Checking in with The Great Amy Ride
I share a collection of posts from The Great Amy Ride, my patreon site that focuses on Movies.
Back in June of 2025, I shared everything I'd written about movies that I had posted over at The Great Amy Ride. I had planned to make that a regular feature, but, well, you know what happened after that. Shit happens, is all I can say.
But today I am starting this as a regular feature. Today's edition will be extra-long, as I have six months to catch up on. But starting next month, this will be a monthly catchup. I won't be sharing the weekly "What Did Amy Watch?" as there are too many of them. They are the best way to keep up with what I am watching on a weekly basis, so I'd suggest signing up for a membership over there. It's completely free to do, and those posts will always be available to everyone.
However, that's not all that has been going on over there. Here now are a selection:
About the Best of the 21st Century (Volume One) - The Candidates...
Originally this was going to be a series of posts about candidates for a list of the 100 Best Films from 2000-2024. That did not happen, in large part because I misjudged when those type of lists were going to be popular and I just lost steam. It happens.
Most of the nominees were shared in my update posts last June and August. However I do have one final one (Zodiac) to share. I'm planning on bringing back the feature as a general series of posts about my favorite 21st Century Films, so stay tuned!
My Top Ten Favorite Movies of 2025
I watched over forty films released in 2025, liking the vast majority of them. Of course, that's generally because my wife and I tend to only watch films that look interesting to us, rather than just watching whatever the heck comes out. In general I thought 2025 was a good, but not necessarily great year for movies. One thing I was pleased about was a run of pretty great films like Sinners and Weapons found an audience. I somehow even watched two MCU films, a whole deal I've mostly given up caring about since Endgame. And they were pretty good!
But which movies made my top ten list for the year? Check it out for yourself now!
My Top Ten Favorite Movies of 2025
Some Thoughts on Ken Burns' Films
After the New Year I began a run through Ken Burns' filmography. I had wanted to do it for a while now, especially since my wife and I are planning to watch his newest, The American Revolution, sometime in the nearish future. Also, I've made a goal of this year watching a whole lot of really long films, because why not? Sometimes you just gotta have a silly, arbitrary goal to work towards.
Now calling Ken Burns' works films is also an arbitrary decision. Except for a couple of his earliest works, his filmography has typically been released as miniseries on PBS. There's a lot of reason to treat them as TV shows, rather than films. But because they are referred to as "A Film by Ken Burns", I feel comfortable treating them as films. If you want to give my "long film" project an asterisk in response, feel free. I didn't know you cared so much, to be honest. It means a lot to me...
I've written at least a little bit about each Ken Burns' work I've watched so far in the weekly "What Did Amy Watch?" posts. But the two films I've spent the most time writing on, The Civil War and The National Parks: America's Best Idea, are worth sharing here.
The Civil War (1990) - Ken Burns (It's the second entry down after the new Jim Jarmusch film)
The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009) - Ken Burns
And that's it. Not a whole lot of new updates, but hopefully the March edition will have a lot more great things to check out!
Amy Wren Says What? is a newsletter that comes out at least once a week. In it I talk about television shows, books, video games, and other topics. Right now I'm running a series of posts about the Star Wars Television show Andor, which will go live every Thursday for eight editions.
Have something to say about this newsletter? Leave a comment! Or if you want have even more conversations about what I write about on here, consider supporting The Great Amy Ride. For free over there, you get access to all of my writing about movies, and paid members get access to the official Discord of me, Amy Wren, as well as other neat perks!
As always, I thank you all for your support.
