2025 What a Year! 

2025 might have been one hell of a year for many reasons. But for me, I spent the most time in the cinema turning off my brain and escaping the world’s chaos for a few hours. From regular viewings at my local cinema to attending world renowned film festivals, I did not shy away from any method of getting my hands on most of this year’s films. I should warn those who wish to read on, I did manage to watch over 500 films this year. While I will not be mentioning all of them of course, there are a great many I do wish to cover.

Let us start back in January. Living in the United Kingdom, the year always starts off slow as 2024 releases are only just arriving here. That being said, I had the joy (jokes) of starting off with Netflix’s Back In Action (Gordon, 2025), what a strange comeback for Cameron Diaz. Though she did do her best holding the film together, we can only wonder why she chose this project as her “return” to acting.

I digress. 2024 films were being released in UK cinemas, and of course if I had not yet seen them, I went and watched. Mufasa: The Lion King (Jenkins, 2024), Better Man (Gracey, 2024), Nosferatu (Eggers, 2024), A Complete Unknown (Mangold, 2024) and TIFF 2024 selected William Tell (Hamm, 2024) and finally The Brutalist (Corbet, 2024) joined the films I viewed for the first time in January 2025. Finally, we got to this year’s actual releases with Flight Risk (Gibson, 2025) and Wolf Man (Whannell, 2025). Not the most positive start for a new year of cinema, but we carried on anyways. The good thing about my January was that it gave me the chance to review some films that perhaps should not have been made in the first place. Not all films are for everyone, but I suppose we all have our own taste and there is an audience out there somewhere.

It took until the end of the month to finally find a film worth noting, Companion (Hancock, 2025). Not a life changing film in the slightest, but one that keeps viewers on their toes while providing shocks and entertainment along the way. It can be quite hard for horror films to do this, or to stay away from their typical tropes. Yet, Drew Hancock’s Companion does just what it needs to do. Sophie Thatcher holds the film together and adds this project to her list of films that show how talented she is. Don’t forget about Jack Quaid, he had quite the year for films and provides the laughter you need mixed into a horror.

Honourable mention goes to the worst film I have seen this year, and even with it only being February, it will remain there. Forever. Tyler Spindel’s Kinda Pregnant starring Amy Schumer. Never watch it. It should have never been made. And I say with full confidence, she needs to be stopped.

My first of several festivals this year was Berlinale. It was an experience unlike any other. Tons of films and freezing cold snow! What more could a cinephile wish for. Many hits were watched in Berlin. Little Trouble Girls (Djukić, 2025), Dreamers (Gharoro-Akpojotor, 2025), and Late Shift (Volpe, 2025) were three of the festival’s selections that I thought were truly wonderful.

But it was not until I watched Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You was I completely blown away. From February until now in December, this film has stuck with me. It changed the way I saw cinema. And like many others, it has changed the way Rose Byrne and her talents have been seen by the world. Going from an actress typically cast in comedic roles, Byrne’s portrayal of mother Linda in If I Had Legs has brought her to the forefront of the best actress race, and there is no denying why. Not only is the filmmaking stellar, but the acting supports Bronstein’s vision. The two work hand-in-hand to share a mother’s story with the world. A tale of how life continues to fall apart and you do not know how far your downward spiral will go until you crash. Will it ever end? In If I Had Legs I’d Kick You it becomes hard to tell. You are left wondering right to the very end. But does everything actually come to a conclusion? You will have to watch to find out.

Another month and there were very few good new releases, it took until half way through March before a film surprised me with each twist and turn. Black Bag, Steven Soderbergh’s latest film kept me on the edge of my seat. Even when I watched it for the third time, I was still shocked. Though I began to follow where hints were dropped throughout, it still provides new angles to see the movie from each rewatch.

Even April managed to disappoint with all of its new releases. Novocaine (Berk & Olsen, 2025), The Woman in the Yard (Collet-Serra, 2025), A Working Man (Ayer, 2025), A Minecraft Movie (Hess, 2025), Death of a Unicorn (Scharfman, 2025), The Amateur (Hawes, 2025), Warfare (Mendoza & Garland, 2025), Drop (Landon, 2025), Borderline (Warden, 2025), and Until Dawn (Sandberg, 2025) were all crappy films. To be expected, however. I had hoped I would have enjoyed Death of a Unicorn and at least Warfare, but there is only so much films can provide, and neither provided what I expected or wanted.

