Chad Comello

  • Favorite Films of 2025

    Forget the Oscars—this is the ultimate resource for the best movies of 2025. Here are the 20 films that stuck with me from the last year.

    (Check JustWatch to see if and where they are available to stream, or your local library for the DVD/Blu-ray. See this list on Letterboxd.)

    20. An Autumn Summer

    There’s just no way I wasn’t gonna go for this, a sincere coming-of-age story with timeless and universal themes at its center like friendship, love, and taking the next step at the precipice of adulthood. Kudos to director Jared Isaac and cinematographer Brandon Somerhalder for so lovingly capturing summer in the Northwoods of the upper Midwest, where the lakes and forests and sand dunes play host to the kind of playful and probing conversations that only a group of eighteen year olds untainted by cynicism can hold.

    19. Blue Moon

    Ethan Hawke is an all-time talker, whether as a podcast guest, motivational speaker, or at the helm of a Richard Linklater movie as he’s been many times—including here in one of his best performances as the renowned Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart. More of a filmed play than cinematic achievement, this is a showcase of great writing and great actors who bring it to life.

    18. Eephus

    On top of being a great fall movie, baseball movie, and hangout movie, Carson Lund’s indie about the last game being played at a rec stadium by an amateur league before its destruction is a touching tribute to the things we hold onto. I know Interstellar already beat it to death, but the Dylan Thomas poem “Do not go gentle into that good night” is an excellent readalike.

    17. Bugonia

    Essentially a two-hander between Emma Stone as a pharma executive who may or may not be an alien and Jesse Plemons as a conspiracy theorist who kidnaps her, Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest has a few images/moments I’ll be thinking about for a long time. And while I’m eager for Stone and Lanthimos to find new creative partners after four straight movies together, there’s no denying their complete commitment to a kind of acidic absurdity that’s unique in contemporary cinema.

    16. Presence

    Steven Soderbergh described the conceit of this low-budget haunted-house thriller—one of two films he released this year—as “the camera is the ghost.” It’s a high-concept, solid-execution kind of movie, which I’ll take any day of the week. Also a great double feature with Here, another unjustly maligned single-house story.

    15. Marty Supreme

    Basically a sports movie (in a good way) set in 1950s New York City with ‘80s music, Josh Safdie’s electrifying, quasi-nonfictional saga of table tennis hustler Marty Mauser triggered the disconcerting feeling of half-hating and half-rooting for a narcissist who creates a lot of wreckage on his quest—but also a lot of fist-pump moments.

    14. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

    We’re in a rather challenging phase of parenthood at the moment, so this visceral, Safdie-esque anxiety dream of a movie from writer-director Mary Bronstein (who’s married to Marty Supreme co-writer Ronald Bronstein) starring Rose Byrne as a beleaguered mother really spoke to me. (As did the various men featured throughout, but in a “well, at least I’m not that bad” kind of way.)

    13. Wake Up Dead Man

    Rian Johnson’s latest Benoit Blanc mystery returns to the gothic roots of Knives Out with another elaborate whodunit, this time with Josh O’Connor as a former boxer turned Catholic priest at the center. During the press tour Johnson revealed insights from his evangelical past that not only made me appreciate him even more as a writer and filmmaker, but also explain why this was a shoo-in for my Best 21st Century Religion Movies list.

    12. It Was Just An Accident

    In this Jafar Panahi film that’s part morality play, part screwball comedy, part skin-tingling thriller, a makeshift group of former Iranian political prisoners wrestle with whether to exact revenge on their captor. How each ensnared person deals with this dilemma is how all of us would. Somehow this was my first Panahi picture, but it won’t be the last.

    11. The Assessment

    It’s been a minute since a movie gave me as many belly laughs of recognition as chills up my spine like this one did. Set in a dystopian near-future when reproduction is strictly regulated by the state and prospective parents must pass an immersive seven-day assessment, Fleur Fortuné’s directorial debut establishes a rather Villeneuvean tone and aesthetic early on—sleek, serious, slightly sci-fi—only to puncture it with very relatable vignettes depicting the harsh realities of child-rearing, while also addressing the pain of wanting to raise a child but being unable to do so. 

