Top 10 of 2025
Disclaimer: The following are not what I think are the “best” movies of the year, at least not in the objective sense of the word. Instead, what follows are my top 10 films of 2025 only in the sense that they are films I personally enjoyed the most, be that by conjuring the biggest emotional reaction, making the biggest intellectual impact, or simply inspiring the greatest sense of wonderment and appreciative awe in me.
In 2025, the field for this list was not quite wide; out of the 94 2025 releases I watched, I gave eleven films a 9, and one film a 10. But while not a wide net for great movies, the great ones we got were pretty damn great. There was a lot of emotion this year, a lot of familial drama as a common theme among my top 10, and then of course a bit of my unrepentant Marvel fanboy-ness thrown in for fun...
#10 – Thunderbolts*
“The past doesn't go away. So you can either live with it forever, or do something about it.”
As said diehard Marvel fanboy, it’s saddened me how much the film franchise has floundered in the last few years. There have been a few solid hits in there, but they have had as many misses in the same period; this year, Captain America: Brave New World would have gone on my worst of list, if I made one of those. So, it pleased me immensely to see an entry that not only felt cohesive, like a film made by artists vs. a corporately mandated hodgepodge, but also featured some well-drawn characters, a confident plot with a lot of narrative momentum behind it, and some well-choreographed and executed action set pieces. It helps that Florence Pugh is one of the best actor acquisitions the franchise has made in some time; she is effortlessly charismatic in her role as Yelena, and her taking front and center finally in a Marvel entry brings a lot of energy to the film. As does the score by Son Lux, which mixes the classic brassy fanfare of Marvel heroes with an alternative edge that sounds unique enough to set itself apart. And while most of these films have a rather blatant, feel-good theme they fall back on, this dives into some slightly darker, more mature territory, grappling with guilt, imposter syndrome, and mental health. The sheer fact that it’s terrifying final villain in a manifestation of a mental health crisis was a bold choice. But more than all that, Thunderbolts was just a lot of fun, more fun than I’ve had at a superhero film in a while.
#9 – Hamnet
"Our children’s hearts beat, they smile, play. Never forget for a moment, they may be gone."
The biggest emotional gut punch of the year, by a healthy margin. It tracks, considering it is a film about losing a child, and the ways in that loss and its accompanying grief can manifest, and how those different forms of grief are handled in different ways. Still though, such a journey could be tiresome or overbearingly bleak, but Hamnet manages to carry its audience through using some fantastic film-making and powerful performances. The film-making side of things is meditative and almost dreamlike; the film flows along effortlessly, with its gorgeous cinematography and the compelling romance dominating the first half. As for the performances, Paul Mescal continues to give a great performance, even if it is the same sort of reserved, shy performance he’s given many time before. Jessie Buckley, on the other hand, continues to absolutely blow me away every time I see her on screen; she is a lightning bolt of a performer, and I would argue the film belongs to her and her electrifying energy. The third act of the film is where the whole thing comes together; while some knowledge of Shakespeare and the play Hamlet would be helpful here, Buckley’s performance makes it less than necessary, as the outpouring of emotion, and the sheer cathartic release of the whole sequence, is enough to carry the film, and put it on this list.
#8 – The Fantastic Four: First Steps
“Whatever life throws at us, we'll face it together, as a family.”
If Thunderbolts was the most fun I’ve had with a Marvel film in quite a while, then Fantastic Four is the most emotionally resonant. Playing out largely like a family drama (there is actually not all that much action in this superhero flick), it very smartly chooses to put its entire focus on the family themselves, giving them meaningful relationships, smart dialogue, and deep characterization. The best of these is Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm, who acts as the heart of the family, and who has the most material to work with, being a new mother asked to put her child in danger for the greater good. Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards is also a compelling character, being as autistic-coded a comic character as there ever has been. Aside from the family dynamics, the retro-futurist world in which the story takes place is a not only a welcome stylistic break from the norm, but also serves as an emotional anchor, rooting the drama in a distinctly un-modern sensibility. All this then does serve the super-heroics, as the incredibly well-realized villains in Silver Surfer & Galactus (both impressive cg feats) create some serious thematic challenges to the heroes, and culminate in what feels like both a classic yet also fresh superhero tale.
#7 – Train Dreams
“The dead tree is as important as the living one.”
