2025 was a year that, in many ways, can be charitably described as “not good.” Checking the news daily felt like high-intensity cardio, and that applies to both updates from the geopolitical world and the film industry. In a year that began with the death of David Lynch and ended with an ominous deal that may see Netflix buying Warner Brothers – undeniably bad news for movie theater lovers – cinephiles had plenty to be upset and stressed about. The one bright spot was the films themselves. After a rocky start, 2025 turned out to be a pretty spectacular year for movies, with one film in particular that has already established itself as a generational classic that will undoubtedly be considered one of the best of the century (take a wild guess which one that is). As represented by my top 10, 2025 was a beautifully erratic film year that saw masterpieces in nearly every possible genre. It was hard to narrow it down (2025 brought me to both the Sundance and Venice film festivals, and I watched more new releases this past year than ever before, so my choices were plentiful), and other films worthy of recommendation include “Elio,” “Friendship,” “A House of Dynamite,” “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” “It Was Just an Accident,” “The Life of Chuck,” “Materialists,” “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” “My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow,” “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl,” “The Plague,” “Sinners,” “The Testament of Ann Lee,” “Twinless,” “The Voice of Hind Rajab,“ and “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.“
10. Little Amélie Or The Character Of Rain
This delightful animated film seems simple in concept: we follow a girl named Amélie from birth through her toddler years. But the film is so much stranger than it sounds. The gentle, pastoral-sounding English title paints a somewhat overly sentimental picture of the film. Its French title translates to “Amélie and the Metaphysics of Tubes,” and the quirky energy that that conjures is much more accurate to the film’s vibe. The movie is borderline sci-fi at times, with an animation style that feels as boundless as a child’s imagination. The vibrant artwork genuinely looks like a warm, youthful memory, perfectly tying the form to the film’s themes. Combined with the gorgeous score by Mari Fukuhara, “Little Amélie or the Character of Rain” is a moving, beautiful, 77-minute journey through the wonders – and weirdness – of childhood.
9. Marty Supreme
It’s not an original idea to say that the Safdie Brothers have a trademark boundless energy as a filmmaking team. In 2025, the two brothers released separate, solo-directed films. Benny’s “The Smashing Machine“ received respectable but lukewarm notices (I liked it!), and, most curiously, the film is far from compelling in its overall momentum. It seems that Josh took all of the energy with him in the brotherly schism, because his film “Marty Supreme“ is thrilling, propulsive, and unrelenting. Josh Safdie finds the perfect muse for his chaotic worldview in Timothée Chalamet. The young actor delivers a performance as the titular Marty that manages to be hectic in nature but strangely grounded in soul – he may not believe the bullshit he’s constantly selling. Still, he’s very good at selling it. Surrounding him is an enjoyably odd ensemble of character actors, familiar faces, and new stars, all inhabiting a period-accurate, expansive 1950s New York. The deeply authentic design details are counterbalanced with a thrilling synthetic score by Daniel Lopatin that, combined with Darius Khondji’s earthy, unvarnished cinematography, gives the film the feeling of a 1980s prestige picture. All of these unpredictable influences and elements mix to make a supremely enjoyable film, even in its many, many stressful moments.
8. Come See Me In The Good Light
At the Sundance premiere of “Come See Me in the Good Light,” the filmmaking team joked that not many filmgoers would seek out a nonfiction film about a poet battling an incurable cancer diagnosis. But Ryan White’s stunning documentary about the late poet Andrea Gibson’s latter days is shockingly universal in a way its hyper-specific logline might not suggest. The film chronicles Gibson’s daily life with their spouse, Megan Falley, as they navigate doctor visits and test results, all while Gibson attempts to prepare themselves for the difficult task of performing what will likely be their final live poetry show. And at the same time, they detail their seemingly unending journeys and milestones of self-discovery throughout the course of their life, along with telling the stories of their many loves and losses. Accompanying all of these various narrative threads are Gibson’s heartfelt poems, which the poet specifically wrote in such a way that they could be understood and appreciated by anyone, regardless of their familiarity with the form. The film was moving at Sundance, but since Gibson’s passing last July, it takes on an even more powerful, curiously empowering energy. Gibson worked to express the inexpressible through their work, and now this beautiful documentary stands as a living monument to their honesty, bravery, and borderless heart.
7. Sorry, Baby
Eva Victor’s stunning directorial debut was, by a wide margin, the best narrative feature I saw at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It’s the kind of out-of-nowhere triumph Sundance was made for: a truthful, funny, but unflinching story told by a singular voice. And yes, the screenplay is equal parts hilarious and touching, but what makes “Sorry, Baby” so exceptional is the tonal control Victor maintains. The film tackles some thematically weighty material, and, if it leans too hard on either end of the comedy-drama spectrum, its balance would threaten to make it either too dismissive of the drama or too morose, risking disengagement. But Victor nails the difficult task of holding tight to the tonal reins without exertion: one minute it’s hilarious, the next it’s heartbreaking, the next it’s terrifying. That’s no easy task for any filmmaker, and the fact that Victor has achieved something so impressive and assured with their very first feature only bodes well for the rest of their career.
