MOVIE OF THE WEEK January 2, 2025: Team #MOTW’s Favorite #MOTWs of 2025
Team #MOTW looks back at the films we featured during 2025 and highlights our favorites. There are many things about 2025 that we want to forget, but these fine femme-helmed/femme centric films that brought inspiration, understanding, compassion, and respite replete with laughter are not among them. Each is a gem. Their themes, topics and genres are diverse. Add them to your must watch list or watch again list. Share titles with friends. To read full #MOTW coverage, click on the highlighted title. Enjoy! – Team #MOTW
Team #MOTW’s favorite MOTWs of 2025:
DEAR MS: A REVOLUTION IN PRINT – Leslie Combemale
People just don’t know how influential Ms magazine really was. This documentary creates a clearer picture of all the ways founding editors Gloria Steinem, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Pat Carbine changed society for American women. Subjects considered in new and often provocative ways included domestic violence, sexuality, porn, motherhood, feminism for men and women, and so much more. It started discussions that helped reframe many important issues for women. I think anyone and everyone would benefit from watching this film, not least a bunch of the folks currently and unfortunately in charge of the country. Read the full MOTW coverage.
DON’T LETS GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT – Sandie Angulo Chen
Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight is a confident and deeply personal directorial debut from actor-turned-filmmaker Embeth Davidtz, who adapts Alexandra Fuller’s powerful 2001 memoir into a memorable drama about a child’s reckoning with memory and the collapse of white rule in Zimbabwe. Framed as an act of remembering instead of a traditional historical drama, the film unfolds through the eyes of young Bobo (a fabulous Lexi Venter), who witnesses family dysfunction during a time of national upheaval. Drawing on her own Southern African childhood, Davidtz brings a visceral authenticity to the movie, and her direction of a child non-actor captures the vulnerability and resilience of childhood. Clear-eyed about colonial history and resistant to nostalgia, the film is lyrical and unsettling, deserving of more end-of-year praise. Read the full MOTW coverage.
Kathleen Chalfant, best known for her theater roles including a Tony Award nomination for “Angels in America,is the luminous center of writer/director Sarah Friedland’s compelling debut feature, Familiar Touch. Through her graceful body language, her piercing eyes and the subtlest of facial expressions, Chalfant reveals her character, Ruth Goldman, a self-possessed woman who lives alone in her California home and whose memory, we soon realize, has grown foggy. She’s not even sure who the man is who has come for the lunch she’s prepared; heartbreakingly, he is Ruth’s son who is there to escort her to Bella Vista, an assisted living facility. Ruth has lost so much; in this quietly powerful film, anchored by Chalfant’s transcendent performance, we also see the small moments of love and dignity that she has gained. As she struggles to adjust to her new surroundings, Ruth bonds with her steady caregiver Vanessa (Carolyn Michelle) who sees Ruth’s humanity as she connects with her as a mother figure. Familiar Touch is grounded in the reality, more poignant for these troubled times, that most of workers in facilities that care for, feed and engage with elders are Black and brown people, many born in other countries. Read the full MOTW coverage.
LITTLE AMÉLIE OR THE CHARACTER OF RAIN – Sherin Nicole
It must have been a child who discovered we’re the heroes of our own stories. Little Amélie captures that revelation in vivid animation, like a storybook set free to run feral and fantastical. No wonder Best Animated Feature nominations have followed this gem throughout the Awards season. Born to a Belgian diplomatic family in Japan, Amélie is a little girl with an entire universe locked inside her. At first, she is a silent god, then a whirlwind. But ultimately, like her name, Amélie is a gentle rain that washes away resentment, revealing love beyond family and a sense of self that crosses borders. With the styling of a folkloric enfant terrible, Little Amélie is a watercolor work of enchantment, where the upheaval of dual identities collides with nationalism in a big bang of childhood—sparking fantastical discoveries and formative memories. Based on the memoir by Amélie Nothomb and co-directed by Maïlys Vallade, women and girls are more than the heart of this story; they’re also the heartbeat behind the camera. Little Amélie or The Character of Rain revels in the wild, wondrous surrealities of girlhood and the women who shape us. Read the full MOTW coverage.
PRIME MINISTER – Betsy Bozdech
Lindsay Utz and Michelle Walshe’s intimate, insightful documentary about former New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern both champions and humanizes Ardern as it tells story of her unexpected rise to political power and the challenges she faced while leading the Kiwis from 2017 to 2023 (including a hate-fueled gun massacre and the devastating impact of Covid). She comes off as humble, empathetic, practical, and efficient, especially once she realizes that she’s going to become a mother during her time in office. She isn’t immune to frustration, sadness, or disappointment, but she never compromises her beliefs or stays down for too long. Because she knows that she still has work to do and that — in her own words — “optimism is not naivete; it’s hope.” Read the full MOTW coverage.
