As usual, I’m sharing what media I watched, read, played, and so on in 2025. This was a really busy year personally, with a lot going on, and so I didn’t get as much time to play games (sadly), but I did make an effort to watch a lot of movies. I just got a Switch 2, so I’m hoping 2026 will bring more games! That being said, it will depend on work. This was a chiller year work-wise relative to the last, but I hope to ramp things back up this year… and maybe I’ll find some time to publish some draft blog posts…!

but anyway, let’s get into it!

Books (& selected comics)

  • Theory and Practice
  • Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
  • East of West
  • The Wicked + The Divine
  • Once & Future
  • 1929
  • Sparta: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Superpower

Really awful on the reading front this year. I’ll try to do better in the future. I spent much of the first half of the year reading comics and worked through Kieron Gillen’s back catalogue, which was fun (and I really love The Power Fantasy currently)!

Other ongoing comics I’m appreciating include the amazing Ultimates run by Deniz Camp (crazy that the ultimate universe is ending soon!), and DC’s companion Absolute universe comics are also great, especially Absolute Martian Manhunter, which is kind of amazing (and also by Deniz Camp). On the manga side, I grew a weird appreciation for Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo, which is doing some interesting things as a sequel series, and I got back into One Piece, which has just been consistently killing it.

Films

  • Saturday Night
  • Joker: Folie à Deux
  • The Iron Claw
  • Babygirl
  • The Fast and the Furious
  • Cuckoo
  • 2 Fast 2 Furious
  • The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
  • The Brutalist
  • Fast & Furious
  • Fast Five
  • Luz
  • Atropia
  • Fast & Furious 6
  • Furious 7
  • Blink Twice
  • Captain America: Brave New World
  • Ne Zha 2
  • The Fate of the Furious
  • F9
  • Fast X
  • Nosferatu
  • Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
  • The Substance
  • Mickey 17
  • Chungking Express
  • Fallen Angels
  • Heretic
  • Zombieland
  • The Man from Earth
  • BlackBerry
  • Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
  • The Hangover
  • 28 Days Later
  • Speak No Evil
  • Ready or Not
  • The Hangover Part II
  • Sinners
  • Companion
  • Layer Cake
  • Sonic the Hedgehog 3
  • Wicked
  • Thunderbolts*
  • Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
  • Happyend
  • Twinless
  • Fountain of Youth
  • Slanted
  • Mountainhead
  • Queer
  • DAN DA DAN: Evil Eye
  • Ocean’s Eleven
  • Ocean’s Twelve
  • Ocean’s Thirteen
  • Barbarian
  • Friendship
  • F1
  • A Minecraft Movie
  • Opus
  • Shiva Baby
  • Superman
  • Final Destination
  • Y2K
  • Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
  • Materialists
  • Weapons
  • Piece By Piece
  • Final Destination Bloodlines
  • Black Bag
  • AVP: Alien vs. Predator
  • The Phoenician Scheme
  • The Double
  • Unknown Number: The High School Catfish
  • Alien
  • Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle
  • Eddington
  • 28 Years Later
  • The Fantastic 4: First Steps
  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
  • One Battle After Another
  • In the Mood for Love
  • Better Man
  • TRON: Legacy
  • He’s Just Not That Into You
  • The Woman in Cabin 10
  • Fantastic Mr. Fox
  • Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc
  • Bugonia
  • Frankenstein
  • KPop Demon Hunters
  • Eagle vs Shark
  • Collateral
  • After the Hunt
  • Ballerina
  • M3GAN
  • M3GAN 2.0
  • The Naked Gun
  • Wake Up Dead Man
  • The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
  • Zootopia
  • Late Night with the Devil
  • Now You See Me: Now You Don’t
  • The Running Man
  • The Watchers
  • Forgetting Sarah Marshall
  • Elvis
  • Good Time

I watched… 107 films this year! Pretty good, improving on last year. It might be tough to beat this next year! As usual, my reviews and ratings are on my letterboxd. I watched all the Fast and Furious films this year (fun to see them progress), and finally watched some Wong Kar-Wai (Chungking Express is amazing). So many amazing films came out this year, but One Battle After Another probably has to be the overall top, although Twinless and Bugonia were really tight contenders (Bugonia is just pure Lanthimos, it’s great) - and, of course, Sinners. I watched a surprising large number of anime movies in theatre (Demon Slayer, Dandandan, Chainsawman), which was fun, and perhaps an interesting shift in stuff in the theatres.

