Movies using unorthodox aspect ratios like 4:3 and 1.66:1 have surged in recent years. Notably, this trend has grown beyond arthouse and festival circuits into mainstream releases like Longlegs, Maestro, and The Holdovers.
For the right movie, boxier ratios convey intimacy, making the shift both welcome and long overdue. The narrower and taller frame mutes the impact of landscapes, moving action, and large ensembles of actors. Characters take center stage, and this focus can make them loom larger than life. This approach harkens back to the classic 1.5:1 aspect ratio of 35mm photography, a format especially flattering for portraiture and full body shots. As director Andrea Arnold notes, who has favored the 4:3 ratio for her films, people are “not small in the middle of something.”
It’s understandable that several of my favorite recent films using 4:3 or 1.66:1 feature humble, low key character studies. For example, Perfect Days follows the routines of a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. The Holdovers presents a holiday-set chamber piece featuring a college professor, a few of students, and a school cook. All We Imagine As Light centers on the lives of two nurses in Mumbai.
But a shakeup in aspect ratio benefits more than small scale stories; it’s also an effective visual signifier of history. The 4:3 ratio originated in television and early studio films like Casablanca and The Third Man. When Osgood Perkins shoots Longlegs in 2:39 for present day scenes while setting flashbacks in 4:3 with rounded corners, he cleverly nods to seventies and eighties VHS horror. Bradley Cooper’s Maestro captures the Leonard Bernstein’s early days in 4:3 and black and white, matching the cinematography of the era.
Although I’ve played video games for decades, I’ve rarely been as down on the hobby as I have in recent years. Critically acclaimed titles such as Metaphor: ReFantazio require more time than my lifestyle permits. Many small indie games I appreciate like Dungeons of Hinterberg come and go without sufficient recognition. Conversely, big budget releases often stick to safe formulas, leading to underwhelming gameplay.
But over the past month, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector have rekindled my optimism. Despite differences in budget, genre, and creative intent, both games are exceptionally well crafted narrative experiences.
At first glance, Indiana Jones follows a familiar AAA adventure template: high quality motion capture, lush soundtracks, expansive locations, and detailed production design that suggests Machine Games spent extensive time and budget on their game. I anticipated gameplay similar to The Last of Us (linear stealth action) or Machine Games’ own Wolfenstein reboot (guns blazing shooter).
But after a few hours of playtime, it’s apparent how Indiana Jones employs a novel approach to its mechanics and story pacing. There’s far less combat than I originally expected, almost all of which leans on avoidance and stealth based melee attacks (Indy can only take a few hits before going down.) Gunplay is usually a choice of last resort. Most gameplay takes place on large maps that allow for open ended exploration, supplemented by a variety of puzzle and platforming challenges. Unlike many adventure games that save their high quality video cutscenes for level transitions, Indiana Jones integrates them more democratically, including a refreshing amount of cutscenes for side missions.
I’ve written here about film’s changing cultural cache and the evolution of what it means to be a devoted cineaste in 2025. But the subject extends far beyond film. In the on-demand attention era, with its endless variety of entertainment, audiences are fragmenting, widening the gap between casual fans and hardcore enthusiasts.
To predict the future of any media form — TV, gaming, music, movies — one must examine what’s most convenient for the casual audience to adopt, along with the depth and availability of content available for enthusiasts. (I hesitate to use the word ‘content’ given its tendency to devalue or anonymize artistry, but it’s the most concise way to describe such a wide variety of entertainment.)
Let’s break this logic down further. Time and money have always distinguished newcomers from superfans, from NFL football to indie horror movies. Someone dabbling with dance pop listens occasionally to Charlie XCX on a mixed playlist, while the obsessive house head buys a crate of DJ sets on vinyl.
Every year people talk about the gap between movies that garner big box office returns (e.g., Deadpool & Wolverine, Inside Out 2) and those that win awards with smaller, more cineaste audiences (e.g., Anora, The Brutalist). Those in the former category are practically everywhere, while many would be moviegoers have never even heard of the latter.
Are movies just becoming less mainstream? Is it an art form in cultural decline in favor of TV, music, gaming, and other forms of entertainment?
Box office and moviegoing habits point in this direction. Most people are heading out to theaters and splurging on PVOD less often, focusing mostly on huge blockbuster “events”. The rest of their free time goes elsewhere. If a movie doesn’t end up on their streaming service of choice, it ceases to exist.
I’ll never forget my first David Lynch movie and the one time I saw the visionary director in person.