    10. A Little Prayer

    Twenty years after his feature debut Junebug scored an Oscar nomination for Amy Adams, writer/director Angus MacLachlan revisits similar ground here with a quiet, unpretentious dramedy tightly focused on the domestic travails of a small-town family reckoning with each other and themselves. Jane Levy gives a quiet knockout of a performance as the unassuming daughter-in-law, whose endearing relationship with David Strathairn’s patriarch forms the emotional anchor of the film. 

    9. The Naked Gun

    Cheers to a movie that knows exactly what it is and how to be that for just the right amount of time—in this case a joke-a-minute reboot of the classic Leslie Nielsen spoof from Lonely Islander Akiva Schaffer. Casting Liam Neeson was an inspired choice given his ability to blend gruff gravitas with solid comedy chops. I still giggle about random bits months later. 

    8. The Summer Book

    Writer-director Charlie McDowell beautifully captures the spirit of Swedish-Finnish author (and Moomin creator) Tove Jansson’s autobiographical novel, which is not an easy feat given the book’s languorous vibe and sparse plot. If you’re willing to dive in and surrender to its gentle, deliberately paced wavelength, you’ll be rewarded with a moving, nature-drenched meditation on loss, parenting, and coming of age before you’re ready to.

    7. Sinners

    This has several A+, capital-C Cinematic sequences that had me thinking “Here we go, hell yeah.” It’s always a pleasure to watch an exciting original story told within genre traditions by a talented auteur with a point of view and brought to vibrant life with visual panache by a kickass cast and crew. How blessed we are to be alive at the same exact time stories like this are channeled through conjurers of the cinematic arts like Ryan Coogler.

    6. The Testament of Ann Lee

    A biopic has to try really hard to avoid the pitfalls of the genre for me to enjoy it. While this technically does fit the bill as a cradle-to-grave story of the founder of the Shakers movement, any stumble it makes just subsumes itself into an ecstatic communal dance of a film—the likes of which I’ve just never seen (or heard) before. Amanda Seyfried FTW.

    5. The Condor Daughter

    A discovery from the Chicago International Film Festival, this story of an Andean midwife’s apprentice caught between following her indigenous traditions and pursuing her dreams in the big city knocked with me out with its stunning natural-light cinematography, incisive cultural commentary, and captivating stillness.

    4. Weapons

    I’m typically a matinee guy but I stayed up past my bedtime to go see this in a theater, and I’m glad I did because we were all in this thing together. (I’ll never forget experiencing that nighttime car scene. IYKYK.) The confidence with which writer-director Zach Cregger both establishes a world and propels us through it is such a thrill to behold. And it’s why this former horror scaredy cat now has season tickets to whatever screwed-up stories Cregger comes up with next.

    3. Black Bag

    “Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender in a Steven Soderbergh spy thriller” is all I needed to know before wanting to see Black Bag, which not only lives up to the potential of that combination but elevates beyond it thanks to its stylistic choices and delightfully twisty story. It’s a dinner-party-worthy meal of a movie with delicious, edge-of-your-seat drama.

    2. Train Dreams

    My word if this kaleidoscopic fable of the life of an early 20th century logger isn’t a gosh-darn movie. There’s just nothing like seeing real humans walking amongst real trees with real sunlight and firelight on their faces, experiencing real joys and tragedies and the fleeting moments in between of feeling connected to it all. Shame it’s destined for the Netflix abyss and not the biggest screens possible.

    1. One Battle After Another

    The more I think about Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest saga the more I love it. Synthesizing the ambitious scope of There Will Be Blood with the propulsive dramedy of Punch-Drunk Love—the two other PTA films I love that also have crazy-good scores, lead performances, and supporting casts among other things—One Battle After Another feels both set out of time and fiercely of the current moment. To quote Bob: Life, man. Life! (Double feature that comes to mind: Anora, a similarly ambitious, distinctively three-act saga with chases and violence and slapstick comedy and a scrappy rebel just trying to survive against brutal systemic forces. “American Girl” indeed.)

    Still haven’t seen: Sentimental Value, Hamnet, Frankenstein, The Secret Agent

  • Papa with his quotes

    These days our two year old has taken to saying, “What you say, papa?” To which I reply: “I say that what you say… is what I say.” Which is, of course, from the iconic ’90s masterpiece Newsies.

