My Top 25 Movies of 2025
If I'm honest, this has been one of the most enjoyable years in a while for being a fan of film. The conversation around the 'death of cinema' will likely use 2025 as one of its exhibits as so many of the big cinematic events (like Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning were semi-disappointments) whilst so many of the best movies were tucked away as some straight-to-streamer release or a quietly dumped VOD drop.
As always, films listed are based on their UK release date whether that’s in the cinema or on DVD, VOD etc. Somewhat controversially for the first time in nearly 20 years of doing this annually in various places, websites and what not I'm going to acquiesce to a couple of long term readers' suggestion and move my famously over-generous cluster of the ‘also-rans’ and ‘near-misses’ separated per genre that very nearly made the final list to the END of my Top 25 so... stay for that after I've warbled on about my Number 1 choice, if you'd like.
Finally, just to squeeze in even more titles of even more films that I absolutely had a great time with and sit just outside of my Top 25 for 2024, here's some thematic double-bills I encourage you to try yourself:
The Only Tolerable Nepo-Baby Double-Bill of Surprisingly Brilliant Fare:
David Mackenzie has taken a real-life technical construct - a telecommunications relay service that allows the deaf or hard-of-hearing to make phone calls via a texting device and an operator, requiring them to type messages which an operator reads to the recipient on the other end of the call - and built around it one of the year's best thrillers; a completely enthralling, at times ingenious ode to the conspiracy movies of the 1970s I adore so much...
... until, in its dying stretch, it feels like it loses confidence and forces itself into the form of a generic 1980s action flick. It disappointed me that a film that injected such freshness into the conspiratorial movie form would go so stale in its final ten-ish minutes.
It's not helped by the fact that a lot of the heavy-lifting required for the 'shock' twist to work leans on the always ace Riz Ahmed to almost step back and for lesser actors like Lily James and Sam Worthington (neither particularly strong, deep or charismatic performers) to carry it over the line. Trust me though, it's such a minor grumble because all around it is so clever, interesting and really well-shot film whilst also being a massive 'fuck yeah' to anyone who's ever done time working in the surveillance / anti-survelliance industries.
I do wonder if the third act reveal-and-run wouldn't have jarred so much if Mackenzie (and here's a reminder that his 2002 debut THE LAST GREAT WILDERNESS is a gem) hadn't so utterly nailed down such a refreshingly sophisticated spin on the conspiracy thriller of old before it arrived.
23. ANNIVERSARY
Firstly, how absolutely fuckin refreshing to come to a film that's way more than what its marketing / trailer has led you to believe. I went in believing this was a dramatic comedy about a family anniversary dinner party ruined by politics. It's ~much~ more than that and the surprise of this probably worked in enhancing my affection for it. Secondly, I know someone who is professionally involved with one of the cast members of this film - allegedly written as a "lucky escape" 'What If' response to Donald Trump's first term as president, made during Joe Biden's tenure then stuck in limbo until now. I've been told that said actor quietly advocated for this not getting released now, not wanting to face the Trump / Project 2025 comparisons, suffer blowback or do press for it. They eventually relented. In an age of Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert experiencing what they have in being seen to speak truth to power, I can get why they had concerns.
The cast is absolutely the thing here. That and the surprise direction it took me in. I'm very much tired of this whole Mckenna Grace 'thing'. I went from complimenting her turn in GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE to suddenly having to see her rolled out in every fourth film released. It's a bit much. Especially for an actress who's growing into simply mildly adequate. That said, the main ensemble is made up of some of my favourite people doing excellent work: Diane Lane and Kyle Chandler are atypically great, my beloved Zoey Deutch finally gets to dig deep and Phoebe Dynevor reminds us all after FAIR PLAY that she's not one to get into a filmic relationship with. Do so at your peril.
The film itself could be accused of having too many character perspectives (most of whom were fairly insufferable types) and too much it is trying to achieve. It's an ambitious scope for an ambitious dystopian political thriller. I can see why people would brace against this for multiple reasons but I thoroughly enjoyed it because it had me hooked throughout. If the only thing I've got to grumble about is that it is too busy then I'd say that's okay. I think this could be a late swing into word-of-mouth gem of the year territory.
22. FRANKENSTEIN
"... Frankenstein to me is the pinnacle of everything, and part of me wants to do a version of it, part of me has for more than 25 years chickened out of making it. I dream I can make the greatest Frankenstein ever, but then if you make it, you've made it. Whether it's great or not, it's done. You cannot dream about it anymore. That's the tragedy of a filmmaker. You landed a 10 or you landed a 6.5 but you were at the Olympics already, and you were judged." - Guillermo del Toro
And so, for anyone who has ardently followed Guillermo del Toro's on-off development of his passion project (afloat at sea on top of the waves of his 'lost' passion projects - after all, no one collects "passion projects" quite like Del Toro), this arrives before us under a weight of multiple decades of anticipation.
Surely it could never live up to such anticipation? Certainly not under the notion that there's never been a better filmmaker suited and paired with such perfect material. The answer is a yes and a tentative no, couched as bedfellows.
On the one hand there's the fact that this is a wildly self-indulgent affair (how Del Toro thought he was going to get a trilogy from the source material, given what he presents at 150-ish minutes here, I'm uncertain) that he seems to want us to regard as operatic drama more than epic horror. Not to mention that, as writer with Mary Shelley’s 'Modern Prometheus' at his complete disposal, Del Toro doesn't seem to have much depth he wants to inject here or much more to say with the material other than "You know, Frankenstein IS the name of the doctor - not the creature!" and "Do you think... maybe... just maybe... Frankenstein's creation might NOT be the real monster after all?"
However, on the other hand, let's get straight to the point: Guillermo del Toro is one of the greatest cinematic visualists of our lifetime and FRANKENSTEIN has been his 'great white whale'. When we sit before this, we're not really marking it up or down on his successful injection of subtext etc are we? (Thankfully not given the fact at one point a character actually shouts at Victor Frankenstein "YOU'RE the real monster!") We're looking to whether he 'brings it' or not.
And boy does he!
