This was not an easy list to make. Not because it was difficult to find ten great films released in the United States in 2025, nor because there were more great films released in that time than in other years, although more so the latter than the former. This list was difficult because when it came down to deciding which films would be on the list compared to those which would be either excluded or “honorable mentions” I simply couldn’t.

While part of me always wants to be very strict in my top films list, the way I tend to be with the ratings in my reviews, many of the films on this list are those which include thematic or narrative elements that overcome their other flaws. In one case, a generally enjoyable but unremarkable film is elevated by an agonizingly beautiful ending. In another, ham-fisted drama builds to a stirring message. Neither of these films would be considered “great” and yet they are two of the films that have most stuck in my memory, and likely will for years to come.

In a time where the concept of “art” itself is threatened by a deluge of algorithmically-produced slop and an authoritarian government is increasingly deciding what is and isn’t allowed to be made, it is perhaps more important than ever to cling to and reward creative work which resonates beyond an antiquated fantasy of objective quality. Flawed work – the overlong, the occasionally boring, the amateurish, the melodramatic – reminds us what it’s like to be human. We need to be bored to become excited. We need sadness to appreciate happiness. We need to see the ugly to understand the beautiful. And sometimes, sadly, we need to witness brutality to remember why we must fight.

As always, there are some films which I couldn’t watch. This year these include award contenders that weren’t available (Hamnet, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value) or I don’t feel interest in (Marty Supreme), and some films of personal interest that I didn’t have time to view (Sisu: Road to Revenge, Nuremberg, Father Mother Sister Brother). A couple of these could have made the list – like last year’s Sing Sing – but, alas, I am just one person with two full-time jobs and a current bout of flu. It is especially regretful that I didn’t become aware of Come See Me in the Good Light until recently, as it documents the journey of Andrea Gibson, a friend of many of my friends.

In the end, I decided to devote this list of the top 10 (ish) films of 2025 to those which I feel most speak to this sui generis moment in human history. These are films which speak to our political and social climate, our obligations to community, and the flaws which make us so wonderfully human. These are the 2025 films which I most want to write about and most wish to share with anyone who is willing to read.

Honorable Mentions:

Superman & Fantastic Four: First Steps – A DCU and an MCU film in the same entry!? Blasphemy! Despite coming from the two biggest rivals in the comic book industry, Superman and Fantastic Four: First Steps have a lot in common. Both are attempting to rejuvenate their respective film franchises, with Superman re-launching the DC universe following the disaster of Zach Snyder and First Steps trying to regain the MCU’s momentum following the post-Endgame letdown. Both films alter the tone of their established mythology to better fit that of the characters with the over-the-top optimism of Superman and the retro futurism of First Steps. Both are the best on-screen depictions of their titular characters and represent a more positive view of humanity than recent fare. In Fantastic Four we have the embrace of intelligence and science, but also of compassion and idealism. With Superman we finally have a superhero who is just a good person that wants to do good things. Best of all, both films offer the promise of even better things to come. Personally, I did enjoy First Steps just a little more, but I completely understand anyone who would disagree because, and here’s the main point, it is possible to like both DC and Marvel at the same time. The real world isn’t like comic books, there doesn’t need to be one hero and one villain. Fans can, in fact, enjoy both franchises. And when that happens, we all win.

Besides, DC and Marvel had comic book crossovers for the first time in twenty years. The rivalry is over.

10 – Grand Theft Hamlet

Image: Tull Stories.

With theaters closed in the UK, stage actors Sam Crane and Mark Oosterven decide to pass covid lockdown by staging a production of Hamlet in the video game world of Grand Theft Auto Online. With Sam’s partner, documentary filmmaker Pinny Grylls, the pair round up fellow players ranging from voice artist Jen Chon and television actor Dipo Ola to a literary scholar playing her nephew’s game account and a random player constantly flashing the butt of his bright green alien costume. Together they put on the multi-billion dollar production Shakespeare had always envisioned, including scenes on yachts, on top of a blimp, and with actual ghosts. Though at times contrived and heavy handed, with emotional breakdowns while still using game emotes, what begins as a silly premise deepens into a celebration of small triumphs, no matter how fleeting, and humanity’s desperate need for social interaction and artistic expression. Where AI companies wish to replace humanity with technology, Grand Theft Hamlet enhances technology with humanity.

(also) 10 – Jay Kelly

Image: Netflix.

