In 2025, I saw the finest movie I’d seen since I was but a sprout in his early 40s. I saw great films by personal heroes Richard Linklater, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Bong Joon Ho. I was treated to a new Ari Aster and a Yorgos Lanthimos and – like clockwork, every three years – a Rian Johnson Knives Out, as well as a pair of winners by I’m-retired-no-wait-I’m-not Steven Soderbergh. But why does my 12-month experience feel so singular? Why does almost everyone I know greet my news about some new cineplex delight with “I haven’t been to the movies in forever”?
To be sure, it’s partly because, dammit, there’s so much good TV out there. If I regularly wrote about a different medium, I’d be happy to share my thoughts on the pleasures of noteworthy 2025 titles including The Pitt, Adolescence, Dying for Sex, the deserved recent phenomena of Pluribus and Heated Rivalry, and almost half of The Studio. For better or worse, though, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool movie critic, and it becomes a lonelier job every year given how few people I know actually go to the movies anymore.
Naturally, we can blame COVID – and should at least partly blame COVID. Prior to the pandemic, between 2019 and the early months of 2020, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women made $108 million domestic and South Korean Best Picture winner Parasite made $53.8 million … can you imagine such tallies for such films happening these days? But even the current domestic box office suggests that, as of ’25, people only come out for properties they already know and (theoretically) love. Sixteen of the year’s top-20 U.S. grossers were based on previously existing IP, and that total increases to 17 if you consider Marvel (with Thunderbolts*) IP, which you should, and 18 if you consider Formula One racing (with F1: The Movie) IP, as you also should.
It’s hard to blame film fans for staying away when streaming gives them not only the comforts of home and the options they declined to see in theaters a few months (or mere weeks) earlier, but the sorts of juicy narrative treats, and longer ones, that movies used to be occasionally good for. So here’s to you fellow film fans who have, every once in a while, joined me on the tentative journey toward keeping the movie-theater experience relevant.
Regarding those two non-IP inclusions in the domestic top-20, thanks for making Zach Cregger’s Weapons the smash it was, even though I wasn’t that horror hit’s biggest fan – you might’ve helped in snaring 75-year-old Amy Madigan an Oscar! And even more thanks for turning my favorite movie of the year – of many, many years – into the financial, cultural, and awards-season behemoth it’s become … .
1) Sinners. Over the course of more than a half-century of movie-going, there haven’t been many film scenes during which I’ve laughed out loud and audibly sobbed at the exact same time. At least a couple of the ever-increasing miracles in the It’s a Wonderful Life finale made that happen. So did Shirley MacLaine’s “Thank you very much” after Aurora’s hospital tirade in Terms of Endearment, and Cary Guffey’s plaintive “Bye!” when bidding his extraterrestrial hosts farewell in Close Encounters, and Celie’s grown son, in Spielberg’s The Color Purple, greeting Whoopi Goldberg with “Mama!” in a voice a full octave higher than you expected from such a towering figure. That involuntary laughter-through-tears response is maybe the best individualized experience you can get at the movies. One particular scene in Sinners gave me that satisfaction. If you’ve seen writer/director Ryan Coogler’s movie, you know the scene I’m talking about.
Really, we should’ve been prepared. In her introductory voice-over, Wunmi Mosaku’s Annie tells us about fabled music so divine that it can summon ghosts from the past and the future, with certain supernatural beings hungry for what that artistry can provide. At the halfway point of Coogler’s singular genre-hopper set in 1932, such ghosts do indeed arrive, and to our enormous benefit, they’re ready to dance. As Miles Caton’s nascent powerhouse Sammie Moore goes to town on the blues show-stopper “I Lied to You,” the exuberant, sweaty Mississippi locals move to the beat, and they’re quickly joined by African tribal people of decades prior, and modern-day pop lovers, rappers, and DJs scratching albums. It’s a thrillingly ridiculous conglomeration of the past, present, and future, and it makes all the sense in the world when this jubilant burn burner figuratively (and visually) burns down the barn, resulting in laughter due to the sequence’s joyous audaciousness and tears due to your shock at how impeccably it’s pulled off … those tears also emanating from what you know will be short-lived exultation. This awesomely moving Black ritual, after all, is being viewed from afar by undead (white) interlopers with zero morals and plenty of fangs.
