On 2025
It’s been a rough year in almost every way. A good thing that happened was movies. So many good movies! Seriously, great year for good film, and by extension, people who like good film. It’s one of the many things I find myself enormously thankful for, the ability to enjoy the things I love, and share them with my loved ones. With that in mind, I wanted to share some thoughts about my favorite movies of the year once more.
I feel the need to clarify, before you yell, these are my personal favorites. This is my list. Write your own.
ON MY WATCHLIST
Movies I am dying to see but haven´t because I can´t or I just haven´t got around to watching for one reason or another.
- Arco (Ugo Bienvenu)
- Ballerina (Len Wiseman)
- Blue Moon (Richard Linklater)
- Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos)
- Die, My Love (Lynne Ramsey)
- F1 (Joseph Kosinski)
- Hamnet (Chloé Zhao)
- Hedda (Nia DaCosta)
- A House Of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow)
- If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein)
- It Was Just An Accident/ ک تصادف ساده (Jafar Panahi)
- Jay Kelly (Noah Baumbach)
- Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie)
- The Naked Gun (Akiva Schaffer)
- No Other Choice/ 어쩔수가없다 (Park Chan-Wook)
- The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson)
- Rental Family (Hikari)
- Sirāt (Óliver Laxe)
- The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendoça Filho)
- Sentimental Value (Joaquim Trier)
- The Smashing Machine (Benny Safdie)
- Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor)
- The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvold)
- Train Dream (Clint Bentley)
HONORABLE MENTIONS
- Avatar: Fire and Ash (James Cameron): Absolutely incredible visuals and action, great acting…but a loooot of repeated beats from the previous installments.
- Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires (Juan Jose Meza-Leon): Just…cool as shit.
- Caught Stealing (Darren Aronofsky): A really fun movie, unexpectedly so.
- Eddington (Ari Aster): A very upsetting, rough movie that kept me on the edge of my seat.
- The Fantastic Four: First Steps (Matt Shakman): My favorite MCU release of the year, a simple, straightforward movie set in a very stylish, good-looking world.
- Final Destination: Bloodlines (Zach Lipovsky, Adam B. Stein): Wayyyy too much dumb fun not to include here.
- Highest 2 Lowest (Spike Lee): A perfectly good Kurosawa remake, which is no small feat in and of itself, but also undeniably a Spike Lee joint.
- KPop Demon Hunters (Maggie Kang and Chris Applehans): An undeniable bop from start to finish. I’ve downloaded the soundtrack.
- The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt): Really great. Might need some time to process.
- Mickey 17 (Bong Joon-Ho): A Bong film through and through, very funny and impeccably made.
- Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (Christopher McQuarrie): Tom Cruise delivers two of the best action sequences of the franchise, but they’re surrounded by franchise nostalgia that weighs the film down.
- The Monkey (Osgood Perkins): Just an absolutely bananas piece of film. What an amazing time, though.
- Ne Zha 2 (Jiaozi): An undeniable smash hit, and a more than deserving one.
- Thunderbolts* (Jake Schreier): The best-looking MCU release of the year, a very thoughtful piece on depression and dread.
- Together (Michael Shanks): A really good visual effects proof of concept and great central performances, but not much else.
- Wicked: For Good (Jon M. Chu): An immensely spectacular conclusion that fixes a lot of things, but not enough.
THE LIST
FRANKENSTEIN
Dir. Guillermo del Toro
Despite the fact that I by no means believe this to be his best movie, or even the best movie of the year, I cannot help but have a soft spot for GDT and an even softer spot for any filmmaker getting to do a lifetime dream project, a film that is so evidently a culmination of work, life experience, and passion. Frankenstein might be my favorite movie of the year, not just because of the incredible production value, not just because of the amazing costumes and makeup, not just because of a delightfully evil Oscar Isaac, or a fantastically melancholy Mia Goth, or a scene-stealing, career-defining performance by Jacob Elordi. It’s my favorite movie of the year simply because I get to see a director reaching full-circle status in real-time behind the camera and on the screen, putting to film ideas, images, and scenes he has dreamt with for decades. Frankenstein is a work that fells very personal, and feels like Del Toro using everything he has learned to bring this dream to life.. This might be why there is a small sense of déjà vu about it, but who cares? It’s beautiful anyway.
SINNERS
Dir. Ryan Coogler
Ryan Coogler’s horror/ western/ musical Sinners is a resounding triumph and a testament to the value of originality in modern cinema, a four-quadrant crowd-pleaser that’s also a powerful, intimate, emotional story. It works as a straightforward cinematic experience and as an incredibly profound, transformative piece. It features some of the best cinematography, score, ensemble performances, and writing of the whole year. Put simply, this film just has sauce. This is just an all-around home run any way you slice it, and might just be the film with the most potential for longevity out of the year.
SUPERMAN
Dir. James Gunn
2025’s Superman is a bold, declarative œuvre of for James Gunn’s DC Universe, a project that will apparently be guided by passion, by good faith, and by Gunn’s own taste, which is hard to decry considering his clear love for the source material and his undeniable expertise at navigating this genre and his own take on it. This results in a DC Universe that feels fully formed, and a Superman that feels true to everything that is essential to the character. What I loved about this film is precisely that: it’s a film and a character that refuse to be anything other than earnest and sincere at a moment where the world turns ever so much toward cynicism and anger. Corenswet, Brosnahan, and Hoult feel like the definitive modern versions of their characters immediately in a way that is as much a testament to writing and direction as performance. At the end of the day, Superman means so much to me, and this movie felt like something I have been waiting for my whole life.
