Movies of 2025 (and 2024)
Dec. 28th, 2025 04:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tinnySince I didn't do a post for 2024, I now added the movies I watched in 2024, as well. In alphabetical order:
2024
Klaus ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Only the River Flows ⭐⭐⭐
The Boy and the Heron ⭐⭐⭐
2024
BisouBye (Standup comedy) ⭐⭐⭐
Brothers ⭐⭐⭐
Chicken Run 2 - Dawn of the Nugget ⭐⭐⭐
Cookie ⭐⭐
Deep Cover ⭐⭐⭐
Flow ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Kpop Demon Hunters ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Les Heures Souterraines ⭐⭐
#schwarzeschafe ⭐⭐⭐
Shawn the Sheep - Christmas Special ⭐⭐⭐
Wallace and Gromit - Vengeance Most Fowl ⭐⭐⭐
Wild Robot ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Klaus ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - What a beautiful Christmas movie! Absolutely make sure you watch this in dark surroundings on a large screen, because the lighting in this movie is something else. Every scene is lit from unusual angles, with shadows dancing and playing across the screen. So gorgeous! The storyline is also cute, the motto of good deeds beget more good deeds really spoke to me, and I didn't expect the sad parts. Very good movie!
Only the River Flows ⭐⭐⭐ - Zhu Yilong gained over 30kg for this movie and then consecutively lost all the weight again during the chronological filming. He looks extremely unattractive in his 80s leather jacket and downcast expression. If you didn't know it was him, you wouldn't recognize him. That said (those were the important parts, lol ;)), the movie is pretty good. It's one of the few regime-critical movies, based on the notoriously regime-critical novels of a famous Chinese author. But it's absurdist enough, and set in the 80s, and high-profile enough internationally that the censorship let it slide. If you're expecting a logical police case, you'll be disappointed. If you're going in expecting a harrowing psychological look at someone living in an absurd police state where you don't know whether he's been crazy all along or driven mad by it all, you'll be fine.
The Boy and the Heron ⭐⭐⭐ - Miyazaki's last movie. Another one that I found hard to understand. There are doors into fantasy lands - or is it the real world just at different times? - and an old man who wants someone to take over his legacy, but he can't find anyone. It's definitely worth it for the beautiful scenery, weird characters, and many many animals. Just as expected from a Miyazaki movie, really.
BisouBye ⭐⭐⭐ - I'm going to count this standup comedy show as a movie, because it is an 80-minute program. If you don't know Paul Taylor, he does bilingual standup comedy - in French and English (both parts subtitled in the other language). It's brilliant! I didn't like his second program much, it was a bit too mean for my taste, but the first one is good, and I enjoyed BisouBye as well. You can watch the full show on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap963rYkqmA
Brothers ⭐⭐⭐ - Peter Dinklage and Josh Brolin as twin Brothers with a family history of crime - also starring Brendan Fraser and Glenn Close. It was very very absurd, and I liked it a lot! Both the characters and the plot reminded me a bit of a Fish Called Wanda, and the police officer made me think of Blues Brothers. My fave scene was the golf carts vs excavator chase. :D
Chicken Run 2 - Dawn of the Nugget ⭐⭐⭐ - I feel almost bad about giving this as many stars as the Feathers movie, because it was not as good as that. It was also not bad, though. Rocky and Ginger have a child, named Molly, and she wants to see the world - and of course, due to stupidly avoidable lack of parental communication, she runs away and straight into the arms of the next chicken farmer. Well, the same chicken farmer, as it turns out, and the chickens are mind-controlled into being happy and brainless. All of that made zero sense. That said, the rescue operation was hilarious and fast-paced, and basically reconciled me with the nonsensical setup. I enjoyed the second half of the movie a lot.
Cookie ⭐⭐ - A fellow HPI fan pointed me towards this French movie with Mehdi Nebbou (from 2013), in which he speaks Chinese. I found it on youtube, but it was a very LQ rip, not an official release. It's about a woman who suddenly has to take care of a six-year old Chinese boy. It turns out that his mother (the main character's cleaning woman) was in France illegally, and she's been picked up by the police. The movie can't really decide whether it wants to be a drama or a comedy or a romance, and the plot basically consists of the woman and her sister (and her husband and her ex) trying to reunite the boy with his mother (in an absolutely impossible way omg i want to rant about this it's so illogical). I still did not regret it because I did get to hear Mehdi Nebbou speak a few lines of Chinese (uuuuuuuh, understandable, and it's audible that he has an ear for languages, but still uuuuuh), and watch him kiss one of the women. So, for me, A++ experience. :D I would not recommend the movie for anyone else.
