Top 10 Movies of 2025
From a Taipei night market to a rundown baseball diamond to a Mississippi juke joint, the movies of 2025 brought us around the world to witness unforgettable characters living out the kinds of stories that only humans could dream up. And to that we say: Thank you, Sensei!
10. Marty Supreme
Marty Supreme, the solo directorial debut of Josh Safdie of the Safdie Brothers (Uncut Gems, Good Time), makes no effort to give us a hero. Marty Mauser, a hopeful tennis table champion played by Timothée Chalamet, is a relentless scoundrel in pursuit of a dream and he’ll use anybody as a stepping stone to reach it. And yet, what makes this movie so special, so invigorating, so powerful—is that through the lens of both Marty and Timothée’s pursuit of greatness, you can’t help but feel your own dreams rattle and reawaken while watching it. —Kevin Prchal
9. Black Bag
“Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender in a Steven Soderbergh spy thriller” is all I needed to know before wanting to see Black Bag, which not only lives up to the potential of that combination but elevates beyond it thanks to its stylistic choices and delightfully twisty story. The inciting incident involving geopolitics and the threat of nuclear war becomes more like a side dish to the main entrée, which is the cat-and-mouse intrigue that entangles Blanchett and Fassbender’s married intelligence officers with their compromised colleagues. Leave it to Soderbergh to feature not one but two crucial dinner party scenes—notoriously difficult to film in an interesting way with people just sitting and talking—and turn them both into delicious, edge-of-your-seat drama. —Chad Comello
8. Sorry, Baby
Deftly balancing the sweet and the sour, Eva Victor’s Sorry, Baby tells its harrowing story with the bluntness it requires and invites you to come in closer and experience it alongside the story’s main character Agnes. Offering up genuine moments of humanity, hilarity, and empathy, you can’t help but walk away feeling as if you’ve made a new friend. Plus, you know, the cat. —Kevin Prchal
7. Left-Handed Girl
Longtime Sean Baker collaborator Shih-Ching Tsou made her solo directorial debut with this hilarious and warm-hearted depiction of a family of women trying to pick up the pieces left by the scuzzy men in their lives. Shot guerrilla-style on an iPhone in a Taipei night market (where they actually operated a noodle stand with real customers), Left-Handed Girl is packed full of ideas and a cast of characters I wanted to follow for the rest of their lives. If you’re a fan of Baker’s blend of screwball comedy and deep-felt humanity for people on the fringes, you’re in for a treat. Watch it before it disappears into the black abyss of Netflix’s back catalog. —James Podrasky
6. Eephus
An homage to the passage of time, the people we meet along the way, and the ways we choose to pass it together, Carson Lund’s Eephus is an instant classic. Centered around two rec league baseball teams who come together to play their last game before their beloved field is demolished, Eephus finds humor, wisdom, and glory in the hang. Even in the face of the players’ ailing bodies and the confoundment of strangers, they play on to the bittersweet end because each of them, like the film’s scorekeeper Franny, consider themselves the “luckiest man, man, man...on the face of the earth, earth, earth...” for having had the chance to do it all. —Kevin Prchal
5. Sinners
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners might be my Platonic ideal of a movie: an exciting original story told within genre traditions by an uber-talented auteur with a point of view and brought to vibrant life with visual panache by a kickass cast and crew. It’s also a period piece that speaks directly to our current socio-political moment, one of the more sensual movies in recent times, and has several A+, capital-C Cinema sequences—including one showstopper that’s a shoo-in for Scene of the Year—that made it both a bloody great theatergoing experience and destined for vampire horror immortality. —Chad Comello
4. Train Dreams
In Train Dreams, Clint Bentley’s solo directorial debut, the story of early 20th century logger Robert Grainier (adapted from the Denis Johnson novella) turns into a kind of impressionistic fairytale, with soothing narration and a 3:2 aspect ratio that give the narrative and its Pacific Northwest setting a picture book quality. Joel Edgerton plays the central character with a quiet tenderness that pulls you in close as he rides the ups and downs of his life. In a year when CGI dinosaurs and pixelated video game characters and “live action” franchise reheats dominated the box office, there’s something elemental and deeply affecting in watching real humans walk amongst real trees with real sunlight and firelight on their faces, experiencing all the joys and tragedies and fleeting moments that somehow accumulate into the ineffable feeling of connection to it all. —Chad Comello
3. It Was Just An Accident
Shot in secret, Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident was both a middle finger to a repressive regime that has repeatedly sought to silence him and a compellingly original tale of a group of very different people united by their mistreatment at the hands of their government. Above all else, he delivers a critically important message of maintaining your humanity even when it’s being stripped away. Panahi may be going back to prison because of this movie, so do him a favor and watch it. Little else will feel as relevant to the world we’re living in today. —James Podrasky
2. Weapons
Besides our number one pick, Zach Cregger’s Weapons was the most fun we had at the movie theater this year. Drawing on many of the ideas from his horror debut, Barbarian, Cregger reinvigorated the genre—bogged down by a decade of Hereditary imitators—with his blend of absurdist comedy and total terror that can switch on a dime, along with realized, imperfect characters that don’t usually find their way into movies about evil witches stealing children for eternal young. We’ll be waiting with our platter of hot dogs for Cregger’s next one. —James Podrasky
1. One Battle After Another
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another felt like the artistic answer to how insane living through 2025 felt. Delivering something for everyone—comedy, action, political intrigue—Anderson is at the top of this form, masterfully pulling every thread together into a unique event movie that no one else could have made. We’re still in awe over that made-for-70 mm final car chase, the complexity of “Ghetto” Pat’s escape with Sensei Sergio, Chase Infiniti’s breakthrough role, and a career-topping performance from Sean Penn. —James Podrasky