I’m not altogether surprised, though I am disappointed, that so many friends and family members have had such diametrically opposed reasons for not being enraptured by Sinners the way I was. Some of them adore the early, world-building scenes, with Coogler fashioning a wholly plausible and lived-in 1932 Mississippi, and are subsequently bothered that this vampire movie had the nerve to turn into a vampire movie. Some have admitted to feeling so antsy during the world-building portion – “Get to the vampires already!” – that they tuned out long before the bloodsuckers ever appeared.
Happily, though, those I know who do adore this thing from start to finish are equally feverish in their rapture, and would likely join me in celebrating particulars all day: Coogler’s wickedly smart script that pays particular attention to the vampires’ need to be invited inside; Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s sublime cinematography, with its unquestionable feel for exterior and interior temperatures; Ludwig Göransson’s stylistically expansive score; Michael B. Jordan’s devilishly charismatic, soulful turns as twin brothers Stack and Smoke; the genius supporting cast that, beyond the similarly faultless Mosaku and Caton, boasts Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell, Jayme Lawson, Omar Benson Miller, Li Jun Li, Yao, Lola Kirke, Peter Dreimanis, and performance god Delroy Lindo, whose monologue about a remembered lynching should, yet likely won’t, make him the front-runner for the Oscars’ Best Supporting Actor trophy. (A new Academy Award for Best Casting is being introduced this year; Coogler’s movie should have that win in the bag.) Coogler’s springtime smash is the most original, exciting movie I’ve seen in at least 15 years, and I’m perfectly at peace if, as anticipated, the nearly-as-deserving One Battle After Another wins trophies that should more rightfully go to this one. Like vampires themselves, Sinners is eternal.
2) Train Dreams. There are things I regret about this past movie year: not getting to Iowa City’s Refocus Film Festival for Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice; watching the Oscars on Hulu and missing live presentations of Best Actress and Picture; paying to see Mark Wahlberg in Flight Risk. My biggest regret, though, was not catching director/co-writer Clint Bentley’s early-20th-century frontier drama at Davenport’s The Last Picture House, because it sure would’ve been nice to see Adolpho Veloso’s extraordinarily rich cinematography, and experience the exquisite sound design, on that venue’s big screen. As I instead saw this tremendous work on Netflix, it also would’ve been nice to know I wasn’t crying alone. A largely plotless stunner that follows logger Robert Grainier (the miraculously fine Joel Edgerton) through his decades in the Pacific Northwest, Train Dreams, like a more approachable Tree of Life, is about nothing yet absolutely everything, so overflowing with simple and majestic beauty that it creates a high you don’t ever want to come down from. I’ve returned to the film almost a dozen times since late-November and, given its staggering emotional wallop and contributions from the likes of Felicity Jones and William H. Macy, don’t feel remotely done with it.
3) Blue Moon. Ever since his role as the ultimate entitled-slacker/smartass in 1994’s Reality Bites, Ethan Hawke has forged a healthy movie career playing characters who consider themselves the smartest guys in any room. This frequently makes him obnoxious beyond belief. Yet while that peculiar performance bent didn’t hurt him in Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight trilogy and Boyhood, I never anticipated that Hawke’s it’s-all-about-me! act would be so stunningly appropriate for Lorenz Hart, the composer who partnered Richard Rodgers for decades before Oscar Hammerstein III showed up to ruin everything. In Linklater’s and screenwriter Robert Kaplow’s Blue Moon, which unfurls in real time as Hart endures Oklahoma!‘s stunning opening-night success, Hawke gives us every bit of the loquacious, sardonic, frequently two-faced asshole he’s played previously. This time, though, his riotous, committed portrayal is tinged with bottomless reserves of melancholy and regret, and what results is a tour de force of aching need and comic desperation. This phenomenally written one-set movie needs to become a stage play immediately for whomever can fake four-foot-10 and wants to win a Tony, and we can only pray that Bobby Cannavale, Margaret Qualley, and Andrew Scott agree to round out its cast with their Broadway-ready electricity and panache.