Deep Cover ⭐⭐⭐ - a British comedy about a group of improv comedians going undercover for the police. It's very absurd, and I loved it. A little dark in places - the film plays it off as funny but I imagine it must be pretty traumatic for the characters. It stars Orlando Bloom and Sean Bean (half of lotr right there) and Nick Mohammed (from Ted Lasso). It's a rec. I also liked the blues guitar soundtrack.
Flow ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - The Latvian Oscar winner for animated movie. It was brilliant. I'm not sure I would have voted it higher than Wild Robot, but they're both extremely good, definitely deserving of the Oscar. The plot is a bit hard to describe, since there is no dialogue at all, and some things (both what's happening in nature and character motivations) are unclear. Plus, it being set almost exclusively on the water, it played havoc with my nausea and I had to have my eyes closed for about half the movie. Which is extremely unhelpful in a movie without dialogue. /o\ From what I gather, the pov cat character lives in a world that regularly sees floods, and we follow the cat through the current flood period. It meets other animals, and together they scavenge a boat to ride out the worst. There are no humans visible anywhere, but lots of artifacts, houses, and cities. The animals are shown as very individual, each with their own characteristics, but the main theme of the movie is how they bond and help each other. The music score is very important, since there is no dialogue, and except for one annoyingly tense section, I thought the music was excellent. The movie leaves a lot of room for imagination - it makes you think, and that's always a good thing.
Kpop Demon Hunters ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - American-Korean animation movie about kpop singers who fight demons. The songs are great and catchy, the animation is beautiful and very colorful, the characters are great and easy to identify with, the mythology is cool (and apparently accurate). The main theme is shame and I liked the positive message. The only downside to me is that it's slightly ugly-anime in a few places, and that the characters are so unnaturally thin and tall that the dancing looks kind of strange? And the romance... kind of worked for me and kind of didn't. That's really a minor complaint, this is a solid rec. The main song still makes me cry every time I watch it.
Les Heures Souterraines ⭐⭐ - (somehow translated into German as "Die Tage Unter Null" which... wtf, it's about people having a bad time and not about temperature, and it's exactly one day, not more. I've seen some bad German titles but this one's even worse than usual.) The movie follows two people around Paris for one day. One of them is a doctor who does house calls, and the other is a woman who has to contend with gaslighting at her job. It wasn't terrible, but it was also not very satisfying. I felt like the author (it's based on a book) had to get something off her chest, and that's perfectly fine, but it does not make for a good movie, unless you're a victim of gaslighting yourself, maybe? What made the time worth it for me is that it's (to my knowledge) the only movie in which Mehdi Nebbou dubbed himself. The original production is French, but he did the dub for his character in the German version himself. If my lackluster review hasn't deterred you, you can watch it here (in French or German) at the official site: https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/054789-000-A/les-heures-souterraines/
#schwarzeschafe ⭐⭐⭐ - A German comedy I saw at a festival: a loose sequel to the original "Schwarze Schafe" from 2006, this movie is about a handful of very quirky characters whose storylines intertwine during a heatwave in Berlin. It's really hard to describe, and all the trailers are (imho) misleading. What can I say, I enjoyed it, I rec it. You don't need to have seen the original to enjoy it (I didn't see that either).
Shawn the Sheep - Christmas Special ⭐⭐⭐ - it was cute. It's not movie-length, but I'm still counting it here. I keep trying to find something wrong with it, but it was just... very cute all the way through. The uses for the lemonade were hilarious.
Wallace and Gromit - Vengeance Most Fowl ⭐⭐⭐ - I'd have given it one more star if there'd been more Feathers. And if Wallace had treated Gromit a bit better. I know it's always the same old shtick, but it wears so thin after three movies, and this one really lingered on the humiliation in a way that made me grit my teeth. At least he apologized at the end. I liked the little gnome robots (although I would have liked Feathers more), and the young police officer, and the plot was fun and engaging. The fact that Wallace equipped the gnomes with different core values was hilarious to me, just like Doofenschmirtz putting a self-destruct button on all his -inators.
Wild Robot ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - I loved this! I always love robots, and this one has a wonderful storyline of love and helping each other. It had a few logic flaws, but nothing too terrible (one was that all the animals spoke a common language that the robot was then able to learn. Eh, no). But overall I really enjoyed it, and I totally did not recognize Kit Connor's voice. (His American accent was good, too.)
