LOS ANGELES — A funny thing about this year’s best films: Half of them are adaptations. As a movie lover who’s always hunting for new talent, new ideas and new stimuli, I used to view that as creative inertia. But 2025 has changed my mind.

Now I see artists drawing inspiration from the past to show that Hollywood should trust the sturdy bones that have kept it running for over a century: good yarns, bold casting, films that don’t feel made by focus groups or doomsaying bean-counters (or, God help us, AI), but by blood and sweat.

From original tales to radical reworkings of classics both high-falutin’ and raucously lowbrow, these 10 filmmakers all know that the most vital part of the storytelling business has stayed exactly the same. They have to wow an audience. And they did.

1. ‘Sinners’

A period-piece-vampire-musical mashup could have been discordant, but writer-director Ryan Coogler confidently makes all three genres harmonize. In “Sinners,” Coogler double-casts his longtime collaborator Michael B. Jordan as twin bootleggers Smoke and Stack, then pits them against a pack of banjo-picking bloodsuckers helmed by a roguish Jack O’Connell. We’re expecting a big, bloody brouhaha and we get it. Underneath the playful carnage, however, the question at stake is: Why suffer the daily indignities of the Jim Crow-era South when you could outlive — and eat — your oppressors? “Sinners” is the most exciting film of 2025, both for what it is and for what it proves: that fresh blockbusters still exist and people are eager to gobble them up.

(“Sinners” is available on multiple platforms.)

2. ‘Hedda’

Tessa Thompson stars in director Nia DaCosta’s “Hedda.” (Prime Video/TNS)

The stage’s iconic mean girl glides from 1890s Norway to 1950s England in this vibrant and venomous adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler.” Tessa Thompson stars as the restless housewife who needs to secure her milquetoast husband (Tom Bateman) a promotion and has a nasty habit of playing with guns. Keeping pace with her manipulative anti-heroine, writer-director Nia DaCosta (“Candyman”) makes a few calculated moves of her own, including gender-swapping Hedda’s ex into a curvaceous career woman (a haughty Nina Hoss) whose drab and geeky new girlfriend (Imogen Poots) irritates their hostess’ insecurities. As a capper, “Hedda” stages its brutal showdown at an all-night vodka-and-cocaine-fueled mansion shebang with a live jazz band, a lake for skinny-dippers and a hedge maze where former lovers are tempted to canoodle. The original play is over a century old, but every scene feels screamingly alive.

(“Hedda” is available on Prime Video.)

3. ‘Eddington’

Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal in “Eddington.” (A24/TNS)

No film was more polarizing than Ari Aster’s COVID-set satire about a mask-hating sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix), a sanctimonious mayor (Pedro Pascal) and the high-tech cabal that benefits when these two modern cowboys come to blows. “Eddington” immortalizes the bleak humor and lingo of May 2020 (think murder hornets, antifa and toilet paper hoarders). More stingingly, it captures the mental delirium of a small town — make that an entire planet — that hasn’t yet realized that there’s a second sickness seeping in through their smartphones. Everyone’s got a device in their hand pretty much all the time, aiming their cameras at each other like pistols in a Wild West standoff. Yet no character grasps what’s really going on. (I have a theory, but when I explain the larger conspiracy, I sound cuckoo too.) This is the movie that will explain pandemic brain to future generations. With distance, I’m pretty sure the haters will come around.

(“Eddington” is available on multiple platforms.)

4. ‘One Battle After Another’

Every shot in Paul Thomas Anderson’s invigorating nail-biter is a banger: sentinels skateboarding over rooftops, caged kids playing catch with a crumpled foil blanket, Teyana Taylor’s militant Perfidia Beverly Hills blasting an automatic rifle while nine months pregnant. It’s the rare film that instantly imprints itself on the viewer. On my second watch, I was shocked by how much of “One Battle After Another” already felt tattooed on my brain, down to the shudder I got from Sean Penn’s loathsome Col. Lockjaw licking his comb to tidy his bangs. Riffing from Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland,” the central drama follows flunky anarchist Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) fumblingly attempting to rescue his daughter (Chase Infiniti) from Lockjaw’s clutches. But he’s not much help to her, and as the title implies, this is merely one skirmish in humanity’s sprawling struggle for freedom that has, and will, drag on forever. Anderson’s knack for ensemble work stretches back as far as “Boogie Nights,” yet here, even his unnamed characters have crucial roles to play. His world-building has never before felt this holistic and inspirational.

