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The Best Movies and Performances of 2025

Just what everyone wants 2 months after the Oscars: another film lover's top movies and performances of the year! 2025 was a terrific year for cinema, and almost as good at the Oscars themselves. We had major horror successes, PT Anderson's best film since There Will Be Blood, new nomination records, a passionate Quaker musical, and an exquisite film that reminded us of the vitality and necessity of the medium. Follow along as I share some favourites from 2025. Note: my list, my rules. There are times when 5 nominees is just right and times when it feels limiting and arbitrary. I admire and respect critics and cinephiles who refuse ties or hold at 5, I'm just not one of them. I also have 7 acting categories, the 4 we know and love + 2 Best Cameo/Limited Performance and Best Ensemble. Best Supporting Actress  Mariam Afshari, It was Just an Accident  Glenn Close, Wake Up Dead Man* Laura Dern, Is This Thing On? Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value Nina Hoss, Hedda Amy Madigan, Weap...
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Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

A shortened version of this review was published as part of  From the Front Row's Trans Canon , in which trans, non-binary, genderfluid etc. critics and cinephiles came together to create a Best Of list according to us. Thanks to Mattie for including me with the 40-odd filmlovers. Check out all of our lists as well as the canon, and enjoy this full review below! When watching a film frequently listed among the greatest ever made, it can be easy to get wrapped up in the grandiosity of it all. "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!" is beyond iconic, as is the image of Slim Pickens waving his cowboy hat while riding a bomb. The lore grows and grows: stories of Kubrick telling George C. Scott his more absurd or over-the-top takes were just practice, but keeping them in the movie. Or the originally envisioned ending of a food fight (which is why there's that huge spread the Russian ambassador picks from in the War Room). Important as they are to th...
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Welcome to We Like Movies

Hey there, welcome to We Like Movies, a space for my film reflections, award musings, and completist tendencies. More on that last one later. I'm Ryan Gaysling, and for now, I'm just placing myself here and looking ahead to the opportunity to write more about film, obsess about Oscars and making top ten(ish) lists, seeing new movies, and talking a lot about older ones too.  Why is it called We Like Movies? Easy, because we do. I do, and if you're here, you do too. What have the movies meant to us? How have our lives changed over the course of a movie? Were you also overwhelmed by the ending of Before Sunset  when you saw it the first time? Did you wear Auteur Training Wheels like Tim Burton or go straight to French New Wave, Ozu, and/or Ousmane Sembene? Maybe it was John Waters or Kasi Lemmons. Perhaps your cinematic awakening was Michelle Pfeiffer cartwheeling into a store and proceeding to whip the heads off of several mannequins. It could have been Kate Winslet whisper...
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Location: Toronto, ON, Canada
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