Top 10 Films of 2025

 My usual end of the year list of the top 10 films. Explanations coming in a week.

1 - Flow

2 - Mickey 17

3 - Superman

4 - F1

5 - Roofman

6 - Nosferatu - I don't normally put any explanations in this version of the post but this was the most frustrating film of the year. It has literally been every position on this list from 2 to 8 depending on how I feel on the day. It may move before next week. It may move before the next hour.

7 - Predator: Badlands

8 - The Phoenician Scheme

9 - Thunderbolts/New Avengers

10 - Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning

Formula 1 2025 - Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

 Part of everyone's suspicion of how neatly everything came together for a finale at Abu Dhabi is they have paid for the final race, presumably in the hope of getting excitement.

And this year they still didn't get it.

They did get tension.

A horrible building tension, with a lot of "are the McLaren strategy team going to screw this up?"

Spoiler - they didn't.

Which makes me, if not happy, relieved.

Obviously, I wanted Ferrari to win, but that went out of the window early on.

After that, I don't really mind. None of the drivers I actively cheer for had any chance so I was neutral for the finale, which is a very odd sort of feeling.

If we're talking about which of the final three I think is the best driver - that's Verstappen. This title does not change that.

At the same time, I was relieved, because I feel there would have been actual and lasting psychic damage to the McLaren team if one of them hadn't won. As to which driver, I'm papaya-neutral.

L is very happy because Norris was his favourites of the wave of rookies Norris was in (mine is Russell. It remains the right choice.).

A Data Visualiser's Lament - World Cup 2026 version

While there are many good reasons to be happy about the expansion to 48 teams (say hello to Curacao, Jordan, Cape Verde and Uzbekistan) and reasons to be unhappy about it (they have blatantly made it easier for the big teams to qualify, only Italian [hand gestures] has prevented all the big teams already being in), I fear I may have the most pathetic reason for objecting.

Bother, I have to put 48 x 26 players into my Gephi chart by hand.

I suspect my diagrams will be late.

There must be a way to do it automatically, but I have not found it yet. 

James Ashford wrote a really nice post on how to do all of this with Python - https://james.ashford.phd/2023/08/25/analysing-the-2023-fifa-womens-world-cup-with-graph-theory/ and I swear I will learn Python at some point.

Formula 1 2025 - Qatar Grand Prix

 I'm going to start with a complaint about the Lusail circuit. It's a perfectly fine, and indeed occasionally excellent, MotoGP track. Because the bikes are narrower so you can race. The F1 cars are broad, and the track is so narrow they can't overtake each other even with the DRS button. A piece of technology whose only purpose is to allow overtaking does not work at this track - for goodness sakes, even Monaco, king of the moving traffic jam races, is wide enough for DRS to do its joy-ruining thing.

So there's a race with no overtaking, even with the magic over-taking button, and then they've removed some of the strategy wiggle room and deviousness by mandating two pit stops and twenty-five lap maximum tyre strategies.

I cut Pirelli some slack because they have to make the tyres to the FIA's specifications, but given those specs, why are they racing somewhere that they know kills the tyres?

The start was the last time the race was interesting, and Norris not fighting Verstappen was the sensible thing to do.

I'm not going to say McLaren made the wrong strategy call because, if it had worked out, they would have been geniuses, and it could have worked. The F1 coverage always gives the percentage change of there being a safety car, but not the chance of their being multiple safety cars. However, choosing not to pit was always a bit of an odd choice on a track where track position is king.

There were a few cars that broke at the end, but none of them broke in a way that required a safety car. I did feel most sorry for Gasly, who performed heroics in the qualifying, only for the car to break out from under him at the beginning of the race and then he had to nurse the car round for the rest of it.

Sainz jnr's car deciding to try to break right at the end gave me coniptions. So glad he made it to the end in one piece. I am enjoying telling people "I told you he was good".

Another note - is it me or are more teams screwing up their drivers's 5 second penalties? I swear this was the second time that's happened to Ocon this season!

End note: I am aware I am supposed to be a Ferrari-focussed blogger, but my team depress me (I recognise, with my soul, the noise the "Cleveland Browns" fan makes from 2.26-2.32 in this video - https://youtu.be/SFCPNT7FafI?si=0dVDR_Y6_CAP_xsF).