2025 in Review: Nathaniel's "Best" List (Pt 1)

by Nathaniel R

Begonia, Marty Supreme, Nouvelle Vague, and Kill the Jockey were among the best films of the year

PART ONE. One of the greatest and worst things about the cinema is that it is a perpetually overflowing cup. Discourse about Hollywood always leans toward sky-is-falling “end of” cinema/moviegoing due to horrid socioeconomic and public behavioral reasons. Yet at the  same time we can never keep up so it’s a fact that artists all over the world are still making cinema like the artform will never go out of style. There is literally always more to see and more in any given year than can be seen by any person, on any size of a screen. (If you love catching up on older films this pleasure/problem is exponentially more true.)

In that spirit of “overflowing” here are some darlings and honorable mentions before we get to the Top Dozen tomorrow and at least one of the ways in which they surpassed reasonable expectations...

Unranked
DOCUMENTARY DARLINGS

I can’t truly compare documentaries to narrative features because I find the goals so wildly different than narrative features (a personal limitation - others don't have this problem) but here are the two I loved most for 2025...

LIZA: A TRULY TERRIFIC ABSOLUTELY TRUE STORY

LIZA: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story  - I knew this doc on “Miss Showbiz” herself would be entertaining but Bruce David Klein's film did that one better by being  unexpectedly focused on a single topic (the way her influences shaped her) rather than trying a dull wikipedia profile approach. I caught my boyfriend watching it a second time the other day and then he asked to see "Liza with a Z". Since I’m still trying to indoctrinate him into the Cult of Liza & Judy, I think I probably owe Bruce David Klein a drink if I ever meet him.

COME SEE ME IN THE GOOD LIGHT - The other doc I loved this year, from Goodnight Oppy director Ryan White and producer Tig Notaro, was a profile of the poet Andrea Gibson. The film primarily focuses on Gibson's marriage and their determination to live the last years of life to the fullest despite a lot of pain and rollercoaster uncertainties from a terminal cancer diagnosis. It's true triumph, I'd argue, is fully sharing Gibson's passion for appreciating everything so it ends up being more than just a cancer movie. It organically folds in a retrospective of the poet's career, their dating history, fears about returning to work, ideas about writing, and even a seriously great Original Song from Sara Bareilles and Brandi Carlisle (which Oscar's music branch passed on because they're maddening fools like that).  Gibson died in the Spring of 2025 but what a gift that they were able to attend the Sundance premiere before their passing. The movie is now an Oscar nominee for Best Documentary Feature. 

Tier 3
HONORABLE MENTIONS - ALPHA ORDER

Remember that Grace Jones tune “I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect For You)” ? That’s the way I imagine these movies feel for someone out there. They felt easy to obsess over even if I didn’t quite. For me these pictures are closer to the Carly Rae Jepsen song “I Really Really Really Really Really Really Like you”. They gave me joy in their own ways and I’ll take joy wherever I can get it.

BABY

BABY - This 2024 festival film was a finalist for Brazil's Oscar submission in 2025 (the honor eventually went to The Secret Agent) and is well worth seeking out now that it's available in the US. The basic focus -- the relationship between a young street hustler and the aging sex worker who mentors him -- will be familiar from endless gay indies (gay indies love hustlers as protagonists as much as mainstream movies love assassins as an actual profession). This one, though, is special for its authenticity, sizzle, genuine craftmanship, and unexpectedly strong performances (take a bow Ricardo Teodoro). It also locates tender feelings and a certain survivor joie-de-vivre in otherwise hopeless circumstances.

BUGONIA  - While I understand it might be inferior to the movie its remaking (Save the Green Planet) and I also understand why Lanthimos' nihilistic worldview is already wearing out its welcome for many cinephiles, I couldn’t possibly care when his movies are presented so stylishly and crafted so impeccably. Plus this one offers up Emma Stone doing a hilariously commanding vivisection of ultra wealthy corporate overloads. She's so certain of her own superiority that the worker bees at her office and her unhinged captor (Jesse Plemmons, also strong) might as well be a different species altogether. The ending has been taken literally everywhere I've looked and in every conversation I've heard, but I'd offer that there's a non-literal way to read it that's not as "twisty".

KILL THE JOCKEY - Argentina’s memorable 2024 Oscar submission hit American arthouses in 2025 and those who skipped it missed out. I won’t soon forget the black comedy of Remo’s self-obliteration or the surrealism of Delores' miraculous emergence from his hospital room or the way Luis Ortega (El Angel) and his team soundscaped and visualized them.

LITTLE AMELIE, OR THE CHARACTER OR RAIN

LITTLE AMELIE OR THE CHARACTER OF RAIN - While KPop Demon Hunters is surely on its way to a not undeserved Oscar win in Best Animated Feature, my personal vote would go to Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han's idiosyncratic charmer. It has the traditional merits of many a great animated feature (strong visual style, image-based storytelling, glorious sense of color, memorable sense of humor) but it runs deeper than that, too, as it tells the story of a Belgian family living in Japan and the complications of their daughter's relationship to her nanny.  I was especially taken with its psychological boldness. The movie fully commits to Amelie's two-year old egocentrism and actually positions her as a god. This world does revolve around her... at least at first. 

