Here are my favourite films of the year...
Weapons (Zach Cregger)
Cregger follows Barbarian by going bigger, darker and more structurally unhinged, folding multiple disappearances, small-town rot and a creeping sense of moral contagion into something that plays like a cursed multi-viewpoint fairy tale. Weapons understands that the scariest thing isn’t the monster (altho she is pretty fearsome) but the community that quietly reorganises itself around trauma. Precision-made dread, bleakly funny in places, and proof that Cregger is now operating as a full-on American horror architect rather than a one-hit disruptor. Some of the crowd I saw this with at the cinema were standing and cheering at the climax, that's such a rush!
One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
PTA goes muscular and mischievous here, shaping a post-idealism America haunted by its own protest movements and ideological aftershocks. Looser than Phantom Thread but more focused than Inherent Vice, this feels like Anderson riffing on history as a looping argument rather than a straight line. There’s sweat, humour, and a low hum of paranoia beneath the talk, a film that knows revolutions don’t end, they just change fonts. And the cinematography is some of the best ever!?
Sinners (Ryan Coogler)
Coogler’s first outright genre pivot lands as a blood-soaked Southern Gothic with teeth and intent. Vampirism here isn’t sexy immortality but inheritance (think sin passed down, monetised, ritualised). Anchored by Michael B. Jordan in dual roles, Sinners fuses horror with blues history, racial memory and the idea that America never really lets anything die. Lush, angry, and mythic in the best way, saw this in IMAX and it blew my mind!
Bring Her Back (Danny & Michael Philippou)
The Talk To Me duo double down on grief-horror, crafting something meaner, sadder and more intimate. This isn’t about jump scares so much as the unbearable desire to undo a single moment. The brothers show a growing confidence in letting scenes rot in silence, and when the violence comes it feels earned and oh boy, that scene with the melon knife is one that will never leave you... Bring Her Back is a film that understands mourning as a kind of possession, one you invite in yourself, not for the faint of heart.
The Ballad of Wallis Island (James Griffiths)
Gentle, funny and unexpectedly bruising, this feels like a folk song discovered on an old hard drive, and instead of sucking, they take you places you didn't expect. Built around loneliness, fading friendships and the strange ache of unrealised lives, this film sneaks up on you with warmth before quietly breaking your heart. There’s a distinctly British melancholy here, rain, memory, missed chances, handled with such lightness you barely notice how deep it cuts. Plus Carey Mulligan is still my fantasy woman :)
F1 (Joseph Kosinski)
Do you feel the need? The need for speed... Only on four wheels rather than in the air!? Kosinski does for Formula One what he did for fighter jets: strips away the gloss to reveal the terrifying ballet underneath. Shot with punishing immediacy and physicality, this is less sports movie and more controlled experiment in speed, risk and ego. Brad Pitt’s ageing racer isn’t chasing glory so much as relevance, and the film understands that velocity is addictive precisely because it’s unsustainable. Big, loud, and surprisingly reflective.
The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson)
Anderson’s espionage fantasia plays like a diorama stuffed with double-crosses, deadpan assassins and emotional repression rendered in pastel. Beneath the symmetry and whimsy is a story about legacy, trust and the absurdity of inherited power. Benicio del Toro grounds the film with unexpected weariness, reminding us that Anderson’s brilliant dollhouse worlds increasingly function as mausoleums for broken men. But they are oh-so-much-fun!!
Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos)
Lanthimos remakes the Korean cult oddity Save the Green Planet! and leans fully into conspiracy as emotional illness. Wildly funny, deeply uncomfortable, and shot with clinical indifference, Bugonia asks whether believing the world is fake is any worse than accepting its cruelty as normal. Emma Stone continues her fearless collaboration with Lanthimos, operating at the edge of satire and collapse. One guy fainted in the screening of this I saw, hope he's ok (and has the chance to catch the ending as the answer to 'is she an alien' does get answered!!
Eddington (Ari Aster)
Aster’s COVID-era Western is his angriest film yet, a portrait of a town atomised by misinformation, masculinity and performative morality. Less horror in the traditional sense, more social exorcism, Eddington is deliberately abrasive, often hilarious, and deeply unsettling in how recognisable it feels. Joaquin Phoenix is a walking wound of authority and resentment, and Aster refuses the comfort of catharsis.
The Order (Justin Kurzel)
Kurzel returns to extremist psychology with grim focus, charting the rise of a white supremacist terror cell with procedural coldness and moral clarity. Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult turn the film into a duel of belief versus obsession, and Kurzel resists sensationalism at every turn. This is not a thriller designed to entertain but to warn — violence shown as banal, contagious and terrifyingly organised.
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Full disclosure I haven't seen Marty Supreme or Sentimental Value, both of which I have a strong feeling might have made it into my top ten!?
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