Like many other budding teenage cinephiles, I was in a phase where I was actively seeking out “edgy” and “messed up” movies. It was the mid nineties, and I was on a tear: Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, unrated cuts of Natural Born Killers, Scarface, and RoboCop. A friend recommended Blue Velvet as “dark shit”, so I rented it on VHS.
The film’s Rockwellian intro left me a little baffled. White picket fences, red roses, blue sky, fireman waving in slow motion — this was a dark film? But then a man watering the lawn had a stroke and fell to the ground. A nearby child looked confused by what was happening. A dog growled in slow motion as the camera pushed into the grass and the sound gave way to bugs gnawing and one of Lynch’s trademark drones. The transition from idyllic suburbia to dread piqued my interest. Lynch’s direction left me unsettled, even though nothing on screen was as explicit as the many other ultra violent movies I had watched prior.
It’s unsurprising to see Xbox fully embrace a multi-platform strategy. Lagging behind Sony and Nintendo in hardware sales and user base, Microsoft can ensure far larger revenue streams by porting its first party games to PS5 and Switch. It’s a strategy that reflects broader industry trends, as escalating development costs and a stagnating console market push publishers like Square Enix and even PlayStation away from long term exclusivity.
However, Microsoft’s Xbox ecosystem — comprising Xbox hardware, Game Pass, and the Windows PC Xbox app — is where they generate maximal revenue and retain full editorial control. Intra ecosystem Xbox keeps the full share of revenue from their own products, while taking a 30% cut from every non-Microsoft purchase. It’s also for now the only space where Microsoft can sell Game Pass and have the technical leverage to integrate a cloud centric, cross platform solution to suit their needs.
Yet the Xbox ecosystem itself feels increasingly under threat. Game Pass subscribers have plateaued, and Xbox Series S and X hardware sales are dropping precipitously.
While their aesthetic and thematic elements differ, small scale, character-driven drama ties together most of my top ten this year. It’s a mostly international list, with only three of my ten picks from American directors, and majority set beyond US borders. I’m unsure if these commonalities reflect the recent guild strikes, my shifting tastes away from big studio offerings, or just random happenstance of what stood out this year, but it’s a trend I wouldn’t be shocked to see continue into 2025.
My list is in alphabetical order; the wide range of genres and subject matter makes pitting individual choices head to head too challenging. While mood and time available may dictate which among the below I revisit, I’d still highly recommend all of them.
It’s been another year where my gaming tastes fell out of sync with the critical consensus. While sprawling RPGs like Metaphor: ReFantazio and Black Myth: Wukong dominate end of year lists, their lengths don’t align with my lifestyle. Instead, my gaming focused on quirky indie titles with unique narratives and puzzle elements, alongside evergreen simulators perfect for pairing with a podcast. More so than past years, no individual game I list here has universal appeal, but for those passionate about the respective genre, they are well worth your time.
The holidays bring extra attention on 4K Blu-rays; gift guides and new studio releases abound, with sales on discs and players commonplace. With a parallel enshittification across many streaming services, is now the time to start investing in physical media?
For most, no. Streaming remains a ubiquitous format, its advantages of convenience and accessibility undeniable. Physical media is for film enthusiasts, with 4K Blu-rays being to movies what vinyl is to music. The format provides the highest echelon of quality available at home, but it’s only discernible to those with the equipment and tastes to appreciate it.
That said, 4K Blu-rays can be a great investment if you like to rewatch movies and own a high end video or audio movie watching setup. For audio, that means a soundbar or receiver that transmits sound through HDMI to support uncompressed audio formats. For video, you’d want a midrange to high end HDR (OLED or LCD) TV or 4K projector to notice the subtle improvements of a 4K Blu-ray’s higher bitrate.
After weeks of research and anecdotal experience navigating local multiplexes, it’s painfully clear that small movies have largely disappeared from theaters. If you enjoy original, small, or otherwise offbeat movies that don’t follow the franchise IP or horror templates, you’ll likely be watching them at home.
The clearest evidence of this phenomenon comes from analyzing global box office returns against budget, for which the traditional industry rule is to aim for a worldwide box office of two to 2.5 times budget to ensure profitability. I focused my research on small to medium budget movies ranging from under 10 to 50 million.
The success stories are almost always horror movies that open wide and easily recoup their budget by opening weekend. MaXXXine took a 1 million budget and lukewarm critical reviews yet still made 22 million in theaters. Longlegs was made for under 10 million and generated an astonishing 109 million at the box office. A 2024 remake of Speak No Evil has made 76 million worldwide against a budget of 15 million.