The best films of 2025

I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM. Kate Jings watches hundreds of films every year for her job programming feature films at the Melbourne International Film Festival, and because she loves them. Today she's bringing you her five favorites from twenty twenty five. There's Leonardo DiCaprio. Of course, there's also Heist's Collaborative Theater as Film PTSD but funny, and there's Porridge. It's Thursday, December twenty five and Merry Christmas.

Kate, welcome to seven AM. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Hey, thanks for having me.

All Right, movies of the year, let's kick things off.

What is first on your list?

Okay, the first one is Paul Thomas Anderson's film One Battle after Another, which I'm sure.

Is topping like every single list.

At the moment, bringing justice to the vigilante group known as the French seventy five. We are here to award Steven lot of Job with the Medal of Honor.

This is a total epic from him.

I mean, I know his films are kind of epic and scope, but this one is you know, it costs a huge amount of money, but it's essentially about a group of like leftist radicals. They're breaking out immigrants from kind of ice like containers, going.

To create a show an announce.

There are a lot of bombs, there are a lot of car chases. It's an incredibly enjoyable film, like it's just a film you want to see at the cinema on the biggest screen possible. But it's also of course very political and very politically minded and kind of a prescient film for the times.

Very important to keep your cap shunted like this so you don't accidentally detonate your charge.

And you said that the film is pressing in terms of the current political climate, So what do you think it gets right in terms of understanding the political landscape, the growing far right, the deepening political divides in the US, but you know, also in a lot of the world.

Well, it's very much about this polarized society. And we saw it also with the film like Civil War that came out earlier this year, about this kind of growing distrust in the government and in political systems and in the law, and a kind of radicalization of people that you wouldn't really expect to be kind of becoming radicalized Like it does feel like an activist film. I mean, it is also still like a big budget car chase film, but there is something kind of solid to it, I think.

And it's also the latest collaboration between Paul Thomas Anderson and Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead. He composed the music for this film.

Talk a bit about the scot.

Yeah, it's his sixth score with PTA, which is interesting. I mean, he does so many films, but he just seems to have such a incredible connection with Paul Thomas Anderson and Johnny Greenwood has just put together.

This beautiful score.

It's very like discordant piano and percussion and like blasts of synth, and it really matches the energy, the frenetic energy of the film. I'd be very surprised if it's not Oscar nominated.

Okay, all right, let's move on.

What is your second pick?

The second one is the mastermind the new Kelly ry Cup film, which actually has quite a lot of connection to one battle after another. You wouldn't think that you know a Kelly Rye Cup film. You know, she makes kind of these pretty intimate, small, low key films. Generally, I love her work so much and this is a heist film, it's said in the early seventies, but it is also about this growing kind of despondency and like political apathy.

You don't look like cops, Saint James.

We've been told that you're mixed up in this robbery.

I sure don't know how you got down this for you got the wrong idea.

I'm afraid you get set against the backdrop of you know, the expansion of the Vietnam War and protests on campus in the States. But at its core, the film is about a man who is kind of this middle class guy who just manages to skate through live He's played by Josh O'Connor, and he becomes quite obsessed with these paintings in the local art gallery, like a large museum, and he puts together a heist with a couple of guys who should not be doing this kind of work.

It's a big life changing opportunity for me, but I don't have to run a workspace and purchase tools, which.

I don't have.

That sort of thing.

And this is real, it's real somewhat coincidentally, I'm sure, being released in the context of the recent actual heist of the Loof.

Yeah, if only it was as meticulously planned as that Louver Highest. And what I wish had come out of the Louver situation is that it had really made everyone rush to see The Mastermind at the cinema, And sadly.

I don't think it did, but it should have. It should have.

Yeah, So the box office straw was just one point four million, despite a lot of very good reviews. So what to make of that?

It is kind of a small film.

I don't think people are ever really rushing out to Kelly Reiker films at the cinema. They should be, she makes beautiful films. It's hard to market a film like this, and with films going straight to streaming, I think that that is, you know, just a rising ish. I mean, people still are going to the cinema. I'm never going to say cinema is dead, because it just keeps coming back.

In some ways, you would think that this one, you know, might be kind of more that way in clin purely because it is it's a highest film. Highest films are fun. People like to go out and watch them. So how does this film sit I suppose within that canon.

I mean, look, it's the most hapless heist you've ever seen, but it's very funny. It's no like Roofifi, it's no Lesser Ruge, it's not even like Oceans eleven, you know, but it's probably my favorite.

Coming up a debut director and a cult favorite.

Kate, we're chatting about your favorite films of twenty twenty five. What's next on the list.

The next one is Sorry Baby. It's by Eva Victor and it's their directorial debut and they also they wrote directed start in It really impressive for someone who has only made like kind of two camera pieces like.

On their phone.