TV Series

  • Game Changers (S7)
  • Doctor Who (nunuWho S2)
  • The Studio
  • Andor (S2)
  • The Last of Us (S2)
  • Daredevil: Born Again (S1)
  • Invincible (S3)
  • Severance (S2)
  • Dark Matter
  • Adolescence
  • Chernobyl
  • Apple Cider Vinegar
  • Mythic Quest (S4)
  • White Lotus (S3)
  • Black Mirror (S7)
  • The Rehearsal (S2)
  • House M.D. (ALL SEASONS!)
  • Alien: Earth
  • Creature Commandos
  • Normal People
  • Marvel Zombies
  • Gen V (S2)
  • The Chair Company
  • Legion (S1-3)
  • Sean Combs: The Reckoning
  • Pluribus
  • I Love L.A.
  • Stranger Things (S5)

BIG year for TV for me, even more so than last year. Andor blew me away, and was probably my favourite show of the year (and probably is a contender for one of my favourite shows of all time). It’s hard to imagine a tighter show than Andor, and I’m sad it’s ending but also happy they could even do it in the first place. The Rehearsal redefined my notion of what a TV show could be, and was the least predictable show I’ve ever seen (and that’s even compared to something like Severance). Severance was amazing, and an extremely fun watch (and fun to chat about with friends). Pluribus is also great, and I’m excited to see where it goes in the future. I also watched a lot of great short series (Chernobyl, Apple Cider Vinegar, Adolescence, Normal People), and rewatched Legion (remains just an endlessly inventive show, I wish more superhero genre items would take as much liberty with their style as legion does episode-to-episode). Finally, I also finally finished watching all of House, M.D. (which I started a few years back, as a background show). I would probably say…. the first few seasons are easily the best, but still it remains solid surprisingly deep throughout. It also makes all the clips of the show you see floating around even better, to be honest.

Looking forward already to the upcoming year of TV (looking forward to The Boys, Industry, House of the Dragon, and maybe Wonder Man)!

Games

  • Ace Attorney Investigations Collection
  • Deltarune Chapters 3 and 4
  • Balatro
  • Super Mario Galaxy 2
  • Mario Kart World
  • Pokemon Legends: Z-A

Not too many games this year, similar to last, but I did really enjoy Ace Attorney as usual (and hoping for more), and really enjoyed Deltarune as usual. I got sucked into Balatro (like many others), and then in the back half of the year focussed on enjoying a Switch 2 and the respective games. I’m currently working my way through the Mega Dimension DLC for Pokemon Legends: Z-A, which is a bit rough, but the base game itself is fun and cool to see as someone who’s been a pokemon fan since the Ruby and Sapphire days.

Other

Music-wise, I listend to a lot of Role Model this year, and continued to enjoy Magdalena Bay and Royel Otis (and saw all three of these artists live!). I developed a strong appreciation for Egoism (from my home of Sydney), really liked Mallrat’s new album, Light hit my face like a straight right, and found Ninajirachi’s debut album (I Love My Computer) AMAZING. It’s a good time for Australian music! Other-stuff-wise, I really liked The Crux, Djo’s new album, and I got a little sucked into k-pop, listening to some Le Sserafim (who I saw live!) and Katseye stuff.

Other video wise, I got sucked into Stavvy’s world clips, and otherwise enjoyed Big A clips and Lemonade Stand. I also had a few months deep in the GothamChess zone, deep on chess.com. Apart from this, I feel that my watching habits didn’t change too much - still a lot of WolfeyVGC, a lot of Jacob Geller, and various other video essayists I enjoy (e.g., Patrick H Willems, Lindsey Ellis, Todd in the Shadows).

Finally, I’m still spending time on reels and tiktoks, but I think it’s become much more mainstream. Much more political stuff, and trends come and go faster than ever. My tiktok account somehow got deleted, so I don’t really spend any time on there anymore, which is…probably good. Overall, I made more of an effort to watch more movies, and clearly that’s actually paid off a bit!

That’s about it for me this year! I’m looking forward to 2026 media-wise, and I hope to have maybe some more games on the list next year… maybe a good year to get back into a bunch of reading. Maybe I’ll try to put out some old blog posts. Already have lots of exciting ideas for research, too. It’s a fun time!