Top 15 Films of 2025

 

Fifteen Favourite 
First Release Films of 2025

Now then, more than the usual caveats apply to my list this year... 

My father got very sick in September and then passed away at the end of October. Consequently, the blog was shut down for over a month and, another knock on effect was that I haven’t, so far, been able to get to the cinema since September. So I’ve missed loads of potential films which might well have made it into my top ten and perhaps even my number one spot (though, that movie is pretty much ‘in the bag’, so to speak). This perhaps also partially explains why this year’s list is only 15 films as opposed to last year’s 30.

So possible contenders I didn’t see were... Now You See Me Now You Don’t, Good Boy, The Running Man and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. Along with a whole host of others I’ve probably forgotten about. So please bear with me on this stuff. Also, the list is pretty much all American movies again... it’s not that I didn’t see many foreign language films, just that I didn’t really rate the ones I saw as being special enough to make the list so... yeah, it is what it is, I’m afraid. 

Anyway, here’s the list with the usual link to the full review on the title... so just click each title to get to the review. Please remember, the UK release dates on some of these are for this year, although at least one of them was 2024 in the US. In ascending order they are...

15. A Working Man
Just scraping into my top fifteen is this trusty, tried formula action flick to the tune of  ‘Jason Statham goes up to eleven on the bad guys!’. A more serious brand of The Stath this time around and it keeps me going until The Beekeeper 2 gets released. 

14. Novocaine
Absolute silliness with a ‘what if the ‘no pain’ villain from The World Is Not Enough used his powers for good in a mild mannered way’ kind of premise. There’s absolutely no way the main protagonist could actually survive what happens to him in this film but, I dunno, Hollywoodland seems to think that not feeling pain is somehow synonymous with not having the lasting effects of the accompanying injury. Still, unbridled silliness does count for a lot so, on the list it goes. 

13. Ballerina
What if John Wick was a hot female? Well, here’s the answer, where she’s somehow shoehorned into a gap between John Wick films which, once Keanu shows up, makes no sense in terms of the continuity. Still, since when did that spoil my appetite for a sexy woman jumping around and beating everybody up (well, okay, a few times but not here, I can forgive it somewhat). 

12. Nobody 2
Okay, so this wasn’t nearly as good as the first movie but, it’s just nice catching up with the main protagonist and also seeing a little more of his wife in action for this one.

11. Jurassic World Rebirth
If you’d have told me a year ago a Jurassic World movie would be on my top fifteen list, well... let’s just say that nobody had any right, after the fiasco of the last three movies, to expect anything decent from this one at all but, nope, this was a much more fun movie than I’d expected. Completely took me by surprise.

10. Superman
Okay, I hate the fact that the DC cinematic universe has already been rebooted and it just makes no sense to me after all that hard work of the previous films in the series. However, I didn’t hate this and, well, in a word... Krypto. A live action movie with Superman’s dog (even though the reveal at the end shows it’s not actually his dog) was always going to hit big with me. I can live with it... so far.

9. The Last Showgirl
Finally, people are taking Pamela Anderson seriously as an actress... and good for her. This heartbreaking portrait of a woman trying to keep herself afloat is amazing and the great Dave Bautista is equally fantastic as her leading man. 

8. Bridget Jones - Mad About The Boy
Well, I loved the first movie when it came out all those years ago but was left rather lukewarm by the two sequels. This one, however, brings Bridget back with a bang and it’s a satisfying conclusion to the franchise, for sure. 

7. Drop 
Okay, a clichéd old plot is this time set mostly in a restaurant. I wasn’t expecting a lot from this tired old premise but, honestly, it was so well filmed and performed that it won me over in no time. The Bear McCreary score helped a lot too.

6. M3GAN 2.0
Wow, a sequel to one of the most popular horror movies in years completely underperformed at the box office and was almost universally hated. I guess I’m out of tune with the times again because, although I loved the first one, I also thought this was a great move to keep the franchise fresh. They ditched the horror and turned it into M3GAN meets Mission Impossible meets Charlie’s Angels. Worked for me... loved it.

5. Tornado 
Well, I certainly didn’t expect to have ‘Scottish female samurai movie’ on my ‘top films which somehow managed to get released in UK cinemas’ Bingo card but, here it is and it was truly wonderful.

4. The Long Walk
Read this over 40 years ago and wondered why nobody had made a movie of it. Well, it’s finally here and it’s a pretty intense take on the original Stephen King (or rather Richard Bachman) novel. The ending is, I believe, not what it seems... and is all the better for it.

3. Presence
Steven Soderbergh brought out two films in UK cinemas this year, both within six weeks of each other. And they both made my top three! With one of them snagging my number one spot, no less. This one is him doing something slightly different with what could have been a traditional ghost story.

2. The Phoenician Scheme
And once again, Wes Anderson brings out a movie which shows why he’s one of the greatest of the living American directors. Another brilliant, funny and witty movie with some wonderfully fun performances. 

1. Black Bag
Soderbergh’s second film of the year is his take on the cold war spy novel as popularised by such writers and John Le Carre and Len Deighton back in the 1960s. Indeed, his main protagonist here is named George (presumably after George Smiley) and wears Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer NHS glasses. So a film which very much wears its influences on its sleeve but then takes us into more intimate territory. An absolutely fantastic piece of cinema.