Tag Archives: Black Bag

My Top 20 Films of 2025

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So far, in our awards, we have looked at Action, Cinematography, Costumes, Emotion, Fun, Music, Tension, Worldbuilding, Best Animation, & Best TV of 2025

However, in this last entry into our Best of 2025 awards, we crown our Best Film of 2025.

All films are subjective, so our list might look completely different from yours. We reviewed 107 films that had their Australian Theatrical/Streaming Release in 2025. This is the list from which we draw our entries, and you can see the complete list of movies HERE.

Much like last year’s list, we have had many staggered releases towards the end of the year in Australia. So we may have films here that were released in 2024 for you but 2025 for us, and there may be some omissions here because we won’t get those films until later in 2026.

Highly Commended

A Complete Unknown, The Accountant 2, The Brutalist, Dog Man, Drop, Elio, F1, Heads of State, How to Train Your Dragon, Kangaroo, Karate Kid: Legends, KPop Demon Hunters, The Long Walk, The Lost Bus, Primitive War, Regretting You, Roofman, The Running Man & Zootopia 2

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The Costumes of 2025 That Made Us Say ‘Hot Damn’

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You can use many techniques to help build your world, ground your setting, or give dimensions to your characters. You can use music and create elaborate sets, but one of the many ways, and often the first way, is through the costumes you make.

People instantly judge a character within moments on the screen, and the outfits are essential to that first impression. More than this, you can also use costumes as a way of storytelling. What do they say about this world? What do they say about how a character is progressing? 

Costumes can build worlds and tell us details we can only see, but also, they can make us say, ‘Hot Damn’, look at that beading on that dress. That must have taken hours to do!

Our Highly Commended Films in 2025 are: Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, KPop Demon Hunters, Nosferatu, Wake Up Dead Man & Wicked: For Good

Our Highly Commended TV in 2025 are: The Diplomat, Foundation, The Residence, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds & Star Wars: Skeleton Crew

So, without further ado, these costumes made us say ‘hot damn’ in 2025. Be warned that there may be slight spoilers ahead.

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Tension That Kept You On The Edge Of Your Seat In 2025!

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Well, we have looked at Action, then Emotion and swung wildly across the spectrum to Fun, and now we are completing that series by looking at Tension. Tension is one of the most challenging facets of filmmaking because it requires the script, direction, acting, and editing to all work in tandem to evoke the perfect pace. If just one part of that group misses, then an essential part of the film falls apart.

In 2025, we continued to see some excellent use of tension to build mystery, to be the harbinger of the coming dread, or even to tick the clock of inevitability.   

Our Highly Commended Films in 2025 are: 28 Years Later, Drop, The Long Walk, The Lost Bus, Nosferatu & Sinners
Our Highly Commended TV in 2025 are: Andor, The Diplomat, Paradise & Silo

So, without further ado, these moments of tension kept us on the edge of our seats in 2025. Be warned that there may be slight spoilers ahead.

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Black Bag – Movie Review

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TL;DR – Sexy, intriguing, delightful, and also a bit tense. In other words, it is an almost perfect spy film.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of this film.

A handgun on a wooden table.

Black Bag Review –

It has been a long time since I have seen a spy film perfectly capture that intrigue, where you, the audience, do not quite know what is going on, yet you are profoundly compelled to find out as the machinations of the story unfolds in front of you. Narratively, that is hard to pull off, especially in the modern era where we have seen most of the story tricks you would use in other films. However, in today’s entry, we find a movie that nails that with class.

So, to set the scene, George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) and Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett) look like your normal highly successful power couple, bar one thing: they both work for one of Great Britain’s security services. Kathryn is a renowned field agent, and George is a security specialist whose polygraphs are legendary. They work well together because they know where all the professional boundaries lie. However, this is thrown asunder when a key analyst, Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård), discovers there are only five people who could have stolen a highly classified weapons program, and one of them is Kathryn. What is George to do? Well, maybe invite every suspect to his house for dinner.   

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