As this is not a binding legal document, I approach my year-end top 10 as only a concept. The thematic discussion going on in the spaces between these films is where the magic is — a scenic route for anyone looking for side quests and sumptuous promenades to explore. An asterisk denotes a film that did not play (or has not yet played) theatrically in Nashville.
Stay tuned for our annual Jim Ridley Memorial Film Poll — which will feature our countdown of the year’s best movies, as selected by a large assortment of our critics and film-expert friends — coming in January.
1. No Other Land*
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this one since the day I saw it.
2. Bramayugam*/Longlegs/Red Rooms
These great works of terror are like obsidian pearls, built over time from something upsetting. It is the excavation that bolsters the greatness — a journey that allows multiple perspectives on a monstrous disruption in what we hope for, what we expect and what ultimately awaits us all.
3. The Brutalist*/Hard Truths*/The Substance
These films study the way a character is built and the way they are broken down. Studies of what one can bear, and what they ultimately cannot. Constructivist portraits of how we transform the world, and how the world transforms us. Rage is a chisel.
4. All We Imagine as Light/Challengers/The People’s Joker
Navigating pathways through what life throws at us, fording the obstacles of tradition (and copyright) to get at something all too real and relatable. The more specific, somehow the more universal.
Rose Glass’ blood-soaked neo-Western thriller opens this week at the Belcourt and Regal and AMC locations
5. Hundreds of Beavers/Love Lies Bleeding/The Wheel of Heaven*
Realism is for suckers. Bloody, beautiful, brilliant and deeply alive.
6. I Am Celine Dion/Luther: Never Too Much/Maria*/Smile 2
We don’t quite demand ritual sacrifice of our artists, but then again, maybe we do? Does suffering enrich great work, or does it simply provide focus and perspective? It is, in fact, all for us …
7. The End/Green Border/Wicked
When films make moral challenges to their audiences, it’s still enthralling (and maybe a little bit shocking). And when the circumstances of and fallout from moral choices are the foundation of something focused on making self-reflection part of the viewing experience, it’s delicious and devastating in equal measure.
8. The Beast/Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl*
You’ll find no better perspectives on the opportunities and terrors of AI than in this refreshing and exciting pair, whether sexy time-slip chaos or garden-based shenanigans are your preferred means of exploration. An ongoing series of sharp delights.
9. Better Man*/I Saw the TV Glow
Dysphoria presented in ways that promote visceral empathy. I Saw the TV Glow, Jane Schoenbrun’s ’90s-addled psychoscape, allows anyone to understand and relate to a life lived under the backbreaking weight of regret, and Better Man, the Robbie Williams biopic, takes its ape-substitution conceit far enough to get past Dewey Cox signifiers into a realm of psychological pain no one expects from a pop star. Better Man also has the single most devastating moment of psychological horror for the whole year when a supporting character realizes that her faculties are failing her — it hits so hard I had to run for the hallway for a few minutes.
10. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World/Horror in the High Desert 3: Firewatch*
Damian Mc Carthy’s horror film opens in select theaters this week
Unexpected procedurals that end with the unspeakable. End of the World, Radu Jude’s vivisection of the gig economy, is a singular portrait of the Global Now, while High Desert 3, Dutch Marich’s found-footage faux doc, finds the tension in the unbroken take. Both are like a meat tenderizer of the soul. The former is blessed with an incredible performance from Ilinca Manolache, and the latter features two of the most sustainedly scary sequences that the found-footage genre has managed to produce.
Honorable Mentions:
The first four minutes of Alien: Romulus, Anora, Babygirl, Birder, Dahomey, The Feeling That the Time For Doing Something Has Passed, Hostile Dimensions, The First Omen, Furiosa, the red-band trailer for In a Violent Nature, the trailer for Joker: Folie à Deux, the formalist eye of Nickel Boys, Oddity, Omen, Poolman, Problemista, Queer, Saint Drogo, Stopmotion, This Is Me … Now: A Love Story.
Outstanding Performances:
The film's Nashville-based co-star will participate in a Q&A tonight at the Belcourt
Michele Austin (Hard Truths), Jonathan Bailey (Wicked), Betty Buckley (Imaginary), Glenn Close (The Deliverance), Daniel Craig (Queer), David Dastmalchian (Late Night With the Devil), Michael Emery (Birder), Nathan Fausteyn (The People’s Joker), Kyle Gallner (Strange Darling), Juliette Gariépy (Red Rooms), Mia Goth (MaXXXine), Ariana Grande-Butera (Wicked), Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Hard Truths), Dakota Johnson (Madame Web), Lawrence Johnson (Kinds of Kindness), Angelina Jolie (Maria), David Jonsson (Alien: Romulus), Lady Gaga (Joker: Folie à Deux), Jack Haven (I Saw the TV Glow), George MacKay (The End), Mikey Madison (Anora), Ilinca Manolache (Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World), Mia McKenna-Bruce (How to Have Sex), Demi Moore (The Substance), Catherine O’Hara (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice), Guy Pearce (The Brutalist), Chris Pine (Poolman), Divya Prabha (All We Imagine as Light), Margaret Qualley (Drive-Away Dolls), Beatrice Schneider (The Best Christmas Pageant Ever), Jason Schwartzman (Queer), Naomi Scott (Smile 2), Léa Seydoux (The Beast), Kiernan Shipka (The Last Showgirl), Graham Skipper (The Lonely Man With the Ghost Machine), Jaquel Spivey (Mean Girls), Alison Steadman (Better Man), Dan Stevens (Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire), Kristen Stewart (Love Lies Bleeding), Jeremy Strong (The Apprentice), Moses Sumney (MaXXXine), Ryland Brickson Cole Tews (Hundreds of Beavers), Yorgos Tsiantoulos (The Summer With Carmen), Denzel Washington (Gladiator II), Alicia Witt (Longlegs), Zendaya (Challengers).
Not to Be Missed in 2025:
Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story, April, The Damned, Dead Mail, Exorcismo, A Guide to Becoming an Elm Tree, Happyend, The Last Sacrifice, Misericordia, My Undesirable Friends, The Shrouds, Stranger Eyes, Viet and Nam.
Outstanding restorations:
Bwana Devil 3D, Closed Circuit, Hellraiser, North by Northwest, Nostalghia, Obsession: A Taste for Fear, The World’s Greatest Sinner.
