{"id":310400,"date":"2025-12-11T08:16:20","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T08:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/310400\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T08:16:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T08:16:20","slug":"the-best-films-of-2025-from-mickey-17-to-one-battle-after-another","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/310400\/","title":{"rendered":"The best films of 2025, from Mickey 17 to One Battle After Another"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Your support helps us to tell the story<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-1uza6dc-0 iCTyfe\">From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it&#8217;s investigating the financials of Elon Musk&#8217;s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, &#8216;The A Word&#8217;, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-1uza6dc-0 iCTyfe\">At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-1uza6dc-0 iCTyfe\">The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.<\/p>\n<p>Your support makes all the difference.Read more<\/p>\n<p>When I think of 2025, I can\u2019t help but think of how it started, with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/films\/features\/david-lynch-death-movies-twin-peaks-director-b2681401.html\" title=\"David Lynch, the visionary artist who made films that no one else could\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the loss of a titan and a personal hero of mine<\/a>, David Lynch. In my confused and frightened teenage years, I caught a late-night showing of Blue Velvet on television and I remember what it taught me: that, yes, the world is a very cruel place. There is an evil that breeds in its soil and bubbles up to the surface in new, awful ways every single day. But there is also love. And love can sometimes be found in the movies. They can promise you that tomorrow will be better. And you can believe it.<\/p>\n<p>I can\u2019t help, then, but also think of how the year has ended, with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/tv\/news\/netflix-warner-bros-deal-b2878787.html\" title=\"Netflix to acquire Warner Bros in massive $82.7B deal for the streaming giant\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">an endless news ticker of corporate monopolies<\/a>, mass layoffs, and advancing AI, and how the entire industry behind the films we love, the little beacons of light, feels so at risk. But still, despite the obstacles, 2025 has provided me (and I hope you) with <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/films\/reviews\">so many of those little beacons of light<\/a>. We should treasure them.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d like to celebrate my favourite 15 films from this year below.<\/p>\n<p>15. Mickey 17<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Film_Review_-_Mickey_17_08000.jpg\"  loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Naomi Ackie and Robert Pattinson in \u2018Mickey 17\u2019\" class=\"sc-1mc30lb-0 ggpMaE inline-gallery-btn\"\/><\/p>\n<p>open image in gallery<\/p>\n<p>Naomi Ackie and Robert Pattinson in \u2018Mickey 17\u2019 (Warner Bros)<\/p>\n<p>As of now, Warner Bros\u2019s future, and potentially the wider viability of theatrical distribution, hangs in the balance. CEO David Zaslav\u2019s disastrous time at the studio\u2019s helm has ended with the company now at the centre of a hostile acquisition war between Paramount and Netflix over its studio and streaming assets. Ironically, Warner Bros has had one of its strongest years critically and commercially on screen, between the likes of Sinners, Superman, Weapons, One Battle After Another, and, in the US, F1. <\/p>\n<p>And while Bong Joon-ho\u2019s $80m (\u00a363m) anti-capitalist, absurdist sci-fi follow-up to Parasite (2020) didn\u2019t quite make its return on investment, its unexpected kick from the wearily cynical to the life-affirming has stuck with me through the passing months. Between the yak-haired, insectoid \u201ccreepers\u201d; the utilitarian workplace comedy; Naomi Ackie\u2019s sunshine-beam grin; and Mark Ruffalo\u2019s very funny Trump-adjacent statesman; the real heart here lies in its luckless hero, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattison), who\u2019s signed up to work, die, be 3D-printed into existence again, work, die, be 3D-printed into existence again etc etc. By the time the credits roll, he\u2019s found an answer to the question: what\u2019s the point of being alive in a world that deems us worthless? That\u2019s made the apocalyptic feelings a little more manageable.