Amanda Seyfried in The Testament of Ann Lee. Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2025 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
Here we are again, wrapping gifts and wrapping up another year of cinema. As has been the case for the past few years, I feel it’s been an embarrassment of riches for us movie enthusiasts. My favorite films this year tended to be what I thought of as high-wire acts: films which boldly mixed genres, tones, and themes, creating delicious and often groundbreaking combinations. These directors cooked, as the kids would say. (Sidebar: is your early 30s still too early to be saying “as the kids would say”?)
10. The Life of Chuck (directed by Mike Flanagan, rated R)
The Life of Chuck is one of a handful of movies I didn’t think was top-ten material when I first saw it, but which I decided to revisit toward the end of the year. In the cases of Chuck and Boys Go to Jupiter (which would be around number 12 for me), I learned a very important lesson in keeping an open mind. Adapting a Stephen King short story, Mike Flanagan explores why we pursue happiness even when we understand the possibility of tragedy. This is done in a non-linear structure through the prism of Charles Krantz (Tom Hiddleston plays adult Chuck; Benjamin Pajak plays middle-school Chuck), a man whose family history informs a rich inner life. As the film lovingly lifts from Walt Whitman, Chuck contains multitudes, and we’re introduced to his inner multitudes first in the film’s most abstract passage, where versions of people we actually meet later populate Chuck’s mind as he faces a tragic fate. The film’s second act is what most of its marketing was built around, and for good reason. Chuck dancing in the street with Janice (Annalise Basso) is my favorite dance sequence in a non-musical movie in many, many years. All of it is joyous without being overly precious. The film hits so many sweet spots without feeling saccharine.
(Now streaming on Hulu and available on several video-on-demand platforms)
9. Sinners (directed by Ryan Coogler, rated R)
For a long while, Sinners seemed like the consensus film of the year, and for good reason. Ryan Coogler’s mix of indie and comic-book genre experience serves him well in bringing his incredibly original genre mashup to life. Coogler uses literal vampirism as a metaphor for cultural vampirism, and it works beautifully. Two brothers known as Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) return home from working for Al Capone and are setting up a juke joint in 1930s Mississippi when outside forces (both supernatural and plain old racist) threaten to literally suck the blood out of the entire endeavor. The film is full of beautiful images, beautiful blues music, and genuine scares, along with several of the best editing choices of the year. It’s one of those films that it’s hard to find anything new to say about, and that’s a very good thing. It’s fantastic that audiences around the world have engaged so deeply with this bold and important material, especially in a genre context. Both the fun and the intelligence of the film speak for themselves and have continued to do so since April. Sinners will go down as one of a few high water marks of the decade-plus horror renaissance of the 2010s and 2020s. If you haven’t seen it yet, I implore you to catch up with it and see why the key musical scene everyone’s talking about will leave you breathless.
(Now streaming on HBO Max and available on several video-on-demand platforms)
8. It Was Just an Accident (directed by Jafar Panahi, rated R)
Jafar Panahi’s Palme D’Or-winning thriller It Was Just an Accident transcends the typical boundaries of evaluating it as a film unto itself, or at least it does for me. Many of Panahi’s meta-documentaries do so as well, but here he returns to straightforward narrative storytelling with tremendous results. Panahi is a legendary Iranian filmmaker who has had several run-ins with the regime for his unvarnished portraits of his country. Currently, if he were to set foot back on Iranian soil, he would be arrested. Like many of his films, he made Accident in secret, and despite its title, everything in it feels intentional. What blows me away is how it feels very planned but also very spontaneous in its narrative trajectory, even without that meta element Panahi is known for. It’s very clearly inspired by the feelings Panahi experienced while being imprisoned. When Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) finds who he believes to be one of his torturers from his time in an Iranian prison, he impulsively captures him, knocks him out, and checks with others from his time in prison to try to make sure he has the right man. What follows is a morally punishing trip to the dark side of the soul, desperately searching for revenge despite possible impending consequences. The climax of this film is one of the best scenes of the year, and also perhaps the most vitally important to our shared humanity.
(In Farsi with English subtitles, available on several video-on-demand platforms)
7. Hedda (directed by Nia DaCosta, rated R)
Adapting the classics is always tricky, but Nia DaCosta made it look easy with her very LGBTQ update of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. DaCosta has been one of my favorite filmmakers for a while, ever since her thrilling and important debut Little Woods, which, like Hedda, features Tessa Thompson in an unforgettable leading performance. Thompson’s Hedda is just as simultaneously mysterious and transparent as the character ever has been on the page, stage, or screen. Her energy matches the world of the film around her: a beautiful art-deco nightmare which seems inviting, but has snakes and sharks around every corner. Nina Hoss’ Eileen Lövborg (a gender-swap of the play’s male Eilert) perhaps experiences more of the sharks than anyone as she steps so boldly out into the male-dominated world of academia. In DaCosta’s reincarnation, the story becomes an examination of how far the promise of “respect” goes in today’s society as well as the time in which the film is set. The triumvirate of female leads (including Imogen Poots as Thea) is as unforgettable an acting trio as you’re liable to find from 2025, and the film itself proves that the theatre will never die as long as ultra-talented people like DaCosta are allowed to refresh its staples for a wide audience. I can’t wait to see her next film, 28 Days Later: The Bone Temple, in just a few weeks! DaCosta’s range never ceases to amaze me.
