Top 10 Movies of 2025 (Sort of)

This end-of-year list may be one of my less reliable recaps. Why pick The Grace Lee Project instead of Yellow Door: '90s Lo-fi Film Club? Why not include a Hong Sang-soo film since I do like him and I watched a half-dozen of his pics? All I can say is that in earlier versions, this was not the case. Outside of the top four recommendations, this list has been in constant flux for weeks. The only constant has been Broker which has always been ranked number one. To see what almost made it (or made it one day but not today), check out the honorable mentions at the end.

1. Broker (2022): Two hardluck scrappers (Song Kang-ho, Gang Dong-won) run a black market adoption scam that gets complicated when a birth-mom (IU) shows up. Hirokazu Koreeda (Shoplifters) directs.

2. 12.12: The Day (2023): This history lesson plays out like a topnotch thriller as it recounts a military coup that followed the assassination of South Korea's president in 1979.

3. KPop Demon Hunters (2025): A international cultural sensation that lives up to the hype, this animation about revealing your true self while fighting evil forces will leave you feeling "up, up, up."

4. Long Live the Island Frogs (1972): Two big-hearted teachers (Shin Il-ryong, Kim Seon-hui) come to an isolated island village to change the lives of the children through power of education...and basketball!

5. Hopeless (2023): Writer-director Kim Chang-hoon's unsparing portrait of a cursed life is as gripping as it is grim. Hong Xa-bin and Song Joong-ki co-star.

6. Man in Love (2014): The illogical romance in Han Dong-wook's kooky crime pic — with a brilliant turn from Hwang Jung-min — is improbably irresistable.

7. Brave Citizen (2023): Because sometimes you need a vigilante film with a female lead (Shin Hye-sun) wearing a cat mask.

8. The Grace Lee Project (2005): This autobiographical doc about a Korean-American woman tracking down a slew of her namesakes starts off as preposterous but ends up profound.

9. Starting Point (1969): One of the trippiest Korean gay films you're likely to see dates back a few decades. (2005's Escape shows the genre continues.)

10. The Kicks of Death (2016): Charles Han Yong-cheol is no Dragon Lee. And why should he be? He's a martial arts star deserving of his own fan club.

Honorable Mentions: The Match (2025), Walk Up (2022), People in the Slum (1982), Yellow Door (2023), and Missing You (2016).

Dark Nuns: Should the Spirit Move You

How much are you into exorcism movies? I ask because the level of your enamorment will be in direct proportion to how much you'll like Kwon Hyeok-jae's fright flick Dark Nuns. Do you require possessed heads that spin the full 360 degrees and vomit made of green pea soup per William Friedkin's The Exorcist? Alas, this K-horror movie doesn't go that far. Would you be compensated if your dispellers of demons had roots in shamanism like those in Lee Doo-yong's The Hut? In that case, Dark Nuns will meet you halfway. How about some evil impregnation like in Rosemary's Baby? There's something like that here too. But mostly, Dark Nuns focuses on the anti-Satanic ritual itself which eats up a surprising amount of screen time.

Tied to the bed, we've got the innocent young boy Hee-joon (Moon Woo-jin) who can execute impressive backbends and speak in a few creepy voices. Working on behalf of benevolent forces, we've got the experienced exorcist, Sister Junia (Song Hye-kyo) and her protegee Sister Michaela (Jeon Yeo-bin) who get little help from hyper-rational Father Paolo (Lee Jin-wook) who's more man of the ward, than man of the cloth. We even have an ambassador from Rome (Thomas L. Frederiksen) who has access to potentially helpful relics. Crucifixes, big plastic canisters of holy water, facial disfigurement, droning prayers, and a determination to learn the evil being's name so he can be cast out testify to Dark Nuns's serious mission. For believers only, perhaps.