It’s part two of a special two-part episode! 2025 was a truly great year in cinema and Dean and Phil have a great many topics to discuss as they each reveal their Top 5 films from the year that was (consult Year 19 Episode 39 for their #10 thru #6 selections). Afterwards, they take a look at, perhaps, the most promising fantasy film to be coming out in 2026! So, keep those streaming queues handy. Your friends in podcasting may just be coming up with some titles you will want to track down!

It’s part one of a special two-part episode! After a rather hilarious cold open, Dean and Phil immediately get down to the serious (ridiculous?) business of counting down their respective lists of the Top Ten Best Films of 2025. This week, they reveal #10 thru #6 on their lists. As with years past, Dean’s list includes films he has hopefully seen, and Phil’s list stretches the definition of “ten” in “Top Ten”. Because they actually accomplish this week’s task in less than an hour, Phil takes some time at the end to regale Dean with what might be the best sci-fi movies to be coming out in 2026! So, buckle up and prepare to celebrate the (recent) past AND look forward to the (near) future.

On the eve of the Golden Globes, Dean and Phil got together via Zoom with the Best of 2025 very much on their minds. They discuss the recent Directors Guild and Screen Actors Guild award nominations. They discuss why the Writers Guild awards pale in significance compared to the DGA and SAG. That leads to a review of the multi-Golden Globe nominated, but WGA-ineligible South Korean dark comedy No Other Choice from writer-director Park Chan-wook, and his co-writer Don McKellar, as well as to a discussion of some Park Chan-wook movies from the past that Dean and Phil hope to track down. From one dark comedy to another, Phil and Dean then tackle Ari Aster’s Eddington before cleansing their palate with the utterly delightful Nouvelle Vague from Richard Linklater. Finally, the CNN documentary “I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not” gets analyzed before Dean and Phil set aside fifteen bonus minutes to peek ahead to what IMDB considers ten of the “most anticipated” movies coming out this year.

On this week’s show, Dean Haglund is finally using a microphone once again. It makes his audio better, to be certain, but somehow it also manages to create several cameo opportunities for his dogs! Don’t let those moments dissuade you, however, as this week’s show is an utterly fascinating conversation between Dean and his longtime co-host Phil Leirness. They go deep, discussing the potential sale of Warner Bros. to Netflix, the life and legacy of perhaps the greatest American architect of all time, Frank Gehry, and the truly spine-chilling lessons we can learn from the Nazis’ film policy.

Dean and Phil compare notes on their Thanksgivings and reveal how (and probably why) Phil got sick on his birthday! Then, they discuss a wide array of brand new and classic movies from various genres and from locales around the world, including Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, the noir classic The Postman Always Rings Twice, the groundbreaking indie Chan is Missing, the all-time masterwork Au hasard Balthazar, and a Netflix doc about Eddie Murphy. In “Celebrity Deaths”, an unforgettable and prolific character actor and one of the greatest playwrights of all time get remembered.