Every year is a great year for movies if you’re willing to look for them.
Sure, some of the biggest and most celebrated films deserve their acclaim, while many films with microscopic releases, or from disregarded genres, are challenging the art form in ways the big budget blockbusters and pre-ordained awards contenders could never.
In 2025, there were risk-takers that blew our minds. There were four-quadrant wonders that proved you don’t have to lower your standards to appeal to the masses. There were fantastic, even perfect movies that came out in the year 2025.
These were the very best.
15. ‘Boys Go to Jupiter’
A trippy, animated summer haze, “Boys Go to Jupiter” tells the story of Billy 5000, who lives in Florida and does delivery gigs so he can afford to move out of his sister’s house. When one of his gigs takes him to a top secret experimental fruit company, a glowing blob creature stows away in his backpack. Ordinarily, this is where an adventure would begin, but instead, Julian Glander’s sweet, weird little film keeps hanging out, pondering the mysteries that teenagers ponder, overlooking the big picture, and grooving out to spacey, catchy, unforgettable songs. “Boys Go to Jupiter” looks and plays like the best indie video game, the one that only the cool kids are playing, and it’s a marvel.
14. ‘Nouvelle Vague’
We usually think of “geeky movies” as franchise pictures, superhero flicks and sci-fi epics, but the geekiest movie of 2025 was Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague,” an obsessively detailed visit to the French New Wave, where every character is a who’s who of arthouse cinema, and every scene is a specific reference to an amazing film, filmmaker or anecdote. Linklater treats an unexpected trip to the set of Robert Bresson’s “Pickpocket” the same way “The Avengers” treated a visit to the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, and his enthusiasm is infectious.
“Nouvelle Vague” tells the story of Jean-Luc Godard, played by a perpetually be-sunglassed, perfectly cast Guillaume Marbeck, as he makes his Earth-shattering debut feature “Breathless.” Godard assumes he’s a genius, without much evidence to support that claim. Everyone else assumes he’s a pretentious blowhard who’s making it all up as he goes along. It turns out, they were both right.
13. ‘Final Destination Bloodlines’
In my original review of “Final Destination Bloodlines” — the sixth film in a slasher series where the villain is the abstract concept of death — I called it “100% pure cinema.” I am not prone to hyperbole.
The “Final Destination” films are nearly perfect engines of suspense, an existentialist fever dream where people who were supposed to die, or were never supposed to exist, are under constant assault from the universe. Anything could kill them, from a discarded penny to a tiny breeze, and directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein use this oppressive, constant threat to build set pieces that command our attention, and inevitably pay off in spectacular, usually unexpected ways, transforming the latest sequel into the best of the franchise. The scene with a shard of glass in a cup of ice is the scariest thing that happened on a big screen in 2025. Sure, there were smarter and more meaningful movies this year, but none were this demonically riveting.
12. ‘Hedda’
Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 play “Hedda Gabler” is, like “Hamlet,” a hoop through which all theater-lovers must eventually jump. It’s a load-bearing work of art, a vital piece of theatrical history, and in the wrong hands it can feel like homework. Nia DaCosta’s “Hedda” is not homework. It’s a firework. DaCosta’s transcendent adaptation transposes Ibsen’s tragedy to the 1950s, where Tessa Thompson plays Hedda, a society girl who settled down with a professor, because it was her only option. When her ex-lover, Eileen (Nina Hoss), shows up at their Gatsby-esque, light-it-all-on-fire party, Hedda slithers from one room to another, manipulating everyone and everything, destroying lives in a mad, perhaps futile effort to save her own.
Thompson gives an all-timer performance, a powerhouse with depth and complexity and humor and sadism, and DaCosta’s fine supporting cast — especially Nina Hoss — feeds into her energy. Nia DaCosta doesn’t just update “Hedda Gabler,” foregrounding themes of race and queerness that were hidden from Ibsen’s original text. She resurrects it.
11. ‘Eephus’
There’s something magical going on at Omnes Films, a creative collective which produced Tyler Taormino’s enchanting, fascinatingly edited “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” in 2024, and swiftly followed it up with Carson Lund’s profoundly minimal baseball drama “Eephus” this year. Both films take place in small towns, where large groups of people turn tiny moments into important memories, and both capture that rare, ethereal feeling of truly walking in someone else’s shoes. A lot of someones.
