Best Movies of 2025 (#10 - #1)
Out of 107 new movies I watched in 2025, the ten below represent the best of what the medium can offer this year. Short of going out and experiencing it for yourself, film is the best way to take in the world beyond what you know. “Rebellion” is something easier said than done, but these films offer inspiration to find small ways to rebel in your daily life. Whether it’s something within yourself to change or finding the courage to do something larger, film shows us characters who are willing to take that first step for us.
“Compassion” can be even harder, especially for someone you disagree with. When Luke Skywalker finally confronts Darth Vader in The Return of the Jedi, he throws his lightsaber to the ground and refuses to fight someone he knows still has the capacity to do good. These films prove that by keeping friends and family close you can also find that capacity to love in even the most dire of circumstances.
All art is subjective, but I try with these lists to put together a diverse group of movies that will offer something for everyone. I hope that there’s a film you’re inspired to check out or even revisit from these recommendations. Feel free to reach out and tell me all about how you agree or disagree. Thank you for reading. It was another great year in the audience!
(#10) Black Box Diaries
When a documentary uses the personal to tell a broader experience that others have shared, it’s a reminder of the power of cinema. After journalist Shiori Ito is sexually assaulted by another prominent journalist in Japan, Noriyuki Yamaguchi, she chose to tell her story instead of remaining quiet. The bravery to speak out knowing you’ll be met with retaliation is one thing, but Ito also chose to direct a documentary herself on her fight to bring the truth to light. She hides nothing in Black Box Diaries, which exposes the emotional aftermath of rape so intimately that at one point you can hear Ito’s tear hit a piece of paper she’s reading.
The documentary shows how alone Ito felt during the process of bringing accountability and criminal charges to her assaulter. As Yamaguchi’s connections to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are revealed, the pushback against Ito only grows from official figures who are supposed to look out for her best interests. In Japan, where the norm for reporting these types of crimes is anonymity, Ito is met with as much vitriol as she is support. Thankfully, Black Box Diaries finds many moments of others stepping up to defend Ito’s truth, and offers a chance for Ito to find her own way to heal from this trauma.
#948 on my Favorites List
Now streaming on Paramount+ {TRAILER}
(#9) Sentimental Value
Director Joachim Trier’s last film, The Worst Person in the World, is in my top 50 favorite movies and features my personal all-time favorite screenplay. So to say I was excited for his follow-up would be an understatement. While it doesn’t soar to quite the same impossible heights as its predecessor, Sentimental Value is still the best screenplay of the year.
Renate Reinsve returns to star as Nora, an actress that lives under the legacy of her celebrated director father, Gustav, played by Stellan Skarsgård (Mamma Mia, Andor) in his best film role yet. When Nora passes on a script Gustav wrote specifically for her, he turns to an American film actress played by Elle Fanning (A Complete Unknown, Predator: Badlands) to take on the character instead. In an already stacked cast, newcomer Inga Ibsdotter Lilleas also manages to steal scenes as Nora’s sister who observes more than she acts.
Sentimental Value beautifully illustrates how histories never leave us and the places we’re from. When our families start to get older, as we get older, and the places and things we grow up with and love begin to fade away, I have a feeling Sentimental Value is going to resonate more with each passing year.
#296 on my Favorites List
Available to rent on VOD (Itunes, Amazon, etc.) {TRAILER}
(#8) No Other Choice
Usually if I recommend someone a foreign film to watch, and they haven’t seen many, my go-to is Parasite. Now with No Other Choice, it might have a run for its money. When a husband and father, Yoo Man-soo, loses his high paying job for a specialized position, his affluent family has to wrestle with the idea they might lose everything. He then realizes that there is a small pool of applicants applying for the same roles as him. In order to secure his chances of finding a job to provide for his family, Yoo Man-soo believes there’s only one choice…obviously he has to kill them all - every other applicant.
As Yoo Man-soo carries out his execution attempts, his victims aren’t faceless bodies. Instead we learn about their lives and are forced to sympathize with them as they are at the hands of our protagonist. As the lead, Lee Byung-hun (Squid Game) understands exactly what tone director Park Chan-wook is striving for, and Park directs this thing with such electricity that I found myself shaking my head multiple times in awe at what he was pulling off. Few directors have been able to modernize their styles like Park, even for something so simple as showing texting on screen.
#283 on my Favorites List
In theaters now; streaming/VOD in 2026 {TRAILER}
(#7) Sinners
No movie has given me hope this year like Sinners has. When an original story with an R-rating can make $400 million at the box office, it proves that there’s demand for new stories, not just regurgitated IP slop. Writer/director Ryan Coogler (Black Panther, Creed) delivers popcorn thrills like vampire action and wraps it all in a message of racial inequality and exploitation that has resonated with audiences everywhere. It’s no surprise, as Sinners also has abundant style. From the sweeping cinematography and score all the way down to the intricately coordinated color on the costuming, it feels of its period in 1930s Mississippi and still somehow fresh for 2025.
