And the Bradys 2025 go to… Peter Bradshaw’s movie picks for this year | film

TIt’s time once again for me to introduce my ‘Braddies’, a strictly personal awards list of films released in the UK in the past year just yet, and as always, it’s very different from this newspaper’s best-of-the-year countdown. These are my top ten lists for Best Film, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Actress, Supporting Actress, Best Direction, Cinematographer, Screenplay, and a film most likely to be overlooked by the mainstream media (or MSM).

When we look back over the past 12 months, there can be no doubt about the villain of 2025: Tilly Norwood, the AI ​​star. Launched in October, she’s a cute, smiling, very convincing non-human indeed, and will operate without complaint and cheaply without rushing to her trailer. Like everyone else, I denounced the terrible simulations and saw them as part of a process of AI filming that has been happening for some time – without the AI.

But the problem is that we can complain as much as we want. Pundits and journalists can act as if our jibes or reasoned criticisms will somehow shame the industry into ignoring AI. But as one producer patiently pointed out to me, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a clear gap between the AI ​​fakery and the real thing. If you look carefully, yeah, sure, okay, you can see the little gap. But the important point is the huge cost gap. The difference in price between AI generation and reality depiction is becoming harder to ignore. The writers’ strike resolution was supposed to provide for restrictions on artificial intelligence. But AI is still coming.

Elsewhere, in the world of Homo sapiens filmmaking, many hugely successful auteurs have given us some great work, and some have seriously let us down. Iranian director Jafar Panahi won the Palme d’Or this year for his dramatic thriller It Was Just an Accident, which took aim at the climate of fear in which the Iranian government operates. And in Venice, veteran independent director Jim Jarmusch received a Golden Lion for his anthology drama, Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, which elegantly explored the idea of ​​narrative. The horror in Gaza has been addressed through some ferocious Palestinian-themed films, such as Kaouther Ben Haniyeh’s angry “The Voice of Hind Rajab.”

But others tried everyone’s patience and outrageously assumed fan loyalty. The venerable Noah Baumbach and the similarly venerable George Clooney laid a huge egg with the sentimental, self-regarding Jay Kelly, a kind of embrace of honor that overstayed its welcome from the moment the house lights dimmed. Also bad was Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt,” a muddled, incoherent, dodgy #MeToo drama.

But alongside them were very exciting sorties from Kelly Reichardt, Paul Thomas Anderson, Josh Safdie, Kathryn Bigelow, Joshua Oppenheimer, Lucille Hadjelovic, and Lynn Ramsey. And Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible Swan Song was a great thrill ride. It is clear that, despite the chatty class annoyance about it, cinema (compared to opera, theater or Premier League football) is still a competitive, low-cost experience, and we must do our best to keep it alive.

So these are my lists, and readers are of course invited to vote on what they think is best and point out what has been omitted.

Best movie
Battle after battle
Young mothers
Ice tower
Trouble little girls
Marty Supreme
the end
Dead winter
Nickel Boys
Real pain
Brutal

Best director
Paul Thomas Anderson for battle after battle
Kathryn Bigelow for “House of Dynamite.”
Kelly Reichardt for The Mastermind
Jesse Eisenberg on Real Pain
Ramil Ross for Nickel Boys
Mike Lee for the hard truths
Diya Kulumbegashvili for April
Jaafar Panahi because it was just an accident
Lynne Ramsay for Die My Love
Brendan Canty for Christie

Best Actress
Jennifer Lawrence for Die My Love
Radhika Apte for Sister Midnight
Shahana Goswami for Santosh
Fiona Shaw, Park Avenue and Hot Milk
Teyana Taylor for battle after battle
Emma Thompson for Dead of Winter
Emma Stone for Pogonia
Cynthia Erivo For the bad: For the good
Marion Cotillard for The Ice Tower
Sally Hawkins for Bring Her Back

Best Actor
Ethan Hawke for Blue Moon
Ethan Herres for Nickel Boys
Brandon Wilson for Nickel Boys
Tom Cruise for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Kieran Culkin on real pain
Timothée Chalamet for Unknown and Marty Supreme full movie
Ralph Fiennes for “The Return” and the choir
Josh O’Connor for The Mastermind and Wake Up Dead Man
Robert Arameo for the films “I Swear” and “Palestine 36”.
Cillian Murphy for Steve

Best Supporting Actress
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor for Nickel Boys
Elle Fanning for A Complete Unknown and Predator: Badlands
Geeta Agrawal Sharma for Santosh
Minna Svagger for Little Trouble Girls
Judy Greer for Dead of Winter
Emily Blunt for The Smashing Machine
Lexi Venter for “We Don’t Go to the Dogs Tonight.”
Mia Threbleton on the Phoenician Plan
Chase Infinity for battle after battle
Fala Chen for the song Little Player

Best Supporting Actor
Guy Pearce for The Brutalist
Joe Pesci on fight day
Hugh Grant for Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
Paul Rudd for friendship
Sasha Tabakovich for Little Trouble Girls
Jesse Plemons for Pogonia
Russell Crowe for Nuremberg
Benicio del Toro on one battle after another and the Phoenician plan
Delroy Lindo for Sinners
William H. Macy, “Train Dreams.”

Best cinematography
Lol Crowley for The Brutalist
David J. Thompson for Warfare
Hélène Louvart at the Hotel Destino
James Friend for the song Little Player
Dan Lustson on Frankenstein
Robbie Ryan for Bogonia
Autumn Dorald Arkapaw for The Last Showgirl
Adolfo Veloso on the Dream Train
Jonathan Rickebourg for The Ice Tower
Bruno Delbonnel on the Phoenician plan

Best Documentary Film
Hanging on a Dream: A Documentary About Zombies
baby
The Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story
I’m Martin Barr
Ernest Cole: Lost and Found
Ocean: With David Attenborough
A new kind of wilderness
Grenfell: Exposed
2000 meters to Andriivka
Massive wreck

Best scenario
Alan Bennett for choir
Paul Andrew Williams for Dragonfly
Embeth Davidtz, “We Don’t Go to the Dogs Tonight.”
Steven Soderbergh for Black Bag
Nicholas Jacobson Larson and Dalton Lieb, Dead of Winter
Paul Thomas Anderson for battle after battle
Kelly Reichardt for The Mastermind
Justin Piasecki for the relay
William Gillis via Hallow
Andrew de Jong for friendship

Best debut
Laura Carrera for On Falling
Karan Kandari for Sister Midnight
Leonardo Van Digel for “Julie Keeps Calm.”
Nadia Fall Bridal
Saulė Bliuvaitė for poisons
Julian Colonna for the Kingdom
Harris Dickinson for Urchin
Embeth Davidtz, “We Don’t Go to the Dogs Tonight.”
Nadia Latif for the film The Man in My Basement
Harry Layton for Billion

It is likely to be overlooked by the MSM
Gazer