The Magnificent Seven
It was another stellar year at the BFI London Film Festival 2025, with close to 200 features alone showing, with content that could no doubt fill lifetimes of storytelling for effectively anyone. It would be an incredible challenge to not find a film that didn’t fail to pique the interest of anyone and everyone you know, but in particular your good self.
Such is the range and giddy chance of discovery that is available, it is a bit of a dilemma to try and figure out what it is you should see. There is no shortage of screens already filling our days, demanding our attention, instilling a desire and addiction to absently scroll, to zone out, so that it becomes an oasis of joy when we discover something that can become so compelling and solely captivating for at least a couple of hours.
Discovering buried treasure we are transported by the glitter of the gems sparkling before us, we are dazzled and enriched. We may not be able to physically touch the radiant jewels, but the wealth of the experience surpasses any monetary value. Storytelling and sharing those stories has made mankind what it is, both incredible, and sometimes not so, where it has to act as a warning.
Amongst the haystack of films that were on show, we’ve chosen some highlights to pin, seven in total, of must-see films that have just released or are emerging on the horizon. We’ve previously reviewed the absolute craft and beauty that is the lifetime project and calling of Guillermo del Toro’s stunning Frankenstein (2025), which roars to be seen on the big screen prior to its release on Netflix. We will also cover a tonally wide variety of films that were in my 9/10 and 10/10, the ones that lingered in my mind basically ever since seeing them. Maybe we’ll drop in some honorary mentions too. But first up…
Bugonia
(DON’T WATCH THE TRAILER AND GO IN COLD)
It would be quite the understatement to say director Yorgos Lanthimos doesn’t do things by half. It’s not that his films such as Poor Things (2023), The Favourite (2018), The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) or The Lobster (2015) are overtly maximalist in a smothering of excessive details or complexity, but they do often require you to readjust your preconceived conceptions of basically everything, be it periods, relationships, or society as a whole.
From the perspective of viewing ourselves in the world as a muscle memory construct always seeking continuity (it saves brain energy), and always being drawn to the security (reward?) of familiarity, like a bee to flowers, it makes giddy playful sense for Yorgos to try to completely rework it, by any theme necessary. Take a norm, drop it, smashing it to pieces, then glue it back together in a seemingly random way. Where what we once believed we knew, err… nope, not anymore. It looks like something we know, and at the same time it definitely doesn’t, creating a snappy tension, like rubber band minds being twanged.
Bugonia (2025) is an adaptation of the 2003 Korean film Save the Green Planet! which was written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan, who also co-wrote this US-centric updated version with one Will Tracy, he of the delightful dark satires The Menu (2022) and multiple episodes of Succession, one of the most biting comedic insights into the corporate world yet.
Whereas the earlier Korean film is a fantastic dark chaotic scrappy New York punk black comedy blend of Delicatessen (1991), Se7en (1995) and The X-Files (1993-2002), the updated shift to the sunny saturated clines of the United CEO States of Big PharAmerica, offers the joyous opportunity to emphasise the striking disconnect the vast majority of folk experience on a daily basis, whether we tune in to it or not.
It is this ‘familiar’ work environment where the corporate message and language used in the boardroom, is encroaching into every facet of our lives, it’s as though our very existence has been townhalled by a HR (Human Resources being the commodity filter we are viewed through, a title that had to be named by space creatures seeking to exploit Earth’s main natural resource) alien species who speak in a strange, cold, inhuman language, devoid of any of the indicators of actual humanity.
It’s definitely English that is being said, but it doesn’t feel like English we’re hearing. Rather than actual ‘normal’ conversation, it’s like a random bingo card of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), TikTok/Insta safe words have been Nutribullet blended together in a dazzling IRL meme reel that not only doesn’t seem appropriate for the topic, but is soundtracked to some aural corporate language slop. Basically doom scrolling our reality.
Which is wonderfully apt, as that is exactly (well maybe, possibly?) what is going on in the film. Or is it?
I’ve focused on the language thus far as it is such a deeply integral part of the film. A mosquito needle sharp stab of words that we’re blissfully unaware of what we are being infected with. Thankfully Teddy (Jesse Plemons) is here to guide us to the light, giving us a crash course conspiracy concussion explanation of what is ‘actually’ happening around us.
