2025 was actually a pretty good year just for getting through some good media. Working at the Ulster Museum as I had been for the most of it meant having to up my game in terms of good nonfiction and broadening my knowledge of stuff in and out of my wheelhouse. We’d some cracking TV and quite a good year for movies and gigs. So, in no order:
Gaming: Basically the same as last year, still playing Streets of Rage 4 a fair few times a week, Balatro, Pool and Slay The Spire daily. The two new games I got into, Deltarune and the new Shinobi from the guys that did SOR4 I enjoyed up to a point but hit skill walls where there were certain bits that were too hard for me to get past and hence didn’t finish which is a bummer but meh, what can you do?
Podcasts: Again, aside from the ones I’m still listening to from last year, The Only Podcast About Movies which is co presented by Matt of Extra History. It’s him and another guy who works in industry so you do get a reasonable level of analysis as well as their opinions and they cover a good range of stuff, their crack is generally decent too.
Theatre: I actually did make it out to the theatre a fair bit. I always say that I’m going to but rarely do, this year though I did genuinely get to see a good few shows. I saw Shame Show again, a locally made queer comedy with some very clever production. I saw Imelda May’s one woman show The Mother Of All Behans, based on the autobiography of Kathleen, mother of Brendan, Dominic and Brian. Ottille – another one woman musical about the Northern Irish blues singer Ottille Patterson. The Tunnel, a troubles era prison drama which was part of he Feilé was brilliant as well as was In The Name Of The Son, based on the life of Gerry Conlon and almost entirely focused on his life after prison, his struggles with mental health and slide into drug abuse. This was written by old family friend, former blanket man and scourge of Sinn Fein Ricky O’Rawe. I got to see pretty much all of these with my Dad so it was fun having a wee boys day out with him. And for my birthday my sister took me down to Dublin to see The Book of Mormon with a couple of our mates.
Youtube: Yeah, aside from the stuff I’ve been keeping up with since last year there’s not been much to write home about. For whatever reason the algorithm seems to want to kill the long form video essay, a lot of the better of which have up sticks and moved to Nebula. Lindsay Ellis though has dropped a few bangers which have made their way back to her channel. The Beatles one is essential watching imo, as is her one on Miss Rachel and the flack she’s been getting from the Israel lobby. The video essay space has been very light on Palestine, only Bad Empanada and the Chapo Trap House podcast seem to have been consistently good on the issue. Sad to see.
TV: There’s been a bunch of live action series I have yet to get around to but really should. I’m part of the way through IT: Welcome To Derry and its been great so far. Pluribus and Silo both look fantastic but aren’t on services I sub to so it is going to take me a minute to get them sorted. Andor season 2, as much as it felt a bit rushed it was still fantastic, arguably the best thing in the whole franchise since the first couple of films Another thing I did see was The Chair Company. Between that and the movie Friendship Tim Robinson has been on a roll this year and long may he continue. It’s a toss up between that and series 2 of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal for best live action show of the year. And I have finally got around to watching all of the original Twin Peaks and I’m well into The Return. I can see why some people consider this the GOAT, I’m not sure I am one of them yet but I’ll reserve judgement until I finish the whole thing.
Anime / Western animated series: Have finally got around to Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood and tbh it was good but a bit too kiddyish for me. I have worked my way through a lot of obscure older anime from back in the day and damn, so much of it was absolute forgettable tripe. A couple that I did like were the old OVAs Ellcia a kind of high-seas fantasy and the urban horror fantasy Phantom Quest Corps. As far as newer stuff, we didn’t get anything new from the bit hitters of recent times, Hosoda, Shinkai etc. got a new Rose of Versailles film which was incredible, if you like shojo anyway, I caught the new Mononoke films (no relation to Princess Mononoke) which are as gorgeously animated as they are creepy and weird. Ponoc (or Continuity Studio Ghibli as I like to call them) give us The Imaginary, possibly their best project yet. Disney give us a whole slew of new Star Wars Visions, some direct continuations of the stories from season 1, all by some of the biggest anime studios currently going. Dandadan season 2 continues the standard set by the first ne, which is great to see since it fucking rocked. My only criticism is they didn’t keep the opening theme and the new one isn’t quite as good.
