365 Movies in 2025 Top Films: 26-21

26. Joint Security Area (2000)

Park Chan-Wook builds suspense masterfully in this taught, propulsive thriller that draws on the real-life tensions between North and South Korea. When soldiers from both countries form a secret friendship, other circumstances quickly test their loyalty, resulting in several murders in the Joint Security Area, the only zone where the two countries can talk face-to-face. The countries contact Major Sophie E. Jean (Lee Young-ae) to conduct an investigation as tensions heat up. The film kept me at the edge of my seat as its flashbacks finally revealed what really happened. If you like simmering thrillers that keep you guessing, Joint Security Area delivers with multiple surprises. 

25. Flipside (2023)

As an obsessive record collector and popular culture historian, Chris Wilcha's record store documentary spoke to me. As much a visit to the failing record store of his youth as a travelogue into past selves, the film uses interviews, reflections, and footage from Wilcha's previous unfinished projects to comment on who we are, why we do what we do, and why we must seek out creativity and growth. Wilcha spends time in the areas that this blog covers by going into the grooves and gutters of existence and art to connect it all together. 

24. The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)

What I love about Sam Peckinpah's technicolor revisionist western is ineffable at times and entirely clear to me at others, but it revolves around how it deals with time and expectation. Set in 1905, the film comments on the end of the western genre and western expansion through Cable Hogue's (Jason Robards) relationship to the land. He discovers water in the desert between two stagecoach routes after his partners abandon him, and he builds a successful business that they eventually try to steal from him. Throughout the film, he and others discuss nature and progress in comical ways, eventually leading to Hogue's decision to follow Hildy (Stella Stevens), his love interest to San Francisco. She is being pushed out of the town of Dead Dog because the town wants to get rid of prostitution. Robards's roguish, yet likeable, performance as a raconteur whose access to water allows him to be a showman, along with a stellar supporting cast bring life to a story of disappearing western frontier. The cinematography and conflation of the modern and the archaic comment upon the nature of the western and cinema itself, resulting in a conclusion where Hogue's life is inexorably caught up in the technologies that changed the world. 

23. In Country (1989)

Norman Jewison's family drama, based on Bobbie Ann Mason's novel, about the effects of war surprised me in its tenderness and accessibility. Bruce Willis's turn as Emmett Smith, a laid-back, yet emotionally damaged, Vietnam veteran should receive more accolades. That said, Emily Lloyd steals the show as his niece, who is struggling to find her place in the backwater town of Hopewell, Kentucky while trying to learn more about her father who died in Vietnam. They help each other find answers about their family and life itself in a story that could be trite but avoids most of the typical clichés. 

22. All About My Mother (1999)

Pedro Almodóvar's All About My Mother is another astounding film in his filmography because it focuses on what it means to be human through many of his typical themes. Eschewing the comedic elements that he used in films like Women on the Verge of A Nervous Breakdown (1988) and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989), he covers family and societal issues in a fairly serious manner. The film builds on his earlier film The Flower of My Secret (1995), which focused on organ transplants, to tell Manuela Echevarria's (Cecelia Roth) story in the aftermath of her son's death. This incident changes her life as she reunites and meets a remarkable cast of characters. Her journey touches on sexuality, gender, and HIV, and allows her to create a new family. Almodóvar dedicated this film "To all actresses who have played actresses. To all women who act. To men who act and become women. To all the people who want to be mothers. To my mother." He captures what it means to be a woman and to be human in various wonderful ways in this film. These characters change for the better in the face of adversity. 

21. Donnie Darko (2001)

If we wanted to, we could label Richard Kelly's directorial debut, "that strange science fiction picture with the man-sized rabbit, Frank" but that would limit the power and philosophical impact of this Lynchian epic. James Duval, best known for his roles in numerous Gregg Araki movies, kills it as this anthropomorphic horror show. Somehow I had never seen this movie in the years since it was released, which seems like something of a miracle given my penchant for the darkly miraculous and narratively ambiguous. The film is a dark journey into many different realms of the human psyche with uniquely twitchy acting from Jake Gyllenhaal that feels like many manic high school experiences, and the disaffected reactions of his friends and family that contrast sharply with his behavior but do little to lessen it. If you are looking for a twisted teenage fantasy (think Holden Caulfield mixed with Fox Mulder and a little Lane Meyer) that contains strange time paradoxes and makes Buffy The Vampire Slayer look like a normal '90s teenager, this might be just the film for you. Hey, don't knock it until you try it.