Chad Kennerk Looks Back at the Year of 2025
Image courtesy of A24
2025 boasted remarkably rewarding moviegoing moments I was grateful to share with a room full of strangers. Much to my chagrin, my favourite release of the year here in America became a 2026 release in the UK. Nevertheless, I urge everyone to see Hamnet in a theatre with an audience while you can. Part of the magic of the movie is watching it collectively in a cinema. To echo Jane Fonda, “This is what film is supposed to be.” It’s a great (and timely) reminder of our own humanity and of what binds us together. If films of that quality can still be made and released theatrically, there’s hope for the art form. Chloé Zhao is a dreamweaver, and with Hamnet, she’s delivered another masterpiece.
It’s extraordinary to witness a film in a theatre and realise you’re watching what will become a new classic. That happened on more than one occasion this year, watching films that I feel will stand the test of time. Among them is Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and the juke joint sequence where walls fall down and barriers are literally broken in a celebratory séance between past, present, and future. That feeling struck me again during the tense three-car chase through the winding roads of the ‘Texas Dip’ in Borrego Springs, California, in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another. And again, as I found myself intently rooting for Timothée Chalamet’s ignoble underdog in Marty Supreme.
When it comes to performances, the work this year was truly exceptional, but no actor touched the truth in the way that Jessie Buckley did in Hamnet. Ethan Hawke delivered a tour-de-force performance as lyricist Lorenz Hart in Blue Moon, also a welcome return to the big screen for one of our finest and most prolific filmmakers, Richard Linklater. Filmmaker Celine Song continued to explore love’s contradictions in a keenly observed look at the modern realities of love and dating in the best date night movie of the year, Materialists. Zootopia 2 is now likely the best Walt Disney Animation Studios’ sequel of all time, but it was another animated sequel, China’s Ne Zha 2, that ultimately took home the global box-office trophy by becoming the highest-grossing animated film of all time and the highest-grossing film of the year at a remarkable $2.4 billion. Two Netflix titles made my list this year: del Toro’s masterstroke take on Frankenstein, which I’m thankful to have seen on a massive ‘The Big Show’ cinema screen at Alamo Drafthouse (on Halloween, moreover) and Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams, which I desperately wanted to see on a big screen, but the emotional experience held at home.
Given Warner Bros.’ incredible slate of films this year, it’s ironic to say that the biggest news of the year had nothing to do with the studio’s output but with the bombshell that Netflix won the bid to purchase the major legacy studio. For an industry finally recovering after a global pandemic and multiple union strikes, the potential merger could spell shorter theatrical windows (Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos says they will uphold 45-day theatrical windows) and a reduced diversity of films. As evidenced in 2019 when Disney acquired 20th Century Fox, it’s a consolidation move likely to mean fewer movies produced for theatrical exhibition. If the merger manages to pass antitrust review, Netflix would gain control of Warner Bros. in 2027, so while 2026 releases will not be directly impacted, another shadow of uncertainty now looms over the business of film. But let’s hope for the best. After some 130 years, the cinema is nothing if not resilient.
Under-the-radar films I really enjoyed this year included the high-concept actioner Novocaine with everyman Jack Quaid, the compelling genre mash-up Companion, the Spielberg-esque adventure The Legend of Ochi, the evocative period love story On Swift Horses, Steven Soderbergh’s starry chess match Black Bag, the crime thriller She Rides Shotgun with young talent Ana Sophia Heger, and Tom Basden’s haunting dramedy The Ballad of Wallis Island.
THE IN-BETWEENS
As Film Review’s The Year in Cinema follows the UK release calendar, each year I lament the number of award-contenders that see a release in the US, but won’t have a UK release until the following year. I’ve therefore borrowed a title from the pages of our historic Film Review annuals, dedicating a portion of my annual assessments to feature additional films that I greatly admired in my moviegoing year.
2025 US releases with a 2026 UK release
Hamnet
Is This Thing On?
The History of Sound
The Plague
Chad Kennerk’s Favourites
