I watched over 130 films in 2025, which is not bad going at all. Some of those were new films, some were rewatches, and some were films I was long overdue watching for the first time. It takes discipline and careful planning to get through this much time sitting on the sofa, so I have a weekly film viewing routine going which runs more or less as follows:
- Friday night is Horror Night. Can be new horror, old horror, or old favourites. Just has to be horror. Most of the time.
- Sunday night is alternately Family Movie Night (where I introduce my boys, primarily my youngest, to movies they should see and will hopefully enjoy) or My Movie Night (where I pick a film I haven’t seen before either that I feel I should watch or because I want to. Sometimes it’s even both.)
- Friday afternoon is occasionally Cinema Club where me and my eldest son will sit down and watch some classic of cinema; often one neither of us have seen, or sometimes one that I want to introduce my son to.
Watching films with my kids is always awesome. My youngest (13 currently) has a remarkable capacity for enjoying movies that should be well beyond his years. My eldest, meanwhile, has turned into a true cinephile and it was at his urging that I’ve finally got around to watching essentials like Lawrence of Arabia and exploring the works of Akira Kurosawa.
I’m certainly not going to go though every movie I watched in 2025 below (you can thank me in the comments) but I am going to pick out a few that have made a particularly big impression. So let’s go for it.
Favourite new film
Unashamedly my favourite newly released film of last year was Predator Badlands. I went to the cinema to see it with my eldest son and was a little grouchy about the extreme cost of the trip (cinema has gotten so expensive these days I’m not surprised the industry is struggling). However, we picked a fancy cinema, had a good lunch, and it turned out to be an awesome afternoon out and a great movie.
There’s been lots written about the ‘Disneyfication’ of the Predator franchise and even more ridiculous pieces about, shall we charitably say, making the predator weak. Now I absolutely loved Dan Trachtenberg’s previous entry, Prey, but there’s no denying that prior to that the franchise was in crisis. Predators was pretty good, but the basic premise is otherwise not that variable or adaptable (as with most monster movies you can only tell a story about an alien creature hunting humans in so many ways before you either repeat yourself or stray so far from the essential components that you’re making a different movie).
With Badlands, Trachtenberg made the bold choice to make the Predator the central character; the protagonist rather than the antagonist. For this to work the character has to be vulnerable otherwise there’s no tension (there’s a reason almost every Superman movie has kryptonite). The result is a sci-fi romp that may tone down the violence but more than makes up for it with sheer fun and delivers some of the best sci-fi screen action since the days of Aliens.
Favourite rewatch
Now that my eldest son is finally old enough, we’ve embarked on a rewatch (for me, at least) of Game Of Thrones. Consequently, when we sat down to watch a movie while season one was fresh in our minds, he was craving something with a fantasy flavour. I immediately pulled out The Green Knight, which I’d already watched twice and figured it was the perfect blend of fantasy themes and stunning cinema craft.
Sure enough my son loved it. Being able to introduce my family to awesome movies is one of my favourite things—and when they enjoy those movies it’s the cherry on top.
It remains one of the most visually unique films I’ve seen; a perfect blend of CGI and cinematography creating something that has the aesthetic sense of a much older film but wouldn’t have been possible to make more than about 5 or 10 years ago. Not only is it visually dense; it also has plenty of thematic depth to it. In fact, following this last viewing I tucked into a two-hour-long visual essay on YouTube that gave me an even broader appreciation for the film.
Favourite overdue first watch
It’s taken me eight long years to finally sit down and watch Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and then most of last year to question why I’d deprived myself of this gem for so long. Definitely some of this was down to the Oscar buzz surrounding the movie—those that are deemed worthy of Oscars are often, though not always, films that I’m not particularly interested in. The other deterrent for me was the assumption that this was a gritty, down-to-earth drama about a mother trying to get justice for her daughter’s murder.
Instead it’s probably one of the funniest movies I watched last year. It certainly doesn’t shy away from the grimmer aspects of the story it’s telling but the combination of a fantastic cast, a sparkling script and a bunch of compelling characters makes this more akin to a Coen brothers movie (though I’m wary of making that comparison as it really doesn’t do justice to writer/director Martin McDonagh who, with films like In Bruges and Banshees of Inisherin has crafted his own cinematic niche).
I also have to give honorable mentions to three other films. A friend recommended I watch First Blood (in the wake of my 1982 top 10 post wherein I revealed I had never seen it) and not only did I thoroughly enjoy it, but it’s stuck with me. It’s one of those movies that’s constructed like a 1970s movie (you can almost, but not quite, imagine it being a Clint Eastwood vehicle) while clearly bringing in some of those 1980s action and exploitation sensibilities that rode so well on home video. It’s a solid exploration of trauma that doesn’t let its deeper themes get in the way of the action.
