Fanboys Anonymous

Welcome to the ninth annual FANBOYS FILM AWARDS!

This will be acting more as a personal list of just the movies that I've seen this year, rather than something that attempts to focus specifically on the superhero film genre as originally conceived.

I invite everyone to join in on the fun by leaving their own lists and thoughts in the comments below to tell us what you watched this year!

FILMS THAT CAME OUT IN 2025 THAT I WATCHED:

28 Years Later
Ballerina: From the World of John Wick
Black Bag
The Black Phone 2
Bone Lake
Bring Her Back
Captain America: Brave New World
Companion
The Conjuring: Last Rites
The Fantastic 4: First Steps
Final Destination: Bloodlines
Frankenstein
Happy Gilmore 2
Keeper
The Life of Chuck
The Long Walk
M3GAN 2.0
Mickey 17
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
The Naked Gun
No Other Choice
Predator: Badlands
Presence
Relay
The Running Man
The Secret Agent (O Agente Secreto)
Shelby Oaks
Sinners
Superman
Thunderbolts*
Together
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Weapons
Wolf Man
The Woman in Cabin 10

FILMS THAT CAME OUT BEFORE 2025 THAT I WATCHED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 2025:

12 Rounds
All the Right Moves
Bangkok Dangerous
The Beach
The Bodyguard
Can't Buy Me Love
Career Opportunities
Cocktail
Congo
Days of Thunder
Dredd
Executive Decision
The Fan
Fifty Shades of Grey
Fifty Shades Darker
Fifty Shades Freed
Fright Night
Gigli
Heathers
Hell Comes to Frogtown
Hudson Hawk
Hypnotic
I Saw the Devil
I'm Still Here
Johnny Mnemonic
Knock Off
The Last Boy Scout
License to Drive
Murder at 1600
Navy Seals
Powder
Risky Business
Sidekicks
Snake Eyes
The Taking of Pelham 123
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Taps
Timecop
Toy Soldiers
Volcano
Weird Science
XXX: The Return of Xander Cage
XXX: State of the Union

BEST / FAVORITE MOVIES OF THE YEAR

I'm not sure I would call any of the movies this year S-tier in the sense that they'd be absolute top of the line all-time favorites, except maybe one closing in on that range (but even then, you'll see where it eventually goes on my 2020s My Favorite Movies of the Decade list:

• The Life of Chuck
• Sinners
• Superman 

Other A-tier type films (roughly an 8/10) from this year would be:

• No Other Choice
• Companion
• Thunderbolts
• Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
• Ballerina
• The Long Walk
• The Black Phone 2
• M3GAN 2.0
• Predator: Badlands
• 28 Years Later
• Frankenstein 

B-tier (roughly a 7/10) would be:

• Captain America: Brave New World
• Relay 

C-tier (roughly a 6/10) would be:

• The Fantastic 4: First Steps
• Black Bag
• Weapons
• Together 

D-tier (roughly a 5/10 and the cutoff of what I mostly enjoyed) would be:

• Shelby Oaks was more interesting before the credits and then turned into the most generic horror film ever. Just boilerplate. What a shame.
• Presence had some interesting parts to it, too, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. 

Beyond that point, all the other movies listed above on my watch list would be E-tier or lower, and there isn't much of a reason to rank them, as they were all disappointing if not horrible.

For anyone curious, out of the movies that didn't come out this year, my favorite that I saw was The Talented Mr. Ripley, to the point that my wife and I then watched the Ripley television series from Netflix as well and enjoyed that. Most, as you could see, were joke movies that we purposely watched because they looked bad, and boy, most of them really were that horrendous.

WORST / LEAST FAVORITE MOVIES OF THE YEAR

• Mickey 17 sounded like such an interesting concept, and Parasite was so good, but WOOF, I hated this movie from start to finish. As much as I appreciate every shot against that disgusting side of politics, I just wasn't entertained by anything in this. Every character felt like something out of a "quirky for the sake of quirky" type of movie, and I don't vibe with those. I was expecting Moon, and I got Wes Anderson.
• Movies like Bring Her Back do nothing for me. I only saw that because my wife wanted to.
• As you can tell, I was on a Tom Cruise kick around the early summer. His early stuff was rough and hilarious to watch. Why are all of his characters douchebags that we're somehow supposed to root for despite being terrible people?
• Happy Gilmore 2 really took a nosedive for me after starting out kind of decent at the beginning of the movie. I'm just not interested in watching a film that revolves around cameos of golfers and Adam Sandler's friends. That does nothing for me. It isn't even a joke.
• The Naked Gun....no. You had a few decent jokes spread out over 90 minutes with MASSIVE stretches in between. The original is in my top 5 favorite comedies ever and something I still crack up at no matter how many times I've seen it, but this just wasn't hitting.
• The Secret Agent felt disjointed and lacking in plot 
• I was so bored watching The Conjuring: Last Rites that I found myself working on my own writing ideas in my head during certain scenes. This was just formulaic "uh oh, spooky vibes building up to a jump scare!" type stuff, and I'll forever say that tropes like "it's supposed to be creepy that a nursery rhyme is being sung by someone smiling" are as bland, uninteresting, and blah as "generic action scene with explosion" and "you should laugh at this comedy because someone was hurt in this scene" 
• The Woman in Cabin 10 and Wolf Man were so boringly generic. I've watched the exact same movie 100 times. They didn't do anything interesting, and everything they did was done better in many other films. I couldn't even tell you the majority of most of the characters in either of those films' names the next day.
• But holy shit, then, I watched Keeper. I was annoyed that I couldn't FALL ASLEEP in the theater. Five minutes in, I was already not digging it, and it only got worse as time went on. I'm not joking when I say that in a year where I watched the 50 Shades of Grey movies for a laugh, I was more engaged in that story than what was happening here. 

