Cinema Roundup + Favourite Films: December 2025

Film
Written By Hind Mezaina

Still from Annie (John Houston, 1982)


Here’s the last of my monthly roundup of my cinema highlights for the year. Tomorrow I will post my favourite films of the year.

Cinema-going this month was rich with repertory screenings. Like last year, I was in London during the first half of December and caught up with old classics. There’s something about watching these films on cold winter days and nights that make them feel more special. Or maybe it’s the December energy in London that feels pleasurable.

When I returned to Dubai, and similar to last month, there was a decent selection of rep screenings in our multiplexes - Sholay: The Final Cut, the newly restored version which premiered in Bologna but didn’t get a chance to watch it there, and VOX Cinemas had a series titled Festive Films which thankfully didn’t include Home Alone which seems to be the only Christmas films certain cinemas/venues show.

I also watched a few new releases, but let’s start with the favourite rep screenings:

London Rep Favourites - 25 in total, in the order of year they were released:

  1. Way Down East (D.W. Griffith, 1920, 35mm)

  2. Morocco (Josef von Sternberg, 1930)

  3. What Scoundrels Men Are (Mario Camerini, 1932)

  4. 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933)

  5. Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946)

  6. L’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1949)

  7. The Heiress (William Wyler, 1949)

  8. Now Barabas (Gordon Parry, 1949)

  9. My Cousin Rachel (Henry Koster, 1952)

  10. Tea and Sympathy (Vincente Minnelli, 1956, 35mm)

  11. Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)

  12. Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959)

  13. The Comedians (Peter Glenville, 1967, 35mm)

  14. The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970)

  15. Putting on the Ritz (Antoinette Starkiewicz, 1974)

  16. Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (Nagisa Oshima, 1983)

  17. Heaven (Diane Keaton, 1987)

  18. Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater, 1995, 35mm)

  19. Heat (Michael Mann, 1995, 35mm)

  20. Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999, 35mm) - Last year I wrote “I’d be happy to watch Eyes Wide Shut every December in a cinema”. So now it’s been two years in a row. Yay.

  21. Yi Yi (Edward Yang, 2000)

  22. The Holiday (Nancy Meyers, 2006)

  23. Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (Quentin Tarantino, 2006, 35mm)

  24. There Will be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007, 35mm)

  25. Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017, 35mm)

 

Rep highlight in Amsterdam (was there for a few hours before flying back to Dubai):

  1. The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928) - live music  - watched inAmsterdam -

 

Dubai Rep Favourites:

  1. Sholay: The Final Cut (Ramesh Sippy, 1975)

    Festive Films:

  2. The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) - Watched with Wael Hattar, and we double billed it with Dust Bunny (see below) and it felt like our days at Dubai Film Festival.

  3. Annie (John Huston, 1982) - Everyone knows the songs Tomorrow and It’s a Hard Knock Life, but no one talks about Lets Go to the Movies

  4. Labyrinth (1986, Jim Henson) — I actually don’t like this a lot, but seeing two films starring David Bowie in a cinema is worth adding here.

  5. Elf (Jon Favreau, 2003)

  6. Happy Feet (George Miller, 2006)

 

New releases watched in London:

  1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson) at BFI IMAX on 70mm
    By the grace of the cinema gods, BFI re-released this between 12 to 18 December. Also got to see the prologue of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey just before it. Now the only format pending for me to watch this is in VistaVision 35mm.

  2. It Was Just An Accident (Jafar Panahi)

  3. Palestine 36  (Annemarie Jacir) - I’m glad this film exists, but I had an issue with the colourised archives, although they are well used from an editing perspective, I’d like to know the reason the filmmaker want to add colour, and based on what historical references. Is it because viewers won’t be able to connect with black and white old footage in a new film? If anything, it made me feel detached.
    Also it just didn’t look good on the big screen, and wish the black and white versions were shown.

New releases watched in Dubai:

  1. Dust Bunny (Bryan Fuller)  - Go for Mads, stay for Sigourney.

  2. Ella McCay (James L. Brooks) - Faulty but had a good time watching it. Can’t be mad at a film when its main protagonist is holding on to her ideals in a world of dirty politics.

  3. El Sett (Marwan Hamed) - Really wanted to like this biopic about Umm Kultum, but Mona Zaki’s acting was stiff, the editing was messy, the constantly changing aspect rations was distracting.

  4. Love Imagined (Sarah Rozik) - endearing even if it got a bit over sentimental towards the end. Good cast and the better made Egyptian film released this month compared to El Sett.

  5. Nuremberg (James Vanderbilt)

 
Hind Mezaina
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