This is easily one of the most visually exquisite films of the year by far. Del Toro's confidence in his cast - a typically brilliant Oscar Isaac, another overwrought and almost inauthentic Mia Goth turn, a game Christopher Waltz and a key performance from Jacob Elordi that shows he's a capable enough actor in the early 'savage' scenes but becomes prone to overcooking it badly in the later / final dramatic scenes - frees him completely to really go to town. As bloated as the final film is, you kinda don't mind because it is so continually awash in sumptuous, intricate imagery that is dressed, lit and framed in a manner that is so unmistakably Del Toro's. There were parts of this so luxurious that I swooned watching it - even at the points I was restless, waiting for the plot to move itself along to the conclusion we already knew was set for us.
21. THE ORDER
Justin Kurzel makes atypically excellent, unshowy cinema that hangs on your skin afterwards. But anyone who thinks an old-fashioned, plain-and-simple "based on truth" action thriller with Jude frickin Law might be beneath him, should remember that between the instant masterpieces of SNOWTOWN and NITRAM sits the absolute unnecessary 'hack' gig that was 2016's ASSASSIN'S CREED.
Based on a 1989 non-fiction book called 'The Silent Brotherhood: The Chilling Inside Story of America's Violent, Anti-Government Militia Movement' - which is rumoured to have covered the same people and same ground Jerry Beck mined for John Frankenheimer from his own life (allegedly) in DEAD BANG, this is a great slice of old school fare just like the type... that's right... "we don't get anymore".
Kurzel keeps things lean, focused and tightly wound. Today, by rights, this should be a bloated and unnecessary 8 part Netflix miniseries. The flaw is in the casting, if you're going to grumble. Nicholas Hoult is excellent, as expected. And 2024/2025 is inarguably a hell of a run for him. But he's up against a dull and ineffective Tye Sheridan (who's entire role is a 'marked for death' cliché) and performances from Law and an abrasive Jurnee Smollett that is all "actoring" and very little authenticity.
20. MEMOIR OF A SNAIL
Adam Elliot's Australian stop-motion masterpiece MARY & MAX is a huge, huge personal favourite of mine and a film I return to once (sometimes twice) a year simply because it's impossible to feel ~entirely~ alone in this difficult world with it existing. It tackles heavy, heavy shit like mental illness, autism, addiction, childhood abuse, loneliness, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and of course friendship in a very funny, very moving way filled with massive amounts of emotion and empathy.
I vowed to go anywhere Adam Elliot wanted to take me as a result of the gift that was MARY & MAX and that led here, to his eventual (eight years in development) follow-up; another beautifully observed stop-motion tragicomedy drawn narratively from both Elliot's own life and the tribulations his close friends have faced too.
The end result is something less accomplished in execution than his previous movie, yet still a wonderful piece of art in its own right that successfully affirms you CAN choose your family, no trauma is truly fatal and humanity in the face of despair is our superpower.
19. HAVOC
Whatever indifference this was met with on release, I feel I have to counter with the fact that we're at the end of 2025 and there's still not been a more kinetic, energised action movie superior to it. Unless you're putting WARFARE or F1 in the same chamber of comparison?
The reviews for this seemed to really be coming at it from an angle or expectation for it to be of a different ilk than what it was ever designed to be. I mean, yeah, it is unnecessarily convoluted and held together with blu-tak from a plotting perspective. And if you were coming to this hoping to see Gareth Evans do a Sidney Lumet police corruption movie with a few more bullets than you were going to be disappointed, sure. Because this is far sillier fare. But no one was coming to this for that. Surely not?
They were coming to this - a Cardiff shot US actioner that had to wait 4 years to be finished - to see the director of THE RAID movies return to film after 6 years following the underrated APOSTLE (and time in the TV trenches with his GANGS OF LONDON show) and deliver his special brand of kinetic action filmmaking and gratuitous uber-violence; a cartoon shoot-em-up with a top tier cast of folk we love to watch ham it up, like Tom Hardy, Luis Guzmán, Timothy Olyphant and Forest Whitaker.
And that's exactly what we were gifted: excessively violent live action cartoon absurdism in which Wales subs for America across one crazy night of face-pummelling, gun-blazing, washing machine chucking bedlam. Is it an instant classic like Evans' RAID movies? No, of course not. It's a great bit of filmic junk food though.
18. SISTER MIDNIGHT
I absolutely ruddy loved this. Mainly because it took my legs out from under me in the best possible way. I knew from the trailer that I was getting the story of a woman who is dragged into an unhappy arranged marriage, told as a dark comedy about the impact on her mental health... but many wild tonal swings, acidic and acerbic comedic punches, junky stop-motion animation and bonkers genre switch-ups later I was delighted to discover director Karan Kandhari's has way more up his sleeve.
Driven like a launched nuclear weapon on a mission through the sky by Radhika Apte's simply astonishing lead performance - as well as a soundtrack that helps the film utterly pulsate with energy thanks to 'needle drops' from Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Blind Willie Johnson, Howling Wolf, Buddy Holly and Motörhead, as well as eclectic Cambodian ballads and a score by Interpol's Paul Banks - this is a macabre, abrasive and shocking sprint of quirkiness.
I was totally 'in' from the minute Apte's Uma started dropping "motherfuckers" and "c**ts" with almost immediate effect and held on in as it only got wilder. Kandhari's entire gambit seems to be to just keep swinging and stretching the film. Not every choice works, not every approach is successful but this is all so deranged and Kandhari so assured and so confident, certainly in his visual choices and pacing that I didn't care when he missed. I just adored his reckless ambition.
My only hope is that everyone can go into this completely cold and have the film's true purpose surprise them.
17. THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME
I'll be the first to admit that this film played me beautifully. I saw the trailer, felt it came across as Wes Anderson (a filmmaker I routinely adore) now starting to run on fumes with his very specific 'style' and Mia Threapleton bothered me. It was the first Anderson movie (okay, second, because THE FRENCH DISPATCH exists) that was met with pre-release apathy from me.
