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Andrew Klavan’s recent year‑end film roundup — billed as a take on “The Best, Worst, and Evilest Films of 2025” — landed like a cold dose of reality for anyone still trusting Hollywood’s taste makers. Klavan, as always, mixes sharp cultural critique with plain talk about which films actually earned an audience’s time and which were ideological agitprop dressed up as art. His show’s film episodes and lists have become a lively corrective to the mainstream narrative.
If there’s a single throughline to Klavan’s argument, it’s that a lot of studios have lost the ability to put Americans in seats with honest storytelling rather than sermons. He’s blunt about the “feminization” of studios, the endless need to check cultural boxes, and the way pundit critics reward political messaging over craftsmanship. That critique isn’t just hot air — it’s rooted in the clear disconnect between what critics praise and what real audiences want to be entertained by.
On the other side, there were genuinely good films in 2025 that remind us cinema can still thrill and move without lecturing. A number of critics have highlighted bold pictures that delivered real storytelling and craftsmanship, showing that great movies still get made when directors and writers focus on story rather than social signaling. Films like the year’s surprise standouts proved that audiences reward gutsy filmmaking, not virtue signaling masquerading as risk.
But the downside was hard to ignore: several once‑trusted names produced limp, preachy products that critics and viewers alike labeled among the year’s worst. The so‑called auteurs who trade in clumsy social experiment films handed audiences movies that felt like homework, not entertainment, and deserved the rebuke they received from reviewers. When a filmmaker’s politics drown out storytelling, the resulting films fail artistically and commercially, and 2025 supplied plenty of examples.
Even the franchise factory showed cracks, with blockbusters that once defined American cinema now criticized for being dull or directionless. Longrunning series that used to be sources of summer joy instead resembled franchise maintenance projects — too busy checking boxes to tell a meaningful story. Critics flagged some of these entries as evidence that the studio system needs a reset, not more boardroom focus groups.
That’s why voices like Klavan’s matter: they push back against the industry consensus, remind patriotic viewers that entertainment can and should be entertaining, and spotlight the filmmakers who still try to make movies that respect audiences. Conservative cultural critics aren’t just contrarians — we’re the last defense of a marketplace of ideas where taste and courage win out over woke groupthink. The Daily Wire and similar outlets have helped build that countercurrent by giving these conversations a platform.
If you care about reclaiming our culture, the choice is simple: stop funding hollow prestige projects and start rewarding filmmakers who write compelling stories, embrace real characters, and understand that movies exist to move people, not to lecture them. Support independent creators, switch off the studios that treat you like a focus‑group statistic, and back critics who tell the truth about art and entertainment. America’s storytellers can make great films again — if patriots make it profitable to do so.
