The best movies of 2025!

For cinephiles, 2025—much as with nearly every other facet of society—was not for the faint of heart.

Netflix’s intended purchase of Warner Brothers Discovery has ominous implications for the long-term future of movie theaters. The introduction last September of a fully AI-generated actress named Tilly Norwood flipped out Hollywood for a period. New ideas continued to take a back seat to existing IP, with Zootopia 2 and Disney’s live-action version of Lilo & Stitch winning at the box office; Avatar: Fire and Ash is certain to follow suit. The brutal murders of Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle end the year on a truly horrific note.

Thankfully, 2005 also had plenty of terrific films. Here are my picks for the year’s best.

50. House of Dynamite

Do you not have enough to despair over these days? Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim want to remind you that nuclear holocaust is just the push of a button away.

49. The Phoenician Scheme

While not top-tier Wes Anderson, The Phoenician Scheme is a pleasant enough trifle with a storyline in which the writer-director shines: roguishly bad dad maneuvers through a dysfunctional family to achieve a sort of redemption. This time around, Benicio Del Toro is the sketchy patriarch. But Wes, ease up on the deadpan dialogue delivery next time, OK?

48. Frankenstein

Guillermo del Toro delivers the big and bombastic in this version of the Mary Shelley classic, and his presentation of the monster (a very good Jacob Elordi) as tragic antihero is compelling. So there is much to admire, but this Frankenstein is also beset by shockingly chintzy CGI, an over-the-top Oscar Isaac, and an inexplicably washed-out visual palette.

47. Superman

With filmmaker James Gunn at the helm of DC Studios, the superhero’s superhero was due a much-needed reset. David Corenswet’s guileless, idealistic Man of Steel is a pitch-perfect antidote for these garbage times, with Rachel Brosnahan his equal as a take-no-shit Lois Lane. Gunn’s film isn’t immune to the genre’s more grating tropes—the third act collapses into CGI sludge—but Superman mostly soars.

46. Freaky Tales

Tom Hanks wins cameo of the year. And no, that is not him in the picture above.

45. The Mastermind

With leads in four movies, Josh O’Connor might have been Hollywood’s hardest-working actor in 2025. His most interesting role, however, was in Kelly Reichardt’s droll comedy about an insufferably smug deadbeat who fancies himself a criminal genius no matter how many times the universe tells him otherwise.

44. The President’s Cake

Writer-director Hasan Hadi’s film follows a destitute schoolgirl barely existing under the care of her elderly grandmother when she is tasked with making her school’s birthday cake for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. As birthday parties go, The President’s Cake isn’t much of one. But as a grim tale of life under fascism, it is suspenseful, surprising and thoroughly riveting.

43. Secret Mall Apartment

In 2003, a small group of Providence, Rhode Island, artists led by a free spirit named Michael Townsend held a furtive protest to the gentrification of a mega mall: they fashioned a covert apartment deep in the bowels of the Providence Place Mall. Documentarian Jeremy Workman captures the impish appeal of Townsend’s four-year prank, but Secret Mall Apartment spurs larger questions of what even constitutes art.

42. Song Sung Blue

You’ll laugh! You’ll cry! You’ll sing your heart out to “Cracklin’ Rosie”! Based on a real-life Neil Diamond tribute band in Wisconsin, Song Sung Blue is very much a mixed bag. Its first hour is crowd-pleasing silliness, buoyed by the star appeal of leads Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson (her best work since Almost Famous). Alas, the second half succumbs to clunky manipulation and overwrought melodrama.

41. Splitsville

The romcom love triangle rectangle of Splitsville sports some of the year’s more inspired physical comedy, and that’s when it’s not being sexy. Oh, and Dakota Johnson might not be much of a thespian, but damn, she is adorable.