Yet within minutes of it starting I was in love with the thing, completely suckered by it. In my book The Yippee Ki-Yay Principle I have an entire chapter dedicated to THE LIFE AQUATIC, and I describe the assault on the pirates' hide-out sequence as the answer to any question of what a "Wes Anderson Action Movie" would look like, and that it would look very, very good indeed. Ten years later Anderson expanded on that with an actual action caper hidden inside of the off-kilter comedy drama with THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL, a masterpiece. Here, Anderson has went even further with a darkly comic action espionage flick, delivered with all his usual visual and narrative 'quirkiness'. In another ten years, he'll be making a superhero blockbuster. But his way.
I didn't like Mia Threapleton's performance and I think that's down to this role very much needing someone with some real experience to nail the specifity of this part and the lines. There's dry comedic dialogue here for her character, but Threapleton's take is to belive dry and flat are the same thing. They're absolutely not and her monotone approach irritated me. (They used to dilute the 'Nepo Baby' thing a LITTLE by making an actor's kid put at least a COUPLE of shifts in on some nonsense. Now there's apparently no line at all between the actor's kid waking up saying "Mum! I want to be a movie star!" and booking #2 on a Wes Anderson gig! ... Please don't see this as an invitation to send me Threapleton's resume, citing 3 episodes of some random show I've never watched as to why she's now skilled enough to co-headline movies like this!)
The yin to her yang is very much Michael Cera, who brings decades of refining his on-screen personality to his first Anderson 'joint' and nails it so tremendously that we're left asking both why he's never been a 'Wes Anderson Player' before and whether he can be one forever now. (And for that matter, why has no one ever thought of utilising Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston comedically as spikey siblings? That's instant gold if what's here is to be evidenced!)
Mixing man-on-the-run adventuring with intricate / borderline absurdism alongside his usual ornate and delicate styling, and some Powell and Pressburger homaging along the way, Anderson has delivered another film that made me genuinely laugh and break into smiles multiple times. That deserves to be appreciated. I have to stop fighting against Anderson's work with each entry though, like his wheelhouse is too samey or something. His whole 'wheelhouse' - a meticulous aesthetic and broad casting of very talented people to deliver eccentric performances mixed with the huge amounts of fun, whimsy, silliness and occasional awe at his ever-so-specifically-crafted visuals and 'out-there' characters - is very evidently my cup o' tea, and I'm more times than not going to come away very satisfied with what he does inside of it.
16. THE WORLD WILL TREMBLE
This snuck up on me out of nowhere as one of the best films of the year. No critics I admire are championing it. No friends of mine are talking about it. Yet it exists as one of the most quietly powerful and deeply affecting films of 2025.
Told at a low and non-sensationalisied level, this is an historical account of Michael Podchlebnik and Szlama Ber Winer escaping the Chełmno extermination camp during World War II for the single purpose of getting word out as to what the Nazis were actually doing. Lior Geller's film is devoid of big set-pieces and overly staged against-the-odds survival sequences. It is an accurate and intimate testimony, pushed through by the powerful and agonised key performances from Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Jeremy Neumark Jones.
The greatest impact the film carries is in making the horrendous horrors seem so rudimentary and 'everyday' to the forces surrounding Michael Podchlebnik and Szlama Ber Winer. It makes what we're seeing so much more harrowing. The admirable absence of atypical dramatic uplift at the end makes the experience more devastating and leaves you even more exhausted after a scant but impressively tight 109 minutes.
In the age we are living in now - where every day it seems the western world heads closer and closer back down this path and America has normalised the word "nazi" so it could be a badge of honour to far too many - I don't think there's a more important film to see this year.
15. HIGHEST 2 LOWEST
Akira Kurosawa's 1963 adaptation of the 1959 Ed McBain novel 'King's Ransom' is a masterpiece through and through, and an all time favourite movie of mine. In moving it to Japan and being fearless in letting the material breath, Kurosawa made an astonishing marriage of moral dilemma and high tension that gives way to quite a bleak take on capitalism alongside a thorough, exacting investigatory journey so impressive its DNA can be found in ZODIAC and both Bong Joon-ho's MEMORIES OF MURDER and PARASITE.
I like Spike Lee a lot and I adore Denzel Washington, but the notion they were making a modern day "hip hop" reinterpretation of the source material with Ice Spice and ASAP Rocky worried me and felt like all it could do was fail really. (Lee is being churlish about people saying he's remaking Kurosawa when he's actually re-adapting McBain seeing as he's playing with Kurosawa's film title for his own, not adopting McBain's.)
Worry not, however. Lee hasn't just made one of the best films of the year, he's put forth a remake that puts him up there alongside John Carpenter, Steven Soderbergh, William Friedkin and David Cronenberg in understanding how to remake a beloved film for maximum originality and best effected impact.
His reinterpretation exudes a swagger and a confidence that immediately nestles you into realising you're dealing with 'platinum-tier' Lee; a man who - when firing on all cylinders cinematically - can spotlight his beloved New York and inventively engage you like few to no others.
I've seen complaints about this film's messy first hour but it didn't feel that way to me. Outside of another aggravating and overwrought performance I couldn't stand from Ilfenesh Hadera (cue me doing Mike Myers in WAYNE'S WORLD ahead of the Charlton Heston cameo), I actually liked the character / world-building. But it's when Lee turns the gear up a couple of notches that I went from liking it to loving it. That set-piece involving the subway drop-off en route to Yankee Stadium incorporating a Puerto Rican Day Parade is all the levels of audacious you've heard it to be and moves this thing into a completely different space.
Suddenly this is less Lee doing Kurosawa and more him using the space he's created to do his 'thing'; contemporary drama expertly splashed with cinematic, geographic, musical, cultural vibes and bon mots that he's 'feeling'. He keeps out of Washington's way in a manner that clearly indicates hiring the best involves leaving them alone to do their best. Lee's time was evidently spent instead coaching and developing ASAP Rocky, who is shockingly impressive here.
This is Spike Lee putting out one of the best films of the year - and casually making it look so effortless that it feels like we're just hanging out with greatness, so be cool.
14. DEAD OF WINTER
I had a great time with this - it's one of the best action thrillers of the year and the best advertisement you'll see this year for just how good we once had it with these low-to-mid budgeted genre films that were once made and treat with respect.