2024
Klaus ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Only the River Flows ⭐⭐⭐
The Boy and the Heron ⭐⭐⭐
2024
BisouBye (Standup comedy) ⭐⭐⭐
Brothers ⭐⭐⭐
Chicken Run 2 - Dawn of the Nugget ⭐⭐⭐
Cookie ⭐⭐
Deep Cover ⭐⭐⭐
Flow ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Kpop Demon Hunters ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Les Heures Souterraines ⭐⭐
#schwarzeschafe ⭐⭐⭐
Shawn the Sheep - Christmas Special ⭐⭐⭐
Wallace and Gromit - Vengeance Most Fowl ⭐⭐⭐
Wild Robot ⭐⭐⭐⭐
all my movie reviews for 2024 and 2025
Movies of 2024
Klaus ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - What a beautiful Christmas movie! Absolutely make sure you watch this in dark surroundings on a large screen, because the lighting in this movie is something else. Every scene is lit from unusual angles, with shadows dancing and playing across the screen. So gorgeous! The storyline is also cute, the motto of good deeds beget more good deeds really spoke to me, and I didn't expect the sad parts. Very good movie!
Only the River Flows ⭐⭐⭐ - Zhu Yilong gained over 30kg for this movie and then consecutively lost all the weight again during the chronological filming. He looks extremely unattractive in his 80s leather jacket and downcast expression. If you didn't know it was him, you wouldn't recognize him. That said (those were the important parts, lol ;)), the movie is pretty good. It's one of the few regime-critical movies, based on the notoriously regime-critical novels of a famous Chinese author. But it's absurdist enough, and set in the 80s, and high-profile enough internationally that the censorship let it slide. If you're expecting a logical police case, you'll be disappointed. If you're going in expecting a harrowing psychological look at someone living in an absurd police state where you don't know whether he's been crazy all along or driven mad by it all, you'll be fine.
The Boy and the Heron ⭐⭐⭐ - Miyazaki's last movie. Another one that I found hard to understand. There are doors into fantasy lands - or is it the real world just at different times? - and an old man who wants someone to take over his legacy, but he can't find anyone. It's definitely worth it for the beautiful scenery, weird characters, and many many animals. Just as expected from a Miyazaki movie, really.
Movies of 2025
BisouBye ⭐⭐⭐ - I'm going to count this standup comedy show as a movie, because it is an 80-minute program. If you don't know Paul Taylor, he does bilingual standup comedy - in French and English (both parts subtitled in the other language). It's brilliant! I didn't like his second program much, it was a bit too mean for my taste, but the first one is good, and I enjoyed BisouBye as well. You can watch the full show on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap963rYkqmA
Brothers ⭐⭐⭐ - Peter Dinklage and Josh Brolin as twin Brothers with a family history of crime - also starring Brendan Fraser and Glenn Close. It was very very absurd, and I liked it a lot! Both the characters and the plot reminded me a bit of a Fish Called Wanda, and the police officer made me think of Blues Brothers. My fave scene was the golf carts vs excavator chase. :D
Chicken Run 2 - Dawn of the Nugget ⭐⭐⭐ - I feel almost bad about giving this as many stars as the Feathers movie, because it was not as good as that. It was also not bad, though. Rocky and Ginger have a child, named Molly, and she wants to see the world - and of course, due to stupidly avoidable lack of parental communication, she runs away and straight into the arms of the next chicken farmer. Well, the same chicken farmer, as it turns out, and the chickens are mind-controlled into being happy and brainless. All of that made zero sense. That said, the rescue operation was hilarious and fast-paced, and basically reconciled me with the nonsensical setup. I enjoyed the second half of the movie a lot.
Cookie ⭐⭐ - A fellow HPI fan pointed me towards this French movie with Mehdi Nebbou (from 2013), in which he speaks Chinese. I found it on youtube, but it was a very LQ rip, not an official release. It's about a woman who suddenly has to take care of a six-year old Chinese boy. It turns out that his mother (the main character's cleaning woman) was in France illegally, and she's been picked up by the police. The movie can't really decide whether it wants to be a drama or a comedy or a romance, and the plot basically consists of the woman and her sister (and her husband and her ex) trying to reunite the boy with his mother (in an absolutely impossible way omg i want to rant about this it's so illogical). I still did not regret it because I did get to hear Mehdi Nebbou speak a few lines of Chinese (uuuuuuuh, understandable, and it's audible that he has an ear for languages, but still uuuuuh), and watch him kiss one of the women. So, for me, A++ experience. :D I would not recommend the movie for anyone else.