The heart of the film lies in the librarians, who view the libraries as “this magical entry point to the world, to stories, to ideas.” Their courage and integrity are bracing, and it is a delight to see one of them relish their superpower—“Research!”—to learn more about the people and money behind the book banners. They know, as one of them says, that the libraries are just the first step in attacks on the school system, public libraries, and access to independent, non-state-approved sources of information. As Steve Bannon says in an archival clip, “The school board is the key that picks the lock.” The film’s most unforgettable scenes show a furious Monica Brown speaking at a school board meeting. Although she homeschooled her eight children, she served on the public school district’s book review committee and suggested that a Christian pastor should decide what books should be in the public school’s library. Her oldest son, Weston Brown, who is gay, spoke in opposition at a subsequent session, his mother seated behind him but refusing to look at him or talk to him, even outside the building after the meeting. This is not about politics. It is about trust. We should trust the people who trust us to tell truth from propaganda, not the people who think we must be “protected” from challenging ideas. If we limit library books to those that don’t make anyone feel discomfort or distress, all that will remain will be Pat the Bunny and Goodnight Moon. Dictionaries, atlases, the Civil War, any war, science, Shakespeare, and even the Bible will be locked away. Read the full MOTW coverage.
THE UGLY STEPSISTER – Cate Marquis
Why I consider The Ugly Stepsister my favorite Movie of the Week of 2025 is that it was so unexpected – unexpectedly well-made, unexpectedly darkly funny, unexpectedly feminist, and even unexpectedly contemporary. This clever, twisted retelling of Cinderella is a satirical, dark comedy, body horror film that turns the fairy tale entirely on it’s head, while also injecting a level of realism and contemporary sensibility in telling the story from the point-of-view of one of the “ugly” stepsisters. The stepsister, Elvira (Lea Myren) isn’t really ugly but she’s not perfectly beautiful either. She is, however, obsessed with the handsome prince, much like any romantic, innocent, gullible contemporary girl might be about a pop star (or, say, Timothee Chalamet). Nothing is as black-and-white or straightforward as we expect, and although it is a lush, even beautiful costume film on one level, it offers a damning, very contemporary commentary on what women are expected to endure for the sake of “beauty” and some striking body horror. The Ugly Stepsister is impressively well-made on all levels, with great costumes, beautiful location settings, gripping script, superb acting and dark comedy, and with a brooding period atmosphere and a bit of modern feel underlying the characters as well. And all this from a first-time woman director, Emilie Blichfeldt! Even if horror films are not usually your taste (and this is horror), the remarkable, unique The Ugly Stepsister is well worth the effort to seek it out. Read the full MOTW coverage.
Alice Lowe’s Timestalker is both a commentary on the complexity of love and a raunchy female quantum leap of sorts. The same spectacular cast moves through the centuries, following Agnes, a woman who finds her presumptive soulmate and then immediately dies a horrible death. Can she learn from her mistakes and change her future? The cast is entirely committed to the slapstick comedy and Lowe’s laugh-out-loud dialogue. Nick Frost is gloriously unhinged. Jacob Anderson’s character possesses a prophetic ability, acting as a strong anchor for Agnes’ wistful shenanigans. A perfectly cast Aneurin Barnard oozes charm, beautifully countering Lowe’s assured/despairing enthusiasm. Speaking of our leading lady, Alice Lowe grounds Agnes in delicious desperation and frivolity. Lowe brilliantly embodies the irrationality of love, bringing fierce chemistry to every scene. Her femme-centric comedy writing has continued to be a force of nature since her 2016 film Prevenge. Timestalker solidifies that dark edge. Timestalker mimics the neon and candy heart color palette of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. The editing is simply fantastic. The structure allows Lowe to run through every period romance genre out there. Timestalker is a clever take on love, fate, delusion, and self-actualization. Read the full MOTW coverage.
Filmmaker Anu Valia’s first feature, We Strangers is a subversive, darkly funny and bitter narrative commentary on socio-economic racial profiling. The story centers on Ray, a young, intelligent, responsible, well-mannered Black woman who works as a for-hire house cleaner. She is diligent and thorough in her work. Her clients are well-to-do families, mostly White, who recommend her to each other, passing along her good services in the same way they’d share a recipe for pesto. Nothing big happens in the movie. Ray goes with the flow, but the toll that the White folks’ behavior and their prejudiced assumptions take on her is palpable. The point that’s being made is subtle, but you really feel it…and it has a denouement that’s a real eye opener. Read the full MOTW coverage.
