Letterbox'd reveals the following about my viewing in 2025 suggesting that whilst obviously I watched far more films in English than in any other language, my highest ratings were skewed towards other countries. Since the picture below is a screenshot you can't click on the bars to see the underlying scores but the average score for the Polish films was almost 4.5 (out of 5). For British films it was just over 3. I also watched more films made in France (61) than in the UK (57) and slightly to my surprise saw 30 German films. Eat your heart out USA. I view all of this as a positive!
Before the proverbial list a few other films to reference:
Why have I never watched this before top rating goes to Dog Day Afternoon, a masterpiece which weaves together bathetic comedy for the ages in the bumbling incoherence of the initial attempted heist; a nuanced portrait of social dynamics and prejudices seen through class, sex, gender and race; an astoundingly tender relationship drama; the stirrings of celebrity culture; and a genuine thriller.
The 'If I could have my time again and run screaming away from the cinema' award goes jointly to the following:
Magic Farm : Unbelievably irritating, terminally unfunny misfire which takes what might be an interesting premise and turns it into a catastrophically misguided mash up of useless millennials, bemused locals and environmental degradation. It’s short but god knows you’ll wish it was far, far shorter.
Mickey 17 : Teeth gratingly irritating to the extent that an early departure from the screening was required! All of the characteristics which have been so annoying in the past were present and correct: infuriatingly buffoonish characters; endless repetition with minimum variation of a basic scenario which isn’t that interesting at the outset; purported comedy which is screamingly unfunny; tonal shifts which are unearned; and far, far too long. It’s a great disappointment after Parasite and demonstrates that I greatly appreciate some Bong - but certainly not all.
If I Had legs I'd Kick You : A Safdie infected (sic) maelstrom which is as annoying as it is exhausting. Trying far too hard for the entire duration of the film removes any potential for development and simply turns the volume up to a permanent crescendo with inevitable diminishing returns which set in at an early stage. Making the audience grind their teeth for nearly two hours is a shame because frankly it submerges the subject matter beneath a near overwhelming desire to simply leave the cinema despite a fearlessly committed central performance.
Now, ten films released this year (or at least shown at Festivals this year) that almost made the Top 10 and are well worth anyone's time: Dreams, Train Dreams, Blue Moon (thankfully nothing at all to do with the perennially annoying Blue half of Manchester which is only slightly less annoying than the Red half of ...), The Secret Agent (watched in the worst cinema in London for, you know, actually watching films so it does really well to survive that experience), Sound Of Falling, Mirrors No.3, The Kingdom, Late Shift and then two relative crowd pleasers The Count of Monte Cristo (the French have a real knack with historical epics) and The Ballad Of Wallis Island.
The last of these is a gloriously gentle, wistful and melancholic account of muddling through. There's no highfalutin therapy, no interventions, just a gradual recognition and acceptance that some things are truly gone but remain a fundamental part of who we are. In other hands this could be cringe comedy or sentimental redemption. Here it is a completely different beast; truly generous towards the oddballs, the mavericks, the has beens in all their endearing eccentricity, glorying in verbal tics and roundelays, the use of self-deprecating humour as a coping mechanism for genuine pain and loss, but also their fundamental decency. If you wanted an account of some of the best aspects of the character of people who happen to be British, this is it. Forget the flags, forget the pomp, forget all the nationalistic garbage.
Finally, here is the Top 10 in ascending order. In another year number 2 would have been number 1. But given the current hell scape that constitutes the world and in particular the descent into fascist authoritarianism in what passes for the USA, number 1 is the best single response and the only choice. It's also an amazing piece of film making.
Several of the other films are also highly on point about our current awful and terrifying moment in which rational engagement with the world, treating all humans as of equal value and constraining the ability of self obsessed fanatics to impose their will on everyone else are being lost. If they go and the best of our Enlightenment inheritance goes with them we will all be the poorer. There will be fewer films like these and we will be back to something like the period - to which the Enlightenment was a response - in which the equivalent of religious affiliation determines whether you have political or civic rights.
10. The Brutalist : Brutalism as an architectural style was a reaction to pervasive nostalgia, a blast of modernism which respected the innate qualities of the materials used and which rendered the use or function of the building in external form. Even relatively small structures could be monumental but the use of commonly available materials was part and parcel of promoting equality. The more one thinks about the film the more that these issues seem embedded within it and for which the tilted, deformed and kinked statue of liberty of the opening sequence is the perfect representation.
The land of supposed opportunity for all which turns out to be ridden with inequality and gilded wealth.
The land in which there is a reactionary movement which lauds ancient architectural styles as an embodiment of the values of the republic and a reaction to modernist concerns.
The land in which the gifted outsider or immigrant may be tolerated for a period as long as they provide value to those who wish to promote themselves but will always be regarded as alien.
The land in which the price of everything is known and is the currency of political and social success. The value of things rather less so.
The land in which power is an obsession allowing the powerful to pillage as they see fit.
The land in which there is no help for the poor and the under privileged who are merely the recipients of condescension and exploitation.
The land in which religious fundamentalism further curdles into christian nationalism and hollow traditionalism.