The best thing though was 17-26, a compilation of stories by Tatsuki Fujimoto, creator of Chainsaw Man and Look Back. Honestly, this was incredible, unmissable stuff even if you’re not that into anime, every story is different and has some of the lushest animation and bravura story telling you’ll ever see. The other big stand out of the year in anime for me was Nukitashi: The Series. This was some of the most bizarre stuff I’ve ever seen in my entire life and really just reminds me of the good old days and everything I got into anime for in the first place. I’m not sure how exactly to describe it, it’s a sex comedy, borderline hentai but like a parody of the genre and not even that sexy, yet weirdly compelling.
Western animation, we got The Mighty Nein, another show from Critical Role who were responsible for The Legend of Vox Machina, which we also got the last season of this year. Just solid fantasy hijinks. Creature Commandos, a suicide squad but with horror monsters set in the new DC Gunn-verse was a lot of fun, reminds me of the good old days of the 90s Vertigo era. Unknown Side-effects from the team that did Scavengers Reign was an absolute belter. The new Invincible season continues to be great too.
My favourite series, perhaps unsurprisingly, was the second season of Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake. While it didn’t quite have the shock of the new of season 1 the animation quality, the cuts and turns of the plotting and the stream of consciousness visual storytelling were absolutely mind-blowing. A constant treat for old fans and new beginning to end, and good news is that we’re apparently getting more, a movie and 2 shows, a BMO centric one for babies and Side Quests, which is basically them going back to basics and doing stuff in the style of the early seasons, i.e. non arc plot single stories. We also got a short from Adult Swim called The Elephant made by a bunch of the OG adventure Time team, Penn Ward, Rebecca Sugar and Pat McHale which was almost three self contained minis where each handed the last panels off to the next with no context and let them riff on what they saw.
And yeah, I did see K-Pop Demon Hunters and it rules, not quite my bag but I can see why the kids all love it. Dogman might be the funniest thing I’ve seen all year. Predator Killer Of Killers was a lot of fun, one of the nest action films of the year animated or no.
For me though the best western animated feature was Memoir Of a Snail, the latest from ozzy stop motion animator Adam Elliott. A gothic, tragic, funny and sometimes heart-breaking story about two twins separated by the child services system and their subsequent lives. Its pretty dark in places but one you can definitely watch with older kids.
Movies: God damn, this has been a very good year for films. We’ve had a bumper crop of great horrors including Sinners, the best black Marxist vampire horror musical crime drama you’ll ever see, and not just because its likely the only film to blend those particular genres. Weapons, Together and 28 Years Later were all excellent. We got two great takes on the classics, passion projects by their respective directors with Robert Eggers Nosferatu and DelToro’s Frankenstein. I got to see 3 cracking new(ish) Irish horror film, All You Need is Death (came out 2023 but only got to see it on streaming this year) which was scored by one of the Lynch lads from Lankum, Fréwaka and An Taibshe two creepy atmospheric elevated folk horrors which are also fine additions to the cannon of Irish Language cinema. My favourite though was Bring Her Back, the second effort from the Philippou brothers. There were bits in that that had me squirming in my seat, and I’m hard as fucking nails and generally don’t get effected like that, so fair play to the lads.
