The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

Honourable Mentions: One Battle After Another, Sinners, Warfare

Although at the time of writing 2025 still has another month to go before it wraps up, it would be mightily impressive if anything manages to top John Mclean's criminally overlooked and underrated Scot-samurai-western fusion, Tornado.

Only Mclean's second film - arriving a whopping nine years after his previous effort, Slow West - but no less authoritatively drawn and woven together, Tornado combines the energy of a Jidaigeki picture with the folkloric and literary influences of the British Isles, making it that most rarest of things in the contemporary medium landscape: a complete original.

Featuring gorgeous cinematography and a brilliant cat-and-mouse dynamic between actors Kōki and Tim Roth, Tornado's story of a samurai's quest for survival and vengeance in 18th-century Scotland is both inventive and arresting, with the cold, blustery chill of the Scottish highlands a perfect elemental complement.

It won't be destined for mainstream attention or awards success, but that doesn't matter. With Tornado, Mclean has fashioned a neo-Gaelic mythology of his own, one which speaks to the myriad ideas of British identity in a defiantly cathartic way, and which will, in time, find the audience it surely deserves.