The man has been around for some time; several days, a week — we can’t be sure. The guy he was traveling with moved on, leaving him among the cigarette butts and half-empty bottles in the clapboard country-roadside motel. Upon coming to and finding himself penniless to pay for the room, he offered to odd-job his way out of debt to the lady who operates the place. She accepted — “No drinking on the job,” though — and he stayed on. Now, one night at supper, her young son eyes him across the table and asks, “Mister, what’s yore name?”
That’s the way life gets sorted out in Tender Mercies. Nothing forced, no privileged information elicited or shoved into the foreground before its time. The characters and their collective life will not be butted and chivvied into artificial poses so that conventional rhythms of “story” can be satisfied. This drifter and the roadside lady come to care for each other (months have gone by now, we know from in-passing references in the dialogue), but we do not see them marry. We do not even see them agree to marry: He asks her whether she’s ever thought about marrying again, says he’s been thinking about it, asks if she’ll think about marrying him. She agrees to think about it. Next scene we see, schoolkids are taunting her boy, Sonny, about his mother’s new husband.
The slippage of scenes — the omission of conventional Big Scenes between scenes, as it were — does not imply that anything common-law has been allowed to develop (the lady is a good Baptist, after all; they’ve been married, legal and proper). What this narrative technique does imply is that life’s truest ceremonies are celebrated in the random minutiae of everyday experience. And that is right nextdoor to recognizing the film’s theme of “tender mercies”: that the pain of mortality, of being bound on a deathward journey whose purpose and itinerary often seem obscure, can be truly alleviated not by spectacular sunsets, exceptional interventions in the progress of existence, but rather by quiet moments of self-knowledge, of seeing oneself in perspective with one’s fellows and one’s environment, in the limpid light of day.
[originally published in Queen Anne/Magnolia News, August 27, 2003]
Film critics have a lot of things on their plate when they sit down to deal with a movie, and some of those things can be pretty far removed from the concerns and curiosity of the typical reader. When you get down to basics, what most people want to know when reading about a given movie is: Am I going to enjoy it? Am I going to be satisfied that I spent two hours of my time that way?
Open Range will take slightly more than two hours of your time, and viewers who keep a stopwatch handy may not appreciate all of it, because it’s easy to imagine how the film could have been shortened, tightened up. But I wouldn’t part with a minute of it. It moves at the settled pace and with the assured stride of a national genre in a culture that values such a thing.
It’s also deeply satisfying in ways that few movies are these days. Then again, few movies these days are Westerns. Fewer still are Westerns that aspire to give the sort of pleasure that even run-of-the-mill Westerns could once be depended upon to stimulate. Open Range costars and was directed by Kevin Costner, who thirteen years ago won some Oscars for making Dances with Wolves. That movie had its virtues, and the new film is clearly the work of the same man, but a better measure of the satisfaction Open Range delivers is the movie in which Costner, as a featured actor, first connected with audiences: Lawrence Kasdan’s Silverado in 1985.
[Originally published in Movietone News 42, July 1975]
They were smart to change the title from TheTen–SecondJailbreak. Even though Charles Bronson says he’s going to set his ‘copter down in the prisonyard for only ten seconds, we don’t dwell on that. If there were a title to remind us, though, we might irritably observe that minutes seem to pass by—and it’s not from suspense or Odessa-steps montage while those prison guards stare on with whuddafuck expressions on their mugs, deciding to open fire only after the whirlybird has all but made its belated exit. It must be well known to everyone who passed near a TV set during Breakout‘s opening week of summer business that this nice man who looks just like Robert Duvall has been tossed into a Mexican slammer on a trumped-up charge, and left to rot there by his business enemies, who happen to include Uncle John Huston, confirmed now in the nasty habits he picked up in Chinatown. Faithful wife Jill Ireland (who is also the faithful wife of Charles Bronson, and hence keeps working in her husband’s pictures) hires baling-wire airman Bronson to get him out somehow. Breakout isn’t nearly the offense against decency, not to mention narrative intelligence, that last summer’s saturation-promo action flick was—DirtyMaryCrazyLarry, if you’d forgot, and if you had, excuse me for bringing it up again. But Tom Gries, for whom many of us once had hopes, has unwisely decided to play most of this film as comedy, without knowing how; and if somebody says that that’s all the plot sounds worthy of, I have to point out that comedy doesn’t just happen automatically when melodrama trips over its absurdities—not comedy consistent enough to carry a whole movie. The actors are noticeably stranded by Gries’s decision and only Sheree North comes near wresting an integral characterization out of the mélange.
