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Movies: Your personal year in review for 2025
This is your place to share any and all thoughts on your movie viewing for 2025.
Movies you talk about do NOT have to be limited to this year’s releases.
Feel free to share:
- Favorites
- Disappointments
- Surprises
- Memorable moments
- Self-reflections
- Anything else!
Let us know how your movie watching for 2025 went.
I did terrible this year. Only 215 movies. I'll do a top 10 of movies I watched for the first time this year (no 2025 releases) Link to the previous year post.
Really disappointed in myself that I couldn't sit through movies this year. I don't know what happened to my attention span.
... that is a lot. :)
If you looked through my diary you’d see it’s a mostly stuff from 2015 onwards and like easy watches that you’d only put on in the background. A lot of Netflix romcoms, stuff like The Perfect Date, Sierra Bourgeois is a Loser, and The Kissing Booth. Stuff I only watched because of their male leads and my interest in their careers. Not a lot of worthwhile stuff.
oh, not too bad then. Back around 2014 or so I crossed 200 but it was all japanese, russian, and french stuff... and I was completely burned out on cinema for a few months until a double of Yojimbo and Sanjuro was in an art-house theatre. Without that double, I think it would have been ages until I saw anything with a subtitle.
I probably do 80 per year these days.. maybe more if I watch new stuff.
I could use some recommendations for Japanese or French movies :) Not too big on all the samurai stuff, but I know Japan has more to offer than that. More by Naruse and Ozu are on my watchlist.
definitely go through Ozu, Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Masaki Kobayashi, Takeshi Kitano, etc -- the big names are big for a reason. For Ozu and Kurosawa, I also did commentary tracks. For Kurosawa, Stephen Prince (author of The Warrior's Camera) teaches Kurosawa or something and... well, he knows everything about everything.
I love Samurai films, so I did a lot of those... I had an extended period of Shaw Brothers films (etc), too. Not to mention Zatoichi, Lone Wolf and Cub etc, too.
For french films, Three Colors Trilogy, Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis), Rififi (Du rififi chez les hommes), Le Trou, Amour, Jules and Jim (Jules et Jim), The Wages of Fear (Le salaire de la peur, also watch Sorcerer), La Haine, Le Samouraï, L'Atalante etc. A top-list will cover the standards like Breathless, Jeanne Dielman etc --- so many perfect films.
If you do do a list, don't go in order of the rating, though. I did that with kung fu and was so excited at first then it became a bit of a slog.
On the topic of Netflix romcoms, give A Copenhagen Love Story a try. I am not sure how well it translates to viewers outside Denmark, but I think it is an interesting twist on the romcom genre. Starts as one, ends more in tragedy.
I gotta say, reading through these year in review threads (and also the weekly what are you reading/watching/playing threads), I seriously wonder where the hell you all find the time!
I watched ~30 movies this year, a huge leap up from my usual tally of 3-5, and that was with deliberate effort to broaden my film horizons. Considering how many and the kinds of movies I've added to my PTW list, what I actually ended up watching didn't follow much rhyme or reason beyond what I was in the mood for at the time.
Highlights
12 Angry Men - Excellently shot and acted.
A Fistful of Dollars - I thought I would have made it through the Dollars trilogy but I only got to this one. I'd seen it in parts many times before but this is the first I can remember watching it all in one go. Surprise surprise, it's still great.
The Breakfast Club - Can anyone watch a John Hughes movie and not want to go back to the 80s? Can it be that it was all so simple then?
In much the same way that Hayao Miyazaki is a master at capturing children's sense of wonder, I think Hughes had a knack for distilling a somewhat-mischievous, somewhat-rebellious aspect of youth that I can't find the words to properly describe right now... even when his actors are plainly in their 20s.
Broker - Last year I came across trailers of around 6 films that I'd take note of and plan to watch 'one day' before realizing Kore-eda was behind all of them. This is the first I've actually watched, and I will make my way through the rest next year.
In The Mood For Love - Hoo boy, I think my computer's still smoldering from playing this. I need some more Wong Kar-Wai.
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence - I first learned of Ryuichi Sakamoto in the early aughts by randomly downloading the main theme of this film's score, and the haunting, bittersweet melody instantly intrigued me. I took forever to get around to watching the movie it was meant for, but it was absolutely worth the wait, and so fitting besides.
Piece By Piece - I knew many of the stories beforehand, and I'm probably a bit of a sucker for Lego. Still, I quite liked how they represented Pharrell's creativity.
The Last Samurai and The Twilight Samurai - I knew Hiroyuki Sanada by reputation more than résumé when he wowed everyone with his decades of experience with samurai portrayals in 2024's Shogun series, so this year I vowed to watch some more of his work in that vein. The battles and the theme of honor in The Last Samurai made it a favorite of mine upon release, and with a more mature perspective today I can say that it still is, while recognizing that the performances of the Japanese cast were probably the ones really carrying the film. I really enjoyed finding Sanada in the main role of an almost diametrically-opposed jidaigeki film in The Twilight Samurai. It's quite understated throughout, but when it bursts into life you realize you were in skilled hands all along. It may well have two of the most realistic, best-performed, and perhaps best-filmed sword duels in cinema.
