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First contemplate the ramen. Carefully observe the entire bowl while savoring the aroma. The jewels of fat twinkling on the surface... the menma shoots glistening with fat... the nori darkening with moisture... the scallions floating on top. Above all, the stars of the show: three slices of roast pork, modestly half submerged.
Tampopo ‘タンポポ’ (1985) dir. Juzo Itami
Tampopo (タンポポ, 1985) Dir. Jūzō Itami
Tampopo (1985), dir. Jūzō Itami
American film poster for the 2016 re-release of Tampopo (1985) dir. Juzo Itami. Art by Ping Zhu for Janus Films.
Tampopo タンポポ (1985) dir. Juzo Itami
Hello! I'm a little later than I'd like to be with this, but literally who cares! Here are my ten favorite new-to-me films of 2025!
I watched a lot of movies that I enjoyed this year, but these ten got under my skin in ways that surprised me and moved me. I highly recommend all of them.
Same rules as always: no movies from this past year (2025) or the year prior (2024). Any other new-to-me movie from any other year is fair game.
01. Taste of Cherry (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1997; Iran; 99 mins.)
"Have you lost all hope? Have you ever looked at the sky when you wake in the morning? At dawn, don't you want to see the sun rise? The red and yellow of the sun at sunset, don't you want to see that anymore?"
Abbas Kiarostami topped my list last year with Close-Up (1990), so at this point I think it's fair to say he's one of my favorite filmmakers. Taste of Cherry was the second movie I watched in 2025, and all year long, it remained the one that moved me the most. The premise is simple: Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi, whose performance I gushed about here) is driving around Tehran in the hopes of finding somebody who will bury him after he carries out his suicide. It's a genuinely emotionally overwhelming experience, but Kiarostami never makes the film feel unbearably miserable despite its subject matter. It's a heavily dialogue-driven film that happens to also be one of the most beautiful golden hour cinematography you'll ever see. It's a remarkably compassionate piece of work, rich and human and endlessly inventive. It's one of those films that remind you what art is about.
Currently streaming on the Criterion Channel and HBO Max.
02. The Cranes Are Flying (dir. Mikhail Kalatozov, 1957; Soviet Union; 95 mins.)
"Wait? More waiting. I'm always waiting! I've had enough!"
The Cranes Are Flying is a feast for the senses, between its achingly beautiful script, its thrilling score (composed by Mieczysław Weinberg), its terrific ensemble led by Tatiana Samoilova, and especially the crisp, dreamy black-and-white cinematography (courtesy of Sergey Urusevsky). Like some of the best Russian works of art, the film is both breathtakingly epic and delicately intimate. An amazing, amazing movie.
Currently streaming on the Criterion Channel and HBO Max.
03. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (dir. David Lynch, 1992; France/USA; 134 mins.)
"And the angels wouldn't help you. Because they've all gone away."
Just two weeks into the new year, one of the defining American filmmakers died. Lynch has never been one of my favorite directors, but I've never disliked his work, so I decided to fill in some of my gaps in his career. By the time the fall rolled around, I had seen enough of Twin Peaks to commit to Fire Walk with Me. It's impossible for me to put myself in the mindset of the audiences and critics of 1992 who felt nothing but disdain for this film; over thirty years later, it clearly stands on its own as a masterpiece of surrealist horror as well as one of the most devastating films I've ever seen about sexual abuse. The trick is that Lynch and star Sheryl Lee (giving an astonishing performance) transform Laura Palmer from a mystery, a meme, a dead blonde, a body in a bag, into an actual goddamn human being. It's a beautiful, horrific film.
Currently streaming on the Criterion Channel and HBO Max.
04. The History of the Seattle Mariners (dir. Jon Bois, 2020; USA; 220 mins.)
"The Mariners aren't special on account of their lack of success. It's just that success is entirely irrelevant. We've entered another realm here, one that's far larger and doesn't operate on the dead currency of winning and losing… The Seattle Mariners are not competitors. They’re protagonists."