The very last film I saw for this list (and technically watched in 2026, but it did release in 2025), Train Dreams is largely a vibe movie, but it just so happens to be a vibe that spoke to me in a very personal, particular way. It follows a simple man, a manual laborer in the logging industry, as he tries to build a very small little life for himself in the countryside of the Pacific Northwest, and this setting is where it gets one of its greatest strengths; the cinematography of the forests and mountains of the region are stunning. It is without a doubt my favorite cinematography of the year. There is a narrative here, and a rather depressing one taken at face value, but the film is larger than its narrative; it’s about just existing in nature, about recognizing your insignificance in the vastness of the natural world and coming to terms with it. As it goes on, its themes of impermanence and progress amidst the agelessness of nature felt incredibly impactful to me. The film feels like snippets of a quiet life; meaningful conversations, notable vistas, all passing him by in a poetic, gentle fashion, with only some even being noted as meaningful, and only in retrospect can these snippets, these moments of joy or sorrow come into focus; they weren’t taking you anywhere or leading to a grander meaning. The moments were the point in the first place.
#6 – 28 Years Later
“Memento amorous. Remember you must love.”
It felt like a wild choice to make a sequel to a horror film from 23 years ago that was not a legacy sequel, and was not in fact even a conclusion to the trilogy, but the beginning of its own trilogy. But wild choices are Danny Boyle’s bread and butter, and this film proves that all these years later, he can still surprise us. 28 Years Later is a more than worthy follow up to the first film and takes a lot of the same themes (themes that are pretty standard in post-apocalyptic tales) like maintaining humanity in a world that seems to have abandoned humanity writ large, and like the worst aspects of that same humanity running wild once the guard rails of society are taken off. But even amidst the chaos and horror of the setting, Boyle maintains a firm, steady view of the heart of his characters, and turning this film into a coming of age tale separated into three distinct acts, while definitely a bold choice, creates a firm connection with the lead, a young boy named Spike who is experiencing all the horror the world has to offer. Boyle’s distinctively bold style also create some of the more memorable film-making choices of the year (grit-ridden bullet time shots and a gorgeously surreal chase amidst a luminous night sky being the standouts). And when the film decides it is time to pay off the emotional stakes of the film, it is tremendously affecting. If you had told me that one of the saddest, most emotionally tender scenes of 2025 would involve a tower of skulls and the bleaching of a dead woman’s bones, I genuinely wouldn’t have known what you were talking about, let alone believed you. But there it was, the film finding the humanity amidst the horror, the heart amidst the grotesque.
#5 – Wake Up Dead Man
“This was dressed as a miracle. But it's just a murder... and I solve murders.”
I’ve enjoyed every Benoit Blanc mystery thus far, but each for different reasons. Knives Out proved Rian Johnson could both tell a classic mystery and then turn it on its head with equal effectiveness. Glass Onion is the funniest and most fun of the series thus far, turning itself into a self-aware farce of a satire. Wake Up Dead Man then does something different yet again, heading into slightly darker, more thematically dense depths. The film still features an excellent mystery, one that turns on a dime without slowing its momentum while also adopting some thriller elements this time around. Josh O'Connor may be my favorite of Blanc's sidekicks thus far, giving a great performance that balances both the humor and the empathy required of it. But what makes this film stand out to me over the other entries is its approach to its primary subject this time around, faith. The film examines the ways faith can be twisted, weaponized, and sold, but also what value it provides and the ways in which it can help people when they need it most. It doesn’t shy away from the topic, or shy away from some of the more challenging conversations that come with the topic, but it’s always handled deftly. This approach creates a more mature, more layered mystery, and makes it my favorite of the series (thus far anyway; I do want more of these).
#4 – Black Bag
“When you can lie about everything, when you can deny everything, how do you tell the truth about anything?”
I love a good spy flick that is heavy on dialogue, lets its character work generate the tension, and revolves around intelligent people trying to outsmart and outmaneuver each other. Black Bag offers that in spades, providing the sort of crackling, sharp as a knife wit and banter that has a rhythm and cadence all its own; the films uses this dialogue instead of action to elicit its thrills, with its primary set piece being a dinner party gathering. It uses also this dialogue to tell a fairly standard spy story; there is a traitor somewhere in an agency, but no one knows who it is. But it throws a wrinkle into the proceedings; it’s also a relationship drama. And that dynamic of being romantic partners while explicitly manipulating and misleading is the crux of most of the superb psychological tension it maintains. Helping this along are incredibly stylish (and sexy) performances from both Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender, playing a married couple as intensely loyal to each other as to their spy craft, and these two performances together make for one of the best power couples in film. All that combined creates an incredibly engrossing, tightly constructed, tension filled spy thriller, and now one of my favorites in the genre.
#3 – Sinners
“You keep dancing with the devil... one day he's gonna follow you home.”
