2025 Review Dump: Films I Liked But Didn't Love

#01 | Magazine Dreams

Magazine Dreams isn’t just a film about obsession. It isobsession. Claustrophobic, muscular, aching with rage and desperation — it's a film that pushes you into the psyche of a man whose body has outgrown his ability to be loved.

Jonathan Majors as Killian Maddox doesn’t act — he consumes. His performance is so tightly wound, so brutally inhabited, that it starts to fray at the edges of reality. Killian is a man chasing an ideal he cannot name. Not success. Not fame. Something older. Something primal. He wants to be seen, but not just seen — validated. And in that need, he breaks.

What unfolds is a slow implosion dressed in the language of bodybuilding, celebrity, and American self-loathing. The film wants to be many things: a tragedy, a character study, a critique of toxic masculinity, a descent into madness. At times it juggles too many ideas, and suffers for it. Plot lines splinter and scatter — the romance, the trauma, the fury — all compelling, but sometimes cannibalising each other because of how much it has going on but doesn't fully flesh out.

Still, when it’s good, it’s unnervingly good. Not in a glossy, awards-bait way. In a visceral way. Like watching a man peel off his own skin for applause. There’s an eerie irony in how closely the themes mirror Majors’s own off-screen controversies. The blurring of art and life becomes unsettling. But even without that meta layer, this is a film that burns. It may not always know where it’s going, but it absolutely knows how to f*ck its viewers up.

7.7/10

#02 | A Nice Indian Boy

There’s something quietly radical about a film that dares to centre a queer South Asian love story without making it feel like an event. A Nice Indian Boy is a romantic comedy that doesn't shout, doesn't tremble, and most importantly — doesn't apologise. Instead, it leans into gentleness. That rare, cinematic gentleness that says: maybe it’s okay to just be.

Roshan Sethi crafts a film so committed to kindness that it becomes a kind of rebellion in itself. The story is familiar — a meet-cute, familial tension, tradition vs self — but the texture is refreshingly unforced. We’re not watching people suffer for being who they are. We’re watching them live. Argue. Fall in love. Laugh like idiots.

And that matters. Especially now. In a landscape so saturated with trauma and existential dread, this is a film that believes any love can be ordinary — and that’s what makes it feel extraordinary. The performances have a lovely awkwardness to them, like real people fumbling into something meaningful. It’s sweet without being saccharine, charming without a wink.

No reinvention of the genre, but it doesn’t need to be. Its power lies in its restraint. And for once, levity doesn’t mean shallowness — it means breath.

7.8/10

#03 | The Friend

It’s easy to be cynical about films like The Friend. The emotional blueprint is practically laminated — a human, a resistant dog, an accidental bond forged through loneliness, and a gradual thawing of mutual grief. And yet, somehow, this one works. Maybe not because of innovation, but because of intention.

There’s a deep sincerity to it, the kind that doesn’t try to trick you into tears — it just lets them come naturally. At the centre of it all is Apollo, a hulking Great Dane who gives one of the most nuanced animal performances I’ve seen in years. You see the mourning in his body, the stillness of a creature that doesn’t understand death but feels it deeply. He doesn’t do anything flashy, which is exactly why it works. He simply misses and mopes around like a depressed man.

The story follows a predictable arc — resistance, routine, breakthrough — but there are pockets of unexpected stillness where the film breathes. A scene where someone reads aloud to the dog becomes unexpectedly moving, not because of what’s said, but because it feels intimate. This is a film about two broken things simply trying to exist next to each other and attempt to make sense of the loss and its impact on them.

Yes, the structure is built from well-worn parts. But the film never lies to you. It doesn’t pretend to be profound, or clever. It just sits beside you like an old companion, quietly saying: I know you’re hurting. So am I. Let’s be here, together.

7.5/10

#04 | Frankie Freako

There’s a strange, beautiful defiance to Frankie Freako. In a cinematic world increasingly dominated by sterile CGI and manufactured horror, Steven Kostanski doubles down on glue, latex, and sincere weirdness — and the result is a gleefully unhinged creature feature that feels like it escaped from a VHS time capsule.

