The Best Movies I Watched in 2025
I could probably count the number of movies I’ve watched in the last ten years on two hands. Something about having to sit there for an hour and a half to, dear lord, three hours as a movie happened at me never appealed to me.
That changed this year. I never took the time to try to get into movies, but now that I have, I’m in love. It turns out that movies are pretty neat. They can also be terrible. The ratio of good/bad is much worse than video games or books, in my experience. I saw a lot of garbage movies, much more so than bad games or books.
Maybe I was looking in the wrong places. Once I turned my attention to East and Southeast Asia, I was finding much better films. Some of my favorite movies ever, as a matter of fact. So grab your passport and join me on a tour of films, or something, I don’t know.
Just like with my video games post, this is a list of the movies I watched in 2025, not necessarily the ones that came out in 2025. There are a bunch of movies that released this year that I never got around to, but hope to see soon.
Shaolin Soccer
I had a friend in high school who loved Stephen Chow. I think he had only seen Kung Fu Hustle and was faking the rest, but still, his breathless love for this director I had never heard of stuck with me. Years later, I found a great channel on YouTube called Accented Cinema and have subsequently become addicted to Chinese and Hong Kong films. He’s done several videos on Chow, and this convinced me to finally go see some of his movies.
One of them was Kung Fu Hustle, which… was okay. I much preferred the movie he made before this, Shaolin Soccer.
You’ll be shocked to learn that Shaolin Soccer is a soccer (football, futball, footy, leg orange) movie, a comedy about “Golden Leg” and “Mighty Steel Leg”. No, I will not be using their real names. Golden Leg is a washed up player who suffered a terrible injury in his playing days and is now basically a janitor for his former teammate’s new all-star team. They’re the elite, and have never lost. Tired of being abused by them, Golden Leg leaves and decides to form his own team.
Wandering the streets, he meets a homeless guy (Chow) cleaning the sidewalk. The man puts on an amazing display of kick-itude, demonstrating the capabilities and many uses for Shaolin kung fu. Calling himself Mighty Steel Leg, he was once a student of a great master and wants to teach it. Golden Leg recruits him to his new soccer team, and together they recruit Mighty Steel Leg’s former fellow students.
You can guess the rest. This lovable team of losers has to come together and learn how to play, and play together to win. They face many trials and tribulations but scrap together enough wins to make it to the championship. There’s a love interest between Chow and a woman making steamed buns on the street. She’s actually an immigrant – she only speaks Mandarin in an area that only speaks Cantonese. Normally a romance plot like this is whatever, but here watching Mighty Steel Leg so confidently and coolly woo her, being kind and respectful to her, while struggling on the football field, is a great contrast. It’s not going to win any points for an original plot, but the gags and personalities certainly are unique.
Shaolin Soccer is absolutely hilarious, it had me laughing my posterior off throughout most of it. The performances by Ng, Zhao, and the supporting cast (including an homage to Bruce Li) are phenomenal, taking what would otherwise be just an okay sports comedy into something special. And I love the way the movie blends kung fu with Footy McFootface.
Good News
What a surprise Good News turned out to be. I had never heard of this movie before when I stumbled onto it browsing Netflix one night after work. Tired and bored I thought, ‘yeah, whatever’ and put it on. And it was fantastic.
Good News is a Korean film loosely (that word is doing a lot of heavy lifting) based on the real life hijacking of Japan Air Lines Flight 351 in 1970. It was hijacked by a group of communist students calling themselves the Red Army Faction, shortly after takeoff from Tokyo. It’s a fascinating moment in Japanese and Cold War history, and the film uses this more as a jumping off point. The best way I can describe Good News is that it’s along the lines of The Death of Stalin, Burn After Reading, or Network in that it’s a deeply nihilistic satire about a very serious topic.
Everyone with even the smallest molecule of power is a piece of garbage in this film, more concerned with saving their own skin first and foremost, and how they can use this to advance their careers seconds. It’s mostly an ensemble film, but we spend the most time with two people: a fixer for the South Korean government known only as “Nobody” and a lieutenant in the South Korean Air Force called Seo Go-myung.
The Red Army Faction want to go to Pyongyang so they can live in what they believe to be a utopia. Nobody and Go-myung come up with this plan to trick them into thinking that the Seoul airport is actually the airport in Pyongyang. There is a lot going on in this movie, that whole deception thing is only, like, a third of it. The rest is all the officials who are arguing about this plan, arguing about who’s to blame when it goes wrong, the Korean President’s wife shows up and she’s played up at this pretentious moron and everyone fawns over her. An American air force lieutenant shows up, and that goes about exactly as you’d expect.