40. Caught Stealing

Director Darren Aronofsky put aside his more provocative impulses to give mainstream movies a shot with this uber-violent comic-thriller starring Austin Butler as a bartender who accidentally gets mixed up in a gangland war. Caught Stealing doesn’t all gel, but Aronofsky and screenwriter Charlie Huston serve up memorably weird characters, especially a pair of murderous Hasidic brothers portrayed by the always-welcome Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio.

39. Die My Love

It takes a while for Die My Love to find its groove, but Jennifer Lawrence commits fully to director Lynne Ramsey’s gut-punch dark comedy about a mother whose postpartum depression scales unforeseen heights. Lawrence digs into the role with zeal, but Robert Pattinson is nearly her equal in the less showy part of her husband.

38. Left-Handed Girl

Until it ultimately crumbles with a shrill and melodramatic third act, writer-director Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl excels as a window to life on the margins working in the night stands of Taipei. Beautifully shot and acted, the picture at its best is reminiscent of Sean Baker’s The Florida Project, which makes sense when you consider Tsou, a frequent Baker collaborator, produced that 2017 indie.

37. Familiar Touch

Kathleen Chalfant is extraordinary as Ruth, an octogenarian mother and former chef struggling with the onset of dementia. Sarah Friedland’s directorial debut (she also scripted) is a tough watch, no doubt, but Familiar Touch is generous to its characters and has a humanity well worth supporting. H. Jon Benjamin, a comedian and voice actor principally known as the voice of Bob’s Burgers‘ Bob, is wonderful as Ruth’s patient son.

36. One of Them Days

A shambling, good-natured comedy of L.A. roommates who have a day to find rent money and avoid eviction, One of Them Days gets a lot of mileage from the considerable charm of Keke Palmer and, making her acting debut, SZA. The laughs are hit and miss (as are most comedies, come to think of it), but they hit more than miss. First-time director Lawrence Lamont keeps the vibe light and likable.

35. Friendship

Few adjectives these days are as overused as “cringy,” but the description is apt for the comedy of Tim Robinson. In Friendship, he is a blithely affable husband and father who becomes an unlikely buddy to a new neighbor (Paul Rudd), a broadcast weatherman who oozes charisma. Robinson, with his simpleton smile and lumbering frame, is a physical manifestation of social insecurities. As is the case with the TV series The Chair Company, Robinson’s performance has the morbid allure of a roadside wreck. Writer-director Andrew DeYoung’s feature debut is alternately hilarious and maddening.

34. Dead Man’s Wire

Gritty crime thrillers set in the 1970s and mimicking the cinema of the period are my movie catnip. Gus Van Sant’s dramatization of a real-life Indianapolis kidnapping-turned-media spectacle offers meaty performances by Bill Skarsgård, Dacre Montgomery and Colman Domingo, who I believe could read an owner’s manual for a dishwasher and make it mesmerizing.

33. Black Bag

What can the great Steven Soderbergh not do? Black Bag is sophisticated, clever and sexy, an espionage thriller that keeps the audience guessing. The picture soars with Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett as moviedom’s coolest hot couple since William Powell and Myrna Loy started making martinis.

32. Thunderbolts*

While I’d be fine with an extended moratorium on superhero flicks,  Thunderbolts* represents a near return to form for the MCU. The secret weapon here is Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, an ace assassin and kid sister to Black Widow. Her commanding presence carries the picture, although there is some fun scenery-chewing from David Harbour as Yelena’s boisterous dad and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a villainous CIA director. Director Jake Schreier knows how to execute action set pieces, and the requisite banter among this new assemblage of misfit heroes is brisk and funny.

31. Megadoc

Francis Ford Coppola’s Quixotic quest to make his long-gestating sci-fi head-scratcher Megalopolis resulted in an admirably audacious but intermittently interesting mess of a movie. By contrast, Megadoc, Mike Figgis’ making-of documentary, is a thoroughly fascinating portrait of an artist’s obsession.