Palestine features quite a lot in the cinema as one of the big things happening in the world at the moment. Even the new Superman seemed to be throwing digs (I personally think it was initially more about the Ukraine but as things unfolded during the production it leant into it). In fiction, To A Land Unknown was basically an update of Steinbecks Of Mice and Men but with Palestinian migrants in Greece. Palestine 36, a historic epic about the origins of the conflict was excellent, a few minor liberties with the historical accuracy aside. We had the documentary No Other Land which did a very good job of showing the general maniacal shittyness of the settlers and the IDF who defend and support them and the day to day bullshit Palestinians on the West Bank have to put up with. The Encampments, which was about the solidarity movement in the states and te sea change in public opinion that seems to be happening there based on the campus protests.
Other than that, The People’s Joker I really enjoyed but I feel like I need to rewatch, its basically the DC villains’ origin story as a trans narrative and its fun as hell. I’m Still Here, a Brazilian film, a true story about the family of a politician, a sitting senator who becomes one of The Disappeared by the fascist Junta in the 70s and their long quest for justice. The Return, an adaptation of the last sections of The Odyssey with Ralph Feins as Odysseus himself was classy good stuff. Pillion with Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård and Babygirl with Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson both did some excellent work bringing BDSM relationship dramas to the big screen with an element of realism conspicuously missing from tripe like 50 Shades of Grey. Cool OSTs on both of those two, particularly the latter. Bugonia is maybe my second least favourite Lanthimos film that I’ve seen but that’s still a pretty high bar and definitely a must see with a lot to say about contemporary society in the usual Lanthinmos bizarre style. Sorry, Baby will probably be remembered as the first of many masterpieces from its writer-director. As for: One Battle After Another, yeah believe the hype it IS that good.
Best new film, at least of the ones I’ve managed to catch so far was It Was Just An Accident. An Iranian films made by a dissident director who was banned from making films and had to shoot the whole thing in secret and smuggle it out of the country. And you can kind of see why, he does not pull any punches. A man who had been tortured by the regime for trades union activity thinks he has come across one of his torturers, by accident, chases him down and captures him with the intent of getting revenge. But, as the man swears innocence he begins to doubt himself and sets out on a journey to find others who were captured with him who might be able to positively identify him. A comedy of errors ensues that takes him all over Tehran with his drugged captive in a box in the back of his truck. It’s great vital film making, as much a black comedy as it is a thriller.
I also saw a fair few older films for the first time that I really enjoyed. The Blaxploitation classic Black Caesar is an absolute banger. Haneke’s Time Of The Wolf was bleak AF in the best possible way. The best film I saw all year might well be the French Resistance classic from the 1960s Army Of Shadows. Based on a novel by a resistance veteran it has a grittiness and a lack of romanticism about it that chimes with what I know about the real history of the time period.
Music: I’ve got to some cracking gigs this year, Managed to knock Laibach off the bucket list when I was over in London, and finally got to see clipping. in Paris (in The Moulin Rouge) touring their latest cyberpunk concept album, where I also saw Violent Magic Orchestra doing their new album in a tiny basement which was frankly the perfect setting. Nice bunch of lads too (and heck out their Boiler Room from Osaka, its unreal). I saw Max Cooper again in Dublin and at Bangface where he headlined the Sunday again and yeah, his music and his AV work are up there with the greats, your Aphex Twins and Autechres. Speaking of which Autechre played the Mandela hall and between them and the support who all played some absolutely sick wonky IDM and breakcore this was the best night of music in Belfast this decade, easy.
Other big gigs, Charlie XCX, fuck the haters I thought she was great. Kneecap and The Fontaines DC – great seeing Irish music repping hard on a world stage. The whole thing with Kneecap and Bob Vylan’s attempted cancelling and prosecution by the genocide propaganda complex was like the current generations big pop culture rebellion moment, Beatles “bigger than Jesus” or the Sex Pistols on Bill Grundy or the God Save the Queen banning, or the 80s metal Satanic Panic do not have shit on this in terms of the literal seriousness of the politics implicit in the whole goings on.
