Well, that was a year.
Skydance merged with Paramount. Paramount and Netflix battled it out to buy Warner. AI and streaming dominance continue to be live topics. The Oscars announced they’ll stream exclusively on YouTube from 2029. The future of cinema as we’ve known it has never seemed more in flux.
And yet film persists, year after year. Despite the Top 10 grossing films worldwide all being sequels, franchise films or remakes, there were still genuine surprises. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners broke the mould with its genre-blending style. Weapons continued to show that genre fans were out there. One Battle After Another was an absolute moment. K-Pop Demon Hunters a phenomenon.
I continue to love movies and we humans love watching stories. There were few days this year when I wasn’t seeing something. Well over 500 films ingested this year, largely reviewed on Letterboxd. I devoured all the Disney as I made my from from 1961 to 1971 as part of a massive project to watch every Disney film ever. I ended the year in the traditional manner: with more Hallmark than anybody should ever ingest.
This is my 2025 story.
By the numbers
514
Films logged
116
articles written
195
Disney films
FEATURED: Sydney Film Festival 2025
From 7–15 June, the Sydney Film Festival lit up screens across the city with over 200 films. Standouts included Kelly Reichardt’s low-key heist The Mastermind, the pounding apocalyptic rave of Sirât, and the heartfelt Blue Moon. The Golden Spurtle brought unexpected joy, while The Life of Chuck was simply magical. Palme d’Or winner It Was Just an Accident also claimed the Sydney Film Prize. Many of these gems appear in The Reel Bits’ Best of 2025!
“There’s nothing worse than children with jazz hands in a film.”
– Stellan Skarsgard, Sentimental Value
Most popular posts of 2025
When looking back at the the 10 most visited posts over the last year, the split between new and archival was almost 50:50. In fact, the #1 was a review for Fan Girl, a film from the Philippines released four years ago. In both 2024 and 2025, it received more views than it did back on release. Lots of Paulo Avelino or Charlie Dizon stans I guess!
2025 posts
Stephen King in 2025: new books, screen adaptations and what’s next
Great Scott! Back to the Future at 40
All posts
Review: Fan Girl (from 2021)
7 great books about film history (from 2022)
Review: Room Laundering (from 2018)
Sex and Smoke: 30 years of Basic Instinct (from 2022)
Review: A Single Rider (from 2017)
SPOTLIGHT: Disney Minus
Over the last few years, I’ve been methodically working my way through the entire Disney filmography — M-I-C, K-E-Y, because I like them. In 2025 alone, I logged around 200 films, plus another hundred television episodes and bonus features.
This year took me from 1961 to early 1971: a studio alternately responding to, or lagging behind, shifting tastes in an America undergoing rapid social change. As Disneyland expanded and Walt Disney World took shape, Walt was also dreaming up EPCOT — a prototype community of tomorrow.
The era peaks with Mary Poppins (1964), before the studio falters after Walt’s death in 1966, though animated landmarks like One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Jungle Book and The Sword in the Stone show the Nine Old Men at their best. Highlights included revisiting the Winnie the Pooh shorts and rediscovering the unexpected joy of The Love Bug.
Every single film I’ve watched this year has been reviewed and logged. Can’t find them on The Reel Bits. Check out my Letterboxd account. That’s where the magic happens.
Don’t follow us on Letterboxd? You know there’s an easy fix for that, right?
And now, without further ado…
Best of 2025
Choosing the ‘best’ of the year is always a bit of a folly. There’s no such thing. The films represented here are, put simply, my favourites of the ones that I managed to see over the last 12 months. Most of that comes down to vibes. Am I missing some? Probably. I’ll get to them at some point. That’s the beauty of movies: they’re always there to discover on another day.
#1. Black Bag
A taut, stylish espionage thriller, Steven Soderbergh’s precise direction and David Koepp’s sharp writing weave a gripping game of trust and deception, elevated by a stellar cast. To say much more would be criminal—it’s best left sealed in the titular black bag. From its quiet moments to its nerve-shredding climax, Black Bag is a slick, sophisticated thriller that knows exactly how long to stick around. By the time you finish this sentence, Steven Soderbergh may have released another film.
#2. Blue Moon
Before Rodgers and Hammerstein became Broadway legends, there was Rodgers and Hart, the duo behind classics like “Blue Moon,” “My Funny Valentine,” and “The Lady Is a Tramp.” Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon zeroes in on the pivotal moment when that first great partnership conclusively dissolved, and a new era in American musical theatre began. Ethan Hawke mesmerises in this intimate, elegantly staged portrait of a genius fading on the margins of Broadway history.
#3. The Mastermind
Kelly Reichardt’s minimalist, observational style might not seem an obvious fit for a 1970s heist film. Yet in her inimitable way, Reichardt quietly reworks the genre into a laser-focused character study of a family man coming undone. Here’s a slow-burn portrait of delusion and decline, with Josh O’Connor (in one of his many outstanding roles in 2025) compelling as a man out of his depth.