Thank god for Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan, and for Sinners. Without them, we all might have lost hope in 2025 films. A stunning piece of craftsmanship. A must watch in IMAX. Then, having said that, without the IMAX ratio, Sinners does not provide as much of a high. But it still remains to be one of this year’s more original and compelling projects.

Now, May brought about something new for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Not everyone believes in the film as much as I did and still do. It does remain to be something different and unusual for superhero films. Thunderbolts* created a team of regular humans who all had their own mental health problems to deal with. None of them were gods or monsters, superpowers maybe a few of them had. But what ended up bringing them together were the traumas of their pasts. Sometimes movies can be just that, a movie. They do not need to be cinematic masterpieces so long as they provide joy and entertainment for the viewer. And Thunderbolts* did just that for me. It brought out a side to the characters from the MCU that perhaps had not been explored to the fullest potential. While Tony Stark, Thor and even Steve Rogers have all dealt with problems, their films simply brush past them. Finally, with Thunderbolts* we are given a rag tag team of misfits. Misfits each and everyone of us can relate to on some level.

Skip past the atrocity that was Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (McQuarrie, 2025) and move onto the Cannes Film Festival. Going on a complete whim, I managed to see one of this year’s most promising directorial debuts. Or, in my opinion, THE MOST PROMISING directorial debut. Eva Victor is absolutely stupendous. Actor, writer and director in her feature film Sorry, Baby. I was left in tears and continue to think about not only their performance, but the entire story itself. Trauma is a difficult subject. One that not many films are able to tackle well. Victor focuses her film on the trauma a young woman faced with her College mentor, and instead of showing the dark sides of this interaction, she stays away from showing the audience the moment it happened. It is not even fully mentioned. Instead, we are given a new look at an event in a woman’s life. Sorry, Baby is touching, heartfelt and most importantly original. Let us keep Eva Victor in our minds and support them and their career as they move forward. Continue to watch and share Sorry, Baby with the world for years to come. Truly one of 2025’s most masterful films, even as it is so subtle and intimate.

Other special mentions for the months of May and June include Hallow Road (Anvari, 2025). A film that remains quite hidden from the world, but one that managed to keep me in the dark until the very end. Another stellar performance from Rosamund Pike and a wonderful addition to British cinema was Ballerina (Wiseman, 2025), along with How to Train Your Dragon (DeBlois, 2025) were two spin-offs/remakes that did wonders on the big screen. Even 28 Years Later (Boyle, 2025) managed to bring tears to my eyes, after I had them closed for all the jump scares.

Bring it to the end of June with F1 (Kosinski, 2025). A film I really had hoped not to like as much as I did. Be it my distain for Brad Pitt, I could not help but be brought into the thrill that the IMAX viewing of this film brought. Both with the scale of the screen and the intense score, nothing could have made me enjoy F1 racing even more. Not even watching the actual event in person.

Special shoutouts to The Fantastic 4: First Steps (Shakman, 2025) and Superman (Gunn, 2025) for providing better entertainment in a superhero film than has been done in the past few years.

Then, special negative shoutouts to more of 2025’s horrendous films. Do I need to share these, not really, but I do love hating on some pretty terrible films to keep others from subjecting themselves to the atrocities. The Old Guard 2 (Mahoney, 2025), Heads of State (Naishuller, 2025), Smurfs (Miller, 2025), and Fixed (Tartakovsky, 2025), four films which left me wondering how they managed to get those actors cast in them.

Ending the summer was the Venice Film Festival. This film festival is… a lot of people, a lot of sun, and a lot of celebrities. Oh yeah, a lot of films to watch too. How can you pick between them, an impossible question. One that I never managed to figure out, and still remain annoyed at those I missed. I managed to watch around 20 films in the ten days I attended the festival, and somehow was not fully thrilled by many. There were quite a few good ones, a number of boring ones, and then a small number that I would entirely watch again (some of which I did). Bugonia (Lanthimos, 2025), No Other Choice (Park, 2025), The Testament of Ann Lee (Fastvold, 2025), and A House of Dynamite (Bigelow, 2025) were my four top films of the festival. In fact, I even rewatched both Bugonia and The Testament of Ann Lee at BFI’s London Film Festival later in the year.

