DECEMBER 27 — I know that for a lot of us, the Covid-19 pandemic has changed our movie viewing habits forever, with many of us now preferring to watch movies from the comforts of our own home. 

The way that movie distribution changed after having to adapt to the pandemic and the post-pandemic world also helped that shift as well, with more and more films (even those with huge budgets) going straight to streaming/digital and with the gap between a movie’s cinema run and their digital release getting shorter and shorter, sometimes within less than a month.

In a way, this helped a lot of us to save money as we just wait for these movies to turn up on digital/streaming platforms, but it also meant that for those of us who prefer to watch films on the big screen, there’s a higher chance for us to miss out on them as gap gets shorter and shorter. 

I’ve definitely missed out on a lot of films in the cinema this year, but this uncertainty in the film distribution game has also resulted in me being able to catch some films that I never thought, even in my wildest dreams, I’d be able to see in Malaysian cinemas.

Of those I did manage to catch, here are the ones I’ve loved the most. 

They may not fit the criteria for what most film critics would list as the best films of 2025, but these are the films that have impacted me the most this year.

Resurrection

I still have very fond memories of watching Chinese director Bi Gan’s previous film, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, in 3D at the Singapore International Film Festival a few years back. 

Watching it felt like I was in a vivid dream. Never in my wildest dreams would I think that I’d be able to watch a Bi Gan film in a Malaysian cinema, yet here I was, about two months back, soaking in the cinematic magic offered by his latest film, Resurrection, in your standard cinema in Damansara Uptown. 

The fact that it’s quite simply his most experimental effort so far made that fact even harder to believe. 

A no-nonsense arthouse tribute to the power of cinema and dreaming playing in a commercial Malaysian cinema? What a time to be alive!

Vulcanizadora

If you’ve been a regular reader, then you’d know that I have a very soft spot for the provocative micro-budget films by US writer-director Joel Potrykus, whose previous films Buzzard and Relaxer have landed on my year-end lists in 2015 and 2019 respectively. 

Vulcanizadora follows the exploits of two characters from Buzzard in the present day as they have now grown older and even more dissatisfied with their lives, going on a camping trip to execute some sort of darkly dangerous pact. 

It initially felt like more of the same, which is already more than enough for me to get onboard, but then it stunningly and heartbreakingly switched into something more mature and thoughtful around the halfway mark, making this something totally new in his filmography. 

A hugely affecting exercise in provocation, this got me thinking about the characters for days after watching it.

Critically acclaimed hitmaker Ryan Coogler (Creed and Black Panther) has made the studios so much money that he has earned the right to make a big budget passion project, which came in the form of Sinners, an epic poem about the Black South, packaged as a vampire flick. 

Along the way we get the Ku Klux Klan, white vampires, segregation, a Chinese couple who runs two stores in town (one each for black and white people) and a stunning musical set-piece encompassing the whole history of Black music. 

It’s not a neatly tied together film, it’s messy in a way that felt as if the filmmakers knew that there’s no way they’d have another chance to do something on this scale, backed by the same amount of resources, again, and the result is a film that luxuriates in the little moments that made the Black South such a captivating spectacle. 

It’s a bold, ambitious and unforgettable film, and while it is definitely nowhere near perfect, it’s just such a treat to see Coogler reach for the stars and fall just slightly short, which is more than I can say for most other films out there.

Sentimental Value

Some films are obviously great and you can see their ambitions from afar while some are so humble and look so normal and unremarkable that their greatness quietly creeps up on you that by the film’s end, you’re dumbfounded at how remarkable it was, despite its unremarkable appearance. 

This latest film from Joachim Trier (of The Worst Person In The World fame) is like that. 

On the surface, it’s like the thousands of films that you’ve seen before about estranged fathers and daughters, but look closer and you’ll discover a deeply affecting meditation on generational trauma and how different people have different ways to cope with and get past them. 

It’s a film where what’s being said and what’s left unsaid are equally important, and the breathtaking acting here by all three major actors, Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgard and Inga Ibsdotter Illeas, will probably be rewarded with some major acting nominations when awards season arrives.