    This is just one of countless examples of me dropping quotes and cultural references my boys (and usually my wife) don’t understand. It’s to the point where once my seven year old realizes I’ve quoted something yet again, he’ll roll his eyes and say, “Papa with his quotes…” Such is the plight of a movie-addled dad. Though I prefer to think of this skill less as brainrot and more as brainripe.

    (Bonus: When the two year old grabs a banana I call him Mr. Bananagrabber.)

  • Links of the moment

    An ongoing series

    Been loving Marcin Winchary’s thoughtful design takes lately, like Flickr’s inspiring URL scheme and the software versions of molly guards and Moylan Arrows. 

    Times New Resistance is a Times New Roman impersonator font that “autocorrects the autocrats.”

    These 11th-century paper flowers, sealed in a Chinese cave, are a marvel of preservation.

    Speaking of beautiful old art: check out this 3,500-year-old drawing of a sparrow.

    Speaking of more beautiful art: an Indonesian cave painting from 67,000 years ago.

  • Complexity at scale

    Alan Jacobs wrote about his admiration for two “enormously complex projects that only became possible after the Industrial Revolution”: the manufacturing and logistical challenges the Allies faced in World War II leading up to D-Day and the studio system in the classic Hollywood era:

    It’s hard for me to imagine how D-Day did not end in utter catastrophe — I struggle to comprehend how it even got underway; and I still can’t quite believe that movies come together the way they do. …

    Maybe my fascination has something to do with the fact that these large collaborative projects are so completely unlike what I do. I once said to a film director I know that I don’t see how movies ever get made, and he replied that in making a movie he has “so much help” from smart and skilled people — he doesn’t understand how I can just sit in a room and write books. But when I’m sitting in a room writing a book I am not accountable to or answerable to anyone else: I only have to manage Me.

    He cites two anecdotes about General Dwight Eisenhower and director Sidney Lumet that encapsulate the seemingly impossible complexity of these jobs and show how some people are just better fit for them than others. Read the whole post.

  • The grammar of filmmaking

    Steven Soderbergh in an interview talking about the grammar of filmmaking:

    There’s a certain way you put a sentence together to get the idea across; you can fuck with that, but at a certain point you fuck with it so much the idea is lost. That applies to almost any form.

    When I’m on set or thinking about a story, making sure that the audience is engaged and that I’m also excited, I have to fight through the sensation of, “Oh my god, another fucking over-the-shoulder shot.” I have to push through that and go, “You’re building a sentence. Getting upset when you have to shoot an over-the-shoulder shot is like getting upset at using the word ‘and’ or ‘the’ in a sentence. It has to be done. It’s part of the grammar.”

  • The secret life of nonfiction book subtitles

    As a lover of nonfiction books, I’ve noticed many of the same phrases being used for subtitles—something that doesn’t happen with fiction since “A Novel” or “Stories” are basically the only options. Some templates I’ve noticed:

    • The Secret/Private Life of
    • [X] in an Age of [Y]
    • A Traveler’s Guide to
    • The Race to
    • A History of the World in
    • How [X] Explains [Y]

    What else should be on the list?

  • What are we doing here?

    There’s a scene from Band of Brothers I’ve been thinking about a lot these days. It’s from the penultimate episode (“Why We Fight”) which finds Easy Company en route to Berchtesgaden in April 1945. Private Webster (played by Eoin Bailey) beholds the thousands of surrendered German POWs marching the other way in defeat and has a (NSFW) moment of clarity and indignation:

    Key quote:

    Dragging our asses half way around the world, interrupting our lives, for what? You ignorant servile scum, what the f*** are we doing here?!

    Perhaps you can see why this might ring true as I consider current events set in motion at the direction of the current president of the United States, including but not limited to a radicalized, extralegal police force laying siege to American cities, kidnapping and murdering people.

    Hearing from friends who live in Minneapolis, for example, I imagine they could deeply relate to Webster’s exasperation and exhaustion at having their lives cruelly interrupted by fascists who seek only to denigrate and destroy. And they’re not dragging their asses to the streets to protest or hold candlelight vigils in the frigid cold for slain citizens because it’s fun and a great use of free time.

    What are we doing here?

    You know who else is wondering the same thing? Santa Clara’s own Batman:

    A man wearing a Batman costume spoke at the Santa Clara City Council to criticize a lack of action against the federal immigration crackdown.