4) Eddington. Considering how it dominated our lives and still hasn’t left the cultural conversation, didn’t you, too, expect more movies that expressly dealt with COVID-19 circa 2020? I remember when it seemed perfectly reasonable – at least in my head – to expect contemporary movie characters to wear face masks and maintain a six-foot distance; for getting-to-know-you exchanges in rom-coms to begin with “So what was your pandemic like?” It didn’t happen … but maybe only because, until 2025, that delightfully diabolical trickster Ari Aster hadn’t gotten around to tackling the subject yet. When the writer/director did, he fashioned the most brutal, hysterical, terrifying COVID landscape imaginable – one in which all perceived “rules” about sane, proper behavior went out the window and everyone in his small New Mexico township let their freaked flags fly, public-health adherents and deniers alike acting universally unhinged because the world itself had seemingly gone insane. Eddington is a scary, bleakly hilarious place to be, a community-wide panic attack with Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Deirdre O’Connell, Austin Butler, Clifton Collins Jr., and others losing their minds in unforgettable fashion. For two-ish hours, it’s a great place to visit. I’d never want to live there.
5) One Battle After Another. Movies, of course, are collections of moments, and few 2025 titles featured quite as many instances of greatness – some of them merely seconds long – as Paul Thomas Anderson’s spectacularly enjoyable Thomas Pynchon adaptation. Leonardo DiCaprio’s desperate dad, informed of his daughter’s disappearance, pulling himself together by taking one last hit of weed. Chase Infiniti, that aforementioned daughter, so understandably traumatized that you fear she might murder the person who loves her most. Sean Penn’s military officer making a wildly inappropriate confession in a grocery store. Benicio del Toro’s cucumber-cool sensei gently admonishing a dojo vistor to keep his feet off the mat. Teyana Taylor’s revolutionary firing a machine gun while nine months pregnant. Regina Hall, in front of a campfire, signaling the end of an era in her melancholic expression. The interrogations of the teens. The lunacy of the Christmas Adventurers Club. The skateboarders bouncing off rooftops like Ninja Turles. The well-armed nuns. The corner office with a view. The shotgun that appears out of freaking nowhere. And the climactic promise – “I won’t” – ensuring that worthy fights of one generation will continue into the next, and the next after that. One Battle After Another. Abso-f—ing-lutely.
6) Mickey 17. When a friend asked what titles I was considering for this list and I mentioned Bong Joon Ho’s sci-fi slapstick, his reaction was instinctive: “Wait … that was 2025?! It feels like that came out ages ago!” Yes it was, and yes it does. How has this wondrous March entertainment been forgotten so quickly? I mean, sure, it’s no Parasite, and I worry that, henceforth, Bong’s output might suffer vague dissings of the “It’s not Parasite” variety. (Call it the Citizen Kane effect.) So let’s please take a moment to remember that Mickey 17 did indeed debut last year and was an absolute hoot – an outer-space action comedy boasting a fully imagined, specific, thrillingly detailed futuristic universe, considerable thematic depth, a first-rate supporting cast (Naomie Ackie, Toni Collette, Steven Yeun, the crudely priceless despot Mark Ruffalo), and Robert Pattinson giving one of his peerlessly weird, and weirdly voiced, character performances. Scratch that: Pattinson gives many of his peerlessly weird, weirdly voiced performances, and that the film’s astonishing examples of on-screen twinning and lumpy extraterrestrials didn’t make the short-list of 10 works in consideration for this year’s visual-effects Oscar is evidence of how sadly fleeting our attention spans have become.