30. The Plague

Charlie Polinger’s directorial debut makes clear once again that children can sure be little assholes. A standout in the Cinema of Anxiety (see #5).

29. Roofman

As star vehicles go, this true-crime comic-thriller featuring Channing Tatum as a robber with a heart of gold is light on its feet. Don’t expect anything too complicated and settle for entertainment. Director Derek Cianfrance keeps the tone breezy and the pace brisk, with excellent supporting performances by Kirsten Dunst as the love interest and Peter Dinklage as how you imagine every Toys “R” Us store manager to be.

28. The Secret Agent

Writer-director Kleber Mendonça overstuffs this political thriller set in 1970s’ Brazil with a lot. Contract killers, a dead shark, an aggressive disembodied leg, an homage to cinema, you name it. If The Secret Agent is ultimately a little too shambolic for its own good, give credit to Wagner Moura for a magnetic performance that ties together the picture’s disparate elements.

27.My Mom Jayne

Law & Order: SVU actress Mariska Hargitay was only 3 years old when her famous mother, Jayne Mansfield, died in a grisly car accident at age 34. Hollywood of the 1950s and ’60s had relegated the busty Mansfield to caricature, but Hargitay lays out in My Mom Jayne how reductive and inaccurate that assessment was. Through archival footage and candid interviews, this absorbing documentary reveals a more complex portrait of the actress.

26. Blue Moon

Ethan Hawke is always a welcome screen presence. In Blue Moon, Richard Linklater’s lovingly crafted biopic of late Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart, he got to demonstrate his versatility. Hawke is masterful as the brilliant, alcoholic and self-loathing showman whose career is on the downslide while that of former collaborator Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) reaches new heights. He is by turns witty, charming, resentful and self-pitying. But Blue Moon, scripted by Robert Kaplow, is no one-man show. Margaret Qualley and Bobby Canavale also shine in supporting roles.

25. The Long Walk

Not even Stephen King believed his 1979 novel could lend itself to a movie adaptation. Director Francis Lawrence and screenwriter JT Mollner proved him wrong.The Long Walk has echoes of other dystopian films in its walk-or-die conceit (talk about your personal trainer mind games!) while honing its own uniquely stark vibe and commitment to character. Cooper Hoffman and Daniel Jonsson lead a solid young cast.

24.Sirāt 

Director Óliver Laxe’s hallucinogenic road trip into hell will have your stomach in knots.

23. Hamnet

I’m not crying, you’re crying. Oh, just go ahead and give Jessie Buckley the Oscar, already. I was not completely wowed by Chloé Zhao’s earnest adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel (the picture is a bit one-note for my taste) but there is no disputing Buckley’s extraordinary work as well as that of Paul Mescal as Bill Shakespeare.

22. F1

When some codger tells you that Hollywood doesn’t make ’em like they used to, show them director Joseph Kosinski’s turbocharged ode to Formula 1. Nothing in Ehren Kruger’s screenplay will tax your brain or even surprise you much, but Brad Pitt is great as Brad Pitt, the emotional notes hit and the racing scenes are awesome. Vroom vroom, indeed.

21. Warfare

Director Alex Garland teamed up with Iraq War veteran Ray Mendoza for this painstakingly authentic retelling of a harrowing Navy SEALS operation in Iraq in 2006. Tense, immersive and very, very loud, Warfare is surely one of moviedom’s most realistic depictions ever of combat.

20. Influencers

Sexy, violent, tongue-in-cheek horror-thriller exploitation in which beautiful people get their comeuppance in exotic locales. Please, sir, can I have some more? Writer-director Kurtis David Harder and star Cassandrea Naud as our psycho have my permission to keep churning these out. Trashy bliss.

