The best movies of 2025 so far, according to critics
No Other Land
Filmed from 2019 to 2023, this documentary is the work of a joint Palestinian-Israeli collective of four film-makers, but really it’s the story of two of them and of a friendship that is both hopeful and hopeless. Basel Adra is a young Palestinian activist who grew up in the southern Hebron Hills. Yuval Abraham is a young Israeli whose political views were changed by studying Arabic in high school; now he tries to get stories of the demolition of Palestinian villages into an Israeli news media that doesn’t want to hear it. As an act of citizen journalism, No Other Land is a document as damning as they come, and it lands in this endless, bitterly complex struggle like an argument that refuses to be rationalised away. (Unrated, 92 minutes) – TB
Where to watch: In cinemas now, and streaming on DocPlay
Porcelain War
This documentary about the conflict in Ukraine and the citizen army fighting back against Russia’s invasion focuses squarely on artists and craftspeople who by necessity have become warriors. Are their senses and sensibilities dulled by the violence around them and the violence they’re forced to wreak? Or are they more alert to the pains, paradoxes and even joys of struggling through to the end of each day alive? Porcelain War is a testament to how life’s beauty – all the world’s fertility an artist is trained to see – endures among privation and death. (R, 87 minutes) – TB
Where to watch: Streaming on DocPlay
I’m Still Here
Director Walter Salles crafts an epic within an epic: a teeming family drama contained within the melodrama of a country going insane. In 1970, Brazil existed in a state of constant tension, with a military dictatorship overseeing a resurgent economy and the increasingly brutal repression of anyone it saw as stepping out of line. Among the latter was Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), a civil engineer and congressman, whose disappearance unleashed the fury and determination of his wife, Eunice (Fernanda Torres) – this film’s real hero. (PG-13, 136 minutes) – TB
Where to watch: In cinemas now
Presence
A ghost story, as told from the point of view of the ghost. Presence is more unsettling than scary, more dramatically gripping than nerve-shredding. And it’s directed by Steven Soderbergh, so you know it has to be smart. His camera silently roams an old suburban house, unable to step past the doors outside, putting the audience inside the mind of a phantom as it yearns to protect the most vulnerable member of the family that lives there. (R, 84 minutes) – TB
Where to watch: In cinemas now, and available to stream on AroVision from March 6
Hard Truths
Building his scripts through collaborative improvisation with his casts, director Mike Leigh creates itchy comedy-dramas about life’s misfits and reprobates and, occasionally, its optimists – average folk, often, who create and survive their own mundane disasters. Hard Truths stars Marianne Jean-Baptiste as a middle-aged, working-class Londoner with a gift for invective and complaint: a woman of titanic feeling who has somehow become a prisoner of herself. (R, 97 minutes) – TB
Where to watch: In NZ cinemas from March 13
Better Man
This delightfully unhinged musical biopic from director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman) chronicles British pop singer and former boy band sensation Robbie Williams, revisiting the singer’s tumultuous rise and celebrating his effervescent body of pop hits (Angels among them). American audiences might be shocked at how well it works on all fronts. Especially considering that Williams is rendered throughout as a CGI chimpanzee. (R, 135 minutes) – MB
Where to watch: In cinemas now, and available to rent or buy from Apple TV Store, Prime Video Store, Google TV, YouTube, Neon Rentals and AroVision
Nickel Boys
Adapting Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that was inspired by the true story of dozens of young men (the majority of them Black) tortured and killed at a reform institution in the Florida Panhandle, RaMell Ross (Hale County This Morning, This Evening) reinvents the cinema as a language of hope. Hope for what? Survival, connection, bearing witness to historical crimes, the sacrament of peering into another person’s soul. It’s one of the most visually and sonically gorgeous movies of the year. (PG-13, 140 minutes) – TB
Where to watch: Prime Video
The 97th Academy Awards take place on Monday, March 3 NZ time, screening on Disney+. Follow nzherald.co.nz for live updates