That's kind of what Eva Victor came up during COVID times of like making these front facing camera videos that were very funny and put them on Twitter. And now they've got this like film that played at can What are you up.

To this fine evening?

I was wondering, do you have like stuff that makes a fire? Why do you need it? My friends and I we're going to make like hart Dogs hard dogs sounds good. I'm sorry, we only bought two hot dogs.

It's essentially about this woman who is she's teaching her a college. It's told in four chapters that have been sort of rearranged, so we're not dealing with a linear timeline throughout the film, which matches the emotional state of the character reckoning with an assault that occurred. They were assaulted by a trusted individual during their time as an undergrad on campus and have now become like a professor.

I know this is hard to talk about.

It doesn't feel that you know that.

We know what you're going through. We are women what.

At the same time, it is a very funny film. It's beautifully funny, tender film.

That is a very hard line to walk though between comedy and that kind of content you know about sexual assault and PTSD.

But you think it kind of.

Manages to, you know, move between those kinds of emotional poles.

Yeah, I really do.

And I think the reason why I've put it into my top four of the year is it's not because it is just the like the best film that came out. It's that even Victor has taken something that's discussed so much in kind of print media and on screen and in television. I see so like I see hundreds and hundreds of films all the time, and I see a lot of films about these this kind of subject, But when something like this comes along, it's like, Oh, there

Missus Ward, what when I asked who has been a victim of a crime?

Did you raise your hand?

No? I realized I shouldn't share it.

So you're unable to share the crime.

It is frankly my worst night, Meredith, to tell this whole rooms strangers about the thing that happened to me. So that is the reasoning as to why I did not decide to continue having my hand raised.

Thank you, okay, And so your fourth pick is from a cult favorite director.

Yeah, this one is Mike Lee's film Hard Truths. I adored this film. I really love Michaele's films, but this one is his best film in quite a long time.

She's rude, man, I've been harassed people all day. I'm sick to death with it.

It stars Mary and John Baptiste, who was in his film Secrets and Lies from nineteen ninety six, and I think she did like the score for another film of his career, Girls, and she plays this ultimate sour pause.

Her name is Pansy.

She is a woman who is just like moving through the world having like problems with everyone, Like she can't go to the grocery store, she can't buy furniture without like absolutely letting it rip, and she can't go to the dentist without saying something hideous to the dentist. Married to this husband who is kind of beaten down essentially by her extreme depression and anxiety.

I'm really selling this film, aren't I.

What's the thing?

I mean, it's like hard if a film is amazing with an unlikable main character, Like how do you kind of get past that and start to enjoy whatever the particular beauty of this film is.

So you know, it's like it's in the title. People can't stand them, cheerful, grinning people.

But she has this sister who is like full of light and love and has these two daughters who are just like every scene with them is just absolute joy, Like it's beautiful to witness, and like that is how the film works because we are not constantly stuck in Pansy's world, like we see that something else exists and could exist for her as well, because it's her family.

That's just ideal.

But it is like I had lots of laughs in this films, like it's a very dark comedy and this film, so.

There were fourteen weeks of rehearsals and then a kind of just a six week block of filming, which it feels to me a little reminiscent of how a play works.

Yeah, and he's made a lot of like you know, he made all these television dramas as well, and that's how he made them in the seventies and eighties.

That's how Michaeley works. He brings in a cast.

He doesn't do normal auditions, and then he gets everyone in a room and sort of he has a basic idea of the film and then gets everyone to kind of help devise it with him. So it's a really collaborative effort. And you very much see that play out on screen.

Great, well, it sounds like the themes here are political, personal, dark but funny.

I mean, yeah, look that cinema in twenty twenty five. In a nutshell, I.

Think coming up how to make the perfect bowl of porridge? And there's an honorable mention, Kate, tell me about your final pick.

There is an Australian document entry I needed to mention. You know, it's a very late contender for the end of the year release, but it's called The Golden Spirtle is by Constantine Costi, who it's his first feature doc. He's actually known as an opera director and he really brings that drama to this film, which is a documentary about a porridge making competition that is on in the Scottish Islands every year.

Incredible, incredible three.

Ingredients, water and oatmeal and salt.

How hard can it be? The most perfect rounded bull of porridge is a marriage of all these things together.

He and his team followed a couple of different contenders in this porridge and porridge making competition and it's very beautiful because it's you know, we see a lot of competition documentaries and this one is sort of elevates that

You know, Christopher Guest could.

Never and what oats will you be using?

Why would I want to tell you?

Other people would get to know.

It's just a really warm film to watch and if you love kind of just looking at the Scottish landscape, you can also just go in for that.

You don't even need to love porridge.

Well I do love porridge and I would love to know what makes a world champion worthy porridge.

Yes, well you'll have to wait and see, is it. Do you use your own bore water? That's what one guy brings in. Yeah, these people are really intense about their porridge.

Well, thank you so much for chatting with me about it all.

Thanks so much.