There’s too many great performances in Sinners to go into detail on any of them: Michael B. Jordan pulling double duty as twins, Delroy Lindo, Hailee Steinfeld, Wunmi Mosaku, Jack O’Connell… They all find the rhythm in what Coogler is putting together. Sinners might not be a straight forward musical, but it’s one of the best movies out there about music. Coogler gets how the mystifying power of music connects us to the past, present, and future. In Sinners’ show-stopping scene, he puts on a literal barn burner that gives me goosebumps just to think of it.
#279 on my Favorites List
Now streaming on HBO Max {TRAILER}
(#6) Avatar: Fire and Ash
You never bet against Big Jim Cameron. With Avatar: Fire and Ash in theaters now, James Cameron is set to become the only director in history to direct 4 movies in a row that gross $1 Billion. Some might argue audiences continue to return to the world of Pandora only for the visual spectacle, and sure the third entry in the franchise brings the conflict to an explosive new finale that’s among the greatest sci-fi action I’ve ever seen on the big screen. But, I argue that those visuals mean nothing if you’re not also invested in the story.
The Sully Family and their never-ending battle with Colonel Quaritch becomes even more complex and intertwined with the fate of the planet in Fire and Ash. The relationships, even as 9ft tall aliens, mirror our own in their grief, their humor, and most of all their love. The performances in the Avatar films have always gone underrated, with Sam Worthington (Jake Sully) and Stephen Lang (Colonel Quaritch) never better than when they play off each other here. The standouts of Fire and Ash though, are the supporting actresses. Zoe Saldaña should have an Oscar for these movies by now. Sigourney Weaver is unrecognizable as the teenage Kiri, but it’s Oona Chaplin’s turn as the villainous cult-leader Varang that steals the show.
Counter to other films this year that encourage compassion in the face of an unstoppable evil, Cameron is positing that sometimes you need to fight back and defend your home when the other side won’t fight fair. Avatar fatigue is a myth, but Post-Avatar-Depression might be very real. I think we all need to go see it five more times in theaters just to make sure we don’t have that.
#56 on my Favorites List
In theaters now; streaming/VOD in 2026 {TRAILER}
(#5) The Secret Agent
The Secret Agent isn’t quite what its title might suggest. That name implies grand espionage, clever heists, and elaborate set pieces. Director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film has much smaller stakes than that, which he makes feel just as epic. Set during Carnival in 1977, on the backdrop of Brazil’s dictatorship, a former scientist, Armando, flees to a coastal town for unknown reasons. Once there, he finds himself at the mercy of an older woman who provides shelter to himself and other political refugees. While working undercover at the region’s ID registration archive, Armando searches for the last physical proof he has of his deceased mother, whom he has little memory of.
Intercut with the ‘77 narrative, we’re given glimpses of two students in the modern day who are researching Armando’s story. The Secret Agent speaks to histories lost to fascist regimes and how they can be recovered by those who carry on legacies. Wagner Moura’s (Narcos, Civil War) performance as Armando carries that history on his face, exacerbated by the toll of having to flee the only life he’s known.
For such a tense story, Mendonça Filho fills the frame with vibrant colors and beautiful actors. Not always in the literal sense, but he’s cast actors who have realistic presences. He also throws a million B-genre tricks at the wall, and somehow they all stick, cooking up a melting pot of style that’s wholly unique. The Secret Agent is a sweaty movie: the walls drip with humidity; actors are constantly drenched in perspiration; and by the end of it you’ll likely be sweating too.
#326 on my Favorites List
In theaters now; streaming/VOD in 2026 {TRAILER}
(#4) Hamnet
Chloé Zhao has managed to pull the Earth onto the screen with Hamnet and make it tangible - something you can feel. We all come from the dirt, and everything about us that makes us unique as an individual was once part of a greater whole. I’ve never seen a film visually represent that more powerfully than what Zhao does in the telling of William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes reckoning with the loss of their child.
Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter, Wild Rose) holds the film together as Agnes, with a raw intensity that’s one of the best portrayals of grief I’ve seen. The biggest surprise, however, is 12-year-old Jacobi Jupe as the child, Hamnet, who gives a performance beyond his years in maturity and skill. Paul Mescal (Aftersun, Gladiator II) has also been consistently great in his projects, and continues to shine as a Shakespeare in turmoil, struggling to balance his family obligations and desire to share his emotions through his art.
Hamnet touchingly blurs the lines between performance and reality. As Agnes watches the play Shakespeare has written them, it unlocks the part of herself that was closed off to these feelings. Hamnet is primal - in its emotions, its performances, its design… It makes you feel because its feelings are something we have been wrestling with since humans first learned to create both art and life.