2025 was the year I continued my baseball era. It was also the year the Seattle Mariners, in their 48 years of existence, came the closest they've ever been to appearing in the World Series. I've never been to Seattle. I never went out of my way to watch a Mariners game before this year. Before this year, I barely paid attention to baseball. You understand, then, why no one was more surprised than me that I spent my October obsessively following the Mariners' postseason. It's this documentary's fault. I watched all six parts of this massive doc over the course of a weekend, and it deeply endeared me to this weird-ass team. The narration isn't dry, but it is dryly funny, and the visuals are limited exclusively to charts, newspaper clippings, and archive photographs. It's incredible how effective and engaging it is: not only do Bois and co-writer/producer Alex Rubenstein make the (genuinely weird, genuinely interesting) story of the Mariners compelling and cinematic, they also gracefully make space for the humor and emotional weight in the whole thing. I laughed out loud multiple times through this series. I literally cried at one point. It's an astonishing achievement in storytelling, and I was just enamored with it.
Available in full on YouTube.
05. Tampopo (dir. Juzo Itami, 1985; Japan; 115 mins.)
"First contemplate the ramen. Carefully observe the entire bowl while savoring the aroma. The jewels of fat twinkling on the surface… the menma shoots glistening with fat… the nori darkening with moisture… the scallions floating on top. Above all, the stars of the show: three slices of roast pork, modestly half submerged."
An absolute delight, this movie. Tampopo was every bit as deliciously weird and sweet and funny as I could have hoped. As in his earlier film The Funeral, Itami makes great use of Nobuko Miyamoto (his real-life wife) and Tsutomu Yamazaki. The stone-faced Yamazaki makes for a wonderful cowboy, but it's Miyamoto's film, and not just because she's the titular role. As the pitch-perfect, deeply lovable heroine, she holds the film together. The vignettes are weird (in the best way), the ramen is photographed beautifully, and although it's just his second film, Itami feels like a matured, fully-formed filmmaker. The humor, the horniness, the performances -- it's all just wonderful.
Currently streaming on the Criterion Channel and HBO Max.
06. Chameleon Street (dir. Wendell B. Harris Jr., 1989; USA; 94 mins.)
"Oh Lord, I hope the sweat doesn’t make my mascara run. I’ll be lookin’ like some kind of punk doctor."
Probably the biggest surprise of the year for me. Chameleon Street is so bold, so assured, so intelligent, so genuinely shocking that it isn't surprising that the Hollywood machine didn't allow Harris to make more films like it, but it is extremely disappointing. As writer, director, editor, and actor, his work here is astounding. Harris the actor brings a hilarious and bone-dry comedic timing to his performance of real-life con man William Douglas Street, while also managing to be equally moving and frightening. Harris the writer crafted an impeccably tight script, while Harris the director gracefully brought it to life with the rambling looseness of longform improv. I've never seen anything like Chameleon Street, but it's a marvel.
Currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
07. A Man Escaped (dir. Robert Bresson, 1956; France; 99 mins.)
"Why bother?" "To fight. To fight the walls, to fight myself, to fight the door."
Bresson hasn't let me down yet. A Man Escaped is such thrillingly simple filmmaking: patient, methodical, prioritizing process over action. Taut, stunning stuff, and surprisingly moving in its depiction of resilience. François Leterrier (a non-professional actor, as was Bresson's way) is incredible in the lead role. I think I prefer the original French title, to be honest: A Man Condemned to Death Escaped. Maybe it's a bit unwieldy, but the specificity scratches my brain in a nice way. Great stuff.
Currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.
08. The Living End (dir. Gregg Araki, 1992; USA; 84 mins.)
"End of the anatomy lesson. Is that thoroughly killer or what?"
My long overdue first Gregg Araki movie did not disappoint. What a thrilling, sexy, funny, and bitterly angry piece of work. As director, writer, cinematographer, and editor, Araki gives the film a irrepressible energy, propulsive and urgent. That gorgeous final shot up there is amazing on its own, but when paired with the end title card, it's just gutting: "dedicated to Craig Lee (1954-1991) and the hundreds of thousands who’ve died and the hundreds of thousands more who will die because of a big white house full of Republican fuckheads." A truly special film.
Currently streaming on MUBI.
09. The Day I Became a Woman (dir. Marzieh Meshkini, 2000; Iran; 78 mins.)
"I have to go now." "But you promised us tea." "It was not destined."
