My top movies of 2025 (Part 1)

If there's one thing I can say about films in 2025, it's that these monsters were stacked. I recently wrote (for a second time) about my two favorite films of the year, so my top two are no surprise to anyone who reads this, but I wanted to take the time to (hopefully) briefly recap my top of the year, just getting it all in under the wire before The Big Awards Show. (Please watch on Sunday! Conan will be great again!)

Honorable Mention: Blue Moon / Nouvelle Vague

How in the world did Richard Linklater manage to make both of these films in one year? It seems nearly impossible. Two period pieces, two (more or less) biopics, both love letters to the entertainment industry. The magic trick in Blue Moon is Ethan Hawke: 20% the tricks used to make him seem under five feet tall, and 80% his fearless and unstoppable performance. As a film, it can't hold a candle to Nouvelle Vague, which really knocked my socks off, in part because of how much I love Breathless, but the magic tricks don't stop the whole way through. An absolutely unbelievable recreation of the French neighborhoods and sprawling cast at the outset of the French New Wave and the influence of Cahiers du Cinéma. The more I think of it, the more I think Nouvelle Vague likely deserves a spot on my Top 10, period, but I wanted to shout out Linklater for accomplishing this breathtaking double feature in a calendar year when he's (possibly) most famous for taking 12 years to make a film.

International Film Honorable Mention: On Becoming a Guinea Fowl / It Was Just an Accident

Just an unbelievable year for international film all around. I wasn't quite able to get around to watching The Voice of Hind Rajab or (all of) Sirat (which may be the frontrunner for the Oscar at the moment), and while I certainly liked The Secret Agent, it's not one of my three favorite foreign language films of the year. (Four, if we're counting Nouvelle Vague). It Was Just an Accident is a gripping, emotional, harrowing tale of possibly-mistaken identity, elevated by the real life situation of director Jafar Panahi, who continues to make films in defiance of his home country, Iran, where he is banned from making movies. (In fact, It Was Just an Accident is the International Film submission from France this year, not Iran. The nascent Iranian war we've just launched for no reason adds extra weight to all of this, of course.)

On the other side, you have On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, which unfolds very much like a surrealist dream, before slowly revealing the extremely real situations at the heart of the film. I have never seen Rungano Nyoni's previous film, although I will definitely seek it out now. Part of what makes On Becoming a Guinea Fowl so mesmerizing and fascinating is that I have absolutely no knowledge of the culture or the people of Zambia, and it's rare for a film (at least the films I usually see) to throw you so deeply into a culture that is truly foreign in so many respects. A very powerful film about a very interesting place.

No. 10: Roofman

Maybe this is just residual love for Logan Lucky and the Magic Mike series talking, but it's a real shame that Channing Tatum doesn't get more work – or at least more high-profile work than he does. Pigeonholed as a unbelievably good-looking guy for the front half of his career, he has shined every single time he's been given an opportunity. He's great in Roofman, but luckily for him and everyone else involved, he's not the only thing that makes this wonderful film work as well as it does. Kirsten Dunst also gives one of the finest performances of her career (particularly in her final scene), and this is a quasi-crime, quasi-heist movie about a very smart fuck-up who keeps doing very stupid things, and still finds the time to charm the pants off of most of the people he comes across. This is a movie that you can pretty much predict front to back going in, but it's handled so expertly and is crafted so well that none of that matters.

No. 9: Warfare

Alex Garland has done it again. I expected Civil War to be a catastrophically bad movie, and it was great. And yet the real story that came out of Civil War ended up being Warfare. Ray Mendoza was the military advisor on Civil War, and when Garland got wind of Mendoza's actual backstory, he said, "Well shit, let's make that movie." The two men co-wrote and co-directed Warfare, which plays out in real time and tells the story of the worst day of Ray Mendoza's life. It's an unflinching and harrowing military film that (at least until the credits, but honestly, not even then) doesn't try to pretend that the U.S. military are heroes, or that the Iraq War was noble or just. Incredible, haunted performances abound in this ensemble piece (and kudos to the casting director for enlisting a dozen dirt-covered guys in crew cuts and helmets who are all visually distinct enough for a viewer to track throughout), including from D'Pharoah Woon-A-Tai (playing Mendoza), Cosmo Jarvis, Will Poulter (quickly becoming a favorite of mine), Joseph Quinn, and more. Shout out to weird British guys who become extremely fascinated with the United States military.

No. 8: No Other Choice

Park Chan-Wook has done it again. While I greatly preferred Decision to Leave, I cannot deny how incredible this story of a humble Pulp Man is (and am dismayed it got shut out at the Academy Awards, but alas and/or What Can You Do). There's just so much going on in this movie all the time, layering comedy and tragedy and violence and desperation as only Director Park can.

No. 7: Black Bag

God bless Stephen Soderbergh, who has made 11 movies in the last nine years across all manner of genres, just because he loves having something to do – and is one of the best alive at doing it. Writer David Koepp is on nearly the same pace, and has recently done three collabs with Soderbergh: Kimi, Presence, and this spy film, which introduces Michael Fassbender as an all-new type of Wife Guy alongside Cate Blanchett as a married pair of MI-5 agents. The movie is delightfully British while being delightfully Soderbergh, and is a tightly-wound little tale that plays out every bit as gripping and rewatchable as an extremely low-stakes version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (or whatever other le Carré work you want to insert here). I rewatched Black Bag last week just to make sure it deserves a spot on my Top 10 of 2025 and the answer, emphatically, is yes.

No. 6: Eddington

I've written before about Eddington, and it seems this is an extremely divisive film. I stand by my assessment, however, that this is the movie America deserves, especially right now. While I admired a lot of Beau is Afraid, I ultimately kind of hate what that movie actually is. In stark contrast, I think Ari Aster is at his absolute best here, and I consider this movie to be significantly finer than his excellent Midsommar. This is a nasty film about a nasty country in a nasty time, and it nails all of the awfulness of America with unflinching honesty.

Next time: my Top 5, and my favorite performances of the year!