It opens, it gets going and it doesn't stop and that makes for an adrenalised and a tense-as-hell ride, especially because in our over-saturated age of the 87North JOHN WICKian elder actor action flick, this DOESN'T have an aged protagonist with a 'special set of skills' - just a genuinely excellent Emma Thompson, channelling Frances McDormand in FARGO, being all wily and not knowing how to quit.
Either side of her in a sparse cast is a truly brilliant Judy Greer working in a hugely entertaining (and scary!) deranged gear and the always great Marc Menchaca doing the yang to the yin of his own performance in Jon Hyams' ALONE. The three of them are so good that between them and director Brian Kirk's handling of the pressure valve, they add a veneer of gravitas to the film even as it gets sillier and sillier.
The whole 'past tragedy' backstory stuff is layered on too thick and grows annoying (not helped by repetitious flashbacks involving Thompson's ineffective nepo-baby daughter playing a younger version of her character), hammering on points that are already sufficiently made and add nothing. It slows matters down and you kinda begrudge the flashbacks after a while because the unrelenting pace of this is its most attractive quality.
13. SEPTEMBER 5
SEPTEMBER 5 premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival in August 2024 to rave reviews and spent the rest of that summer and autumn receiving that sweet, sweet Oscar 'buzz'. By the time it was put out on limited release in the US that December it was highly regarded as "the film to beat" at the 2025 Academy Awards. Six weeks later, it received not one single nomination and became an almost immediate punchline about when 'hype' fails. And that's grossly and painfully unfair. Because none of that 'noise' is in anyway about SEPTEMBER 5's quality. It's about how the state of cinema has changed for the worse so very depressingly that something like this can't be "in the conversation" about Best Picture... but WICKED and EMILIA PEREZ can! Jesus, take me back to that better time.
Working as an 'opening salvo' companion piece to Steven Spielberg's MUNICH in the same way that Steven Spielberg's THE POST is to Alan J. Pakula's ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, Tim Fehlbaum's film is an air-drum tight historical thriller that grabs you with ease then doesn't let go. It's the filmic equivalent of a grip around your shirt collar that evolves into a throat throttle. The scene where the crew realise the terrorists are watching their program which in turn foils a rescue attempt is simply masterful.
Fehlbaum - a Swiss director with nothing of much to his name as credits go, certainly that I've seen / heard of - takes all the fallibility that comes with making professional and moral decisions within such fraught and uncharted territory (helped mightily by excellent performances by Peter Sarsgaard, Ben Chaplin and especially John Magaro) and couches it in a darkly dark variation of "just a gang trying to put on a show" that changed television forever.
12. F1
Look, I'm not going to sit here and try and convince you this is some sophisticated work of cinematic art. I'm not even going to argue against the evil of any film that contains this much Lewis Hamilton (one of the most eminently punchable people on the planet!) AND music by Ed Sheeran, who contributes the imaginatively titled "Drive".
Nor am I going to defend a new low in cinema where multi-billion dollar sports organisations arrange for multi-billion dollar tech firms to blow $200 million on a 156 minute advertisement/love letter to them, and we pay for the 'privilege' to watch it (it's called F1: THE MOVIE, goddamnit - they're not being subtle!).
All of that is true. But what's also true is that despite all this, you're still provided with an unashamedly old-fashioned, absurdly entertaining and insanely enthralling piece of blockbuster fare - How much of this will hold up when the borderline orgasm-inducing spectacle of IMAX is taken away, I dunno. Yet what's here is a solid piece of unexceptional storytelling wrapped up in a fur coat of exceptional cinematic craftsmanship, with director Joseph Kosinski doing for race cars here what he did for fighter jets in TOP GUN: MAVERICK.
The story is so stale you imagine the script pages came with green mould, and if you told me the actual screenplay was just the one for Renny Harlin's abysmal 2001 Stallone movie DRIVEN with the cover page torn off, I'd believe you. It's about the level you'd expect from a repeat offender hack like Ehren Kruger - the Damon Idris character is so badly etched out (and poorly performed in parts) that his redemption arc simply doesn't click. And the 'wolf-in-sheeps-clothing' twist doesn't work either because it lands obviously from the start and is played to its resolution too late and without satisfaction. We'll not even touch on Kruger's 'more-is-depth' approach - tragic past, quirks, failed marriages, near-death health woes, gambling addictions - to his main guy that borders on the comedic. But not a bit of that detracts one bit from how utterly engulfing the whole thing is. I know not one jot about the sport of Formula One but from the first moment Kosinski put me on the back wheel of a car and took me into 'combat' at 200+mph, I was hooked. You could argue this thing is less a film and more an 'experience' and you wouldn't be wrong necessarily.
It's as pornographic towards the movie star at the front and centre of this as it is to the vehicles, the industry and the tech of the sport. Brad Pitt is at his most effortlessly charismatic and engaging here, making bunkum on the page almost sound like Steven Zaillian material. Hell, by his second shirtless ice bath and his third close-up of agitated deep thought I was almost swooning myself and thinking the man could get high and beat my arse on a private jet any time. And I love my wife.
For me it worked a treat as a complete hark back to the blockbusters of my teenage years - a Jerry Bruckheimer production with an extremely talented visualist at the helm, a sturdy enough story built off old underdog tropes (here the aged has-been coming back for one more shot at professional glory), scored by Hans Zimmer. I thought I was 16 years old again for 2½ hours watching this.
11. TRAIN DREAMS
It absolutely serves me right to go into this with my arms cynically folded against the wave of exalting reviews and the Terrence Malick comparisons (a filmmaker who I'm not necessarily a consistent fan of - and who's films I like the least are the ones this was compared the most to), thinking "Fine. Let's see what all the fuss is about!" Because, trapped inside the almost claustrophobic 3:2 aspect ratio with the astonishing beauty of the Pacific Northwest captured by cinematographer Adolpho Veloso pushing against the seams, this thing absolutely kicked my arse. It genuinely moved me.
