Here are my favourite books and movies that I read and watched throughout 2025.
Books
Films
Recent releases
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Marty Surpreme (Josh Safdie, 2023)
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On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni, 2024)
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April (Dea Kulumbegashvili, 2024)
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Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross, 2024)
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Color Book (David Fortune, 2024)
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Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story (Sinéad O’Shea, 2024)
Disappointments this year included 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle, 2025), Cover-Up (Laura Poitras & Mark Obenhaus, 2025), Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2025) and Caught Stealing (Darren Aronofsky, 2025).
Older releases
ie. Films released before 2024, and not including rewatches from previous years.
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Where Is the Friend's House? (Abbas Kiarostami, 1987)
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Naked (Mike Leigh, 1993)
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The Florida Project (Sean Baker, 2017)
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Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)
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The House of Mirth (Terence Davies, 2000)
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A Summer's Tale (Éric Rohmer, 1996)
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It's Such a Beautiful Day (Don Hertzfeldt, 2012)
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La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995)
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The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke, 2001)
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A Touch of Zen (King Hu, 1970)
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The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent, 1974)
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An Affair to Remember (Leo McCarey, 1957)
Distinctly unenjoyable watches included War of the Worlds (Rich Lee, 2025), Highest 2 Lowest (Spike Lee, 2025), Elizabethtown (Cameron Crowe, 2005), Crazy Rich Asians (Jon M. Chu, 2018) and Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (Rob Reiner, 2025).
On the other hand, unforgettable cinema experiences this year included big-screen rewatches of Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974), Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1982), Heat (Michael Mann, 1995) and Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955).