Congratulations everybody, we made it to the end of 2025! This year has certainly been something to behold, and there’s a lot of unfortunate reasons for that, but a way we can look back on this year fondly is by looking at the films released over these last twelve months. This has been an excellent year for film and, in hindsight, a good bit better than 2024. The blockbusters this year were much stronger, we had a strong line-up of both independent films and big franchise instalments, and there was a future classic to be found in just about every genre.
Previously I’ve approached the mammoth task of looking back at the year’s films in a variety of ways. I’ve done simple highlights of my favourite films of the year, and last year I mostly went in chronological order, exploring certain themes and genres along the way. This year though, I’m doing something a little different. To highlight the variety of movies we had this year, both good and bad, I’m allocating certain films I saw with a particular award. This won’t be an especially serious award half the time, but it’ll just be a nice reminder of what I saw this year. For my actual best and worst lists, you can check out my socials.
But we’ll at least start chronologically, because the first film I saw this year is getting an award.
‘Best Line’ Award: Nosferatu
I’m classing this as a 2025 release because, while this came out at the end of 2024 in many places, here it was our big New Year’s Day film and it’s one of the best ones we’ve had in recent years. It was a visually rich and exciting take on the source material, but one of my fondest memories of being in a cinema this year is hearing an audience full of film fans taking in the immense pleasure that comes from hearing Willem Dafoe say “I have seen things in this world that would’ve made Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother’s womb.” Let’s face it, there was not a single more satisfying line in any film this year. It was my first cinema visit of the year, and I started on that incredible high.
Most Awkward Cinema Experience: The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man
If Nosferatu was a good cinema experience, then 2025’s bizarre cult comedy The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man (Editor: Simon was much more positive) was certainly the worst. Not because of any annoying audience distractions (that honour was awarded to the phone lights being used to illuminate Sisu: Road To Revenge), but because I have never felt less in on a joke in my entire life. This was an audience guffawing at every strange line, every unfunny non-sequitur, every bad edit being passed off as charming amateurism, and I sat there completely stone-faced, not enjoying myself in the slightest. It was only 79 minutes, yet it felt like 79 hours.
The Flawed Future Classic Award: Sinners
While I’m not the biggest fan of the Black Panther films, I could always tell that Ryan Coogler was a fantastic director and when I heard he was making an original film, I was interested to see him tell his own story. Sinners is by no means perfect, since there are some frustrating plot holes and it can turn a little generic towards the end, but for 90% of it runtime, it’s absolutely bloody brilliant. It’s gorgeously helmed, well-acted and creative big-budget filmmaking that has an amazing build of character and story in its first half before it just roars to life. It’s also so impressive how it manages to span genres – this is horror, period drama, Southern Gothic and a kick-ass vampire action movie all rolled into one and it’s insanely good fun. It has its flaws, but what works is just terrific, and I can see this having a lot of longevity.
The ‘Ball Fumbled’ Award: Him
Every year there are going to be films that waste their potential, and while there’s a strong case to be made that Death of A Unicorn completely fumbles its fun killer-unicorn with trite and lazy execution, the anticipation for Justin Tipping’s Him (produced by the one and only Jordan Peele) compared to the misfire it really was is undoubtedly the biggest case of missed expectations that we had the whole year. Marlon Wayans was great and there was some occasionally arresting imagery, but those are about the only positive things I can say about it. It was just an utterly confused and forced re-tread of films like Whiplash and Black Swan, but with American football subbing in for drumming and ballet respectively.
Plus, picking Him gave me the perfect excuse to make a pun about how the film dropped the ball. It’s probably the best impact it’s had on anything, and that’s sad.
The ‘Everything But The Kitchen Sink’ Award: Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
After the fantastic Dead Reckoning: Part One two years ago, I was incredibly excited to see how the story, and indeed the entire Mission: Impossible series, concluded with this eighth instalment. However, the somewhat mixed early reactions tempered my expectations slightly, and I was slightly trepidatious when I sat down in the cinema for the three-hour extravaganza.
The Final Reckoning has all the best elements of the Mission: Impossible franchise, with the jawdropping action sequences, breathtaking cinematography, and really fun interplay between the IMF crew. However, it also contains all of the franchise’s weak points (the slow-mo and romance from John Woo’s M:I 2 aside), with a lot of portentous dialogue, confusing plotting, and a determination to go as big as possible, when arguably Fallout and Dead Reckoning had already hit the ceiling.
