The Golden Flask Awards Celebrate our favorite “hell yes” movies and performances of 2025
Welcome back to the Golden Flasks, our annual excuse to dress up the way you dress up for the Oscars and then decide to join others for a “casual drink” that somehow turns into three rounds, a bucket of popcorn, and a midnight movie showing of your favorite movie of last year with various celebrities in their tuxes and dresses until the sun comes up the next morning…
These awards are NOT the Oscars. We love the Oscars, but the Oscars are built for legacy. And for people to talk about in “film circles” outside of film class for years to come. The Golden Flasks are built for the movies that made you nudge your friend and whisper, “Oh my god, that’s so crazy.” The ones that made you freely laugh out too loud. The ones that earned that second cocktail right before the lights dimmed. The ones you re-litigated in the parking lot like you were paid by the studio to do it.
This year’s unofficial motto: We came to have fun, and 2025 delivered.
The Golden Flask Awards RULES (very scientific and subjective – feel free to debate us)
We are not honoring the BEST movies of the year. Everyone does that.
We’re awarding the movies we enjoyed the most, the performances we couldn’t stop quoting, the ones that we would excitedly recommend, hoping someone would hear it in our voice and go out and see it. And the theatrical moments that reminded us why we still leave the house for this stuff. Sometimes “fun” overlaps with “great.” Sometimes it’s just the movie equivalent of ordering dessert because you’re an adult and nobody can stop you.
Also: popcorn is mandatory. Peanut M&Ms are strongly encouraged. (Judgment is reserved for people who talk during the movie, not for your snack choices.)
The Awards:
Gold Flask Award Movie of the Year
WINNER: Thunderbolts*
Was it the BEST movie of the year. No. This is our winner because it gave us a return to what the best Marvel “team-up chaos” movies used to give us: an ensemble that actually works. Not just a lineup of characters waiting for their own spinoff, but a group that feels volatile, funny, bruised, and weirdly human. Thunderbolts* returned the MCU back to the forefront with a great popcorn-fare movie, bringing together some amazing performances from returning characters and introducing a few news ones effectively.
Thunderbolts* succeeds because it understands the secret sauce of crowd-pleaser cinema: you do not need perfect heroes, you need messy people who lock into a shared rhythm. This cast feels like they’re in a movie together, not just sharing a franchise. That is the difference between “content” and “a damn good time.”
Also in the conversation:
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Sinners – probably the BEST movie of the year and really fun to witness such amazing filmmaking from writing, directing, visuals and acting
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Weapons – crazy, weird, a good movie to see with an audience and that shared “WTF” energy
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Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning – enjoyable, just a tad too long for having had two or three cocktails first
Best Director and Writer
WINNER: Ryan Coogler
Coogler gets this because his work on Sinners has that rare mix of control and momentum. Even when the movie is going big, it still feels intentional. It’s moody and like a movie color picture of the 1920s South. You can almost feel the humidity. That’s the stuff you feel in your bones as an audience member, even if you cannot articulate it until your second cocktail.
Special Mention: Paul Anderson for One Battle After Another
Sometimes a filmmaker just swings. Not a safe swing. Not a “four-quadrant” swing. A real swing that reminds you movies can be authored, strange, funny, and still entertaining as hell. That’s what this mention is for.
Best Ensemble
WINNER: The cast of Thunderbolts*
When an ensemble clicks, you can feel the room lean in. Not because the plot got louder, but because the chemistry got sharper. The cast of Thunderbolts* carries that “I do not trust you, but I kind of need you” tension that makes every group scene pop. NOTHING is funnier than Florence Pugh’s Yelena in the MCU, especially when she interacts with her father, Red Guardian, played by David Harbour. Wyatt Russell adds that broken and frustrated wannabe a hero energy along with Sebastian Stan, returning as The Winter Soldier. But, the arrival of Lewis Pullman as Sentry/Bob/Void is the cherry on this old fashioned cocktail of a movie.
Honorable nods (because 2025 had teams):
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Weapons (the kind of cast where every reaction shot is a gift)
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Sinners (a “we are all in this nightmare together” vibe, which is always fun when done right)
Best “What the f***?!?” Moment
WINNER: Josh Brolin in Weapons
Some line reads are so perfect they become communal property. Brolin’s “what the f***?!?” is one of those. It is not just funny, it is cathartic. It’s the audience’s inner voice given permission to exist out loud. It’s a great almost comic relief after an intense horror moment. And one of those amazing moments where the audience agreed out loud with the character in the movie.
This is why we go to movies. So a serious actor can drop one perfectly timed human reaction and the whole theater laughs like it needed it medically.
Most Entertaining Normal Guy Chaos
WINNER: Bob Odenkirk in Nobody 2
Odenkirk has mastered this specific flavor of character: the guy who looks like he should be buying sunscreen and comparing hotel rates, but is clearly one bad moment away from turning your entire vacation into an action movie.
If the Golden Flasks had a “Most Likely To Beat Up Three Guys While Apologizing” award, he’d win that too.
Best Action, Best Stunts, Best “Okay That’s Insane”
WINNER: Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Tom Cruise understands that this franchise and the product team still understand the oldest trick in the book: give the audience real stakes, then back it up with real spectacle. You do not sit through a movie like this for plot elegance. You sit through it because it makes you grip the armrest and grin like a maniac.
It’s a theme park ride for adults who pretend they don’t like theme park rides. It’s why big screens are still around, people.
Best Theater Experience
WINNER: Final Destination: Bloodlines
This one had that perfectly dangerous pedigree vibe where you are both excited and slightly nervous about what comes next, how else could they kill people after this many movies and for its fun, shared, and “grisy” theater atmosphere. Movies like this remind you that “fun” does not always mean same old, same old. Sometimes “fun” is the audience collectively realizing they are in good hands and bad trouble.
You could feel the crowd enjoying the ride the entire time when the grisly death set ups had people talking out loud in the theater.
The Golden Flask “We Love Movies, Shut Up” Closing Toast
Here’s what 2025 did right: it reminded us that going to the movies is not just consumption. It’s ritual. It’s the joy of being in a dark room with people you do and do not know, all reacting to the same moments in real time. It’s the feeling that the world can be messy and exhausting, and you can still show up, order something cold, eat something ridiculous, and have two hours of unfiltered fun.
So cheers to the winners. Cheers to the weird surprises. Cheers to the line reads that live in our heads forever.
And cheers to Thunderbolts* taking the top prize, because sometimes the movie of the year is not the most “important.”
It’s the one that made you smile the longest on the drive home.
