By Gary M. Kramer –
Looking back on the year 2025 in film, here are a dozen favorite films that I wrote about this year for the San Francisco Bay Times. While all these films played in cinemas—sometimes only at film festivals—several of them are currently available for streaming.
Silent Notes had Bruce (Daniel Durant), a Deaf man, needing $120,000 to get a cochlear implant. To earn money, he starts working as a delivery man for some gangsters. Bruce also, unexpectedly, finds himself attracted to Ethan (Matt Riker), a motormouth who happens to run in the same circles he does. Sweet, clever, and satisfying, director Toni Comas’ modest film was a nifty little sleeper.
Bonus Trackwas an enchanting and chaste queer teen romance about finding—and going—your own way. The infectious film boasts engaging performances, and a terrific soundtrack, which includes the catchy song, “A Very Bad Fun Idea.”
The fabulously entertaining documentary Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story was a valentine to the iconic singer, dancer, and actress, Liza Minnelli. Director Bruce David Klein traced Liza’s life and career through interviews, film clips, and archival photos and footage that make the film feel like catching up with someone you know.
A Nice Indian Boy had Naveen (Karan Soni) reluctant to have his boyfriends meet his traditional (but accepting) family. That all changes when he has a meet cute with Jay (Jonathan Groff), a photographer who was adopted by Indian parents. The guys have an awkward first date, but their relationship gets serious. After Jay meets Naveen’s parents, Megha (Zarna Garg) and Archit (Harish Patel), Naveen experiences emotions that open him up to deeper love. This was an extremely charming feel-good romcom.
Marco Berger’swondrous drama Perro Perro,shot in luminous black and white, is an allegory that shrewdly lets viewers draw their own conclusions about sexuality and gender. But it is also a deeply romantic love story between a man and his naked human-looking dog.
There is an abundance of Black queer strength and joy in Assembly, a marvelous documentary about artist Rashaad Newsome and his stunning 2022 commission for the Park Avenue Armory. Newsome, who codirected the film with Johnny Symons, records the preparation and exhibition of his show, Assembly, which is about reclamation, emancipation, and decolonization. Assembly will make everyone who missed seeing Newsome’s multimedia production in person regretful yet grateful that this fabulous film exists to show them what they missed.
In the bold, fabulous, and queer absurdist drama Kill the Jockey, Reno (out gay actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), a once-successful jockey, is pressured to win races for Sirena (Daniel Giménez Cacho), a mobster. This plot, however, is merely a framework for director Luis Ortega to hang a series of wildly surreal, inventive, and arrestingly offbeat sequences. Pérez Biscayart gives a sensational performance, speaking very few words but doing some incredible physical work.
Slight and profound, writer/director Ira Sachs’ Peter Hujar’s Day consists of Peter (Ben Whishaw) recounting his previous day in detail to Linda (Rebecca Hall) for a potential project she is working on. Whishaw’s performance—from the cadence of his voice to his body language as he eats, drinks, and smokes, and even the way he articulates his thoughts when he lies or remembers something—is astonishing.
In the wistful, elegiac Blue Moon, the celebrated and closeted lyricist, Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke), holes up in Sardi’s delivering a series of absorbing and occasionally amusing monologues. Hawke delivers a showboating performance as Hart becomes emotionally spent over a long, wearying night.
The film version of the Tony-winning musical Kiss of the Spider Woman has moments of seduction and at times is spellbinding. The musical numbers are stylishly executed, but this Kiss is best during the scenes between cellmates Luis Molina (out gay Tonatiuh) and Valentin (Diego Luna) confiding in each other about their dreams and fears as they possibly fall in love.
Trans actress Tommy Dorfman made an auspicious debut as a writer/ director adapting Mason Deaver’s book I Wish You All the Best.Ben (Corey Fogelmanis) is a non-binary teenager who is encouraged to express himself visually, and verbally. The film is as messy as Ben is—and that is meant as a compliment. As Ben slowly changes his clothes from sad hoodies to more feminine garb, or tries out they/them pronouns, they blossom, and Fogelmanis’ sensitive performance makes this growth credible.
Queer writer/director Julia Jackson’s (Bonus Track) stylish and clever queer romance 100 Nights of Hero has Cherry (Malika Monroe) pressured to have a son with her husband, Jerome (Amir El-Masry), but she has real feelings for her handmaiden, Hero (Emma Corrin). The costumes and set design are fabulous and the cast delivers the witty dialogue with aplomb.
I look forward to covering more great queer films in 2026.
© 2025 Gary M. Kramer
Gary M. Kramer is the author of “Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews,” and the co-editor of “Directory of World Cinema: Argentina.” He teaches Short Attention Span Cinema at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute and is the moderator
Film
Published on December 18, 2025
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