It’s nearly the dawn of 2026, so it only makes sense that I conclude my 2024 list now, before it gets so stupidly late that all relevance is lost. Perhaps we’re already there. So be it.
These are some very, very excellent movies made by some very talented people. We’re most of the way through 2025 and I think that I can say with some confidence that this year will have been inferior to the last. Nothing has blown my socks off just yet; not like my favourites of 2024, at least. It’s impossible to say, but I feel like I’ll be remembering more moments from 2025 movies than the entirety of the films they came from. Moments from Sinners, moments from Good News, moments from Bugonia – all great movies, but they aren’t without their flaws when looked at as a whole. At least a couple of the movies below approach flawlessness (though next to nothing can reach that, of course). Read on to find out which came the closest.
[As usual, TIFF reviews are linked to my TIFF 2024 roundup.]
#5. A DIFFERENT MAN
A Different Man has steadily snuck its way up my rankings, entirely because I can’t stop thinking about how damn smart it is. It’s effectively two movies in one: the first movie is a parable about a man with a severe facial disfigurement who undergoes an experimental operation, freeing him from his superficial disability but exposing his inner ugliness. The second film is, ingeniously, a profound questioning of whether the movie you’re watching, A Different Man itself, should morally or ethically exist. Is it exploitation? Is it shining light on an important issue? Is it opportunistic? Would it be more insulting not to make this movie? A Different Man, and Sebastian Stan by association with his character, are grappling directly with these questions in thoughtful and often hilarious ways, never letting the meta-ness of it all get in the way of a great story of envy and entitlement. At the film’s core is Adam Pearson, an actor who actually has the condition that Sebastian Stan’s character is fictionally afflicted by. His charisma and confidence clashing with Stan’s crippling insecurity is funny and pathetic and oozing with some incredibly clever subtext. A Different Man also happens to have the best surprise cameo of the year, which you’ll just have to see for yourself. A Different Man is enchantingly different.
#4. NICKEL BOYS
Nickel Boys doesn’t give you any space. Its first-person perspective locks you into the eyes of two Black boys forced into a sickeningly abusive American reform school in the ‘60s, and you experience all the horrors – and the humanity – they encounter there. It’s easy to call the filmmaking a gimmick, but once you see it, you’ll understand. You feel trapped when they do; you feel alone and helpless when they do. But you feel excited and nervous and, on rare occasion, free when they do. You feel that they’re just children, but that they’ve been forced to become wise and brokenhearted beyond their years. Most of all, you’ll feel angry, as our protagonists do, at a system designed as sadistically as possible, scarring each child physically and mentally. A particularly affecting scene shows us that this kind of trauma never leaves, it lingers and lasts and takes root across a whole lifetime. Small victories ground the film and lighten it – but only make the harder moments that much more nauseating. It’s not an easy watch, but it is gorgeously presented and features some of the year’s most dynamic performances.
#2. THE BRUTALIST
I don’t want to make this review all about addressing the film’s criticisms, but I think it’s hard not to at least mention them. First of all, Brutalist’s Oscar campaign was derailed by an errant bullet in the form of an AI accusation at the worst possible time, an accusation that, while true, was so miniscule that it never should have been a story in the first place. Now, late in 2025, the dust has settled and the general consensus is that the film is decent, but stumbles into territory far too literal for its own good in its second half. To that I say…no? May I just say no? Can I simply disagree that a capitalist literally raping an artist is too on the nose?
Much like with my review of The Substance, I believe that some messages are worth making clear to even the most undiscerning in the audience; they’re just that crucial. The Brutalist is the quintessential takedown of the American Dream: the story of an immigrant artist with the talent, the drive and the crippling flaws to make for the success story of the century – only to be derailed by the only man capable of providing him the means of creation. The Brutalist positions the capitalist as inherently envious of the artist, for the latter can create and the former can only take take take.
I wouldn’t dare posit that the film is saying anything new or even particularly controversial, but its technique is something special. The tale of László Tóth hasn’t left me for more than a few days at a time; I always find myself considering what was going through Tóth’s mind in that provocative final scene. It’s the story of America being told through a single man and that man is biblically captivating. The opening scene is a flurry of words and images and the exciting cacophonous chaos of America to a stranger, culminating in the inevitable reality: it’s exactly what you’d expect, but flipped on its head, twisted into something recognizable but wrong.
#1. CHALLENGERS
This isn’t fair. Challengers is so perfectly tuned to my wavelength that it feels almost impossible that it exists, like I willed it into existence through a wish I didn’t know I’d made. Every tense look, every sexually charged moment, every shot of a tennis ball from a wacky perspective – it all feels like heroin shooting through my veins, except this heroin doesn’t dull after the first time. Justin Kuritzkes’ script moves with an all-consuming sexiness and sweatiness and intimacy, pinging between its three leads as they go about betraying and seducing and loving and hating and fucking and playing some god damn tennis. My god, do they ever play tennis.
The soundtrack is heavenly, elevating the film’s most sensational moments into loin-soaking spectacles of pure clay-court ecstasy. The final moments of Challengers left me feeling more alive than I’ve ever felt in a theatre before. God exists, and he’s taken the form of three dysfunctional friends/lovers who know each other too well and themselves not enough. These characters are somehow as complicated as the cast of The Leftovers but established within a perfectly-paced, tennis-serve fast 131 minutes. This is the near-flawless movie, a classic, a triumph of filmmaking and screenwriting and acting and scoring and editing and hell, I don’t know, keygripping. Best boy…ing. Catering. Every part of Challengers is the best it could possibly be, and it makes me happy just thinking about its existence. If Luca makes anything even half as good as Challengers ever again, he will go down in history as one of my favourite directors of all time.
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