Mike Wheeler
"We can be crazy together"
- Pronouns
- He/him
- MarioWiki
- The Shadow Prince
Hello everyone, I hope 2026 is going well. Like with 2023 and 2024, I made a full ranking list out of the movies that I watched in 2025. This year I watched quite a few good movies, some okay movies and a few bad ones, which is similar to the last two years. However, there are some patterns that I still think will be interesting to discuss.
Like I did with my list of movies in 2024, I will give my reasoning for my Top 5 and Bottom 5.
5th Worst: The Kissing Booth 2- This movie has a lot of small to medium problems that bring it down. I felt that while it was portrayed as unreasonable for Elle to suspect Noah of cheating because she jumped to conclusions about the item under Noah's bed, it did rub me the wrong way that Chloe kisses Noah when Elle is around and that even as a friend, that's not something that you should let a girl do in front of the person you already are in a relationship with. I also felt that Noah had less personality here than in the first movie, he has an occasional fun moment at the beginning but tends to serve more as an object to move the plot forward. In addition, sometimes how oblivious Lee is towards the wishes of his girlfriend feels extremely oblivious to the point of feeling hard to buy, even by the standards of a teen movie. It has a few things going like that it was cool to see Taylor Zakhar Perez as Marco, and he does a good job making the character feel charismatic (In a way, sometimes too good of a job, because he feels more interesting than Noah in this movie). The movie does try a bit to have some polish, as it tries to have a few moments of being slower and character-driven and be a bit detailed about tying things to the first movie. However, as someone who even was just okay with the first movie, this one felt slightly weaker still.
4th Worst- Home on the Range: This movie has a few moments of succeeding in being entertaining as I did enjoy that the cows have different personalities when they work together, and I do like that one of the protagonists at least has a personal stake in the plot and the movie executes that okay. The villain's voice actor feels like he was having fun too. There also at least is some emphasis on action that can work such as in the climax. However, this movie just can feel too blaring towards one. The animation style feels too cutesy and exaggerated and can start to grate. Some of the bad jokes aren't just a bit weak, they are very unfunny such as the fart jokes. Except for "Will The Sun Ever Shine Again" being a good song, the songs feel forced and really amplify the movie's problem with immature/gross-out humor. This movie feels very in-your-face about wanting to make kids giggle and it starts to grate, and even the few redeeming qualities of personality I mentioned aren't enough to save it.
3rd Worst- Sixteen Candles: This is interestingly another third worst spot that I consider to be better technically than the previous two movies but the parts that I didn't like grated on me even more than them, like Brother Bear 2 in 2024. In this instance however I felt like instead of being better than my #5 and #4 technically but more dull than them like that one, this is better than #5 and #4 technically but has even more frustrating elements than them. I felt like the nerdy kid Ted really started to become obnoxious with how constantly he flirts with Sam and invades her privacy and it doesn't feel funny at all, with it not helping that you're still supposed to sympathize with him to an extent. Maybe the idea behind his geeky but still trying to be savvy with popularity character isn't a bad one but feels very poorly executed. It also rubbed me the wrong way that the pretty girl Caroline gets drunk and Ted wants to take her home in his car, such as to kiss her and et cetera, and that didn't do his character many favors with me personally either. I get that you're supposed to see Ted as annoying to characters like Sam but the movie feels like it fails to make his writing annoying to the characters but funny to the audience instead of annoying to both. The Asian character has that writing problem too and feels extremely stereotypical and annoying and the writing feels kind of racist for him too. I get that the elements I dislike are normal for the 1980s, which is why I say I disliked it more than I consider it bad objectively, but that doesn't mean I consider them to be well-executed. This movie does have some redeeming qualities though, as I found the conflict about how Sam's family is so busy that they forget her birthday, with an occasional surprising heartwarming moment when they do remember about her such as her father talking to her being a good scene. I felt like Sam herself was an alright protagonist and I could sympathize with her, and there are a few funny moments with her sister's wedding especially since the sister's actor is very convincingly prideful. The movie does feel like it succeeds in having the energy of a 1980s party as well, but there just were the other elements about how it specifically goes about trying to recreate that energy that were agitating to me.
