The 5 Films You Can’t Miss This New Year
Time for a brand spanking new calendar - and a fresh batch of fantastic films on the big screen. Come on in 2025, the popcorn’s warm!
good.film
a month ago
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Pat yourself on the back. You’ve emerged blinking from that weird twilight zone between Boxing Day and New Years’ (how many days are even IN that gap? Insert shrug emoji here). That sound you’re hearing isn’t the last dregs of curdled egg-nog being poured down the sink. It’s movie lovers everywhere rubbing their hands together with glee.
If you’re into jaw-dropping, award-winning, thought-provoking cinema – and we know you are – January in Australia is a stellar time at the multiplex. Not only is it a blissful escape from the heat into a frigid paradise of choc-tops and aircon, it’s also when studios jockey to release their most original, extraordinary fare. Coz hey, awards ceremonies are JUST around the corner.
This year’s no exception. In the first fortnight alone, we’ll see career-best performances from Zoe Saldaña, Colman Domingo, Kieran Culkin and Ralph Fiennes. We’ll be graced with a glorious French-Mexican cartel musical, a Brooklyn sex comedy that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and an auteur road movie with a difference that’s been hailed as profound and laugh-out-loud funny.
Here’s a taste of five unmissably delicious flicks unspooling in the first few weeks of 2025. If these are any guide, it’s going to be an absolute cracker of a moviegoing year…
Emilia Pérez
In Cinemas: January 16
If “audacious” was in the movie dictionary, this would be the film it points to. Wildly imaginative and energetic, this French-produced, Spanish-language musical crime comedy might have the most intriguing premise we’ve heard in ages: a lawyer helps a Mexican cartel kingpin enact a plan he’s been secretly preparing for years… a gender-reassignment surgery to evade the authorities, and become the woman he’s always dreamt of being.
The film bites off an incredibly thought-provoking mouthful of ideas and chews furiously: themes of identity (obviously) along with atonement, abandonment and legacy all beat at the core of this total original. Adding another layer of potency is the Mexican setting, which touches on the long-lasting impact of cartel-related violence, and the broader societal changes the country is undergoing.
Yes, we did say this is a MUSICAL – and it works. French director Jacques Audiard is keenly aware of the juxtaposition he’s created by setting such spiky social themes within a genre more typically suited to green witches and Wonkas. "Something shocks me deeply in Mexico – all these problems of missing people,” Audiard says. “I wanted to make a musical, I wanted people to sing and dance, so why not against the background of a tragedy?”
Bravo, Monsieur Audiard – Emilia Pérez is a revelation, and critics agree. The film has just scooped a whopping 10 Golden Globe nominations (the second most ever) and it’s France’s entry for the International Feature category at next year’s Academy Awards, which it’s widely tipped to win. All eyes are now on the Best Actress race: can Karla Sofía Gascón become the first openly trans actress in history to be nominated for an Oscar?
Sing Sing
In Cinemas: January 16
From its Toronto premiere way back in September 2023, it’s taken a while for this acclaimed prison drama to break out… yes, pun intended. That’s because A-grade indie studio A24 knows exactly what it has on its hands, unveiling this stunner in the new year for maximum effect (in fact, it’s being re-released in the USA on January 17, right when Oscar voters’ eyes are at their most peeled).
The second feature from Texan director Greg Kwedar, Sing Sing looks at the transformative power of art, with its story of a group of incarcerated men who find purpose – and emotional rehabilitation – by acting in a theatre prison performance. It’s a case of art imitating life: the script is based on the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program run at the real-life Sing Sing prison in New York.
At a formidable 98% on the infamous Tomatometer, critics have hailed the film’s compassion and authenticity. Much of that comes from the impressive ensemble cast, some of whom are formerly incarcerated actors themselves. In a poetic twist, filming took place at the actual Sing Sing Correctional Facility — the very same prison where one actor, Jon-Adrian Velazquez, spent nearly 25 years after a wrongful conviction. He’s since been exonerated.
Over on the glitzy side, there’s deafening Oscar buzz for lead actor Colman Domingo, whose character in the film is also wrongly imprisoned. With honours from twenty-five other awards groups under his belt, don’t bet against a return invite from the Academy for the Afro-Latino actor; he was nominated in 2024 for playing openly gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin.
