Posted on 12/31/2025 6:45:02 PM PST by sphinx
“The Ballad of Wallis Island”—One of 2025’s most endearing sleepers was this British comedy from director James Griffiths about a duo of folk singers, played by co-writer Tom Basden and Oscar-nominee Carey Mulligan, who travel to a Welsh island for a gig. Basden’s writing partner, Tim Key, plays the rich fan who encourages the duo to reunite for this performance. What follows is a film filled with big laughs and a startling amount of heart....
“Bugonia”—Based on Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 film, “Save the Green Planet!”, Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest collaboration with actress Emma Stone is a galvanizing apocalyptic satire. She plays a chilly pharmaceutical CEO abducted by an irate employee (played frighteningly by Jesse Plemons) who is convinced that she is an alien hellbent on conquering humanity. From one scene to the next, the film keeps us guessing about the true nature of its characters, eliciting laughs that occasionally get caught in the viewer’s throat....
“Nouvelle Vague”—There are some films that are impossible for me to watch without wondering what Roger would have thought of them. I have a feeling he would have been utterly delighted by Richard Linklater’s meticulous recreation of the radically unconventional production days for Jean-Luc Godard’s profoundly influential 1959 masterpiece, “Breathless,” the picture often credited with birthing the French New Wave. Each legendary figure of the movement is so impeccably cast that there are times the film feels akin to time travel.
(Excerpt) Read more at rogerebert.com ...
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At least some of us are finished detoxing on football, so let's hear your "best of 2025" movie list, preferably NEW movies that were released this year.
There are many such lists floating around. I picked this one as a prompt simply because it is reasonably mainstream. It included several of my top five: The Ballad of Wallis Island and Nouvelle Vague, which I put in the intro to the thread, plus Sentimental Value and Hamnet, also on the linked list.
I would add The Friend, which is not on her list but (IMHO) should be.
I've seen all of these in the theater and recommend them highly. If you are quick, you might still be able to see Hamnet in the theater, which I would also highly recommend. The fact is, the big screen demands and commands attention in a way that at-home viewing never can. This is important for movies that do careful world building and character development. It is also important for movies that are quieter, thoughtful, understated, and building for a slow burn, and which therefore require the kind of adult attention span that is now being programmed out of the TikTok generation. In other words, they are the kind of movies that "Hollywood" is losing the knack of making, because the industry is now dominated by streamers that are oriented towards clickbait movies deliberately dumbed down for couch potato, multitasking casual viewers. YOU may watch excellent movies in rapt silence and with total attention, but 99.9 percent of home viewers don't, and the streamers know who their audience is. Which is why it's up to us, if we like intelligent, adult movies, to watch them when they appear, preferably in the theater.
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Several of the other movies on Chaz Ebert's list are solid, though I would rate them a bit lower. And several more are on my watchlist but I haven't gotten around to them yet. But I'll not get into that now.
This is simply a call for freeper recommendations for good 2025 movies. We spend plenty of time grousing about the bad ones. What have you watched that you like and recommend?
I do keep track of freeper recommendations, so I appreciate any you want to suggest. I am not a genre snob. We have different viewing tastes. But if you are looking for an easy New Year's resolution, maybe knock off the grousing about "Hollywood hasn't made any good movies since whenever." You wouldn't know if you don't at least check out a few, so take a look at some freeper recommendations. At least a few might appeal to you.
P.S. I also found a pretty solid list of "most anticipated 2026 movies." I'll post that tomorrow.
movie ping list
And Happy New Year.
Terrible year for movies. But I did enjoy the Housemaid.
Thanks for the recommendation. I’ve noticed The Housemaid but haven’t looked at reviews yet. I’ll add it to my watchlist.
This year is better than a lot of people are giving it credit for. It’s strength, however, is in the quiet, introspective character dramas that I happen to like but that don’t get much traction FR.
Freepers have some distinct preference patterns, and a lot of us invariably say they are looking basically for escapism, in various genres.
This year’s best movies, IMHO, are the very opposite of escapist movies. They are movies about the inescapable things, which is to say, they are the stuff of classic drama, however it is framed in the show.
In the movies I listed, the Big D features in several. As do the other two D’s, the two L’s, and the Serenity Prayer themes.
Anyhow, the Housemaid is now on my list. Thanks.
A freeper recommended Frankenstein (Del Toro) and they were right. Liked it a lot. Other than that it was another bad year for film.
Thanks — Happy New Year too!
No where near the best script. Said nothing about the human condition.
But it was popcorn fun.
You had bad guys, you had good guys and you had monsters who wanted to eat them both because they did not care.
The Lost Bus on Apple TV. Strongly Recommend!!! (Free Republic thread)
I just watched the enjoyable, but somewhat complex “Train Dreams.” It is the exact opposite of flash and glitz. It’s a very slow story of the life of “everyman,” n this case, Robert Grainier, a logger and railroad worker who “leads a life of unexpected depth and beauty in the rapidly-changing America of the early 20th Century.” It’s a movie of quiet reflection on life. I’m surprised it got made in this short-attention span clickbait era.
There are several brutal scenes that deal with the extreme racial prejudice that existed around 1900 as well as another tough scene of frontier justice for a man whose brother had been murdered.
The “Great Fire of 1910” is an important element in the movie. That was a huge wildfire in the Inland Northwest region of the United States which burned three million acres in Northern Idaho and Western Montana in the summer of 1910.
It connected with me because it takes place up the road from us in Bonners Ferry, Idaho and a number of familiar inland northwest places are described. My mom’s family was into logging and making lumber. Just today I hired a local “urban forestry” small business to remove two red fir trees severely damaged in our big wind storm ten days ago. So there’s a regional connection in the Idaho panhandle, a family connection to logging and a personal connection to the local forests and wilderness.
I can’t imagine paying money to see any of them.
Or even ‘wasting the bandwidth’ on them: Most of them have been ‘bootlegged’ and available on one of the big (generally legit) video sharing platforms.
And the only one that I have watched is “Eddington” and that, only because it was filmed in some of ‘my old stomping grounds’. It was overall mediocre, Started out pretty good and ended up being very disturbing.
Have there been any decent movies I've missed in the last 21 years?
If you like stories.
If you are one of the "I only read Physics text books" people then no.
Train Dreams was a beautiful film.
Most movies in theaters come to TV within a couple of years anyway.
me too
very unexpectedly
It's the third of the enjoyable "Knives Out" movies.
Yeah and I saw like, none of them... On purpose.
I posted before I saw your post. I loved this movie—just beautiful and will be one that stays with me. The actor who played the lead character was so good. I need to see it on a big screen— watched at home on Netflix which didn’t do the amazing cinematography justice.
Are you done with her? Can you give her my number?
And seeing things on the big screen is very different then seeing it on the small.
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