(Now streaming on Amazon Prime Video)
6. Sorry, Baby (directed by Eva Victor, rated R)
Though there are five 2025 films I love just ever so slightly more, I don’t know that I’d describe any of them as braver than Sorry, Baby. Debut director Eva Victor adapts their own real-life story of a sexual assault committed against them in college, and somehow goes above and beyond that by making one of the most heartfelt, thought-provoking, delicately handled, and surprisingly funniest movies of the year. I love the way this movie moves; very few films make better use of a non-linear structure in my opinion. Victor plays Agnes, who is not a 1-to-1 version of herself, but who, in addition to the assault (which the film refers to as “the bad thing”), contemplates what Victor as a person and filmmaker is clearly contemplating. Friendship, relationships, long-term commitment, and fulfillment are all interrogated here, but in such a gentle way that I found the film genuinely revolutionary. It also feels revolutionary in the way it depicts the assault, which is blessedly non-graphic but still gets across the requisite emotional severity. As Agnes discovers more and more grace in her life, the film blossoms into more than just a great character study. It’s a study of how we talk about these issues, and a hopeful plea for a better way forward.
(Now streaming on HBO Max and available on several video-on-demand platforms)
5. One Battle After Another (directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, rated R)
Similarly to Sinners, I’m wondering what can be said about Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another that hasn’t already been said. I’ll try my best regardless. It’s a real blessing that one of our very best filmmakers made a true epic which reminds those of us who are paying attention to everything happening in this crazy world that we are not alone. More than that, he made something which feels anti-fascist in its very ethos, and yet so brilliantly entertaining that it never feels like a polemic. It’s about good people doing what might be the most important thing right now: surviving. Of course ex-revolutionary Pat, a.k.a. Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) does most of the pure surviving in this movie, as opposed to all the people and forces around him fighting to hold on to what rights and freedoms remain, but the film itself wouldn’t be complete without the completion of his and his daughter Willa’s (Chase Infiniti) emotional arc. The person who kicks that arc off, Willa’s mother Perfidia (Teyana Taylor) is one of the most memorable movie characters of this or any year, despite only appearing in what is basically the prologue of the film. But hey, it’s a pretty damn good prologue. Everything else in the film is damn good as well, led by the assured, experienced voice of Anderson, whose singular vision is only matched by his collaborative skills. One of the best scenes in the movie (in a movie with a lot of best scene candidates) was partly the brainchild of Benicio Del Toro, who has rightfully emerged as a dark horse Oscar contender. Del Toro plays Sergio, Willa’s karate instructor and a leader in his community. The scene in question features Sergio leading a bewildered Bob through a series of apartment buildings as he both gets Bob ready to face the foes he’s about to face and prepares his own compatriots to flee an immigration raid. Somehow, Del Toro and Anderson made that sequence deathly serious and hysterically funny all at once. They must have been tapped into the equilibrium-inducing vibes of Sergio’s constant refrain: “ocean waves.”
(Now streaming on HBO Max and available on several video-on-demand platforms)
4. Weapons (directed by Zach Cregger, rated R)
Weapons marks my favorite collection of theater experiences this year. I ended up seeing it four times in theaters, and each time, it was delirious fun to see and hear the crowd react to its hilarious twists, jump-worthy turns, and incredible ending. Like a lot of films on my list this year, Weapons flits nimbly between genres, at times a very strong drama, at times an uproarious romp of a comedy, but always a boundary-pushing horror film. The ensemble cast all carry their own parts of this unique tone as the film’s Magnolia-like structure winds to the aforementioned brilliant ending. I can truly say I’ve never seen anything like Weapons before, and I don’t think anyone had seen anything quite like Gladys (Amy Madigan), who easily became the most iconic new horror character of the year. Madigan’s performance is kind of the personification of the film itself, balanced on the delicate and delicious precipice of horror and comedy and the perfect combination of both. From a thematic perspective, the thing which cements all of these elements together is director Zach Cregger’s eye towards real school safety situations beyond the fictional one he sets up. Our leads (outside of Gladys) respond as realistically as they can within the film’s unique tone, and that anguish and confusion is the canvas upon which Cregger paints a personal exploration of the topic without sacrificing some of the most go-ahead entertaining storytelling of the year.
