Historical epics, Hong Kong action flicks, quirky love stories, a white-picket-fence nightmare courtesy of David Lynch and lots of noir. As 2025 draws to a close, these are my favourite cinematic discoveries of the year.
The Hard Way (1943) “I like to watch you work. It’s like watching the manoeuvres of the Atlantic fleet.” So says Paul (Dennis Morgan) to Helen (Ida Lupino) after one of the latter’s more vicious manipulations. A standard ‘ruthless woman claws her way to the top’ narrative (showbiz edition) is pushed to greater heights by the performances: Ida Lupino as Helen, a predator living vicariously through her sister; Jack Carson as the all too gullible Albert, a song and dance man who falls in love with the aforementioned sister; and Dennis Morgan as Paul, Albert’s partner, who’s wise to all the angles but unable to steer him clear. Morgan had bite; The Hard Way should have led to Warner Bros. giving him meatier fare.
The Face Behind the Mask (1941) Or: the brutality of the American Dream. Janos Szabo (Peter Lorre), a Hungarian immigrant, comes to the US bright with hope, only to be disfigured in a fire and driven to the brink of suicide. A lean, low-budget noir, The Face Behind the Mask crams a lot into its brief running time, including inventive camerawork, uncliched characters (a small-time hoodlum is one of the warmest, must unaffected people Janos meets) and a superb central performance by Lorre.
The Crimson Kimono (1959) After a memorably grim opening—in which a woman bleeds to death on a bustling street—Samuel Fuller’s noir morphs into a candid look at the Japanese-American community in Los Angeles. The tour of Little Tokyo feels a little forced (let’s visit a martial arts school, a rice cake factory, a temple etc.) yet scenes like the one set in a cemetery, where the camera lingers on memorials to soldiers who died in World War Two, make it clear clear the film was made with respect. Not only is there an inter-racial friendship between the investigating detectives (played by James Shigeta and Glenn Corbett), but also something even more radical: a love triangle that resolves with a white woman choosing a relationship with an Asian man and neither being punished for it.
Blue Velvet (1986) One of the most disturbing films I’ve ever seen. On his way home, Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) discovers a severed human ear lying in the grass and decides to investigate. His quest takes him from the safety of small-town Americana into a netherworld ruled over by the malevolent Frank (Dennis Hopper).
Does the film have a moral? Maybe. Jeffrey sees ugliness in the world and refuses to turn away. His investigation is driven by darker impulses and he learns things about himself he would rather not have known. Yet through it all he retains his compassion and a strange sense of nobility.
The cast is fearless. MacLachlan plays Jeffrey as a well-meaning, almost naif drawn inexorably into the pit. Isabella Rossellini is terrifying as a woman who may be mad or sane, victim or co-conspirator. And Dennis Hopper doesn’t so much emerge from the inferno as radiate it from every pore.
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) Sergio Leone’s majestic Western is filled with marvels. The protracted opening, where we learn almost everything we need to know about a trio of gunmen with barely a word spoken. The crane shot that sweeps over the roof of the train station to reveal the town of Flagstone. Ennio Morricone’s music, which seems to weep. And the sight of Henry Fonda’s blue, blue eyes—so brilliant and so cold.
Frankie and Johnny (1991) Tears of joy are the rarest you can shed. Imagine my astonishment when the last 10 minutes of this film were so beautiful, so exquisitely judged from performances to dialogue to score, that all I could do was cry. I’d say this was a film for hopeless romantics, except one of its primary messages is that romanticism isn’t hopeless. Love is worth leaving yourself open to and seizing when it comes your way. Frankie (Michelle Pfeiffer) is tough but brittle; Johnny (Al Pacino) is flamboyant and could be mistaken for flippant. Both are lonely and in pain. But Johnny realises they don’t have to be. The final sequence partly revolves around the late-night show at the local classical music station. What’s not to love?
Election 2 (2006) As dazzling and merciless as its predecessor, Election 2 picks up the story a few years later, as a Hong Kong Triad once again prepares to elect its next leader. Former allies Jimmy (Louis Koo) and Lok (Simon Yam) are pitted against each other in a battle for supremacy that’s also an indictment of greed, ambition and corruption. The violence is visceral. When a hitman tells his boss that their predicament is a nightmarish one, you can’t help but agree.