One gig I did miss unfortunately was Billy Woods, as it was in Dublin and that was the night at the start of October where the weather was completely mental. Shame because along with clipping. Billy is probably the best in the game at the moment and Gollywog is some of the rawest horrorcore. Similarly, Brian Ennals and Infinity Knives new joint A City Drowned In God’s Black Tears is another masterpiece of raw alt-industrial hip-hop. FKA Twigs latest Eusexual, dark, clubby some tough edges to it and still kind of poppy.
It's not been a bad year for punk, I saw The Circle Jerks and The Descendants in the Limelight here back at the start of the year. I got listening to The Chats album which I only got hearing this year though it’s from last year. Lambrini Girls LP was a class bit of modern Riot Girl.
Favourite LP of the year though was Kae Tempests latest where he’s essentially come out as trans-masc after identifying as non-binary for the last couple of years and that’s pretty much the theme of the album with Tempests usual fiery poetic delivery. If you can hunt down a bootleg of the Glasto set its really worth seeing.
Books: I read a fair bit of good genre fiction, Alan Moore’s The Great When being the most literary and the highlight. Joe Abercrombie’s The Devils, basically a Catholic Gothic Suicide Squad set in an alternative middle ages, was fun. I read the whole Empire of The Vampire trilogy, and cheesy, derivative and all as it is it was also very enjoyable. I did also read a fair bit of serious non-fiction. I read The Wretched Of The Earth and Said’s Orientalism as well as the whole of Jonathan Bardon’s History of Ulster. I read Dead As Doornails, Anthony Cronin’s readable and insightful memoir of his time in mid 20th century bohemian Dublin, which in turn inspired me to read Pat Kavanagh’s The Great Hunger and Other Stories.
Finn Dwyer of The Irish History Podcast’s pop-history book A Lethal Legacy was another absolute delight. It tells the story of modern Ireland through a series of True Crime Podcast-esque murder stories and is as recommendable to the layman as anyone in academia. Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism's Forgotten Radicals by Maurice J. Casey I picked up after hearing him on Dwyer’s podcast talking about the book and again, its in the sweet spot between pop-history and the serious stuff for academics. It takes in feminism, the Russian revolution, Trotskyism Vs Stalinism, queer history too. And it’s a good read to boot, the author puts a lot of himself and his journey as a researcher into the text, much more so than one usually gets.
Similarly, Kincora: Britain's Shame - Mountbatten, MI5, the Belfast Boys’ Home Sex Abuse Scandal and the British Cover Up by Chris Moore has a lot of Moore’s own story of his decades long involvement with the case and is, I personally think, essential reading for anyone with the slightest interest in the conflict here. Beyond conspiracy theory, this is conspiracy fact and it is harrowing.
Much more fun was the collected EC Ray Bradbury stories published and collected by Fantagraphics. This is pre code when comics production was basically the wild west and they would occasionally cut corners by ripping off stories from the more respectable sci-fi magazines assuming nobody would notice. Bradbury though actually did read EC horror comics and was a little surprised to come across his own work. Instead of getting mad and getting the lawyers involved he just wrote them and said he actually liked what they did with it and maybe in future they could cut a deal and he’d let them do his work with his official endorsement and name on the cover if they credited him and sent him a reasonable remuneration, which they did and the stories are an absolute joy, not surprising considering that they’d the likes of Wally Wood, Joe Orlando, Jack Davis and so on on art duties.
So that was 2025, or at least the highlights. There was a bunch of stuff I didn’t quite gel with or like over much. Or just thought was fine. There’s still a bunch of stuff I’ve not got around to that might well have made this post if I’d got to it. 2026 is shaping up to be a good one too and no doubt if I do another one of these at the end of next year you’ll be hearing all about Arco, Hamnet, Hades 2 or The Voice of Hind Rajab from me. I really hope we keep up the good run of horror films and The Bone Temple lives up to the last one. I’m also hoping to get a lot more stuff written for this blog. So, here’s to another new year, hope 2026 brings us happier times because it is grim out there and that doesn’t seem to be letting up any time soon.
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