(Now streaming on HBO Max and available on several video-on-demand platforms)
3. Marty Supreme (directed by Josh Safdie, rated R)
Perhaps the best sports movie in a generation and easily the best table tennis movie ever made, Marty Supreme surges with the passion and recklessness of its main character, Marty Mauser (Timotheé Chalamet). Mauser is very loosely inspired by the life of Marty Reisman, an iconoclastic table tennis legend who was active throughout the 20th century. Not everything you’ll see in Marty Supreme really happened, but a fair enough amount of it did to make it interesting even beyond how engaging it is as a piece of fictionalized storytelling. Marty has one goal: to beat his Japanese rival. This goal comes at the expense of all other relationships and obligations in his life, and the stakes of the rematch he wants are hilariously downgraded over the course of the film due to his sheer dumb pride. The Safdie brothers (Josh and Benny) previously directed Uncut Gems, which has a similarly tense, almost panic-inducing tone. While Marty Supreme is only slightly more subdued, it also stands apart from Gems in being an excellent 1950s period piece. The film is just as iconoclastic as its main character, with unexpected but somehow totally fitting needle drops and a wild opening credits sequence to rival that of Gems (if you know, you know). Whatever we think of his style during this particular Oscar campaign, Chalamet is totally deserving of recognition here. As well-made as the film is, I can’t imagine anyone else carrying it like he does. There’s this strangely casual streak to his frantic energy which completely matches the tone Josh Safdie is going for. The film is a total rush from start to finish, a shot of adrenaline which actually leads the audience to a strong and intelligent conclusion.
(Currently in theaters nationwide)
2. Sentimental Value (directed by Joachim Trier, rated R)
We go from the rush of something like Marty to something much more novelistic with Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value. In fairness, I’ve heard the word “novelistic” applied to this film so often that it’s starting to irritate me a little bit, because the visuals here are so vitally important and should not be overlooked. Crucially, the filmmakers found the perfect house for this particular story, which follows stage actress Nora (Renate Reinsve) and her film-director father Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård) as Gustav returns to the family home to direct a very personal film. This is partly as a means to try to patch things up with Nora, with whom he has a very troubled relationship, to say the least. The way the home is photographed actually informs the fault lines in their relationship. At the start of the film, they can’t get through one conversation without things blowing up beyond control, and the home, with its many corners and crevices, becomes our safe place, even though it does hold a fair amount of this tension within its storied walls. Reinsve and Skarsgård are phenomenal, but I would be remiss in not mentioning Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas as Agnes, Nora’s sister, and Elle Fanning as Rachel, the film star Gustav casts in the part he initially wrote for Nora. The four of them see the conflict from unique perspectives, and the way the film builds to moments of quiet catharsis between them is unforgettably poetic.
(In Norwegian and English with English subtitles, available on several video-on-demand platforms)
1. The Testament of Ann Lee (directed by Mona Fastvold, rated R)
To my mind, the biggest tragedy of this movie year isn’t the impending sale of Warner Brothers, but the near-complete snubbing of The Testament of Ann Lee in the Oscar race. The fact that Ann Lee missed out on every single below-the-line shortlist (although Amanda Seyfried will still likely be nominated for Best Actress) is blasphemy, and I don’t say that just because this is a film about religion. Regardless, Testament is a triumph. It’s one of a handful of modern musicals among my favorite films this year, though some of its music may not feel that modern, as much of it was adapted from Shaker hymns. It does what musicals should do, in that the songs inform the tone and emotions of the piece. As we follow Ann Lee (Seyfried) through the harrowing experience of losing four children, and then eventually becoming the unquestioned leader of the Shaker movement, director Mona Fastvold and composer Daniel Blumberg apply an unwavering humanism to the proceedings. Somehow they manage to frame these real events through a modern lens and with modern musical techniques without losing the sense that we have been transported to the pre-Revolutionary War days. As Ann and her followers journey from England to America, they find that the promises of religious freedom aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. It’s not hard to see what Fastvold and her tremendous cast and crew are getting at: the notion of God-given rights; the narcissism of small difference; the chaos of culture clash that has been with us in America from the very beginning. This is a complex tapestry woven on an unforgettable score, and carried by the singularly astounding work of Amanda Seyfried, whose commitment to the intense physical work required by the film’s lavish choreography seems to have been infectious. There is not one moment where this unique blend of artistic endeavors isn’t mixed well, and it’s precisely because everyone seems so committed to it. The film itself builds to a near-religious fervor, and when you consider that it was shot in a month on a $10M budget, the sheer scope of it is enormously impressive.
(Currently in limited theatrical release; expanding nationwide soon)
Honorable Mentions:
Eddington
Boys Go to Jupiter
Train Dreams
Zootopia 2
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Black Bag
Vulcanizadora
Hamnet
Companion
Predator: Badlands
