backyard. It’s as strange as it sounds, in the best possible way.
Honorable Unmentions
Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker, The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank, The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry, Everything’s Fine by Cecilia Rabess, Dream State by Eric Puchner
P.S.
Other things I read/am reading this week: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (I love when young adult fiction isn’t written like it’s for idiots!!) and The Wedding by Dorothy West (I’m almost finished).
Other things I watched this week: Chronicle (high school boys develop superpowers and it goes poorly), Diner (a good movie about terrible men hanging out in 50s), and Annie Hall (watch for the absolutely sparkling Diane Keaton performance).
December playlist, with a few select holiday songs sprinkled in. Please enjoy the cover art from Eloise at Christmastime.
That’s all. Hope everyone has a wonderful New Year’s! Next time we talk, I will have seen Marty Supreme, which my family inexplicably has no interest in.
xo, Lael
You’re literally a fake Diane Keaton Stan.
Lael! Great list! I just read the animators and was also left in a fog, I loved it so much. best, Lael