Toronto International Film Festival overlapped Venice, and of course on September 4th I flew from Venice and went directly into TIFF. My first screening was Sentimental Value (Trier, 2025). Beautiful as it was, it is not the film to watch jet lagged at 9pm. TIFF was filled with a bunch of “good” films. Nothing stupendous, nothing horrendous, but simply good. A film you could sit at home and watch with the family, or a group of friends. Sometimes that is all you need. But when this repeats for every film you watch, it begins to get tiresome. Hedda (Da Costa, 2025), Hamnet (Zhao, 2025) and Wake Up Dead Man (Johnson, 2025) remain my three top films of this festival. With Hamnet and Wake Up Dead Man being two I rewatched in London. I even lucked out in Toronto and tortured myself (positive) by rewatching If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. Wonderful!

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain (Vallade & Kuang, 2025) is a film which world premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May this year. Without knowing much about it, I watched it at a screening at TIFF and had never been so blown away by an animated film before, or at least not in awhile. For a film based off a children’s graphic novel, Little Amélie provides so much for adults to connect and relate to. A young girl finds herself in the most confusing world, and through her eyes the audience is brought on the most wild of rides. A tale for the ages, it can be seen as a simple story for kids, or one for adults to reflect upon.

Heading out of the Toronto International Film Festival and into BFI’s London Film Festival, I managed to catch Paul Thomas Anderson’s return, One Battle After Another. My goodness did this film ever live up to its reviews. A 35mm screening at the Odeon cinema in Leicester Square was just what I needed. It is a wild ride for its entire runtime. Something that I do not find happens quite often. Keeping you invested throughout the whole story. When you see as many films as I have, you have a difficult time remaining focused. But PTA and DiCaprio keep you hooked.

Then, for highlights of the BFI’s LFF include Endless Cookie (Scriver & Scriver, 2025), The Voice of Hind Rajab (Hania, 2025), Blue Heron (Romvari, 2025), Is This Thing On? (Cooper, 2025), and even Roofman (Cianfrance, 2025). Special notice to The Voice of Hind Rajab, a film that excelled with its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival at the start of September. Providing such a terrifying story, in the most surreal of methods, the filmmaker crafted a fictionalized account of one girl’s horrifying experience. There is nothing like it and perhaps never will be again. Not only is it simply a film, it is a message to the world.

Leading towards the end of the year, there was not much that stuck with me as much as those I have previously mentioned. However, I Swear (Jones, 2025) is another film based on a true story that deserves its time in the spotlight. KPop Demon Hunters (Appelhans & Kang, 2025), Come and See Me in the Good Light (White, 2025), and Wicked: For Good (Chu, 2025) are three other films that I thoroughly enjoyed as well. Do keep it in mind, however, that the sequel to the amazing Wicked (Chu, 2024) could never live up to the amazement of the original as even in the stage musical, the second act was never as good as the first. Then, I was finally able to see It Was Just An Accident (Panahi, 2025) and it did not disappoint either.

For a year filled with cinema, and some films watched at home as well, I never would have expected what I got. I spent more time working at the cinema and watching films at the cinema than I did anywhere else. There is no other way I would have preferred to do it. I believe all films are better when you watch them on the big screen with an audience. Whether it be just a few of you in the screen, or a sold out theatre, the cinema is the place to be.

I am forever grateful I have had the opportunity I have to view as many films at the cinema as I do. And I do look forward to 2026 to see what there is to come. For a compact top ten films of 2025, see my list here. Here’s to the films that made and broke 2025, and to the future of the industry.

Thank you to those of you who made it to the end. I do hope you can take my words to heart, and if there are any films you had yet to watch and wanted to, if I recommended them please let me know what you think if you ever get around to them. For those I highly DID NOT recommend, I would take my words to heart. Just know I believe in the cinema.