A distinctly unique vision, Sinners is a Southern Gothic, Blues-soaked mix of period drama and supernatural horror that doesn’t so much jump from genre to genre as much as it weaves all its disparate elements into a specific combination that I can’t say I have ever seen before. The film takes its time establishing its settings, characters, and tone; the setting of Jim Crow era Mississippi alone has a lot of potential, but the films chooses to focus in on the culture surrounding it characters, specifically the communal nature of that culture, and the function of music in that community. Music is an especially large part of the film, with it being both a narrative device (music as literal magic), a key thematic element (music as powerful tool in maintaining culture), and a key part of the film-making. The film has a lot of great music in it (there are a few tracks that I’ve replayed repeatedly since its release) but there are two musical scenes in the film that stand out so greatly they’ll be forever burned in my mind; both joyous, but one in a transcendent sort of way, and the other a perverse, terrifying sort of joy. And that’s all to say nothing of the vampires. As the film transitions to its more supernaturally thrilling second half, it becomes a bold, atmospheric monster story; ramping up its tension up until it releases the carnage in glorious fashion. The film fully understands what makes vampire mythology fascinating, what makes it terrifying, and the precise ratio of camp to earnest horror that makes them work as villains.
#2 – Sentimental Value
"I can't work with him. We can't really talk. My father is a... very difficult person."
This is an actor’s film, a film all about inner character emotions and relations, asking for humanistic, subtle performances. And in that style, this is one of the best films of that kind I’ve ever seen. The film follows the family of a once prominent film director, whose absence in their childhood has created an emotional rift between them. As it progresses, the film doesn’t go big with the drama or reveals but instead lets the reality of these characters roll out slowly, through snippets of conversation, gathered through the context of their interactions, through minute expressions that completely sell us an emotion or thought process. This wouldn’t work at all with lesser actors, but all three of its leads are phenomenal; Stellan Skarsgård as a father unable to fully apologize or make sense of his failures as a father, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas as the older daughter trying to maintain a through-line to keep the family together, and Renate Reinsve as the main character, a woman more deeply affected by her family than she is ever able to let on. And as good as these actors are, soon enough you stop seeing actors at all, becoming so engrossed that all you see is a family, working through their issues, yet unable to fully express themselves. Those are the core themes of the film as well; generations in conversation, what they try to say to each other, what they fail to say, and what can't be expressed through words. It’s an honest, poignant, nuanced, deeply felt film; a quietly emotional powerhouse.
#1 – One Battle After Another
“We failed, but maybe you will not. Maybe you will be the one who puts the world right.”
Very often do I feel like a film is firing on every cylinder, coming together perfectly, taking exceptional work from every artist involved and then making those pieces something greater than the sum of their parts. But so it is with One Battle After Another, a big, bombastic, epic of a movie that somehow makes its extensive runtime both fly by and feel like there is so much more to see. This is largely due to its almost constant kinetic tension and narrative propulsion that never lets up as it flies through its saga of revolutionary ideals and the dangers and costs of resisting the machine of oppression. The music is equally deserving of praise, as the plinking, clock-like score makes sure that almost every scene feels like it is counting down to something. The editing as well is striking, focusing less on cuts that maintain chronology and more on cuts that make the biggest emotional impact, especially in a final act car chase that is destined to go down in history as one of the greats. And of course the performances; DiCaprio & Penn are giving huge, almost cartoonish performances that somehow still elicit empathy and emotion (it should be noted that is also one of the funniest films of the year, largely on their shoulders) and Chase Infiniti is a rising star I can’t wait to see more of. If this all feels like a series of disconnected points, you’re not wrong, but that is the magic of this film to me; it is put together so well that each of these elements on their own would work, but combined as they are they become a masterpiece.
Honorable Mentions:
Marty Supreme - A fascinating character piece that drops into inspirational sports movie, then conman drama, then crime thriller and back out again whenever the hell it feels like it. The titular character himself is a force of manic chaos, using and deceiving and leaving destruction in his wake, and the film matches that energy with distinct style. The film only really falters when it's getting too a bit too raucous with its dialogue, becoming a cacophony of yelling (the same affliction Uncut Gems was full of) and in its final act where the film attempts to redeem the character without ever really selling an arc that changed him in any meaningful way.
The Life of Chuck - It's as bittersweet as dramas come, an exploration of memory and mortality. The performances are fantastic across the board as the film wrenches emotions from you at surprising moments. And though the dialogue on occasion can be a tad cloying and on-the-nose, ultimately it leaves you with a heavy, longing sort of feeling, the likes of which often come at the end of a great book but rarely come at the end of a film.
Friendship - It’s honestly surprising that Tim Robinson's distinctive brand of bizarre, surreal, socially awkward comedy actual works as a feature film, but it does in pretty hilarious fashion, giving us a truly unhinged anti-hero of a protagonist who can't help but self-sabotage every aspect of his life.