I also (at the suggestion of my eldest son) watched Requiem For A Dream for the first time last year. Famously a seriously depressing film, I found there was such a meticulous joy taken in the way it was made that I came away from it feeling bizarrely uplifted. It’s quite an experience.
I also watched the three-hour Russian science fiction epic Stalker for the first time. Twice, no less. Alex Garland’s Annihilation is probably one of my favourite films from the last decade and I went down something of a rabbit hole last year after learning that it had thematic ties to the novel Roadside Picnic, and that Stalker was an adaptation of said novel. My first viewing of Stalker took place over several sessions (watching on my iPad in the evenings of one week). I enjoyed it enough to watch it again with my eldest son not too long after, and we did it in two sittings that time. My son, budding cinephile that he is, loved it and we’ve talked about it a lot since that viewing.
Favourite horror
I’m going to cheat and pick two favourites here simply because I can’t decide between the two. There was a lot of hype about Sinners and I felt optimistic enough that the good reviews were reliable that I did something I almost never do and shelled out for the 4k without waiting for it to get reduced anywhere. Director Ryan Coogler said somewhere that he wanted to ‘provide a full-course meal’ for the viewer and that is exactly on the money. When the credits rolled on Sinners I felt like I’d been on an exquisitely crafted journey and I felt more than satisfied.
There’s no denying it’s a long movie and, if you’re waiting for the horror bits to start, you’re going to be hanging around for a while first. However, that first part of the journey is filled with beautiful cinematography, a great double performance from Michael B Jordan and an exquisite soundtrack (luckily the second part is full of those same things too, as well as vampires!). There’s also a bravura musical sequence midway through (the one that everyone talks about) which was so incredible I had to grab my son the next morning and make him watch it.
As for my second choice, I’d heard lots of buzz about Heretic but didn’t get around to watching it until it finally hit streaming last year. While I love the story and the themes it explores, I am all over Hugh Grant in this movie. I loved him in Four Weddings, and I’ve enjoyed him in numerous other movies, but to see him take that natural charm and twist it into something truly sinister is an absolute delight. It’s one of those movies that I wanted to watch again as soon as the credits rolled.
I’m also going to give a nod to the 1980 psychological horror Possession which I’m not sure I was particularly aware of before last year but heard enough about to decide that I should give it a watch. It’s a baffling, disturbing, unique experience that I couldn’t get out of my head afterwards. It’s got the most unhinged performances from Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani. I almost immediately went and bought a copy of it on 4k because I knew that sooner or later I was going to want to see it again. Though not for a while …
Favourite Sci-Fi Hidden gem
Several years ago, when Netlfix was much better than it is today (and much cheaper) I used to enjoy trawling through the numerous sci-fi hidden gems that you could find in its catalogue. These would often end up being my Sunday night viewing so I’ve been very happy to find a few such movies (none of which were on Netflix) for my Sunday evenings over the last year. All three of the films I’m listing here were featured on various youtube channels and I’m grateful for that because I probably wouldn’t have been aware they even existed otherwise.
Vesper is an European production which was apparently made for peanuts but looks absolutely stunning. Seriously there are visuals in this film unmatched elsewhere. The story revolves around familiar science fiction themes of artificial intelligence as well as the haves and have-nots and it is set in a world struggling after environmental collapse. The ending might not land for everyone (I liked it, even though it wasn’t exactly conclusive) but this one is definitely worth it for the journey.
The Artifice Girl, unsurprisingly, deals with the development of artificial intelligence and features an in-development AI as the central character, with the drama deriving from the few humans in the cast who have to decide whether their creation is sentient or not. That summary is definitely underselling it. The story is broken down into three chapters, each set in a single location which makes for an unusual but gripping style of presentation (you could easily see this working as a stage play).
Tatum Mathews, only 13 at the time of the film’s release, is remarkable as the title character while writer-director Franklin Ritch is also excellent as Gareth, the developer. His character is played, in the third chapter, by Lance Henriksen which is a delight (and introduces a perhaps unintentional link to the thematically similar game Detroit: Become Human).
Finally, The Assessment is built around an incredible performance by Alicia Vikander (who also stars in one my very favourite AI movies, Ex Machina) as the Assessor sent to determine whether Elizabeth Olsen and Himesh Patel’s couple are worthy of having a child (yes, this is, again, a dystopian future). This is perfect science fiction in that the strength of the story comes from the very human themes and the challenges that the couple are forced to tackle as part of the assessment process, but this is all enabled and enhanced by the setting without the movie ever shouting “yes! we’re in the future!”.
Your favourite movie watch of 2025? Let me know in the comments.