An adaptation of Denis Johnson’s novella, this is the story of a man's life. It's that simple. We follow a man as his heart opens, he sits with his regret, he questions the mark he is making on the world and we watch as a lifetime majestically passes from the point of constructing the railroads of the West with his bare hands to being sat passengered on a plane flight. He loves, he loses and he can't escape his trauma and remorse. But he keeps moving. I obviously resonate with that enormously, right? ('The Yippee Ki-Yay Principle' - on sale now!)
It's expansive, elegiac and epic. And most impressively of all it's one unexceptional logger's life from the 1880s to the 1960s in just 100 minutes (less credits) - continually shot from a distance, like we're dropping in and catching up with this acquaintance of ours Robert Grainier (an excellent Joel Edgerton), with zero narrative artifice.
The latter is what I think I liked best, frankly; that there's no dramatic structure this character is pushed into but instead incidents that simply occur to or around him that we bear witness to. Like life itself for all of us, where the living / existing / enduring is the story.
10. THE PERFECT NEIGHBOUR
Told entirely through police bodycam footage and residential / police station CCTV, Geeta Gandbhir's documentary detailing the 2023 murder of Ajike "AJ" Shantrell Owens by Susan Lorincz is an astoundingly cleanly-executed and deeply upsetting experience. It will drop your jaw and break your heart.
Ajike Owens was the best friend of Gandbhir's sister-in-law and, on hearing of this incident and the outraged aftermath, Gandbhir correctly believed Lorincz was going to hide behind Florida's stand-your-ground law so headed straight down to the state to begin filming the case.
It would have been an easy slide for the documentary to therefore fall into Michael Moore esque bias and what not, but actually very little of her initial work makes it into the film, allowing the simple actual facts and behaviours to stand for themselves through core evidential material instead.
And what's in front of us is a hugely upsetting presentation of everyday banal evil writ large before us and the systemic failures within modern policing in which complacency has infected the need for proportionate escalation. If you're sat shouting questions about whether Lorincz would've been allowed to harass families and waste police time to this level and to this tragic end if she was black or they were white, you're shouting the right questions.
By the final 20 or so minutes, such is the raw and harrowing display of trauma and naked grief married to sociopathic entitlement and callousness, my wife and I were sat openly crying alongside one another.
9. PREDATORS
I will admit to being 'part of the problem' when it comes to the noughties TV show, TO CATCH A PREDATOR. It was one of my absolute "go-to" programmes during my lonely borderline alcoholic insomniac days, living on my own fresh from the police service with a stab wound and unchecked PTSD; staying up for 4 - 5 days straight smoking Lucky Strike Lights, drinking Jim Beam and obsessing over the 'night owl' schedule of ITV4's LARRY SANDERS and MAGNUM PI re-runs alongside ITV2's airing of Sylvester Stallone's reality TV show THE CONTENDER, E4's airing of FREAKS & GEEKS back-to-back with BEAUTY & THE GEEK and FX showing DRAGNET LA and episodes of this on what felt like an endless loop.
I was royally obsessed with TO CATCH A PREDATOR. There was obviously the gratification that came with seeing paedophiles getting taken down and there was the high drama that came with this notion that the world of online sex predation was/is so prevalent and out of control that the police can't cope anymore and perhaps only this one news host and this one show can make a difference. But there was also the confusion - as a trained and qualified investigator (much less qualified and experienced then I am now) I would frequently sit lost as to how any of it was ever legally sound or prosecutable. Paedophiles are evil, but they still have legal entitlements at the end of the day.
David Osit's fantastic documentary does a magnificent job of touching on that element on my behalf, whilst establishing the history and the context of the show. It quietly spotlights also that for all its phenomenal impact upon our culture, it burnt fast and bright and was properly done within 3 years. (No one really gives a shit about the myriad of desperately peddled offshoots host Chris Hansen has schlumped around embarrassingly ever since!). Mainly though it brilliantly prickles our complicity in the successful creation of this 'beast', the myriad of truly awful online replicants that followed in its wake (and I can confirm, having worked for one body of law, damage more prosecutable cases then not) and our relationship with true-crime obsession, our humanity and our ever increasing need to 'hunt and destroy' for entertainment / clicks, etc.
Yes, the now infamous 2006 Texas footage is included. Yes, it's awful. The almost detached nature of Hansen and the laughing, sociopathically camera-savvy police woman make it oh so much, much worse. So too will the case study chosen here exploring 'age specific' crimes and whether the 18 year old pursuing a 15 year old should have been treated equitably to the 40+ men chasing 12 year olds.
Much has been made of the sit-down with Hansen in the final stretch. I don't believe it to be the 'gotcha' that some are making it out to be, frankly. Nor do I think Osit was perhaps couching it in that manner. Does Hansen come off well? No. But he hasn't in any interview since he's been peddling lesser and lesser / shoddier and shoddier variations of his 'creation' - he's so 'down river' and lost to any possibility of deeper insight that he still truly believes himself to be the greatest of 'guardians' and all human life expendable to suit his needs. Coming off worse - far worse - is his reprehensible 'copycat', "Skeet" Hansen doing YouTube rip-offs of the show, bringing subjects to the brink of suicidal ideation and then declaring "I must inform you, you've been Skeet'd!" whilst putting police light filters and poorly costumed 'players' in his videos fraudulently so he can circumnavigate a YouTube takedown notice for his tacky shit.
Those final shots in the documentary - multiple camera perspectives on Hansen's exit from the building post-interview, evoking the very style of his infamous show - are a masterful way of David Osit tacitly reminding us that predators come in a variety of forms across a very wide scale; there's the ones who prey on children for their own sexual gratification but there's also those who prey on their fellow man, vulnerable and / or criminal, for their own ego and professional gain.
This sits alongside THE PERFECT NEIGHBOUR as the absolute must-see documentary of the year.
8. WARFARE
I have been involved in active conflict / 'engagement' whilst serving in the military once in my life. Once was enough. I placed down my firearm, vowed never to ever fire a gun again or take another life - and didn't / haven't. Though I rued the consequences / impact / aftermath for a further damaging 15 years thereafter. Which led me to... you know... write a book about mental health.
