Tonight we’re doing what we now do annually and perhaps against the advice of several medical professionals: taking a look back at an entire year of movies we watched for this show and attempting to pretend it was all worth it.

Yes, it’s time once again for the Filmjitsu Awards, or The Jitsus as we like to call them, our year in review episode where we make the bold assertion that watching bad movies on purpose counts as culture!

Normally, one of us would be forcing the other to endure a single cinematic war crime, but tonight we zoom out, do the math and realize—yet again—that we spent an alarming chunk of our finite lives watching movies that ranged from “deeply misguided” to “actively hostile toward the viewer.”

This year alone we subjected ourselves to creature chaos, franchise rot, inspirational failures, dead-eyed nostalgia grabs, movies that forgot to have third acts, movies that forgot to have first acts, and at least one film that seemed to be made entirely out of spite. And yet—we’re still here. Recording. Somehow older. Definitely no wiser.

But the point of the Jitsus isn’t to relitigate the suffering—no, no. This is the ceasefire. This is the truce. This is where Mike and I momentarily lower our weapons and admit that, yes, sometimes even the worst movies accidentally do something right.

A performance that overachieved. A stunt that risked life and limb for absolutely no reason. A score that deserved a better movie. A cinematographer doing God’s work while everyone else was asleep at the wheel. These are the things we’re hoping to honor tonight.

As always, our awards categories include Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Score, and Best Stunt (aka, The Sweaty Eddie’s named for first-year winner Eddie Furlong in Brainscan) as well as a couple other wildcards that exist purely because we miss the Blockbuster and MTV Movie awards. And then—because we are gluttons for punishment—we’ll attempt to crown a Best Picture through our most dangerous tradition: Kick Three, Pick One. One movie. Mutual agreement. No survivors.

And because it wouldn’t be Filmjitsu without some degree of self-inflicted humiliation, we’ll also count down our Bottom Five hot takes of the year. These are opinions spoken confidently into microphones that, in hindsight, maybe should have been unplugged. Statements that aged like milk. Or cheese. Or whatever grows in the back of the fridge when you stop looking.

So tonight is about celebration. It’s about survival. It’s about finding meaning in the rubble. And most importantly, it’s about proving—once again—that no matter how bad the movies get, we’re still willing to force a really good friend to watch them so you, our audience, might never have to.

Grab a drink, lower your expectations, and join us as we hand out imaginary trophies and officially close the book on another year of cinematic suffering.

Welcome to the 2025 Filmjitsu Awards.

Best Stunt (The Sweaty Eddies)

Best Stunt this year goes to Courtney Palm in Sushi Girl — and not for movement, but for stillness. This is physical endurance as performance. Holding that pose, under scrutiny, without breaking — that’s control. That’s work.

I did consider Cassi Thomson in Left Behind, because between the bridge free-climb, the helicopter coverage, and her proximity to that biplane crash/explosion beat, she’s doing far more than that movie deserves. Even if the movie looks cheap, what she’s doing isn’t. But Palm’s restraint wi

Best Actor

Best Actor — I mean… look. This was not a year where subtlety thrived. And because of that, Best Actor pretty much has to go to Max Grodénchik in Rumpelstiltskin. This is a performance that exists in a state of permanent creature panic. He understands immediately that the movie has no floor and just commits to absolute chaos. You remember him, and more importantly, you remember why you remember him. That’s the job.

Now, could it have gone to Terry Kiser in Weekend at Bernie’s II? Honestly, yes. Playing dead convincingly for that long is physical acting, whether anyone wants to admit it or not. And I also briefly considered Liam Neeson in Love Actually, because he’s doing sincere emotional work in a movie that is constantly trying to distract him with nonsense. But at the end of the day, Grodénchik is the movie. And that wins.

Best Actress

Best Actress was actually easier than expected, because once I thought it through, it had to be Patty Mullen in Frankenhooker. This movie does not function without her. She’s fearless, she’s funny, she’s physical, and she never once hides behind irony. She doesn’t apologize for the movie — she embodies it.

Sure, I could’ve gone with Emma Thompson in Love Actually for that one devastating scene that basically just wrecks you emotionally. And Laura Linney, also in Love Actually, gives a performance that is quietly brutal in a subplot the movie almost abandons out of embarrassment. But Patty Mullen creates Frankenhooker. Without her, it’s just parts on a table.

