10 Best Movies Of 2025, According To Rotten Tomatoes

Anyone who says 2025 was a bad year for movies is a fool. (Sorry if that’s you, but I stand by it!) From Paul Thomas Anderson’s American masterpiece “One Battle After Another” to Ryan Coogler’s first-ever entirely original film — the triumphant “Sinners” — to Zach Cregger’s wry horror flick “Weapons” to strange and unsettling projects like Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia” and smaller-scale standouts like “Sorry, Baby” and “Friendship,” this has been a banner year in cinema. Still, you might be surprised that not one of the titles I just listed found a spot on the highest-ranked movies of 2025 on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

I’ll also note that some pretty enormous 2025 releases that fell just outside of the top 10 won’t be included on this list, including Jafar Panahi’s tense thriller “It Was Just an Accident,” Park Chan-wook’s darkly funny anti-capitalist screed “No Other Choice.” (For context, “Sinners” is high on Rotten Tomatoes’ list with 97%, as is “Sorry, Baby”). So what did make the list? As I assembled this selection, I was struck by how many of these have fallen largely under-the-radar for general audiences this year, despite earning either perfect or near-perfect scores on the entertainment industry’s biggest and most well-regarded review aggregator. Consider adding any or all of these titles to your watchlist immediately, because these 10 films are, according to the consensus of major critics, the very best movies that were released in 2025 — from documentaries to international gems to a sports movie you’ll have to see to fully believe.

Chinese director Jia Zhangke is an enormous name in his home country, particularly because he’s the founder of the Pingyao International Film Festival and is generally considered one of the republic’s very best auteurs; in fact, his 2006 film “Still Life” won the coveted Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. So what about his critically adored 2025 film “Caught by the Tides,” which earned 99% on Rotten Tomatoes?

The story focuses on the decades-long relationship between aspiring singer and model Qiao Qiao (Zhao Tao), who’s having a secret relationship with her boss Guao Bin (Li Zhubin) before he leaves their province to try and earn money elsewhere. The two live separately for some time, with the duo conducting their lives independently. When the film comes to a close, they reunite during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Caught by the Tides” actually uses footage that Jia spent years collecting and archiving; as he told The Film Stage in an interview, “During 1999 and 2000 was the time I had my first DV camera, so I would usually aimlessly go about shooting footage. This is a habit I still maintain up to this day, and I have a lot of raw footage using different types of cameras and captures throughout the years.” When he saw that he had footage that lined up with his movie’s intended timeline, he was struck by inspiration and mixed his previous footage with his fictional story. “On the one hand, you have the actual documentary-type of reality, and then you have the fictional, creative reality. By combining these two, you create the realities that these characters can somehow position themselves in.” It worked, and critics loved “Caught in the Tides.”

On a track from her Grammy-winning album “Cowboy Carter,” Beyoncé plainly states that “America has a problem” (though she styles it in all caps for emphasis), and frankly, the pop superstar’s thesis is pretty plainly proven right in Netflix’s stunning 2025 documentary “The Perfect Neighbor,” which has a 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. “As gripping as it is deeply unsettling, ‘The Perfect Neighbor’ lays bare the systemic failures and the quiet terror embedded in American legal systems with surgical precision,” the critical consensus on the review aggregator declares.

Directed by documentary filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir (who has co-produced documentaries with Spike Lee and won an Emmy for her short-form documentary “Through Our Eyes: Apart” in 2022), “The Perfect Neighbor” hones in on one specific instance of American violence: the murder of 35-year-old Ajike “A.J.” Shantrell Owens at the hands of her neighbor, 58-year-old Susan Louise Lorincz, in Ocala, Florida. Gandbhir’s most striking and ingenious decision is not to make a “simple” documentary about this horrible incident, but to rely on the body cameras of police officers who actually worked on the case and dealt with disputes between Owens and Lorincz before and after the killing. Lorincz was ultimately convicted for manslaughter, but despite that much-needed victory for the memory of Owens, “The Perfect Neighbor” casts an unflattering light on Florida’s state-specific “stand your ground” laws. It’s a tough watch, but necessary, and critics agree.

Wagner Moura has quietly been establishing himself as one of our most versatile and talented performers for years at this point, so it’s honestly not all that surprising that he’s finally getting recognition for his lead role in “The Secret Agent” — a movie that earned 99% on Rotten Tomatoes and a critical consensus that calls the film a “thematically rich and visually arresting political thriller” that “blends grindhouse stylization with biting social commentary to weave a vividly dangerous yet darkly human tale.” 