BEST ACTOR

WINNER = Michael B. Jordan (Sinners)

EXPLANATION = I was so set on having this be Jack Quaid for Companion at the beginning of the year, but some other great performances just had to knock him down a peg. Major shout out to him, though. Michael B. Jordan gets the nod here for playing two parts. And Alfie Williams killed it, so that was a very impressive performance. Those would probably make my top three even above Jacob Elordi, and I think Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson are a duo act of sorts for The Long walk. All great performances, though.

HONORABLE MENTIONS = Alfie Williams (28 Years Later), Jack Quaid (Companion), Cooper Hoffman (The Long Walk), David Jonsson (The Long Walk), Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein), Lee Byung-hun (No Other Choice)

BEST ACTRESS

WINNER = Sophie Thatcher (Companion) or Madeleine McGraw (The Black Phone 2)

EXPLANATION = Thatcher's been ragged on a bit this year for her acting, it seems, but I thought she did an awesome job playing a part a lot of people would have messed up. I'm not sure if I can give her the spot over Madeleine McGraw, though, as she stole the show for the second film in a row, and being at her young age, that could make it more impressive overall. Give that girl more roles, for sure. She'll win an Oscar someday.

HONORABLE MENTIONS = Julia Garner (Weapons), Son Ye-jin (No Other Choice)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

WINNER = Nicholas Hoult (Superman)

EXPLANATION = Best Lex Luthor we've gotten outside of the DCAU Bruce Timm incarnation. I LOOOOVED Hoult's version. Fantastic.

HONORABLE MENTIONS = Austin Abrams (Weapons), Ben Wang (The Long Walk), Delroy Lindo (Sinners), Omar Benson Miller (Sinners)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

WINNER = Amy Madison (Weapons)

EXPLANATION = A little overrated, I would say, but I do feel like she deserves most of the applause.

HONORABLE MENTIONS = Sora Wong (Bring Her Back), Sara Sampaio (Superman), Wunmi Mosaku (Sinners)

BEST STORY

This is an alternative to Best Adapted/Original Screenplay where the execution of the overall product might not be the equivalent of Best Picture, but the idea was there.

WINNER = The Life of Chuck

EXPLANATION = This came about at the right time, given my current depression and where I am in my life age-wise and, well, let's just say I cried in the theater and I cried when I watched this a second time at home.

HONORABLE MENTIONS = Black Bag, The Black Phone 2, Companion, Sinners, Superman

MOST FAITHFUL ADAPTATION

Which movie felt like it was the most honorable to the source material it was trying to represent?

WINNER = Superman

EXPLANATION = That's Superman.

HONORABLE MENTIONS = Ballerina, Captain America: Brave New World, Fantastic 4, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Predator: Badlands, Thunderbolts, Wake Up Dead Man

BEST VISUALS

This covers special effects, cinematography, production design and even editing.

WINNER = Superman

EXPLANATION = Admittedly, some of the shots seem like they're filmed with a weird camera lens, but I am absolutely not someone who should be talking about that, as I do not have any understanding of that other than "that looks weird" or not.

HONORABLE MENTIONS = Fantastic 4, Frankenstein, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Predator: Badlands, Thunderbolts

BEST ACTION SET PIECES

This honors the stunt work as well as the choreography and idea of an action sequence.

WINNER = Ballerina

EXPLANATION = This was the fight sequence film. For it to not win would mean that it failed on its very premise.

HONORABLE MENTIONS = Captain America: Brave New World (really shouldn't by any means), M3GAN 2.0, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Predator: Badlands, Sinners, Superman, Thunderbolts

BEST CHARACTER DESIGN

This combines makeup, costumes and the CGI build of characters.

WINNER = Superman

EXPLANATION = I could nitpick some stuff, but overall, this felt like the type of world I would want to make a Superman film. A good runner-up would be Thunderbolts most likely.

HONORABLE MENTIONS = Captain America: Brave New World (really shouldn't by any means), Fantastic 4, Frankenstein, Thunderbolts

BEST MUSIC

This category examines both the score and the soundtrack.

WINNER = Sinners

EXPLANATION = Score-wise, I would lean more toward Mission Impossible or Superman. I really dig the Fantastic 4 theme, too. The Life of Chuck has some great music in it. But when you've got a movie like Sinners that in part revolves around the music, and the music is that good, it deserves to take out the others.

HONORABLE MENTIONS = The Life of Chuck, Frankenstein, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Fantastic 4, Superman (for the score, not the other musical tracks), Thunderbolts

TELL US YOUR LIST IN THE COMMENTS BELOW!