How CINEMA AUTOPSY Chooses Its Favourite Films of the Year

CINEMA AUTOPSY's year-end list is a personal, single-critic selection: Thomas Caldwell names his favourite films released in Australia during that calendar year, and publishes the post in late December. It is not a poll of multiple contributors, a box-office ranking, or a list tied to US or global release dates. If you want a critic's individual take on what actually reached Australian screens in a given year, the list is built for that; if you need consensus rankings or award-voting results, this is not that kind of list.

What the list covers

The scope is set by Australian release timing, not by when a film premiered elsewhere. Each post is framed as "Favourite films released in Australia in [year]," which means a film that screened widely abroad in one year but only opened in Australia the next would belong to the later list.

The published record on the blog shows this pattern holding across consecutive years:

Two things follow from the table. First, the list is annual and appears in the final week of December, so a year's list is available before the year formally ends. Second, the wording is consistent year to year, which makes the lists comparable if you want to trace how Caldwell's picks shift over time.

Who makes the selection

The list is authored by Thomas Caldwell and presented as his favourites, not as a staff consensus. The blog describes itself as film reviews, criticism and discussion by Caldwell, and the year-end posts are signed to him. That matters for how you read the list: it reflects one critic's taste and viewing, so omissions are not statements that a film was overlooked by the wider critical community.

The same personal framing appears elsewhere on the site. A January 2025 post, "Farewell David Lynch," is described as brief notes Caldwell wanted to share, written from the perspective of someone for whom no other filmmaker "played such a large part in my life as both a fan and a critic." The year-end lists sit in that same first-person critical voice rather than an institutional one.

How to read the list in practice

Because the criterion is "favourite" plus "released in Australia," the list is best used as a viewing shortlist for films that were actually accessible to Australian audiences that year, and as a record of one critic's priorities.

• If you are planning viewing: treat the list as a curated set of titles that had an Australian release, which is useful for checking what was in cinemas or otherwise released locally in that window.
• If you are comparing years: the consistent December publication and identical scope wording let you line up 2022 through 2025 without adjusting for different criteria.
• If you need broader coverage: the blog also carries longer-form criticism, such as the March 2023 essay on Justin Kurzel's Snowtown, so the year-end list is one format among several rather than the site's only output.

One practical limit: the list is a selection, not an exhaustive catalogue of Australian releases. A film's absence tells you it was not among Caldwell's favourites, not that it went unreleased.

What the list does not tell you

The posts are framed around favourites and Australian release timing; the available material does not describe a numerical ranking method, weighted scoring, or a contributor vote. So don't read position or inclusion as the output of a formalised ranking system. For the same reason, the list is a poor proxy for critical consensus or industry awards — it is one critic's year, published at year's end, scoped to what opened in Australia.