It is early January once again, which means it is time for me to count down my favourite new films of the past 12 months. Please enjoy the 2025 edition of “10 Great Films”.

A few caveats: firstly, if your favourite film didn’t make my list there is a genuine chance I have not seen it. Secondly this list’s definition of a 2025 release means “released in Australia in 2025”, so inevitably a couple of 2024 productions are going to make my list. Finally I post an annual ‘great films’ list, and it is not called a ‘best films’ list for a reason. All I am claiming in this annual post is that here are 10 films I thought were particularly great and which I wholeheartedly recommend.

As always, there were more than 10 films I really liked from the past year. Runner-ups this time include Strange Harvest, The Bus of Life (El Bus de la Vida), Weapons, But Also John Clarke, Second Victims, Caught Stealing, Companion, Superman, and The Girl Who Stole Time.

10. El 47
(2024, Spain, d. Marcel Barrena.)
If there is a common theme to my favourite films in 2025, it is of straightforward stories told well. Barrena’s 1970s-set Catalan drama follows a bus driver’s quest to extend his Barcelona route into the hillside shanty town of Torre Baró. In my review I wrote that the film ‘tells a very familiar story, and broadly hits a very predictable series of beats. While one could criticise The 47 for playing things very safe, its strength lies in its integrity. This is an open and honest drama, with a strong sense of social justice and a set of warm and readily identifiable characters. While it is based on a true story, and captures a specific period of recent Spanish history, the struggles it depicts are largely universal.’

9. Sinners
(2025, USA, d. Ryan Coogler.)
It is surprising that it has taken five films for Ryan Coogler to actually tell a fully original story, but it was absolutely worth the wait. Ostensibly a vampire-centric horror film, Sinners has a world of things to say about American history, race, bigotry, class, and music. The screenplay is phenomenal, the performances world-class, and the music sublime. The film’s greatest sequence – a transcendent group experience of music – is 2025’s finest single scene by far. A full review is incoming at some future date.

8. Resurrection
(2025, China, d. Bi Gan.)
While Resurrection does not quite meet the highs of Bi’s earlier features Kaili Blues (2015) and Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2018), it remains from moment to moment an example of pure cinema: visual, inspiring, imaginative, and memorable. In my review I wrote: ‘Resurrection is a dream narrative with a razor-thin science fiction premise, and a love letter to the history of Chinese cinema. It is an experience that I am glad to have undertaken, and would happily take again. This is cinema that takes its audience places.’

7. The Golden Spurtle
(2025, Australia, d. Constantine Costi.)
Constantine Costi’s loving chronicle of a Scottish town’s annual porridge-making festival is just delightful to watch. As per my review: ‘ Like many great documentaries, the subject matter is an excuse: what it really represents is a profile of community, culture, and human behaviour. It is a warm, enormously charming excuse to spend about 75 minutes with some funny, wonderful, and occasionally eccentric people.’ What makes the movie as good as it is is the production values, particularly its stylish photography.

6. Becoming Led Zeppelin
(2025, UK, d. Bernard McMahon.)
The key to this music documentary’s quality is right there in the title: rather than present a broad survey of rock band Led Zeppelin from start to finish, Bernard McMahon’s film selectively focus purely on its foundations. Specifically, it tracks the band’s own experience from newcomers to super-stardom. What did that feel like? How did it change them? From my review: ‘ There is no attempt at objectivity. Instead, this is wholly subjective account. It is all the more effective for that. It makes for a hugely engaging watch.’

5. The Life of Chuck
(2024, USA, d. Mike Flanagan.)
As with Sinners, I somehow forgot to review this one – an oversight I’ll try to correct shortly. I think the biggest challenge The Life of Chuck faces with its audience is its pedigree: based on a Stephen King short story and directed by Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep, The Haunting of Hill House), it brings with it assumptions of being a horror film. Instead the film wildly transcends genre, and presents realistic stories of life in the most extraordinary of ways. There’s a superb ensemble bringing it to life as well, including Tom Hiddleston, Karen Gillan, Mark Hamill, and a much-missed, very welcome Mia Sara. Chuck did not deliver what I expected; it delivered something much better.

4. Sorry, Baby
(2025, USA, d. Eva Victor.)
A profound and beautiful feature debut for writer/director/actor Eva Victor, in which a woman recovers from a life-changing trauma. It is insanely well-written, and handles difficult subject matter in a brilliantly effective and responsible way. From my review: ‘There is so much to praise here. It is such a superbly confident work, whether that it is in Victor’s lead performance, or the bold use of a wide screen ratio for such an intimate story, or Lia Ouyang Rusli’s musical score. It is superbly edited, effectively condensing a long story into an efficient 104 minutes. The quality is in Victor’s sharply crafted dialogue, which manages to reflect numerous honestly drawn characters as well as showcase believable flawed behaviours without sacrificing likeability.’

3. A Complete Unknown
(2024, USA, d. James Mangold.)
At the beginning of each year, a tranche of awards contenders released in the USA at the end of the last are finally released in Australia. This is the case with the next two picks, both from 2024 but only released locally in 2025. A Complete Unknown is a brilliantly directed and performed biography of Bob Dylan’s early years, and James Mangold explores the man and the history with much the same style and effectiveness he employed on Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line (2005). As I noted on El 47, if there was a theme to my favourites in 2025 it was straightforward, high quality storytelling. A Complete Unknown is emblematic of that.

2. Conclave
(2024, UK, d. Edward Berger.)
Another critical smash from late 2024, Conclave benefitted in particular from a career-best lead performance by Ralph Fiennes. The intricate and byzantine machinations of the Catholic Church’s election of a pope is carefully laid out and explained with maximum dramatic effect and political tones. From my review: ‘This is a handsomely staged film, peppered with fascinating ritual and detail, populated by a world-class cast, and focused almost entirely on human interaction and moral drama. It is truly sensational stuff. It is, in the best possible sense, a new classic of conventional narrative drama. It is pure, unadulterated, mature drama.’

1. The Long Walk
(2025, USA, d. Francis Lawrence.)
As an author, Stephen King proves exceptional in two regards: he is master of staging uncanny, out-of-this-world situations inside deliberately grounded and ordinary environments, and he is gifted at writing similarly grounded, everyday characters and dialogue. I think the best screen adaptations of his work – The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Stand by Me (1986), The Mist (2007), and others – are the ones that capture those two strengths. The Long Walk, which adapts King’s pseudonymous 1979 novel, captures them with enormous quality and effectiveness.

The film’s core premise is absurd, but delivered with an eye for parable as well as blunt realism. When violent moments break out they are appropriate confronting. When the characters converse, it is with a superb emotional honesty and heart. In my review I wrote director Francis Lawrence ‘trusts the source material and his cast, and the result is something that is both riveting to watch and emotionally rich. You never leave the characters, and that enriches the effect their ordeal has on you.’

I’ve had some affection for some of Lawrence’s earlier films, including Constantine (2005) and his Hunger Games sequels (2013-15). I never for a moment dreamed he’d make my favourite film of the year.