In a modern society that has been built on nature vs. purchase, Teddy unfortunately has been dealt the role of a drone worker bee, working till he drops making sweet honey for the queen bee CEO Michelle (Emma Stone). While the 0.0002% of the hive population swans about in the hexagon of luxury, Teddy is cycling to work in a stock warehouse while listening to the latest Truther podcast exposé.
He may be poor in commerce, but he’s rich in alt-content, and through devotional (maniacal) research has discovered that our fair planet is being governed by actual aliens, with Michelle apparently showing all the traits of one, like having hair on her head etc, and she’s actually from the planet Andromeda.
Given the world we all currently ‘share’, there’s an immediate unnerving relatable rationale to this. Would any of us be really surprised if one of our Earthly billionaires stopped mid sentence in a presentation, only for their face to open up and a tiny alien in a cockpit wave at us, then give us the bird. Such is their bizarre use of language, devoid of intonation and mechanical like movements as if a baby was chewing the remote they were shipped with. Maybe they are hiding in plain sight… ALIEN???
Emma embodies all tech bros, spectrum edge lords who respond to regular questions with the empathy of an A, B, C option offered by the snake oil systems they sell, they are ChapGPTs, biological versions of environmental destroying data centres, ending every sentence with a prompt for further engagement. How do you evoke or pronounce an ‘—’, the giveaway tick of AI generated sentences.
Thankfully Teddy has a plan, and with the help of his devoted hapless cousin and Padawan in the guise of Don (Aidan Delbis), the kidnapping of Michelle is but a discount store shopping spree away. They just have to remain focused, resolute, loyal to their cause, and they will be able to save the entire planet by the forthcoming lunar eclipse.
To say everything is mental as it all unfolds is an understatement, and yet it feels terrifyingly (and comedically) all too real. The behaviour of the elite is anything but human. Nothing they do seems in the slightest bit ‘normal’, while they fill their days chasing longevity tech (as I mentioned in the Frankenstein review), and exclusive premium rituals that are the modern equivalent of Cleopatra bathing in ass’s milk, and beauty treatments using crocodile excrement. Can’t wait to see the return of that beauty treatment.
There’s an added extra playful and disorientating layer that Emma Stone would also have access to potentially bizarre, latest beauty trends, and will have no doubt met some let’s say peculiar individuals in her career, all of which results in a mesmeric performance by her, effectively being one of her least dynamic characters she’s ever played, it is distilled and restrained perfection.
While Michelle goes through what any person would deem torturous (it is actually torture), she responds with pitch deck speak during a 360º appraisal, immediately making us think every business person on the planet is quite possibly an alien.
I mentioned at the start not to watch the trailer, and I mean it. The ongoing collaboration between Stone and Lanthimos (at least six projects so far) is a thing of pure wonder and celebration of craft and storytelling. There’s a reason Emma won an Oscar for Poor Things, and there is zero doubt this collective (including many repeating crew members like cinematographer Robbie Ryan) have cultivated an environment where genuine magic is produced, and they will reach even greater heights yet.
These heights now include Plemons and Delbis who deliver genuinely stunning performances. Jessie has shown such capabilities numerous times elsewhere, but new comer Delbis brings such warmth to an incredibly hostile world, he basically represents all of us being indifferently being batted around a pinball world.
The film looks gorgeous, sumptuous, rich colours that veneer the darkness, odd off kilter lenses that provoke discomfort when the scene seems normal, and flashes of pure reality glitching spasms that leave the viewer utterly confused in a deliberately confused world. Confused cattle are easier to steer.
It’s a staggeringly bizarre and wonderful film, even though visually it’s not Yorgos’ most full on venture, the intensity is ramped up for this one. Topic wise it would make for a natural double bill with Ari Aster’s Eddington (2025), but also the lesser known Sovereign (2025) starring Nick Offerman and Jacob Tremblay where the basic structure of reality is being enshitified around us all, whether by supposed aliens, or by CEOs. Is there really any difference?
If at first you don’t succeed, buy, buy again is probably not what humanity should be aspiring to.
10/10
Bugonia is on release from 31 October.