Most of us at Parallax View are no longer actively reviewing new films but we still try to keep up with them. And after decades of making lists like this, it’s still part of our routine. So while, even a week into January 2026, we are still catching up on some of the most celebrated films of 2025, we can’t help ourselves. Though far from definitive, these are snapshots of what we have been able to see, and what impressed us, over the last year.
Contributors in reverse alphabetical order. Films list in preferential order (unless otherwise noted).
Jeffrey Overstreet
This list of my favorite films of the year comprises only titles that opened on big screens or on streaming services in Seattle before the end of the calendar year. Thus, a lot of titles you see on other 2025 lists are missing here because they reached Seattle moviegoers after January 1, 2026, and some titles were popular on 2024 lists but didn’t reach Seattle until early 2025.
You’ll find reviews of some of these films at jeffreyoverstreet.com, my new website (under construction). More reviews of these titles are coming soon.
THE TOP NINE Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh) Eephus (Carson Lund) It Was Just An Accident (Jafar Panahi) No Other Land (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor) On Becoming A Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni) One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson) The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson) Seven Walks With Mark Brown (Vincent Barré and Pierre Creton) Wake Up Dead Man (Rian Johnson)
ELEVEN RUNNERS-UP I’m still arguing with myself, so any of these could climb into the top ten in the coming weeks: A Little Prayer (Angus MacLachlan) Blue Sun Palace (Constance Tsang) Bono: Songs Of Surrender (Andrew Dominik) Hard Truths (Mike Leigh) Harvest (Athina Rachel Tsangari) Hedda (Nia DaCosta) Left-Handed Girl (Shih-Ching Tsou) Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross) Put Your Soul On Your Hand And Walk (Sepideh Farsi) The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho) Train Dreams (Clint Bentley)
Richard T. Jameson
From the top: Sinners One Battle after Another It Was Just an Accident The Secret Agent Sentimental Value Train Dreams Blue Moon Sorry, Baby Sirāt A House of Dynamite
Continuing more or less in order: The Mastermind, Die My Love, Nouvelle Vague, No Other Choice, 28 Years Later, Weapons, Bugonia, After the Hunt, Nuremberg, Freaky Tales, Superman
Have yet to see Hamnet, Marty Supreme, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Materialists
Robert Horton
First Tier: Blue Moon (Richard Linklater) It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi) One Battle After Another(Paul Thomas Anderson) The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendoça Filho)
Second Tier: Sirat (Oliver Laxe) Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos) Die My Love (Lynne Ramsay) When Fall Is Coming (Francois Ozon) Marty Supreme(Josh Safdie) Weapons (Zach Cregger) Sound of Falling (Mascha Schiliniski) Hamnet (Chloé Zhao) Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier) House of Dynamite(Kathryn Bigelow)
Not-Inconsiderable-Pleasure Tier: No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook) Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater) Friendship (Andrew DeYoung) Ballad of Wallis Island (James Griffiths) 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle)
Michael B. Jordan and cast in Ryan Coogler’s ‘Sinners.’ Photo credit: Warner Bros.
Kathy Fennessy
1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson) 2. Sinners (Ryan Coogler) 3. The Secret Agent / O Agente Secreto (Kleber Mendonça Filho) 4. Familiar Touch (Sarah Friedland) 5. 40 Acres (R.T. Thorne) 6. Sirāt (Oliver Laxe) 7. Blue Sun Palace (Constance Tsang) 8. Blue Moon (Richard Linklater) 9. It Was Just an Accident / Un Simple Accident(Jafar Panahi) 10. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)
1. Sinners, Ryan Coogler 2. One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson 3. Caught by the Tides, Jia Zhangke 4. It Was Just an Accident, Jafar Panahi 5. Souleymane’s Story, Boris Lojkine 6. Seed of the Sacred Fig, Mohammad Rasoulof 7. I’m Still Here, Walter Salles 8. Peter Hujar’s Day, Ira Sachs 9. The Mastermind, Kelly Reichardt 10. Blue Moon, Ethan Hawke.
