Welcome to the first ever CCC Year-End Movie Awards! I’m
handing out a random assortment of completely made-up accolades to films I saw
this year, both good and not so good. 2025 was not a terrible year for
films—certainly better overall than I had been anticipating—but it was not an
exceptional year, either. These movies were all worth mentioning, though, in
different ways, and a few of these awards might even instigate some dispute, so
let’s get into it!
Best Sequel Award
There were so, so many sequels this year, and some
surprising nominees include follow-ups to Final Destination, Tron,
and Zootopia. The Best Sequel Award winner, though, is a movie I knew
nothing about until pretty close to its release date, aside from the fact that
it was part of a franchise I love, and was one of two reboot-ish sequels
released this year, following a previous successful prequel-reboot. Predator:
Killer of Killers was the animated anthology for the Predator franchise
I never knew I needed. It totally shocked me when I first saw it, and I even
watched it again before Predator: Badlands to find it held up on a
rewatch, too. Why does it win this award? It’s not only the best continuation I
saw this year, but it actually surpasses most previous Predator sequels,
for me, putting it up there as one of the best in the entire thirty-eight-year-old
franchise.
Cutest Alien Award
There are three nominees, including the oddly endearing
Creepers from Mickey 17, with Bud from Predator: Badlands as the
frontrunner, but in quite the upset, Bud loses to the CGI-ification of a
previously hand-drawn Disney icon: Stitch, from the live-action remake of Lilo
& Stitch. No, it wasn’t a great movie—in fact, it was actually pretty
bad in some unexpected ways, like how it inverted a couple of the core themes
of the original—but I still found it enjoyable enough to see the one time in
the theatre and I probably don’t need to see it ever again, because it was
automatically a pointless exercise when the original is just so good. But,
Stitch remained cute and endearing, even in CGI.
Worst Remake Award
Speaking of Lilo & Stitch, there were a few
remakes this year that really didn’t need to happen. Wolf Man, War of
the Worlds, and How to Train Your Dragon all left many moviegoers
scratching their heads, wondering “was that necessary?” because were any of
them better than previous versions? Not at all. As much as everyone hated War
of the Worlds, I think Snow White should win this award, because
wow, talk about bad word of mouth way before the movie even came out! It seemed
like nobody was on the side of anyone involved in this remake, and it lost
Disney money, but rightfully so, I’d say, because it just looked plain bad, and
I didn’t hear any nice things said about it. Between Lilo & Stitch
and this, maybe Disney will finally start to slow down on the remakes. Oh,
wait, I just remembered that Moana trailer…never mind.
Best Remake Award
For all the bad remakes in 2025, not every single one was a
dud. Some could be argued as being more like updates than remakes, such as Fantastic
Four, but let’s face it, they’re all basically remakes. I’m giving this one
to Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein, because I was quite
looking forward to his long-in-development adaptation of Mary Shelley’s famous
novel, and I enjoyed it, though it wasn’t as good as I had hoped it would be. I
loved the performances and the ways its was faithful to the source material,
but the narrative was also twisted into a very Del Toro-ified version,
oscillating between meaningful, contemplative, artful moments and unsubtle,
over-the-top, dumbly obvious ones. Visually and thematically, it was mostly
great, and I’m glad I got to catch it in theatres instead of just on Netflix.
Biggest Meme Spawned from a Movie Award
The winner is A Minecraft Movie, hands down. The
sheer absurdity of kids turning theatres upside down with absolute mayhem when
Jack Black exclaims “Chicken Jockey!” defies any other memes that any other movies
initiated. I still don’t really know what “Chicken Jockey” even means, and I do
not want to know.
Biggest Waste of Money Award
The budgets keep getting higher! Hollywood is setting itself
up for failure! There were a few notable box office bombs, as there always are
in any given year, but I think the most shocking waste of money award has to go
to Netflix. It’s not for their insanely bloated budgets on the final episodes
of Stranger Things, but for the flawed adaptation of the book The
Electric State, which I read and quite enjoyed, but the movie bears little
to any resemblance to the source material, and it cost a staggering 320 million
dollars! The Russo Brothers must’ve thought they were directing another Avengers
movie with that kind of money, but it got terrible reviews and everyone
instantly forgot about it. At this point I’m anticipating Netflix subscription
prices will quadruple just so they can make some money back. Update: they’re
trying to buy Warner Brothers? I guess they didn’t lose that much money…
Biggest Disappointment Award
Considering how little I was looking forward to this year’s
slate of films at the end of 2024, this is a pretty short list of nominees, but
there were a few films that really didn’t live up to even moderate
expectations. 28 Years Later was not the epic return to form for Danny
Boyle and Alex Garland I had been hoping for (and was hyped up for by that
trailer—mini-award for best trailer of the year goes to that first teaser with
“Boots”) and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning was the weakest
entry in the long running Tom Cruise-led franchise after an unbelievably long
run of strong sequels—and yet, I still enjoyed both films, despite being
disappointed. What I had high hopes for and still didn’t really enjoy was Mickey
17, which gets this award, for kind of blowing it on a really fun concept
with too many tonal shifts, too many dumb ideas, and too little entertainment value
beyond Robert Pattinson’s committed performance.