(“One Battle After Another” is now playing in theaters.)

5. ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’

The backstory behind this stunner couldn’t be more baroque: Director Bill Condon (“Dreamgirls”) boldly revamped a Broadway musical of an Oscar-winning drama (itself taken from an experimental novel) about two inmates in an Argentinean cell who mentally escape into the movies. Each incarnation has doubled down on the sensorial overload of what came before. If you know “Kiss of the Spider Woman’s” lineage, you’ll be impressed by how Condon ups the fantasy and stokes the revolutionary glamour with more Technicolor dance showcases for Jennifer Lopez. (She’s doing her best Cyd Charisse, which turns out to be darned good.) If this is your first taste of the tale, give yourself over to the prickly but tender relationship between prisoners Luis and Valentin, played by feisty new talent Tonatiuh and a red-blooded Diego Luna. This is go-for-broke filmmaking with a wallop. As Luis says of his own version of “Kiss of the Spider Woman” playing in his head, “Call it kitsch, call it camp — I don’t care, I love it.”

(“Kiss of the Spider Woman” is available on multiple platforms.)

6. ‘A Useful Ghost’

Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s Cannes Grand Prix winner opens with a haunted vacuum cleaner. From there, it gets even more surprising. Ghosts have infested a wealthy widow’s factory and are possessing appliances, seducing her son and cozying up to the prime minister for favors. Some of these people have died by accident, some by corporate neglect or worse. This droll spook show bleeds into romance and politics and, to our shock, becomes genuinely emotional. (It helps to remember that the military killed over 80 Bangkok protesters in 2010.) But why vacuum cleaners, you ask? The conceit is more than a sticky idea. Ordinary people can get crushed but the anger they leave behind lingers like fine dust.

(“A Useful Ghost” opens Jan. 16, 2026, in theaters.)

7. ‘The Roses’

Benedict Cumberbatch, left, and Olivia Colman in “The Roses.” (Jaap Buitendijk/Searchlight Pictures/TNS)

Technically, “The Roses” is rooted in the 1980s hit novel and subsequent blockbuster “The War of the Roses,” which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as an estranged couple who attack each other with lawyers, poison and chandeliers. In spirit, however, this redo is pure 1930s screwball comedy. Leads Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman are skilled verbal ninjas who hurl razor-sharp insults at each other’s egos, and although their characters’ divorce happens in California, director Jay Roach lets the actors keep their snippy British accents. The script by two-time Oscar nominee Tony McNamara (“The Favourite,” “Poor Things”) adds a cruel twist to the original: This time around, the marrieds truly do try their damnedest to love and support each other. And still, their walls come tumbling down.

(“The Roses” is available on multiple platforms.)

8. ‘In Whose Name?’

Nico Ballesteros was a high schooler with an iPhone when he entered Kanye West’s orbit in 2018. Over the next six years, the Orange County kid shot over 3,000 hours of footage as Ye (as the artist legally became known in 2021) jetted from Paris to Uganda, Calabasas to the White House, meeting everyone from Kenny G to Elon Musk on a quest to fulfill his creative and spiritual goals while incinerating his personal life and public reputation. Ye gave the documentarian full access with no editorial oversight, besides one moment in which he tells the camera that he wants the film to be about mental health. This riveting tragedy definitely is. We see an egomaniac whose fear of being beholden to anything motivates him to go off his meds, a billionaire provocateur who believes he can afford the consequences of his bigotry and, above all, a deeply flawed man who nukes his entire world to insist he’s right.

(“In Whose Name?” is available on multiple platforms.)

9. ‘Sirāt’

The techno soundtrack of Oliver Laxe’s desolate road thriller has rattled my house for months. Lately, I’ve spent just as much time contemplating the movie’s silence — those hushed stretches in which this caravan of bohemians speeds across the Moroccan desert looking like the only free people left on Earth. A father, Luis (“Pan’s Labyrinth’s” Sergi López), and his 12-year-old son team up with this band of tattooed burnouts in the hope of finding the boy’s runaway sister. Before long, Luis is just hoping to make it to safety, assuming anywhere safe still exists. Static on the radio warns that World War III might be underway. These outsiders click off the news and crank up the music. The paradox of “Sirāt” is that I’m dying to talk about it more but I’ve got to keep my mouth shut until people experience its dramatic twists for themselves.