About two-thirds of the way in, there’s a sudden tonal shift as Go-myung is forced to go onto the plane, once its landed to negotiate with the hijackers. They’re all armed with guns, machetes, and bombs, and he sees how terrified the passengers are, and also the hijackers. Then he sees their leader stab himself and says “if you don’t get me to Pyongyang before I die, they’re going to blow up the plane and it’s going to be your fault”. Up to this point, Go-myung was thinking about medals and being a hero, but now he’s completely fed up with everything and scared. I love when movies take a sudden, unexpected tonal shift like this so I was eating it up at this point.
I wrote like over a thousand words of notes while watching this movie, I think it’s great. This probably deserves its own blog, I think I’m going to write that up later. And, like, nobody’s seen it. It’s only got four reviews on Metacritic; three of them are okay and one is bad. I don’t think we watched the same movie because the one I watched was great.
Ne Zha
Ne Zha is a 2019 animated film from China, directed by Jiaozi. There’s a fascinating story about how he was pretty much broke and put what little money he had into the creation of this movie, and it went on to become (at the time) the second-highest grossing movie ever in China (the first was Wolf Warrior 2). Ne Zha 2, released earlier this year, has surpassed it to become the highest grossing by a massive margin. It made 10 trillion Chinese yuan more than the current second-highest grossing film.
Ne Zha is based on the character in ancient Chinese folktale, while the plot loosely follows the 16th century novel Investiture of the Gods. It’s an animated film that feels like golden age Pixar through a Chinese lens.
There’s this thing called the Chaos Pearl that’s sucking up energy from heaven and earth, and these two gods, Taiyi and Gongbao, are sent to destroy it, but they fail. Instead, the pearl is split in two – the Spirit Pearl and the Demon Orb. A curse is placed on the Demon Orb so that in three years time it will be destroyed by lightning. Meanwhile, Tiayi is given the Spirit pearl so that it can be reincarnated as the son of Li Jing, another god.
But Gongbao gets jealous, so he steals the Spirit Pearl and impregnates Li Jing’s wife with the Demon Orb. Just go with it. This child is Ne Zha, a hellish demon child cursed to die in three years. Gongboa then takes the actual Spirit Pearl to the Dragon King, who uses it to give birth to Ao Bing, who was supposed to be the good son but is now being corrupted by the evil dragons. Or are they evil?
There’s a lot going on with the lore that I don’t know much about because it’s a culture we so rarely interact with here in the west. I’m sure the “novelty” of this lore and plot is part of why I like it so much, but this is genuinely a great film. Excellent writing and acting, the art is mostly great – Ne Zha’s “final form” looks silly, but otherwise the visuals are stunning. I love the characters and the arc Ne Zha goes through, and despite the questionable art style, I do love the ending.
This is a big, blockbuster movie and not typically the kind I’d recommend. But it’s clearly made with love and doesn’t “feel” like a big movie. Maybe because its not from Hollywood. Maybe its because it was made by people who actually care. Either way, Ne Zha is something special and I can’t wait to finally watch the sequel in the new year.
Chungking Express
My first Wong Kar-wai film, and I couldn’t have chosen a better one, I don’t think. I’ve always heard about this movie (and In the Mood for Love) whenever I fall down cinema buff rabbit holes. I always liked the look of it, but I thought it would be too auteur for me. But I finally gave it a chance and I am so glad I did because this movie is so damn good.
Chungking Express is sort of an anthology film, but with only two stories. It’s a romance movie, but not the typical saccharine, sickly sweet one you might expect. The first story is about an unnamed woman in a blonde wig and He Zhiwu. Zhiwu, not knowing about the woman’s underworld connections, falls in love with her and tries to woo her. The second story sees an unnamed cop make his rounds near the restaurant Midnight Express. There, he meets Faye, an oddball who works at the restaurant. The two stories don’t connect - the two cops bump into each other as the film transitions from one story to the next, but that’s the only interaction.
That’s about all I want to say, because the story goes to some unexpected places and I don’t want to spoil it.
Chungking Express is one of those films that you know is going to be an all-time great within the first few minutes. From its unique cinematography that defines Kar-wai’s films you really feel like you’re in the streets of a grimy 90’s Hong Kong. The acting is superb, although that’s to be expected from a cast made up of Tony Leung (who I’m quickly coming to find is one of the greatest actors of all time), Bridgett Lin, Takeshi Kaneshiro, and Faye Wong.
This is terrible writing on my part, but I really don’t want to say too much about this movie. I didn’t know much about it going into it, other than it’s considered a cult hit and that its director is really good. I had no clue what to expect, and I’m so glad I went into it as blind as I did. You should do the same.
Dead Talents Society
We stick to East Asia, this time Taiwan and the horror comedy Dead Talents Society. I haven’t laughed this much watching a movie in a longtime, by which I mean the two or three months since I saw Shaolin Soccer.
We follow an unnamed dead woman and her best friend Camilla as they laze about the afterlife. “Rookie”, or “You There” as she’s referred to in the English subtitles, is on the verge of disappearing because the last vestige of her existence in the world of the living has been thrown away. Not because she’s super old, she’s in her twenties, she was just that unremarkable while alive.