7) It Was Just an Accident. Almost without question, writer/director Jafar Panahi’s dramatic-thriller-slash-absurdist-comedy – the Palme d’Or winner at last May’s Cannes Film Festival – will be in contention for several Academy Awards, among them Best Picture and Best Directing. The real question is whether the Iranian auteur will be allowed to attend the March ceremony, given that, last month, he was sentenced to a year in prison, with an adjoining travel ban, for “propaganda activities” against the nation. That It Was Just an Accident itself is concerned with a group of Iranians reckoning with their own past imprisonment for similar “crimes” is an irony too astounding to be believed. Yet you believe every minute of this riveting, oftentimes bitterly funny tale of released political prisoners who can’t decide whether to exact revenge on their abducted former tormentor, considering that, having been blindfolded, they’re not certain he was their tormentor. A cinematic slow-burn like few others, Panahi’s morally complicated yarn reaches its apex in a stationary, nearly 20-minute shot that provides the catharsis everyone has long needed. And then the movie goes further, leaving us, and the superb lead Vahid Mobasseri, with the haunting implication that, despite our best efforts, some nightmares simply refuse to end.
8) Twinless. Michael B. Jordan wholly individualized Smoke and Stack through subtle alternations in cadence and temperament. Robert Pattinson crafted 17 equally adorable dumb bunnies before treating us, with the 18th, to a Mickey with more meanness and less empathy. But in a stellar year for cinematic twinning – Robert De Niro was solid in The Alto Knights, too! – only Dylan O’Brien, headlining director/writer/co-star James Sweeney’s deviously shoe-dropping comedy, convinced you that his brothers were played by different actors. As Roman, a simple, morose soul mourning the death of his twin Rocky, O’Brien is all Joey Tribbiani sweetness and emotional innocence, the perfect mark for Sweeney’s lovelorn-and-handling-it-badly Dennis. Yet about a third of the way in, an extended flashback introduces us to Rocky and forces you to do a double-take. Surely the performer enacting this confident, proudly gay smoothie with the relaxed body language and brazen forwardness isn’t the same guy who’s so abjectly believable as his straight, damaged, nearly monosyllabic other half? O’Brien has been vastly underrated for years, but Twinless finally gave him the breakout role(s) he’s long deserved, and the film itself being funny, painful, and continually unpredictable is just icing on a very tasty, if cringe-inducing, cake.
9) Bugonia. Hey, I miss the old (by which I mean young) Emma Stone, too – the one who was such a blast of sunny, naturalistic radiance in Superbad and Easy A and La La Land and the Andrew Garfield Spider-Mans. But it’s hard to bemoan her apparent exodus when the Stone who’s been Yorgos Lanthimos’ muse for seven years is routinely delivering performances of such fearless abandon and ballsiness. Her portrayals in The Favorite, Poor Things, and Kinds of Kindness are exceptional. I’m pretty convinced, though, that the double Oscar winner has never been as exciting on-screen as she is in Bugonia, playing a tightly wound Big Pharma CEO whom Jesse Plemons’ and Aidan Delbis’ kidnapper cousins are convinced is an alien, and whose uncannily serene, cat-and-mouse attempts to free herself suggest that they may be onto something. With their bleakly funny paranoid freakout, Lanthimos and screenwriter Will Tracy keep the mood distinctly unnerving and the laughs deeply unsettling, causing your allegiances to continually shift between victim and victimizers. The finale, meanwhile, is a grand swing for the fences that makes contact, both uproarious and devastating. We’ve come a long way from Superbad, but Stone, in film after film, remains super-good.
10) The Life of Chuck. This is my 31st year-end movie roundup for the Reader, and over the past three decades, I’ve occasionally included among my 10 favorites titles I initially enjoyed yet later grew to love. Writer/director Mike Flanagan’s Stephen King adaptation may be my first top-10 selection that, after a single viewing, I didn’t even like that much. There was certainly a lot to like: the opening third that visualized the most heartbreakingly banal of apocalypses; Tom Hiddleston’s and Annalise Basso’s vivacious mid-film hoofing accompanied by Taylor Gordon’s glorious drumming; the final stretch’s best school dance ever – a 180-degree reversal on King’s prom night in Carrie. But back in June, the thematic triteness modeled on that tiresome We’re All Connected chestnut bothered me enough to consider the work a disappointment, even though the film’s effects lingered enough to keep it freshly in mind. With benefit of a couple additional watches on Hulu, though, I’ve come to adore this thoughtful, tender, beautifully shot celebration of ordinary pleasures that boasts fantastic turns by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Mark Hamill, Mia Sara, 14-year-old tyro Benjamin Pajak, and one-scene wonders David Dastmalchian and Matthew Lillard. The Life of Chuck is my happiest mea culpa of 2025.
