2025: A Year in Review

It’s that time again when we take a look back at some of the outstanding features released throughout the year (mostly going by UK release date). Featuring our regular special guests Vera Graziadei, Ruairí O'Brien and Alex Harper.

2026 is looking promising with new releases from an array of filmmakers including Emerald Fennell, Christopher Nolan, Stephen Spielberg, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Greta Gerwig, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Denis Villeneuve. 

Despite this, the takeover of Warner Bros looks concerning for the future of cinema and remains to be seen how trends will change over the next few years. It has also recently been suggested that cinema is an “outdated concept”, with streaming set to become the future. We don't buy that: nothing unites us like the power of film and the experience of sharing it in a room full of strangers. 

Thank you to all of our readers and contributors for all of your continued support. Here’s hoping for another outstanding year of cinema and cinema-going. 

Vera Graziadei

Bugonia (Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos)

Bugonia was, for me, one of those rare films that manages to be genuinely entertaining while still feeling rigorously intelligent. Featuring extraordinary performances from Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone, it marks another audacious, darkly playful work from Yorgos Lanthimos, operating at an impressively assured level. The film pulls you along with wit and momentum, repeatedly tightening its grip and gradually revealing something far darker and more unsettling beneath its surface. The ending, in particular, lands as a bleak and lucid reframing of what precedes it, raising questions about belief, power, and delusion. It’s a bracing, often provocative piece of filmmaking that seduces and destabilises in equal measure, and one that trusts the audience to sit with its discomfort.

Hamnet (Dir: Chloé Zhao)

Hamnet is the tearjerker of the year. It pulls at the heartstrings almost mercilessly, even if it occasionally tips into sentimentality. Chloé Zhao is one of those rare, sensitive filmmakers whose work I actively wait for, and here she brings an intimate, elemental touch to a story about how Shakespeare wrote Hamlet in the aftermath of losing his son. Elevated by what is surely one of the standout pairings of the year, Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal are both mesmerising. Jessie, in particular, delivers a breathtaking performance: from one of the most convincing and physically raw birth scenes in recent cinema to what may be the most devastating portrayal of grief I’ve seen on screen. The film’s emotional force is overwhelming, and even when it risks excess, it remains deeply sincere.

Sentimental Value (Dir: Joachim Trier)

Sentimental Value unfolds with admirable subtlety, sensitivity, and patience, gradually revealing a family shaped by absence, grief, and loss. The film focuses on the long-term effects of parental absence on adult identity, tracing patterns of seeking attention and affirmation while remaining emotionally isolated. Rather than building toward a conventional cathartic confrontation, Trier keeps anger, resentment, and despair simmering beneath the surface throughout, never offering a neatly resolved solution. The film also incorporates a self-reflexive film-within-a-film element, examining art and performance as both refuge and avoidance, and questioning whether storytelling can truly repair emotional fractures or merely aestheticise them. The result is a psychologically nuanced and restrained work, in which meaning is revealed through glances, behaviour, and small shifts, allowing the subtext to emerge almost imperceptibly, yet with a profoundly moving impact.

Love Me Tender (Dir: Anna Cazenave Cambet)

Love Me Tender challenges societal prejudices and expectations about motherhood. It’s built around a central character who, on paper, might seem unlikeable or morally questionable. Yet through Vicky Krieps’s remarkably nuanced and lucid performance as well as psychologically insightful script, you end up deeply sympathising with and understanding a woman fighting for custody of her child after leaving her family, while coming to terms with her sexuality and exploring unconventional ways of living. The film is confident and powerful, refusing to judge or simplify its main character. Instead, it offers genuinely adult storytelling, which is comfortable with ambiguity, enquiring, and exploring rather than moralising or reducing things to black-and-white conclusions.

Sound of Falling (Dir: Mascha Schilinski)

Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling stayed with me because of its inventive approach to non-linear storytelling and the powerful emotions it evokes with remarkable subtlety. The film’s true central character is a rural house, which connects four girls across different periods of the 20th and 21st centuries, carrying stories of memory, trauma, gender, and history across generations. A truly bold and ambitious work, displaying an exceptionally high level of cinematic craft. It really needs to be seen on the big screen and approached as a meditation, allowing the film to envelop you in its haunting atmosphere and stunning visual poetry.

