Best New To Me Films of 2025
This is the third year I’ve done one of these lists for the blog, and I’ve discovered over these three years that I like this list a lot more than the “best new releases” list that goes along with it. I’m going to say that preference is the reason that this year, for the first time, I’m releasing this list of my discoveries of older films first. That’s definitely the reason, and not that I’m stalling for extra time to get caught up on awards season fare before committing my 2025 Best of the Year list to publication.
My 2023 list - read it here.
The truth is, old stuff is always going to be better than new stuff. That’s not because we’re a fallen society and that everything new sucks – lots of new stuff rules. There’s just a hundred years of old movies, and only one year of new movies. Even if you watch the best of the best year in and year out, there’s only so much time. A decade from now, even if you watch hundreds of the best movies ever made every year, there will probably still be 10 old movies you haven’t seen as good as or better than the best new releases of the current year. And that is so cool. What’s so great about becoming invested and immersed in an artform and learning to appreciate things outside of your immediate context is that it opens up a world and history of art that will last you the rest of your life. We should all be so lucky, and my wish for the world is that we can all get there together.
My 2024 list - read it here.
This list excludes films that were released in 2025 (the best of those will be in a second list, coming next week), and also excludes films from 2020-2024 for good measure, to weed out things like international films that didn’t get releases here until 2025 and the Big Movies from the 2020s that I missed because I didn’t watch any new movies for a few years during lockdown. Everybody knows about those movies, you don’t need me to tell you that The Fablemans is good, or that Decision to Leave rules (but both of those statements are true).
Anyway – here’s the list!
10. The End of Summer (1961)
I watched a number of Ozu films in 2025, and they ranged from good to great, though none reached the peaks of Late Spring or Tokyo Story. End of Summer was my favorite of the bunch (though Good Morning warrants an honorable mention). What made it stand out is the way it synthesizes so many different Ozu themes and fixations.
Ozu’s films are concerned with movements between life stages, conflict between generations, and the push and pull of personal desires and societal expectations. While his other films certainly don’t limit themselves to only one of these at a time, The End of Summer presents a buffet of all of the above by centering the story around a large family with multiple generations, conflicts, and marriage plots.
The film’s central family has an aging patriarch whose health is failing, his widowed daughter in-law who the family would like to see re-married, and an adult daughter who lives at home who they’d also like to see married. Oh yeah, and the patriarch is sneaking out to be with an old flame whose daughter might be his illegitimate child?
All of these conflicts are dealt with more forcefully and conclusively than in a lot of Ozu films (really the opposite of the tender resignation of Late Spring), and in a real opposition to many of his masterpieces each character is allowed to follow their hearts desire, to whatever end. (Congrats to Setsuko Hara who finally manages to dodge getting married off against her will in one of these).
The film begins and ends with faithful old Chishu Ryu as a farmer at the river, observing the smoke of the cremation furnace, the inevitable end we must all face – the societal expectation no personal desire can overcome.
9. Déjà Vu (2006)
I think it’s fair to say the films of Tony Scott have found a renewed appreciation in recent years, probably to some degree drafting in the wake of Michael Mann’s ascendence to Film Bro supreme deity. In 2025 I watched several of his films for the first time. I liked Enemy of the State, and Crimson Tide is very good, but Deja Vu is the movie that really stands out to me as evidence that the tragically deceased younger Scott brother was The Real Deal.
This is a movie that succeeds on every level. It’s a time travel movie that works intellectually and emotionally, it’s an incredible vehicle for Denzel Washington, who reminds us what a Movie Star is, and it’s a compelling entertainment of the kind that has been increasingly rejected by the big studios.
The film successfully intertwines two plot goals for Washington’s character, to stop a terrorist attack and to save a young woman. Time travel is involved, and the way the individual life and the larger scale tragedy become intertwined emotionally, thematically, and plot-wise turns what should be a silly action thriller into something I found deeply impactful emotionally. When we see Denzel one final time at the end of this film, it is a magic trick of the highest degree, executed by a master filmmaker making great use of his signature movie star.
8. To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)
This movie is nuts. Friedkin wanted to make a deranged cop movie for the 80s the same way he did for the 70s with The French Connection and he succeeded. If this movie had nothing going for it but the car chase it would still be an incredible movie, because the car chase is probably the best I’ve ever seen. It successfully one-ups the stakes of The French Connection by having our protagonist cops driving the wrong way on an LA Expressway to escape pursuit.
But that ISN’T all the movie has going for it - it is a pitch black portrait of police as selfish, greedy, adrenaline junkies, taking and taking and taking until they inevitably get their heads blown off, which only ratchets up the stakes and the feeling of justification for the survivors. The ending is dark and empty, gazing directly into hell while the synths blare. Hell yeah dude.
7. The Day of the Jackal (1973)
Michael Mann and Steven Soderbergh must love this movie. There’s no way they don’t. It’s the best example I’ve ever seen of the incredibly knowledgeable and skilled criminal vs. the network and resources of the police. The Jackal, a British assassin, is hired by Far-Right French nationalists to kill the President of France. The police are tipped off and a comprehensive manhunt is put in place to catch him or keep him out of the country. The joy of the movie is in the intricate methods both sides use, the play and counter-play of the planning, the research, the preparation - and then finally getting to see the two sides’ plans collide and it all going to hell. It’s a Rosetta Stone for the careers of multiple master filmmakers.
