Midpoint Report 2025
Won't you meet me halfway?
For the third year in a row, I’m borrowing a bit from the Grierson & Leitch Podcast to celebrate the first half of 2025.
Like them, I’ve listed below the six best 2025 films I’ve watched this year, but I’ve also added more, making note of my best newsletter essays alongside several other media favorites. For the first time, I’ve included more than two books…because I’ve read eighteen already! What a year.
As always, these lists shorten as they proceed, and I write exactly one sentence of justification for each item to make this quick and clean. If you’re interested in greater context, please comment or email me.
Links to each section appear below for your navigational convenience.
Enjoy!
7 Essays
6 Movies
5 Books
4 Videos
3 Shows
2 Bands
1 Event
*****
Seven Essays
Presented in alphabetical order
All written by me in 2025
Art Docent (Vol. 6.17)
There’s less remembrance here than rumination about remembrance, but I love how it guided me toward a renewed sense of purpose and understanding on the eve of my now-annual class trips to Katelyn’s tree in the Memorial Garden.
Banach-Heartski (Vol. 6.07)
So much of this pseudo-fan-fiction owes to Raymond Carver that it’s probably unfair to include, but the fictional argument about love between Carver’s cardiologist and me soars as much for my conversational contributions as the style and character I borrowed.
Celebrity Crushed (Vol. 6.10)
Two of these seven pieces are about grief, but the coat of fiction varnished over this response to Michelle Trachtenberg’s untimely death imbues it with more pep than self-administered therapy should ever have.
Juanita Verde (Vol 6.15)
Nearly 9,000 words comprise this essay masquerading as fiction that examines jealousy, scale, and my relationship to John Green, but it resonates with me less for the parable than the character it brings to life.
Programming (Vol. 6.14)
My degree is in mathematics, but this is the mathiest piece I’ve written, a cocktail that lets the Harmonic series and graphing calculator coding reinforce reflection about the costs of enduring disbelief and self-doubt.
That Man (Vol. 6.09)
I love writing about people, and this essay about a guy I coached against interrogates a petty beef and celebrates a twisting two-decade relationship while inducing tears every time I read it.
The Red Stealth (Vol. 6.02)
If an alien put a phaser to my forehead and ordered, “Give me the best thing you’ve ever written”, I would hand the alien this POV-twisting piece about the defining baseball bat of my adult life.
Six Movies
Presented in alphabetical order
All released1 stateside in 2025
Atropia
Alia Shawkat lends Atropia depth, allowing this story about simulations and allegiance during the War on Terror to be poignant, funny, and charming without those disparate tones clashing.
F1 The Movie
At first, the conventionality of F1 The Movie annoyed me, with seemingly every scene and development plucked out of older, admittedly weaker films, but Kosinski deepens the characters enough to give the brilliantly-shot racing sequences rousing stakes.
Heart Eyes
A legitimate horror romcom, Heart Eyes deftly weaves the two genres together with abundant laughs that never rob it of necessary tension or a sincere desire to see Gooding’s and Holt’s characters get together.
Paddington in Peru
It’s the weakest entry in the Paddington trilogy, but there’s so much wholesomeness and cheery humor that I’m celebrating it for the winning smile it plastered on my face.
Sinners
Coogler and Jordan give audiences a little bit of everything in this horror period piece with a stunning music video and epic battle sequences dropped in that flow seamlessly with everything else.
Thunderbolts*
Marvel mixing tired team-builder tropes with therapy speak shouldn’t work, but I love Florence Pugh, and the final act’s earnest turn felt every bit like the nourishing group hug projected on screen.
Five Books
Presented in alphabetical order
All read by me for the first time in 2025
Everything is Tuberculosis
by John Green
Green’s sharp and rigorous exploration of TB comes in a narrow package, but it reads as comprehensive yet personal, weaving in the story of Henry, a spirited young man battling the disease, to lend the book’s already stirring conclusions additional urgency.