Ruairí O'Brien

Nouvelle Vague (Dir: Richard Linklater)

I went along knowing nothing but the title - a bit pompous I thought. I was immediately pulled into a fictional account of Jean-Luc Godard making his first film. This really felt like it was made in the sixties on the streets of a still hungover post war Paris. Godard is kind of unbearable in his cockiness and he proceeds to drive everyone around him mad- except the unflappable Raoul Coutard. 

I loved this so much that I immediately downloaded the film he was making, the legendary Breathless.

Pillion (Dir: Harry Lighton)

I can’t say that I enjoyed it. It’s a hard watch. If you don’t know, it’s about an extreme dominant/submissive relationship and it can be hard to watch what the poor sub Harry Melling goes through. But somehow in the end it left me with food for thought. It has stayed with me in a way I never expected. I have huge respect for the filmmakers for making something so brave and unique.

Hamnet (Dir: Chloé Zhao)

I’d love to have witnessed the pitch - or should I say the response to the pitch - ‘It’s about Shakespeare? Oh, it’s about Shakespeare’s wife - that doesn’t sound like box office gold. Oh, it’s about her losing her child? You’re telling me you want to make a film about the grieving wife of William Shakespeare and you think there’s an audience for that...’

This film is proof that Jesse Buckley is just the most magnificent actress. Also Lukas Zal’s cinematography is stunning.

But more than that, the film just pays out like an emotional jackpot in the end and it’s all about Jesse. Jesse for President!

Eternity (Dir: David Freyne)

I have to confess, I am biased - I shot this movie, but I’m also writing this piece so you can’t stop me from picking this one. 

We made a Billy Wilder style screwball comedy. It’s got great laughs and it’s got moments that will pull at your heart strings (I mean really I’ve seen grown men cry at this thing) but it works because it’s shot through with great humour and it’s not cynical. It’s just a big hearted movie that I think will stand the test of time.

Also we should get extra points for having the best soundtrack- David Hemmings just elevates the whole thing with his contribution. If I was a billionaire I’d hire him to soundtrack my life.

Oliver Webb

Roofman (Dir: Derek Cianfrance)

Based on the real-life spree robber Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum) who hid out in a Toys "R" Us store after escaping from prison. This was a fun, highly rewatchable feature that was also well-crafted with some understated performances. I enjoyed this one thoroughly. 

Have a look at our interview with the film's DOP here!  

Hard Truths (Dir: Mike Leigh)

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Mike Leigh and virtually everything he has produced has been a masterpiece. Bias aside, this is Leigh still top of his game with no signs of slowing down. A filmmaker who has stayed true to his style. Marianne Jean-Baptiste also delivers a phenomenal performance and deserved an academy award nomination. 

I would have added this to our 2024 list, but it didn't hit my local cinema until early 2025.

Sentimental Value (Dir: Joachim Trier)

The Worst Person in the World is one of my favourite films of the last decade, so I was naturally very excited to see a preview of Joachim Trier’s follow-up. Trier is a filmmaker who is seemingly going from strength to strength and I can't wait to see what he does next.

I'd also like to highlight Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning who are all fantastic. I wouldn't be surprised if Skarsgård takes home Best Supporting Actor at the upcoming academy awards. This is one of the year’s standouts for me.

Young Mothers (Jeunes Mères) (Dir: The Dardenne Brothers)

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne returned to the big screen earlier this year with their latest film Young Mothers. The film follows five women: Jessica, Perla, Julie, Naïma, Ariane and their children, who are all housed in a centre for young mothers. The brothers’ deliver another exceptional film here. The final sequence is one of the most moving scenes I have seen in recent years.

The Ballad of Wallis Island (Dir: James Griffiths)

Not only did The Ballad of Wallis Island give us a range of catchy folk songs like Give Your Love and Slip Away, it’s also a moving tale of past loves and heartbreak. The film is one of the most heartfelt British comedies of the last few years.