(“Sirāt” returns to theaters on Feb. 6, 2026.)

10. ‘The Naked Gun’

Liam Neeson needed this pummeling pun-fest. So did everyone else in 2025. Director Akiva Schaffer’s continuation of the “Police Squad!” franchise let the 73-year-old “Taken” star poke fun at his own bruising gravitas. Playing the son of Leslie Nielsen’s Lt. Frank Drebin, Neeson kept us in hysterics with a stupid-brilliant barrage of surreal wordplay and daffy slapstick. The casting was as odd — and perfect — as rumors that he and his co-star Pamela Anderson started dating on set. This fourth sequel didn’t try to outsmart the classic Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker template. It simply told the same old story: Cop meets babe, cop and babe canoodle with a magical snowman, cop drops his trousers on live TV, this time minus the blimp. Goodyear? No, the worst — which made Neeson our hero.

(“The Naked Gun” is available on multiple platforms.)

Since I’m all jazzed-up about great movies, here are 10 honorable mentions very much worth a watch.

“The Ballad of Wallis Island”

A kooky millionaire strong-arms his favorite mid-aughts folk duo into playing a reunion show on his Welsh island. Sounds cutesy, but it’s the movie I recommended most — to everyone from my mailman to my mother. They all loved it. Join the fan club.

“Bunny”

This East Village indie by debut director Ben Jacobson is a scummy gem. A gigolo’s birthday goes very wrong. But all the characters racing up and down the stairs of his uber-New York walk-up hovel are a howl.

“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”

Rose Byrne excels equally at comedy and drama. This audit of a breakdown smashes both together and cranks the tension up to eleven. Playing a high-stress working mom of an ill child, her try-hard heroine leans in so harrowingly far, she goes kamikaze.

“Lurker”

Today’s celebrity might be viral on Instagram and unknown everywhere else. Alex Russell’s stomach-churning psychodrama stars Archie Madekwe as an L.A.-based singer on the brink of genuine fame and Théodore Pellerin as the hanger-on who endures — and exploits — the fledgling star’s power moves and hazy boundaries.

“Magic Farm”

Filmmaker Amalia Ulman’s rascally farce stars Chloë Sevigny and Alex Wolff as clickbait journalists who fly to Argentina to shoot a viral video about a singer in a bunny costume and wind up looking twice as ridiculous.

“One of Them Days”

Keke Palmer and SZA play broke Baldwin Hills roommates who have nine hours to make rent. I’d happily watch their stoner high jinks in real time.

“The Perfect Neighbor”

Pieced together primarily from police body-camera footage, Geeta Gandbhir’s documentary unfurls in a Florida cul-de-sac where a community — adults, kids and cops — agrees that one woman is an entitled pill. The problem is she thinks they’re the problem. And she has a gun.

“Sisu: Road to Revenge”

If Buster Keaton were alive, he’d hail this grisly, mostly mute Finnish action flick as a worthy successor to “The General.” It even boasts a thrilling sequence on a train, although director Jalmari Helander also brazenly poaches from “Die Hard” and “Mad Max: Fury Road.”

“Train Dreams”

Trees fall in the woods and a 20th-century logger (Joel Edgerton) plays an unheard, unthanked but beautiful role in the building of America.

“Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery”

Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) teams up with a soul-searching priest (Josh O’Connor) to solve a perplexing church stabbing. From deft plot twists to provocative Catholic theology, Rian Johnson’s crowd-pleasing murder mystery is marvelously executed.

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Off Fairview Avenue in St. Paul, a new gymnastics facility has a bit of everything. One side of the gym has high-level training for the University of Minnesota Men’s Gymnastics Club, and on the left of the gym are mini pads and toy tunnels. The facility is a new home for the club.

The facility — which the Friends of Minnesota Men’s Gymnastics helped open — is known as Foundation Gymnastics and is at 655 Fairview Ave.

