The Kallys® – Best Films of 2025 – The Essential List
The Kallys® are an annual set of made-up awards (aren’t they all?) that celebrate my favourite creative works from the calendar year just gone. It’s a fun way to reflect on my favourite arty experiences and share them with others. I give you full permission to pass these suggestions off as your own when someone comes to you for a cool recommendation. I hereby present The Kallys®: Best Films of 2025
I’ve been looking back at the films that actually managed to leave a mark. I’m talking about the ones that didn’t just flicker across the screen but felt like they were painted onto it with some proper craft and care
This year, the truly standout work in cinema was that bit harder to find, but some filmmakers managed to capture the messy, unvarnished sides of humanity that is relatively absent from mainstream movies
In this weird world of CGI overload and algorithmically enhanced, second-screen-optimised storytelling, there is something deeply satisfying about stories that prioritise artistry, honesty and atmospheric weight over spectacle.
With that said, these are the best films (by far and away) that I saw in the calendar year of 2025
1 \ Sinners
This is a great movie and easily the best I saw all year. It’s moody, mad, musical and mythical. A proper piece of art. And like any great piece of carefully crafted art, it’s not just one thing that makes it so good.
At this stage we know that Ryan Coogler is one of our great contemporary directors. What an eye he has. And his writing is spot on too. He also chooses his collaborators very wisely and once they click, they stick. Like Michael B. Jordan, who once again shows us again why he’s a tip-top actor, with a genuonely hypnotic split performance as identical twins.
Hats off too to Ludwig Göransson, Coogler’s longtime composer, who has crafted a really gorgeous score. In fact, music and song are such a vital part of this film (If I were a New York Times writer, I would even go so far as to say that “music is a character in this film”).
And if we throw all the other excellent components in the mix, like the genre-bending storyline (with more than a hint of a Robert Rodriguez-esque, vampire-shaped fork in the road), as well as the lavish and lush colourful cinematography (that looks like it was painted on to the screen), we have a truly modern classic on our hands.
A timeless film about who we are right now. Must see. [Trailer here]
2 \ One Battle After Another
You can tell when a new Paul Thomas Anderson film is released. Cinephiles come scampering out from underneath their IMAX projectors and start to use words like “ephemeral” and “triumphant”. The thing is, they’re generally right (damn them) and, especially in this case. One Battle After Another is a really good film.
In fact, there is likely to be a good deal of superlative fawning over PTA after this. (PTA is what the film snobs affectionately call Paul Thomas Anderson. Not to be confused with the Parent Teacher Association, who bring out the superlatives in many of us). The film-snob community will undoubtedly mansplain that “PTA’s visual artistry is immense” and that “every frame is stuffed with detail… and the visceral impact is undeniable”. That’s largely true also. The film looks great.
Cineastes will undoubtedly exclaim that Leonardo DiCaprio is terrific and Sean Penn is excellent. What a shocker. They are rarely bad (as actors, I have no opinion on their personal choices) In fact, the whole cast is brilliant. The film critics will undoubtedly wholeheartedly agree by describing it as a “tour-de-force ensemble performance”. That sounds close enough to me.
As for me, I think it’s very good (it’s also weird and uncomfortable at times). That is, if you like odd sprawling movies that jump between timelines while thoughtfully tackling topics like greed, idealism, regret and integrity. And especially if that movie is adapted from a Thomas Pynchon book called Vineland (which The New York Times, or someone like that, will inevitably describe it as “an unwieldy unfilmable Thomas Pynchon novel set in a dense, messy, sprawling universe…”
Either way, whoever you take your recommendations from, you should watch this movie. [Trailer here]
3 \ A Complete Unknown
Waaaaay back at the start of year, this little gem of a movie came out about the legendary Bob Dylan in his freewheelin’ folky early days. At the time I was going through a particularly deep phase of Dylan (everyone has these phases, even Bob) because my eldest son was discovering Dylan’s iconic songs on guitar. We were like giddy kids the night before going to the cinema to see this movie. The big questions bubbled up. Is Chalamet up to the task? What songs will he sing? Will they do Bob justice? And so on.
We needn’t have worried. The film was a delight and Chalamet was outstanding (as were Monica Barbaro and Edward Norton). I do know other folks (on the obsessive end of the Dylan fan spectrum) who thought it was too throwaway and glossy. But I disagree. The central focus on the songs and songwriting from the era is what made it so captivating. If you have even the mildest curiosity about Bob Dylan (he’s only our greatest living songwriter!) then you should give it a spin.
As for me and my son, our year of Bob was bookended beautifully with a concert by the man himself in Dublin. It felt fitting that Bob was the connecting throughline for our year. Something I will treasure forever. [Trailer here].
