Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash 
     
In the first six months of 2025, I watched 51 movies and 10 series. Looking back, that’s a lot of movies! I don’t consider myself to be a cinephile (a person who really loves movies), but I do seem to spend an awful lot of time watching them. So, today I’ll share a bit of information about the best and worst movies I’ve seen so far this year and what I’m looking forward to.

The good: One of my favourite movies from the first half of 2025 was Nosferatu, a Gothic horror vampire film that came out in 2024. I had wanted to see it on the big screen last year but missed my chance, but I was able to stream it at home this year. While I still prefer the classic Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Nosferatu was quite visually striking and portrayed a very different kind of vampire (more bestial and horrific) than the ones we’ve become accustomed to in Hollywood movies. 

Another standout for me this year was a British series called The Rig, especially season 1, which follows a crew who experience mysterious and deadly events while working on an oil rig in the North Sea. I’ve always enjoyed a good supernatural thriller set in a remote location, and The Rig does a great job of showing what life on an oil rig is like and how people react in times of crisis. (Season 1 came out in 2023 and season 2 was released at the beginning of 2025.)

Honourable mention goes to a 2016 documentary called The Battle of Chosin, which details the brutal reality of (one part of) the Korean War in 1950. We don’t learn much about this war in history classes, but the footage and interviews in this documentary opened my eyes to the challenges of fighting battles in the winter and the terrible hardships suffered by all sides in this conflict. This documentary is actually available for free on YouTube.

The bad: I think the worst movie I watched in the first half of 2025 was probably Screamers: The Hunting, a 2009 sci-fi sequel to the film Screamers, which was released in 1995. The original was certainly a B movie, but it had some charm and creativity. The sequel, unfortunately, fell completely flat. Despite the slightly better special effects, the acting and story left much to be desired (which is probably why it only has a 16% rating on Rotten Tomatoes!). 

The weird: The three most unusual movies I watched in the first half of 2025 were The Boy and the Heron, Canadian Bacon, and AI Rising. I’ve already written about The Boy and the Heron (originally released in 2023), so I won’t say too much here, but it was definitely a confusing journey through a mystical world that I enjoyed visually but couldn’t really make sense of logically! With a movie like that, I suppose it’s best to just enjoy the ride and not think too seriously about it. 

Another odd one was Canadian Bacon, a 1995 satirical comedy about “a struggling [American] president who is persuaded by his confidants to fight with Canada.” While the story might have seemed absurd at the time, watching the film in 2025 was a bit unsettling because of how the current tensions between Canada and America have made a once unthinkable conflict suddenly a lot more realistic. 

Finally, AI Rising, based on a short story from 1980, was not at all what I expected! It dealt with some interesting issues related to “love in the age of AI,” but there was far more graphic sexual content than I expected. It would probably be quite embarrassing to watch this movie with friends or family sitting beside you!