6. Three Colours: Red (1994)
I watched the three colours trilogy this year, and all three movies are great and worth watching (White is a truly insane movie, complimentary), but Red is my pick for favourite. The first movie is about grief; the second movie is about…love? Perversity? And the third movie is about the beauty and heartbreak of human connection. A lone woman comes to know a bitter old man who uses an illegal radio to listen in on his neighbours’ phone calls. Over time they develop a friendship, and eventually her friendship convinces him to turn himself in.
The film is sumptuously beautiful, reveling in the architecture and homes of Paris. The detail and intricate production design that went into creating these rooms is marvelous. The film uses its beauty to reinforce themes of loneliness and voyeurism with shots like the iconic image of the film, where Irène Jacob’s character is silhouetted against an enormous billboard bearing her face. We are watching her, we see her, we know her, and yet we don’t. We are separated from her even as we learn everything about her.
How can we not have empathy for a man who both soothes his loneliness and cuts himself off from the world cynically by voyeuristically spying on other lives, when we live like this every day? Every kind of entertainment we’ve developed replicates this experience in its most popular permutations. And we all ought to turn ourselves in for our crimes and live together instead.
5. Black Orpheus (1959)
An incredible movie to experience for the first time. It’s so full of life, bursting with colour and music and overflowing with joy. Ultimately it’s a story about death, as you might expect from the title, and the way it flows from one to the other, life to death, joy to grief, is musical and powerful. The way that the film transports the Greek myth to contemporary Rio de Janeiro, infusing a 20th century city with ancient magic and wonder is incredible. There’s a shot towards the end of the film where the protagonist is trying to find his love, and he’s sent to a spiral staircase that goes up and down, and leaning over the railing we see it goes down and down and down, and the distant bottom is bathed in crimson light, and we know what’s waiting down there. Shivers down your spine – a wonderful movie.
4. The Elephant Man (1980)
Rest in Peace to David Lynch, maybe the greatest film artist the medium has yet produced. I eulogized him in last year’s version of this post while discussing The Straight Story, but the memorial and tribute to his life and work in the wake of his passing included showings of all of his movies at both chain theaters and independents – it was a special time, and I was able to see this film, The Elephant Man, for the first time in a packed house, the only feature length Lynch film I hadn’t yet seen at the time of his passing.
It’s a haunting, towering work of transcendent love and empathy. Everything in Lynch’s later career is here in embryonic form. The night watchman who lets passers-by into Merrick’s room to gawk at and taunt him feels like an early iteration of Bob and the Black Lodge, human cruelty transformed into a force of cosmic malice. The creaking and groaning pipes that get so much time setting the tone for the film are the Victorian version of the power lines and electric transmission systems that would haunt so much of Lynch’s later work.
I don’t mean to suggest that the film is only important for the way it hints at what’s to come – instead I’m insisting that this film fits perfectly among Lynch’s other works, filled with the same interests and obsessions that are his trademarks. While in so much of Lynch’s other work the scales fall the other way, to darkness, here the supreme love at the heart of the universe reaches out through the screen.
3. Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003)
Exquisitely beautiful, a movie that wants you to marinate in its tone and texture and its pacing makes sure you do. A world of ghosts haunting a dying movie theater, and an exploration of the theater as a physical space. All its nooks and crannies, side rooms, back hallways, tickets taking booth, projectionists booth, bathrooms…what are the affordances of an old and sparsely attended movie theater, and what do they provide to people who want to be alone together?
2. Pather Panchali (1955)
A genuine masterpiece of storytelling at the cinema. I had never seen a Satyajit Ray film before and it was really special to see it at the theater. Reminded me somewhat of the films of Kenji Mizoguchi in the way that every aspect of the film is devoted to telling the story. The film isn’t flashy or elaborate in its staging or shot construction, but simple scene after simple scene adds layers and layers of meaning and weight until the effect is overpowering. And the effect IS overpowering – the end of this film is titanic.
The scene that still holds strong in my mind after all this time is where the two children see a train for the first time. The way the train’s coming is hinted at, through sound, through misdirection, and finally when it appears, and the way the children react creates an incredible emotional impact, all from something so simple. That’s elegant filmmaking, and it’s at the heart of why the film is so great.
1. Napoleon (1927)
The first few decades of Cinema’s existence were an overflowing fountain of invention that has been pilfered by every succeeding generation of filmmakers. Every generation of filmmakers that grew up watching movies with sound have gone back to the silent era and been shocked to discover that the first artists to work with motion picture cameras were paving roads of technique and style that wouldn’t be traversed again until a new generation discovered them and thought they were inventing them for the first time. Some of those roads paved by the silent filmmakers are to this day paths untraveled. They sit, lonely trails to unknown destinations, waiting for the next generation to discover them and find what’s waiting at the end.
Abel Gance’s Napoleon is a triumphant piece of cinema. It is 7 hours of wonder. The film is constantly unloading frame after frame, shot after shot of inventive, stunning, and shocking visual alchemy. It feels intimate and immediate in a way few movies in the 100 years since have equalled. Watch Napoleon. Love Cinema. We’ve been doing it for a century now, and I pray for us to continue down into the future for as long as possible.
Thank you for reading. If you watch any of these movies because of this list let me know, and comment below with your favourite first time watches of 2025.
Links:
Just the one link today, but a reminder to check out my zine, Hinterlands #1 on itch here if you haven't already.
Jake's Favourite Watches of 2025: My friend Jake wrote his version of this list, and his has 20 movies on it - that's twice as many as mine, which means its twice as good.