2025 in film: Kent's Five Faves (plus two old ones)

I'm not a professional film reviewer. If you're here, reading this, you're keenly aware of that fact. I don't have any responsibility to anyone but myself to review and/or critique films. I do it because my brain doesn't work well at storing information, so if I want to remember what I thought of a film, or how it affected me, or trigger the memory of the film, I need to have it written down somewhere. If anyone outside of me wants to read it, or likes to read it, well, that's kind of nice.

Since I'm not a professional film reviewer, I don't see a lot of films. I mean I think I watch more films than the average person does, but I'm not in the theatre multiple times a week watching screenings of soon-to-be-released or newly-released movies. I'd like to, but I have a day job. If I get to the theatre to watch a film, it's because something drew me there, whether it's writer, director, star, theme, genre, property, word-of-mouth...and also I'm not the most adventurous film goer, so I only branch outside of my comfort zone a little bit.  Like, I've heard about the films of Jafar Panahi for years, but I've yet to see one, despite 2025's It Was Just An Accident being highly praised from the get go, and making many, many, many top ten lists. I'd like to see it, sometime, but there's no telling once we get outside of this review and awards season whether I will (once the conversation dies down, so does my interest).

I don't recall having done a "best of" list on this site before, primarily because I have never seen enough of a year's films to ever feel legitimate in saying "these are the year's best films".  Friend and reader Shawn asked me about a month back what my favourite film of the year was, and I didn't have an answer for him. I've been pondering it ever since. This is the result of that pondering.

This is not a "best of 2025" list. These are just the films that came out in 2025 that I have seen that excited me the most or had me thinking the most about them afterwards (it looks like it might be alphabetical order, but it's not). 

1. Bugonia - I can't even explain why this made the top of my list. It's a weird film that plays with all expectations and feels like a forgotten 70's sci-fi thriller mixed with experimental cinema that also doubles as an environmental crisis warning and anticapitalism screed. It feels old and very now.
2. Materialists - or how I learned to stop worrying and love Dakota Johnson. Probably making no one else's top ten list but mine... this one could have been something so superficial and yet it wormed its way deep into my brain.
3. Sinners - an incredible cast delivers incredible performances in a film from an incredible director with music by an incredible composer. Just a rich text that blends action, horror, music and historical critique at once. Plus it has the single best scene in cinema this year.
4. Superman - The new movie that I've rewatched the most this year because I can't believe there's a Superman movie that feels like the Superman I've been reading in comics for forever. Vying for top spot of my favourite superhero movies ever.
5. Splitsville - The surprise of the year for me, and ... another Dakota Johnson movie? It's no secret that comedies in cinema are scarce these days, and if they do pop up they're usually of the action-comedy variety (re: Anaconda) but here we have just a straight up comedy for adults that isn't centred on making the audience uncomfortable. What a ribald gift of a film.

Nearly made it (this is in alphabetical order): Frankenstein (pretty), Honey Don't! (I suspect I'm its only defender), One of Them Days (funny), One Battle After Another (theres...a lot going on), Train Dreams (mundanely dreamy), Wake Up Dead Man (Josh O'Connor is everything), Weapons (goddamn fun)

70% of the films I watched last year were not released in 2025, and less than 15% of what I watched last year were re-watches (mostly Coen Brothers movies). Of all the new-to-me older films I watched, two took up more of my brain space than any others: 

1. Purple Rain - Prince's origin story told in the guise of fiction. A bizarre movie that is either a full-on calamity or a masterpiece. Why not both?
2. The Swimmer - Burt Lancaster's story of a seemingly effervescent charmer who decides to pool-hop his way home slowly reveals he's in full-on crisis. Has a day gone by that I haven't thought about this film since seeing it? Well, yes, but not many.