Round-up of Films seen in 2025
Dear USE Readers,
The good news is that I managed to see more films than I thought I would in 2025, and many of these films turned out to be more intriguing than I first thought they would be based on the way they were promoted. Other films turned out quite disappointing, given the reputations of their directors and/or their casting.
Among the films that gave much food for thought were Gia Coppola’s “The Last Showgirl”, a heartbreaking psychological study of a woman who has thrown her life away and sacrificed significant relationships chasing a dream that proves unworthy of her limited talent; Ben Leonberg’s “Good Boy” which explores how pet animals might foresee their owners’ impending deaths and how they try to comfort their owners and warn them; Tim Mielants’s “Small Things Like These”, exposing the notorious Magdalene laundries in Ireland in the 1980s, how they and the Roman Catholic Church exploited young women and teenage girls in dire circumstances; Andres Veiel’s documentary “Riefenstahl” which explores the links connecting fascism, the cult of body worship and obsessions with beauty and perfection at the expense of people’s welfare and social justice; and Emmanuel Courcol’s “En Fanfare!” which tackles several themes including the power of collective action to effect social change and reach beyond class divisions.
There were a few stinkers I saw as well: Joonho Bong’s “Mickey 17” which in satirising class divisions and hierarchies ends up confused and one-dimensional, not treating its themes with the depth they deserve; and Sergei Loznitsa’s “Two Prosecutors” which in trying to draw parallels between 1930s-era Soviet society and modern Russian society, ends up damning itself as anti-Russian propaganda. Guillermo del Toro’s version of “Frankenstein”, in presenting the monster as basically benign all the way through and the monster’s creator as villainous, robs those characters of their complex natures and waters down the original novel’s themes of the effects of alienation and isolation on individuals; additionally, because of the stereotyping of the main characters as villain and innocent victim, the Promethean theme, with the unexpected addition of forgiveness and redemption (not in the original novel) is weaker than what it could have been.
My expectations over 2026 and beyond are not very high, as global political and economic conditions are cutting into global film industry profits and governments reduce spending that support filmmaking, related industries and other artistic industries as they divert monies towards military spending and preparing for future wars. Nevertheless I’ll continue trying to find and hunt down good films as they come.
Wishing everyone a happy and bountiful year in watching films in 2026!
Nausika