Originally a 2007 short film (The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island) by director James Griffiths, The Ballad of Wallis Island was shot by DOP G Magni Ágústsson, ÍKS, who we sat down with a few months ago for a chat about his work on the film.

Have a read here!

Alex Harper

Hamnet (Dir: Chloé Zhao)

'Grief is just love, with nowhere to go.' It's a well-worn idea, phrased here by Georgia Ellery, yet it feels like a fundamental truth. Hamnet breathes life into it anew, in its imagined account of the love and loss shared between Agnes (Jessie Buckley) and William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal). She allows her heart to open to him when he proves that he can understand her, he just needs the tool of storytelling to express his emotion; she threatens to close it when that same tool is used to tell the story of their greatest loss. Chloé Zhao is comfortably back in her realist roots, crafting with her cast and crew a film at once heavy and healing, beautiful in its truth. 

Left-Handed Girl (Dir: Shih-Ching Tsou)

A film of collective experience, of being absorbed within an ecosystem, that reaches a hand out offering us the same treatment. The kaleidoscopic markets of Taipei, stalls selling Liáng Mian, a pet Meerkat chasing a ball on the street. A family made dysfunctional by tradition. The burdens hefted upon mother Shu-fen (Janel Tsai) by the generations above and below; the expectations on high-school dropout I-ann (Ma Shih-yuan) for her looks, her status; the nascent belief system of impressionable I-jing (Nina Ye), a "devil-handed" lefty, as she navigates the broadening world. Tsou Shih-ching has developed quietly alongside collaborator Sean Baker since their effort Take Out, building upon her ability to paint personal history and microscopic reality with natural ease. Chen Ko-chin's astonishing iPhone cinematography is the cherry on top: not a single wasted shot.

It Was Just an Accident (Dir: Jafar Panahi)

Accidents happen for a reason. A stray dog in the road, a damaged car, mechanic Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) overhearing the distinct squeak of his former torturer Eqbal's (Ebrahim Azizi) prosthetic leg. He kidnaps the man, digs his grave, and when justice is about to be served, there is a doubt. A cadre of former political prisoners and Eqbal's victims come to dispel the question of his identity and see punishment served, only to face the farcical intricacies and systems of Iran and their own moral conscience as opponents, not perpetrators, of the regime. Jafar Panahi has sacrificed a lot to make this guerilla tour-de-force revenge thriller. Sensitive, perceptive, and devastatingly aware of reality— to protest a broken system with compassion may be just, but it won't leave you free. 

Bugonia (Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos)

Yorgos Lanthimos leans into the most razor sharp edges of his sensibilities in this absurdist satire, where a big-pharma CEO (Emma Stone) is kidnapped by two bumbling but radicalised conspiracy theorists (Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis) on account of her being an Alien. Well, Supposedly... Bugonia is a bleakly funny and timely treatise on the forgottens of the world, where indignation becomes righteousness and conspiracy becomes fact. Humanity is stripped down to a crusade, and Lanthimos ripostes with maybe the most absurd idea imaginable: what if we are the ones who have abandoned empathy, where the chaotic universe hasn't?

Twinless (Dir: James Sweeney)

After the sudden death of his brother, Roman (Dylan O'Brien) attends a support group for bereaved twins and strikes up an unlikely bromance with the prickly Dennis (James Sweeney, who also directs). They each represent different strands of unrequited neediness, as Roman's earnest, pained yearning plays unstoppable force/immovable object with Dennis' defensive shell of rejection anxiety. It's an insightful, heartfelt study of grief and co-dependency, until it absolutely isn't. Sweeney pulls the rug and what follows is hilarious and utterly diabolical. 

Train Dreams (Dir: Clint Bentley)

An American epic that dares to be humble and small. Adapted from Denis Johnson's acclaimed novella by the creative duo of Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar (the former directing), we witness the full life of a logger (Joel Egerton) bound to self-imposed hermitude. His story is not told with grandeur, posture, or reflexivity— just the gentle flow of a life lived, and the moments of beautiful inconsequence that pull all the everyday, ordinary experiences that make up an existence into the most startling focus.