<\/p>\n<p>14. Pillion <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/pillion-2.jpeg\"  loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsg\u00e5rd in \u2018Pillion\u2019\" class=\"sc-1mc30lb-0 ggpMaE inline-gallery-btn\"\/><\/p>\n<p>open image in gallery<\/p>\n<p>Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsg\u00e5rd in \u2018Pillion\u2019 (Picturehouse Entertainment)<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s been a banner year for cinematic kink. Thanks to both Babygirl and Pillion, there\u2019s some hope that general audiences will have walked away from 2025 with an understanding of BDSM that\u2019s a touch more developed than what lies, gagged and spanked, between the pages of Fifty Shades of Grey. It\u2019s not just that writer-director Harry Lighton\u2019s debut is sexy \u2013 and Harry Melling\u2019s Colin meekly declaring that he has \u201can aptitude for devotion\u201d to Alexander Skarsg\u00e5rd\u2019s leather-clad biker Ray is definitely sexy \u2013 but that it\u2019s sweet and deeply romantic, too, in how these two characters try to find harmony even when their desires might be at odds.<\/p>\n<p>With the full endorsement and involvement of the Gay Bikers Motorcycle Club, Lighton\u2019s loose adaptation of Adam Mars-Jones\u2019s novel Box Hill is a rhapsodic depiction of kink as community. There are countryside weekends with campfires and picnics tables and orgies. It\u2019s a film that involves <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/films\/features\/pillion-alexander-skarsgard-harry-melling-interview-b2872553.html\" title=\"Inside Alexander Skarsg\u00e5rd and Harry Melling\u2019s very kinky romcom: \u2018People can\u2019t believe the BBC funded it\u2019\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">delicate, intuitive work from Lighton, his actors, and especially from intimacy coordinator Robbie Taylor Hunt<\/a> \u2013 all to ensure that submission never comes across as coercion and that dominance is never equatable to cruelty. Cinema could always do with the kinds of shakeups Pillion offers.<\/p>\n<p>13. Hedda <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/HEDD_2024_UT_240124_TAGPAR_03071RC_3000.jpeg\"  loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Tessa Thompson, Nina Hoss and Imogen Poots in \u2018Hedda\u2019\" class=\"sc-1mc30lb-0 ggpMaE inline-gallery-btn\"\/><\/p>\n<p>open image in gallery<\/p>\n<p>Tessa Thompson, Nina Hoss and Imogen Poots in \u2018Hedda\u2019 (Prime Video)<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019d be easy to say writer-director Nia DaCosta delivered us <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/films\/features\/hedda-tessa-thompson-interview-b2840709.html\" title=\"Tessa Thompson on becoming a very different Hedda Gabler: \u2018People say she\u2019s terrible \u2013 I feel protective of her\u2019\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a total reinvention of Henrik Ibsen\u2019s play<\/a> Hedda Gabler and leave it at that. It\u2019s a shot of adrenaline. Who could resist? But, really, that undersells the achievement here. There are marked differences in its structure, in the way it teases the playwright\u2019s (reliably) tragic conclusion, in its relocation to a 1950s cocktail party at an English country home, in its changes to the race and gender of some of its characters. But, like another take on a classic that I\u2019ve placed at the very top of my list, DaCosta\u2019s vision is in total, enthusiastic alignment with Ibsen. Their souls touch. <\/p>\n<p>DaCosta commits, full-throated, to Ibsen\u2019s voracious, dissatisfied, cyclonic creation, to the stifled but exquisitely beautiful young woman who\u2019s tethered herself to a dull mind through marriage. Hedda (Tessa Thompson) is bitter enough to risk both the fortunes of an old flame, Eileen L\u00f6vborg (Nina Hoss), and an old schoolmate, Thea Clifton (Imogen Poots), for just a taste of their freedom. <\/p>\n<p>It matters that L\u00f6vborg, here, is a woman. It matters that this Hedda is Black. But these choices only accentuate the powder-keg instability of Ibsen\u2019s work, which DaCosta and Thompson capture with sensual command.