Just like the next movie on this list, The Day I Became a Woman is really three short films in one. In a bit of a miraculous filmmaking, Meshkini manages to not only make each of the three feel complete in themselves while also tying them together in surprising and moving ways. Telling three different stories exploring the ways women in Iran are oppressed by their patriarchal society, the film is extremely affecting. Great performances, stunning imagery, and delicious use of metaphor. Every second of the film is mesmerizing, but the third chapter feels especially powerful, between its poetry and its sense of liberation. Beautiful work all the way around.
Currently available on the Internet Archive.
10. Poison (dir. Todd Haynes, 1991; USA; 85 mins.)
"Prison was not new to me. I'd lived in them all my life. In submitting to prison life, embracing it... I could reject the world that had rejected me."
As audacious a debut feature as any I can think of, Haynes' first feature is similarly structured to The Day I Became a Woman. Adapted from (inspired by?) three Jean Genet novels and spun into three wildly different films crammed in one (titled "Hero," "Horror," and "Homo"), Poison is impossible to categorize. It's part news mockumentary, pulpy horror movie, gritty prison drama, and even when it seems like the three parts couldn't be less connected, Haynes keeps the action of them propulsive, reaching three distinct emotional climaxes at once. I'm sure it's not for everyone, but once I settled into the rhythm of it all, I was transfixed by it. It's nasty, camp, tragic, funny, and breathtakingly beautiful. Unbelievable stuff.
Currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.
Honorable mentions (in alphabetical order): And Then We Danced (Levan Akin, 2019); Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter, 1976); The Beaches of Agnès (Agnès Varda, 2008); Chess of the Wind (Mohammad Reza Aslani, 1976); Close Your Eyes (Víctor Erice, 2023); Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004); D.E.B.S. (Angela Robinson, 2004); Faces (John Cassavetes, 1968); Farewell My Concubine (Chen Kaige, 1993); Faust (F. W. Murnau, 1926); The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986); Hale County This Morning, This Evening (RaMell Ross, 2018); Hellzapoppin' (H. C. Potter, 1941); Hester Street (Joan Micklin Silver, 1975); The Human Condition I: No Greater Love (Masaki Kobayashi, 1959); In Another Country (Hong Sang-soo, 2012); Je Tu Il Elle (Chantal Akerman, 1974); Lemonade (Beyoncé, Kahlil Joseph, et al., 2016); No Bears (Jafar Panahi, 2022); Nosferatu the Vampyre (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1979); Nothing But a Man (Michael Roemer, 1964); Panique (Julien Duvivier, 1946); The Passionate Friends (David Lean, 1949); Port of Shadows (Marcel Carné, 1938); Record of a Tenement Gentleman (Yasujiro Ozu, 1947); Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch, 1984); Take Out (Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou, 2004); Taxi (Jafar Panahi, 2015); Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1991); The Trial (Orson Welles, 1962); Umberto D. (Vittorio De Sica, 1952); We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay, 2011); White Material (Claire Denis, 2009)
And finally, some miscellaneous viewing stats:
First movie watched in 2025: Nosferatu (dir. Robert Eggers, 2024)
First movie seen in theaters in 2025: Hard Truths (dir. Mike Leigh, 2024)
Last movie watched in 2025: The Apartment (dir. Billy Wilder, 1960)
Last movie seen in theaters in 2025: The Apartment (dir. Billy Wilder, 1960)
Least favorite movie: Bohemian Rhapsody (dir. Bryan Singer and Dexter Fletcher, 2018)
Oldest movie: The Kiss (dir. William Heise, 1896)
Longest movie: Cleopatra (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1963 - 251 mins.)
Shortest movie: Something Good - Negro Kiss (dir. William Nicholas Selig, 1898 - 1 min.) (rewatch)
Month with the most viewings: February (34)
Month with the fewest viewings: April (14)
First movie from 2025 seen: Mickey 17 (dir. Bong Joon-ho)
Total number of movies: 296
Movies! Who knew. Happy new year!
my humble criterion collection
タンポポ - Tampopo Juzo Itami, 1985
Alternative Poster by Gokaiju