I used to be 'one of those' who'd watch most war movies or battle sequences and be like "Bullshit, man. Bullshit." Rare was a film that ever got the "little stuff" nailed down. Like, for me, one of the things so vivid in my memory for days after was how misaligned my senses were - seeing, hearing, touch, they were all just completed shook out of position and sync with each other. It gave this spaced, otherworldly edge to my movement and engagement that weirded me out and I can never forget.
This is a film that's ostensibly just the "little stuff", contained within a 'real time' movie that's completely stripped back and down to its bone - just this one moment, in this one house on this one street on November 19 2006 in the wake of the Battle of Ramadi during the Iraq War. It's a film "made from memory" by Ray Mendoza (and Alex Garland), who was a Navy SEAL there when it went down.
The best elements of the film come from the experience Mendoza brings to this and makes sure is captured on screen; the way characters' speech begins to change given the thickness of the dust and smoke they're having to choke down, the physical and mental effect of getting your 'bell' well and truly 'rung', that one guy (there's always this guy!) who rolls on in far too adrenalised as a means to mask his fear and pisses you all off, the clusterfuckery of you eventually just openly firing responsive to directional sound coz you can no longer make anything out anymore, the helplessness of trying to help friends who are beyond such care but not yet beyond this world...
... All this stuff is just background to the explosions and the gunfire but that they're there at all, that they're presented as they are gives this thing a remarkable verisimilitude way beyond the average war movie. Those movies show you the horrors of war cinematically speaking whereas, trust me, this thing takes you on a 'tour' then rings out your ears whilst forcing you to eat the dust and panic whilst smelling dark claret. Some are complaining there's not much to this outside of the conflict shown. The conflict is the thing.
Sure, at an acting level the performances don't achieve the credibility and realism the rest of the film does. The cast - Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Kit Connor, Finn Bennett, Joseph Quinn, Charles Melton, Noah Centineo and Michael Gandolfini - bring a mostly 'try hard' "fresh from Dale Dye bootcamp" overearnest theatrical machismo that doesn't feel authentic.
You can also call it out if you like for what many a critic calls the "clichés" - the cowering Iraqi families, the casually attired everyman faceless "baddies", the alpha male brah caricatures as "goodies" - but that's negating the fact these were the factual components of that time in that war. Hollywood has just mined them dry in lesser movies. This doesn't try to develop any greater depth with these elements, nor could it have been successful in trying. But this was never intended to be about those elements. It was only ever meant to be about that one moment, in this one house on this one street on November 19 2006 in Iraq as Mendoza and his team remember it. He's made an incredibly potent film of impressive craftsmanship that absolutely honours his friends and captures the key terrors of active conflict / 'engagement'. He shares co-directing with Alex Garland, and it's the latter's name attached that gave me pause and made me nervous. Mainly because he managed to make CIVIL WAR without apparently having a single introspective thought about our current societal and political divisions.
CIVIL WAR was the film in which Mendoza served as technical advisor and it was his recounting of the incident captured in this film to inform a scene in that movie that intrigued Garland, who in turn has been vocal that he only holds a co-credit here because he had to essentially take care of "the technical stuff" Mendoza had no experience in to free the guy up "to take care of the important details". He refers to it as Mendoza's movie in reality. And for me, it's those "important details" that are key to this being so personally impactive upon me and which makes this one of the best films of the year.
Outside of a clumsy attempt to connect eventual victims to specific characters to give the film an emotional throughline that it doesn't successfully land (or need), Christian Swegal executes a helluva movie as writer / director; his ability to quietly spotlight the abject emptiness of this sovereign citizen movement (it really is just a babble of words connected to old medieval rules someone googled then repeated to others as still pertinent fact) is impressive.
But the secret weapon of this whole thing lies in the casting of Jacob Tremblay (his puberty-driven growth-spurt shocked me when I realised who I was looking at), who's excellent here, and Nick Offerman, an actor who has nothing in his past work that suggests he's capable of what he delivers here:
Offerman's portrayal of a man becoming untethered from reality and safe psychological standing the more his absolute bullshit won't stand up is the sort of performance that should be the underdog / wild card of awards season. It's also nice seeing 80s 'icons' like Nancy Travis, Martha Plimpton and especially Dennis Quaid do very solid character work in support - especially Quaid and Travis who do good work with slightly manipulative material.
This thing made me so tense and so sad, which I believe was its intention. It's quietly one of the more affecting and important films you'll see this year. Especially if we're wanting a better understanding of how people are getting to the point of flinging bullets at other people who don't align with them at the rate we are these days.
I knew going in that I was predisposed to at least liking this because the foundations had been laid and set long-ahead by Tim Robinson with my continual belief that DETROITERS was the last great commission Comedy Central ever made (and the cancellation of it ostensibly killed the channel, morphing it into the undignified mess it is now) and I THINK YOU SHOULD LEAVE is the best thing Netflix has ever given us.
Robinson's whole comedic voice is my sort of thing; a marriage of awkward, absurd and perpetual anger with genius level skill in doing the comedically unthinkable - overcooking the 'bit' until that itself becomes funny.
It's been a long time since I've been in the hands of a film that's made me laugh whilst making me deeply uncomfortable. And boy did I squirm hard umpteen times watching this. There were parts where I actually resonated with Robinson's Craig in terms of his social awkwardness and discomfort but then the dial kept getting turned to a point it was genuinely funny, but absolutely impossible to empathise with.
Outright comedy of the year for me!
5. WEAPONS
Maybe this is controversial given the internet's 'need' to have hundreds of 1500 word 'think pieces' on the thematic interpretations of "the ending of..." a new movie online within 12 hours of its release, but hear me out anyway: What if Zach Cregger's new movie WEAPONS isn't really... you know... about anything? Maybe it's just a horror movie - a fuckin great one - that's not interested in "elevated" status? It's not about grief. It's not about communal scapegoatery. It's not about school shootings. It's simply a story from a guy who very evidently rejoices in the journey of a mystery and the destination of a great horror pay-off replete with communal gasps and laughs.