<\/p>\n<p>12. Black Bag <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4237_D020_00093_RC3.jpeg\"  loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Cate Blanchett in \u2018Black Bag\u2019\" class=\"sc-1mc30lb-0 ggpMaE inline-gallery-btn\"\/><\/p>\n<p>open image in gallery<\/p>\n<p>Cate Blanchett in \u2018Black Bag\u2019 (Focus Features)<\/p>\n<p>What Pillion did for what\u2019s queer and kink, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/films\/features\/steven-soderbergh-black-bag-interview-b2732930.html\" title=\"Steven Soderbergh: \u2018I\u2019m cured of wanting to make anything you could label as \u201cimportant\u201d\u2019\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Steven Soderbergh<\/a>\u2019s spy thriller Black Bag did for what\u2019s heteronormative and monogamous. And, arguably, it had the harder job. The second of the director\u2019s two-punch of old school, cinematic craftsmanship \u2013 after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/films\/reviews\/presence-review-steven-soderbergh-b2684317.html\" title=\"Steven Soderbergh\u2019s Presence radically subverts the haunted house genre\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">his (also excellent) lo-fi POV ghost story<\/a> Presence \u2013 Black Bag is a film about the most sexily efficient marriage spliced together in such a sexily efficient way that every second of its 94-minute runtime is a thrill. <\/p>\n<p>Bedecked in soft leather trenches and cashmere turtlenecks, provided by costume designer Ellen Mirojnick, and followed around London by the elegant chime of David Holmes\u2019s score, Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender flex their martini-chilled appeal as married spies Kathryn and George Woodhouse. They move in the confident, languorous way that harkens back to an older kind of movie star, the kind who could control a scene with nothing but a flick of the hair or a subtle adjustment of the cuff. George hears there\u2019s a mole in the agency and one of the suspects is Kathryn. What\u2019s to be done? And when everyone\u2019s compromised by the malevolent vehicle that is international espionage, can there ever exist such a thing as a \u201cgood\u201d lie? <\/p>\n<p>11. From Ground Zero: Stories from Gaza<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/01C-from-ground-zero.jpeg\"  loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"\u2018Offerings\u2019, one of the short films in \u2018From Ground Zero: Stories From Gaza\u2019\" class=\"sc-1mc30lb-0 ggpMaE inline-gallery-btn\"\/><\/p>\n<p>open image in gallery<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Offerings\u2019, one of the short films in \u2018From Ground Zero: Stories From Gaza\u2019 (Cosmic Cat)<\/p>\n<p>In a year of beautiful, defiant work by Palestinian filmmakers, as well as non-Palestinians, about the genocide \u2013 among them Annemarie Jacir\u2019s Palestine 36, Sepideh Farsi\u2019s Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, and Mahdi Fleifel\u2019s To a Land Unknown \u2013 the one I particularly wanted to draw attention to is From Ground Zero: Stories from Gaza, produced by Palestinian filmmaker Rashid Masharawi. It\u2019s an anthology of 22 shorts, all made in Gaza at the end of 2023. It\u2019s truly remarkable. <\/p>\n<p>A multi-disciplinary work, combining fiction and documentary alongside stop-motion animation, it encompasses every experience, every outlook, every expression of heartbreak and every preservation of joy. Not only does it feel vital for us to witness this, but the film\u2019s as honest an examination of the value of art as you can find, expressed by artists having to make the most impossible decisions. What can the impulse to create survive? What sustains it?<\/p>\n<p>In Nidal Damo\u2019s \u201cEverything Is Fine\u201d, a comedian still tells jokes in the rubble. Etimad Washah appears on camera, several minutes into \u201cTaxi Wanissa\u201d, to tell us that her brother was killed by an Israeli bomb. She doesn\u2019t have the strength to complete her film. A project like this, really, should exist beyond the relative superficiality of lists and awards, but I\u2019ve placed it here in the hope that readers will seek it out. <\/p>\n<p>10. Bugonia <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Film_Review_-_Bugonia_85817.jpg\"  loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Aidan Delbis and Jesse Plemons in \u2018Bugonia\u2019\" class=\"sc-1mc30lb-0 ggpMaE inline-gallery-btn\"\/><\/p>\n<p>open image in gallery<\/p>\n<p>Aidan Delbis and Jesse Plemons in \u2018Bugonia\u2019 (Focus Features)<\/p>\n<p>As I wrote in my review of Bugonia, the world as of now \u201cfeels like the punchline to a joke someone would make on their deathbed\u201d. I think it explains my particular attraction to Mickey 17 and to this, Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019s darkest fable, still packed with its own moments of strange