“Eephus” takes place at a small-town baseball diamond, where two local teams — comprised of middle-aged dads, not professional players — are saying goodbye. The field is about to be bulldozed, and the next-closest field is just far enough away that they’re not going to bother. So they play, and they can’t help themselves, they just keep playing, long after the lights go out and they can’t see the ball. “Eephus” captures a feeling that none of these guys will ever capture again, and although it tries not to let go, nothing lasts forever.
10. ‘The Testament of Ann Lee’
There were three films this year about the supernatural power of music, and they all have a spot on this list. Mona Fastvold’s “The Testament of Ann Lee” is the most realistic, even with its elaborate impromptu choreography, religious ardor, and dreamlike, storybook quality.
Amanda Seyfried stars as Ann Lee, a woman who converts to the Shakers in the 18th century, and gradually becomes their savior. The men don’t like her whole “vow of chastity” idea, and the other, more popular sects react violently to their belief that confessing sins is a public activity, but her devotion is, well, unshaking. Fastvold realizes “The Testament of Ann Lee” as a proper musical, with bizarre and intoxicating choreography and songs which, both original and timeless, get under your skin. It’s a gorgeous, odd, beautiful achievement.
9. ‘KPop Demon Hunters’
There is, despite protestations to the contrary, no inherent correlation between success and quality, but sometimes mainstream audiences are onto something, and they were right to elevate Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans’ animated crowd-pleaser “KPop Demon Hunters” to its rank as, easily, the most popular movie of 2025.
On the surface it’s just another “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” riff, where a trio of Korean pop stars moonlight as demon hunters, using their musical powers to kick butt and seal off holes to a hell dimension. But “KPop Demon Hunters” immediately finds its own identity, exploring the power of popular music to shape our lives for the better, and worse, and the ease with which good intentions lead to corruption. Rapturously animated, with characters as spirited and alive as any live-action film this year, with a soundtrack that rightly topped the charts. For the record: “Golden” is the epic theme song, but “Soda Pop” is the catchiest bop.
8. ‘Good Boy’
The history of cinema is littered, if you will, by adorable puppers. Rin Tin Tin, Lassie, Benji, heck, let’s cut Cujo some slack since it’s not his fault he got rabies, dogs have been headlining great movies since the early silent era, but few have given a performance as soulful and heartrending as Indy, the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever who stars in Ben Leonberg’s “Good Boy.” Yes, Indy is just a dog, and his performance was stitched together from the best moments the director could capture on camera, but let’s not forget that that’s how every motion picture performance is assembled, so Indy deserves as much credit as anybody.
“Good Boy” is a haunted house story, and like many haunted house stories, the dog can tell something weird is going on before the humans do. But “Good Boy” is told from the perspective of the dog, so we see the terrifying specters Indy sees, and we watch as this poor little dude struggles to process what he’s seeing, and protect his vulnerable owner from harm. It’s a simple but impossibly intense story, and don’t worry, nothing terribly bad to Indy, this isn’t that kind of a film.
But it is the kind of film that explores how vital a connection we have with our pets, and how awful it is when they see us in trouble and don’t know how to help. One of the last lines in “Good Boy” speaks to this connection and it’s so devastating, and so earned, that just thinking about it, even months after I watched the film, makes me want to weep. You’re a good boy, Indy. You’re a very good boy.
7. ‘Wake Up Dead Man’
Rian Johnson broke out in 2005 with his brilliant teen neo-noir murder mystery “Brick,” and apart from a few side-quests into sci-fi, he’s been trying to one-up his whodunnits ever since. His “Knives Out” movies, starring Daniel Craig as the whimsically drawling southern detective Benoit Blanc, have all been wonderful ensemble pieces in the classical Agatha Christie mold, but “Wake Up Dead Man” may be his masterpiece. It’s not just an ingeniously crafted riddle reel, it’s also a rich exploration of contemporary American faith, whose power to heal has been marred, even scarred, by its ties to the political fringe and its conflation with a cult of personality.
Josh O’Connor stars this time around as Rev. Jud Duplenticy, whose latest assignment brings him to a small church ruled with an iron fist by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), whose die-hard followers act like they’re in a cult. Naturally, the Monsignor is murdered and it’s up to Benoit Blanc to solve the crime, but by dragging prime suspect Duplenticy along for the ride, the atheistic detective finds himself freshly challenged. No, he’s not going to start believing in God, but maybe he’ll start believing that religion is more than a boondoggle. Or maybe he’ll expose it all as a con.