Next in Line:
11) Predator: Badlands. Director Dan Trachtenberg delivered delirious, fist-pumping summer-blockbuster fun … in November. By all means, keep enjoying comic-book heroes and Disney reboots. I, meanwhile, will be patiently waiting for a reunion with Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi’s toothy runt and Elle Fanning’s chatterbox half-‘bot. Miraculously, this 38-year franchise gets better with each new entry.
12) Presence. Steven Soderbergh Makes Casual Masterpieces, Part I. I can’t name another fright film in which the “malevolent” being was us, nor one in which the “us” identity was so ticklishly withheld. Screenwriter David Koepp kept tightening the screws, while Soderbergh made unimaginable supernatural horror completely relatable – and weirdly comforting.
13) Black Bag. Steven Soderbegh Makes Casual Masterpieces, Part II. Outside of his Ocean’s 11s, the director doesn’t make sequels. Could he please reconsider for this gorgeously entertaining Spy v. Spy endeavor, with Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett at peak chic? The opening and closing dinner parties alone are enough to demand followups.
14) Nouvelle Vague. Will I wind up in Film Critics Jail for suggesting that this origin story for Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless is more entertaining than the genuine article? If so, it’s a sentence I’m happy to serve, with director Richard Linklater exploring the many charming miracles that led to a New Wave classic.
15) Sketch. To date, I haven’t seen every Angel Studios release, nor every kiddie-horror comedy. I’m still willing to proclaim writer/director Seth Worley’s fiendishly imaginative outing the best of both, a movie so unexpectedly hilarious and legitimately tension-filled that my dropped jaw, over 90 minutes, couldn’t help but form an open-mouthed smile.
16) Companion. Writer/director Drew Hancock’s phenomenally juicy, 21st-century Stepford Wives puts us, uncomfortably, in AI’s corner. Through the unimpeachable Sophie Thatcher, we find ourselves rooting for the theoretically unrootable – reminding us, to borrow a West Wing quote, that there are worse things than not being alive. Like being Jack Quaid’s character.
17) Zootopia 2. I would’ve been perfectly happy had Jared Bush’s and Byron Howard’s sequel simply not sucked. But this was way better than passable, providing twisty plotting, miraculous visual and character-based gags, and an enticing “Will they or won’t they?” romantic development to rival the halcyon days of Sam and Diane. Cheers!
18) Good Boy. A ghost story so affecting I honestly couldn’t talk about it for several days without welling up. That’s partly because Ben Leonberg’s star (and pet!) is so beautifully directed, but also because the terrier’s source of terror was heartbreakingly sad. As a scare flick, this is one thunderously moving tearjerker.
19) If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. Apologies, Timothée, but it’s Rose Byrne who gave the live-wire, exposed-nerve performance of 2025, portraying the ultimate harried mother – and bad-decision poster child – in writer/director Mary Bronstein’s pitch-black comedy. Nervous breakdowns don’t get more exhilarating. Plus, bonus points for the year’s most unexpected acting discovery: Conan O’Brien. (!!!)
20) Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. The least of Rian Johnson’s Benoit Blanc mysteries … and I’ve still returned to it a half-dozen times. Josh O’Connor is the easy MVP, yet adding Josh Brolin, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, and others, this is marvelous whodunit escapism – sensational fun, and ideal background noise while performing other tasks.
10 Runners-Up to the Top 20: Bring Her Back; The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie; Drop; The Friend; Friendship; Hedda; It’s Not Over, Jeff Buckley; Materialists; Sentimental Value; Together.
10 Runners-Up to Those Runners-Up: Death of a Unicorn; Dog Man; Good Fortune; Hamnet; Highest 2 Lowest; John Candy: I Like Me; One of Them Days; The Perfect Neighbor; Roofman; The Shrouds.