2nd Worst: The Fox and The Hound 2- There are a couple of silver linings to this movie that make it at least feel like it could be more offensive, such as that its animation is good, being smooth and colorful, and fairly polished. Interestingly none of the characters from the first movie feel out of character, as characters like Tod and Copper still act like themselves, despite that it could use their personalities more interestingly. However this sentence ending alludes to most of the problems of the movie, as I did not consider it to be compelling. I didn't consider Dixie or Cash to feel like standout characters at all and didn't care whether they would get back together, and none of the conflict regarding the Singin' Strays felt interesting. For a movie that puts an emphasis on music and a band that makes it even worse that all of the songs are forgettable as well. None of the jokes stood out to me either, except for maybe that the cat Zelda has a couple chuckleworthy moments and that the sideplot of the girl chaperone leading the talent scout around only for him to face slapstick of getting hurt grew on me a bit by the end. This movie feels like a pointless midquel to make money that could completely be skipped, with the exception of that it does focus on Tod and Copper's friendship more while they still are friends, considering the original movie skips to where Tod and Copper start having problems sustaining their friendship pretty quickly.
Worst: The Kissing Booth 3- This movie has flickers of decent moments as Noah does show moments of being more mature and retaining his arc of solving conflicts like an adult instead of getting into fights, and Chloe is in character about still having strength and being a good influence for Noah. There is one good moment where Chloe expresses being sad about the relationship problems Elle and Noah are facing because of the problems her family faces that feels genuine. The idea of Elle automatically having trouble with her stepmother because of memories of the previous marriage is an interesting one, too. With that said, the vast majority of this movie feels like filler and in addition feels like unentertaining and dumb filler. A lot of the movie just feels like the characters getting into party events and then arguing about topics and any time they do, it feels like they learned nothing from the first two movies whatsoever. Elle lies about a topic again to make her relationships feel more smooth exactly like the first movie, Lee is possessive and is unsympathetic and guilt-tripping towards Elle's boundaries when he's supposed to have learned about that from the first movie, every conflict we've seen before in previous movies and the arguing feels boring and to be tuned out as a result. Marco is also written much worse here than the second movie and is written as just someone who has no traits other than being a loser who wants to constantly act over-the-top in unfunny scenes to court Elle, compared with the second movie where he at least is more interesting with his points about Elle and Noah's relationship and how Noah could be a better boyfriend, and his shared common interests with her. I am giving this movie the bottom spot because while any of the other four movies I could at least identify some element of it I considered consistently good, the better parts here just feel decent but feel like irrelevant crumbs of quality because they are swallowed up by the rest of the movie being derivative unstructured filler.
5th Best- Freaky Friday (2003)- A second Freaky Friday movie in a row making the #5 spot. I liked that this movie does a good deal different from the 1976 version as in this instance, the mother and daughter know right away that they switched bodies and (try to) work together. There are still a great amount of funny moments here as well, like how Tess chews out Anna's rude teacher while in her body. There is a good amount of heart here as well, such as Anna's dislike of that her mother is remarrying and how she ends up coming around to approve of her soon-to-be stepfather feels genuine. Jamie Lee Curtis has a lot of personality as the responsible but sometimes too much mother and the same goes for Lindsey Lohan acting as the individualistic daughter, and Lohan's music performance at the end is great too.
4th Best: A Miracle on Elm Street- This movie is really able to get a lot of the Christmas spirit right as Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle feels like he is able to perfectly encapsulate the sense of mystery and wisdom that Santa should have. I like Santa's positive impact such as how he makes stores feel forced to adopt more benevolent policies, and the movie knows how to be a Christmas comedy that feels funny instead of tacky. The only real flaw to this movie is that I wished that there was
during the trial, but other than that, this movie feels like a classic.
3rd Best: The Princess Bride- This movie really feels like it has a lot of personality in telling its story, and so do all of the characters. Westley feels heroic and clever with a sense of humor, the prince is a good combination of a pathetic coward and still a threat, and the characters who join Westley's side feel like they are a good combination of quirky and eccentric but also sympathizable. This movie feels like it could have just relied on its visual effects to distract from its story and characters or made those elements melodramatic, but the story is well-paced and feels classic with a sense of good and evil, and the characters are likable and extremely entertaining.