levity. Both are speculative fiction only in the outline. The maybe or maybe not of extraterrestrial life doesn\u2019t make much difference when the outsized loneliness of their downtrodden heroes feels as real and relevant as it can get. <\/p>\n<p>Yet Bugonia, which sees Lanthimos join forces with Succession writer Will Tracy for an adaptation of Jang Joon Hwan\u2019s Save the Green Planet! (2003), has a few added complications up its sleeve. That Teddy (Jesse Plemons) would kidnap the head of a pharmaceutical company (Emma Stone) makes an uncomfortable amount of sense once we understand that her need for profit destroyed his life, even if he\u2019s insisting she\u2019s really an alien emissary. <\/p>\n<p>Only Lanthimos has us constantly questioning where our empathy should lie: is this a righteous crusade? Or an excuse to inflict violence on a woman? At the centre of it all sits Teddy\u2019s cousin, Don (Aidan Delbis), a young autistic man who offers us our best hope for some moral clarity. See, Lanthimos isn\u2019t a nihilist, really. It can just be hard, sometimes, to be honest about humanity without coming across as one. <\/p>\n<p>9. Nosferatu <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Film_Review_-_Nosferatu_32607.jpg\"  loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Willem Dafoe and Lily-Rose Depp in \u2018Nosferatu\u2019\" class=\"sc-1mc30lb-0 ggpMaE inline-gallery-btn\"\/><\/p>\n<p>open image in gallery<\/p>\n<p>Willem Dafoe and Lily-Rose Depp in \u2018Nosferatu\u2019 (Focus Features)<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s no surprise that the Gothic has made such a sharp and sudden comeback with the likes of Robert Eggers\u2019s Nosferatu, Guillermo del Toro\u2019s Frankenstein, and, on the horizon, Emerald Fennell\u2019s Wuthering Heights and Radu Jude\u2019s Dracula. Their 19th century predecessors were issued from a place of deep uncertainty about the future, an impassioned reaction against industrialisation\u2019s destructive hold on all that is natural, spontaneous, emotional, and intangible. All the elements, ultimately, that make us human. <\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a profound comfort to be found, then, in returning to these stories in a year where AI poses a more enhanced version of the same threat. And in Nosferatu, the vampire, via FW Murnau\u2019s 1922 silent classic, is stripped back to his original, Gothic form, as the Jungian shadow self. He is a reflection of every repressed feminine desire, of the impulses women \u2013 both then and, regrettably, still now \u2013 have been told are shameful and perverse.<\/p>\n<p>These ideas are rendered authentically through the eyes of a young woman of the 1830s, Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) \u2013 targeted by the wraith-like Count Orlok (Bill Skarsg\u00e5rd). Gorgeously trimmed with Eggers\u2019s precise eye for historical detail, Nosferatu is hardly a dusty museum piece. There\u2019s ecstatic life pumping through every frame. <\/p>\n<p>8. One Battle After Another<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/rev-1-OBAA-DUS-R2v48J_021825-4_High_Res_JPEG.jpeg\"  loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Teyana Taylor in \u2018One Battle After Another\u2019\" class=\"sc-1mc30lb-0 ggpMaE inline-gallery-btn\"\/><\/p>\n<p>open image in gallery<\/p>\n<p>Teyana Taylor in \u2018One Battle After Another\u2019 (Warner Bros)<\/p>\n<p>Teyana Taylor\u2019s Perfidia Beverly Hills is undeniable. Taylor doesn\u2019t just give us one of the year\u2019s best performances, but also a towering cinematic image \u2013 she\u2019d be IMAX even if you watched One Battle After Another on your phone (do not do this). In Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s second take on Thomas Pynchon, an adaptation of his 1990 novel Vineland, we open with Perfidia marching into an immigration detention centre, knocking Colonel Steven J Lockjaw (Sean Penn) to his humiliated knees, and telling the world, \u201cthis is an announcement of a motherf***ing revolution\u201d. Instant celluloid immortality. <\/p>\n<p>But One Battle After Another\u2019s place here on this list has as much to do with its magnitude \u2013 the way Anderson can move a film with the smooth glide of a cigarette drag \u2013 than with the smaller, quieter ways it deals with the question of what to do when the revolutionary dreams of youth haven\u2019t been fulfilled and life goes on. <\/p>\n<p>Taylor\u2019s performance is all about righteous fury, but it\u2019s also about a mother who knows she\u2019s let down her daughter (played