MARTY SUPREME - I keep hearing Josh Safdie’s electric sports drama / character portrait described as a natural successor or twin (in quality) to his previous sweaty critical darling (Uncut Gems). I suppose I get the comparison but I hated the former; This time I am reluctantly fangirling!  What a difference a genuine movie star (Timothée Chalamet) forcibly lowering your every defense can make. To his credit and a sure sign we're dealing with a very long career in its infancy, Chalamet can turn the star wattage way the help up without sanding down any edges of a character for simple "likeability". I’ve never related to Gwyneth Paltrow more as she moves through the picture like I did watching it: repulsed, annoyed, intrigued, embarrassed, stressed, disoriented, and turned on all at once. 

MICKEY 17

MICKEY 17- Bong Joon Ho had an absolutely impossible task following up his masterpiece Parasite. Nothing was going to suffice so we loved the genre swerve in order to take another swing at the same pet topic. Robert Pattinson’s funny, weird, and intentionally half-formed creation as a clone who hasn’t ever imagined a real identity for himself outside of the indentured grind of very late stage capitalism (yes, it will get worse!) was the year’s most undervalued star turn, Leading Actor division. 

NOUVELLE VAGUE  -Richard Linklater's latest improbable triumph is an homage to the French New Wave by way of doing a 'making of Breathless' comedy. That it's this feather-light when most would have gone heavy-handed to describe a a seismic sea-change in cinema history is something to be treasured even if it means the pleasure is ephemeral. The latter feels like a feature not a bug;  We rarely know in the now which of our days or artistic experiments might bear future fruit. 

THE SECRET AGENT  - I wouldn’t ever attempt my own version of the fawning “masterpiece” praise that Kleber Mendonca’s Filho’s latest has become accustomed to receiving. Still,  there’s no denying that the overstuffed, political, and provocative Brazilian Oscar contender about a leftist professor in hiding during “a time of great mischief” in Brazil has riches galore. That is if and when you can connect to its central story about a leftist professor in hiding during fascism amidst its many meandering passages. Despite my undeniable yearning for a tighter running time and more narrative focus I’ll readily admit that we many of the picture's real highlights --  a  janus cat, that kinky dentist appointment, the story of “The Hairy Leg”, or the endearing group portrait of similarly displaced refugees  --wouldn't even have happened if Mendoça didn’t love to meander.

SORRY BABY

SORRY BABY  - While I would like to claim that I never pre-judge movies, I am only human. Sometimes when I arrive late to an abundantly praised title, my defenses are up and I assume the praise is unwarranted and hyperbolic and a product of sharing a filmmakers politics. I was so happy to be wrong even if I didn't quite understand the need for directing awards (the screenplay is where it's at!!!) Eva Victor's light and funny touch and personality-filled quirks somehow never feel at odds with the deadly serious heavy topic. It's a minor miracle when you add in the fact that she was multi-tasking through all of it as writer / director and star. May the sophomore effort, whenever it comes, be even better!

TRAIN DREAMS - I'm so happy to have been on the Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley train right from the start. I remember hoping I'd see more from them after their little seen or discussed debut Transpecos (2016) and here we are, multiple Oscar nominations later with a gorgeously realized poetic film about an everyman's life in the early 20th century. While the emotions can be tumultuous and haunted, Train Dreams has a kind of marvelously serene or spiritual core -- that's something you almost never see in an American motion picture. 

VIE PRIVEE (A PRIVATE LIFE) - Longtime readers know that French cinema was one of my three gateway drugs to my cinephilia (the others were the Oscars and a repertory movie theater very close to my childhood home). So to see a genuinely iconic American actress dropped right in to a very French movie, fluent and thriving, was a unique thrill.  I consider this odd anti-thriller about a therapist (Jodie Foster) who becomes convinced her suicidal patient (Virginie Efira) was murdered to be another win for the very talented writer/director Rebecca Zlotowsky (Other People's Children). I hope more people will eventually start caring about Zlotowsky's filmography. But back to Jodie: Between this, Nyad, and True Detective, one of the most thrilling actress of the 1990s is finally back where she belongs... in front of cameras. And yes she will be one of my Best Actress nominees.

VIET AND NAM

VIET & NAM -  I'll confess that I wasn't always sure what Trương Minh Quý was doing or going for in his narrative feature debut which premiered at Cannes 2024 before making its way to the US in 2025. But I place the blame on my own lack of sociopolitical awareness of Vietnam and its history. The film is clearly politically minded as it circles its countries ghosts and alludes to its migration boom. But whatever my own confusion, spectacular scene work goes a long way with this movie-lover and Viet and Name has not one but  three sequences I doubt I'll ever forget: a sex scene in a coal mine, a psychic in a graveyard, and an ending that feels like a psychic echo, a literal tragedy, and a surreal nightmare, depending on what you take from it. 

Tomorrow in part two ... my dozen favourite films of 2025

Comments

[DK]

I liked Bugonia a lot, way more than Poor Things.

But really—I can’t believe more hasn’t been written about Lanthimos and women. His last several movies have been all about turning female suffering/degradation/humiliation into entertainment—the pornier, more graphic, more dehumanizing, the better. He's more interested in what's happening to their bodies/images than he is with what's happening inside their heads.

And look, I love Dogville, The Piano Teacher, etc.—I’m not squeamish or overly PC about this stuff. But at this point it feels like a really gross crutch Lanthimos uses (and Emma Stone enthusiastically subjects herself to) to create his tone, and I’m over it. It's super trashy, increasingly perverted, not at all enlightening or meaningful.

I’ve said this: She needs to find her Mike Nichols, her Jonathan Demme, someone who can offer a more humanistic showcase for those gifts. She's so good in Bugonia, the nomination is well deserved, and she's at the peak of her powers right now. She could do anything she wants and she chooses to keep returning to this trash.