Chicago film experts recommend 10 can’t-miss movies from 2025 that you may have missed the first time around
The holiday break is a cue for film buffs to catch up on what they missed this year. We asked Chicago filmmakers and critics for recommendations of films they caught in 2025 that audiences overlooked. We curate 10 here, alphabetically by title. All are now available to watch online.
How do films get overlooked? Many are increasingly bypassing theaters. Online platforms offer stand-alone films and episodic series. Only big-budget, star-studded Hollywood products get publicized.
“A diverse range of films may not receive the attention they deserve” due to “shorter theatrical windows,” Max Friend, CEO of movie ticketing platform Filmbot, which is used by the Davis Theater at 4614 N. Lincoln Ave., said in an email.
The Northwestern alum adds: “Chicago is home to a number of amazing independent cinemas that curate the most compelling new releases, along with hosting repertory fare and retrospectives.” Key takeaway: “curate.” Check out the schedules of the Davis Theater, Music Box, Siskel Film Center and the recently renamed Facets Film Forum. Year-round, they look out for what to watch — and films to add to your must-stream list.
Curating is what the Chicago International Film Festival, Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival, Chicago Latino Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival and Chicago Critics Film Festival are all about. Although these annual showcases typically screen a given film just once, our independent cinemas book select titles afterward.
‘The Age of Disclosure’
This slick, alarming report debuted in March at South by Southwest Film & TV Festival. Director Dan Farah interviews Air Force pilots who witnessed unidentified aerial phenomena (aka UFOs), government investigators and scientists who claim alien spacecraft and alien bodies inside them have been found around the world. Despite visual and musical touches lending credibility, this exposé never lets a skeptical expert push back its provocative claims. Eight decades of cover-up and fears of assassination seemingly silence sources from revealing all that they know.
‘Anniversary’
“Anniversary” is an audacious up-to-the-minute drama that got the vote of Nick Digilio, local film podcaster and author of “40 Years, 40 Films.” “It’s provocative, relentless and unforgettable,” he said. “I loved every crazy, brilliant minute of it.” But “there was no push from the studio and no advertising whatsoever.” Lori Rosene-Gambino wrote this screenplay hooked to a fictive 2016 thesis titled “The Change: Birth of a New Nation” by a Georgetown University undergrad from Illinois. Its book version is a bestseller that sparks a cult-like countrywide authoritarian movement. Polish director Jan Komasa seamlessly interlaces family and national crises.
‘The Baltimorons’
This comedy “might be the best holiday film of the year,” according to Lisa Trifone, an editor and film critic at Third Coast Review, an online magazine specializing in Chicago-area arts and culture coverage. Indie writer/director Jay Duplass sets this touching zig-zag comedy of errors on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The title refers to a local improv group that canceled Cliff for an unforgivable, unbecoming critique of a fellow comic. Baltimore native and comic Michael Strassner plays Cliff and co-wrote the screenplay with Duplass. After getting an emergency appointment with a dentist — with her own issues — the duo bond. Their itinerary is like an urban anthropology of Baltimore.
‘Birdeater’
Local indie film stalwart Joe Swanberg picked this Australian indie about city friends spending a weekend partying hard in a rented house in the Outback. It’s a traditional bachelor party, but the bride-to-be and a woman friend go, too. Preloaded with horror cliches, its unpredictable narrative may perplex genre purists. Suppressed feelings, not blood, spurt in what the filmmakers call their “interrogation” of an outdated “Australian man” stereotype. Co-directors and co-writers Jack Clark and Jim Weir embed unsettling secrets in the couple’s relationship. Fear too many films on our list are feel-gooders? Then this is the upsetter for you. “I happened upon it blind at the Alamo one night and took a chance on it. I’m very glad I did,” Swanberg said in an email.
