ON the Beat | List-o-maniacal Tendencies 2025

Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal in Eddington | Photo: A24

Cinema, in both its mainstream and art house-y forms, has always been a healthy factor in Santa Barbara’s cultural diet, but the portions and prospects grew exponentially in 2025. Much of this renewed energy, despite dire projections from the “death of the movie theater” doomsayers, comes through the heightened agency of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF). A ripe old 41 years running now, SBIFF has held forth boldly in its flagship Riviera Theatre homebase and will soon unveil its lavishly renovated, five-screen Film Center smack dab in the middle of downtown.

Meanwhile, SBIFF’s “Cinema Society” presentations of screenings of forthcoming gems — and live post-screening Q&As with filmmakers and actors, interviewed by festival domo Roger Durling — has gone over the top, with high profile offerings on a dizzyingly regular basis.

Metropolitan Theatres continues to keep its multiple screens busy, including its own arthouse hang the Hitchcock, which sometimes screens films also available up on the holy hill of the Riviera.

The local film culture infrastructure is in place, and expanding exponentially: If it’s built, will they come? Aye, there’s the rub.

In his appearance after a screening of the spectacular Lorenz Hart–based Richard Linklater film Blue Moon, Ethan Hawke addressed that fragile subject (before a very full house, by the way). “As somebody who started really young, a huge fear of mine is being rendered irrelevant and still feeling like you have something to offer. And as somebody who loves cinema, I have that fear of ‘What do we do if cinema is not in style?’ Now one of the problems is the artists have to make something special enough to demand it. And audiences have to demand it.”

Surveying a very good harvest of films released this year, the content factor is well in order and Hawke’s plea for “something special” has been delivered. Certain themes emerge, however accidentally. Genre mash-ups and freewheeling structural tinkering are at work in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, Ari Aster’s wildly dark funhouse Eddington, P.T. Anderson’s One Battle After Another, and Josh Safdie’s rope-a-dope-ing ping pong flick Marty Supreme. Mad mothers appeared in knockout roles, with If I Had Legs I’d Kill You (featuring Rose Byrne) and Die, My Love (with whirlwind-y Jennifer Lawrence).

The ample world cinema treasure chest included Iranian iconoclast Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident and Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke’s innovative Caught by the Tides. When your arthouse film brain grew weary, there were also sweet films to sink into, such as Eephus and Ballad of Wallis Island.

One of my favorite “aha” moments in 2025 cinema arrives towards the end of Caught in the Tides, when a shopping mall robot reads our protagonist’s weary face and reports that she looks sad. It then quotes Mother Teresa: “If you love until it hurts, the hurt goes away and all that is left is love.” It also cribs a putative Mark Twain quote: “For human beings, the most effective weapon is laughter.” Suitably for our times, it is an AI presence, speaking truth to power and the powerless, on the big (or small) screen.

Top Ten (plus) 2025 Films:

Train Dreams (Clint Bentley) (see review)
Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier) (see review)
Weapons (Zach Cregger) (see review)
Blue Moon/Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater) (see review)
It was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi) (see review)
The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)
The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)
Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor) (see review)
Eddington (Ari Aster) (see review)
Souleymane’s Story (Boris Lojkine) (see review)
Eephus (Carson Lund)
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein)
Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke)

Also:

Hamnet (Chloe Zhao) (see review)
One Battle After Another (P.T. Anderson) (see review)
La Grazia (Paulo Sorrentino) (see review)
Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos) (see review)
Becoming Led Zeppelin (Bernard MacMahon) (see review)
The Ballad of Wallis Island (James Griffiths)

Sir Paul McCartney, accompanied by his band — past and present — at the Santa Barbara Bowl, September 26, 2025 | Photo: Ingrid Bostrom

When it comes to the pressing musical question “What was the hottest concert in Santa Barbara this year?,” the answer is a no-brainer. Two words: Sir Paul. Yes, plenty of Santa Barbarians have trekked to L.A. over the years to catch the sweetest Beatle live, but there was something surreal and almost mystical about hearing him survey his 60-plus years of a musical life in the relatively tiny (4,500 seat) Santa Barbara Bowl. Kudos go to booking royalty Moss Jacobs for pulling it off.

To the outside world, the gig may have been considered a warm-up for his fall tour, but we in the 805 know better. This was the grand tour kickoff, and officially first-time he’s played “Help!” in decades (maybe inspired partly by the desperate need for help in the world, and Washington D.C.). We can own that.

There were plenty of other options to keep an eclectic music lover’s calendar densely inked in, at the Bowl, the Lobero Theatre, SOhO, UCSB Arts & Lectures, CAMA, Music Academy of the West, and more. Another special night landed at, and paid due homage to the Arlington Theatre, in the form of the Queens of the Stone Age, in a unique Weill/Brechtian mode.