2nd Best: Good Will Hunting- This movie is very thought-provoking in covering topics such as trauma leading to stubbornness, and does so without feeling pretentious or dull. Its highlights are definitely Robin Williams' and Matt Damon's performances. Robin William's performance as Professor Maguire is the perfect combination of deep, sympathetic but stern, and with a sense of humor, and Matt Damon is able to combine Will's character as acting arrogant but with a good side and one does feel for him, such as by a certain ending scene. One really thinks about what it would be like to be in these character's shoes such as the problematic detachment from being talented at logical topics as Will, or the ability to have deep conversation but a dark cost leading to that ability like Professor Maguire. The movie feels very seamless; if it went just a bit even further than it should making Will a jerk one might not feel as sympathetic as they should towards him and the movie could have made Professor Maguire less down-to-earth for humor which could have taken away from his feeling of presence. All in all, it is a movie where the two characters' connections feels very genuine and worked towards with a payoff that works because you care about them.
Best: Grave of the Fireflies- This movie tackles an extremely serious historical topic of Japan after it was being attacked in World War II, but it has an interesting strategy by doing so. Instead of being very gory, it elects for a calmer tone with only a few bloody scenes but this calmer tone successfully makes things seem more eerie. By the movie actually starting out where the siblings have adequate food and water and then slowly go downhill in terms of how the conditions slowly become more desparate, the movie gives more of a sorrowful, declining tone. Scenes such as certain deaths hit harder because of this method of the movie, and the movie is good at alluding to when another character is going to die. The harsh nature that every other person has towards the siblings helps worsen the downward trend tone, such as the aunt's extremely stern and very unsympathetic nature and the farmer's treatment when he finds out Seita's stealing from him. The music amplifies the nature as well being calm but sorrowful. One can see how hardworking Seita is and his younger sister Setsuko is very lovable, so the movie succeeds in making every bad thing that happens to them dishearten the audience.
Some statistics. It is interesting that less than half of the 31 movies that I watched last year were animated, compared with three-quarters in both my 2023 list and 2024 list. I am starting to phase into more live-action/mature content so that was a factor probably, but animation is still one of my favorite genres and the #1 movie is still an animated movie (though a more mature one) so there's that. Also, it stands out the movies on average I watched in the second half of the year were much better on average than the first half the year, as I remember almost all of the movies in the Bottom 5 except the #1 and almost all the movies in the Top 5 except the #1 I watched the second half. It makes sense because in August I made a list of which movies I wanted to see next, meaning I had more of a pattern of watching movies I thought could be good. Between the movies I watched in 2023, in 2024, and 2025, I think 2023 had both the best movie, Psycho (1960), and the worst movie, Call Me By Your Name, although for those three lists, Grave of the Fireflies is my second favorite, and The Kissing Booth 3 was not as bad as Call Me By Your Name, though that's not an easy feat. I can also explain my rankings for any of the other movies on my list as well.
Like I did with my list of movies in 2024, I will give my reasoning for my Top 5 and Bottom 5.
5th Worst: The Kissing Booth 2- This movie has a lot of small to medium problems that bring it down. I felt that while it was portrayed as unreasonable for Elle to suspect Noah of cheating because she jumped to conclusions about the item under Noah's bed, it did rub me the wrong way that Chloe kisses Noah when Elle is around and that even as a friend, that's not something that you should let a girl do in front of the person you already are in a relationship with. I also felt that Noah had less personality here than in the first movie, he has an occasional fun moment at the beginning but tends to serve more as an object to move the plot forward. In addition, sometimes how oblivious Lee is towards the wishes of his girlfriend feels extremely oblivious to the point of feeling hard to buy, even by the standards of a teen movie. It has a few things going like that it was cool to see Taylor Zakhar Perez as Marco, and he does a good job making the character feel charismatic (In a way, sometimes too good of a job, because he feels more interesting than Noah in this movie). The movie does try a bit to have some polish, as it tries to have a few moments of being slower and character-driven and be a bit detailed about tying things to the first movie. However, as someone who even was just okay with the first movie, this one felt slightly weaker still.
4th Worst- Home on the Range: This movie has a few moments of succeeding in being entertaining as I did enjoy that the cows have different personalities when they work together, and I do like that one of the protagonists at least has a personal stake in the plot and the movie executes that okay. The villain's voice actor feels like he was having fun too. There also at least is some emphasis on action that can work such as in the climax. However, this movie just can feel too blaring towards one. The animation style feels too cutesy and exaggerated and can start to grate. Some of the bad jokes aren't just a bit weak, they are very unfunny such as the fart jokes. Except for "Will The Sun Ever Shine Again" being a good song, the songs feel forced and really amplify the movie's problem with immature/gross-out humor. This movie feels very in-your-face about wanting to make kids giggle and it starts to grate, and even the few redeeming qualities of personality I mentioned aren't enough to save it.