The Final Reckoning is a Mission: Impossible film pushed to its absolute extremes and while it’s highly, highly flawed, I did ultimately leave with a smile on my face. Until, of course, I remembered the God-awful Angela Bassett monologue from the film’s opening which makes Ethan Hunt sound like Jesus Christ.
The ‘Dead Horse’ Award: Jurassic World – Rebirth
I’ve never been a fan of this franchise, even the legendary first film, so quite why I decided to see the new Jurassic World I’ve got no idea. Maybe I placed too much faith in Gareth Edwards, or maybe I was at least attracted to a Jurassic World movie that wasn’t trying so hard to cater to nostalgia like the last one was. But then the film started, and endless shot callbacks to the original film, stupid and annoying side characters, and a creaky video game-esque plot made me quickly realise that this would be the same old shit. Gareth Edwards does his best from a directing standpoint and, of course, the action sequences are well-made, but the magic and the invention of this franchise is well and truly dead, and everything (especially Scarlett Johansson’s performance) feels offensively phoned-in. The franchise now feels as old as dinosaurs themselves, and I was so bored and irritated by Rebirth that I almost walked out. And I didn’t even think of doing that during Madame Web.
Best Stephen King Adaptation: The Long Walk
It’s certainly been a good year to be Stephen King, as he’s been raking in money from the amount of adaptations of his work there were this year. From the very sweet The Life of Chuck to the bonkers The Monkey to the flawed but fun [The] Running Man, there was really something to cater to every type of Stephen King fan. However, my pick for the best adaptation this year goes to Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk, which managed to keep the novel’s concept simple and grounded while still being cinematic. Everyone was fantastic in this, from David Jonsson to Cooper Hoffman to Mark Hamill, and the tone was suitably gloomy and desperate. I don’t know how quickly I’d revisit it but, even in a year where all of the Stephen King adaptations were at least solid, this one had the most confident direction and efficiently-told story.
The ‘No. Just No’ Award: Avatar: Fire & Ash
I’ll speak at the end about some films that I frustratingly missed out on, but there were some where I simply couldn’t muster up enough interest to try them out and, as I alluded to in my review of the very good Savages, my interest in and patience for James Cameron’s world of pretty blue screensavers is negligible to say the least. So when I found out that the big release this Christmas is the third instalment of the Avatar franchise, with a runtime as long as Return of The King and a trailer as up-its-own-butt as usual, I took one look and went “No. Just no.”
Best Needle-Drop: Superman
I remember being very taken aback by the use of George Harrison’s “Beware of Darkness” in the summer’s horror smash Weapons (which I thoroughly enjoyed, for the record), so count that as a honorable mention for this award. However, when deciding what the best needle-drop in film this year was, my mind had already been made up when James Gunn decided to use the twee indie-pop classic 5 Years Time by Noah & The Whale in his fun new take on Superman. As a Noah & The Whale fan and a James Gunn fan, watching Mr Terrific kick ass while that was playing was strangely cathartic.
The ‘Hell Yes’ Award: 28 Years Later
I finally caught up with the original 28 Days Later this year and absolutely loved it. I even liked its decent if generic follow-up in 2007. However this long-awaited third instalment, and first in a new trilogy, might just be my favourite in the series. Filmed in the North East, it’s a well-directed, rich, scary and emotional new chapter in the series, that fits so many fantastic ideas in just under two hours. From that terrifying opening flashback, to the phenomenal closing scenes with Ralph Fiennes, 28 Years Later is a sublime and visceral re-introduction to the world of this series, and I can’t wait to see The Bone Temple in just a few weeks.
Well, that seems to cover all the bases. There were of course films I didn’t get the chance to see: I missed out on some of the big films like F1 and Materialists, I haven’t yet caught up with Together, and I also need to find time to watch the critically-acclaimed Sorry, Baby. There’ll also be the Boxing Day releases where the awards season race will well and truly start, so we at least have that to look forward to.
But these were my off-kilter and random awards for what was, in my opinion, a damn good year for film. It might not’ve been damn good for anything else in this crazy world, but hopefully we can continue to see some good cinema in 2026 while everything sorts itself out. See you then.
