2025: Yearly Awards and Recap

It’s hard to believe that 2025 has come to an end. Where does the time go? It seems like just yesterday everyone was in a panic because all of the world’s infrastructure was going to shut down because of the Y2K bug. Now we’re suddenly a quarter done with this century.

It’s equally hard for me to believe that I started this website nearly four years ago in January 2022. I began What Jeff Watched as mostly a personal project for me to record and keep track of my opinions on the content I consume.

I’ve never done any advertising or social media promotion for this site and the fact that it now gets thousands of unique readers per months from all over the world is pretty cool to me. I know that’s not much readership at all compared to many websites, but most of you reading this are actual strangers to me with your own unique lives, experiences, and opinions, and the fact that you’re taking the time to read my thoughts on movies, TV, books, and video games is meaningful to me. Thank you for reading.

Anyways, it’s time to hand out some awards for 2025. I’ve done a post similar to this one wrapping up the year since 2022, but for this year I felt less passionate (positively or negatively) about a lot of the content I consumed.

Movies

Certain years I feel extremely strongly about what my favorite overall film of the year was, but this go round that wasn’t really the case. For last year’s awards, when the winner was Civil War, and for 2023, when Aftersun took home this honor, I had those movies in my mind at the end of the year as clear-cut personal favorites, as well as great overall films. This time I needed to really refresh my memory with the titles I thought were far above average in 2025.

Best Movie of 2025: The Life of Chuck

That shouldn’t take anything away though from The Life of Chuck, a charming, memorable movie I graded a 9/10, and that is firmly deserving as being deemed my Best Movie of 2025. The Life of Chuck is based off of a Stephen King story and directed by filmmaker Mike Flanagan, who typically does more horror-centric projects. 

The Life of Chuck, however, isn’t horror at all and has the feel of a modern fairytale. It’s a message movie where the overarching idea is more important than the characters on the screen. As the title suggests, this is a movie about life; a little more specifically, it’s about the value and importance of every life. It’s excellent, and the sort of film I’d recommend to everyone.

As it was a weaker year for movies, there weren’t too many titles that even scored an 8/10 or above. Still, I’d like to list out my next five favorite films of 2025. 

Five Next Top Movies of 2025 (ordered by preference)

One Battle After Another: 8.5/10

Bugonia: 8/10

Weapons: 8/10

Train Dreams: 8/10

It Was Just an Accident: 8/10

Some years I passionately hate a particular film I watched. For example, something like Blink Twice in 2024 (which I view as everything wrong about movies today). This year, however, while there were movies I disliked, nothing offended my sensibilities to such a great degree. So, I don’t really think any movies merit receiving a Worst Movie of 2025 award.

That doesn’t mean there was a shortage of not great, blah movies though. In fact, I found that in 2025 many movies were greatly overrated. These half dozen films received mostly positive reviews from the majority of critics, but I didn’t care for any of them.

2025 Duds: Overrated & Overhyped Films

28 Years Later: 5.5/10

A House of Dynamite: 5.5/10

Bring Her Back: 5.5/10

Companion: 4.5/10

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery: 4.5/10 (Most Overrated Movie of the Year)

The Long Walk: 4/10

None of these movies are truly awful, but they all definitely disappointed.

TV

I watched plenty of TV in 2025. Lots of it was somewhat disappointing (we’ll get to that later), but one show stood head and shoulders above the competition.

Best Show of 2025: Adolescence

Netflix’s mini-series has extremely serious subject matter that makes it not an easy watch. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a supremely worthwhile show. Centering on a 13-year-old accused of murdering a classmate, Adolescence isn’t a typical whodunit or police procedural. This is a series far more concerned with exploring why what happened occurred.

Each of the show’s four hour-long episodes are impressively filmed in a single, continuous shot and focus on a different time period that occurs at one point of the case. With fantastic acting, an important story, and a creative method of storytelling, Adolescence is memorable and stands out as the year’s best.

Best Show of 2025 Runner-Up: Death by Lightning

It was a great year for the four-episode Netflix miniseries. Death by Lightning is an entertaining historical drama that focuses on a pair of often overlooked United States historical figures, President James Garfield and the man who shot him, Charles Guiteau.

In past years, I typically forced myself to sit through a show I wasn’t enjoying at all just so I could write a complete review. In 2025, I gave TV shows a fair chance, but if I disliked them, I wouldn’t finish the series and would just write reviews of what I did watch (Paradise, Dope Thief). Before I really adopted this (smart) strategy though, I did watch all of a show that was pretty darn poor.

Worst Show of 2025: Silo Season 2 

I watched the disastrous second season of Silo back in January, but it was never dethroned as the worst reviewed show of 2025 (earning a 3.5/10). I loved the first season of Silo, so season 2 being an absolute slog to suffer through was a major disappointment. Somehow, Silo wasn’t also the most disappointed I ended up being with a TV show.

Most Disappointing Show of 2025: Andor Season 2

Andor Season 1 is my favorite TV show or movie in the entire Star Wars universe, so I was extremely excited for this second (and final) season to be released. After a three-year wait, what we got is a show far inferior to that original season.

Andor Season 2, strongly contrasting Season 1, is zero percent focused on character and all about the plot. I had plenty of other issues with this season that I detail in this article, but, overall, while it wasn’t awful (earning a 5.5/10), it was the most letdown I’ve been by a show in over a decade.

What Jeff Read

If there was one constant in 2025 for me, it was Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings. Over the course of this year, I read all 16 books that occur in Hobb’s fantasy universe. I didn’t set out with the intention of reading 16 books basically back-to-back, but I enjoyed them so much that that’s what I ended up doing.

I detailed my experience with the series in the post titled: The Best Fantasy Series Ever. I’d say that title of that post gives you a pretty good idea of how I felt about it. Sure, there are definitely weaker novels in the group (mostly as part of the Rain Wild Chronicles books), but taken as a whole, Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings is phenomenal.

My favorite book of the 16 was Fool’s Errand (which is the seventh book), though four of the titles I rated a perfect 10/10. If you have any interest in fantasy, you should give Hobb’s books a try.

Series of the Year: Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings

Video Games

One thing I didn’t get to do in 2025 was play as many video games as I had in past years, though late in the year I did purchase a Nintendo Switch 2. Inspired by the purchase, I did play two games on the console in the year’s later months, Donkey Kong Bananza and Pokémon Legends: Z-A.

Donkey Kong Bananza was the better of those two games, but I didn’t love it as much as many game reviewers and DK fans did. (I rated it a 7.5/10.) So, I don’t think it really deserves a Game of the Year Award (or that I played enough games to merit awarding such a prize). I’d recommend checking out some of the games in the 2023 version of this post if you’re looking for some video games that I truly loved.

Well, that’s all for 2025! I’m looking forward to continuing this site into the new year (and hopefully far beyond that). Be on the lookout for more posts to come!

-Jeff