Gymnast Owen Frank performs on the pommel horse as longtime assistant coach Bob Wuornos watches during practice at the new home of the University of Minnesota Men’s Gymnastics Club in the Fairview Business Center in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

There are three dedicated spaces — a preschool area, a space for the University of Minnesota men’s team training, and a section for the uneven bars and the high jump. The facility is open to all levels of gymnastics, with recreational practices and children.

Mike Burns, the head coach for the club, said they looked at a few buildings in Northeast Minneapolis and places near the U but chose the building in St. Paul because it met the 20-foot ceiling height requirements for equipment such as the rings.

Burns said the new building is helpful because it is near the university, and the mix of gymnasts at different levels is a good way to motivate everyone.

“We have a high-level men’s gymnastics team training in the same space that these little kids will be doing their gymnastics. They’ll have some upper-level gymnastics that they can kind of be exposed to and watch while they’re doing their stuff and give them a chance to think, ‘Oh I could maybe do that someday,’” Burns said.

University of Minnesota Men’s Gymnastics Club head coach Mike Burns uses a heavily padded crutch to help gymnast Ben Letvin maintain his posture on the rings during practice in the club’s new facility in the Fairview Business Center in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Series of changes for team

The men’s gymnastics club has gone through a series of changes that started in 2020. Men’s gymnastics was removed from Division I status that year by the university’s Board of Regents. According to Burns, the team moved from Division I to club status and continued under the campus life program.

When the team became a club, they received funding from the Friends of Minnesota Men’s Gymnastics, a nonprofit.

After the team’s Division I status was removed, Burns said, there were immediate effects in participation, but the club was slowly able to increase team members, from seven in 2020 to 26 this year.

“It impacted it initially, but I think it’s kind of a great destination for gymnasts that want to continue to do gymnastics at the college level, at a very high-level institution. So I think we’re pretty attractive for guys that aren’t able to get onto an NCAA team. We have a great option for them here,” Burns said.

With a wall of championship banners as a backdrop, gymnast Luke Pedersen performs on the parallel bars during practice at the new home of the University of Minnesota Men’s Gymnastics Club in the Fairview Business Center in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Looking for a new home

​Burns said the team was asked to leave their original space in Cooke Hall in 2024, after the U decided to renovate the building for the diving team, the kinesiology program and RecWell activities. The same year the team was asked to move out, they won second place at GymACT nationals.

For Ben Letvin, a junior with the club, the loss of Cooke Hall was almost like losing a home.

“Cooke Hall was kind of like a safe haven for men’s gymnastics at the University of Minnesota. It was a historic place,” Letvin said. “I mean, the men’s gymnastics team had been practicing there for about a hundred years before the university changed the use of the space. So, it was kind of just a shock.”

After that, the team moved around to different training facilities in areas like Mini Hops in Plymouth, North Shore Gymnastics in Maple Plain, and Twin Cities Twisters in Champlin.

​For junior Jack Gagamov, president of the gymnastics team, moving around was a struggle at first. People had to meet at different times during the week.

Gagamov said he’s excited for the team to have its own facility again, to build culture.​

“It’s a team sport. So being able to bounce off of each other’s energy is really important to be able to hit routines. I think understanding who you’re competing for every day in the gym makes a really big impact on the outcome of your routines,” Gagamov said.

Gymnast K. J. Richardson, right, shakes hands with head coach Mike Burns after his high bar routine during practice at the new home of the University of Minnesota Men’s Gymnastics Club in the Fairview Business Center in the Midway neighborhood in St. Paul on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

A sense of community

Andrew Winslow, a freshman athlete on the team, said the new facility helps build a sense of community with the mix of recreational and professional levels.

“I think it’s a great opportunity, honestly. We still get to keep that long-lasting history of being the Minnesota Men’s College of gymnastics,” Winslow said. “Having this facility double for rec classes and other purposes such as private lessons or one-on-one coaching, even in the future of making a junior men’s club gymnastics team that will go out and compete just like we do, but at the junior Olympic level, I think it’s all really exciting.”

Micah Winder, a freshman with the team, said the location was convenient, especially for students.

“I like how close it is to my apartment and how close it is to campus. It’s a lot of time and gas saved,” Winder said.

The facility opened for the team in late October and is now open for recreational lessons.

