Top films of 2025

Tough cookie, lost count of how many films I've seen. Over 200, less than 300 ? I started to put them on Letterboxed starting late October but still didn't catch up with the rest.

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Top of the series is here and films from 2024 are again a problem, The Brutalist and The Substance should've make the 2025 list, as there still are some of 2025 which I haven't seen yet (Hamnet, Resurrection, Sound of Falling ?).

Just caught up with Park Chan-Wook's No Other Choice that makes the list. It's limited in Romanian Cinemas now, so try to see it on the big screen, it's worthy.

Kinda disappointed with Romanian Cinema this year too. I liked Kontinental '25 and that's it. Could 've been also Jude's Dracula but he made it such an intentional mess and duration wise a whole calvary...

But disappointments of the year: the new Running Man by Edgar Wright. And the last Mission: Impossible. Hopefully...Oy...

Top 5 -alphabetically:

all that's clickable as links are my "reviews"

Eddington -Ari Aster

O agente secreto-Kleber Mendonça Filho

One Battle After Another -Paul Thomas Anderson

Sinners -Ryan Cooglar

Sirat -Oliver Laxe

new entry on Jan. 2th 2026:   No Other Choice

Almost Famous ;) -also alphabetically:

Ballad of a Small Player -Edward Berger

Bugonia -Yorgos Lanthimos

Caught Stealing -Darren Aronofsky

Father Mother Sister Brother -Jim Jarmusch

Frankenstein -Guillermo del Toro

In the Hand of Dante -Julian Schnabel 

Nouvelle Vague -Richard Linklater

Nuremberg -James Vanderbilt

The Materialist -Kelly Reichardt

The Phoenician Scheme-Wes Anderson

Tornado - John McLean

Train Dreams- Clint Bentley

Warfare -Alex Garland & Ray Mendoza

Nicolas Cage Award of the Year:  The Surfer  (d. by Lorcan Finnegan) 2024 !

Horror:

28 years Later-Danny Boyle 

Together -Michael Shanks

Weapons -Zach Cregger

Good Boy- Ben Leonberg

The Monkey-Osgood Perkins

Dangerous Animals -Sean Byrne

The Gorge -Scott Derrickson

The Long Walk -Francis Lawrence

The Substance -2024, Coralie Fargeat

Keeper -Osgood Perkins

Comedy:

even weaker as it is, still good fun !!!

This is Spinal Tap 2:  The End Continues by the late Rob Reiner....

Bunny -Ben Jacobsen 

an indie, punkish NY film in the best way, kinetic, quirky, funny, dark comedy, punkimprovised, irreverent. Cool punk songs too.

Documentary:

Soundtrack for a coup d'etat -2024-Johan Grimonprez

the doors -When You're Strange- - Tom DiCillo, from 2009 but remastered in Cinema limited

pink floyd at pompei -1972. Adrian Mabel, remastered in Cinema limited

Devo -2024, Chris Smith   -netflix

Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius) 2025/ Questlove   -netflix

Catch-Up -Four Aces:

Pale Flower- Masashiro Shinoda-1964 

La Traque -1975 Serge Leroy

The Childhood of a Leader -2015 Brady Corbet

Finalmente l'alba - Saverio Costanzo -2023, on which I wrote: 

Rome and Cinecitta 1953. More like a drreamlike story, a false thriller, homage to Fellini and La Dolce Vita, Notti di Cabiria, and linked to a real muder cold case known as the Italian Black Dahlia. Interesting slow film, in the Venice Competition in 2023. Modern beat score, strange and eerie. Song Last Nite by The Stokes (2011) on the end credits. 

3 1/2 out of 5

Hold Back the Dawn (1941)

Hold Back the Dawn (1941)

Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett wrote it at the time of their legendary partnership. Ketti Frings wrote the novel on which story, the dynamic duo have much improved it. Boyer tries to make it his own, especially as a Foreigner with a lovely accent (his own, which he kept all his life !). For Romanians it's a blast, cos' he is a crook / gigolo from Bucharest named George(s) Iscovescu !!! 

Studio man Mitchell Leisen directed it professionally. The year was 1941 and immigration was at its WW2 boom. Iscovescu wants to get in the USA and he needs a passport and a citizenship and in order to get those he needs to marry an American. The film premiered on September 11th 1941, just three months before Pearl Harbor !

The two women in the film are opposites, each with its role, Paulette Goddard as the femme fatalish Anita and Olivia de Havilland the innocent Ingenue Mrs. Brown. 

Supporting characters, from Curt Bois as Bonbois, to Walter Abel's  Inspector Hammock, Victor Francen as Vander Lucken and Nestor Faiva as hotellier Flores, the story is told in a flashback from the stage / set of a film at Paramount, on which Iscovescu/ Boyer went to see to director Dwight Saxon, played by none other than director Mitchell Leisen in order to see this story (maybe the most modern aspect of the film, predicting Sunset Boulevard ?) !!!

Very long for those day's standards (116 mins.) and heavilly plotted, it has a bleaker tone for a romantic  melodrama and a downbeat immigration angle. And a small dose of film noir (esp. for the self-person narration). The dialogue is sharp and some witty and cynical one-liners are already trademark Wilder.  Brackett and Wilder were very dissapointed with the result and Boyer's refusal do do a dialogue with a cockroach, they cut off most of his lines, giving them to Paulette Goddard. Also  I read this was the last film Wilder wrote without directing it (even though Ball of Fire for Hawks opened in December 1941...).

Hold Back the Dawn was nominated for 6 Oscars back in 1941, including best film, best screenplay and best cinematography (in Black&White, Leo Tovar). 

3 1/2 out of 5 ! 7 out of 10 !!! (loses steam due to the duration, otherwise would've been an Eight!)

No Other Choice (2025)

1st film I saw on 2026 it's one of the best of 2025 and one of Park Chan-wook's best. No Other Choice aka Eojjeolsuga eobsda.  It's also the offical Korean Submission for Best International film at the Oscars and it's nominated for 3 Golden Globes Awards. No Other Choice premiered in the 2025 Venice Film Fest Competition. It won Best Director in Sitges FF. 

It's limited in Romanian Cinemas now, so try to see it on the big screen, it's worthy.

I follow the Korean director for 25 years, ever since he came to Bucharest with his 1st feature, JSA (Joint Security Area) at the 1st Festasia fest edition.  That was before Oldboy, Mr. and Mrs. Vengeance, Thirst, Handmaiden and Stoker. Saw most of his oeuvre, also the HBO series The Sympathiser, so I can say that this one it's one of his best. 

Lee Byung-hun who is South Korean leading man is here a Paper Man, formerly "Pulp Man of the Year 2019." He was also in PCWook's JSA, in A Bittersweet Life, Squid Game series, even in G.I. Joe. Here he is a plain family man, with a desperate will to get back to his job that was downsized.

It's a Korean Le Coupert / The Axe, based on Donald  E.Westlake 1997 novel. It was made before by Costa-Gavras in 2005 as The Ax, a great black comedy, merciless, starring José Garcia. But Wook-Chan goes even further in absurdity and satire. He co-wrote this with Don McKellar, they worked together before on The Sympathiser. The film is produced by Costa-Gavras family and it's dedicated to the Greek director, who kept the rights of the novel and gave them to Park Chan. The film was supposed to be in English first (2009 starting) but kept developing.

Great score too, and great idea of a cello subplot, by Chan-wook Park's collaborator, Cho Young-Wuk. 

4 out of 5 / 8 out of 10 !!!