Best Movies of 2025
2025 was a pretty good year for cinema. First, here are some honorable mentions: Blue Moon, Predator: Badlands, The President's Cake, and Secret Mall Apartment.
Now, here are my personal 10 best movies of 2025.
10. Black Bag
Spy husband George (Michael Fassbender) comes across clues that his spy wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) may be responsible for an internal leak of top-secret software. He struggles with allegiance to his job and country or loyalty to his wife in this whip-smart thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by David Koepp.
9. Marty Supreme
Timothée Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, a two-bit hustler who will stop at nothing to become the table tennis world champion. Mauser is an unlikable character, but Chalamet adds just enough sympathy for us to care. Criticism from some viewers feel the character's change of heart late in the film comes out of nowhere, but it really doesn't because there are unspoken moments in Chalamet's performance that clearly show him being affected by certain situations. Set in New York City in 1952, but with a 1980s soundtrack, this is a sports film with welcome eccentricities.
8. Nouvelle Vague
Is Jean-Luc Godard a mad genius or incompetent filmmaker? That's the question in Richard Linklater's often funny and strangely charming imagining of what it was like during the shooting of Godard's seminal film of the French New Wave, 1960's Breathless. The casting is impeccable with Guillaume Marbeck as the egomaniacal and seemingly mad Godard, and Zoey Deutch as actress Jean Seberg, who feels she is making a career ending picture. This is a great movie about making movies.
7. Frankenstein
Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro's new "very del Toro" version of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel portrays the Creature (Jacob Elordi) as the film's emotional core, while his creator, Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), is the absolute villain. It's mad scientists and monsters with a soul. The movie is also a sumptuous, visually striking work of art. Just look at how the colors of the costumes worn by Mia Goth pop on screen.
6. Weapons
At 2:17 in the a.m., 17 children inexplicably ran out of their houses and vanished without a trace. That is the compelling mystery that bleeds into Grimm fairy tale territory in writer/director Zach Cregger's masterwork of horror. Weapons proves that horror can be smart, savage, and funny all at once.
5. Warfare
The word "intense" perfectly describes Warfare, based on filmmaker Ray Mendoza's experiences as a U.S. Navy SEAL in the Iraq War. A platoon of SEALs take over a two-story house to keep an eye on suspicious activity at a market down the street. Eventually, the soldiers are attacked, sustain injuries, and must figure out a way to escape the house. This realistic as hell action thriller, co-written and directed by Mendoza and Alex Garland, is presented in real time and is perfect for streaming because it is so intense and unsettling at times that you can pause it if you need to take a breather.
4. Train Dreams
Based on the 2011 novella by Denis Johnson, this period drama recounts 80 years in the life of railroad worker Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton in a quiet, remarkable performance). Among director Clint Bentley's influences for the film are Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev, Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke, and Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven. This haunting and deeply powerful meditation on finding a meaning in life is full of thoughtful moments and beautiful imagery. Just look at those forest scenes shot at dusk. Cinematographer Adolpho Veloso has said that 99% of the film was shot with natural lighting.
3. Sorry, Baby
Eva Victor is a triple threat as director, screenwriter, and star of Sorry, Baby, a moving drama about picking up the pieces after a traumatic experience. In this semi-autobiographical movie, Victor plays Agnes, a college literature professor who is the victim of sexual assault. A key scene in the film is a static shot of a house as hours go by. It's devastating because we, the viewer, know what horrible, life-altering incident happens in that house. This is heavy subject matter, and giving it even more bite is that the character of Agnes uses her dark sense of humor to cope with her trauma.
2. One Battle After Another
Washed up revolutionary Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) must rescue his daughter from the clutches of right-wing madman Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) in this politically topical thriller from filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia). Inspired by the 1990 novel Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, the movie is a fast-paced thriller with splashes of dark comedy and a nerve-wracking finale that reinvents the cinematic car chase.
1. A King Like Me
The Zulu organization, responsible for the first Black Mardi Gras
parade in New Orleans, is the subject of filmmaker Matthew O. Henderson's wildy
entertaining and informative documentary A King Like Me. The film
chronicles the history of the organization while following the current members
of the Zulu Club. This is often very funny, as some of these riders are real
characters, but it's also very poignant as it deals with race relations and
catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina and COVID-19. A King Like Me traveled
the film festival circuit in 2024, including our own New Orleans Film Festival,
but it didn't get a wide release until it was acquired by Netflix in 2025. It
is currently streaming on Netflix, so please give it a watch. It's a fantastic
documentary.