    “What the f*** are we doing here? Seriously, you have had months to prepare for this upcoming event. I don’t give a damn if this is out of decorum. People are dying on our streets every single day in this country because we allow this federal government to walk all over you. Look me in the eye. Can any one of you go home to your children and tell them that you did everything you could to protect their classmates? To protect their grandparents? I don’t think you can.”

    Thank you, Batman. And no thanks whatsoever to all the ignorant, servile politicians doing the bidding of the geriatric malignant narcissist dementia patient and wannabe mafioso currently occupying the White House who is not long for this earth. What a waste.

    Another related lesson courtesy of the Dark Knight: Terror will lose.

  • Links of the moment

    An ongoing series

    Make something heavy. 

    Pop songs in Renaissance and Baroque style.

    Great longread from Bilge Ebiri on Terrence Malick and his influential filmmaking style. 

    “What if you held a tree long enough for it to grow around your hand?”

    You know I’m here for a Tangible Media Collection.

    Which HTML element are you?

  • The ‘Hi mama’ archives

    Part of our six year old’s bedtime routine is dictating a text for me to send to my wife while he’s brushing his teeth. See if you can detect a pattern in some recent messages:

    If these don’t epitomize six-year-old boys, I don’t know what does.

  • Favorite Books of 2025

    Continuing the trend of the last few years, this is a “books I managed to read” list rather than a curated selection of favorites as my reading hit an all-time low. I could blame any number of attention grabbers in my life, but ultimately I’m just not In My Reading Era like I used to be.

    Still, here are the titles that tickled my fancy in 2025, with links to anything I wrote about them.

    Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company by Patrick McGee

    Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green

    Lost in the Stream: How Algorithms Redefined the Way Movies Are Made and Watched by Jeff Rauseo

    Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari

    Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession by Craig Childs

    The Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book That Everyone Uses But No One Reads by Ammon Shea

    Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering by Malcolm Gladwell

    The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson

    The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett Graff

    Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive by Eliot Stein

    Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane! by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams & Jerry Zucker

  • Training AI with poetry

    Hollis Robbins on training LLMs on poetry and the concept of judging “greatness”:

    Poetry is a kind of test case, a training ground for understanding what “expert knowledge” brings to the table. Mercor’s bet is that the same process that trains a model to write better poetry can train it to do better legal drafts, better medical diagnoses, better financial analyses. The core assumption is that professional judgment (a lawyer deciding how to frame an argument) and aesthetic judgment (a poet deciding how to break a line) are computationally similar problems. Both require the model to navigate an “unbounded” decision space where there is no single “correct” answer, only “better” or “worse” ones based on expert consensus.

    Suddenly the “they should have sent a poet” line from Contact takes on a whole new meaning.

    This is a victory for the humanities I guess? Perhaps a Pyrrhic one though.

  • 2025 in review

    See previous year in review posts.

    My view from the end of all things 2025:

    Joined my buddy Nicole Kidman at AMC for a 9:15am showing of Marty Supreme. Don’t think I’ve ever done such an early showtime before, but it’s a great way to start the day.

    Here’s a snapshot of what this year looked like for me:

  • Links of the moment

    An ongoing series

    Size of Life is another banger from Neal.fun, one of the best places on the internet.

    Shoutout to ROMAN and other obscure Excel functions.

    Unfortunately, I have to side with Marco Rubio in the Times New Roman/Calibri font war.

    In praise of the prescient and “punishing digitopia” of Spielberg’s Minority Report.

    The real reasons you’re not reading.

  • Christmastime was here

    Some thoughts after another Christmas season:

