The calendar is on its last page yet again and it’s Year In Review week here. Let’s kick it off with my 10 favourite movies of 2025* – a surprisingly excellent year for mainstream Hollywood where a lot of clever and edgy horror and drama managed to sneak into cinemas.
*Despite the modern age we live in, New Zealand still sometimes gets movies a bit later, so a few releases that were officially in 2024 didn’t make it to our screens until this year. Still, I’m including them, because I’m in charge here! (This also means there’s more than a few acclaimed 2025 films that haven’t gotten here just yet like Hamnet and Marty Supreme.)
My top 10 of 2025:
1. One Battle After Another – Was there any other choice, really? Paul Thomas Anderson has been one of the world’s finest directors for the past 25 years, and this year feels like the year that everyone finally noticed. I wish it had been a bigger box office hit but in the American shitshow of 2025 the mere fact this exists is awesome.
2. Sinners – After Black Panther and Creed, we should’ve already known Ryan Coogler was the real deal, but he takes it to another level in this unexpected smash hit that tackles America’s blood-spattered history and marries it with the power of music, the horror of the unexpected and a series of achingly romantic tragedies.
3. Frankenstein – Trust Guillermo Del Toro to give fresh new blood to a frequently filmed tale. With darkly gorgeous and tactile lush design and a heartbreaking turn by Jacob Elordi as an oddly sexy version of the monster, Del Toro’s passion project is lush, gory and epic, like a fusion of the Universal and Hammer-era Frankenstein tales. Kind of like his Shape of Water, I very much felt like Guillermo made this movie just for me as a cool little secret to share between mates.
4. Superman – Thank god, for the first time in decades we’ve got a Superman movie that’s light in spirit and doesn’t hammer us with dreary Jesus symbolism. Embracing the silliness of the Silver Age comics – Metamorpho! – and anchored by David Corenswet’s endearingly cheerful performance, Superman was the freshest comic book movie of the year.
5. Prime Minister – The rise and fall and rise again of a New Zealand politician, the story of Jacinda Ardern is far more candid than I’d imagined it could be. It’s a wonderful documentary but it’s also kind of heart-breaking, because in the world we’re currently in I can’t see politicians who act like actual human beings instead of sneering hypocritical grifters ever getting anywhere again.
6. A Complete Unknown – This one didn’t open in NZ until early 2025, and left a big grin on my face the whole time. The music biopic is a cliche by now but this succeeds by giving us a single slice of Bob Dylan’s career, and fantastic performances by Timothee Chalamet, Ed Norton and Monica Barbaro. Rose-coloured and sanitised like all biopics, but delightful all the same.
7. Pavements – A film festival favourite that finally showed up in New Zealand this year, this uncategorisable mockumentary is probably the best possible movie that could be made about Pavement, reimagining their slacker anthem songs as fodder for rock musicals, a museum and pretentious Hollywood biopic, and sloshing fake and real together in the perfect tribute to this beautifully eccentric band.
8. Bugonia – We don’t talk enough about how awesome Emma Stone has become, and how wild this former romantic comedy star’s career choices have been – a conniving commoner in The Favourite, a sexual Frankenstein in Poor Things, and then a career woman who might just be an alien in the wild Bugonia, the latest button-pushing insanity from Stone’s welcome muse Yorgos Lanthimos.
9. 28 Years Later – A zombie movie three-quel that goes in incredibly unexpected directions, deep into a post-extinction Britain and anchored by a riveting family drama and an all-time third act performance by Ralph Fiennes. Not at all what anyone expected 23 years after 28 Days Later – like everyone else, I’m still unpacking the Jimmys – but I loved its crazy swerves, and am dying to see where it goes in the upcoming 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.
10. Eddington – Ari Aster’s blunt weapon of a satire about America during Covid is never subtle, but it’s confrontingly hilarious in its story of a small town sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix, excellent) caught up in pandemic unrest. It escalates somewhere beyond cringe comedy to the point of being truly uncomfortable, just like watching America has been this year. I haven’t seen another film yet that so starkly confronts that American society has, well, kind of lost its bloody mind in the last few years.
And just all lurking around #11, the runners up: The Phoenician Scheme, Conclave, Thunderbolts*, Sentimental Value, Wake Up Dead Man, Weapons, The Brutalist, Companion, Pee Wee As Himself, Fantastic Four: First Steps
Nik Dirga 