10 of the best films of 2025 so far

BBC film critics Carin James and Nicholas Barber choose the highlights of this year’s film, from brutal war epics to vampire dramas from ambitious times.

In the sharpest American indie film ever, the companion starring Jack Quaid and Sophie Thatcher as a dedicated young couple, and goes to stay with some friends on a distant forest vacation of Russian tycoons. (Rupert’s friend has a hilarious cameo as mullet oligarchs.) As the drunken night of confessions, doubts and disagreements unfold, it appears the first to see whether the film is a romantic comedy or whether Neurish’s thriller about the robbery may be wrong. In fact, Companion is a science fiction comedy thriller, but beyond that, the more you know about the film beforehand, the more fun its many original twists and turns. It is sufficient to say that writer-director Drew Hancock’s big screen debut is modern technology and is a never-beatable topic of how certain unstable young men are entitled and misogynistic young people are. And it packs all the ideas into 97 minutes. (NB)

Like Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, he was able to outdo himself with the sinners. Michael B. Jordan is harshly convincing, as the twins, who returned from Chicago to their homeland in Mississippi from Chicago in Jim Crow South, are called Smoke and Stack, to open Juke Joints in 1932. With his enormous ambition and imagination, Coogler is heading for a completely original film that swirls the familiar genre and obscures the real and supernatural. Sinner is a vampire film and is also a work of the era. It’s a drama about racism, family, superstition, and spirituality, accompanied by passionate sex and exhilarating blues music. Coogler directs Brio, creating an illusion in which African musicians appear next to the rapper. The first hour is full of texture and can stand alone as a film from the era, but ultimately the supernatural invades, leading to an action, blood and vengeance finale. Jordan is surrounded by a great supporting cast including Delroy Lind, Unmi Musak and Haley Steinfeld. Door sex, blues, vampire? What does everyone want in the movie? (CJ)

Miranda Yousef’s Rivet documentary tells the story of a stranger from Thomas Kinkade, one of the best-selling artists in history. Critics dismissed his work as nauseating illness, but in the 1990s and 2000s there were shops all over the United States dedicated to sentimental photographs of Kinkade’s cozy country cottages. Art asks fascinating questions about who can determine what to count as legal art, and whether some paintings are more moral than others – questions that resonate today in light of the ongoing culture war in the United States. But Yousef’s delicately balanced and delicate films are as appealing to personal issues as they are sociopolitical. An important part of Kinkade’s marketing was the public image he was carefully constructed as a carefully Christian and a man of a national family, but the so-called “painter of light” also had a dark side. Has the pressure of being a squealing, squealing Dr. Jekyll pushed him to become a self-destructive Mr. Hyde? (NB)

Civil war writer and director Alex Garland and the film’s military advisor, veteran Ray Mendoza, have created a disastrous, visceral real-time drama that recreates the real battle between naval seals and al-Qaeda jihadists. Garland’s master technique and Mendoza’s First Hand Experience of War Experience blend into an uncompromising focused film. But the faces of Joseph Quinn, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis and d’pharaoh woon-a-tai are enough to capture the fear and determination that they are under siege. The actor, who creates characters far from the bravery of a typical Hollywood war film, portrays the courage of a fight as a terrorist-filled endurance test. This film immerses us in that feeling. It’s loud and violent, and they never stop when the barrages of hand-rena bullets and gunfire are relentless and screams of pain begin from the injured man. War is a dazzling technical achievement, but it’s even better. Focusing on the personal costs of combat and violence itself, rather than the politics of the Iraq conflict, it reinvents the war film with brave freshness and immediacy. (CJ)

Barry Keogan, Christopher Abbott and Colm Meaney Star are stars of this dark, bloody Western-style thriller about a feud between sheep farmers in remote Ireland. Meanney and Abbott (speaking dialogue in Irish) play the damaging father and son who lose two awards rams just to discover that it was stolen by their neighbor Shiftless son (Keogan). The accusations are made, shocking res reaches a boiling point, and violence continues. But the film’s debut author director, Christopher Andrews, rewinds his story and plays it from an enlightening new perspective. Suddenly, the stubborn story of crime and retribution becomes a poignant tragedy about hopeless financial difficulties, youthful stupidity, man’s pride, and trauma passed down from an implicit father to an implicit son. They are difficult to beat, but they are beautifully shot, cleverly plotted and surprisingly powerful. (NB)

