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.
16. Chainsaw Man The Movie: Reze Arc (Tatsuya Yoshihara)
Unlike say something like Zootopia 2, which promotes something positive (the virtues of expressing one's feelings), Chainsaw Man is little more than a love story told straight, and is all the better for it. Would call it best animated of the year if I actually made the effort to see animated films last year. It's better than Zootopia 2-- I can say that much.
15. Train Dreams (Clint Bentley)
Understand the temptation to use voiceover narration-- helps incorporate as much of Denis Johnson's original text as possible-- but its use in this particular picture is a drag on said picture; only later when the film gains enough confidence to walk on its own and explore the wide world does it feel like something unfolding on the big screen instead of a scrolling text with widescreen illustrations. With Joel Edgerton, who looks as if he was born to play a mountain man, and William Macy, who makes a brief but lively cameo.
14. Superman (James Gunn)
Not Gunn at his best but at his most straightforward, as if trying to kick a bad drug habit. Still his take on the Big Blue Boy Scout is refreshingly sweet-natured, an antidote to the dark n edgy superpowered bores that have lumbered forth and lulled me to sleep. Plus Nathan Fillion needs his own Guy Gardner movie and Krypto is such a good dog!
13. Quezon (Jerrold Tarog)
Not fair and balanced and cuts a few (okay a lot of) corners and bends a handful (okay an armful) of truths; my biggest complaint about the film is that it doesn't give in to its tendencies and transform into the full-fledged dance musical it keeps threatening to become. But Tarrog's biopic is livelier than most and more flattering than anyone is willing to admit-- a portrait of our beloved president as badass gadfly tweaking the noses of all-powerful stuffed-shirt Westerners. Heroic? Not really, and thank goodness for that; heroes make me snore.
12. The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson)
If I can't rate this higher it's because Anderson comes up with plenty of them, in a variety of colors and emotional tones, and they're all of a consistent quality. This one has a Trumplike figure actually redeem himself, somewhat, in a way I'm guessing Trump is incapable of (actually I'm guessing Trump is incapable of redemption, period).
11. Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro)
Arguably del Toro softpedals (not to mention sexes up) the more horrific aspects of the creature's nature, but even so this is a handsome beautifully mounted production of Mary Shelley's great gothic novel. A struggle to accept, definitely not del Toro's best (tho it should have been), but I did end up liking it.
10. Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh)
Think Mr. and Mrs. Smith as written by John Le Carre, smart and sexy and subversive as hell. Doesn't quite touch the kind of honest despair Le Carre at his best is capable of, but finely crafted and finely acted (of course being a Soderbergh) and overall a fine time at the movies.
9. Mickey 17 (Bong Joon-ho)
Biggest slam against this film is that it isn't Parasite; best thing about this film is that it isn't Parasite. Bong rarely if ever repeats himself, thank goodness, and here he turns out a large-budgeted production with wonderfully oddball virtues-- not the least of which is what may be the most endearing character Robert Pattinson's ever played (and yes I've sat through Twilight-- over two hours of my life I'll never get back).
8. Weapons (Zach Cregger)
Loved the ingeniously constructed script, the eerie imagery (kids silent in the night like cruise missiles with wings spread and engines cut off, gliding towards selected targets), the spiky interplay between Julia Garner as beleaguered teacher and Josh Brolin as beleaguering parent, above all Cary Christopher's eerily honest portrayal of a child in way over his head, in a situation he can barely understand let alone handle.
7. Cinemartyrs (Sari Dalena)
Hands down a more visually gorgeous, more moving, more insanely inventive celebration of cinema than Richard Linklater's overrated museum piece.
6. Hamnet (Chloe Zhao)
Call me a sucker for a period weepie. Zhao's adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's attempt to link The Bard's only son to The Bard's most famous play isn't notable for its historical veracity (the theory remains unproven if intriguing) or sense of humor (comic highlight is when the playwright berates an actor for lacking conviction and even that scene lacks conviction) as for the delicate way Zhao frames Jessie Buckley's face while she addresses the camera. Arguably Zhao's best work, never mind she was a hired gun-- she feels this story as if it were her own.
5. No Other Choice (Park Chan Wook)
By turns harrowing and hilarious, Park's dark corporate downsizing comedy is arguably his stylish best, morphing almost seamlessly from Squid Games satire to Hitchcock homage (one shot-- a high overhead, of two cars parked on the shoulder of a coastal road-- lingers without comment, as quietly malevolent as a shower head or a jungle gym full of birds). Pairs nicely I think with Train Dreams (which acts as its prequel fifty years previous), Parasite (its prequel seven years before), and even Cloud (its sequel six months later). Not Park's best (that honor in my book goes to Decision to Leave) but definitely up there.
4. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Arguably Anderson's masterpiece and the best adaptation of Thomas Pynchon to date (not that there are many), a hurtling juggernaut of a shaggy-dog odyssey of an epic chase across hundreds of miles of California landscape with dozens upon dozens of ICE agents in hot pursuit. On drugs. Leonardo Di Caprio gives the performance of his life and Sean Penn the most hilarious in the film (never knew walking about with a ramrod up your rear could be so funny) and Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti play the most inspiring rebels and Benicio del Toro is just well cool af.
3. Cloud (Kurosawa Kiyoshi, 2024)
Talk about genre bender, Kurosawa Kiyoshi's film starts out as character study of an amoral techno creep, turns into a stalker/home invasion thriller involving the many online victims of said creep, turns into an efficient little shoot-em-up between victims and creep and his new friend, ultimately turns into... something else. 2025 may be a fairly good year for horror, even films that barely qualify as horror, but this is hands down my favorite.
2. Magellan (Lav Diaz)
Just when you think Diaz has sold out-- a color film, and under less than three hours!-- you look at Diaz and Artur Tort's dusky candlelit imagery, the field after field of corpses the famous explorer leaves behind in his wake, and you say: "I would like this projected in 35 mm, please." If Paul Thomas Anderson's epic adaptation of Thomas Pynchon explored fascism's latest manifestation in the form of thugs in uniform smashing down doors, Diaz reaches back centuries to depict the father of all fascists, an adventurer and monumental mass murderer who killed tirelessly for his royal patron's benefit. "We work for his greed." "That's a good one, we work for his greed!" and they toast to the king's greed.
1. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)
A man named Vahid recognizes Eghbal, the prison interrogator who may or may not have tortured him a long time ago. What would you do if you were him? How would you do it? Who would you contact, how would you convince them to help and, conversely, what can they do to make you stop? The proceedings are compelling the emotions intense but also, surprisingly, funny. One of Panahi's best and one of the best to win the Palme d'Or in recent years.
First published in Businessworld 1.9.26
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