Presence has a premise that sounds goofy, and so many things could have gone wrong, but Soderbergh nailed every single small element of this with the dexterity of a veteran. The film absolutely works in its slow-burn, quietly devastating way, a tragic, haunting study of lingering pain and undying love, all with a deceitfully gimmicky POV-style camera that never feels like it wears out its welcome and worms its way into the film’s visual narrative. The movie works just as well without the titular Presence as a well-performed portrait of a family collapsing as grief hangs in the house’s atmosphere, which is perhaps the most impressive thing about it.
28 YEARS LATER
Dir. Danny Boyle
What a goddamn picture. This movie could not have been a bigger shock to my system, a film that shook me in ways I did not expect. This felt less like a sequel to 28 Days Later or its 2007 follow-up and more its own weird, bold, coming-of-age/ horror hybrid with absolutely devastating gut punch turns that caught me off-balance to teary-eyed, slack-jawed effect. Ralph Fiennes plays what is probably my favorite performance of the year in Ian Kelson, a doctor that is vastly more than what his eccentric appearance and demeanor suggest. Also, the cinematography? SPECTACULAR. I don’t normally enjoy Alex Garland, but his writing and Boyle’s direction (which is among his most effective work, up there with Steve Jobs) create something timeless in ways few films achieved this year. Cannot wait for the follow up now.
MATERIALISTS
Dir. Celine Song
Yet another surprise for me, especially as someone who isn’t crazy about rom-coms, Celine Song’s sophomore effort feels terribly clever and complex and insightful in ways that can be read so many ways. The conceit of the movie, a rom-com that is set in our real world, with real concerns and real stakes, works as cliché-filled storytelling where the clichés are weaponized as launching pads for insightful commentary, as a happy-ending fairytale that can be read as poetically or as pessimistically as the viewer wants. Characters that would normally be one-dimensional and archetypal or walking, talking punchlines are treated with empathy as human beings who walk around a world in which they feel fundamentally broken, unlovable, or doomed. The movie is elegant, intelligent, and graceful.
BRING HER BACK
Dir. Danny and Michael Philippou
After Talk To Me, I was certainly anxious to watch the Philippous’ follow up to their 2022 debut. And to be honest, Bring Her Back absolutely floored me. The film itself is a lot more thoughtful and mature than one would expect from low-budget horror, but there’s so much patience and trust in the audience, an expert touch in the sense of balance between upsetting gore and heart-rending sorrow, in the balance between unhinged pain and quiet melancholy. Sally Hawkins delivers one of the more interesting performances of the year, a study the downward spiral into selfish cruelty in the service of desperation. And that kid is definitely one of the most talented ted kid actors in horror history, right?
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER
Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
The strongest contender for Movie Of The Year at the moment and probably one of the only times I’ll agree with any award shows that grants this Best Picture and Best Director. As with any PTA joint, this is just an enormously deliberate film, carefully constructed in every way a film can be, from cinematography to score to goddamn sound design. There so much to chew on, so many wonderfully quirky details paired with some great PTA insights on individualism, revolution, anger and gratification, fascist authoritarianism, and communitary resistance. Leo might have just won a well-deserved second Oscar here in one of his more fun roles in recent years, but he’s enormously overshadowed by an ensemble of actors at the top of their game that includes Teyana Taylor, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, and the best possible introduction for Chase Infiniti. I’d posit that that road chase in the climax is the best-filmed sequence of the year. One Battle After Another is one of those films that makes you grateful for cinema.
The Knives Out films have very quickly become one of my favorite things to look forward to, as they have rapidly carved out their own place in modern cinema as vehicles for Rian Johnson’s personal filmmaking instincts and his obvious sense of earnest political activism. The latest installment of the series, Wake Up Dead Man, proves that they have limitless potential and room to continuously change what they can even be. Despite its pointed portrayal of incompetent tech billionaires and sycophantic yes people, Glass Onion had a ton of issues: it was kinda glib, chronically on Twitter, and hugely dated almost immediately. This new one, however? Benoit Blanc feels a little less like a cartoon and a little more like a real guy with real pet peeves and real drives. There’s something unexpectedly poignant, enormously resonant, and thoughtful about human nature as it relates to faith, whether to God or to people we choose to follow, which makes it timeless. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still very over-the-top, but there’s something more relatable to it. It doesn’t hurt that it features some of my favorite camerawork of the year, a truly amazing church set, the return of Craig in what is obviously a better role for him than Bond ever was, and a commanding, humble performance by Josh O’Connor in one of the better-written characters of 2025 pop culture.
WEAPONS
Dir. Zach Cregger
If I’m totally honest, I do think that discourse around this movie got wildly, disproportionately out of hand in therms of critical gamesmanship, one-up contests of praise. However, it’s impossible to deny the appeal of Zach Cregger’s Weapons, an allegory wrapped in dense layers of style and twisty narrative. I did feel ahead of the movie a couple of times, which is not great for a tense mystery yarn, but I had a hell of a time with it. It’s very outlandish and funny, mixed with the odd moments of real, tangible pain and confusion by the townspeople suddenly robbed of their children. That ending was so great, though, funny and haunting in equal measures.
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