Alain Guiradie (Stranger by the Lake) is full of surprises. It starts as a drama about Jeremy, a young man who returns to his small village in the lush French countryside for a funeral, and quietly becomes a comic lust, along with a thriller about hiding a murder. The film cleverly carries the audience through all these turns. Jeremy is an opportunist, but it’s also a mystery. He may have had a passion for his former boss and leader, the village bakery. Baker’s widow definitely seems interested in Jeremy, who grew up as a close friend of his son Vincent. He now angers and doubts that Jeremy wants to sleep with his mother. Jeremy doesn’t want that, but he finds himself in a passive relationship with the local priest. The joke is that so many people lust after Jeremy, the suspense comes from the eyes of a small town and local police, wondering what happened when Vincent mysteriously disappeared. Misericordia (Latin for Mercy) was nominated for the French Cesar Award, the equivalent of an Oscar, including films and directors, but its human comedy lands easily on audiences everywhere. (CJ)

Deep in the lush French countryside, he has to look after his sister Claire (Luna Garrett) after his father’s sudden death. What is his answer to their tragic economic problems? Make award-winning premium cheese. Louise Courvoisier’s debut film is a heart-warming adult drama rooted in the soil of the Jura region she grew up in. She offers a simple insider’s perspective on how intense a life is possible for farm workers, and how much carefree young people suffer when they turn into merciless, responsible adults. But she also fashionables a warm, romantic and gorgeous scenic story that ultimately fascinates the hopeful story of the underdogs who work together in the sunlight to improve their lives. As Monty Python once said, cheesemakers are blessed. (NB)

The giant, sloppy great Dane is Naomi’s tug of war surrounded by the city of Manhattan, but by the end of this lovely film about love and sadness, physical comedy with a dog appears to be the least of it. Watts smoothly plays Iris, a creative writing teacher who committed suicide by Walter, the best friend of a famous womanizing writer. Even though she lives in a one-room apartment in a pet-free building, he leaves his dog, Apollo. Addressing Apollo is a way for Iris to tackle Walter’s love and sense of loss, played in flashback scenes where Bill Murray had a major impact despite his minimal screen time. Based on the eloquent and acclaimed 2018 novel by Sigrid Nunez, the film was directed by Scott McGahee and David Siegel. Swalking the Mawkish cliches, they created interesting and moving film gems, whether you’re a pet lover or not. Come for the wild great Dane and stay for beautifully rendered emotions. (CJ)

Two great heroes of Aardman are back. And so are their most despicable enemy of all time, the demonic penguin named Feathers McGrow. Most birds in the vengeance, nominated for an Oscar by Nick Park and Marlink Rossingham, are packed with qualities that cherish the biased adventures of Wallace & Glomit. In particular, it deals with seeing tuna with feathers, more than 30 years have passed since he was featured in the wrong pants. But there’s more to the new film from the Bristol-based studio than the nostalgic whims you’d expect. When Wallace invents a robotic garden gnome doing all of Glomit’s favorite gardening tasks (and even before it becomes evil), the story takes a canal boat trip to Mission: Impossible territory by dealing with the horrors of artificial intelligence. (NB)

Very talented director Rungano Nyoni, I’m Not a Witch (2017) won the BAFTA with her outstanding British debut, making the artistic and accessible film of the great visual Panash. Her latest film is a clear-eyed drama about cultural and generational conflicts. The heroine Shura is a cosmopolitan woman who recently returned from town to a Zambian village. Shura drives the house from a costume party wearing a glittering silver helmet and dark glasses (a homage to Missy Elliott’s video), and Gioni conveys this dissonance at once as she finds her uncle Fred dead on a dirt road. As the story takes us to a family’s traditional funeral ritual, it slowly reveals that Shura and her two cousins ​​were abused by Fred as children. Gioni’s style is realistic even if you dismiss its surreal image. The story of secrets and sexual assault trauma ultimately builds power when Shura remembers a child’s television show and the title of this stunning film. (CJ)