Bring Her Back

This has been an outstanding year for horror flicks, and while there are plenty of hugely enjoyable horror highlights out there this year like Weapons and Final Destination: Bloodlines, none can quite compete with the terrifyingly dark unpleasantness that’s on offer in this film. 

It’s a film about grief that skilfully pulls the audience into that dark state of mind as well, and when that long-telegraphed ending arrives, you will be left emotionally exhausted, yet full of understanding why a mother would go to such crazy lengths just to bring her daughter back. 

First with the unforgettable Talk To Me and now this, let us all hail the new kings of modern horror, Australian brothers Danny and Michael Philippou.

One Battle After Another

One of the most critically acclaimed films of the year, and definitely the most thrilling and swiftly paced film in writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s career, One Battle After Another plays almost like an all-out action movie. 

Right from the beginning, when we’re introduced to Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) as a young revolutionary, all the way until the film continues with his life in hiding, raising his teenage daughter Willa alone, Anderson has a grand ball staging one suspenseful action set-piece after another while making fun of what’s currently happening in America right now. 

It’s the kind of film where there’s a lot to unpack, but they never get in the way of thrills and fun.

Grand Tour

Portuguese director Miguel Gomes is, alongside directors like Albert Serra and Lisandro Alonso, one of my favourite directors of the 21st century. 

They’re the kind of cinephile directors who, while making films that are unfortunately called "slow cinema", are never afraid to have fun making them, whether through their subject matter or the forms they explore in making their films. 

Take this latest one from Gomes, a playful period travelogue that follows Edward, a minor British functionary who’s fleeing from his fiancee across South-east Asia and East Asia during the first world war, except that everyone here speaks Portuguese, and Gomes liberally uses footage of modern-day South-east Asia and East Asia as well in the film. 

Halfway into the film, his fiancée Molly arrives and then takes over the film. 

Those seeking neat narrative resolutions will find this film, or in fact any other film by Gomes, deeply frustrating, but those willing to open up to Gomes’ unusual rhythms and cinematic flights of fancy will enjoy this aptly named grand tour.

Universal Language

Talking about cinematic flights of fancy, there are probably very few that are fancier than Canadian director Matthew Rankin’s previous film, The Twentieth Century, which plays like an even more gonzo Guy Maddin film, if that’s even possible to imagine. 

With that same absurdist spirit, Rankin has found a different way to indulge his now trademark style of blending history, film styles and culture into a cinematic pastiche with this second film, which sees him setting the movie in a fictional Canada where everyone speaks Farsi (and sometimes French) and almost everyone in the cast are Iranian. 

Gorgeously shot and filled to the brim with smart little visual jokes that take advantage of this absurdity, Rankin even manages to find ingenious ways to tie the film’s trio of stories together that will leave the audience emotionally satisfied at the film’s end. 

A richly rewarding and unique experience.

Ebony & Ivory

A word of warning — this film is definitely not for everyone. Much like director Jim Hosking’s debut film The Greasy Strangler, which placed second on my list in 2016, this comic provocation will surely be called one of the dumbest movies of 2025, a time-waster, a one-note joke, an endurance test, and all sorts of other put-downs. 

But this imagining of what might have happened when Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder wrote the song Ebony & Ivory together back then, is so hilariously absurd and so confrontational that I found myself warming up to its many extended one-note jokes and laughing out loud at its many repetitive shouting matches that I found myself watching again and again. 

If you loved The Greasy Strangler, I think you’ll find it quite easy to love this one as well.

Eye For An Eye 2: Blind Vengeance

Technically released in China last year, this follow up to Eye For An Eye: The Blind Swordsman, which made my favourite genre films of 2023 list, only made its way outside of China this year, and is an even better film. 

That first film was like a riff on the Zatoichi films, and this time director Bingjia Yang has chosen to riff on another legendary Japanese movie series, the Lone Wolf and Cub series. 

Our hero, the blind swordsman, now gets a child sidekick who begs him to take her under his wings. 

That child wants revenge against the movie’s chief villain for killing her brother, and the movie proceeds on this path with plenty of awesome action set-pieces, and higher production values compared to the already excellent original. 

If you’re looking for great action, this is the one for you.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.