It Was Just An Accident (Jafar Panahi, 2025)

We have ways of making you talk

Give Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi this much credit: he shoots what he sees. Intrigued by the look on a young girl's face, he made The Mirror (1997), about a child acting in a film production and the sudden plot twists she introduces in both the film and her life. Seeing how women are treated in Iran, he made The Circle (2000), a series of interlinked stories about different women, and Offside (2006), about a group of young women determined to see the World Cup qualifying match between Iran and Bahrain-- even if women are banned from attending. 

The Circle, Offside, and the crime drama Crimson Gold (2003) helped earn Panahi a 6-year prison sentence and 20-year filmmaking ban; he responded with This Is Not A Film (2011), and the surreptitiously shot Taxi (2015). He was arrested and imprisoned again in 2022 for following up on the arrest of a fellow filmmaker, and his response is this film-- about former prisoners and how they react when meeting their former prison interrogator.   

Best Films of 2025

Best of 2025

Not having really focused on seeing everything out there because-- reasons-- but did manage a few titles. This list can and will change while I'm still playing catch-up.

20. Eddington (Ari Aster)

Starts off terrific as a New Mexico version of Bernard Tavernier's Coup de Torchon with Joaquin Phoenix in the Philippe Noiret role, then devolves into yet another vast conspiracy theory a la The Parallax View only with a lot more firepower (yawn) and a lot less atmospheric menace. 

19. Sinners (Ryan Coogler)

The first forty minutes, where different folks come together as a team and raise up a juke joint, are some of the most glorious storytelling of 2025; the rest-- not so much. 

18. Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie)

Basically Uncut Gems with ping pong paddles. This Safdie brother's first solo outing confirms several things: that setting their stories in the past helps settle their frenetic helter-skelter filmmaking; that Adam Sandler is a far better actor than Timothee Chalamet; and that Masaaki Yuasa's Ping Pong: The Animation is a more detailed more honest more inventive treatment of the sport.

17. Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater) 

Another of the director's valentines to filmmaking, this time French. If I don't actively dislike it that's because I'm constantly amused by the casting (the actor playing Godard has the man's attitude roughly right, but the actor playing Jean-Paul Belmondo can't even approximate his gunpowder charisma). If I don't actively like it that's because 1) I could just watch the movies themselves and read about the gossip in the many accounts and biographies available, and 2) I mention a better celebration of the joy (and agony, and history) of Filipino filmmaking later in this list.

Tom Cruise is perfect in 'Eyes Wide Shut'

Tom Cruise is perfect

(WARNING: details of the film explicitly discussed!) 

I remember hearing that for the role of main protagonist (eventually named Dr. William Harford) in Stanley Kubrick's last project (eventually named Eyes Wide Shut) the director considered Woody Allen, Dustin Hoffman, Bill Murray, Albert Brooks. 

I shook my head. "No. They aren't right."

"Why not? It's a comedy, well an erotic comedy, and they're comic actors." 

I shook my head. "No."