The first-ever Brazilian movie to get Golden Globe nominations in the best picture and actor categories for drama, writer and director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film tells the story of a former professor named Armando (Moura) who’s trying to keep a low profile in Recife, Brazil, amidst a period of political strife under a brutal dictatorship. Throughout the story, Armando frequently gets help from fellow refugees trying to evade the government — especially the city’s deeply corrupted police chief Euclides (Robério Diógenes) — and he adopts different names, including Marcelo Alves … unaware that two hitmen, brothers Bobbi and Augusto Borba (Gabriel Leone and Roney Villela) have been hired elsewhere in Brazil to hunt him down.

I won’t spoil the exciting twists and turns of “The Secret Agent” here, but the movie is thrilling, bloody, gripping, and flat-out incredible — and anchored by Moura’s vital central performance. If you want to watch all of the best films of 2025 and don’t want to miss anything, definitely don’t skip “The Secret Agent.”

The Apple TV documentary “Come See Me in the Good Light” is heartbreaking, but it’s also one of the best movies of 2025 according to Rotten Tomatoes, earning an incredible 100% on the website and scoring a critical consensus that says the documentary is an “emotionally searing yet gently radiant portrait of Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley’s navigation of terminal illness that never loses sight of the warmth, humor, and love that defined their relationship.” Andrea Gibson, for the uninitiated, was an American activist and poet who was good friends with comedian Tig Notaro, a woman who has also dealt with a life-changing diagnosis. Alongside producer Stef Willen, Notaro, Gibson, and Gibson’s wife, Megan Falley, they decided to film a documentary mostly at Gibson and Falley’s home, centered around Gibson’s diagnosis of ovarian cancer, which they received in 2021 before passing away in the summer of 2025.

“Come See Me in the Good Light” was years in the making, and it might break your heart, but you’ll come away strangely glad that Notaro, Gibson, and Falley crafted this ode to Gibson’s life before they left us. Plus, it includes some seriously incredible original music; singer-songwriters Sara Bareilles and Brandi Carlisle wrote and performed the duet “Salt Then Sour Then Sweet” for the documentary, and they even co-wrote it with Gibson.

Directed by Deaf activist and “America’s Next Top Model” and “Dancing With the Stars” winner Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim — who’s known for directing a little documentary called “An Inconvenient Truth” as well as “It Might Get Loud” and “Waiting for Superman” — the 2025 documentary “Deaf President Now!” takes audiences back to the late 1980s. In case you’re unfamiliar with the titular protest, “Deaf President Now” was the name of a movement in the spring of 1988 at Gallaudet University in the nation’s capital. Gallaudet is a private university in Washington D.C. that’s specifically meant for students who are Deaf and hard of hearing, but that spring, the university’s board of trustees elected to install a hearing president, Elisabeth Zinser, instead of two Deaf candidates: Irving King Jordan and Harvey Corson. This caused an understandable uproar, and DiMarco and Guggenheim gave it a spotlight in 2025.

Corson doesn’t appear in “Deaf President Now!” but Jordan does, and Guggenheim and DiMarco do an admirable job of representing this conflict. Rotten Tomatoes thought so, too. Its critical consensus says, “Deftly chronicling a pivotal flashpoint in deaf community activism while skillfully folding inclusivity into its style, Deaf President Now! is a documentary that heartens as much as it informs,” and that pairs nicely with its 100% rating.

Nobody can deny that journalism came under attack in 2025, which means it was the perfect year to release “Cover-Up,” a documentary focused on Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh. Directed by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus — the former of whom won an Oscar in 2015 for her documentary “Citizenfour,” which focused on whistleblower Edward Snowden and was nominated recently for “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” — “Cover-Up” chronicles Hersh’s career and actually sits down with the man himself to talk about his unbelievably necessary work delving into crimes committed during the Vietnam War and other conflicts. Specifically, Hersh exposed crimes committed by the United States itself, including but not limited to the bombing of Cambodia by then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Watergate, and even the post-9/11 human rights violations committed at Abu Ghraib by the administration of George W. Bush.

Poitras tried to get Hersh on the record for a documentary for two decades, and it paid off handsomely in “Cover-Up,” which even uses recordings of former United States president Richard Nixon talking about Hersh himself to Kissinger in what the two politicians likely believed was a private conversation. “The size, the body of work speaks for itself,” Poitras told IndieWire in a feature on the documentary, saying she was “obsessed” with Hersh and continuing, “plus it had particular resonance with me to have somebody who is so consistently critical of this country and its policies and exposing them and then also the failures of the press throughout, across decades.” If you believe in the sanctity of great journalism, go watch “Cover-Up,” which earned 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The fictional story of a Guinean immigrant working in Paris, “Souleymane’s Story” — “L’Histoire de Souleymane” in the original French — is one of the most fascinating and affecting films of the year according to Rotten Tomatoes, which awarded the film 100% and says, in its critical consensus, “Achingly human in its depiction of immigrant struggles, ‘Souleymane’s Story’ asks us to witness, understand, and grant empathy to all.” To call the French bureaucracy that handles immigration difficult and arcane is a massive understatement, and in “Souleymane’s Story,” we meet Souleymane himself, played by relative newcomer Abou Sangaré (who won a César Award for best male revelation, marking a major victory for this fresh new talent).