#393 on my Favorites List
In theaters now; streaming/VOD in 2026 {TRAILER}
(#3) Marty Supreme
Fair or not to a professional critique of Marty Supreme, I went into the theater with impossibly high expectations for Timothée Chalamet. When you talk the talk like he does, then you need to be able to walk the walk. Turns out Timothée Chalamet doesn’t know how to walk, he only runs.
In what is by far the best performance of the year, Chalamet leaves it all on the field for what will be a generation-defining role that people will probably talk about in 50 years like they do with Pacino in the 70s. It’s that good. He makes it impossible to separate the performance from the performer, because Chalamet has openly talked about how he shares the same aspirations for greatness as his character, like in his motivational SAG acceptance speech.
From the moment Chalamet’s character, Marty Mauser, was conceived, he’s been a winner. Marty hustles his way through life in pursuit of only one thing: to be the greatest table tennis player in the world. The entire film is Marty in one gear, mostly at the expense of others, driving forward towards his goal of getting to the International Championship in Tokyo. He screws over his friends and family however he can to achieve his personal journey. Director Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems) mirrors the non-stop pursuit of greatness with a barrage of quick cuts and fast dialogue that never slows down. Marty Supreme stressed my whole family out when we saw it on Christmas Day, and isn’t that really in the true spirit of the holidays?
#125 on my Favorites List
In theaters now; streaming/VOD in 2026 {TRAILER}
(#2) One Battle After Another
The revolution will not be televised; it will be in glorious 70mm VistaVision. One Battle After Another is an easy pick for one of the best films of the year, because it’s an instant new American classic. Director Paul Thomas Anderson (AKA PTA) probably has two or three of those already (There Will Be Blood, The Master, Boogie Nights), but no film this year captures the current zeitgeist, melding it with humor and propulsive action, like One Battle After Another.
The film opens with an extended prologue, depicting exploits of the revolutionary group The French 75, in particular “Ghetto Pat” played by Leonardo DiCaprio (Wolf of Wall Street, The Revenant) and “Perfidia Beverly Hills” played by Teyana Taylor (A Thousand and One). Their work placing bombs in the offices of ultra-conservative judges and breaking migrants out of detention centers crosses their paths one too many times with Colonel Steve Lockjaw, played by a deliciously evil Sean Penn (Milk, Mystic River). After a 16-year time jump, PTA throws us into a vaguely futuristic time where circumstances have only gotten worse.
Colonel Lockjaw has risen in power, and in order to tie up loose ends from his past before he can be admitted to a secret white-nationalist society, he needs Pat and Perfidia’s daughter, Willa. In the breakthrough performance of the year, Chase Infiniti embodies the message of One Battle After Another perfectly in Willa - that the determination of the next generation might be our saving grace. Leonardo DiCaprio gives one of his best performances yet, if only for how little he actually does in this movie. Pat stumbles and fails to rescue his daughter at every turn, with Leo teaching a masterclass in physical comedy, but he shows up for his daughter when it matters most.
With the support of Benicio Del Toro’s (Sicario, The Usual Suspects) Sensei Sergio (the coolest calmest character since The Dude), PTA reminds us and Pat that it should all be “ocean waves”. This fight against facism is nothing new, so now is time for us to step up and do our part to stand up against its rising tide as people have done time and time again.
#262 on my Favorites List
Now streaming on HBO Max {TRAILER}
(#1) No Other Land
I first saw No Other Land in February 2025, and it has remained at the top of my Best of the Year list ever since. Having already won Best Documentary at the 2025 Oscars, it still feels as though this one is going criminally unseen. I’m hoping to rectify that today. Following Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist, and Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist, this documentary charts years in their relationship as they work to shed light on the horrors that are being committed through the destruction of Basel’s home in Masafer Yatta at the heart of the West Bank.
Masafer Yatta is under constant threat by both the IDF who use “executive orders” to tear down family homes in the area and settlers who continue to encroach and provoke violence in an attempt to cause the Palestinians to flee. As the years pass, we see Basel slip into depression at the apparent hopelessness of the situation, only to constantly find a spark of rebellion again when his community comes together.
The layers between these figures in No Other Land feel generations deep, because they are. Using decades of footage, the film draws striking comparisons between Basel and his father, who has been in this fight since Basel was young. Basel and Yuval’s relationship to each other, their homes, and to filmmaking inspire complex thoughts about the fight for freedom in Palestine and how it’s documented for foreigners to receive. In the most stunning scene of the year, a secondary documentary crew comes to Masafer Yatta to film a young man who has been paralyzed after a shooting by the IDF. The man’s mother states that other western documentary crews have come before, and still nothing has changed.
Just weeks after No Other Land won its Oscar, Israel broke the ceasefire agreement and resumed attacks on Gaza. Nothing has changed, but it needs to, and films like this are the spark that can light the fire.
#341 on my Favorites List
Available to rent on VOD (Itunes, Amazon, etc.) {TRAILER}