Disappointments/lowlights
Tokyo Story - not bad per se, but I was underwhelmed. I was sold it as a potential greatest-movie-of-all-time candidate, but I much prefer Kurosawa's Ikiru which hits similar notes.
Idiocracy and Office Space - Not for me I guess.
Also Watched
2 Days in New York
Abigail's Party
Airplane!
Bazodee
Coonskin
Good Hair
Lupin the Third: Jigen's Gravestone
Lupin the Third: Goemon's Blood Spray
Lupin the Third: Fujiko's Lie
Mid-August Lunch
Nemuri Kyōshirō 3: The Man with No Tomorrow
Police Story
The Phoenix: Karma Chapter
The Raft
Senna
Take the Ball, Pass the Ball
War Game
I also finished making my way through all of the ESPN 30 For 30 docs that I was interested in (about 1/3 of them all), having started in mid-2024. I'm not sure how much I should consider them films though, despite what Letterboxd says. I could go on and on about how many of them I'd recommend even if you aren't invested in the featured sport (26 Years: The Dewey Bozella Story, Once Brothers, Maradona '86, Into The Wind, No Más, Hillsborough, Bad Boys, Ali: The Mission, Ceasefire Massacre, What Carter Lost, Believeland, Year of the Scab...) but O.J. Made in America is the absolute must-see.
I can highly recommend Chungking Express. In terms of romantic attraction depicted in a convincing manner, that is one of the best in my opinion.
Here is everything I watched this year
everything.. I think
pretty tame year. How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, Anora, Islands, and Nouvelle Vague were all standouts for newer films.
Any thoughts on La Bête? I never got around to watching it.
oh man! it isn’t a perfect film, but it’s pretty neat and worth the watch. it almost feels like something from Nolan. The pace and rhythm is also interesting. definitely worth a watch.
The year isn't over yet, but I will probably land at about 300 movies, which is more reasonable levels compared to 362 last year. My stats have the complete picture.
One of my goals was to have a greater percentage of non-English language films and about 60% were, so I am satisfied with that. The majority of those were Italian films which has been a big thing for me this year. In addition to even more spaghetti westerns (highlights being And God Said To Cain and I Am Sartana Your Angel of Death), I also explored related genres with giallo (with Deep Red and The Suspicious Death of a Minor being highlights) and poliziotteschi (The Big Racket being the outright insane one and Revolver as a film with more political depth) as they have great deal of overlap in actors, directors, styles and themes.
I am not up to speed with many 2025 releases, as I will usually catch up on those next year, but it has been a real strong year for Danish cinema. I liked A Copenhagen Love Story, Second Victims and Home Sweet Home. There is a generational shift going at the moment with film makers in Denmark, and I am really excited for what we will see in the coming years.
American films of 2025 have mostly been a disappointment, or just decent. Warfare, Weapons and Bugonia was worth watching, but didn't live up to their hype. Minecraft was terrible.
Some 2024 films that impressed me was Parthenope, Bird, Peacock and Conclave.
No concrete goals for 2026 as such. Will continue to watch broadly across periods, countries and genres. Maybe I will dedicate a bit more to rewatch stuff, some more classics from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and perhaps some more Japanese.
I'm going to stick to 2025 releases because I don't remember or keep track of what I watch. But it's easy enough to scroll through a list of 2025 releases and jot down what I've seen. Mine is very front-loaded with kids movies and I really don't watch a lot of movies, but...
KPop Demon Hunter -- I really like this movie. It's simple, but animation's nice and the songs are great. I'm past the point of paying attention to the movie when my kids watch it, but I still enjoy it from time to time.
Minecraft Movie -- This movie is all over the damn place. A decent half of it is just straight lifted from the plot of the Warcraft movie / Warcraft 1, even down to Malgosha basically being a female pig version of Gul'dan. Which is honestly kind of enjoyed because that's as close as I'll ever get to seeing another Warcraft movie. I also enjoyed some of the jokes...the bit with Malgosha trying and failing to stab Steve at the end was pretty funny.
Plankton: The Movie -- I refuse to recognize any Spongebob that isn't the first 4 seasons. I mean not really, but this movie wasn't great.
Thunderbolts -- The first MCU movie I've seen in a few years and I really enjoyed it. And not like "it's a mediocre movie, but it's MCU and I can live with it" enjoyed. Like actually enjoyed it.
Happy Gilmore 2 & The Naked Gun -- Grouping these together because they're basically the same idea. Take a beloved comedy and do a sequel 30+ years later. And the result for both was about what I expected -- the same kind of humor as the originals, a lot of in-jokes and nods to the previous film(s), and a pretty forgettable plot. Like I literally do not remember what the plot of The Naked Gun was at all and it really wasn't that long ago that I watched it. All that being said, both are all I want out of comedy films.