3rd Worst- Sixteen Candles: This is interestingly another third worst spot that I consider to be better technically than the previous two movies but the parts that I didn't like grated on me even more than them, like Brother Bear 2 in 2024. In this instance however I felt like instead of being better than my #5 and #4 technically but more dull than them like that one, this is better than #5 and #4 technically but has even more frustrating elements than them. I felt like the nerdy kid Ted really started to become obnoxious with how constantly he flirts with Sam and invades her privacy and it doesn't feel funny at all, with it not helping that you're still supposed to sympathize with him to an extent. Maybe the idea behind his geeky but still trying to be savvy with popularity character isn't a bad one but feels very poorly executed. It also rubbed me the wrong way that the pretty girl Caroline gets drunk and Ted wants to take her home in his car, such as to kiss her and et cetera, and that didn't do his character many favors with me personally either. I get that you're supposed to see Ted as annoying to characters like Sam but the movie feels like it fails to make his writing annoying to the characters but funny to the audience instead of annoying to both. The Asian character has that writing problem too and feels extremely stereotypical and annoying and the writing feels kind of racist for him too. I get that the elements I dislike are normal for the 1980s, which is why I say I disliked it more than I consider it bad objectively, but that doesn't mean I consider them to be well-executed. This movie does have some redeeming qualities though, as I found the conflict about how Sam's family is so busy that they forget her birthday, with an occasional surprising heartwarming moment when they do remember about her such as her father talking to her being a good scene. I felt like Sam herself was an alright protagonist and I could sympathize with her, and there are a few funny moments with her sister's wedding especially since the sister's actor is very convincingly prideful. The movie does feel like it succeeds in having the energy of a 1980s party as well, but there just were the other elements about how it specifically goes about trying to recreate that energy that were agitating to me.
2nd Worst: The Fox and The Hound 2- There are a couple of silver linings to this movie that make it at least feel like it could be more offensive, such as that its animation is good, being smooth and colorful, and fairly polished. Interestingly none of the characters from the first movie feel out of character, as characters like Tod and Copper still act like themselves, despite that it could use their personalities more interestingly. However this sentence ending alludes to most of the problems of the movie, as I did not consider it to be compelling. I didn't consider Dixie or Cash to feel like standout characters at all and didn't care whether they would get back together, and none of the conflict regarding the Singin' Strays felt interesting. For a movie that puts an emphasis on music and a band that makes it even worse that all of the songs are forgettable as well. None of the jokes stood out to me either, except for maybe that the cat Zelda has a couple chuckleworthy moments and that the sideplot of the girl chaperone leading the talent scout around only for him to face slapstick of getting hurt grew on me a bit by the end. This movie feels like a pointless midquel to make money that could completely be skipped, with the exception of that it does focus on Tod and Copper's friendship more while they still are friends, considering the original movie skips to where Tod and Copper start having problems sustaining their friendship pretty quickly.
Worst: The Kissing Booth 3- This movie has flickers of decent moments as Noah does show moments of being more mature and retaining his arc of solving conflicts like an adult instead of getting into fights, and Chloe is in character about still having strength and being a good influence for Noah. There is one good moment where Chloe expresses being sad about the relationship problems Elle and Noah are facing because of the problems her family faces that feels genuine. The idea of Elle automatically having trouble with her stepmother because of memories of the previous marriage is an interesting one, too. With that said, the vast majority of this movie feels like filler and in addition feels like unentertaining and dumb filler. A lot of the movie just feels like the characters getting into party events and then arguing about topics and any time they do, it feels like they learned nothing from the first two movies whatsoever. Elle lies about a topic again to make her relationships feel more smooth exactly like the first movie, Lee is possessive and is unsympathetic and guilt-tripping towards Elle's boundaries when he's supposed to have learned about that from the first movie, every conflict we've seen before in previous movies and the arguing feels boring and to be tuned out as a result. Marco is also written much worse here than the second movie and is written as just someone who has no traits other than being a loser who wants to constantly act over-the-top in unfunny scenes to court Elle, compared with the second movie where he at least is more interesting with his points about Elle and Noah's relationship and how Noah could be a better boyfriend, and his shared common interests with her. I am giving this movie the bottom spot because while any of the other four movies I could at least identify some element of it I considered consistently good, the better parts here just feel decent but feel like irrelevant crumbs of quality because they are swallowed up by the rest of the movie being derivative unstructured filler.