19. Wake Up Dead Man

Smart, credible whodunits are rare, but thankfully Rian Johnson has successfully resurrected the genre with his dependably entertaining Knives Out franchise. Religious faith, demagoguery and the cult of personality are the connective tissue in Johnson’s third—and, I think, best—installment. Daniel Craig returns as brilliant detective Benoit Blanc, but the heaviest lifting, acting-wise, is from the ubiquitous Josh O’Connor (see #45) as a monsignor ensnared in a seemingly impossible murder case. The ensemble cast is uniformly terrific, with standout turns by Josh Brolin, Glenn Close and Andrew Scott.

18. Companion

As the world loses its collective mind over artificial intelligence, let’s give it up for  a comic thriller with a fresh take on the possibilities of AI. Writer-director Drew Hancock’s feature debut is set in the near future, but it feels like a movie of the moment. Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid play a young couple off for a weekend getaway with friends in the country. There are snappy twists and surprises; the less you know about Companion going in, the better.

17. Rental Family

Hikari’s warm, engaging comedy-drama stars Brendan Fraser as Philip Vanderploeg, a struggling American actor in Tokyo who drifts into the rental family service. His most challenging role is to play the biological father of Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman) a young girl whose single mom needs to sell the illusion of a two-parent family to enroll the child in an elite private school. The catch: Mia cannot know Philip is just pretending. Rental Family is the rare “crowd-pleasing” tearjerker that is effective without working so hard.

16. The Shrouds

At age 82, David Cronenberg shows no sign of softening. The filmmaker, who practically invented the body-horror movie, continues working out his cinematic obsessions—physical transformation, shadowy conspiracies, sex and death—in The Shrouds. Vincent Cassel (bearing more than a passing resemblance to the director) is a wealthy widower who has channeled his grief into an industry of high-tech cemeteries where mourners can watch the decay of their dearly departed. And that’s not even the weird part. 

15. No Other Choice

This acid-dipped black comedy by South Korea’s Park Chan-wook features a tremendous Lee Byung-hun as a paper company executive whose sudden joblessness takes a murderous bent. The best way to stamp out the competition, realizes our desperate and out-of-work protagonist, is to stamp out the competition. Who knew Dunder Mifflin types could be so treacherous? No Other Choice is not in the same league as Park’s Oldboy or The Handmaiden. It is too absurd for that. However, as is always true with Park, the film is visually sumptuous.

14. Eephus

First-time filmmaker Carson Lund summons the spirit of Robert Altman in this wry ode to baseball and male bonding. The title references a rare variation of the curveball; eephus is a pitch so slow, it lulls batters into forgetting to swing until it’s too late. That can also be a nifty metaphor for life, and Eephus, set in smalltown Massachusetts circa the 1990s, is about life—midlife, to be exact—in all its bittersweet, shaggy, oh-my-aching back glory. As one character opines, “Is there anything more beautiful than the sun setting on a fat man stealing second base?” Short answer: No, there is not. The screenplay by Lund, Michael Basta and Nate Fisher is endlessly quotable.

13. 28 Years Later

In 2002, director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland reinvigorated the zombie flick with 28 Days Later, a box-office hit that spawned a sequel five years later from different filmmakers. The original collaborators reunited for 28 Years Later, but this was no cash grab. The “rage virus” of the franchise has reduced the United Kingdom to a largely uninhabited wasteland overrun by flesh-eating zombies. The picture delivers the requisite gore, but at its heart is an affecting coming-of-age story about a 12-year-old boy (newcomer Alfie Williams) intent on finding medical help for his ailing mother. Slated for release next month is 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.

12. Jay Kelly

It wasn’t a stretch for George Clooney to play a handsome movie star, but the latest work from auteur Noah Baumbach gave the actor his best role since 2011’s The Descendents. In Jay Kelly, Clooney is a hero of the big screen thrust into a late mid-life crisis after a series of unexpected events. In different hands, this material would be Hollywood navel-gazing, but Baumbach, who co-scripted with actress Emily Mortimer (who has a bit part), gives us multidimensional characters and dialogue that is smart and funny. Special mention for an excellent Adam Sandler as Jay’s mensch of an agent.

