There’s a reason that the marmoset hasn’t been blogging this year. When it comes to creating online content, I’ve been focusing my energies on the excellent Sci-Fi Bulletin where I get to write critically (and, hopefully, entertainingly) about the joys, or otherwise, of science fiction, fantasy and (my favourite of the three main genres) horror, on both big and smaller screens. Our esteemed managing editor, Paul Simpson has been facing health challenges, so it has galvanised our little gang to keep the motor running. It’s a wonderful space, writing for an informed and interested audience without fear or favour who (I tell myself!) will appreciate me taking a long view (I’m getting on a bit) of the latest twists and turns of genre entertainment.

There are always patterns, as I explore in my latest round-up of the year’s best Big Screen genre offerings observing that science fiction seems to have taken something of a back seat to horror in 2025 and hazarding a guess as to quite why that might be the case. Click here to read the full article.

But, as a jobbing script writer, my viewing habits go far wider than my main critical brief. I’m still producing work covering comedy, satire, fantasy, science fiction, historical drama, not to mention the occasional police procedural and odd smidgeon of children’s TV. Basically I watch a bit of everything, trying my best to catch at least one episode of any new series on the telly-box and spending possibly more time than is healthy in the darkness of my local movie theatre.

So, what did it amount to, all this ogling? Indeed, critical essays aside (enough opinions already!) what, if anything, do the numbers tell me? I’ve watched 133 movies over the last 12 months – 118 of them new releases. It may not be exactly scientific but at more than two films a week it’s surely a decent and at least reasonably representative data sample. Of course on their own the numbers are just numbers, they only take on meaning when you start to compare them over time when the trends appear to be striking.

There are doubtless far more authoritative industry stats available, but the first thing that struck me was that compared to 2024, the proportion of female film directors helming the new releases I saw had more than halved from 19% to 7%. Directors of colour had also dipped from 19% to 13%. US movies – mainly directed by white men – had reasserted themselves jumping from 50% in 2024 to 59% in 2025. Yes, it’s only a one year comparison but nonetheless the differences are striking, suggesting a retraction of diversity in terms of who is (literally) calling the shots, just as on screen representation seems, superficially, to be healthier than ever. While drawing correlations between identity, talent and authorship are contentious, it’s hard not to infer that white men have simply got better at telling more diverse stories. Whether that is a good or a bad thing, is a matter for ‘heated debate’ as Caroline Aherne’s Mrs. Merton might have said.

Meanwhile, British movie originations using these crude metrics appeared to have dipped from 34% of what I chomped my popcorn to in 2024, down to just 18% (although plenty of the US sponsored titles were shot over here, obviously) – and it’s worth adding that I make a special effort to catch as much homegrown product as I can.

But, perhaps counterintuitively given those figures, it was a fun and intriguing year in the cinema. While so many big releases seemed to falter (Mickey 17, Snow White, Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, After the Hunt, Christy, Superman, Fantastic Four, The Smashing Machine, Elio and the abysmally titled Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere) and those that didn’t (notably Wicked For Good, Lilo and Stitch, A Minecraft Movie) weren’t for me there seemed to be a resurgence of small to mid-sized movies just intent on telling great stories that left me wiser about the human condition. Indeed some of them were in no way the best movies ever made, but they have stayed with me and I was not only entertained but was glad they were there in a world where there’s a growing belief that art can be reduced to an algorithmical function. Amongst those I would include – going by their UK release date – in only a vague order:

September 5th – a compelling, if workmanlike, account of the 1972 Munich olympics terrorist attack cleverly focused on the sports TV production unit who found themselves covering the events and facing hitherto unheard of editorial challenges.

From Hilde With Love – a little known and deeply affecting story of anti-Nazi dissidents in Germany during World War II.

Sketch – surprisingly edgy and inventive children’s fantasy that came and went under the radar but is well worth searching out, if you missed it.

Pillion and Lurker – explored controlling and abusive relationships from different angles and had me squirming in my seat… in a good way.

Companion – a smart, witty ‘B’ movie tech thriller about an android girlfriend gone rogue, which in its own way also explored ideas around coercive control.

Roofman – Channing Tatum proves he can really act in this funny and affecting biopic of a small time hustler holding out in a Toys’r’Us department store.

Good Boy – haunted house horror from the POV of an adorable Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. What’s not to like?

Blue Moon – Ethan Hawke gives a career best performance as diminutive alcoholic American lyricist Lorenz Hart.