Considering our current social climate, a film about the loneliness of being a wealthy and influential elder white man shouldn’t work. Yet, between the beautifully filmed landscapes of California and Tuscany, a funny script, and a glorious performance by George Clooney basically playing George Clooney, Noah Baumbach’s latest offers more generosity to its titular character and society in general than every real life billionaire combined. Though never exactly propulsive, and at times dull, Jay Kelly is a highly enjoyable film (with one of the best little kid characters in a long time) until the very end where Clooney delivers the single most devastating closing line since Martin Scorsese in Killers of the Flower Moon. With its themes of regret, isolation, and gratitude, this is a film that, like George Clooney himself, we will only appreciate more as time passes.

(yup, another) 10 – Thunderbolts*

Image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

Yeah, Superman and Fantastic Four: First Steps were both good, but 2025’s best superhero film was also its least super superhero film. Having already been the breakout star of 2021’s Black Widow, the film wisely places Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova at its center, allowing us to see herself, the world, and the rest of the cast through her broken lens. While the film obviously includes many standard MCU elements, both Pugh and the more grounded, cynical tone bring an unexpected freshness to the cliches – the dialog feels fun again, the world is more real, and threat is more authentic (The Void remains one of the most appropriate and terrifying images of the year). Based around the concepts of trauma and redemption, Thunderbolts* shifts away from spectacle and toward introspection, with a climax that’s less a fight than a therapy session. We forget sometimes that the most important universe any hero can save is the one which we experience inside of ourselves.

(and) 10 – No Other Choice

Image: CJ Entertainment.

As a filmmaker, Park Chan-wook has always been wickedly funny. From the brutal absurdity of Oldboy to the karmic satisfaction of The Handmaiden, Park’s films tend to strike just the right balance between humor and shock. Yet none so far may be as funny or as pointed as No Other Choice. Aiming directly at the company culture which still dominates South Korea and much of the world as a whole, Park effectively portrays the fears experienced by so many of us who work industries threatened by shifting social expectations and corporate greed. As Man-su, a lifelong “paper man”, Lee Byung-hun brings a tangible desperation to the role, knowing that there is only one way to preserve everything to which he has dedicated his life. With ineffectual oligarchs already forcing generative A.I. into every facet of our lives, No Other Choice serves as an effective allegory for every person watching what we love, what gives us purpose, be destroyed (along with the environment) so that billionaires can become wealthier. The humorous part is, once every possible employee is gone, we’ll have no other choice but to target the boss.

9 – Frankenstein

Image: Netflix.

As the 21^st Century’s preeminent creator of monster cinema, always capturing the humane within the monstrous, Guillermo Del Toro is perfected suited to adapting Mary Shelley’s classic. Thankfully, and unlike Victor Frankenstein himself, cinema’s resident mad scientist waited for the proper factors – budget, technology, his own skill – to be in place before releasing this creature upon the world. With outstanding performances from Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein wonderfully portrays the paths of both characters as they alter from sympathy to cruelty and back again, finding they can’t exist together nor apart. Gorgeous sets and incredible practical effects make the grotesque images of splayed open bodies become strikingly beautiful, emphasizing the interplay between gothic art and gothic horror. Thematically, Shelley’s novel may never have been more relevant than now, as humanity speeds toward birthing a technology that could literally replace us all. There’s an undeniable resonance in watching the oldest work of science fiction in our modern world of science reality. If only real world Frankensteins were as patient and skilled as Del Toro, they might understand that while creator and creation don’t hate each other, violence between them is inevitable.

8 – Lost in Starlight

Image: Netflix.

In early summer, Netflix released an animated feature based in Seoul, South Korea, which centers around music and focuses on two characters from opposing walks of life. Then one month later Netflix released ­K-Pop Demon Hunters. Yet, being overshadowed by a flashier production seems sadly appropriate for Lost in Starlight (I mean, even the title is prophetic), an unassuming science fiction romance about one person who lost his chance at greatness and another whose greatness could leave her lost. An animation style that beautifully juxtaposes near-future fantasy and retro reality makes Starlight a masterpiece of environmental storytelling, capturing the differing viewpoints of its two characters. Culminating in one of the single most intense sequences of the entire year (one that reminded me of a fear I’ve had my entirely life), Lost in Starlight highlights the transcendental nature of love. Sometimes just knowing that someone loves us, no matter how far away they are or how long we’ve been apart, can be enough to lead us into the light.

7 – On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

Image: A24.

