Sasha's End of the Year Awards 2025
Since I did this last year, might as well make it a yearly tradition. Welcome to the second annual Sasha's End of the Year Awards 2025 where I give out awards to things I enjoyed from this year.
Game of the Year - Donkey Kong Bananza
Donkey Kong Bananza was my favorite game of the year, it had me hooked for days and it was just so much fun to be able to smash everything but also the narrative of Donkey Kong and Pauline connecting through the adventure was deeply touching and the callbacks to the past entries in the series were quite fun. The inclusion of Pauline does sort of mess with the timeline a bit altho general sentiment seems to be that Lady from Donkey Kong (1981) and Pauline from Odyssey and DK Bananza are seperate people, the former the grandmother of the latter. That's my theory on it at least, its fun to speculate even tho I doubt Nintendo is doing much to keep a consistent timeline.
Nevertheless what made Donkey Kong fun was how vibrant everything was, everything oozed charm with every Kingdom you went to. The soundtrack was also really good, aided by the recod player you can access in the getaways you build where you can listen to records you find.
All in all Bananza had the same kind of wow factor and magic to it that Super Mario Odyssey did in 2017 which is really the highest praise I can give it because I love Super Mario Odyssey and the team really brought that kind of sparkle to the table once more.
Movie of the Year - Predator: Badlands
I didn't watch a lot of new films this year, focusing rather on older films. I watched some real gems like the works of David Lynch (Rest in Peace), Fire Walk With Me and Blue Velvet come to mind as standouts that I'll surely remember forever. Another fun film I saw for the first time this year was Electric Dreams from 1984. While quite broadly speaking a collection of music videos stitched together into a movie it's quite a fun jaunt into the tech world of the 1980s and quite an emotional roller coaster. With all that said my favorite new film of the year was Predator: Badlands. I've been quite a Predator fan since seeing Dan Trachtenberg's previous work Prey (2022) when I went back to catch up on the series. This new film really is a high point for the franchise not just in terms of the box office but also just it encapsulates the entire franchise. From the Alien connections with Weyland-Yutani, to using terms from extended unviverse material such as the race actually being called Yautja. It just seems a lot of love for the franchise went into making the film.
The film is quite a fun story about trying to prove oneself, societal expectations and most importantly of all found family, all themes I quite dig in films. The friendship between the Yautja and the Weyland-Yutani droid as they try to survive the harsh world. The main character being a Yautja instead of being the aggressor flips the franchise on its head a bit but it also gives some insights into this alien race. Dek the Yautja has to learn that the harshness he was raised in might not work and being an alpha, like a wolf, means whoever can protect the clan the best. In the end he seems to find his own clan. It's just a beautiful film and the effects and acting are top notch. Would recommend.
I also ship Thia, the Weyland-Yutani droid and Dek, the Yautja, they have mad chemistry together!!
Album of the Year - Alter Ego
This was a tough call because I really enjoyed Sabrina Carpenter's Man's Best Friend and frankly I've become a bit of a Sabrina Carpenter stan this year. However Lisa (from BlackPink) managed to create one hell of a debut solo album.
It's got this late 2000s vibe to it that I just really dig, going from bop to bop. Something about it just gives me the feeling that I'm at a night club in 2009 and bumping to somme tunes. Yet of course it has the same energy as a lot of her work with Blackpink or at least you can still feel it.
As for messaging it really feels to be a sort of rage against the machine type, especially like with the song Fuck the World where the tone is set from the title alone. Quite a fun album that I recommend people listen to. I bought the CD to enjoy because frankly fuck Spotify, but that's weering a bit offtopic. Can't wait to see what Lisa brings us in the future.
Video Essay of the Year - The Biggest, Craziest Wikipedia Drama Ever
Now I watch a lot of youtube video essays, its become a thing I love doing, the longer the better in fact. I just find myself fascinated by a lot of things and I've started to build up my attention span by watching these.Now there were a lot of video essays released this year but I landed on giving the Essay of the Year award to The Skill Issue, or: How I Learned I Could Learn, and So Can You! (also capitalism is a disease) by Sane Retry
Click to view on Youtube
I think this video by Tor's Cabinet of Curiosities sort of is the pinnacle of video essays and what I quite enjoy about long form video content. It's about an hour and a half long and explores the life of David Woodard, a relatively obscure figure in the history of things yet is connected to a lot of historical things. Tor highlights his weird instance of trying to put himself at the list of wikipedia article accessible in most languages list, creating 300 articles about himself mostly using google translate. He then goes over this man's history and connects him to various aspects of history from a failed fascist colony in Paraguay to the bioterrorism attacks of an Indian cult in Oregon and many more things and it's just so entertaining to listen to Tor talk about this. There's so many odd facets of history that this David Woodard is connected to. I highly recommend the video.
That does it for another year's award show. I hope to write more frequently on this blog in 2026, but I make no promises. I will try tho.
I hope everyone is having a nice holiday seasons and a wish everyone a happy new year.
-Sasha Henriksen