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As Burns balances classes with younger kids; he and other gymnasts are preparing for their Maroon and Gold intrasquad set, a way for the team to test itself before major competitions.

The team also will have home competitions in early January and February at Shakopee High School and Humboldt High School, respectively. The MN GymAct Invitational also will take place at Humboldt High School on Feb. 14.

For more information on the Foundation Gymnastics facility, go to foundationgym.org.

While there really aren’t any Christmas constellations in the sky any time of the year, there’s a wonderful sign of the season waiting for you in the early evening eastern sky right now.

It’s a bit of a challenge to find but not too difficult. It’s the Christmas Tree Cluster you can see with just a small telescope or even a decent pair of binoculars, and it really looks like a Christmas tree. It’s easier to see in the dark countryside, but even in light-polluted areas you should be able to spot it. Formally, in the astronomical books, it’s known as New General Catalog Object 2264, or NGC 2264 for short. It’s so cute, and hopefully it will add to your holiday spirit.

After 7:30 or so it will be high enough above the eastern horizon to start your search. The Christmas Tree Cluster resides in a very obscure constellation called Monoceros the Unicorn, which looks more to me like a ham radio tower my Dad set up on top of the house I grew up in, much to my Mom’s objections. Forget about trying to truly see Monoceros. You don’t need to and it’s so faint, anyway. The best way to find the little Christmas tree is to use the bright constellation Orion the Hunter, perched diagonally in the southeastern sky. I know you’ve seen it before. It’s the dominant constellation of winter, containing the three bright stars in a nearly perfect row that make up the belt of the mighty hunter.

(Mike Lynch)

On the upper left corner of Orion is a bright reddish-tinged star called Betelgeuse that marks the armpit of the hunter. On the upper right corner of Orion is the star Bellatrix, not quite as bright as Betelgeuse. Draw a line from Bellatrix to Betelgeuse and continue that line to the lower left about 10 degrees from Betelgeuse. Ten degrees is about the width of your fist at arm’s length. Scan that area with your binoculars or telescope and you should eventually find it. Once you do, you’ll see the cluster of 20 or so stars arranged in the shape of a Christmas tree.

What’s odd, though, is that the brightest star is at the base of the tree, not at the top where you would expect it. The starry little tree will appear to point to the lower right in binoculars and some telescopes. However, most telescopes will give you an inverted view so the miniature tree will point to the upper left.

The Christmas tree shape of the cluster is arguably a pleasant coincidence. The stars just happen to be arranged that way from our view of them on Earth. Like most open clusters, this is a group of young stars that formed out of a large nebula of hydrogen gas, much like our sun did over 5 billion years ago. These clusters of young stars hang out together for several hundred million years until gravity from other surrounding stars breaks them up. My attached photo of the Christmas Tree Cluster was taken with one of the high-definition astronomical cameras and captured not only the cluster but also the nebulae around it. With binoculars or a small telescope, you won’t see the nebulosity, but you should easily see the stars that make up the tree.

The Christmas Tree Cluster (Mike Lynch)

The stars that light up the Christmas Tree cluster send their tidings of great joy from a long, long way away. They’re about 2,600 light-years distant, with just one light-year equaling nearly 6 trillion miles. Since a light-year is defined as the distance that light travels in one year, the lights we see from this Christmas tree tonight left those stars in about 600 B.C. They’ve been waiting a long time for you to see them!

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and retired broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is the author of “Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and adventurepublications.net. Mike is available for private star parties. You can contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.

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After Richfield police received numerous 911 calls Saturday morning that a man was “dragging a dead body” out of an apartment and loading it into a vehicle, police gave chase until the man pulled over at an Edina hospital’s emergency room entrance.

An unconscious 23-year-old woman was in the back seat with a gunshot wound. Despite lifesaving efforts, she was pronounced dead.

The Richfield Police Department gave the following details about the incident on its Facebook page:

At about 3:12 a.m. Saturday, officers responded to 911 calls from residents at 7601 Knox Avenue South saying a man had loaded what looked like a dead body into a vehicle.

An officer in the area tried to pull the man’s vehicle over but the driver didn’t stop and there was a brief chase until the man stopped at the emergency entrance at M Health Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina, where the woman was discovered in the back seat.

The man was taken into custody.

No further details were available. The incident remains under active investigation.

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