    • In many ways our two boys were the ideal ages for it. The six year old has done it enough times to know what’s coming and anticipate the different elements, and the two year old is like a joyful, bright-eyed little elf who’s down for anything.
    • Introducing them to the season’s traditions and iconography was a trip. The lore is so deep that it’s like catching up a new viewer of a plot-heavy TV series at season six—at some point you’re like “just go with it” and luckily they have no problem with that.
    • One evening we went to a local park with a big walkable light display, which had a Santa and Nativity Scene and trains and a spinning penguin and a bunch of other seasonal regulars. That combination of completely different characters and mythologies is fascinating and honestly awesome. It’s a melting-pot holiday season and I’m here for it.
    • We saw a community production of A Christmas Carol that used the original Dickens language, which meant it was trickier for the boys to follow (though having seen The Muppet Christmas Carol already definitely helped) but also a richer experience—especially thanks to the haunting audiovisual effects during the Ghost Marley sequence.
    • As a teenager I was all “Christmastime is so phony and corporate” and now I’m like “haul out the holly, baby!” Yet once the 26th arrives, I can’t wait to get the tree and decorations back in storage to reclaim space in our small house. (Christmas music is still allowed until New Year’s Eve, capped off with “Auld Lang Syne” of course.)
    • I didn’t have much time to watch many Christmas movies that I’d normally get to, including It’s A Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve, but one I did rewatch that’ll continue to be part of the rotation for years to come is The Holdovers.

  • Blogging as whittling

    In his year-in-review post, Tom MacWright lauds the benefits of blogging:

    Blogging has been, for me, an unalloyed success. It has connected me to people, given me a place to develop my thoughts, made some of my work on the internet – a place always decaying and forgetting – a little more permanent. I absolutely recommend everyone do it.

    I know why most people don’t do it: not enough time and too much fear of publishing ‘bad writing.’ Maybe ‘nothing to write about,’ too, though this never seems that real to me, given how the average person I meet has interesting thoughts and ideas to share.

    I second this sentiment. Next year will be my 20th blogging anniversary (!!), and at least for the way I approach it—as a personal, generalist, and low-stakes log of what occupies my interest and attention at the moment—it’s something you should be able to slide in between everything else in your life. That’s to me what makes it a fun and sustainable hobby.

    It feels like people think writing a blog post equates to building an ornate wooden desk: something that requires intense dedication and specialized skills and a huge time commitment. But really it’s more like whittling a stick: dash off a few (key)strokes, make your point, and you’re done. Then whittle another one. That’s it.

    He also mentions removing analytics, which is key. If you’re in it for the likes or views or revenue, then it’s a hustle, not a hobby, and you’re bound to abandon it or get burned out.

  • Media of the moment

    An ongoing series

    Christmas music. ‘Tis the season! Some newer albums I’ve been enjoying: Happy Golden Days by The Arcadian Wild, Sleigher by Ben Folds, and Family Christmas Album Vol. II by The Oh Hellos.

    Homestar Runner. I didn’t realize this web series was still around, but browsing the website was a blast from my high-school past when this became an early-2000s pre-social media viral phenomenon. Episode #4 of Teen Girl Squad contains two quotes that remain with me to this day: “Y’all are so wack.” “Wiggidy-wack?” “Nope, just regular type”. And: “Grood. I mean good. And great. Great and good.”

    Little Old You by The Okee Dokee Brothers. A new Okee Dokee Brothers album is like a national holiday in our household, so we’re very much enjoying this new one. Favorite track so far: “Apple of My Eye”

    Death By Lightning. This Netflix miniseries adaptation of Candace Millard’s Death of the Republic (one of the best books of the 2010s) is textbook Chad, and also kind of a silly melodrama. If I didn’t know its context and backstory I would have so many questions about this stranger-than-fiction saga.

    Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company by Patrick McGee. I can’t remember which blogger recommended it, but this book is a fascinating history of Apple’s place in the global economy over the last 30 years. I’d forgetten how much the one-two punch of the iPod and iTunes for Windows skyrocketed Apple into the stratosphere. RIP to my beloved 3rd generation iPod Classic 🥲

    Forward by The Swell Season. I’m enjoying this new album from Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, which feels like a spiritual sequel to Once.

  • Links of the moment

    An ongoing series

    How I, a non-developer, read the tutorial you, a developer, wrote for me, a beginner.

    How Marlon Brando changed acting.

    Red sprites FTW.

    How to fix a typewriter and your life.

  • Steps involved in fall leaves clean-up

    For me:

    1. Clear out gutters
    2. Methodically blow leaves from around the yard perimeter into the middle area, dealing with wind along the way
    3. Initial mow to mulch the leaves
    4. Blow and rake again into a smaller area
    5. Start bagging
    6. Continually rake into a smaller area in between bagging until done
    7. Drag heavy bags to the side of the house to await garbage day
    8. Put away equipment

    For my boys:

    1. Run and jump through leaf piles
    2. See #1