Flasz On Film

Here’s another little roundup of articles I’d like to highlight as part of my Year in Review series for 2025. This time, I would like to list a handful of pieces I wrote throughout the year that ended up read the most.

Heidi: Rescue of the Lynx (2025) – Review

To be honest, I don’t know how this little review found itself on this list, as it is as inconsequential as they come. Perhaps my comments geared more as parental guidance than a reading of the film—and being product aimed at preschool kids it didn’t invest in one at all—struck a chord somewhere and a handful of mums and dads found my ramblings useful. Can’t be sure. Maybe there is an audience for functional reviews for children’s movies somewhere out there and I casually brushed shoulders with it. (Full article here)

Pillion (2025) – Review

Another one of my strict reviews, this time of Pillion, found some kind of audience that I was not sure existed. Though, I have to admit that I had way more fun writing this movie up than I had reviewing Heidi: Rescue of the Lynx or Super Charlie. It was, being completely honest, a weird movie to talk about. On one hand, the experience of watching it with an audience full of people who had absolutely no idea what they had just stepped into and there was a few hundred words hidden in simply commenting on this experience. While on the other hand, Pillion offered me an opportunity to let my own hog loose and leave a few pointed remarks regarding the film’s own self-importance. At the same time, some queer movies develop an audience and a cult following much easier than other films and based on what I saw on Letterboxd, I was one of the few people who didn’t praise this movie to high heavens. (Full article here)

The Choral (2025) – Review

Another one of those little reviews that I personally paid very little attention to that ended up clicked on quite a bit. Over the years I think I have developed a full-blown allergy towards these blowhard prestige-adjacent movies aimed at elderly middle-class audiences (like Conclave, Belfast, or Wicked Little Letters) and maybe my bias is now on full display when I sit down to review something like The Choral. I don’t think I wrote about the movie in there more than I wrote about what the movie wasn’t. But, as always, it was a fun little experience trying to articulate why risk-averse movies like this are popular with certain demographics and why they are a pain to sit through. (Full article here)

28 YEARS LATER, Sprinting Zombie Bodybuilders and Dancing on Freshly Painted Surfaces

I was thinking the other day that in 2025 I think I wrote the most one-star reviews that I can remember. And I should add that I dispense five-star ratings like hot cakes, which should also inform you that a negative review coming from yours truly is something to give you pause. Nevertheless, what was supposed to be a more contained text about 28 Years Later ballooned into a treaty that questioned the existence of this franchise as a whole because the original Danny Boyle movie from 2002 barely left enough room to accommodate one sequel, let alone a franchise resurrected many decades later. Though, I will say I was quite happy with myself when I came up with the section in which I described the insidious sound made by sprinting zombies on steroids. (Full article here)

BLOOD MERIDIAN at 40 and Why Now Is the Time to Adapt the Seemingly Unadaptable

Look, Cormac McCarthy is one of my favorite authors and Blood Meridian is his best book in my humble estimation. Therefore, I had no other choice but to pounce on an opportunity to write about it on the occasion of its fortieth birthday. In fact, I am extremely happy and grateful that my article outlining the numerous reasons why Blood Meridian remains such a difficult beast to adapt—and John Hillcoat is still working on it as of now, by the way—was read by so many people. This is one of those pieces into which I poured quite a lot of thought, energy and research and seeing it resonate with people enough to become the most popular article from this year truly warms my heart. (Full article here)