by Chase Infiniti, in her screen debut). Leonardo DiCaprio, as the father, is an accomplished clown, but he\u2019s poignant, too, when placed in the same position of regret. And so, the film leaves us with a little parcel of hope. To the next generation, \u201cmaybe you will be the one to put this world to right\u201d. <\/p>\n<p>7. The Shrouds <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/-2925_7570717f-0315-4c37-9204-cb68ba3d50a9.jpeg\"  loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Vincent Cassel and Sandrine Holt in \u2018The Shrouds\u2019\" class=\"sc-1mc30lb-0 ggpMaE inline-gallery-btn\"\/><\/p>\n<p>open image in gallery<\/p>\n<p>Vincent Cassel and Sandrine Holt in \u2018The Shrouds\u2019 (Sophie Giraud)<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve never seen grief depicted quite in the way it is in The Shrouds. Evidently its director, Canadian maestro David Cronenberg, agrees. His motivation to tell a story of a man dressed in his same black with his same white-grey hair (Vincent Cassel\u2019s Karsh), who builds a tomb for his wife with a three-dimensional CT scan of her body so he can watch her slowly disintegrate, comes from his own dissatisfaction. His wife of 38 years, Carolyn Zeifman, died in 2017. None of the books on loss he read seemed to express what he felt. <\/p>\n<p>And so The Shrouds, the Cronenbergian grief book, expresses the unexpressed in a stunning new form. It\u2019s morbid, yes, and not made for every constitution, but I found myself completely drawn in by the director\u2019s idea of grief as something entirely visceral, as a tangible pull towards the dead. Karsh expresses the urge to climb into his late wife\u2019s (Diane Kruger) coffin. He loves every part of her. And that includes the body, even when it\u2019s at its sickest. This film is complex, and radical. And it\u2019s a great testament to the core philosophy \u2013 that the body is the seat of the soul \u2013 of one of our most visionary filmmakers. <\/p>\n<p>6. Die My Love<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/DieMyLove_Still45_MUBI_Credit_Kimberley-French.jpeg\"  loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Lawrence in \u2018Die My Love\u2019\" class=\"sc-1mc30lb-0 ggpMaE inline-gallery-btn\"\/><\/p>\n<p>open image in gallery<\/p>\n<p>Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Lawrence in \u2018Die My Love\u2019 (Kimberly French)<\/p>\n<p>Lynne Ramsay looks at people with honesty even when they\u2019re in their most wild, untethered forms. Madness, for her, has no romance, no tragedy, no delicious drama to it to revel in. In Die My Love, her adaptation of Ariana Harwicz\u2019s 2012 novel, all we have is the sickness, in all its itchy and insidious little manifestations.<\/p>\n<p>Grace has recently relocated from New York to live in a remote farmhouse with her husband Jackson (Robert Pattinson), in order to raise their newborn son. The change of scenery and circumstance does nothing to stem the black mood gurgling up from her stomach. It only makes it worse. The director\u2019s found the ideal figurehead for her ideas in Lawrence, who has a skill in playing both a character\u2019s true vulnerabilities and the performance they place in front of it. Grace never asks for help. She can\u2019t express how she feels.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, she acts out by snapping at a too-perky cashier (\u201cwhy are you talking?\u201d) or letting her breast milk drip down into a puddle of ink, mixing in her frustrations as both mother and writer (she was meant to be writing the great American novel). Trapped within a cramped, 4:3 aspect ratio, there\u2019s nowhere to escape the soullessness in Lawrence\u2019s eyes and droning buzz of idle flies. It\u2019s an unshakeable film. <\/p>\n<p>5. It Was Just an Accident<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ItWasJustAnAccident_Still_LesFilmsPelleas_03.jpeg\"  loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Vahid Mobasseri in \u2018It Was Just an Accident\u2019\" class=\"sc-1mc30lb-0 ggpMaE inline-gallery-btn\"\/><\/p>\n<p>open image in gallery<\/p>\n<p>Vahid Mobasseri in \u2018It Was Just an Accident\u2019 (Mubi)<\/p>\n<p>It Was Just an Accident can\u2019t be severed from its circumstances. Its director, Jafar Panahi, shot the film in secret, after the 20-year ban the Iranian regime had placed on him \u2013 that restricted him from leaving the country or making films \u2013 was unexpectedly lifted. Yet in the week of the film\u2019s UK release, Panahi