The Brutalist explores all of this with fascinating characters given life through magnetic performances. The film is lengthy but not over extended. It is monumental just like the building that Toth seeks to construct. It is timely in a way that the director may have anticipated given the focus of others of his films because it is being released into a land of gimcrack, fascistic know-nothing conservatism driven by the greed of oligarchs and overwhelmed by pain and hatred.
In the epilogue we learn something that we may have earlier suspected about the significance of the precise dimensions of that building. It is another example, this one truly awful, of form reflecting function.
9. Alpha : A complex film replete with imagery: for the deadening fear of experiencing more grief in a life that has already had its fair share and how this traps us and those for whom we grieve; for the trauma of inherited pain and exclusion; as an allegory for the freezing effects of victim blaming in social responses to an epidemic. And probably for much else besides. Increasingly powerful as it proceeds with a real emotional charge towards the end when those who have been both memorialised and marmorealised are finally allowed to escape both metaphorically and literally.
8. Nouvelle Vague : Ridiculously enjoyable hommage which is not hidebound by a very deliberate attention to detail (even down to using the original camera employed in making A Bout De Souffle) and seems to capture the culture as well as the substance of the film making process.
7. Begonia : A coruscating satire on raddled conspiracists which manages to convey the real world suffering that often underlies a turn towards craziness as a means of making sense of an uncaring world; the disastrous consequences of believing nonsense because its your very own secret knowledge; the reality that there are corporations and governments conducting themselves in the most reprehensible manner; and the desperate reality that humans beings self delusion and self obsession is such that they would rather allow their world to be destroyed than to defer gratification. Look on and despair.
6. Sorry, Baby : The manner in which the film depicts a response to assault is pretty astounding mining disassociation, the borderline absurdity of ham fisted procedurally based engagement by institutions, the kindness of strangers, triggers and releases; even how to speak and not to speak about what has happened. And it is wonderfully performed.
5. It Was Just An Accident : Remarkable tonal shifts are managed in a magisterial manner so that they emerge from the deepest recesses of the human soul as a response to life changing trauma. A deeply humanist film which demonstrates that trauma need not destroy instincts for human sympathy and connection and that an eye for an eye does indeed just lead us all to become blind. However the ending, which is one for the ages, also illuminates how trauma shatters lives. Any regime that acts with impunity in degrading its citizens deserves our utter condemnation.
4. Sentimental Value : Another superb film from Trier that mines generational family dysfunction in a manner that is affirming of both the pain and the fear and the love and the hope. There are clear echoes of Bergman but much greater warmth in the way that these conflicts are navigated and ultimately resolved making them feel tractable rather than utterly insurmountable. As with Worst Person there are sequences that hit the emotional sweet spot perfectly, capturing secret moments of deep intimacy. And then there is the glorious house, a personality in its own right containing the multitudes that have lived within.
3. The Mastermind : Delicious, and deeply ironic, dismantling of an entitled, feckless, delusional, over privileged man child with (another!) final sequence for the ages. It's just beautifully done with a wonderful lightness of touch allowing the protagonist to damn himself in all the very best ways with just the occasional hint of self awareness. There are clear resonances for the current plethora of gilded nobodies running the US. I laughed a lot.
2. Vermiglio : A film so perfect that I cannot conceive of any possible improvements. A beautifully judged, deeply compassionate, empathetic account of a small world and big emotions. The characters are rendered through small, subtle signifiers, often unspoken, emerging as fully rounded individuals for whom the viewer forms remarkable levels of attachment, particularly the trio of sisters - Lucia, Ada and Flavia. Structuring the narrative through the natural rhythms of the seasons, heightened (literally) by the Alpine settings, emphasises the symbiotic relationship between humans and their environment.
There are resonances of many earlier Italian films set in remote rural communities. Christ Stopped At Eboli comes to mind immediately. But Vermiglio has a warmth and a human sympathy which distinguishes it from the more overtly political accounts of Rosi or the Tavianis and is simply magical rather than engaging with the magical realism of Alice Rohrwacher.
There was a short introductory (recorded) Q&A with the director before the film began. I think I was basically in love with her by the time she’d finished speaking.
So, yes, I rather liked it.
It may also have been part of my coping strategy today because Vermiglio is the complete opposite of the grotesque bombastic freak show unfolding in Washington. The rest of the strategy consisted of: Locate significant expanse of sand. Plunge in head. Wait several hours.
1. One Battle After Another : Probably the most pertinent cinematic engagement with the hellscape that is the USA under the orange obscenity, magically achieved by way of an array of washed up revolutionaries and the modern day equivalent of the underground railroad coming good against the forces of performative reactionary bigotry characterised by a set of white supremacist ogres and their wannabe foot soldier - a ramrod straight army type whose walk seems that of a man with, well, a ramrod right up his backside - as well as sundry right wing militias and the nominal agents of the state. It's a wild ride with astounding sequences (the skaters riding over the rooftops and 'that' road towards the end), a shout out to the analogue world and some tremendous performances.
So, that's it.
Let's hope we still have films - and cinemas - in 2026.
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