Guilty Pleasure Award
I find it most interesting to compare reactions to a movie
when they vary greatly from person to person, or when my own is in the
minority. I don’t know if this is the right award for Avatar: Fire and Ash
or not, but I had to give it something, and this might be because I’m so fresh
out of the IMAX as of writing this, but for some reason I enjoyed it far more
than Way of Water, even though it is objectively worse than the other
two Avatar movies in several ways and most people are condemning it for
its repetitive nature, excessive runtime, and forgettability. I’m going to
unpack it more in the near future, but for now, I’ll say I recognize that it
isn’t that great or that special, but I also enjoyed the experience far more
than the last one, and found it more comparable to experiencing the first
movie.
Best Stunt Award
Even though it will get no other awards (I could have
nominated it for the Guilty Pleasure Award, too) I also had to give the eighth Mission:
Impossible something, and leave it up to Tom Cruise to be the only one who
can top the best stunts performed by Tom Cruise. Even though Mission:
Impossible – The Final Reckoning didn’t live up to the previous few sequels
in terms of overall quality, story, or believability, I still found it quite
entertaining, and the biplane sequence did live up to the unprecedented
standards the series has set for itself in terms of jaw dropping action.
Best Horror Film Award
I was originally going to give this award to Weapons,
as I quite enjoyed its nonlinear storytelling and how it created so much
mystery with the marketing campaign and unpredictable narrative, but it’s a
mystery that really only works once. I remember thinking I wish I could see it
again without remembering anything about it. What ended up being the best
mystery film of the year, though, was Wake Up Dead Man, the third whodunit
written and directed by Rian Johnson starring Daniel Craig as detective Benoit
Blanc. No, this isn’t really a sequel or part of a standard modern franchise at
all, and whether or not you’ve seen the previous Glass Onion or the
original Knives Out doesn’t matter one bit to how enjoyable Wake Up
Dead Man is. I was hooked by the setup and remained interested and
entertained the whole way through, but best of all? The mystery had me going
“OHHHHHH!!!!!” at multiple points in the third act and reacting strongly, just
like Knives Out, and I was very surprised at how much better this one
was than Glass Onion, which was not nearly as good on a rewatch. Bonus
award for Best Actor goes to Josh Brolin, for the unhinged Monsignor Wicks in
this and the determined dad Archer Graff in Weapons.
Most Surprising Superhero Film Award
The biggest surprise, though, gets the award, because I was
curious about James Gunn’s Superman: Legacy (shortened to just Superman,
although my movie stub bears the original title!) but I didn’t expect to find
it worth seeing a subsequent time in theatres, and for it to be even more
enjoyable in the second round. Some fans found it a bit jarring with how it
laid the groundwork for the new DC cinematic universe, but once I got past the
pacing issues and unexpected worldbuilding choices, I actually found I
connected with the movie more than I ever expected to, and in terms of being a
James Gunn movie but also a Superman movie, I found I was in agreeance with the
majority of fans who embraced it. I don’t love Superman as a hero, and I
wouldn’t say I loved the movie, but I did find it well made, with the necessary
heart and action and visual splendor.
Best Original Film Award
As you can tell from this list and from the general state of
wide release movies these days, the ratio of original filmmaking to
remakes/reboots/sequels/prequels/IP films is way off. There were a number of
movies I enjoyed this year that were fresh concepts not based on anything, with
nominees including Weapons, Sinners, and One Battle After
Another. As usual, I missed many of the new original films in theatres and
will be playing catchup for the foreseeable future, but at this point, One
Battle After Another really stands out as the only completely unique and
wholly entertaining movie I saw in 2025, with a fantastic cast, engaging story,
interesting shots, humour used effectively, and a runtime only about thirty
minutes shorter than Avatar: Fire and Ash, but without a moment wasted
or anything missing. I was worried it would be overhyped, but I think the hype
should be believed.
Best New Old Film Award
In years past it’s been controversial for me to include old
movies amid my best movies seen in theatres for the year, such as Jurassic
Park 3D in 2013, Jaws and Back to the Future in 2015, or Raiders
of the Lost Ark in 2016. This year, the award goes to Kill Bill: The
Whole Bloody Affair, which is also a new record for the longest amount of
time I spent in a movie theatre in one sitting watching one single feature
film. The four-and-a-half-hour runtime flew by. This is how Kill
Bill was meant to be seen, with key scenes added in (as well as some
omissions that actually improve the narrative) and it had been long enough
since I had seen Vol. 1 or 2 that it felt like I was seeing it
for the first time with fresh eyes, while simultaneously feeling nostalgic. The
Whole Bloody Affair reaffirmed this action epic as my favourite Tarantino
film, hands down, and this version, in all its seismic glory, may have just
entered my all-time favourite films list.
Best Dinosaur Film Award
The last award is a very CCC-coded one. You might be
thinking, oh, this is an easy win for Jurassic World Rebirth! WRONG. I
did not like the new Jurassic World much at all. Sure, the effects
looked better and the action was better and, overall, it was better than Jurassic
World Dominion, but it was also worse in some ways, and still so dumb
compared to The Lost World and even Jurassic Park III. The Best
Dinosaur Movie Award goes to Primitive War, for being an absolute blast
with tons of dinosaurs chasing Vietnam soldiers and devouring them and
delivering incredible special effects considering how low the budget was. No,
it wasn’t among the best dinosaur movies I’ve ever seen, but in terms of cheesy
action and combining war clichés with dinosaur clichés and making it as
thrilling as possible, yeah, it was a banger, and it’s the best dinosaur movie
I’ve seen in a long time.
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