was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/films\/features\/jafar-panahi-interview-prison-iran-b2877189.html\" title=\"Jafar Panahi is Iran\u2019s most important filmmaker. He was sentenced to jail after this interview\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">sentenced anew in absentia to a year in prison and a travel ban<\/a> for \u201cpropaganda activities\u201d. <\/p>\n<p>And neither, then, can it be severed from the way his work is flooded with the experiences, direct or indirect, of being one of the regime\u2019s most public targets. It Was Just an Accident practically rattles with the rage and confusion of it all. Mechanic Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), while working in his garage, hears the squeak of a prosthetic leg that he recognises instantly as belonging to the man who tortured him in prison. <\/p>\n<p>He follows the man (Ebrahim Azizi) and kidnaps him. But, suddenly doubting his identity, chooses instead to ferry him around town in search of positive identification. The film is bleakly funny in a way that dares us to laugh in the face of unimaginable trauma, but which also does much to close the distance between one Iranian artist\u2019s experiences of censorship and the looming threat of it increasingly facing artists in the UK. Urgent doesn\u2019t even begin to describe it. <\/p>\n<p>4. The Brutalist<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/PREMIOS_SAG-PUNTOS_CLAVE_88671.jpg\"  loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce in \u2018The Brutalist\u2019\" class=\"sc-1mc30lb-0 ggpMaE inline-gallery-btn\"\/><\/p>\n<p>open image in gallery<\/p>\n<p>Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce in \u2018The Brutalist\u2019 (AP)<\/p>\n<p>While The Brutalist didn\u2019t win Best Picture at the Oscars (the honour went, instead, to Sean Baker\u2019s adrenaline-pumped Anora), it still feels reassuring to know that, for a brief time, Brady Corbet\u2019s 215-minute, widescreen VistaVision, American epic was at least treated as a frontrunner in the conversation. It\u2019s not so much a film to devour, but to be devoured by, with a wrecking ball weight to it that challenges, in each frame and every breath, the myths that America built itself upon \u2013 and which it writes and rewrites now with an increasing sense of coercion. <\/p>\n<p>L\u00e1szl\u00f3 T\u00f3th (Adrien Brody), a once renowned architect and a Jewish survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp, arrives in America anonymous once more. Hired by industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), L\u00e1szl\u00f3 is reduced to nothing more than a man\u2019s pet intellectual, his humanity sucked out of him day by day, humiliation by humiliation. <\/p>\n<p>He builds his so-called \u201cmasterwork\u201d, but at what cost? It\u2019s the question that Corbet, with his co-writer and partner Mona Fastvold, confront without necessarily providing an easy answer to (is there one?) What lingers is the soul-sick feeling of it all. It\u2019s the truest American film of the year. <\/p>\n<p>3. Sorry, Baby<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/SORRY-BABY_6.jpeg\"  loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Eva Victor in \u2018Sorry, Baby\u2019\" class=\"sc-1mc30lb-0 ggpMaE inline-gallery-btn\"\/><\/p>\n<p>open image in gallery<\/p>\n<p>Eva Victor in \u2018Sorry, Baby\u2019 (Philip Keith)<\/p>\n<p>Cinema, at its best, can be a confession. It can be a therapy session. It can be a friend\u2019s hand wrapped around yours. Sorry, Baby is all three, a film willing to be vulnerable about the hard emotions \u2013 shame, guilt, silence \u2013 that erupt in the wake of trauma. Agnes refers to her sexual assault by a literature professor (Louis Cancelmi) only as the \u201cbad thing\u201d. Other words feel insufficient. And Victor, the film\u2019s writer-director, reflects their character\u2019s disassociation by only showing us what happened from outside the house where it happened, and only in the change we see in Agnes when she walks away from it. Her expressions are glazed over. Her body seems unnaturally stiff. We know.<\/p>\n<p>Sorry, Baby is a film with an extraordinary sense of totality to it. Agnes\u2019s world can be sweet and tender, because she has a best friend in Lydie (Naomi Ackie), who would commit homicide if it could make things even a little more bearable for her, and a cat who magically appears, an earthbound, whiskered little angel of a creature. Still, trauma isn\u2019t something you can shake off and throw in the trash. And Sorry, Baby understands that better than most.