“Wake Up Dead Man” takes the framework Johnson has created and pushes it into richer territory. Where “Knives Out” and “Glass Onion” focused on the fallacy of class, the third entry explores the purpose of 21st century religion, and comes to richer and more soulful conclusions than you might expect. And that’s not to mention to fabulous all-star cast and exceptional, twisty-turny plot.
6. ‘Predator: Badlands’
Dan Trachtenberg brought the “Predator” series back to its rough-and-tumble roots with his 2022 prequel “Prey,” but the live-action follow-up — after quick, episodic, animated digression with the mixed-bag “Predator: Killer of Killers — completely reinvents the franchise. Well, from a structural perspective. At its heart these movies have mostly been critiques of violent, toxic masculinity, and “Predator: Badlands” follows suit. It just kicks more ass than usual, with better writing, directing and acting than the often-underwhelming franchise arguably deserved.
Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi stars as Dek, a runty alien Yautje whose father wants him dead, to make an example of his weakness. Dek travels to a hostile alien world to hunt the ultimate prey, and for once it’s not mankind: it’s a giant monster that literally can’t be killed. Along the way he teams up with a Weyland-Yutani android, or rather half an android, played by Elle Fanning, who gives an award-worthy performance in a film that’s destined to be ignore by serious awards.
In many ways “Predator: Badlands” is a typical action picture about a tough guy learning the importance of friendship, but Trachtenberg knows what makes that subgenre work, and he nails it in every possible way. This isn’t just a sci-fi adventure with cool monsters and memorable characters and perfect pacing and unforgettable action sequences. It’s all of those things, granted, but it uses those crowd-pleasing trappings to explore the depths of masculinity and expand its definition, in a healthy way that actually, in every way, kicks more ass.
5. ’28 Years Later’
Danny Boyle’s “28 Years Later” could never have the same artistic or cultural impact that his genre-defining “28 Days Later” had over two decades ago. After all, that bar was set way too high. But maybe it should. Zombie stories surged in popularity after Boyle’s first post-apocalyptic outing and they never went away, so it’s hard to make them feel fresh again (or at least, as fresh rotting corpses can be). “28 Years Later” does the job, nevertheless, and makes it look… well, not “easy.” If it was “easy” anybody could have done it. It makes the job look pretty hard, but yet it flows so organically you might not be conscious of the painstaking effort.
“28 Years Later” frames the zombie apocalypse, now nearly three decades long and localized entirely to the British isles, as a national fable, with as much to say about the British identity as Robin Hood or King Arthur. Boldly intercutting World War I footage with a trek into the undead wilds, the preservation of life and culture in a hostile environment adds depth to the familiar concept, and Alex Garland’s beautiful story only turns more philosophical from there. This isn’t just a journey of a young boy, played by Alfie Williams, to find the last doctor in the country to save his mum. It’s a journey into long-lost spiritualism, after the constant brush with death has robbed the experience of all its profound meaning.
That, and it’s all so magnificently entertaining. Boyle shoots the hell out of this film, crafting larger-than-life mythological figures and landscapes, soaring set pieces, and a conclusion that baffled American audiences but was, to everyone who actually knows who Jimmy Savile was, horrifyingly subversive and controversial. “28 Years Later” is classic, epic filmmaking in a genre originally defined by its cinematic modesty.
4. ‘It Was Just an Accident’
Jafar Panahi is not, legally speaking, allowed to make movies in Iran. That he keeps making movies, on the sly, that are politically defiant and artistically profound is one of the art form’s greatest miracles. His latest, “It Was Just an Accident,” is one of the strangest juggling acts you could possibly see in 2025. That it works at all boggles the mind. That it’s one of the best movies of the year? What can we say, that’s Jafar Panahi for you.
“It Was Just an Accident” stars Vahid Mobasseri as a former political prisoner who, years later, by chance, hears his torturer’s voice. He kidnaps the man, intending to kill him, but he won’t confess, so he tracks down other torture victims in a bizarrely wacky, ongoing road trip. Photographers, newlyweds, everyone eventually piles in the back of his van, with the torturer, debating what the moral thing is to do, struggling with their thirst for revenge, and defying expectations at every turn.