Freako isn’t just a character — he’s a manifestation of childhood fears and gross-out joy. A grotesque, misunderstood misfit with googly eyes and a penchant for carnage. But the genius of the film lies in how Kostanski refuses to leave him as just that. There’s a soul buried in the slime. A weird, lonely sadness beneath the chaos.

Tonally, it dances on a wire. One wrong move and it could collapse into shallow parody, but somehow it doesn’t. The horror is tactile. The humour is irreverent without being grating. And the emotional thread — the one that says, “Even Freakos needs friends” — lands with surprising grace.

This isn’t for everyone. It was never meant to be. It’s campy, messy, and proudly b-movie magic. But it’s also alive. Every frame feels handmade. Every joke lands with the rhythm of someone who grew up on Saturday morning cartoons and stayed up too late watching Goosebumps and Creepshow.

Kostanski doesn’t just direct the film — he conjures it. And by the end, Frankie isn’t just a freak — he’s a friend we all wish we had.

7.5/10

#05 | Hallow Road

"Hallow Road" is a spine-tight thriller that unfolds in a single, haunted night. It traps you in the front seat of a car with Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys, racing through darkness toward their daughter—who’s only ever heard, never seen—as the line between parental panic and something more unsettling blurs.

Inside that car, Anvari extracts every drop of tension. Pike is quietly ferocious, balancing the instinct to rescue with the heartbreak of knowing she might be undoing everything she stands for. Rhys is equally riveting—oscillating between brittle rage and brittle hope. Their fractured marriage, laid bare by split-second decisions and guilt-laced dialogue, emerges as its own kind of horror.

The film lives and dies by its audio and performances—turn signal clicks, breathy whispers, a smoke alarm’s ominous beep, and a heart-thudding score pushing you into the shadows beyond the windshield. It’s a genius in-car chamber piece—not flashy, but emotionally naked and brutal.

Then the film leaps. Just as it earns its claustrophobia, it pivots into something uncanny, folkloric—a sense of something supernatural stirring amid the trees. It's the storytelling equivalent of catching your reflection in a window at the wrong angle. Jarring? Yes. Effective? Absolutely.

There are a couple of narrative quirks—like the near-absence of tracking your daughter’s phone—that give the set-up a loose edge. The ending is a little too abrupt, deciding for the easy (cop-out) route, instead of taking the film to the next level.

Bottom line: Hallow Road is one of those brief breath-held, gut-kicking horror films you don't fully love, but can’t quite shake.

7.5/10

#06 | Oh, Hi!

"Oh, Hi!" is like watching a rom-com take a wrong turn down a country lane and accidentally stumble into a psychological thriller. Sophie Brooks clearly knows the absurdity baked into modern romance — the fear of intimacy, the white-knuckle awkwardness of communicating, the endless cycle of disappointments when reality fails to match fantasy. But instead of wrapping that in soft, glossy comfort, she pushes it toward something more jagged, something closer to horror, even if it’s cloaked in comedy.

Molly Gordon is magnificent in that space between magnetic and menacing. Her character is all nervous energy, quick wit, and desperate longing — a performance that makes you laugh even as you flinch. Logan Lerman is the perfect counterbalance: his Isaac doesn’t play fear in the traditional sense, but confusion — as if he’s trying to puzzle his way out of a situation that doesn’t obey the normal rules of dating or reason. Together, they feel like two halves of a nightmare meet-cute.

But the film itself isn’t as precise as its casting. The writing can feel thin, the structure uncertain, and the tone wobbles between heartfelt and farcical without always sticking the landing. It’s messy, sometimes predictable, and never quite as sharp as it promises to be. Yet that very unevenness weirdly fits the subject. Modern dating is messy. Attraction isunpredictable. Relationships are under-written scripts we keep fumbling through.

So no, it isn’t perfect. But it is alive — sparking with manic humour, anxious truth, and two leads who make you want to watch even when the film itself can’t quite decide what it wants to be.

7.5/10