10 Best Films of 2025

Ellen looking to the heavens

In a year packed with 1990s revivalism, noir resuscitation and franchise exhaustion, these are the films I liked the most in 2025. I’ve attempted to avoid the obvious but not be wilfully obscure and have probably succeeded at neither. Without further ado, with links to full reviews, here goes – in 1-10 order. Dying (dir: Matthias Glasner) A German black comedy so bleak you might laugh out of desperation, following a pair of oldsters as they reach the end of the road, and their two appalling adult children. Superbly underplayed by a top-notch cast, it’s a novelistic, dense, all-enveloping wallow in human misery, three hours long and worth every minute of the grief. … Read more

Dying

Ellen looking to the heavens

How’s this for an opening shot. An old woman in distress on the floor in her nightie, shit down one of her legs; behind her an old guy jigging dementedly, naked beneath his open blue shirt, genitals flapping in the breeze. Dying (Sterben in its original German) is billed in some quarters as a black comedy. Brown might be closer to the mark. It’s a very, very dark colour either way. Find your jollies where you can with this one. A companion piece to Michael Haneke’s Amour, maybe, it paints a bleak picture of old age, and follows the two oldsters, Lissy and Gerd – she still just about keeping up appearances, he … Read more