One Battle After Another – perhaps the ‘biggest’ movie in this list (along with Sinners) and while I might have been less wowed than others (it’s headed for a few Academy Awards no doubt) it was a hugely enjoyable ride full of character and fun, not least for its highly original car chase finale.

Santosh – a fascinating Hindi police procedural following a young female constable encountering police corruption in rural India.

The Choral – From the trailers this looked like yet another piece of cheesy British heritage cinema. In reality it was far sharper with Alan Bennett back on form, drawing on themes he explored successfully in earlier works such as A Day Out as far back as 1972, and the original Talking Heads from the 1980s.

It Was Just An Accident – managed to throw a chilling light on Iranian state oppression while squeezing out genuine humour and humanity along the way. Just getting it made was a remarkable statement in itself.

The Rule of Jenny Pen – John Lithgow terrorises fellow care home resident Geoffrey Rush in a movie designed to scare the willies out of anyone contemplating the ever approaching immediacy of their declining years… (i.e. me).

Warfare – Alex Garland finally makes a movie that works in every respect from start to finish. A visceral (literally), truthful and horribly immersive war movie.

House of Dynamite – the most terrifying movie of 2025 as we watch Sir Idris Elba lead us into nuclear war in 19 minutes of real time seen from different perspectives.

Oscar winning Latvian animation – Flow – had its UK release this year, and is a soul stirring animated masterpiece contemplating a drowned world from the perspective of a small black cat and its animal friends.

I Swear – was classic British film making at its very best as Robert Aramayo staked his claim on being the next hot UK acting talent with his depiction of Turette’s trailblazer John Davidson. Just close your ears to Maxine Peake’s iffy Scottish accent.

Sinners – top drawer vampire action acted as a conduit for a thoughtful essay on the Americanisation of the US’s migrant communities. In that respect, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is surprisingly close to The Brutalist, only shorter, more entertaining, less pretentious and actually more culturally astute… plus it has a score to (un)die for… literally.

A Real Pain was also a 2025 release in the UK and similarly soul stirring, unless, like a surprising number of my friends, you simply look at at and think: ‘Isn’t Kieran Culkin just really annoying?’ without asking why.

The Ballad of Wallis Island – I laughed, I cried, I laughed again in this flawless, life affirming romcom-with-a-twist featuring a standout central performance from Tim Key.

Australian horror Bring Her Back – blew my socks off as Sally Hawkins made us sympathise for a woman with the most evil of intent. Horror movies are rarely truly scary, but this had me cowering in my seat and peeping through my fingers, but managed to touch my heart as well. My film of the year by a very long way.

So, what, if anything, can one conclude from this mish-mash of unscientific data and thumbnail impressions? On the one hand we see diversity seemingly on the retreat and identity politics taking a back seat. Arguably it was left to Wicked to do all the heavy lifting on that front this year – and very successfully too by all accounts, including the box office ones. But as the other big franchises seemed to sputter, this left the medium of film to get back to what it does best, which is to tell a far more diverse range of stories taking us to corners of the human experience that we might otherwise never see.

While the dictum ‘no stories about us, without us’ might seem hard to argue with, I often find myself wondering whether it is in fact little more than a glib and counterproductive truism. Surely the heart of much that it is great in art comes when creatives use our imaginations precisely to explore ideas and situations we have not, nor could ever experience. I have a vague memory that this frowned upon phenomenon is actually called empathy. As anyone who has ever filled in a funding application to Arts Council England will know, it can feel at times that we have turned the empathetic imagination into an artistic crime. It might explain in part why we have, as a society become so polarised and absolutist and binary and intolerant. Artists have boxed themselves into a corner where it is essentially an offence to claim to know anything about anyone that isn’t you. We talk a lot about ‘lived experience’ (or ‘experience’ in old money) but as a curious and hopefully empathetic creative it’s written into my artistic DNA to want to write about things I haven’t experienced at all. We have quite literally taken the art out of art.

Thankfully, in 2025, I have felt, perhaps intangibly, that this horrible, stifling absolutism is on the retreat. To be fair, perhaps, as I suggested earlier, we have learned something positive from this period of artistic insanity. We see the world with a wider lens and that’s a good thing, but crucially, it feels as if we are being allowed to imagine again, and get back in touch with the real world…

…just in time for a war and global collapse when we simply won’t have time for such trivia, nor, as Mr Freud once said, for ‘the narcissism of our (extremely small) differences’.