Could Cregger be accused of 'trolling' those who believe "elevated horror is always really about... etc etc"? Sure. There's shots and imagery here that I think would back that up. The core reality though is he's made a film that, whilst a modern day Brothers Grimm like / Hansel & Gretel esque fairy tale at its core, is stripped down to the basic genre requirements of 'hook' and 'delivery'.
The script is marvellously structured, but not necessarily clunker-free - Should Brolin's characters revelatory discovery be one easily found and assessed by the plethora of police, FBI etc? Yes. Could little Alex have pulled off the stick-trick far sooner then the film's ending? Yes. Does any of this shit put speed bumps along the route of the ride? Not at all.
Supported by a terrific cast (Josh Brolin reaffirms he's my favourite working actor right now, Julia Garner plays her character with an interesting absence of warmth for someone we're meant to feel sorry for, Alden Ehrenreich continues to be every film's secret weapon and Amy Madigan should win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for what she sells here, and most of these people were last minute replacements when the original cast was lost to the strikes), Cregger jumps wide and free of clichéd 'Salem-era flashbacks', "what it all means" articulation and ponderous exposition and simply delivers an intriguing, thrilling, mysterious, funny and scary great time.
This played in a packed cinema on a boiling hot early afternoon showing and it absolutely killed - Cregger is confident in his belief that intriguing, thrilling, mysterious, funny and scary is sufficient enough for a terrific, communal squeal-and-laugh great time and he is absolutely correct.
I loved this thing, man. I went in expecting the hype to have overcooked this to a state of charcoal. I was proven to be unjustly cynical. I heard that opening voiceover declare there's a type of music "so pure it can pierce the veil between life and death, past and future" and I instantly eye-rolled so hard - only for Coogler to effortlessly present what such aural audaciousness would sound like... and look like too.
There's themes, ambitions and intentions at play here. Some work / land. Some don't. And it certainly could've done with 15 less endings perhaps. But using the scene in which Sammie's music proves so transcendent that he unknowingly summons the spirits of his past and future musical brethren as an example, I'll always champion and favour a filmmaker who swings for the backboards every time. In this day and age in cinema the 'trying' is the win.
And it's made with a technical confidence and an obvious adoration for big, wide framing too. Coogler casts his muse Michael B. Jordan as the twins Elijah "Smoke" Moore and Elias "Stack" Moore, and opens the movie on the characters seamlessly passing a cigarette between each other to share. You're dared to spot the technical work at play from the outset (one of 'em ain't fucking there, after all). You can't. And a lot of that is down to Jordan's genuinely accomplished dual work here.
Critics say the film's better in its more grounded first half than the vampire siege second. I loved hanging out in this world with these characters so much that if no vampires had ever showed up I don't think I'd have minded. But that's the sort of power a film can affect when you cast people like Wunmi Mosaku and Delroy Lindo - both of whom do the sort of work here that win Best Supporting Actress / Actor awards... but only in the historical grounded version of this where the vampires don't show up because you know how flaccid the Oscars are towards horror.
It's a fabulous film to indulge in whether aurally or visually; it's a simply fantastic musical AND a frankly gorgeous reconfiguring of the 'historical' horror - a Jim Crow-era Southern love letter to the blues... with Irish Riverdancing vampires!
Somewhat definable as "ROCKY meets UNCUT GEMS by way of every authentic period-ish New Yoork boroughs movie"... if ROCKY was about ping pong instead of boxing, and Rocky Balboa was a monumental arsehole without a single redeemable quality - someone who could easily be accused of taking the 'American Dream' to sociopathic levels!
I loved this - it burrowed under my skin almost instantaneously in that Safdie way (Josh working alone, whilst Benny was off attempting the impossible task of trying to convince the world D'Wayne Johnson was a 'credible' actor) and I went 'all in' on Josh Safdie's offsetting any criticism that he's confused incident for drama by simply supplying a tsunami of incident upon incident that never waits around long enough for dramatic artifice to take hold.
The pulsating Daniel Lopatin score married with non-period but still ace songs from New Order, Tears for Fears, Fats Domino and Peter Gabriel was a hugely effective selling point but then there's the ecclectic casting - I mean, if you'd told 16 year old me that one of the most tense moments I'd experience in cinema 30 years later would be the director of KING OF NEW YORK facing off against half of Penn & Teller over a frickin angry dog, I'd have been like "Eh?? What?"
Then you add in a member of the American DRAGONS DEN making his [impressive] acting debut, a turn from Gwyneth Paltrow that had me eventually understand what the 90s saw in her and a performance from Timothée Chalamet - all acne-scarred, sinewy, weasely and scuttling; a literal NYC rat made human, scurrying to 'feed' from one source to the next in his pursuit of his own agenda above all else - that finally made me 'get' what everyone else is so obsessed with. Chalamet delivers one of the best performances of the year here.
And the Safdie supporting players - alongside the aforementioned Penn Jillette and Abel Ferrara - this time are no less than Odessa A'zion, Tyler Okonma, Fran Drescher, David Mamet, Fred Hechinger, the author Larry "Ratso" Sloman, Emory Cohen and Sandra Bernhard.
This plays like an early Scorsese crime picture reconfigured as a sporting underdog movie and presented as if a screwball caper was actually an unrelenting nightmare of anxiety and discomfort. It's the 'American Dream' spotlighted harsh enough to expose that sociopathic self-reliance still somehow has to nourish the rich and powerful in order for you to move remotely forward. In Josh Safdie's world you can dream big and excel in your skill - but you still have to 'show the money'!
The term "a film of our time" is often used but here's a film that's not just of our time, but it's unfortunately two or three steps ahead of where we're going too*. And that makes it all the more a fascinating curio seeing as it's a loose adaptation of a 1990 Thomas Pynchon novel that was set in 1984 but weighted in the 1960s.
[* You know the Christmas Adventurers helped author Project 2025.]
I genuinely think I'm going to struggle to articulate how much I adored this. Not just the film in totality but also watching one of my favourite filmmakers work in an entirely different gear - here somehow making the year's most grandly staged action thriller, a screwball caper, a political comedy and a drama of real weight and emotion. At the same time. In the same film.
