The best movies of the year so far

Do the Oscar hopefuls during the summer holidays count? It seemed a strong – or at least enjoyable - batch this year: Pope preview Conclave, a surprisingly good turn by Timmy Chalamet as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, and the film that kicked sand in everybody’s face, including its own, Emilia Pérez.

But, like Oscar, I’m picking Sean Baker’s Anora. It took the fairytale staples – the handsome prince, the damsel in distress and the evil hatchet-man – and upended all of them completely.

The prince was awful, the damsel didn’t need rescuing, and the hatchet-man was the nicest person in the movie.

It was a well-known story – I mean, Steven Spielberg made a movie of it, for goodness sake. But a mostly German team told the story of how it reached the world – the people in charge of covering the Munich Olympic Games were there already when terrorists kidnapped Israeli athletes.

It’s politics, it’s sport, it’s morality and for the first time the phrase “the story” dominated current events.

Peter Sarsgaard, Ben Chaplin and John Magaro are all wonderful, but it’s Leonie Benesch (The Teachers’ Lounge) who captures the attention.

This was a toss-up with another prison movie Sing Sing. But the sheer brilliance of director RaMell Ross’s coverage of the story – based on Colston Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel - is what put it over the line.

Ross directed and co-wrote Nickel Boys, though neither are his areas of expertise. He’s a photographer by trade, which is why the story of Elwood and Turner in jail at the height of 1960s segregation is told entirely from their points of view.

Actors Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson often worked with cameras strapped to them. A gimmick? Not a bit of it. Best shot movie of the year, no doubt.

There was never any question, really. When I struggled to get into the several cinemas screening Tinā on its first night, I realised this was special.

Special because it was that rare thing among New Zealand films – an out-and-out crowd pleaser. It was sold as a Samoan movie, which it was, thanks to director Miki Magasiva and star Anapela Polataivao, but it couldn’t be more mainstream Kiwi as well with its lovable auntie sorting out troubled school kids, the appeal of choir singing, hints of romance in the high school musical, and genuinely pass-the-hanky moments at the end. Who says we don’t like full-on cheese in our films?

There was a surprising amount of politics in the first half of 2025, whether it was the Oscar-winning Brazilian film about “the disappeared”, I’m Still Here and the Australian account of imprisoned journalist The Correspondent. But for sheer bravery, the Iranian film The Seed of the Sacred Fig was something else.

It’s an account of the women who took to the streets to protest at the excesses of the so-called Morality Police. The gimmick being that the father of two of the women is an investigating judge, charged with prosecuting them.

The government tried to stop it reaching Cannes, and director Mohammad Rasoulof had to sneak it over the mountains to get there. Spoiler: it picked up five awards there. Quite brilliant.

This is mostly an award for a step in the right direction for comic-book movies, after a string of over-blown, tangled concoctions for the last couple of years.

First, Thunderbolts* is full of characters who are neither super nor particularly heroic. It’s actually full of characters, full stop, which is another nice change.

Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Sebastian Stan make Tom Cruise look even more like a flawless action man than usual.

No, that’s not particularly a compliment. And mostly – saints be praised – you can watch it with the bare minimum of background research.

The dreaded multi-verse is conspicuous by its absence.