My Favourite Films of 2025
As promised, I’m taking ten minutes to write up a list of my favourite films of 2025. Having no TV, I spend an awful lot of time in the cinema and am particularly grateful to have the world’s best independent cinema on my doorstep. I fully intend to spend as much time as possible loitering in the QFT in 2026. I’d also like to recommend a novel called Brian by Jeremy Cooper (Fitzcarraldo Editions) which I read this year. It’s a lovesong to arthouse cinema and manages to capture exactly what I love so much about the cinema experience and why it’s so different to watch movies on the small screen. If you like arthouse cinema, you might enjoy it too.
2025 was a cracking year for movies and I’ve failed to get my list of favourite new watches down below twenty. Here they are in no particular order aside from Sorry, Baby and No Direction Home which were my top watches of the year. My criteria for enjoying a film is pretty simple. Did I lose myself in the story? Did I think about the film after I left the cinema? Did the characters and plot have veracity? Did watching it change me in some small way?
Sorry, Baby
No Direction Home
A House of Dynamite
Deaf
Late Shift
Train Dreams
Pavements
A Want in Her
Bogonia
Sinners
Nickel Boys
Blue Road - The Edna O’Brien Story
I’m Still Here
Young Mothers
Weapons
A Real Pain
Caught Stealing
Dreams, Love, Sex - Oslo Stories Trilogy (this is sort of cheating as it was 3 films)
Hard Truths
Lollipop