10 Unexpected Pleasures: The Alto Knights; Clown in a Cornfield; Eternity; Heart Eyes; The Housemaid; Locked; A Minecraft Movie; The Running Man; Song Sung Blue; The Unbreakable Boy.
10 Unexpected Disappointments: The Ballad of a Small Player; Die My Love; Honey Don’t; A House of Dynamite; Jay Kelly; Kpop Demon Hunters; Marty Supreme; Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning; Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere; Warfare.
10 (Well, 12) Great Performances in Solid-to-Meh Movies: Austin Butler in Caught Stealing; Daniel Day-Lewis in Anemone; Benicio del Toro in The Phoenician Scheme; Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez, and Daniel Radcliffe in Merrily We Roll Along; Dwayne Johnson in The Smashing Machine; David Jonsson in The Long Walk; Josh O’Connor in The History of Sound; Sydney Sweeney in Christy; Emma Thompson in Dead of Winter; Youn Yuh-jung in The Wedding Banquet.
10 Solid-or-Better Sequels, Prequels, Reboots, or Remakes: The Accountant 2; Final Destination: Bloodlines; Frankenstein; The Naked Gun; Paddington in Peru; The Roses; Silent Night, Deadly Night; Spinal Tap II: The End Continues; Superman; The Toxic Avenger.
10 Blah-or-Worse Sequels, Prequels, Reboots, or Remakes: 28 Years Later; Anaconda; Black Phone 2; I Know What You Did Last Summer; Karate Kid: Legends; Kiss of the Spider Woman; M3GAN 2.0; Nobody 2; Snow White; The Strangers: Chapter 2.
10 That Didn’t Deserve Their $100-Million-Plus Domestic: Avatar: Fire & Ash; Captain America: Brave New World; The Conjuring: Last Rites; F1: The Movie; The Fantastic Four: First Steps; Five Nights at Freddy’s 2; How to Train Your Dragon; Jurassic World Rebirth; Thunderbolts*; Wicked: For Good.
One Awesome Movie Ruined by a Lousy Finale: Relay.
One Lousy Movie Redeemed by an Awesome Finale: Ballerina.
One Movie wikth a Supporting Performance (That Would Be Amy Madigan’s) That Makes the Whole Thing Worthwhile: Weapons.
One Movie with Amazing Tech and Music That You Still Forget 10 Minutes After Leaving the Theater: Tron: Ares.
One Genuinely Decent Movie in No Way Worth an On-Set Fatality … Not That Any Movie Ever Would Be … : Rust.
10 That Could Easily Have Been My Least-Favorites of the Year: Dangerous Animals; The Electric State; House on Eden; Love Hurts; Nuremberg; Regretting You; Shadow Force; The Surfer; Until Dawn; A Working Man.
But My Actual 10 Least-Favorites:
10) Ella McCay. As a writer/director of feature films, James L. Brooks should’ve quit while he was ahead. By which I mean 39 years ago.
9) The Senior. A 59-year-old plays football on his alma mater’s team, and the only people who may hate this ridiculously ineffective “inspirational” sports drama more than me are probably those dozens of deserving collegiate players sidelined so Michael Chiklis could get a star vehicle.
8) The Last Rodeo. The Senior for bronco busters.
7) A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell in a personal-growth travelogue winsome and cloying enough to make you wish Memory Lane were forever closed for repairs.
6) After the Hunt. Luca Guadanignio can do anything – inlcluding, apparently, making the worst Woody Allen drama Woody had nothing to do with.
5) Oh. What. Fun. It’s. So. Not.
4) Hurry Up Tomorrow. Tomorrow eventually got here. The Weeknd’s screen success may not be so lucky.
3) The Rule of Jenny Penn. Mayhem and murder in a New Zealand nursing home, with Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow starring in in the most thoroughly unpleasant 100 minutes of 2025. Bugger it all.
2) Flight Risk. Worst actor of the year: Mark Wahlberg. Worst supporting actor: his tongue. Runner-up: his hair.
1) Now You See Me: Now You Don’t. And I wish I never did.
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