‘Bob Trevino Likes It’
Pamela Powell, a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, called this movie a “heartfelt story that will break your heart while it fills you with hope and love” and put it on her 2025 top 10 list. This uplifting comedy tells the story of Lily Trevino (Barbie Ferreira), a selfless young Kentucky woman surrounded by the most needy boundary-oblivious people you could imagine. The worst is her dad, Bob. But the film’s title refers to an unrelated, under-appreciated Indiana man with the same name. Lily meets him online by chance. John Leguizamo plays this new friend. Together, they enable their respective emotional repairs. Written and directed by Tracie Laymon, the comedy is based on her own online experience. Like Lily, she bonded with an out-of-state man with her father’s name, whom she met on Facebook by chance.
‘Grand Theft Hamlet’
Directed by and written by Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane, this documentary is the most inventively conceived film on this list. During COVID lockdown in England, Grylls adopted the conceit of staging William Shakespeare’s 1600 tragedy “Hamlet” inside “Grand Theft Auto,” a video game launched in 1997. An unruly backstage making-of chronicle ensues. Virtual players enter and exit at random. When characters kill one another, the game screen refreshes: “wasted / Rosenkrantz_ destroyed you.” In lieu of “The End” we see “EVENT OVER Not enough players in the session.” Josh Larsen at Filmspotting podcast said: “High art collides with low expectations,” although “the conceit may have scared away gaming-skeptic cinephiles or Shakespeare-suspicious gamers.”
‘Invader’
Shot in nerve-wracking hand-held style, this terse 70-minute exploitation exercise observes a young Chicago woman get off a bus at 4:30 a.m. in Morton Grove. A disfigured headbanger of a taxi driver, played by longtime Chicago indie Jim Sikora, rolls up. She decides to walk. Outside her uncle’s house, she can hear the phone ring. Uh, oh. The title character is played by Joe Swanberg, who recommended “Birdeater” above. Frank V. Ross, busy editing his seventh indie feature, said in an email: “It’s the best thriller I’ve seen to exploit the paranoia that brought us the Ring camera.”
‘Materialists’
Robert Kojder, chief critic at movie and pop culture website FlickeringMyth.com, thinks this thoughtful rom-com set in the high-end dating scene of New York City got overlooked. “A24 typically has an incredible slate of films throughout the year. This one seems like [it] somewhat slipped under the radar due to a May release date,” he said in an email. Its “forthright honesty about de-evolution of relationships into something transactional” may have put off patrons. Celine Song writes and directs the story of a professional matchmaker played by Dakota Johnson. Two men of very different means, played by Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans, want to marry her. Fascinating how little dialogue dwells on love, given the genre. Instead, it’s almost a pass/fail seminar on materialist calculations that go into marrying.
‘Sorry, Baby’
Screenwriter and Columbia College Chicago emeritus professor Ron Falzone recommends Eva Victor’s debut. Victor plays Agnes, a young and troubled New England grad student. The notorious novel “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov is on her syllabus. Victor wrote the screenplay and directs, too. The opening shot is the exterior of Agnes’ old house at night. Later shots stare at her front door from inside. This character study turns out to be irony-inflected, not horror-inflected.
‘Twinless’
David J. Fowlie, critic at Keeping It Reel, a Chicago film review and discussion site, nominates this “dark comedy deftly navigating some tricky tonal risks, easily one of the year’s best.” This winning comedy drama is about two men who meet at a support group. Everyone, minus one imposter, is twinless, grieving over their late sibling. The pair in the plot differ in many ways. One is their sexual orientation. Their friendship grows. Then we see these new Portland pals are not twinless in the same way. An awful lie could spell a breakup. They always talk over one another until their last lines delivered in unison. Another happy ending not to be overlooked.
‘The Ugly Stepsister’
Erik Childress at the Movie Madness podcast and blog urges looking at this transgressive take on the Cinderella tale. Childress likes how it “takes Grimm to another level.” The first feature by Norwegian writer/director Emilie Blichfeld takes rude liberties with the classic fairy tale of Cinderella. One twist is learning which character is actually called “Cinderella.” Her name is heard for the first time rather late in this English-dubbed tale. Marrying for money leads to gory plastic surgery and weight reduction via tapeworm. You might take it as a horror feminist mash-up of material girl and girl power gone wrong. Not for little kids.