11. Bugonia

Compared to the usual outrageousness of his previous works, director Yorgos Lanthimos tells a reasonably straightforward story in Bugonia. Jesse Plemons portrays a conspiracy theorist convinced that a pharmaceutical company CEO, played by Lanthimos muse Emma Stone, is a malevolent space alien. He and a neurodivergent cousin (Aidan Delbis, who has autism) kidnap her so she will take them to her leader for the purpose of negotiating the future of Earth. Like Eddington and One Battle After Another, this darkly funny and deeply pessimistic picture resonates in an age where social media validates any batshit idea.

10. Eddington

Given that Eddington is a merciless skewering of the political divides, culture wars and free-floating rage that dominate American life in 2025, the idea of watching this film might strike some as slightly more pleasant than open-heart surgery. Even with a top-tier ensemble cast featuring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal and Emma Stone, the movie polarized audiences, which is a specialty for writer-director Ari Aster. But for those of us with a predilection for pitch-black comedies and a side of misanthropy, this bilious tale of politics in smalltown New Mexico is enthralling. 

9. Sorry, Baby

Perhaps surprising for someone who launched their showbiz career through online sketch comedy, the film debut of writer-director Eva Victor is a remarkably assured tonal balance of humor and heartbreak. Victor stars as Agnes, a Massachusetts college professor struggling with a past trauma about which she has confided only to her best friend (Naomi Ackie). The movie is a sensitively crafted and acted examination of endurance, but with a lightness of touch that values subtlety and humor. There isn’t a false note in Sorry, Baby.

8. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

While most Academy Awards prognosticators think Hamnet’s Jessie Buckley is a lock for Best Actress (and she is excellent, don’t get me wrong), if there were any justice in such things, Rose Byrne would be Oscar-bound for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, a febrile dark comedy from writer-director Mary Bronstein. As Linda, the barely-hanging-on mother of a girl with an unidentified illness, Byrne chafes against a world that appears to conspire against her at every turn. Linda’s every interaction is fraught with peril—Conan O’Brien is particularly memorable as a prickly work colleague—while she continues to make dubious, if all too human, decisions.

7. Train Dreams

Loosely adapted from Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella, Train Dreams follows Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), a reclusive logger and railway worker who drifts through the 20^th century quietly observing life’s grandeur and tragedies. Writer-director Clint Bentley and co-writer Greg Kwedar (they also collaborated on last year’s Sing Sing) imbue their film with lyricism, nature’s beauty and the hushed reverence of being in a forest at dusk. Edgerton perfectly conveys taciturn soulfulness, with excellent supporting performances from the likes of Felicity Jones and William H. Macy. Train Dreams also boasts one of cinema’s most poignant endings in a year that had some doozies.

6. It Was Just an Accident

A chance encounter leads Iranian auto mechanic Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) to suspect that the unassuming family man who has come to him with car trouble is none other than “the Peg Leg,” an unusually sadistic member of the despotic regime who tortured him years earlier. Vahid enlists the help of fellow ex-inmates to determine if this customer with a prosthetic leg, Rahid (Ebrahim Azizi), is the one who subjected them to manifold horrors. How positive can these traumatized people, all of whom were blindfolded while in captivity, be in their identification? If Rahid is indeed that monster, what revenge, if any, does he deserve? The naturalistic camerawork of It Was Just an Accident ratchets up the tension. Dissident Iranian writer-director Jafar Panahi comes from a knowing place, having spent several years imprisoned in Iran for “propaganda.”

