Across 2025, we saw the return of beloved directors, the revitalization of film genres, and many daring or bizarre risks. What has made 2025 a standout year in recent memory, though, has been the sheer hope and excitement accompanying our gradual return to watching these films on the big screen. Audiences are rewarding and celebrating good cinema, and Varsity’s Film & TV team are here to highlight the films that topped their list.
Otto Bajwa Greenwood: One Battle After Another
My favourite film of 2025 undoubtedly remains Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another. The film opens with the militant fervour of a resistance group called the ‘French 75’. The movement rapidly unravels, however, as their uncompromising opposition to fascism places them squarely in the sights of the fanatical racial fetishist Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn). Forced to live off grid, the film follows the now pathetic, former ‘French 75’ revolutionary, Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), as he tries to make a new life for himself and his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti). However, when his long-standing nemesis returns and Willa disappears, the once-radical activist is thrust into a desperate search, as both father and daughter are forced to confront the lingering consequences of their shared past.
One of my favourite elements of the film remains its modernity. Despite being loosely based on Thomas Pynchon’s novel, Vineland (1990), the film reworks the book’s political satire and cultural paranoia into our contemporary moment. Whether it is liberating an immigration detention centre, exploring the enduring resistance against white supremacy, or capturing weed-smoking nuns, Anderson’s comic writing, Michael Bauman’s innovative cinematography (you know the scene), and Johnny Greenwood’s suspense-filled score make this film a modern classic.
Dan Porritt: The Ballad of Wallis Island
The Ballad of Wallis Island sticks out to me from 2025 as an unexpectedly moving portrait of nostalgia and acceptance. It follows Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden), a folk musician invited to perform on a remote Welsh island by secluded superfan Charles Heath (Tim Key). Building on their 2007 short comedy film, Basden and Key add to this story Herb’s former musical and romantic partner Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan), who has been invited without Herb’s knowledge to fulfil Charles’ dream of reuniting the acoustic duo. Reopened wounds and the struggles of communication are blended with the laughter of the film’s origins.
Key’s brilliance as a comedic actor has always been clear in the fine-tuned awkwardness of his characters created for television, but the emotional landscape on his face during moments of silence in Wallis Island proves that his knack for the subtleties of British interactions stretches far beyond the comic. Myriad one-liners from the folk fanatic (“To paraphrase The Beatles, there goes the sun” being a favourite) are balanced by the screenplay’s power in leaving things unsaid. Basden’s original songs fill in the blanks; Mulligan’s hesitance giving way to harmonising conveys just as much as the lyrics the pair are singing.
Heidi Lewis: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Rian Johnson catches lightning in a bottle for the third time with this thrilling sequel. This time, rather than a luxury estate or a secluded island, Johnson captures a deliciously anticipatory atmosphere by setting his story in a church. Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) joins the collection of Johnson’s heroes as a genuinely good, if somewhat awkward and misguided, protagonist, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Jud’s hilarious yet heartwarming dynamic with the formidable detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) shines amongst the tension, a breath of fresh air in between the drama.
“Audiences are rewarding and celebrating good cinema”
Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close) serves as a fascinating killer, complicated and neither good nor bad. Driven by rage, love, passion and devotion, Martha is perhaps unexpected amongst the captivating entourage of characters. The personalities of the cast balance out perfectly, with ridiculous one-liners, arguments, and strained relationships. The victim of Martha’s antics, Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), appears as terrifyingly powerful with his booming voice and claws sunken deep into his followers, and his downfall is satisfying. Knives Out continues building its legacy as one of the most engaging murder mystery franchises in recent cinematic history, with the newest edition cementing this position.
Ruby Redwood: Bugonia
Bugonia is a rigidly tense and tightly-plotted film whose intensity made my palms sweat in the cinema. Its story follows a reclusive, bee-keeping conspiracy theorist (Jesse Plemons) who abducts the CEO of a large pharmaceutical company (Emma Stone), whom he believes to be an alien threatening humanity and the population of honeybees. Plemons’ character, Teddy, attempts to extract a confession from the CEO, Michelle, and force her to organise a meeting with her fellow ‘Andromedans’, a goal which is frustratingly challenged by Michelle’s persistent denial of any alien-hood in a series of tactfully suspenseful dialogues.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ directing, Will Tracy’s writing, and several outstanding performances converge to induce a perfect soup of emotions, none of them moderate. Teddy’s manipulation of his vulnerable autistic brother Don is completely heartbreaking to watch, but it remains one example of the film’s poignancy among many moments which are genuinely distressing, enthralling and exciting.
Daniella Adetoye: Sinners
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners stands out as one of the most striking films of 2025. Set in Jim Crow America, it follows twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) as they return home to open a juke joint. What begins as a historical drama soon fractures into something more surreal, blending Southern gothic horror, and social allegory.
“The personalities of the cast balance out perfectly, with ridiculous one-liners, arguments, and strained relationships”
It is impossible to ignore the film’s technical precision, from its meticulously choreographed one-shot to Ludwig Göransson’s pulsating score which heightens the film’s sense of dread and inevitability. Music is central to Sinners, with the juke joint functioning as a site of resistance, connection, and communal survival. Through this space, Coogler explores the unifying power of Black music across time and place, weaving together jazz, blues, traditional African rhythms, rap, and rock. In doing so, the film transcends the violent racial oppression that defined the 1930s. Few films in recent years have felt as ambitious or emotionally resonant to me, with its core themes lingering in my mind long after its blood-soaked final act.
Amanda Ljungberg: A Useful Ghost
A Useful Ghost was the most affecting experience I had at the cinema in 2025. You do not expect this from the flat, absurdist tone it leads with, but director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachok deftly manoeuvres a quaint, quiet metaphor into something entirely moving. A Useful Ghost is thoroughly, even shockingly political, but you will not need an in-depth knowledge of Thai social history and contemporary politics to enjoy or appreciate it. Tragically and stupidly deprived of the chance to compete in the Foreign Film Category at the Academy Awards, but deservedly winning the Grand Prix at Cannes Critics’ Week, this is a satire not limited to confronting corruption, censorship, capitalism, queerness, generational trauma, religion, and class mobility.
March’s wife Nat dies from pollution sickness, which has already claimed another worker at March’s family factory. When Nat is reincarnated into a vacuum cleaner, she must prove herself the eponymous ‘useful ghost’ to her disapproving in-laws by colluding with first the factory owners, then politicians and military figures, to erase other ‘vengeful’ spirits which survive by lingering in people’s memory. This is ultimately about the struggle to preserve cultural memory and voice, and the sacrifices one makes and justifies in the desperation of making for oneself the peaceful, loving homes and freedoms one is born deserving. It is a deeply Thai film, uniquely outspoken at that, but, as I have suggested, A Useful Ghost will resonate with anyone who cares about accountability, originality, and justice.