The Bitter Stems (1956) Fernando Ayala’s supremely stylish, self-assured noir, with an ending which will leave you speechless. Gaspar (Carlos Cores), a middling journalist with delusions of grandeur, supports himself and his family on a meagre salary. One evening he meets Liudas (Vassili Lambrinos), an undocumented immigrant from an unidentified European country. Needing money to rescue his family, Liudas suggests they con people with phony journalism classes; Gaspar, eager to dedicate himself to a noble cause, agrees. All goes well, until a stray remark makes Gaspar question whether Liudas’ relatives even exist. The film is full of flourishes, like the outré dream sequence which establishes Gaspar’s back story or the constant heat, which floods every space and seems to work itself into Gaspar’s addled brain, raising his madness to fever pitch.
Tea and Sympathy (1956) Tom (John Kerr) is the black sheep of his cookie cutter prep school: a sensitive boy who knows how to cook and sew and prefers classical music to rough housing and leering at women. The only person who truly understands him is Laura (Deborah Kerr), the wife of his housemaster. She is also the only one who shows him any kindness, to the disgust of her husband, Bill (Leif Erickson), who would prefer she restrict herself to the shallow tea and sympathy of the title.
The performances are outstanding—particularly the Kerrs and Erickson, all reprising roles they originated on Broadway. It’s doubtful the Hays Code censors cared that by insisting on so many alterations—all references to homosexuality were dropped, among other changes—they were proving the story’s point about prejudice and the justifications people provide for it. If we would simply let the Toms and Lauras of the world flourish, we would all be the better for it.
The French Revolution: The Years of Hope (1989) The first half of a cinematic epic made to mark the 200th anniversary of the revolution—and all that followed. Grand in ambition and scrupulous in attention to detail, the film is also surprisingly fair-minded about the many, many historical figures involved. Robespierre’s (Andrzej Seweryn) antipathy to the monarchy is suggested to date back to Louis XVI (Jean-François Balmer) snubbing him as boy, but neither man is wholly without vice or virtue. Marie Antoinette (Jane Seymour) is a victim of circumstances, her public persona co-opted and distorted by critics like Danton (Klaus Maria Brandauer) who found it convenient to do so. And Danton himself, still one of the most debated figures of the era, is deliberately contradictory, a cynic who throws in his lot with idealists even as he mocks them.
An international co-production led to a multi-national cast, with Seymour, Peter Ustinov and Sam Neill the most prominent Anglophones, playing the queen, Honoré de Mirabeau and the Marquis de Lafayette respectively. I watched the French-language version, where it was clear Ustinov spoke his own dialogue, Seymour and Neill were dubbed and I gained a new appreciation for Neill’s own voice. (The English-language version is worth seeking out just to hear Neill himself recite The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen). The French Revolution immerses you in the chaos, as extremism gathers momentum and the subtitle ‘years of hope’ becomes increasingly ironic. It was so exhausting, I’ve yet to embark on the sequel.
The Body Snatcher (1945) Boris Karloff plays the titular resurrectionist, a cabbie named (aptly) Grey, who plies his other, more lucrative trade with faux avuncular glee, keeping the esteemed Dr. MacFarlane (Henry Daniell) and his students well-stocked with specimens. The story unfolds in a strange Hollywood conjuration of Edinburgh, neither Old nor New Town, filled with references to the real city’s lore (not just Burke and Hare, but also Greyfriars Bobby) yet eerily devoid of people. The streets are wide and bare and almost barren, and so quiet that the voice of a street singer raised in a lament about Bonnie Prince Charlie haunts an entire neighbourhood. Karloff is the marquee name, but this is Daniell’s film through and through. He is extraordinary, presenting the hauteur he excelled at—that dry, wry voice seems custom-made for sneering—only to reveal MacFarlane’s genuine humanity beneath. At times he is so raw, he threatens to tear the rest of the film apart.
Blonde Crazy (1931) James Cagney and Joan Blondell take a promising if choppy script about the escapades of a bellhop and a maid and make it compelling through sheer charisma. Cagney’s Bert is a firecracker. Blondell’s Anne is his ideal foil: mature where he is childish, still where he is constantly in motion. The wisecracks coexist with a startling bluntness: Bert may be the film’s hero, but that doesn’t stop him from attacking an innocent man when he’s desperate for money. Pre-Code Hollywood is another country; they did things differently there.
Breaking News (2004) What begins as a police sting gone wrong (the ensuing shootout is filmed in a single take and seems to encompass half a neighbourhood) evolves into a blistering critique of police and criminals alike. Embarrassed by a bungled operation culminating in a uniformed policeman surrendering to a gunman, filmed live by a passing TV news crew, the Hong Kong police decide to reclaim their authority by turning the hunt for the criminals into a spectacle for the press and public. The police officers are intelligent and efficient, but also rash, manipulative, prone to in fighting and have no qualms about lying to the public. The crooks are violent, ruthless and more honest to their hostages than the cops outside. Director Johnnie To takes no prisoners.
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