Lamb
by Troy Ford
This debut novel grapples with one of my favorite themes—how we understand other people—but it’s also a moving multi-genre piece that paints a tender portrait of a tall, mohawked man who struggled to find support and himself during the AIDS crisis.
Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride
by Will Leitch
Leitch’s latest led to the most tears I’ve ever shed reading a book—I have the blue post-it notes to prove it—but that obscures how much of a blast watching Neil race against the clock to die productively actually is.
My Brilliant Friend
by Elena Ferrante
The translated prose is incredible, among the sharpest and most pleasurable I’ve ever read, but this story of friendship and rivalry also felt honest and human.
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
by Jenny Han
Let this first entry in Han’s original trilogy serve as a stand-in for all six books I read; I vaguely remembered the story from the movie adaptation, but the earnest, uncertain narration of Lara Jean Covey won my affection from the start and reassured me somewhat as an author.
Four Videos
Presented in alphabetical order
All watched by me for the first time in 2025
A 2025 Rewatchables Mailbag
Channel: Ringer Movies
Any Big Picture movie draft or Rewatchables episode could slide in here, but I especially loved the “how the sausage is made” element of this episode, showcasing the work behind and affection for this pleasurable movie podcast.
Babygirl is a film about AI.
Channel: Emma Chang-Kredl
Babygirl perplexed me—and Chang-Kredl’s title suggested more of the same—but what could have been a convoluted argument about a specious hypothesis was compelling and convincing from start to finish.
The Story Behind This Perfectly Normal Photo
Channel: Jeffiot
As he’s done before, Jeffiot (with help) chases down the origins of another ubiquitous online asset, this time the Cooper Family Falling Body photo, and this lost artist documentary weaves together several competing mysteries in a supremely satisfying fashion.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY A MATTRESS?
Channel: Secret Base
The funniest thing I’ve watched in 2025, this Jon Bois video about email marketing and mattresses cracked me up so much that I had to pause the video until I finished my dinner to avoid the risk of choking.
Three Shows
Presented in alphabetical order
All watched by me for the first time in 2025
Erased
I realized where this was going early and found the ending awkward, but I still enjoyed this 2016 limited anime series about a cartoonist dropped back in time to stop the murder of a childhood friend.
The Rehearsal (Season 2)
Nathan Fielder’s insincere schtick stokes an anxiety in me when it’s making jokes out of regular people, but this season, which focuses on FAA regulations and cockpit communication, is absorbing and moving in a way Fielder has only once2 before approached.
White Lotus (Seasons 1-3)
Watching at all means I caved to the zeitgeist, but I did enjoy the suspense in these stories about rich, unhappy people and murders at a luxury hotel chain.
Two Bands
Presented in alphabetical order
All listened to by me for the first time in 2025
Bleachers
Jack Antonoff co-writes wonderful songs with Taylor Swift, and to no one’s surprise but mine, he also writes wonderful songs for his band, whose rereleased first album, A Stranger Desired, became a regular listen almost immediately upon it finding me.
THEM
They’re responsible for my favorite song—“Vintage Jeans”—and music video of the year, and they’re the only band I’d travel to see playing live on a whim.
One Event
Presented in alphabetical order
All experienced by me in 2025
Seniors’ Last Day
There were other contenders, including the Steeplechase and the cricket tournament-slash-book talk, but this second-annual event marked an incomparable and emotional ending to not just one year of school with one cohort but three.
The regular newsletter will return on Sunday, July 6th.
And now back to cleaning.
Technically, Atropia has not been released yet. I watched it digitally during the Sundance Film Festival.
That instance: “Finding Frances”, the series finale of Nathan for You.
Quite a list Michael. I was surprised and thrilled to see you’d read Lamb by Troy Ford. Troy is a long-time Substack friend and I’m happy to see his book out there. I just didn’t realise your paths had also crossed. What a wonderful little world Substack is :)