Other highlights include an especially juicy Ojai Music Festival, directed by Claire Chase and featuring the great Craig Taborn and Susie Ibarra, and still twenty-something jazz vocalist wonder Samara Joy bringing her fantabulous young septet to The Granada Theatre. Montecito’s own jazz legend Charles Lloyd, 87, paid one of his regular Lobero visits, this time with the underrated guitarist marvel Marvin Sewell in tow.

And the list, thankfully, went on, and goes on and on. This remains a bodacious place for music lovers to live and work.

Live Music in the 805, an Eclectic’s Choice:

Quire of Voyces, “Mysteries of Christmas,” St. Anthony’s Chapel
Queens of the Stone Age “Catacombs Tour,” Arlington
Blind Boys of Alabama, Campbell Hall
L.A. Phil, Granada (The Rite of Spring, The Firebird Suite, John Adams’ Frenzy)
Samara Joy, Granada
Daniil Trifonov, Campbell Hall
Paul McCartney, Bowl
My Morning Jacket, Bowl
Father John Misty, Bowl
Music Academy of the West, AFO, Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, Granada
Jeremy Denk, “Beethoven +” (three nights), Music Academy of the West
Ojai Festival, Claire Chase presiding, featuring Susie Ibarra and Craig Taborn
Camerata Pacifica, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring for piano four hands,
Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion
yMusic, Gabriella Smith, Aquatic Ecology, Hahn Hall
Santa Barbara Symphony, Kurt Weill, Seven Deadly Sins, with Storm Large
Charles Lloyd Delta Trio (featuring guitarist Marvin Sewell), Lobero Theatre
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Granada Theatre
Yuja Wang and Víkingur Ólafsson, Granada (first half)

Cloth as Canvas gallery shot | Photo: Josef Woodard

Art in town found its place in all the right places in 2025, with some additions to the mix. On the established art scene reliable front, fine Fine Art made its way into such trusted spaces as the UCSB AD&A Museum, the Westmont Museum of Art (a year marked by the retirement of trailblazing first director Judy Larson), Sullivan Goss, the cutting-edge and community-friendly MCASB, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

SBMA’s year was especially fruitful, not only with the crowd-teasing blockbuster of its current Impressionist art bonanza, but, more importantly, a few strong contemporary shows under the fresh leadership of curator James Glisson and director Amada Cruz. Just down the block on Anapamu, new aesthetic heat came to town with the Seimandi & Leprieur Gallery, focused on art from the Caribbean. In this town, art will out, come what may, whatever the harsh realities of current events and weather patterns.

Santa Barbara Art Exhibitions:

Between Planes: Exploring Sculpture through Print,
Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art
Impressionist Revolution: Monet to Matisse from the Dallas Museum of Art,
Santa Barbara Museum of Art
Fertilum, Ricardo Ozier-Lafontaine, Seimandi & Leprieur Gallery
Cloth as Canvas, Elverhøj Museum, Solvang
Proscenium: Elliott Hundley, SBMA
Fare Trade, Brett Leigh Dicks and Patricia Clarke, Architectural Foundation Gallery
Vian Sora, Outerworlds, SBMA
TL;DR: TEXT / ART (Too Long; Didn’t Read / Too Long; Don’t Read), Sullivan Goss
Tomiyama Taeko: A Tales of Sea Wanders, UCSB AD&A Museum
WILDLAND: Ethan Turpin’s Collaborations on Fire and Water,
Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art
Public Texts: A Californian Visual Language, UCSB AD&A Museum
Dario Robleto: The Signal, SBMA

TO-DOINGS:

John Jorgensen and Quintet plays at SOhO on January 7. | Photo: Courtesy

Music Academy of the West’s “Mariposa” concert series continues its slow but steady pace with the first must-see concert of 2026, a super trio meeting of double bassist Edgar Meyer, cellist Joshua Roman, and young violin sensation Tessa Lark at Hahn Hall on Thursday, January 8. All three musicians have been featured in Hahn Hall before, and all embrace the ideal of keeping a shifting attitude between classical, rootsy, and come-what-may musical impulses. In other words, this is some serious and fun-loving business at hand.

The phenom known as Santa Barbara Acoustic, which has brought stellar acoustic guitar pickers for several years now, kicks up some new dust with its new series in a new and ripe locale — the Unitarian Church’s Parish Hall. But, before moving into the new space, the 2026 unplugged fun begins in its longtime and welcoming perch of SOhO, next Wednesday, January 7, with the return of the Django-maniacal John Jorgensen and Quintet, along with the stunning Nashville sensation Rory Hoffman, blind and with lap-bound guitar will travel.