Video: Sizing up local screening events and prominent performances of 2025

In an effort to complement Tone Madison‘s recent year-in-review reflections, in which eight freelance contributors offered their thoughts on their 2025 calendar year at the theaters and at home, I wanted to sit down once more with Josiah Wampfler, host of OCA Media’s Two Tickets Please!, for an expanded and slightly more informal dialogue. Previously, we collaborated after the 2025 Wisconsin Film Festival and the bulk of summer blockbuster season.

Our mutual availability was limited during the month of January—the original date was even postponed once due to illness—and so we had to suspend any sort of idealized roundtable discussion with four or more people. Only Wampfler and myself met on Wednesday, January 28, at Oregon High School.

We recapped some of the most striking and memorable Madison screenings of 2025, of which I had a plethora of picks—from the restored world premiere of Jean Béranger’s queer short Lafcadio (1948) at the Chazen Museum, to the unique interplay of silent image and vinyl sounds at Atwood Music Hall in the summer and autumn, to Joe Meredith shorts at Bartell Theatre, to a rare 35mm screening of Victor Erice’s Dream Of Light (1992) at UW Cinematheque.

Wampfler took the lead on more substantial discussion about favorite film performances of the year. From the heart of Hedda (Tessa Thompson) to the scene-stealing Chalamet in Marty Supreme, he highlighted roles both underappreciated and fanatically buzzed-about. I turned my attention to Jesse Plemons in Bugonia, Kathleen Chalfant in Familiar Touch (and Hal Hartley’s Where To Land), and June Diane Raphael in Weapons (well, what little screen-time she has).

Since so many major critical darlings in 2025 seemed to boast stellar ensemble casts, we then touched upon a handful of those. Wampfler centered the family trio (Renate Reinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, and Stellan Skarsgård) of Sentimental Value, the sprawling coteries of One Battle After Another, and I chose the close-knit recreational baseball league of mostly aging men in Eephus, as well as the compelling mix of professional and nonprofessional actors in heightened period piece Marty Supreme. Wampfler lastly tipped his cap to The Long Walk and Black Bag.

Related to the subject, I would like to add a few footnotes and apologize for any ignorance on my part about an evolving situation with Josh Safdie, as it mainly relates to the casting and working environment of Good Time (2017). At the time of recording, we were not aware of the revelations and breaking controversy. Additionally, while I had some inkling of the politics of Kevin O’Leary (Milton Rockwell in Marty Supreme), I should have seen his asinine remarks coming about Billie Eilish—or any left-leaning or progressive artist in the entertainment industry for that matter. Speaking for myself, I support Wisconsin-born actor and activist Mark Ruffalo in his sentiment that O’Leary “played himself well in [the film].”

Thank you to Wampfler and OCA Media executive director Paul Zwicker for their expertise in the tech setup. If you’d like to see and know more about the non-profit public access station, OCA Media, which serves the Oregon, Wisconsin, area, you can visit their YouTube page and find them on Spectrum and TDS. Wampfler’s Two Tickets Please! show has been active since early 2021.

In lieu of time-intensive transcription, feel free to use YouTube’s built-in “subtitles/closed captions” and auto-generative transcript tools as accessibility features, as imperfect as they are. And if you’d rather listen to an audio-only version of our conversation, I’ve uploaded the file to SoundCloud.

Thanks so much for keeping up with Tone Madison‘s commentaries and general arts coverage. You can routinely find writing on recent local screenings, filmmakers, and more via our main film section tab. —Grant Phipps, Arts Editor