I consider 2025 to be a great year for film. In fact, of the films released in 2025, I watched over 130 and gave over 75 of them a 3.5 rating or higher. That’s plenty of high-quality movies.

Here are my picks for the best films of 2025!

Honorable mentions (in alphabetical order): 2000 Meters to Adriivka, The Alabama Solution, The Bad Guys 2, Black Bag, Blue Moon, Come See Me in the Good Light, Cover-Up, East of Wall, Eephus, Escape from the 21st Century, A Little Prayer, Marty Supreme, The Mastermind, Materialists, Mickey 17, The Secret Agent, Superman, Twinless, Wake Up Dead Man

10. Die My Love

The performance of the year. Jennifer Lawrence gives herself fully over to director Lynne Ramsey in a tale of what happens to you when the “happily-ever-after” life isn’t going the way you had hoped. Lawrence gives a career-best performance of feral magnetism with a complete lack of inhibition or self-consciousness. Robert Pattinson does fine work as her clueless husband, while Sissy Spacek shows she can still deliver the goods as her mother-in-law, the only person who might actually understand what she is going through. It might not be for everyone, but it was certainly for me.

9. No Other Choice

To say Park Chan-wook knows what he’s doing is an understatement. Time and time again, the veteran director takes a difficult premise filled with unlikeable characters, and turns it into one of the most entertaining and funniest films of the year. It also helps when the premise has whip-smart political and social commentary. It also helps when Lee Byung-Hung and Son Ye-jin deliver some of the best performances of the year. It might not be the most accessible of films, but it is more than rewarding in today’s society.

8. Sinners

Just in case you weren’t aware, director Ryan Coogler does not miss. Whether it’s indie character dramas, legacy sequels, or big-budget comic book films, the guy has a complete handle on what the audience wants to see. Never before has it been so apparent with this film, delivering complex themes to go with top-notch craft across the board, but in a film about vampires. Michael B. Jordan once again proves to be the De Niro to Coogler’s Scorsese, delivering a monumental performance as twin brothers searching for a dream at the wrong time. Delroy Lindo, Wunmi Mosaku, Jack O’Connell, Li Jun Li, Hailee Steinfeld, and newcomer Miles Caton bring the whole thing to glorious, music-filled life. Don’t miss the mid-film performance from Caton of the song “I Lied to You” that transcends musical performance on film.

7. Train Dreams

What direction do you take in life when the world never has much special use for you? Solitude is your saving grace until you realize how much you are alone. Once the world lets you in, you are shown how uncaring and unjust the world can be. It doesn’t make it any less perfect in that time you had. It’s not sad because you lost it. It’s perfect because you had it. It’s a special kind of film that can manufacture that much substance out of an incredibly sad narrative, but director Clint Bentley makes it sing with the most beautifully lensed and marvelously acted films. Joel Edgerton delivers a career-best performance with Felicity Jones, William H. Macy, Kerry Condon, and Nathaniel Arcand rounding out the pitch-perfect ensemble. It might not be the most important film, but it’s one of the best.

6. It Was Just an Accident

All the paranoia, anger, and fear of living in a country that doesn’t like you must be awful. Director Jafar Panahi directs all his criticism of the Iranian regime into his film of eternal conflicts between justice and truth. Featuring the ensemble cast of the year, there is a constant tension of consequences coinciding with humor and paranoia. It also features the absolute best ending of the year, bar none.

5. Sentimental Value

Director Joachim Trier and star Renate Reinsve teamed up for my favorite film of 2021, only to deliver another knockout for 2025. While a completely different experience from The Worst Person in the World, this film works as a good sister film, a good deadbeat-dad film, a good film about making films, a good film about being lonely, and a good film about unhealed trauma. There’s a lot to cling to, whatever it is that you can grasp. All of that comes together in suitably dramatic ways, but without the melodrama. Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgard, Elle Fanning, and especially Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas all dial in pitch-perfect performances.

4. Sorry, Baby

First-time director and star Eva Victor decides to make their first film and manages this perfect balance between dramatics without the draining, comedy without the cringe, and poignancy without pretentiousness. How they are able to balance it all without coming across as an amateur, I’ll never know. They also deliver a stellar lead performance as a woman who can’t reconcile the worst thing in her life. An exceptional piece of art from an exceptional artist. I can’t wait to see what they do next. Make sure not to miss John Carroll Lynch in a one-scene powerhouse as a kind mind who gives Victor a sandwich.

3. Hamnet

For a film that made me cry three times, I am aware of the specific impact this film gives. Yes, I have children and the immense emotional peril of children has a tendency to set me off emotionally. But, bad films have also made me cry. Director Chloe Zhao attempts to humanize and rationalize the life and work of William Shakespeare through his witch-adjacent wife and the death of their son. The director knows how dramatic this event can be without having to overdo the impact. Jesse Buckley gives one of the performances of the year as the aforementioned wife, while Paul Mescal compliments as the often-gone Bard. Newcomer Jacobi Jupe is equally affecting as the titular character. Bring the tissues.

2. The Voice of Hind Rajab

The most affecting film I’ve seen in some time. Director Kaouther Ben Hania’s recounting of the volunteers attempts at rescuing Palestinian five-year-old Hind Rajab from a destroyed car is nothing but a ball of anger, stress, and dismay. If this is the stress of listening to it in film form, I can’t imagine actually being a part of that situation. Every adult cannot fathom the lack of humanity present, and they each break down accordingly. Everyone is trying their best, but it’s just not good enough with all the bureaucracy and evil in the way. All the while, this poor girl is just trying to stay alive. It’s desperately effective filmmaking that is in no way pleasant to watch. Regardless, it’s essential viewing. And this is just one of a thousand stories just like it. A devastating story and one of the most essential films of the year.

1. One Battle After Another

This film sat at number one for so many months, I thought nothing would unseat it. I eventually watched other films that bumped it down the list, only for a subsequent rewatch to push it back to the top spot. Everyone else might have it here too, but I have no regrets. It’s the most complete film I’ve seen in a long time. Paul Thomas Anderson takes everything he has learned from his previous masterpieces and delivers a film that works for cinephiles, agro film-bros, and for general audiences. PTA manages to get one of Leonardo DiCaprio’s best performances, resurrects Sean Penn, deploys the charisma of Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, and Teyana Taylor, and somehow discovers Chase Infiniti to top it all off. The best film of the year might end up being one of the best of the decade.