6. Avatar: Fire And Ash
We all know why the “Avatar” films are so successful. James Cameron pushes the limits of what we imagine is visually possible with each successive entry, creating artificial worlds so lifelike and beautiful that it nearly drives some audience members into psychosis. And he can direct an efficient, exciting action scene seemingly in his sleep. After all, he has been doing it since the 1980s. So, you could say I was surprised the scene that made the greatest impression on me in the third entry in the “Avatar” franchise wasn’t a high-flying battle or a stunning exploratory sequence with fantastical creatures. Instead, it was a dialogue scene that held my attention more than any other, namely one between the seemingly unstoppable villain Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang, giving his best performance in the series) and Varang (Oona Chaplin), the leader of the newly introduced Mangkwan clan. She and her tribe look to Eywa not as an omniscient deity worthy of respect and awe, but as a willfully neglectful mother figure, deserving nothing but derision. In the film’s most memorable moment, she brings Quaritch into her tent and drugs him with some sort of psychotropic substance, which gives Cameron a reason to experiment with some new, trippy visual stylings. It’s a long scene where Varang explains her hatred for Eywa and her affection for the power of fire. Chaplin brings Varang to life with inscrutable intensity, making her seem even more dangerous because of her irrepressible cynicism. It’s an amazing performance throughout the film, but in this one scene, she, Lang, and Cameron all work together to deliver something truly exceptional. “Avatar: Fire and Ash” proves there are plenty of unexplored areas of the franchise for Cameron to explore. The next chapter can’t come soon enough.
5. Weapons
It’s almost hard to imagine, given how much the character has dominated conversations surrounding the film (especially now in the heart of awards season). Still, there was a time when we didn’t know who Aunt Gladys was. The marketing of “Weapons,” Zach Cregger’s roller coaster ride of a horror movie, didn’t show even a hint of the film’s now-iconic villain, brought to delicious life by Amy Madigan. But ever since audiences first met the kooky, eccentrically made-up, yet still terrifying witchy woman, she has established herself as the type of indelible horror character that will live on beyond the movie, becoming recognizable even to those who haven’t seen the film in the same vein as Jason or Freddy. But before Gladys is introduced over halfway into the film, “Weapons” takes audiences on a terrifying and strangely funny journey through the paranoia of the suburbs. Practically everyone has an opinion about the impenetrable central metaphor of the disappearance of all but one student in an elementary school classroom, but whether or not viewers seek to delve into what their evaporation could represent, they’re sure to have a thrilling time. The final chapter of the segmented, POV-shifting story is a total triumph of filmed entertainment; it’s practically impossible not to shriek with delight at the film’s gruesomely cathartic conclusion. Cregger clearly has an instinct for what audiences want to see in their horror movies, and both Aunt Gladys and “Weapons” will undoubtedly be some of the most memorable, long-lasting parts of 2025’s cinematic legacy.
4. Tinsman Road
A few years ago, Robbie Banfitch leapt onto the radars of horror nerds with his frightening and very strange film “The Outwaters.” That desert-set thriller begins as a typical found-footage horror movie before expanding and breaking away from the format’s typical rules, showing Banfitch to be an innovative filmmaker to watch. With his follow-up film “Tinsman Road,” he continues exploring the world of found footage and stays more locked-in to the typical rules and regulations of that filmmaking style than he did with “The Outwaters.” But this is far from your typical shaky-cam, first-person POV horror movie. “Tinsman Road” is an appropriately lengthy, mournful look at how loss and grief can hover over our lives like a specter. This period piece smartly takes place before the proliferation of smartphones, giving the film a tactile, analog feel which nicely complements the charmingly homemade camera quality, which further makes sense given that the main character, Robbie, is a filmmaker himself. He and his mother, Leslie (played respectively by Banfitch and his real-life mom, the heartbreakingly talented Leslie Ann Banfitch), try their best to live their lives with as much normality as possible after the disappearance of Robbie’s sister/Leslie’s daughter. All the pair has is each other, and yet, as is so often the case after a tragedy, they jump into conflict with each other just as much as they comfort each other, if not more. Behind his concerned mother’s back, Robbie seeks to investigate the disappearance on his own, armed with nothing but his camcorder and his local intuition of the area and its customs. With his camera, Banfitch floats through Robbie’s life: his daytime searches for his sister, including interviews with the extremely Jersey locals (as a born-and-bred Jersey boy myself, I found the supporting players particularly delightful in their familiarity), and his nighttime solo drinking interrupted by his mother’s eerie nocturnal spells. It’s a daily pattern the film luxuriates in, getting the audience accustomed to Robbie’s atypical life in the same way that overwhelming grief can eventually start to feel routine, even as it makes you feel like you’re drowning. Whether or not ghosts exist is a mystery that may never be answered. Still, the chilling, upsetting, and extremely powerful “Tinsman Road” shows how grief can haunt us just as effectively and oppressively as any imagined spirit possibly could.