Best Death Scene

Best Death Scene goes to the gravedigger decapitation in Nekromantik. Low budget, no irony, no apology. His head is almost chopped in half at nose level, and it works. It’s nasty, it’s practical, and it commits fully. That’s horror.

Best Score

Best Score goes to Jerry Goldsmith for Deep Rising. Jerry Goldsmith did not have to go this hard. He could’ve phoned it in. Instead, he delivers a full-bodied, propulsive score that treats the movie like a real cinematic event. There’s a lot wrong with Deep Rising, but the music is absolutely not one of those things.

Best Sex Scene

Best Sex Scene — and this was a weird year for this — goes to the lighting doubles scene in Love Actually. It’s awkward, it’s human, and it’s oddly tender. It’s not sexy so much as it is honest.

A runner-up would be the end-of-sex beat between Streep and Begley Jr. in She-Devil**, which works precisely because it’s emotionally corrective rather than erotic. But Love Actually takes it.

Best Cinematography

Best Cinematography — there was no real competition here. It goes to David Watkin for Return to Oz. This movie looks like a waking nightmare. Texture, darkness, menace — it’s visually unforgettable, and it’s doing heavy emotional lifting that the script barely attempts. Nothing else we watched this year comes close.

The Peebles’ Choice Award — Worst Accent / Persona

And finally, The Peebles’ Choice Award. This isn’t just about bad accents — it’s about performances that break the movie’s reality.

The winner here is Meryl Streep in She-Devil. This isn’t exactly an accent problem — it’s an artificial persona problem. The movie even sets up the idea that she used to be “real,” and then completely abandons any return to authenticity. That erasure of growth is what sinks the performance.

I also seriously considered Ray Liotta in In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, because bringing Jersey tough-guy energy into a medieval fantasy just collapses the illusion instantly. And James Lorinz in Frankenhooker, whose accent is so thick it basically becomes a special effect. But Streep wins on structural damage.

Best Director

Best Director is one of those awards where I had to remind myself that it’s not about whether I like the movie — it’s about control. And because of that, this goes to Richard Curtis for Love Actually. This is a tonal juggling act with a massive ensemble, competing moods, and wildly uneven material — and somehow, for a lot of people, it still lands emotionally. That’s directing.

Now, I did seriously consider Stephen Sommers for Deep Rising, because that movie moves. Pacing, geography, momentum — it’s genre competence at a level we just didn’t see very often this year. But Curtis is managing chaos on a different scale, and it counts.

Best Picture

Nominees:

Love Actually

Frankenhooker

Deep Rising

Rumpelstiltskin

Or… Return to Oz

BOTTOM FIVE HOT TAKES

If Filmjitsu is a record of anything, it’s proof that confidence and correctness are not the same thing.

Because over the course of 2025, somewhere between bad movies, bottom fives, games of dueling double bills and Kick-Two Pick Two, Mike and I unleashed a handful of takes so bold, so contrarian, and so wildly out of step with popular consensus that they demanded accountability.

These weren’t jokes. These weren’t hypotheticals. These were opinions spoken into microphones, backed by conviction, and left behind like broken glass for future us to step on.

Tonight’s Bottom Five is our reckoning: the 2025 Hot Takes that made us pause mid-edit and think, “Wow… did I really say that?”

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TIER 1: NUCLEAR

1. “Mark Hamill gives his best-ever screen performance in Sushi Girl.”
2. Jay: Nicolas Cage would be phenomenal as The Dude. Me at my most contrarian. Mostly because I was bullshit at Mike’s approach for the bottom five.
3. “’Bottom Five Girlfriends’ blames the victims in a movie about a guy who keeps his girlfriend’s head in a jar.“
4. Mike saying he watched “Cool As Ice” and liked it when he most certainly did not because he watched it with RiffTracks, which then prompted me to say “Watching Cool as Ice with RiffTrax is like using a cinematic condom — you didn’t raw-dog the movie.”
5. If you were to combine Uwe Boll and Tommy Wiseau, you get a pretty good flick or so says Mike in episode 58 in the name of the king: a dungeon siege tale.