TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. Our critic-at-large, John Powers, spends his time reading, watching and listening. And every year at this time, he offers a list of things he liked that he wished he had gotten a chance to review. This year's version wanders from Italian movie sets to southern football stadiums to a galaxy far, far away.
JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: The great blessing of being a critic-at-large is that one gets to be an omnivore. The abiding curse is that there's too much of everything. Every December, I look back at scads of good things I didn't manage to talk about. This year-end list is my last chance to share a few favorites with you. First off is "La Grazia," the new movie by Paolo Sorrentino, the Italian director who won an Oscar for "The Great Beauty." Scaling back his trademark flamboyance, he tells a reflective story that offers a refuge from our enraged American politics. In a quietly radical move, Sorrentino portrays something we seldom see in movies, an honorable politician - in this case, a respected Italian president who, as he heads toward retirement, finds himself dealing with personal grief and grappling with profound moral issues, like who deserves a pardon. Alive with enjoyable characters - a wise African pope, a sassy woman art critic, an unrepentant murderess - "La Grazia" revolves around a majestic performance by Toni Servillo, an actor so thrillingly versatile that if he starred in an antacid commercial, I'd rush to see it.
The battle against tyranny is the theme of "Andor", the best television series I saw this year. I've never been much of a "Star Wars" guy, and I scoff when grown men proudly show me their action figures of Chewbacca and Darth Vader. Yet the second season of Tony Gilroy's prequel to the movie "Rogue One" is so politically sophisticated that it makes the rest of "Star Wars" feel naive. From Diego Luna's reluctant hero, Cassian, to the ruthless rebel mastermind played by Stellan Skarsgard, to Faye Marsay's heartbroken rebel raider, the show captures both the courage and painful cost of rising against an empire capable of anything, even genocide. Here, a young rebel worries about an upcoming action, and Cassian gives her a pep talk.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "ANDOR")
RACHELLE DIEDERICKS: (As Niya) If I die tonight, was it worth it? You've done this before. You must have thought about it.
DIEGO LUNA: (As Cassian Andor) This makes it worth it. This right now, being with you, being here at the moment you step into the circle. Look at me. You made this decision long ago. The empire cannot win. You'll never feel right unless you are doing what you can to stop them. You're coming home to yourself.
POWERS: The stakes are less galactic and far funnier in Eli Cranor's rollicking mystery novel "Mississippi Blue 42," the perfect whoopee cushion for those like me, who are psyched for the upcoming college football playoffs. Set at a fictional pigskin-mad Mississippi University, it follows Rae Johnson, a newbie FBI agent and coach's daughter who's investigating corruption in the football program. This tough cookie soon finds herself swimming in a swamp of sexual favors, crooked politics, racial exploitation, self-serving religiosity and, of course, runaway greed. Cranor was himself a college quarterback, but he's no true believer. In his gleeful skewering of the football industrial complex, he's in the tradition not of Pop Warner, but Carl Hiaasen.
You get another dowdy heroine in the enjoyable Italian TV series "Imma Tataranni: Deputy Prosecutor," my current top choice from the smorgasbord of great international programs on MHz, one of the rare streamers I think worth the money. Now in Season 4, the show stars an amusingly overwrought Vanessa Scalera as Imma, a righteous investigator with exploding orange hair, popping eyes and a wryly twisted mouth, who sees murder where other people see only deaths. Naturally, she won't let up until she solves them. Based in the picturesque city of Matera and steeped in Italiana - real-estate shenanigans, mafia influence, arguments about food - the show's heart lies in Imma's loving relationship with her kind, beleaguered husband, Pietro, and in her chaste yearning for Calogiuri, the handsome young protege who worships her.
We linger in Italy for "The Silver Book," the seductive new novel by English writer Olivia Laing. The book starts off in Patricia Highsmith territory. A young gay man flees in 1974 London for mysterious reasons. He winds up in Venice, where he becomes the lover of Danilo Donati, a real-life costume and production designer, who gets him involved in the making of actual movies by Frederico Fellini, who we see being shockingly cruel to Donald Sutherland, and Pier Paolo Pasolini, a cultural lightning rod and sexual renegade. "The Silver Book" is at once a love story, an insightful portrait of the artistic process, a look into Rome's famous Cinecitte Studios and an oblique snapshot of the politically violent era in Italy known as the Years of Lead. Crystalline in style yet shadowed by menace, it captures a bygone era when making movies became a kind of religion.
Cinema was literally that for film director Martin Scorsese, who made his first great movie "Mean Streets" in 1973 and is still making them today. In her enthralling Apple TV documentary series "Mr. Scorsese," Rebecca Miller charts his epic career, tracking how this tiny, asthmatic child from New York's Little Italy went from hoping to become a priest to finding his salvation making movies like "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull." Brilliant, but driven by dark energies, cocaine nearly killed him. Scorsese's become the pope of American movies. Hollywood always genuflects before him, while ignoring his righteous ideas about cinema. Certainly, we're a long, long way from the days when "Taxi Driver" had people lining up to see it.
This year's biggest screen sensation has been "KPop Demon Hunters," Netflix's breezy animated musical, about a ramen-eating girl band that, well, battles demons. Now, I can't pretend that this is high art. It makes "Buffy" look like "Anna Karenina." But it's a genuinely good family movie that plays like a lighter-on-its-feet version of "Wicked." Indeed, I'd wager that no movie this year sparked more joy. It even won over a hardened critic like me with its catchy musical numbers, which is why, in a 2025 that spawned so many demons, I'd like to ring in the New Year with the movie's anthem, "Golden," an Oscars-bound song full of hope and empowerment that had audiences giddily singing along in movie theaters.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GOLDEN")
EJAE: (As Rumi, singing) I'm done hiding, now I'm shining like I'm born to be. Oh, our time, no fears, no lies. That's who we're born to be. You know we're going to be, going to be golden. We're going to be, going to be, born to be, born to be glowing. (Singing in Korean). You know that it's our time, no fears, no lies. That's who we're born to be.
MOSLEY: John Powers is FRESH AIR's critic-at-large. On tomorrow's show, we'll continue our retrospective of favorite interviews of 2025 with actor Richard Kind. You've seen him on countless TV shows and films in his 40-year career - "Only Murders In The Building," "Curb Your Enthusiasm," "Spin City," "Mad About You," "A Serious Man," and "Inside Out," just to name a few. I hope you can join us.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MOSLEY: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Briger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Heidi Saman, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Anna Bauman, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tonya Mosley. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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