#4. The Life of Chuck
Mike Flanagan just gets Stephen King. Having previously adapted Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep, and now holding the television rights to The Dark Tower opus, he understands that King’s work isn’t about the horror, it’s about the people experiencing it. His adaptation of King’s novella is a tender, time-reversed mosaic that honours the humanity in Stephen King’s work, and offers a ode to life itself. It’s a quietly stunning film, and like Chuck himself, it contains multitudes.
#5. The Phoenician Scheme
Wes Anderson’s latest may look like business as usual, but beneath its symmetrical surfaces lies a surprising meditation on mortality, redemption, and the cost of one man’s schemes. Visually and technically, Anderson arranges everything like the meticulously kept shoeboxes that house the elaborate schemes of his protagonist. You could still walk in cold and know from a single frame that it’s an Anderson joint. Yet there’s a metaphysical undercurrent here that feels fresh, sidestepping the ironic detachment of The Darjeeling Limited or The Grand Budapest Hotel in favour of something more earnest.
#6. Sentimental Value
Following the monumental success of The Worst Person in the World, Joachim Trier reunites with actress Renate Reinsve for a different kind of exploration of life’s ripple effects. Trier’s slow-burn drama charts the therapeutic journey of a family long unable to communicate. A delicately observed, emotionally layered story that showcases Joachim Trier’s gift for capturing life’s quiet, complicated truths, anchored by an outstanding cast.
#7. It Was Just An Accident
Despite the official lifting of his filmmaking ban, Jafar Panahi still had to work in secret on this latest project. For good reason too: while the film plays like a reimagined road-movie thriller, it remains deeply critical of the Iranian government. Here it’s Panahi in defiant form, turning a taut mistaken-identity thriller into a sharp, darkly funny reckoning with trauma and justice. It all leads to a gut-punch of a climax, one that tests the humanity of its central characters and challenges our own assumptions.
#8. One Battle After Another
One of the biggest surprises up front was just how horny this movie is. That charged opening, right up through the glorious Steely Dan needle drop, made me realise I’d gone in knowing next to nothing about the film, and that was refreshing. Despite the length, Paul Thomas Anderson moves with terrific momentum, anchored to the chaotically inept character Leonardo DiCaprio throws himself into completely. It arguably runs a few beats too long, and I’m not convinced all those gripping moments will hold up on repeat viewings. Still, whatever inserted stick that gives Sean Penn his distinct walk deserves an award all its own.
#9. Hamnet
There are moments at the start of Chloe Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell where I wondered if the director meant to keep us at a distance for the duration. Like Shakespeare’s work, we view this snapshot through a highly constructed lens. Instead of the verse of the Bard, we have Zhao’s measured pace and Łukasz Żal’s dreamy photography. Thanks largely to the performances of Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, it becomes a beautifully articulate study of love and grief. Sometimes in that order, sometimes the other way around. Allowing history to guide rather than shackle the storytelling, it’s rare to see such a fresh approach to material so deeply ingrained in the cultural bloodstream. This is one I suspect I’ll be revisiting, even if only in my mind, for a while.
#10. 28 Years Later
Danny Boyle didn’t just come back with a sequel a quarter of a century in the making: he and writer Alex Garland took some big chances. It’s a a bold, sensory assault that elevates its genre roots into something far more visceral and unexpectedly reflective. With Nia DaCosta’sThe Bone Temple due in early 2026, Boyle has aimed high and mostly succeeded, delivering not just one of the boldest films of the year, but a chapter in an ongoing story.
The best of the rest
There were so many films I straight-up adored this year. The 10 films above, and their order, are almost arbitrary. Few cinema experiences match Sirāt for intensity, The Golden Spurtle for pathos or Sinners for that musical moment.
My full ranked list of 2025 releases is, you guessed it, on Letterboxd.
The future
This might very well be the end. Or more likely, a bit of a lengthier pause. For a little while at least.
Closer to home, you may have noticed I’ve posted significantly less this year. The site completely crashed back in July, days before celebrating the 15th anniversary of the site, necessitating a complete front-end rebuild. Bots have been besieging WordPress sites this year making it difficult to know how many people are actually visiting. All of that makes maintaining a website a little less fun.
Not to sound too dramatic, but this site had been my primary outlet for 15 years. That’s no longer the case. With Amy, my partner in life and travel, we’ve really enjoyed expanding our writing styles over at Travel While Nerdy. It’s an outlet that’s allowed us to reflect on our travels — and inspired even more trips. (Please go check it out: we put a lot of love into it!)
Which is how we’ll spend a large chunk of 2026: travelling, writing about our travels and exploring the world. I suspect I’ll still be watching films along the way. Maybe I’ll see you out there?
