9. Sentimental Value – family members feuding
Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value distinctly fits into the “I know it’s a good film, but did not resonate with me” category. It’s certainly disappointing, considering my general love for complex family relationship dramas, but I found myself oddly unfeeling throughout despite faultless performances and my great love, a large, ancient home full of secrets and generational trauma. Renata Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas play Nora and Agnes, sisters whose father Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård) returns to Oslo after their mother’s death to reclaim the house. A seasoned director with no films to his name for the last fifteen years, Gustav has written a script based on his mother, a member of the Resistance who was tortured during the Second World War and who committed suicide in the family home, and wants Nora to play the title role. Enraged by her father’s absence, Nora refuses to have anything to do with him, while Agnes prefers to keep her distance. As they grapple with his return and their difficult childhood, Gustav hires American actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) to play the lead instead, resulting in further tensions.
Cinematographer Kasper Tuxen’s work is delicate, gentle around the three leads, who all provide the most understated of performances – Lilleaas is particularly moving, the mediator between the two more fiery personalities of her sister and father. As earlier stated, the strength of Sentimental Value for me is in the very sudden humour that occurs almost spontaneously – Gustav gifting Agnes’ young son Erik The Piano Teacher and Irreversible DVDs as a birthday gift for instance, or the opening scene, in which Nora succumbs to stage fright and repeatedly tries to leave, ripping her dress and eventually facing the audience with it duct-taped shut. No doubt one of the best scenes of 2025.
8. Babygirl – corporate laws breaching
Over a year after its release, I finally sat down to watch Halina Reijn’s Babygirl, the talk of the town back in January alongside the likes of Nosferatu (still not seen) and We Live in Time (also still not seen, though glimpsed extracts on the screen next to me during a long-haul flight, and did not wish to proceed). It makes number eight, but really, it should be in the lower numbers – unfortunately, it is up against much-loved comfort films, so it shall remain at the lower end of the scale on the naughty-nice list this year. In the wider 2025 release demographic however, it is certainly in the top tier, particularly thanks to Harris Dickinson’s performance as Samuel, who enters a cat-and-mouse, dom-sub relationship with the CEO of the company he is interning at, Romy. Nicole Kidman as the latter is bewitching, and her name as a – somewhat – empowered, high-flying executive drawn into some fairly aggressive erotica is certainly a draw. But I could not help but be fixated by Dickinson’s flat tones and expressionless face – when he smiles or gives in, it feels like being rewarded. The pacing is perhaps a little bit off in terms of their relationship’s development – it is very slow at first, tantalising, until it happens all at once at the third mark, leaving a sense of “what next” and a couple of close misses that feel oddly redundant. But the heart of the story is there, beating, pulsing to the brilliant needle drop of INXS’s Never Tear Us Apart.
7. Chef – Cuban sandwiches serving
The ultimate feel-good film about food (set in America maybe, because who can contend with Ratatouille?) comes in at number seven, a story about drive, passion and family that takes Jon Favreau and friends on a road trip across the USA, selling traditional Cuban cuisine. When chef Carl (Favreau) receives a scathing review, he unintentionally enters a Twitter war with his critic, culminating in his resignation and the search for something new. This something new takes the shape of an old, rundown food truck (financed by his ex-wife’s ex-husband, no less – a great cameo from Robert Downey Jr.), in which he can finally have free reign over his cooking alongside sous-chef Martin (John Leguizamo at his best) and rekindle his relationship with his son (a wonderful performance from Emjay Anthony). The film was written, produced and directed by Favreau himself, and in this sense, it does feel like a bit of a celebration of himself (he ends up remarried to Sofia Vergara and owner of a successful restaurant, no less) – yet, it’s great fun, truly heartwarming, and most importantly, the food looks divine (though shield your children’s eyes when Carl cooks spaghetti aglio e olio for Scarlett Johansson, it’s strangely erotic).