Focusing on a middle class family in Zambia, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl burns like the long trail of a fuse before igniting dynamite. Following the loss of her uncle Freddy, Shula (Susan Chardy) suddenly has to manage the constant demands of family dynamics and social norms while also processing her own feelings toward the deceased. Although touching on such topics as funerary customs, performative grief, gender roles, and class struggle, Guinea Fowl saves its most devastating criticism for those in the family who overlooked years of sexual abuse from the man they’re all now forced to mourn. At times abstract and comedic, Guinea Fowl brutally satirizes humanity’s tendency to deny the worst in those around us, and our assumption that ignoring a problem will make it go away. In the same year that the US Department of Justice decided to shield those investigated for sex trafficking children, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl emphasizes the fact that predators thrive in the silence of their prey. Stop ignoring the worst in people just because it’s personally inconvenient. Listen to the women.

6 – Mickey 17

Image: Warner Bros. Pictures.

Following his international breakthrough with the surprisingly cohesive Parasite, Mickey 17 finds the Bong Joon Ho once again racing wildly between narrative tones like a cinematic juggernaut destroying everything in his path. Often as bleak and it is hilarious, the film has all the subtlety of a shotgun blast to the face, especially when it comes to Mark Ruffalo’s almost too accurate portrayal of a buffoonish, self-obsessed, lascivious dictator with a protruding underbite. Yet, beneath the wild satire, the SF alien mumbo jumbo, Steven Yeun’s gleeful villainy, and everyone going at Robert Pattinson like a prime rib buffet, Mickey 17 wonderfully deconstructs the idea of social hierarchy, examining why certain people are considering important and others disposable. As it becomes more and more obvious that those born into real world wealth view themselves as gods and the rest of us as slaves, Bong reminds us that the upper reaches of society can’t survive without exploiting those beneath. Where No Other Choice implies the fall of social structure, Mickey 17 dances in the rubble.

It’s crazy to think that 2025 gave us scathing satires from both Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon Ho, and neither are nominated for a single Oscar.

5 – Eddington

Image: A24.

Ari Aster films have always been divisive. This division usually comes through his use of elevated horror (Hereditary, Midsommar) or abstraction (Beau is Afraid), but with Eddington Aster sows division on subject matter alone. And that is, of course, the whole point. As a dispute over a mask mandate riles up an old grudge between town sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) and Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), Aster skillfully captures a country so eager to oppose itself that a minor inconvenience becomes an assault on one’s rights becomes an existential threat becomes neighbors literally shooting each other in the street in a climax that is both jarring and entirely foreseeable. Yet beneath this all, Eddington’s most disturbing (and likely divisive) element is the way in which corporate forces – particularly social media and others which thrive on misinformation – manipulate the population for their own gain. Joe is right about one thing: it’s not about choice. It’s about control. Let’s hope that future years make Eddington a farcical over-reaction to the paranoia of a forgotten past, rather than a horrifying portent of our dystopian future.

4 – Bugonia

Image: Focus Features.

Similar to Eddington, Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest film also addresses how media feeds into personal paranoia. However, with Bugonia, we see that these echo chambers are often self-imposed, driving the viewers, listeners, readers, or watchers toward media which confirms our biases and personal mythologies, thus strengthening our resolve to be proven right. Or, more accurately, our absolute refusal to be proven wrong. Powerful performances by Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, along with the sympathetic Aidan Delbis, highlight a tense and layered script (including this year’s biggest vocabulary) which brilliantly offers just enough information that the film itself forces us into the same paranoia and doubt plaguing its characters. Although bleak in his assessment of humanity, Lanthimos keeps the film humorous, and the narrative twists assure that it remains entertaining throughout. Bugonia does such an excellent job at playing with viewer expectation and sympathy that by the end, after everything has been revealed, we’re still not sure what is and isn’t real.

3 – Sinners

Image: Warner Bros. Pictures.

Coming off two successful Black Panther films, director Ryan Coogler’s latest demonstrates a command of the craft that few filmmakers ever achieve. Similarly, Michael B. Jordan has become an absolute force on screen. Sinners is such a richly detailed production, with such a lush look to every frame, that the film itself feels like a living thing. Much like the film’s virtuoso tracking shot through the development of Black American music, Sinners interpolates elements of its myriad influences into a gleefully entertaining celebration of freedom and a testament to singular artistic vision. A machine may be able to copy from previous work, but it takes a real artist to know use those influences to make something feel wildly original. Sinners shows us that music, and art in general, is a uniquely human product, an ever-expanding hive mind that allows us the means to exist far beyond our physical limitations. It’s something that can only be understood through experience. Plus, in 2025, there are few things more satisfying to watch than racists being massacred.

