What Could Have Been: One Battle After Another

Already getting buzz as one of the top films of this past year and perhaps being in line for the Academy Award Best Picture next month, One Battle After Another (2025), written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (and inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel “Vineyard”), features big stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, and Benicio del Toro, and has everything going for it... meaning that it should wow and amaze. Yet, from a screenplay perspective, a lot is missing... despite being nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay as well.

Back in 2020, I decided that it would be a good idea to post a top ‘25 Films of the Decade’ list to celebrate some of the best films of the 2010s... it took some tinkering (lots of crossing this one off and adding that one) – but I’ve got to say, the response made it absolutely worth it. With all that feedback, many asked if I could do the same for the decade before... it has taken longer than expected, but good things come to those who wait. So, without further ado, here are the best of the 2000s ... with a short description as to why each film made the cut.

The one armed bandit (also known as the slot machine)... a dream for a select few winners, a nightmare for most others. Gambling, in many ways, can be an addictive curse, but could that also be the case for those thugs running the machines too? A crime centred noir-lite directed by William Witney, City of Shadows (1955), may just answer the above question. Big Tim Channing (Victor McLagen), is not living up to his name, as his thuggish fellow racketeers Tony Finetti (Anthony Caruso) and Angelo Di Bruno (Richard Reeves) are dominating the slot game, as his dilapidated machines are out of order half the time. That is, until a street wise twelve year old orphan, Dan Mason (as a young boy, Jimmy Grohman), gives him the grift that will put him back on top.

The first Missed the Bloody Cut horror selection of this 2025, here are some more horror movies that did not meet my strict criteria (a rating of 7.0 or higher). . . but are still entertaining films (horror fanatics may enjoy) that do not deserve to be ignored like a radiation spill in a secret government location – and that are definitely worth a watch (just maybe not several re-watches).

Boy, how time flies when you’re wearing a CAPE, or to be more specific, enjoying yourself at the Cornwall and Area Pop Event, which, like all good things, has returned once more... and is excitingly celebrating its tenth anniversary this year!!! Attracting thousands of pumped up visitors on a rather dreary Saturday, April 26th, 2025, the locale was joyously cheerful thanks to the boisterous crowd filling the place... with a Sunday still to come for those in the Cornwall, Montreal, and Ottawa region.

It’s usually hard to bet against Barbara Stanwyck. Starting her career in the late 1920s, within a few years she was already churning out star making roles as plucky working class girls who could rise to the top: think Ten Cents a Dance (1931) and Baby Face (1933) – both reviewed here on Filmizon, only to further elevate herself during the film noir era with starring roles like Double Indemnity (1944) and The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) – also both on Filmizon, she even conquered television later in her career as matriarch Victoria Barkley in 112 episodes of Big Valley from the mid to late 1960s. In other words, it’s rather unusual to see her in a clunker... though with the film looked at here today, Shopworn (1932), directed by Nick Grinde, Stanwyck herself described it as, “one of those terrible pictures they sandwiched in when you started”.