DUBAI: Here are the first half of our top picks from this year’s feature films.
‘Sinners’
Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Canton
Director: Ryan Coogler
This vampire horror set in the Southern US during the racial segregation of the Jim Crow laws was 2025’s surprise smash hit — chiming with critics and audiences alike to become the highest-grossing original film of the last 15 years. That’s testament to both Jordan’s excellence in dual roles as Elijah and Elias Smoke — twin brothers returning to their hometown and trying to outrun their criminal past — and Coogler’s singular filmmaking talent. The Smokes set up their own juke joint, at which their talented blues-musician cousin Sammie is the resident star. Then the joint becomes the target of undead evil forces. “Sinners” is brash, bold, and a lot of fun.
‘Marty Supreme’
Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A’zion
Director: Josh Safdie
Chalamet takes some big swings — literally and figuratively — as aspiring table tennis champ Marty Mauser in this comedy drama set in 1950s New York and loosely based on the life of Marty Reisman. They pay off, though, anchoring Safdie’s screwball absurdism to an utterly believable, though mostly unlikeable, character; a twitchy, self-pitying narcissist always looking for the next hustle. Paltrow’s return to the big screen as retired movie star Kay Stone is equally compelling — her composed, wry stylishness a vital balance to Marty’s desperate neediness.
‘Ocean with David Attenborough’
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Starring: David Attenborough
Directors: Toby Nowlan, Keith Scholey, Colin Butfield
In perhaps the year’s most vital movie, the 99-year-old English biologist and broadcaster presents a gorgeously shot, immersive film that examines the damage done out of sight, deep in Earth’s oceans, by the thousands of super-sized fishing trawlers operating around our planet constantly. With his trademark authority and passion, Attenborough lays out just what is at risk if this destruction continues. But he also offers a little hope: research has shown that the oceans can recover. “As nature documentaries go, it’s hard to imagine ‘Ocean’ being bettered,” our reviewer wrote.
‘Flow’
Director: Gints Zilbalodis
Writers/producers: Gints Zilbalodis, Matiss Kaza
This dialogue-free Latvian animation is an extraordinary labor of love and an engaging mix of stunning beauty and thought-provoking message. It follows a black cat struggling to survive alongside a small group of other animals in a post-apocalyptic world in which water levels are rising dramatically. The beautifully rendered landscapes and the attention to small details in the animals’ movements, noises and behavior make this a work of art. It’s a slow-burn, almost meditative at points. but with moments of great peril and small heroics.
‘Train Dreams’
Starring: Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, Clifton Collins Jr.
Director: Clint Bentley
Bentley’s beautifully shot, mournful drama — based on Denis Johnson’s novella — follows the 80-year-long life of logger Robert Grainier (Edgerton), a taciturn, tough outdoors man whose softer side is revealed in his love for his wife. Dialogue is sparse, but Edgerton is excellent as a man with a placid surface over hidden depths. “When Grainier suffers unimaginable loss, Edgerton plays out the grief, regrets, despair, and the depression empathetically and utterly convincingly, without any grandstanding,” our reviewer wrote. “Not much happens (on screen), but there’s a lot going on.”
‘One Battle After Another’
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Regina Hall
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Apart from being the acclaimed director’s most successful outing in terms of box office takings, this darkly funny pulpy thriller is also his most straightforwardly entertaining, anchored by DiCaprio’s excellent turn as a world-weary left-wing revolutionary-turned-stoner trying to protect his daughter from his old fascist nemesis — played by Penn (staying just the right side of caricature). There’s a great blend of action and goofy comedy here, but there’s emotional weight too — particularly in the scenes between DiCaprio and Chase Infiniti, who plays his daughter — and a timeliness to its themes of immigration and dissent.
‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’
Starring: Saja Kilani, Motaz Malhees, Amer Hlehel
Director: Kaouther Ben Hania
Ben Hania’s docudrama is an astonishing, nauseating, and memorable piece of filmmaking. Five-year-old Hind Rajab was killed in 2024 by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza, along with six relatives and two paramedics. Ben Hania uses the real — and hugely distressing — audio of Rajab’s communications with the Red Crescent after the IDF’s initial assault on her uncle’s car, of which she was the sole survivor. She mixes that with fictional reconstructions — using actors — of the emergency response. Some have questioned the ethics of Ben Hania’s approach, suggesting it may be seen as exploitative and/or manipulative. But perhaps the failure of traditional media representations of the suffering of the Palestinian people to spur an adequate response means such high-concept ideas are not only justified, but necessary.
‘A Real Pain’
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Will Sharpe
Director: Jesse Eisenberg
Eisenberg’s high-wire act here can only be admired as he (seemingly) effortlessly presents an emotionally resonant and deeply funny story based around an odd couple’s exploration of one of history’s darkest historical atrocities. That odd couple are New Yorker cousins David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Culkin); one uptight and neurotic, the other extrovert and free-spirited. They visit Poland for a heritage tour of Holocaust-related sites and to see the childhood home of their late grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. Their journey raises all kinds of questions and concerns around friendship, family, conformity, mortality, and more. The easy chemistry between the leads, and Eisenberg’s assured-but-never-showy direction make this a joy to watch.
‘Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl’
Voice cast: Ben Whitehead, Peter Kay, Lauren Patel, Reece Shearsmith
Directors: Nick Park, Merlin Crossingham
The sixth installment in Aardman Animations’ action-comedy series about a provincial English inventor and his long-suffering dog was a delightful reminder that it’s entirely possible to tell a great storyin 90 minutes or less. With Aardman’s familiar, but still astonishing, stop-motion skills providing the visuals, and Nick Park and Mark Burton’s knack for creating storylines that produce giggles and feels for all ages, this was a welcome return for our two unlikely heroes and their arch enemy, the penguin Feathers McGraw, who’s out to frame Wallace as a criminal.
‘Bugonia’
Starring: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Black comedy about the abduction of Michelle Fuller (Stone), a pharmaceutical executive, by conspiracy theorist Teddy Gatz (Plemons) and his autistic cousin Don (Delbis). Gatz’s mother was left comatose after participating in a clinical trial for Fuller’s company, and Gatz believes that Fuller is an “Andromedan” — an alien species attempting to turn humanity into their slaves (and killing Earth’s honeybees). Lanthimos is a master of the macabre and bizarre, as he shows again in this remake of a 2003 Korean film, and Stone is customarily excellent as the icy exec, while Plemons brings unexpected layers to Teddy. Satisfyingly twisty.