2 – If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

Image: A24.

There is not a single moment of ease in Mary Bronstein’s second directorial offering. The daughter’s constant screaming off-screen; the ceiling hole that seems to grow ever larger; the absentee, gallivanting husband; that hideous thing they call a hamster; the relentless crush of parental and personal and professional and financial responsibilities; the film itself, shot almost entirely in intense close-up on Rose Byrne; and even the title with its implication that any means of fight or escape has been removed, are all meticulously crafted to be as panic-inducing as possible. It’s a two-hour anxiety attack where every word starts an argument, every laugh is an act of self-defense, every step strikes a nerve, and the only reprieve is through habits that slowly result in self-destruction. Yet, impactful as the direction is, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You simply wouldn’t work without the selfless, uncompromised performance of Rose Byrne. As the single face we see for the majority of film, her expressiveness makes even the moments of surreal beauty feel less like placid release than a monster waiting in the dark. Between this and the similar if even more surreal Die My Love, it’s a mystery why anyone would ever choose to have children.

1 – One Battle After Another

Image: Warner Bros. Pictures.

During one of One Battle After Another’s standout moments of political satire, Colonel Steven Lockjaw uses the pretense of an immigration action to have one of his men infiltrate a peaceful protest in order to open fire on American citizens. The scene is brutal, inflammatory, and intended to illustrate Lockjaw’s cruelty and the lengths to which he will go to reassert his power and ego. As portrayed by Sean Penn, Lockjaw is a ridiculous figure pretending at superiority. He’s a hypocrite and a buffoon thrust into a position of power based solely on his birth and complete lack of compassion. Yet delusional and self-satisfied as he is, even Lockjaw knows that he is the villain. And he is perfectly content to play this role as long as it gets him what he wants.

One Battle After Another is a journey into a version of America that is both a hilarious caricature of our paranoid, self-important nonsense and a disturbing recreation of the atrocities which define our history. It’s a film that feels almost too directed at the current moment and yet, with its central duel of washed-up men still fighting a decades’ old war over a single woman, could exist at every moment. At almost three hours long, the film feels epic, fully examining its sprawling themes of institutionalized racism, imagined power structures, hypocrisy, and resistance against oppression. Yet from the gloriously explosive opening to its gorgeously filmed climax, the film never drags, flying along like a well-built machine over a smooth stretch of highway. Its pacing is so perfect that what feels like an epic, all-encompassing indictment of modern America, condenses into a simple, intimate story of fathers and daughters, of broken men trying to find what they think will make them feel whole.

Already one of cinema’s finest modern auteurs, Paul Thomas Anderson uses everything he’s learned over thirty years to create a film so well crafted that its abundant collection of disjointed scenes, outlandish characters, and farcical situations are brought together into a single cohesive narrative. (For the record, I have heard the criticism of the film’s treatment Black women. I believe this is attributed to the characters and not the filmmaker. However, the criticism is valid and worthy of examination.) From dialogue, to cinematography, to performance, to music, every element of filmmaking is working at such a high level the audience recognizes that this an all-time great film long before the it ends because we know that our lives will never be the same once the ends roll.

As I write this, much of America is still reeling from another murder of a non-violent protestor during an immigration action in Minnesota. The action was brutal, inflammatory, and illustrates this government’s cruelty and the lengths to which it will go to reassert its power and its leader’s ego. It is the action of broken men, hypocrites, buffoons, whose own satisfaction is depending upon making others as miserable as themselves. Villains.

The power of One Battle After Another comes in reminding us, those experiencing this current moment, who could have been on that street in Baktan Cross or Minneapolis, that we don’t have to be lambs for their slaughter. That underneath the masks, the body armor, the fake uniforms, the overcompensating assault rifles, men like Lockjaw are sniveling, bratty little cowards pretending at strength. Although not without their own flaws, One Battle After Another captures what happens when people refuse to be oppressed, stand up, and fight back.

Never accept their cruelty.
Never accept their lies.
Never let them beat us down or make us numb.
Never let them murder us without consequences.
Never let them control our lives, our minds, our hearts, or our expression.
Never stop protesting.
Never stop resisting.
Never stop fighting one battle after another.