Her only resort, obviously, is to join a haunting talent agency so she can start scaring living people to… I don’t know. How scaring people keeps her in existence isn’t explained. I guess it keeps her in people’s minds, and that’s ghost energy or something. But there’s this whole undead society that exists by scaring people, like Monsters Inc. and they have to meet quotas or the boss of this place will un-exist them. Like I said, not well explained. It doesn’t really matter though, because Rookie is terrible at scaring people until a “washed up” ghost named Catherine and her agent, Makoto, reluctantly take her under their wing.
The world of the undead is so creative, they’ve got their own society complete with talk shows that hype up these celebrity ghosts and have these reality TV shows as they compete to see who can scare the most people. There’s also a cultural difference here, as these ghosts have to eat, drink, and sleep, and while they can’t be killed, they can’t phase through walls or possess people, or really do anything we in the west would think of when us Westerns think of a ghost.
This is a hilarious movie. There’s a scene early on where the Rookie is trying to figure out what her “gimmick” is going to be, and they try to have her stop a car by appearing in front of a speed car, then go invisible (to humans) again, sneak into their car while they’ve stopped, and then re-appear in their rear view mirror inside the car. But the car hits her and she goes flying in the air. I won’t spoil the whole joke, but I had to pause and laugh for a good couple of minutes.
And the ending! The last third of the movie is the most ridiculous, unhinged thing I have ever seen. It’s gloriously stupid and I love it. But there are also really touching scenes exploring the Rookie’s time alive and how it relates to Cathy, and these expectations placed on both of them. Its a lot like Good News in that it balances this dark, macabre humor with touching, heartfelt scenes well.
Dead Talents Society is so creative with how it portrays the afterlife, and its absolutely hilarious. It’s not perfect. It alludes to work/life balance problems in society but never addresses it head on. The script doesn’t know what to do with poor Camilla in the second half, so she awkwardly stands around without saying much. They also set up a romance between Cathy and Makoto throughout that they seemingly forget about by the end. But overall, it’s so funny and out of pocket, and its one of those things where its wearing its heart on its sleeve and you can’t help but love it.
2000 Meters to Andriivka
We’re finally heading west with a documentary. Documentaries aren’t typically my bag. I’ve seen quite a few that felt more like vanity projects for its creator, or simply propaganda, rather than a proper deep dive on the subject matter. That is not the case with 2000 Meters to Andriivka, where we’re not even told the creator’s name until the end credits. That would be Ukrainian journalist Mstyslav Chernov, who joined the soldiers on the front line during Ukraine’s failed June 2023 counteroffensive, trying to take the village of Andriivka.
With most soldiers these days equipped with helmet-mounted GoPro cameras, the Russo-Ukraine War has given average citizens the most realistic and unnerving look at war ever. 2000 Meters to Andriivka is mostly made up of a handful of soldiers from the 3rd Assault Brigade, fighting in a 2000 meter wide forest to reach the village of Andriivka. These scenes are interspersed with images of civilians, and of Chernov joining the brigade and watching the battle from afar. But the bulk of the documentary is combat footage, and it is harrowing.
I suppose a certain group of people would call this propaganda, but it’s not. It subtly states that Russia is in the wrong for invading, but that’s about as far as they go. It doesn’t glorify war, either, turning Ukrainian soldiers into defenders of the motherland or heroes. Instead, you see what life is like on the battlefield. In a word: hell. Explosions are constantly going off, the soldiers barely react when they hear the whistle of an artillery or mortar shell about to land. Gunfire bursts all over the place. Men toss grenades and demand that their enemy surrender.
This is not a documentary for the faint of heart. You will see people die and dying. There are dead bodies on the ground, yes, but you will actually see people being shot to death. A Ukrainian commander is full of life one moment – barking orders, coordinating with his soldiers the next attack, asking who got hurt and if they’re okay – then he stands up, takes a few steps, and is gunned down, his body falling to the ground instantly, lifeless. We cut to the helmet camera of the man next to him, trying to figure out if he’s still alive or dead, advancing under a hail of gunfire to check on him, only to realize he’s dead, and having to call it in over the radio. He’s suddenly in charge of the attack.
But you’ll also see soldiers who clearly don’t want to be there. One man, a 46 year old grandfather who volunteered, at first asks not to be on camera because he doesn’t think he’s worthy. He says he’s no hero. We spend ten minutes talking to him in a dugout, more explosions ripping apart the trees in the background as they share a cigarette. He finally agrees to be on camera, and says he promised his wife he’d come home eventually. We’re then told he was killed five months later.
It’s scenes like these that make this the best documentary I’ve ever seen. A truly heartbreaking look at a stupid war, one that the world is determined to forgot. Yet with more and more wars starting all over the world in the last couple of years, these are scenes we are all going to become more and more accustomed to.