5th Best- Freaky Friday (2003)- A second Freaky Friday movie in a row making the #5 spot. I liked that this movie does a good deal different from the 1976 version as in this instance, the mother and daughter know right away that they switched bodies and (try to) work together. There are still a great amount of funny moments here as well, like how Tess chews out Anna's rude teacher while in her body. There is a good amount of heart here as well, such as Anna's dislike of that her mother is remarrying and how she ends up coming around to approve of her soon-to-be stepfather feels genuine. Jamie Lee Curtis has a lot of personality as the responsible but sometimes too much mother and the same goes for Lindsey Lohan acting as the individualistic daughter, and Lohan's music performance at the end is great too.
4th Best: A Miracle on Elm Street- This movie is really able to get a lot of the Christmas spirit right as Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle feels like he is able to perfectly encapsulate the sense of mystery and wisdom that Santa should have. I like Santa's positive impact such as how he makes stores feel forced to adopt more benevolent policies, and the movie knows how to be a Christmas comedy that feels funny instead of tacky. The only real flaw to this movie is that I wished that there was
definitive proof that Kris was Santa shown
3rd Best: The Princess Bride- This movie really feels like it has a lot of personality in telling its story, and so do all of the characters. Westley feels heroic and clever with a sense of humor, the prince is a good combination of a pathetic coward and still a threat, and the characters who join Westley's side feel like they are a good combination of quirky and eccentric but also sympathizable. This movie feels like it could have just relied on its visual effects to distract from its story and characters or made those elements melodramatic, but the story is well-paced and feels classic with a sense of good and evil, and the characters are likable and extremely entertaining.
2nd Best: Good Will Hunting- This movie is very thought-provoking in covering topics such as trauma leading to stubbornness, and does so without feeling pretentious or dull. Its highlights are definitely Robin Williams' and Matt Damon's performances. Robin William's performance as Professor Maguire is the perfect combination of deep, sympathetic but stern, and with a sense of humor, and Matt Damon is able to combine Will's character as acting arrogant but with a good side and one does feel for him, such as by a certain ending scene. One really thinks about what it would be like to be in these character's shoes such as the problematic detachment from being talented at logical topics as Will, or the ability to have deep conversation but a dark cost leading to that ability like Professor Maguire. The movie feels very seamless; if it went just a bit even further than it should making Will a jerk one might not feel as sympathetic as they should towards him and the movie could have made Professor Maguire less down-to-earth for humor which could have taken away from his feeling of presence. All in all, it is a movie where the two characters' connections feels very genuine and worked towards with a payoff that works because you care about them.
Best: Grave of the Fireflies- This movie tackles an extremely serious historical topic of Japan after it was being attacked in World War II, but it has an interesting strategy by doing so. Instead of being very gory, it elects for a calmer tone with only a few bloody scenes but this calmer tone successfully makes things seem more eerie. By the movie actually starting out where the siblings have adequate food and water and then slowly go downhill in terms of how the conditions slowly become more desparate, the movie gives more of a sorrowful, declining tone. Scenes such as certain deaths hit harder because of this method of the movie, and the movie is good at alluding to when another character is going to die. The harsh nature that every other person has towards the siblings helps worsen the downward trend tone, such as the aunt's extremely stern and very unsympathetic nature and the farmer's treatment when he finds out Seita's stealing from him. The music amplifies the nature as well being calm but sorrowful. One can see how hardworking Seita is and his younger sister Setsuko is very lovable, so the movie succeeds in making every bad thing that happens to them dishearten the audience.
Some statistics. It is interesting that less than half of the 31 movies that I watched last year were animated, compared with three-quarters in both my 2023 list and 2024 list. I am starting to phase into more live-action/mature content so that was a factor probably, but animation is still one of my favorite genres and the #1 movie is still an animated movie (though a more mature one) so there's that. Also, it stands out the movies on average I watched in the second half of the year were much better on average than the first half the year, as I remember almost all of the movies in the Bottom 5 except the #1 and almost all the movies in the Top 5 except the #1 I watched the second half. It makes sense because in August I made a list of which movies I wanted to see next, meaning I had more of a pattern of watching movies I thought could be good. Between the movies I watched in 2023, in 2024, and 2025, I think 2023 had both the best movie, Psycho (1960), and the worst movie, Call Me By Your Name, although for those three lists, Grave of the Fireflies is my second favorite, and The Kissing Booth 3 was not as bad as Call Me By Your Name, though that's not an easy feat. I can also explain my rankings for any of the other movies on my list as well.