Flasz On Film

I am a big fan of context and I believe that a big part of composing a best-of list of movies, such as it was, does not stop at just firing off the top ten and leaving things be. However, in addition to sharing some titles that deserved time in the limelight despite failing to make it to the top, I want to add some nuance to my process. You might look at the movies I considered the best and most important and you won’t find your own personal favorite there, and it might not be because I didn’t like it. It might just be simply because I didn’t get to see it for one reason or another.

Therefore, here are five prominent films from 2025 that I missed in theaters, either because they weren’t playing close enough for me to go see them or because for some reason I didn’t get to watching them just yet.

The Mastermind

Kelly Reichardt remains one of my favorite filmmakers working today and I have been looking forward to The Mastermind for a while. It came out of the Cannes Film Festival propelled by glowing praise and somehow didn’t receive a wide enough release for me to be able to watch it. As someone who thoroughly enjoys Reichardt’s humanist approach to character-building, this indie caper is a movie I still look forward to catching up with.

Jay Kelly

I don’t have a good excuse for not being able to watch Jay Kelly, Noah Baumbach’s latest piece, as it is widely available to watch on Netflix. Sometimes life simply gets in the way of things and there isn’t enough free time in the day to watch everything in time for list-making preparations. Nevertheless, I have always enjoyed Baumbach’s brand of cinema that occasionally traverses between looking up to Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman, while it also fashions its own brand of caustic dramedy.

Sorry Baby

This one, I have to admit, has remained firmly in my blind spot. Eva Victor’s directorial debut Sorry Baby has found its way onto many people’s end-of-year rankings and I actually did have an opportunity to go and see it but pressed by the sad reality of having to make choices in life, I decided to go and watch something else. And now that my attention has been drawn to this movie, I feel that it would be something I’d enjoy. Another similar case this year was Julia Ducournau’s Alpha, which played near me for exactly one day and now I will have to wait a while before I have an opportunity to watch it; but it is Sorry Baby that I feel the most disappointed with myself about missing.

Train Dreams

Just like Jay Kelly, Train Dreams is one of those movies I don’t have a good enough excuse for missing because it’s right there on Netflix, available for me to see whenever I choose to sit down and watch. And the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Train Dreams could be a film that I’d vibe with because I enjoy revisionist westerns, especially ones that look and feel a bit more connected to their setting and character, as opposed to being driven by simple and relatable plots.

Die My Love

Finally, there’s Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love, which is a movie I was looking forward to seeing and one that never played close enough to where I live to make the trek to the cinema look feasible. As a longtime fan of Ramsay’s work all I can say is that based on what I know about it tangentially and from the scraps of footage I have seen thus far, this is probably one of those films that had the biggest chance of making a last-minute emergency landing on my top 10 list for the year. Alas, it will have to wait a while.

Nevertheless, I am hereby making it a personal commitment to catch up with these movies in the coming weeks and months and write some words about them. Although I have abandoned the idea of writing about any and all movies I watch and strategically focus on new releases, round anniversaries or movies I can turn into an interesting essay, the titles mentioned above will hopefully find their way onto Flasz on Film in the near future, so if you are interested in what I think about them, the only thing you need to do is wait a little while.