3. Black Bag
In our algorithmically programmed movie landscape, subgenres can easily get flattened or reduced. Take the spy movie, which in recent years has almost entirely been monopolized by James Bond. Besides 007, intrigue, double-crosses, and clever gadgets have mostly been folded into action movies, such as the “Mission: Impossible” series. In that way, “Black Bag” is strangely refreshing. It’s a tightly plotted, classy thriller about hidden agendas and mistrust, smartly framed through the relationship of the central married couple, played with sophistication by Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender. David Koepp’s expertly constructed screenplay is essentially the story of a typical romantic pair facing moments of doubt that plague any relationship; this couple just has the ability to use hyperadvanced technology and expert espionage tactics to investigate their marital suspicions. The rest of the ensemble is equally attuned to the film’s slick, cool tone, especially Marisa Abela and Tom Burke. With “Black Bag,” Steven Soderbergh continues his ostensible quest to direct essentially every genre and type of film, and the spy film is perfectly attuned to his innovative, efficient filmmaking style.
2. No Other Choice
Park Chan-wook is simply the most creative filmmaker working today. Few directors use the camera like he does, putting it in places I’ve never seen before and finding brand-new angles and point-of-view shots that prove this artistic medium is still in its comparative infancy. His cheeky camera placements and uproarious editing choices are silent punchlines, emphasizing the humor in this very dark comedy. Anchored by the best leading man performance of the year from Lee Byung-hun, “No Other Choice” shows that some situations are so upsetting, there’s truly nothing else to do but laugh. Lee’s Man-su is a man whose life goes from (to misquote another 2025 auteur project) highest to lowest almost instantaneously. And in his hilariously violent and violently hilarious quest to secure stable employment, Park constructs a brutal metaphor for the way that cutthroat, individually-minded capitalism pits humans against each other. Sure, we may not all go about it in such a bloody manner as Man-su. Still, in a world that values productivity and profit over the natural harmonious order of the world, we all eventually find ourselves faced with no other choice but to act in a manner that goes against our conscience in order to survive. Sometimes the only thing that makes it easier is a good laugh at the absurdity of it all.
1. One Battle After Another
When future film historians look back at 2025, the conversation will likely begin and end with “One Battle After Another.” Both in sheer cinematic accomplishment and in the way it captures something specific and brutally honest about this moment in American history, no other film from this year comes close. And perhaps the most truthful element of its assessment of this messy, unsteady period that we’re all doing our best to live through is its uncertainty. There are no easy heroes in Paul Thomas Anderson’s world of revolutionaries and militant oppressors. Those who might be seen as champions of freedom are allowed to exist with imperfections – a risky choice of characterization that might make their fight easy to write off by those watching the film who don’t share such freedom-fighting convictions. Of course, Sean Penn’s Col. Lockjaw and the Christmas Adventurers are beyond-parodies of the fascist-minded white Christian nationalists who have infected the higher levels of our real-world government (brilliantly, Anderson makes them totally laughable while never minimizing their truly threatening nature, which is totally true of our current political situation). But nearly all of those fighting for, as Teyana Taylor’s Perfidia Beverly Hills says, “free borders, free bodies, free choices,” are shown to be severely flawed, whether that’s Perfidia’s traitorous turn or Pat/Bob’s (Leonardo DiCaprio, giving what might be his greatest performance) burned-out, slovenly ways. Even Willa (Chase Infiniti), our personified hope for a brighter future, is set back by her oh-so-very Gen Z cell phone dependency. Those looking for flawless, clear-minded heroes will find none here. And in fact, that grasping at unreachable perfection detrimentally affects both sides of the fight, from the Christmas Adventurers’ deletion of Lockjaw after learning of how he strayed from their ideas of racial purity to Comrade Josh’s insistence on unwaveringly following the French 75 code-speak. In this way, the film reflects how infighting and a demand for absolute perfection of ideals are a recipe for political fights to implode. The bigger picture gets lost when you’re constantly asking people on your own side, “What time is it?“ But even when just assessing its technical merits, “One Battle After Another“ is an unqualified masterpiece. Much has been said of its highly efficient editing, with the nearly three-hour runtime flying by (I last watched it twice in one week, on the days immediately before and after Christmas, with various family members, and each time it felt incredibly propulsive). The decision to cut the entire first act before the dramatic time jump, as a practically unstoppable montage, helps set the rest of the film into a comfortable, unstoppable cruising gear. From then on, it’s an unending odyssey for Bob and Willa, as they experience the worst couple of days of their lives. And at the film’s end, we in the audience feel just as changed as they do, having watched a father and a daughter both come to terms with the unstable reality of their existence and the fact that the past cannot be changed, even if you had no hand in it. The only thing to do is move forward. Against the wishes of the Christmas Adventurers of our real world, we cannot and will not be drawn back to a regressive era of darkness and separation. The world only moves forward, and no matter how hard the monsters at the top of the pecking order may try, there will always be Willas ready to spring into action and proudly, defiantly push against their authority.
What do you think of my list? Please let us know in the comments section below or on our X account. Check out Matt Neglia, Josh Parham, and Dan Bayer’s Top 10’s of 2025 and remember you have until February 14th to fill out your ballot for the 2025 NBP Film Community Awards. Till then, thanks for reading.