Honorable Mentions: The Featherweight, Robert Kolodny; Grand Theft Hamlet, Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane
A Baker’s Dozen (plus one, because I just won’t be constrained by the whole number thing) of my favorites for 2025, in ascending order: 14. Merrily We Roll Along (Maria Friedman) 13. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt) 12. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni) 11. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi) 10. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor) 9. Wake Up, Dead Man (Rian Johnson) 8. Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos) 7. Eephus (Carson Lund) 6. Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh) 5. La Grazia (Paolo Sorrentino) 4. The Life of Chuck (Mike Flanagan) 3. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier) 2. Sinners (Ryan Coogler) and finally, pure catnip… 1. Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater)
I also liked: Becoming Led Zeppelin (Bernard Macmahon), Chain Reactions (Alexandre O. Philippe), Final Destination: Bloodlines (Zach Lipovsky, Adam B. Stein), KPop Demon Hunters (Chris Applehans, Maggie Kang), The Long Walk (Francis Lawrence), The Monkey (Osgood Perkins), One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson), Superman (James Gunn), 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle), Weapons (Zach Cregger)
I have not yet had a chance to see either No Other Choice (Park Chan-Wook), Blue Moon (Richard Linklater) or The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho), three movies I fully expect would stir this baker’s dozen list up a bit, but so be it— as a wise candyman once said, so little time, so much to do. Others I have yet to experience include The Ugly Stepsister, The Shrouds, A House of Dynamite, If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You, Misericordia, Dust Bunny, After the Hunt, Eddington, Jay Kelly, Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Naked Gun, Splitsville and Father Mother Sister Brother, among many others. I’ll get to them in 2026, along with other non-movie-related matters. Maybe.
Sean Axmaker
1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson) 2. Sinners (Ryan Coogler) 3. Train Dreams (Clint Bentley) 4. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier) 5. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi) 6. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho) 7. Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie) 8. Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater) 9. Hamnet (Chloe Zhao) 10. A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow)
Runners-up (and on another day may have made the list): Cloud (Japan), Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (Embeth Davidtz), The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt), No Other Choice (South Korea), Sirāt (Oliver Laxe), Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor).
Honorable mentions and memorable cinematic experiences: Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh), Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos), Caught Stealing (Darren Aronofsky), Dust Bunny (Bryan Fuller), Eephus (Carson Lund), Frankenstein (Guillermo Del Toro), Reflections in a Dead Diamond (Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani), Wake Up Dead Man (Rian Johnson), Weapons (Zach Cregger).
There are, sadly, some significant films I have not yet seen (among them Blue Moon, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, The Sound of Falling, Father Mother Sister Brother and Peter Hujar’s Day) and hope to catch up with them soon, but as of publication this is where they stand.
Stellan Skarsgard and Renate Reinsve in Joachim Trier’s ‘Sentimental Value.’ Photo credit: Neon
[Originally published in The Weekly (Seattle), May 1977]
Annie Hall is far and away the best movie Woody Allen has made. Much more importantly, it’s good and rich and satisfying in terms that, heretofore, have had only negative reference to Allen’s film career, demarcating the limits of his scope as a writer-director-star.
The picture was called Woody Allen Film throughout its two-year conception and realization—a title that made all-too-perfect sense with regard to the trajectory his filmmaking has been describing. With the qualified exception of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex…, all Allen’s films have flaunted his personal centrality as pretender to the throne of Chaplin, Keaton, or whomever you happen to uphold as the comic star-auteur par excellence. Their cast lists abound in interesting players whose actual participation often amounts to nothing more than a walk-on; very few—Gene Wilder in Sex, Jessica Harper in the weird Persona parody just before the end of Love and Death—have managed to register decisively enough to be retained on the retina of memory the next day or, indeed, as long as the film itself lasts.
[Originally published in Movietone News 45, November 1975]
Even the most casual glancer at the credits is going to smirk at the fact that The Three Days of the Condor is taken from a book called The Six Days of the Condor; a certain suspense factor tied up with significantly designated slices of time is distinctly compromised before the action can get underway. That difficulty aside, the movie version is not only twice as fast-paced as the book but also approximately 600% improved. Literarily, James Grady’s novel is sufficient to make Frederick Forsyth look like Graham Greene by comparison, and Sydney Pollack and his screenwriters have wisely compressed the itinerary of Condor—the code name of a CIA-employed reader and analyst of spy, mystery, and adventure novels who goes out to lunch one rainy noon and returns to find his utterly innocuous section totally “damaged” (everybody has been machine-gunned) by, just maybe, another CIA faction. Indeed, Pollack jams the plot past so fast that I wonder whether nonreaders of the book will be able to follow its every turn, especially when (Altmania again) key clues and crucial awakenings on the part of one character or another are often thrown away in a stepped-on line of dialogue or murmured soliloquy.
