Sinners Is The Best Movie Of 2025 So Far While The King Of Kings And Sneaks Are Certainly Not

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Sinners isn't just the best movie of 2025 (so far), it's better than anything I saw from 2024 as well. The same can't be said for the other movies I saw over the past week: The King Of Kings, The Wedding Banquet, Sneaks and The Chosen Part 3.

Here's mini-reviews of each in what was a very uneven week:

Sinners is maybe the best recent example of what a great director can do for a movie. Ryan Coogler took a genre that was around for over a century and made it unique and thrilling.

This is brilliantly cast with Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld and Delroy Lindo leading the way. But, they are always great. The standout for me was newcomer Miles Caton in his first role. Not only is he a very good actor, he has an incredible voice.

Coogler is such a genius! This has one of the best musical numbers I've ever seen in a movie. Here's an example of his greatness: someone is asked to go get someone else in a store across the street. Instead of it cutting away, the camera follows that person any by doing so, shows us more of this 1932 world we are in. Things like that ground a movie and make everything feel more real.

This is easily the first great movie of 2025.

Sinners: A

I don't know what's worse about The King Of Kings: the weird frigid computer animation or how they made Jesus the least charismatic cartoon character ever.

This tells the entire story of Jesus (from birth until the resurrection) as told by Charles Dickens to his young son and a cat. This works terribly as it keeps cutting away from the biblical story every 40 seconds back to this annoying kid and even worse cat.

This does have a star-studded voice cast including Kenneth Branagh, Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman and Oscar Isaac as Jesus. But Isaac tries this quiet, kind voice that ends up being flat, robotic and boring.

This movies does accomplish the bare minimum of what it intends to do: tell the story of Jesus in a movie for kids. But everything else left me either bored or annoyed.

The King Of Kings: D+

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Sneaks is a movie that is committed to the concept of cartoon sneakers…and that's about it. The computer animation feels out of a movie made 20 years ago. The shoe puns wear thin by the first act. It all just feels flat.

This isn't a movie that will leave you miserable if your kid forces you to go see it but it's also immensely forgettable. Even for people that love sneakers, there isn't enough here to recommend this to anyone.

It's a movie about sneakers and instead of Michael Jordan or even Kevin Durant, the big basketball star in this movie is Chris Paul. Paul has had a very good career but in the scope of NBA superstars, he's not even anyone's fifth choice. But's the perfect one for this movie.

Sneaks: C-

The Wedding Banquet is a dramedy where the drama works very well but the comedy is something out of a bad Will & Grace episode from 1999.

This tells the story of two gay couples who are friends, one of which wants to have a baby and one who can't decide whether to get married. Bowen Yang struggles in the dramatic scenes but very good actors like Lily Gladstone (so good in Killers Of The Flower Moon) and Youn Yuh-Jung (perfect as the grandmother in Minari) elevate the movie.

The sitcom elements overtake the movie by the third act and the whole thing becomes somewhat ridiculous by the end. It's too bad because there are some interesting stories here but the forced jokes make this a movie I can't recommend.

The Wedding Banquet: C-

The Chosen: Last Supper Part 3 is the weakest of these groupings of episodes. It's far too long at over 3 hours and unlike the first two, you notice the production values can't keep up. The biggest issue is the uneven acting. In the middle episode, they do many flashbacks of how the apostles were before they met Jesus. So, now you have weaker actors sharing scenes with even lesser actors just doing guest spots.

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Jesus and Judas continue to be the best part of this series. Both actors are very good and you end up just wanting to see more of them. I honestly could have had this entire season simply be Judas' struggle with betrayal and Jesus grappling with knowing what he was facing.

I can't recommend this movie or even the series to a general audience. But if you are seeking out a story about Jesus, The Chosen is worth watching. I'm not a religious person so this isn't something I am looking for. But if you are, I believe the positives may outweigh the negatives.

The Chosen Part 3: C-

The Chosen Season 5 (Parts 1-3): C

2025

1)SINNERS

2)Presence

3)Black Bag

4)Warfare

5)Novocaine

6)The Amateur

7)Drop

8)Death Of A Unicorn

9)The Damned

10)One Of Them Days

11)Paddington 3

12)Hell Of A Summer

13)Valiant One

14)Rule Breakers

15)Heart Eyes

16)Mickey 17

17)Last Breath

18)Flight Risk

19)Minecraft

20)Den Of Thieves 2

21)Dogman

22)Companion

23)A Working Man

24)The Alto Knights

25)The Penguin Lessons

26)The Chosen Part 2

27)Looney Tunes

28)Opus

29)Becoming Led Zeppelin

30)Captain America: BNW

31)The Chosen Part 1

32)Riff Raff

33)Inheritance

34)THE CHOSEN PART 3

35)THE WEDDING BANQUET

36)Night Of The Zoopocalypse

37)SNEAKS

38)Ash

39)THE KING OF KINGS

40)The Friend

41)Snow White

42)The Unbreakable Boy

43)Brave The Dark

44)Wolf Man

45)The Monkey

46)Love Hurts

47)The Last Supper

48)Woman In The Yard

49)In The Lost Lands