Culture
Three of 2025’s best films
By: Gordon Briggs
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For devout cinephiles like myself, this is the busiest time of the year. The holidays mean many multiplexes are packed with family-friendly blockbusters. Awards season brings plenty of prestigious films vying for recognition. In the midst of it all, smaller films from earlier in the year can be overlooked. Here are three films from 2025 that are some of the year’s best.
The Girl with the Needle is an absolute knockout. Watching the movie, not only was I moved emotionally by its story, but Needle unfolded in a bold, black-and-white, expressionistic style that made it one of the most visually impressive films on the market.
In a story that is still surprisingly relevant, we meet Karoline, a young factory worker in post-WWI Copenhagen, who struggles to survive after her husband goes off to war. When she becomes pregnant, Karoline must endure a series of negotiations, interrogations, and outright exploitation to make her daily bread in a city that casts women like her aside.
Visually, the film is abrasive yet oddly beautiful. The movie has a stark, jaundiced aesthetic, heavily influenced by German Expressionism, featuring distorted shadows, and a gritty, dilapidated urban setting. That choice creates a haunting, oppressive atmosphere that mirrors the film’s dark narrative of a young woman trapped in a bleak postwar society.
Then there’s the story itself, which I can only describe as Socio-Economic Body Horror. Throughout the film, you get the sense that either through pregnancy or work, Karoline is never in control of her own body, and that the violence shown later in the film is the only choice she has. It may have been released in 2024, but for me, it’s an early standout of 2025. ★★★★
The world is coming to an end. After months of internet and power outages, various natural disasters, and a general feeling of hopelessness, The Life of Chuck starts by showing us the end of all things. The question is, if the entire world is ending, why are our main characters seeing posters and billboards everywhere wishing a happy retirement to some man named Chuck? This is the mystery behind The Life of Chuck, a genre-bending and unabashedly sentimental movie that may be one of the standouts of 2025.
Starting with the literal end of the world, but unfolding in reverse chronology, we follow the life of an accountant who… you know what? I’m not going to tell you much more because part of the film’s power is going in cold, and watching this world build itself even as it chronicles another world falling apart.
Those who want a supernatural horror from Stephen King may be disappointed. However, in another fruitful collaboration with director Mike Flannigan, the film unfolds before us like a good mystery book, where small, seemingly minor events are revealed to carry great significance.
Example: There’s an entertaining moment where Chuck has an impromptu swing dance with a stranger. It’s an ordinary event, but it resonates throughout the film, underscoring the need to live in the present. That’s the secret to this movie. Rather than just reveling in the death of the universe, the movie gives us a way out.
This is a film of multitudes. The way the movie blends cosmic ideas, end-times depression, and little asides about adolescence would be a daunting task for any movie if it weren’t for this outstanding cast. Mark Hamill and Chiwetel Ejiofor are quite good here as characters in Chuck’s journey. For my money, Matthew Lillard does his best work with a monologue that only lasts a few minutes.
The result may frustrate some, but to me, it’s a “post-post-apocalyptic” film. One that’s destined to play in nearly empty theaters, but will find an audience among those looking to cope with a world that feels like it’s gone wrong. ★★★★
Finally, there is Dahomey. I haven’t watched many documentaries lately. Streaming platforms have been overloaded with true-crime documentaries, celebrity bios, and retrospectives of various tragedies.
That’s part of the reason why I was so taken with Dahomey, a movie that is part documentary, part ghost story, part cultural reckoning, and a standout of 2025.
The film chronicles the return of 26 royal treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey, which had been held in a museum in France for decades, to their country of origin. In chronicling that repatriation, the film captures debates by local college students as they present their views on the repatriation of these artifacts.
Usually in films like this, information is given to us via exposition from “talking heads.” Thankfully, the director, Mati Diop, chose a different direction. The documentary’s most unconventional element is actually giving a voice to the artifacts themselves. Specifically, instead of using a traditional documentary narrator, Dahomey is narrated by one of the returned treasures, a statue of King Ghézo, who, using a deep rumbling, distorted voice, narrates the events of its return home.
This decision to give the objects themselves a voice conveys the symbolic weight of the artifacts’ displacement and their ghostly presence in the film.
This is where the art professor in me really begins to appreciate this work. The filmmakers are not just observing history; they are giving narrative and emotional weight to a concept that could feel abstract and cerebral.
That’s what I continue to admire about Dahomey. It’s not just an engaging film, it’s a useful one. ★ ★ ★ ★