<\/p>\n<p>2. Nickel Boys<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/newFile-2-1.jpg\"  loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson in \u2018Nickel Boys\u2019\" class=\"sc-1mc30lb-0 ggpMaE inline-gallery-btn\"\/><\/p>\n<p>open image in gallery<\/p>\n<p>Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson in \u2018Nickel Boys\u2019 (Curzon)<\/p>\n<p>Nickel Boys and Sorry, Baby share in their desire not to linger on the point where trauma formed, but to seek more empathetically to understand its effects, to see how pain becomes intertwined with DNA. And in RaMell Ross\u2019s adaptation of Colson Whitehead\u2019s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel, he extends that thought into the realm of memory and history through the daring use of point-of-view camera and precisely mapped sound design. Nickel Boys is cinema as a feat of full-body immersion. It\u2019s like nothing I\u2019ve seen before. <\/p>\n<p>In 2012, an unmarked mass grave was discovered on the grounds of the Florida School of Boys, with evidence of a documented 100 deaths at the school. Nickel Boys honours these lives lost in the twinned figures of Elwood (Ethan Herisse, with Ethan Cole Sharp as his younger iteration) and Turner (Brandon Wilson), whose eyes we see through and whose differing world views we come to understand. <\/p>\n<p>Elwood grew up in the embrace of optimism \u2013 a world of Martin Luther King Jr and the space race \u2013 while Turner was left, shunned and alone, in the shadows. When they experience violence, Ross\u2019s camera drifts out of its POV to briefly hover behind the character\u2019s head, so that we can feel the boy\u2019s sense of connection to reality start to fracture. Yes, it\u2019s important for us to remember that history is preserved by memory. But what happens to those burdened with the task of carrying it? <\/p>\n<p>1. Frankenstein<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/360_prodfather_still_3996x2160_rec709_08L.png\"  loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi in \u2018Frankenstein\u2019\" class=\"sc-1mc30lb-0 ggpMaE inline-gallery-btn\"\/><\/p>\n<p>open image in gallery<\/p>\n<p>Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi in \u2018Frankenstein\u2019 (Netflix)<\/p>\n<p>I end this list with a number one that\u2019s already embroidered onto my heart. I feel we\u2019re in dire need of the Romantic, Gothic spirit that Mary Shelley championed in her 1818 novel Frankenstein, that rejects what would conform us, automate us, and divide us. Instead, let us embrace radical compassion and imagination. Let us open the door to doubt, vulnerability, and humility. Let us surrender ourselves to ideas larger than we can control.<\/p>\n<p>Guillermo del Toro, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/films\/features\/frankenstein-netflix-interview-jacob-elordi-b2857243.html\" title=\"How Guillermo del Toro, Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi made the horror movie of the year\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">our father of monsters<\/a>, is one of the closest figures we have today to Shelley, Bryon, and the whole Romantic set of the early 19th century. Frankenstein is his passion project, his life\u2019s ambition. He\u2019s described Shelley\u2019s novel as essentially \u201chis Bible\u201d. And with his adaptation, he doesn\u2019t speak for Shelley, but more directly communes with her. It\u2019s not just a translation. It\u2019s a dialogue. <\/p>\n<p>It is, of course, a rich, Gothic vision of malachite silk and crucifixion blood, with costumes by Kate Hawley and production design by Tamara Deverell. But del Toro\u2019s film, already championed for its aesthetic beauty, also engages in a profound understanding of what Shelley\u2019s work might mean for us today. It\u2019s a Frankenstein for now, which recognises that the author\u2019s warning \u2013 \u201chow much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow\u201d \u2013 feels far too late for our world. She feared what Victor Frankenstein might unleash into the world. Now, there\u2019s a Victor Frankenstein at the head of every Fortune 500 company. <\/p>\n<p>Instead, and through Jacob Elordi\u2019s richly felt performance as the Creature, del Toro recognises how we have all become creatures ourselves, pushed into a world that wasn\u2019t built for us to exist in (there are echoes of Mickey 17 there, you might notice). He also offers us what we lost in Lynch: a chance to forgive the darkness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-310400","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}