A Real Pain
In Cinemas: Now
We loved him in Zombieland. We loved to hate him in The Social Network. Now, actor and filmmaker Jesse Eisenberg has written and directed a heartfelt Holocaust “comedy” that’s widely regarded as his best work ever. And he’s not alone. His co-star, Succession’s Kieran Culkin (whom Eisenberg cast purely on his “essence” alone), racked up every Supporting Actor prize under the sun as 2024 pulled down the shutters.
A Real Pain clunks together two vastly different Jewish-American cousins, David and Benji. One emotionally repressed, the other volatile and drifting, they set out on a heritage tour to Poland to honour their late grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. As they pluck up more of their family’s roots – and confront their own personal struggles – the real impact of generational trauma ekes its way into the daylight.
If it feels risky to pull laughs out of the 20th century’s most shattering event, you wouldn’t be wrong, but that’s where A Real Pain dances beautifully on that magical intersection between tragedy and comedy. It’s obvious that Eisenberg has drawn the film from a deeply personal place; the Polish location was the exact home where his family lived in 1939, and it’s the first time a feature film has shot on location (with permission) at an actual concentration camp.
Variety called it a beautifully complex ramble of a road movie, and it’s an undeniable crowd-pleaser, so long as you’re prepared to laugh and shed a tear. The clue, after all, is in the title: while it’s focused on the Jewish experience, A Real Pain captures the “universality” of pain. And since part of the human experience is to struggle with loss, we might as well get together and laugh about it, right?
Conclave
In Cinemas: January 9
As the visible head of the Roman Catholic church, the Pope is an icon for more than 1.3 billion Catholics throughout the world (and as a bonus, he gets driven around in that cool glass car). Ever wondered how a new Pope is chosen, though? We haven’t either – but as this riveting papal thriller proves, when the time comes to anoint the Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, there’s a very shadowy undertow of power and politics at play.
Following up his surprise international hit All Quiet on the Western Front, German director Edward Berger brings a rich Euro-sensibility to this adaptation of the Robert Harris bestseller, which gathers a boatload of the world’s cardinals behind closed doors to elect a new leader. Ralph Fiennes is anxiously brilliant as the man tasked with keeping the process on the rails. Like any good conspiracy, that’s easier said than done.
Surprised that a “vote for the Pope” movie could be such a gripping look at politics? Peer closer and the ingredients are all there: a glimpse inside an inner sanctum with immense power, but cloaked in secrecy. An exploration of a deeply gendered organisation where anyone who doesn’t fit hetero-masculine norms (hint, hint) is discounted.
Add in that we’re seeing the film in the wake of a stomach-churning US election (and an upcoming Australian one), and you’ve got an even more timely story. Is Conclave the film that’ll send white smoke up the Academy’s chimney when the Best Picture envelope gets opened in 8 weeks time? The smart money right now says yes.
Anora
In Cinemas: Now
Could this be 2024’s biggest big-screen surprise? Don’t be put off by the premise: a sex worker swept into a whirlwind romance by Vanya, the footloose, f**k-up son of a billionaire Russian oligarch. While you might think it’s giving Pretty Woman Goes to the Kremlin, this spicy and surprising dramedy offers more – delving with sophistication into complex ideas of exploitation, self-worth and transactional love.
The brainchild of New Yorker Sean Baker, Anora has created a tsunami of excitement in the States for its unconventional casting and didn’t-see-that-coming plot twists, but perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. He’s the filmmaker who shot an entire feature film on an iPhone 5S (2015’s Tangerine) and chose Simon Rex, a former adult film actor, to lead his 2021 black comedy Red Rocket with hilarious results.
But even Baker may have topped himself this time with his casting of relative unknown Mikey Madison as the titular Anora Mikheeva, a 23-year-old Brooklyn stripper who hits the jackpot when Vanya offers her $15,000 to spend the week with him. She’s an absolute revelation in the role – defiant, hilarious, volcanically headstrong and at select moments, heartbreakingly vulnerable. It’s genuinely one of the greatest performances you’ll see all year.
As a storyteller, Baker has always had a keen eye on the class divide, and that’s doubled here by crashing together two polar-opposite characters: one from the wealthy elite, and one from the world’s oldest service industry. He asks, can a connection built on a drunken financial transaction really grow into genuine love? With its bittersweet vibes, Anora gives us a unique and unforgettable version of the answer.
Happy New Year from all of us at good.film - we’ll see you at the movies!