I've long argued against the notion that Leonardo DiCaprio is the great he's made out to be but, by God, in Paul Thomas Anderson's hands he is here. And then some. There's not a bum note in the cast across the board either, though isn't that the Anderson standard? The darkly hilarious and twisted things Sean Penn does with his role - right down to the specific and hilarious gait - would normally make him a sure thing come awards season, if he hadn't spent the last 5 years burning the award bodies down.
Massive plaudits to Benicio del Toro too but this is a female-centric film and all the power generated comes from the female characters / performances; Teyana Taylor and a frankly astounding Chase Infiniti are receiving all the acclaim but it's a quiet and powerful turn from Regina Hall that impressed me just as equally.
Given what's here, you kind of get that Anderson is married to a strong, iconic woman of colour. That translates. Not one of his females here is undone or betrayed by cliché or clumsy tropes; Deandra doesn't become a third act double agent, there's no tacky climactic redemptive reappearance by Perfidia Beverly Hills and - no matter Bob's best intentions - no one rolls in to rescue Willa Ferguson, she does [mostly] just fine on her own.
This thing is just constantly moving. It's really rather astonishing how propulsive it is. It's an anxiety-inducing experience in a lot of ways because it feels like we're hanging on for dear life. And when Anderson doesn't have us squeezed right in the thick of some of the most audacious action set pieces of the year - yes, in a Paul Thomas Anderson movie - Jonny Greenwood's score steps up and carries the weight.
I laughed frequently. I gasped in places. By its conclusion I felt genuinely moved. There's legitimately not a bum note or imperfect moment in this. This is by far my favourite film of the year and I think in time it could become one of my favourite of Anderson's movies.
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Those aforementioned honourable mentions?
Action movies that I enjoyed this year were the straight-to-streamer dollop of silliness that was Head of State, the 'return' of Tony Jaa in Striking Rescue (aka Fist of the Warrior), Josh Hartnett in the 'Bullet Train but on a plane' Sky Original Fight or Flight, the incredibly effective and underated dystopian action-thriller 40 Acres, John Maclean's excellent Scottish samurai period chase curio Tornado, Jean Luc Herbulot's ticking-time-bomb actioner Zero (his follow-up to his cult gem Saloum) and the shockingly actually good Taron Egerton movie She Rides Shotgun.
Drama(s) / Thrillers that stood out for me this year were The Surfer with Nicolas Cage, the wobbly but enjoyable Stuntman; an ode to the Hong Kong action industry, the far better than it had any right to be Blumhouse effort Drop, King Ivory - the latest straight-to-digital effort from immensely prolific lower-tier filmmaker John Swab, Neighbourhood Watch with Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jack Quaid, the delightfully bonkers 'killer genetically engineered dogs on a collapsing bridge' Korean thriller Project Silence, the quietly devastating and shamefully unsung BBC Films abuse drama Unforgivable, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's riveting Cloud, The Brutalist - even with my minor issues with it post-interval, the insanely entertaining The Last Stop in Yuma County, Steven Soderbergh's unjustly underseen all-star espionage flick Black Bag, the French thrill-ride Night Call, the really rather moving Bob Trevino Likes It, the rather terrific and consuming Sharp Corner with a performance from Ben Foster that deserved to be more greatly championed, the devastating and impactive Small Things Like These, the harrowing prison drama Inside and I loved Kelly Reichardt's The Mastermind too.
In terms of comedies this year, some that I enjoyed were the 'one crazy day' throwback One Of Them Days, the better than it had any right to be belated Netflix sequel Happy Gilmore 2, the low-fi 'end of the world' 90s-set horror comedy Y2K, HBO's Succession side-sequel Mountainhead, the sorta delightful Roofman, Bong Joon Ho's delayed and uneven but occasionally brilliant Mickey 17, the heavenly Zoey Deuth / Ruby Cruz romantic comedy drama The Threesome, and the really rather lovely musical, whimsical treat that was The Ballad of Wallis Island.
Animation that I liked this year includes (and this is a cheat straight-out-the-gate as I imported it rather than wait for it to be released here next year) the Daffy Duck / Porky Pig apocalyptic ode to 1950s sci-fi movies The Day The Earth Blew Up that Warner Bros didn't know what to do with, Gints Zilbalodis' Oscar-winning Flow, the bonkers and bombastic (but could never be done in live action) Predator: Killer of Killers, and the surprisingly engaging sequel Zootopia 2.
It was a tremendous year for documentaries with Quest Love's enormous Ladies & Gentlemen: 50 Years of SNL Music leading the way and including a seven minute musical creation that needs to be seen to be believed, the jaw-droppingly upsetting Grenfell: Uncovered, the ode to the power of stellar investigation that was Oklahoma City Bombing: American Terror, the outrage-inducing The Saltpath Scandal and shout-outs to the documentaries that finally landed here like Kim's Video and Downey Wrote That.
Horror films I liked a lot were the Australian WWII heist/creature feature Fear Below, Osgood Perkins' fun (but overhyped) The Monkey, the tsunami of silliness that was Werewolves, the underrated Ick and the low-tier but immensely fun Monster Island, the surprise (at least to me?) sequel Influencers which I really enjoyed, Robert Eggers' Nosferatu and the brilliant The Rule of Jenny Pen (both near misses on my final list), Bring Her Back, the absolute surprise gem that was The Ugly Stepsister and the 'better then it had any right to be' but uneven 28 Years Later.
Blockbusters (of sorts!) that I enjoyed were - if you could call it a 'blockbuster' - the rather delightful family film Sketch, Netflix's legacy sequel / remake Bullet Train Explosion, the spin-off from the now exhausting John Wick 'universe' Ballerina mainly because of that bonkers reshot third act, the thoroughly enjoyable under-loved reheated leftovers that was Jurassic World: Rebirth, James Gunn's crazily overhyped Superman with its odd momentary flashes of brilliance, the disposable but mightily enjoyable Nobody 2, the empty confection and wasted opportunity that was the remake of The Running Man, James Cameron's samey but brilliantly entertaining Avatar: Fire & Ash, MCU's Thunderbolts, AppleTV's The Lost Bus and Rian Johnson's bloated but occasionally excellent Wake Up Dead Man.
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