There is no conceivable way that a film which fuses “Death and the Maiden” and “Little Miss Sunshine” should work at all, let alone expose the soul of humanity, but here we are. “It Was Just an Accident.” Yeah, right, as if this kind of genius could have ever happened by chance.
3. ‘Listers: A Glimpse into Extreme Birdwatching’
Yes, you read that title correctly and no, I didn’t make it up. Owen Reiser’s “Listers: A Glimpse into Extreme Birdwatching” is the best documentary of the year, even though it bypassed the festival circuit, theaters and major streamers altogether. You can instead find this incredible road picture in its entirety, for free, on YouTube, and discover what over two million other people have discovered, while the rest of the entertainment industry was looking the other way.
“Listers” is the story of Owen Reiser and his brother Quentin, who fall, on a whim, into the wild world of birdwatching. Every year, birdwatchers compete to see the most birds. As with any subculture there are rules, there are controversies, there’s even lore. With a playful cinematic style and a fantastic sense of humor, the Reisers pack up their car and commit to a solid year of rolling across the continental United States, knowing nothing about birds but picking it up, they assume, along the way.
Lots of great documentaries are about interesting topics, but although “Listers” is about birdwatching, and your mileage might very about how interesting that is, more than anything else it’s about our fascination with being fascinated. Every possible pastime, no matter how pastoral, can lead to obsession. What Reiser’s film does, so beautifully, is expose how easily we can find the beauty in something we didn’t care about two seconds ago, and how quickly it can become our whole personality. And it’s all done with a freewheeling, gonzo flare that makes it one of the year’s most enjoyable watches.
2. ‘Sorry, Baby’
Eva Victor’s directorial debut “Sorry, Baby” is a subdued film by this year’s standards. No demon hunting, musical numbers, or ghosts, just one person struggling, for years, with depression after experiencing a life-altering assault. And somehow, incredibly, it’s very, very funny.
Victor wrote the screenplay and stars as Agnes, who just wants to be an English professor, but whose supervisor does something terrible. As if it couldn’t get worse, he also avoids all consequences, leaving Agnes with no resolution. Everyone Agnes talks to means well, but nobody really gets it, and it takes every iota of dry humor Agnes can muster just to get through a day. By the time they find a kitten, Agnes is so completely drained that all they can do is say, matter of factly, that they guess they’re going to love that cat forever or something.
The tragedy of trauma is easy to overplay, and sometimes that’s what it’s like, but the genius of “Sorry, Baby” is that Eva Victor focuses almost entirely on the smaller moments, where the misery and isolation are omnipresent, and simply have to be dealt with. Everybody means well, nobody else gets it, and making it from one scene to the next is one of life’s greatest victories. “Sorry, Baby” is a wonder.
1. ‘Sinners
Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” wasn’t just the best movie of the year, it was the event of the year. A roaring, furious, passionate inferno of artistic ambition, writ large on a gigantic scale, with every notion we have of identity, of genre, of grand tradition forged into its celluloid. It’s a film about vampire attacking a juke joint in the 1930s. It’s a film about the war for Black identity, and the refusal to be coopted into a White miasma, where all is equal provided it’s under their benevolent, bloodsucking tentpole.
That “Sinners” came from a major studio which is, as we speak, in the process of being sold to either a company that rejects the theatrical process — which “Sinners” was specifically designed to amplify — or a company that’s kowtowing to the same vampires “Sinners” fights tirelessly against, is not what makes the great. Instead it’s emblematic of just how far this film’s greatness resonates. It exists out of time, literally swirling through the past and future, telling a cautionary tale that even its own studio is likely to ignore.
Impeccably crafted, superbly acted, electrifying and glorious, “Sinners” is gigantic cinema, literally and figuratively, and likely one of the most impressive motion picture accomplishments this decade. So you’d better believe it’s the best film of the year.
Honorable Mentions: “Black Bag,” “Deathstalker,” “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle,” “Everything’s Going to be Great,” “Grand Theft Hamlet,” “Heart Eyes,” “Lavender Men,” “Lesbian Space Princess,” “The Long Walk,” “The Luckiest Man in America,” “Materialists,” “No Other Choice,” “The Phoenician Scheme,” “Queen of the Ring,” “Relay,” “Scarlet,” “The Secret Agent,” “She Rides Shotgun,” “Sketch,” “Superman”
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