The Grierson & Leitch Podcast: 'Jurassic World Rebirth' and the Best Films of 2025 (So Far)

Welcome to the end of the first half of the movie year. On this episode, Will and I both reveal our favorite six films so far in 2025. Oh, and we also rip on Jurassic World Rebirth. Check it out below.

'Caught by the Tides' Review

I'm not claiming it's any kind of blockbuster, but the fact that Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides is still playing in and around Los Angeles more than a month after it opened is damn heartening. For the Los Angeles Times, I extol its virtues, and explain why it's actually a decent primer for someone just getting into Jia. Hope you enjoy. 

Cannes 2024: The Wrap-Up and the Rankings

The 2024 Cannes Film Festival is when I finally decided it's not worth debating whether a particular edition was "good" or "bad." Truth is, every Cannes is filled with triumphs, misfires, disappointments, underappreciated gems, surprises, and movies you liked a lot more (or a lot less) than your colleagues did. And because the festival doesn't necessarily front-load its strongest offerings, you really have no idea where the annual ebbs and flows will land. You have to take Cannes in its entirety, judging it not by one day but by the whole two-week experience. There's no festival like it because it's longer and, therefore, harder to process as it's happening. Only distance will tell you for sure -- and even then, you may be shocked to catch up with a few films you missed (or revisit ones you saw) and discover what a great year it had actually been. There's no such thing as a "bad" Cannes, just degrees of good.

That said, do I think I found a film this year that could match 2023's twin stunners in The Zone of Interest and Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell? No, but looking over my rankings, I'm pleased by how many strong films I saw, with the possibility of more bangers to come. (I wish I'd had time for The Balconettes, The Kingdom, Armand, Black Dog, Flow, Santosh, Viet and Nam and others. And I wish my screening of Universal Language had had English subtitles like it claimed it would.) 

Here's a list of everything I saw at Cannes, from worst to best, with links leading to individual reviews. And please note that I'm not including the first half of the restoration of Abel Nance's extraordinary Napoleon, which I saw and was completely blown away by.

34. Megalopolis
33. The Surfer
32. The Second Act
31. The Apprentice
30. Oh, Canada
29. Beating Hearts
28. Emilia Perez
27. Wild Diamond
26. Rumours
25. The Shrouds
24. Visiting Hours
23. Misericordia
22. Being Maria
21. I, the Executioner
20. Motel Destino
19. The Substance
18. It's Not Me
17. Christmas Eve in Miller's Point
16. Elementary
15. The Girl With the Needle
14. Bird
13. Three Kilometers to the End of the World
12. Blue Sun Palace
11. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
10. Eephus
9. Good One
8. The Invasion
7. All We Imagine as Light
6. Anora
5. Grand Tour
4. Caught by the Tides
3. Kinds of Kindness
2. The Seed of the Sacred Fig
1. September Says

A few words about my No. 1 film. I went into Ariane Labed's directorial debut basically blind. (I knew the plot description, plus who had worked on the movie.) And from the first moment, I was enraptured, its spell never breaking. September Says (pictured above) was part of Un Certain Regard, but it crushed me more completely than anything in the Competition, although Mohammad Rasoulof's The Seed of the Sacred Fig got awfully close. When I review movies at a festival, I go home straight from the screening and write -- I don't talk to anyone or check online reactions. So I'm basically in a bubble, unaware of how others feel, and what I quickly discovered was that I was higher on September Says than, basically, anyone else. (As one colleague, who hadn't seen it, put it derisively, "It sounds like a Toronto film.") Maybe a second viewing will diminish the film in my estimation -- maybe revisits of The Seed of the Sacred Fig or Caught by the Tides or Anora or All We Imagine as Light will vault them up the rankings. But for now, this tale of two peculiar sisters -- too delicate and strange for this world -- earns the top spot.

Because I am historically awful at predicting the Palme d'Or winner, my guess is worth nothing. Nonetheless, I'm with the consensus that it's going to be either All We Imagine as Light or The Seed of the Sacred Fig. It's impossible to know what a Cannes jury will go for, but my gut tells me that All We Imagine as Light's gentle beauty will win out over The Seed of the Sacred Fig's darker, more challenging tone -- although filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof's emotional appearance at the latter's premiere may be too much for the jury to resist. Could Anora pull off the upset? Emilia Perez? Absolutely. But I'm going with All We Imagine as Light, which premiered late this year and has all the momentum going into the weekend. Not that you should bet your mortgage on my hunch.  

My 2024 Cannes Preview

What are the films I'm most intrigued by this year at the world's most prestigious festival? Take a look.

Your 2024 Cannes Competition Preview

This was very fun: For RogerEbert.com, I wrote about every film that will be screening in the Official Competition at Cannes. (A few more movies are expected to be added in the next couple weeks.) Which movie, sight unseen, do I think has the best chance of winning the Palme d'Or? Read on.

Cannes 2015: 'Mountains May Depart' Review

The latest from Chinese director Jia Zhangke (The World, Still Life) expands on his favorite theme: the way life keeps on changing and time just keeps on rolling by. Mountains May Depart tells a love story over three eras, ending in Australia in 2025. It's a solid drama that just misses greatness. I explain why over at Paste.

Cannes 2013: 'A Touch of Sin' Review

Currently on Screen International's critics grid of the Cannes competition films, A Touch of Sin is the second-highest-rated film, right behind Inside Llewyn Davis. Which is funny because many people I've chatted with seem down on director Jia Zhangke's latest. I'm not one of them, as I explain in my Paste review.

Why Nobody Has Heard of Hou Hsiao-Hsien or Jia Zhangke, Part Two

The recent redesign of the LA Weekly website has made it a little tricky to find a lot of archived articles at the moment, but thankfully I was still able to hunt down David Ehrenstein's report from last summer, during the height of the "boxoffice slump" media frenzy, about foreign films' challenges in getting into U.S. theaters.

Ehrenstein lays out the sad economics of the situation -- and why, like with the major studios, independent distributors have to rely more and more on DVD sales to shore up their bottom line.

(Note: Part One of this thread is here.)

Why Nobody Has Heard of Hou Hsiao-Hsien or Jia Zhangke

Recently, a friend's father lamented that today's cinema has no Bergman, no Fellini, no Antonioni. Where, he wondered, were all the great new foreign filmmakers?

The answer is that they're still very much out there, but that American audiences hear so little about them. This piece by Anthony Kaufman in the New York Times helps explain why foreign filmmakers are becoming an endangered species on U.S. screens. The culprits range from lack of media attention to the competition for art-house space, but here's a succinct summation from the head of a small distribution company:

"I feel as if there's almost no auteur draw anymore. As opposed to 20 years ago, you were marketing the movies around the filmmaker -- Fassbinder's new film, Godard's new film. We still do it, but the honest truth is that the filmmaker matters increasingly little today."

Which I think is very true and really sad.

(Note: Part Two of this thread is here.)