5. Marty Supreme

Before they parted ways, filmmaking brothers Benny and Josh Safdie had perfected what one could call the Cinema of Anxiety. In Uncut Gems and Good Time, desperate but inexplicably cocky antiheroes with a gift for self-sabotage let bad decisions multiply, each perilous turn building to something even more calamitous. Josh’s solo debut, Marty Supreme, loosely based on a table-tennis champion of the 1950s, continues that sweat-inducing aesthetic, only now he and co-writer Ronald Bronstein (husband of #8’s Mary Bronstein) have tapped the charisma of Timothée Chalamet. As Marty, Chalamet infuses a loathsome character with an ineffable gravitational pull that halfway explains why others keep allowing him to decimate their lives. The movie keeps careening toward you like an out-of-control car. You know this cannot end well, but there is no looking away. 

4. Sinners

After languishing in the MCU with The Black Panther franchise, Ryan Coogler had the opportunity this year to stretch his imagination. Sinners is nominally a vampire picture, but the writer-director sets his movie in 1930s-era Clarksdale, Mississippi, smack dab in the racist heart of the Deep South. Long before any bloodsucking begins, Coogler takes his time introducing us to an array of characters, particularly young bluesman Sammie (newcomer Miles Caton) and twin brothers Smoke and Stack (Michael P. Jordan pulling double duty) who are busy starting up a juke joint. If vampires and Jim Crow are two legs of Sinners’ three-legged narrative stool, music is the third leg. As Clarksdale is the birthplace of blues, Coogler gets to celebrate the genre and its storied legacy. By all rights, this sort of mashup should be a mess, yet Sinners is a blast.

3. Weapons

In 2022, writer-director Zach Cregger’s  Barbarian came from nowhere with a combustible mix of horror, laughs and a playfully nonlinear narrative reminiscent of the Tarantino playbook. Three years later, Cregger topped himself with Weapons,  which boasts the same ingredients as that earlier movie but now with the assuredness of someone fully in command of his storytelling powers. Segmented into chapters, each focusing on a different character, Weapons revolves around a central mystery: why did nearly all the students of a third-grade classroom race from their homes at 2:17 a.m. one morning and just disappear? Julie Garner is the classroom teacher whom many parents believe is somehow responsible. Cregger deftly navigates the multiple storylines, and has assembled a knockout cast that includes Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich and an unforgettable Amy Madigan. 

2. Sentimental Value

The Norwegian import that won a 19-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival is a powerful exploration of parenting, grief and reconciliation. Such themes can be heavy stuff, but Sentimental Value writer-director Joachim Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt (the pair also did The Worst Person in the World) are too smart and nimble to let weightiness overshadow vibrant storytelling and richly drawn characters. Stellan Skarsgård is Gustav Borg, a once-acclaimed filmmaker who comes back to his former home after the death of his ex-wife. His return provides an opportunity to patch things up with his estranged adult daughters, Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas). Nora is having none of it, however, especially when Gustav asks her to portray his mother in a thinly veiled autobiographical film. The three leads are tremendous.

1. One Battle After Another

No surprise here. Paul Thomas Anderson spent 20 years wanting to adapt Thomas Pynchon’s presumably unfilmable book Vineland, which makes it even more extraordinary that this comedy-drama feels so immediate. One Battle After Another hits like it was written and shot mere months ago. Amid a federal clampdown on illegal immigration and the shadowy workings of a secret society called the Christmas Adventurers Club, an ex-lefty terrorist-turned-burnout goes searching for his teen daughter who has been kidnapped by a racist Army colonel. Leonardo Di Caprio is the burnout, newcomer Chase Infinity is the girl, and Sean Penn is the military man; all are almost guaranteed Oscar nominations. PTA’s ensemble cast also boasts Benicio del Toro stealing his every scene as a fix-it sensei and Teyana Taylor as a tough revolutionary with the memorable name of Perfidia Beverly Hills. A rollicking blend of action, comedy and family drama—including perhaps the best car chase in a movie since 1985’s To Live and Die in L.A.—One Battle After Another is an unequivocal masterpiece from arguably the most exciting American filmmaker working today.

Honorable mentions: Misericordia, Nouvelle Vague, The Perfect Neighbor, The Baltimoreans, Good Boy