Deep Cover ⭐⭐⭐ - a British comedy about a group of improv comedians going undercover for the police. It's very absurd, and I loved it. A little dark in places - the film plays it off as funny but I imagine it must be pretty traumatic for the characters. It stars Orlando Bloom and Sean Bean (half of lotr right there) and Nick Mohammed (from Ted Lasso). It's a rec. I also liked the blues guitar soundtrack.
Flow ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - The Latvian Oscar winner for animated movie. It was brilliant. I'm not sure I would have voted it higher than Wild Robot, but they're both extremely good, definitely deserving of the Oscar. The plot is a bit hard to describe, since there is no dialogue at all, and some things (both what's happening in nature and character motivations) are unclear. Plus, it being set almost exclusively on the water, it played havoc with my nausea and I had to have my eyes closed for about half the movie. Which is extremely unhelpful in a movie without dialogue. /o\ From what I gather, the pov cat character lives in a world that regularly sees floods, and we follow the cat through the current flood period. It meets other animals, and together they scavenge a boat to ride out the worst. There are no humans visible anywhere, but lots of artifacts, houses, and cities. The animals are shown as very individual, each with their own characteristics, but the main theme of the movie is how they bond and help each other. The music score is very important, since there is no dialogue, and except for one annoyingly tense section, I thought the music was excellent. The movie leaves a lot of room for imagination - it makes you think, and that's always a good thing.
Kpop Demon Hunters ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - American-Korean animation movie about kpop singers who fight demons. The songs are great and catchy, the animation is beautiful and very colorful, the characters are great and easy to identify with, the mythology is cool (and apparently accurate). The main theme is shame and I liked the positive message. The only downside to me is that it's slightly ugly-anime in a few places, and that the characters are so unnaturally thin and tall that the dancing looks kind of strange? And the romance... kind of worked for me and kind of didn't. That's really a minor complaint, this is a solid rec. The main song still makes me cry every time I watch it.
Les Heures Souterraines ⭐⭐ - (somehow translated into German as "Die Tage Unter Null" which... wtf, it's about people having a bad time and not about temperature, and it's exactly one day, not more. I've seen some bad German titles but this one's even worse than usual.) The movie follows two people around Paris for one day. One of them is a doctor who does house calls, and the other is a woman who has to contend with gaslighting at her job. It wasn't terrible, but it was also not very satisfying. I felt like the author (it's based on a book) had to get something off her chest, and that's perfectly fine, but it does not make for a good movie, unless you're a victim of gaslighting yourself, maybe? What made the time worth it for me is that it's (to my knowledge) the only movie in which Mehdi Nebbou dubbed himself. The original production is French, but he did the dub for his character in the German version himself. If my lackluster review hasn't deterred you, you can watch it here (in French or German) at the official site: https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/054789-000-A/les-heures-souterraines/
#schwarzeschafe ⭐⭐⭐ - A German comedy I saw at a festival: a loose sequel to the original "Schwarze Schafe" from 2006, this movie is about a handful of very quirky characters whose storylines intertwine during a heatwave in Berlin. It's really hard to describe, and all the trailers are (imho) misleading. What can I say, I enjoyed it, I rec it. You don't need to have seen the original to enjoy it (I didn't see that either).
Shawn the Sheep - Christmas Special ⭐⭐⭐ - it was cute. It's not movie-length, but I'm still counting it here. I keep trying to find something wrong with it, but it was just... very cute all the way through. The uses for the lemonade were hilarious.
Wallace and Gromit - Vengeance Most Fowl ⭐⭐⭐ - I'd have given it one more star if there'd been more Feathers. And if Wallace had treated Gromit a bit better. I know it's always the same old shtick, but it wears so thin after three movies, and this one really lingered on the humiliation in a way that made me grit my teeth. At least he apologized at the end. I liked the little gnome robots (although I would have liked Feathers more), and the young police officer, and the plot was fun and engaging. The fact that Wallace equipped the gnomes with different core values was hilarious to me, just like Doofenschmirtz putting a self-destruct button on all his -inators.
Wild Robot ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - I loved this! I always love robots, and this one has a wonderful storyline of love and helping each other. It had a few logic flaws, but nothing too terrible (one was that all the animals spoke a common language that the robot was then able to learn. Eh, no). But overall I really enjoyed it, and I totally did not recognize Kit Connor's voice. (His American accent was good, too.)