[Originally published in Movietone News 43, September 1975]
I just realized I can’t remember how the line begins, so I’m going to fake it: “Technicians provide realism—artists supply truth.” “Technicians” almost certainly wasn’t the word but the rest is legitimate as a quote. A Hollywood director says it to Waldo Pepper, who was just too late to do his stuff as an ace in the Great War and now has a job, under a phony name, as a stunt flyer for the early talkies. Pepper has just pointed out that the wrong planes are being used by the movie squadron, which happens to be reenacting the legendary air battle he knows by heart and hearkens back to in support of his personal romantic code. George Roy Hill has left himself a lot of loopholes, as usual: The director who delivers the line is, or at least would be in many imaginable circumstances, right to prefer poetic truth to the documentary variety. But he’s wrong within the emotional context of the film, and he’s pompous and defensive to boot. But Waldo’s righteousness is somewhat compromised by our memory that he more or less opened the film by laying down a verbal account of the original battle, fascinating both his immediate, Nebraska farm family audience and its counterpart out there in the darkened theater, winning them and us with a charming blend of self-effacing softspokenness and ingenuous egoism, and shortly thereafter was exposed as a fraud for having cast himself in the story at all. But Hill implicitly tipped us to that particular con by preceding his Technicolor movie proper with monochrome archive stills showing aviation heroes giving up the ghost while stunting for movie cameras; this, plus our association of Robert Redford and Hill with that earlier, supposedly pleasurable screwing-over TheSting—similarly punctuated by (painted) illustrations of a movie crew filming con artists in their maneuvers—surely constituted some kind of fair warning.
[Originally published in Queen Anne News / Magnolia News, June 23, 2004]
Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks) is in a bad place.
Flying into an airport that is never referred to as JFK even though that’s what it must be, he has traveled from his homeland of Krakozia, a suppositional satellite of the former Soviet Union, to New York City, U.S.A., on a personal, undisclosed mission. Unbeknownst to Viktor, while his plane was in the air his country has been whisked out of diplomatically accredited existence by a small, messy, yet effective revolution. Hence, he finds himself in an intractable limbo between the debarkation gate and the portals to America.
His passport is invalid, his return plane ticket useless. He can’t go on; he can’t go back. Inconveniently for the beleaguered bureaucrat, Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci), charged with monitoring international comings and going at the terminal, neither can he be made to go away.
Whereupon director Steven Spielberg sums up the situation with a patented tour-de-force shot. Viktor walks through the International Arrivals concourse to the verge of its public core and stops; then the camera cranes back and up, pulling away from our central character — and very identifiable star — as hundreds of travelers and airport personnel teem through several layers and at least an acre of glass-walled corridors, gift shops, bookstores (Borders!) and grab-a-bite eateries, till only a sheer act of will enables us to keep track of where Viktor’s dim, distant, and helpless figure stands.
[Originally published in Movietone News 34, August 1974]
It may be a peculiarity of my character that a little of Jan Troell’s unassumingness goes a very long way. There’s something very admirable—and certainly “grownup,” to anyone passionately concerned that the movies grow away from Melodrama and towards Life—about his talent for capturing the offhand beauties of a field, a rock, the picturesque yet undecorative angle from which the whimsy, at once gentle and profound, of a pregnant woman indulging in her last reverie on a swing is observed and defined. TheNewLand begins (at least, as it is shown in this country) with a slow, obscurely motivated zoom-out from a deep stand of trees somewhere in 19th-century Minnesota, the sound of … an axe? a gun? a wheel? … reverberating within. Anything could be happening there—something surely seems to be happening there—and in its own good time the land and the film may reveal that something to us.
[Originally published in Movietone News 42, July 1975]
Bite the Bullet will be easy for some people to underrate and easy for others to overrate—which evens out to saying it’s a pretty good movie. Richard Brooks has hardly specialized in Westerns, but those he’s made are worth remembering: The LastHunt, an utterly original tale about buffalo hunters, full of pain and cold, and vouchsafing Robert Taylor and Stewart Granger rare opportunities to acquit themselves admirably; and TheProfessionals, a fat and sassy Mexican-bandido thing that bit off its gritty-romantic conceits too neatly for serious credibility but still yielded a generous portion of thrills, laughs, and shameless glory. BitetheBullet is built around a 700-mile endurance race sponsored by a newspaper called The Western Press. The reporters and a few high-toned gamblers, promoters, and horse-owners travel by railroad while a satisfyingly diverse band of aspirants and one hired rider—cover the terrain the hard way.
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