In the film, we watch as Souleymane rides an electronic bike throughout Paris while preparing to apply for asylum in the country, despite constant hurdles; not only are the odds difficult to overcome in France in the first place as an asylum seeker and immigrant, but writer-director Boris Lojkine also highlights how Souleymane’s fellow Guinean immigrants are more than happy to take advantage of him, trick him, and even steal from him to secure their own safe places in the French capital. “Souleymane’s Story” is gripping, enthralling, and puts you into Souleymane’s shoes as he tries to make it in Paris and start a new life for himself, and it’s an important film meant to help us all understand the human experience just a little better.

“Eephus” technically hit the festival circuit in 2024 but got a wide release in the United States in 2025, and no matter when it came out, critics absolutely loved this irreverent sports flick. Sitting pretty at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes with a critical consensus that declares it a “bittersweet baseball outing thrown at a perfect pitch.” Directed by Carson Lund, who wrote the screenplay with Michael Basta and Nate Fisher, “Eephus” focuses on a ragtag baseball team, Adler’s Paint, as they prepare to play one final game on their beloved field before it’s demolished. As their ringleader, Ed Mortanian (Keith William Richards, previously best known for “Uncut Gems”), gets them ready to go up against their longtime rivals, the Riverdogs and their leader Graham Morris (Stephen Radochia). We follow Adler’s Paint through their ups and downs, and the results are as touching as they are hilarious.

Even if you think you’re allergic to sports movies, “Eephus” is genuinely in a league of its own — and it’s probably one of the best “hangout” movies in recent memory, in that you would love nothing more than to hang out with Ed and his teammates once you’re finished watching. Maybe the funniest part of “Eephus” — and by the way, that title refers to an extremely rare pitch in baseball — is that there’s another field available for these two recreational teams, but they scoff at the mere idea, making the stakes pretty low. That’s perfect for this movie, though. Sometimes you just want to watch something fun and comforting, and that’s “Eephus.”

Charlie Polinger’s directorial debut, “The Plague,” released in the spring of 2025 with Joel Edgerton as a major supporting star, is a gripping body-horror-based thriller that pulls you into the world of an all-boys summer camp. It stands in stark contrast to other movies set at summer camps; basically, this flick is anything but nostalgic. It did earn a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which, in its critical consensus, said, “Steeped in disquieting mood without ever treading water, ‘The Plague’ takes common adolescent anxieties and elevates them into an unforgettable chiller.”

Without spoiling this genuinely shocking movie, here’s the gist: a bunch of boys attend a summer camp centered around water polo, and as they put each other through increasingly nasty hazing rituals (like sneaking bugs into each others’ beds), they’re all afraid of catching that title plague, which manifests as strange lesions on their body and can turn their brains into pudding. (Polinger uses this to represent puberty in a way, as most of the boys are around 12 and 13 years old.) In an interview with IndieWire, Polinger said he was inspired by films like “Beau Travail” and “The Shining” as well as comedian Bo Burnham’s film “Eighth Grade,” telling the outlet that he hoped to “capture a social dread and vulnerability of your body and something you don’t see as much with boys because it requires a certain vulnerability to be an object of terror in that way.” Edgerton, in that same feature, admitted that he wanted to direct the movie himself but eventually handed the reins to Polinger, and the latter’s clear vision proved he was the right man for the job, with the utmost due respect to Edgerton.

Another film that made its debut in 2024 at festivals but earned a 2025 wide release, “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” is, according to Rotten Tomatoes, the very best film of the year with a perfect score of 100%; the critical consensus declares, “A vibrant exploration of family and social mores, ‘On Becoming a Guinea Fowl’ marks another superb effort from writer-director Rungano Nyoni.” Speaking of writer-director Nyoni, her previous film “I Am Not a Witch” won her a BAFTA with “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” earning her a best director award at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival — and they’re both richly deserved, based on her specific and excellent eye for unforgettable cinematic images and her knack for immersive storytelling.

The film centers around a young woman named Shula (Susan Chardy) who’s heading home in the middle of the night from a party when she discovers the body of her uncle Fred (Roy Chisha) by the side of the road near a known brothel; when Shula calls her dad, he asks her to stay with the body until someone can come and get both of them. From there, “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” tackles some genuinely gutting topics — there’s some seriously rough stuff about Fred’s past and his behavior that shakes Shula to her very core, alongside the audience — but it’s a richly rewarding film with arresting visuals and a phenomenal central performance by Chardy. “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” is yet another excellent film from Nyoni, and now, we can’t wait to see what she does next.