01/08/2026
Are There Still 12 Movies a Year Worth Seeing?
A number of you have said—kindly and sincerely—that you want to help us reopen the theater when the time comes. And since we’re closed right now, this is exactly the moment to have an honest conversation about what that actually takes—not a nostalgic one, not a marketing one, but a clear-eyed one.
The conventional wisdom goes something like this. Hollywood doesn’t make good movies anymore. Everything is either a bloated franchise, a kids’ movie, or a three-hour CGI endurance test. People repeat it so often online that it starts to feel like settled fact.
Let’s slow that down and actually test it.
Take the year 2025. If you pull out the top 20 films, each of which grossed over $100 million domestically, those juggernauts alone account for roughly 35% of the entire domestic box office.
That’s the feast part of today’s feast-and-famine model—huge movies consuming a disproportionate share of tickets sold.
So let’s set those aside for a moment.
But before we do, it’s worth saying this out loud: the blockbuster list is not just capes, cartoons, and empty spectacle. Sitting squarely in that realm is “Wicked: For Good,” a sequel, yes—but also a serious musical reimagining of Oz that treats performance and craft as seriously as scale. If you say you don’t like horror as a genre, it’s still an honest question how you resist “Sinners,” which broke through precisely because it used horror as a delivery system for character, dread, and moral pressure rather than cheap shocks. Then there’s “F1,” which did nearly $190 million at the box office on the strength of an original story, star power, and real, seat-tightening tension. And maybe kids’ movies aren’t your thing—but even then, it’s hard to deny the charm and intelligence of “Zootopia.”
But fine.
Let’s knock out all twenty of the blockbusters anyway. Even the good ones.
What’s left isn’t twelve movies.
What’s left is dozens.
In a typical year, a theater of our size doesn’t program just the top 20 titles. Beyond those, there are probably another 60 films that cycle through our screens—middle-budget dramas, thrillers, genre films, comedies, and oddballs that never dominate the conversation but absolutely reward an audience that shows up.
What follows isn’t all of them.
It’s twelve that illustrate the point: lots of high-quality movies, plus a few guilty pleasures, that make the idea of a movie-a-month not just plausible, but realistic.
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The Guilty Pleasures
Almost all of these films are well-reviewed. And then there are a couple we’re just going to have to call guilty pleasures—movies I liked for reasons that made sense to me, even if critics weren’t on board.
“Flight Risk” sits at 29% on Rotten Tomatoes. I get it. This is not a subtle movie. But I thought it was a tight thriller, and I was on the edge of my seat for most of its runtime. Not every movie needs to be a graduate seminar. Some just need to keep you leaning forward.
Then there’s “Anaconda,” which landed at 52%. Barely a passing grade in critic land. But I could watch Jack Black read the phone book and be reasonably well entertained. Sometimes charm counts. Sometimes energy counts. Sometimes a movie knows exactly what it is.
Those are the outliers.
The rest of the list is solid by any reasonable measure.
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The 12 “Little Gems” (Rating + Quick Synopsis)
• “One Battle After Another” — 95%
A high-energy action drama built around cycles of violence and moral exhaustion. It balances spectacle with adult themes—propulsive without being dumb, serious without being self-important.
• “28 Years Later” — 89%
A tense return to a world shaped by catastrophe. Less about jump scares than endurance and moral compromise—horror used as a pressure chamber for people and choices.
• “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale” — 91%
A satisfying farewell that understands its audience and doesn’t overstay its welcome. Comforting, yes—but made with craft and affection rather than cynical fan service.
• “Complete Unknown” — 82%
A quiet, character-driven drama that rewards patience. Anchored by performance rather than plot mechanics, the kind of movie that benefits from being seen without distractions.
• “The Amateur” — 62%
A lean spy thriller with rough edges. Not everything lands, but the central premise—an ordinary person pulled into extraordinary circumstances—carries enough tension to justify the ride.
• “The Running Man” — 87%
A sharp reimagining that leans into satire as much as action. Fast, smart, and socially aware without turning into a lecture—genre with teeth.
• “Roofman” — 87%
A true-crime drama that avoids sensationalism. More interested in psychology than spectacle, building tension through character and consequence.
• “Black Bag” — 96%
A sleek, adult spy thriller that trusts the audience to keep up. Stylish without being empty, and one of the rare espionage films that values intelligence as much as action.
• “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” — 60%
A glossy, entertaining caper that most people probably didn’t hear much about. Just for fun, take a look at the image above. I’m pretty confident the vast majority of our customers—people who like ensemble casts, smart pacing, and a fun night out—would have enjoyed it. It didn’t dominate the culture. It didn’t need to.
• “Flight Risk” — 29%
A stripped-down thriller that does exactly what it promises: tension, tight pacing, and forward motion. Critics weren’t buying. I was.
• “Anaconda” — 52%
A creature-feature that knows it’s here to entertain, not win awards. Messy fun with a cast that makes the ride go down easy.
(Yes, I’m counting the guilty pleasures. Real moviegoing always has.)
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The Point of All This
That’s the part we’re actually in danger of losing. Not because the movies don’t exist—they clearly do—but because we’re out of practice with the moviegoing habit itself. We’ve trained ourselves to treat films as background noise rather than shared experience.
Habits don’t disappear all at once.
They erode. And once they’re gone, it’s easy to mistake that absence for proof that the thing itself no longer mattered.
Sometimes things get repeated so often on social media that people start treating them as true rather than just widespread. If we don’t challenge that narrative with an honest accounting, we’re implicitly saying we prefer to be a nation of channel-flippers—alone on our couches—rather than a communal audience of neighbors laughing, gasping, and sitting together in a darkened room, living a couple of hours of life together.
If this ran longer than most posts you scroll past, that’s intentional.
Take the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/R2PLKXX
We know we’re closed right now. We know reopening takes more than nostalgia.
But if you said you want to help, this is the case for how to do it—and why there are plenty of movies that will hold your attention.
Moviegoing culture doesn’t come back with one perfect film.
It comes back with twelve pretty good ones—and people willing to show up for them.
