2025 was a great year for movies. They all are, despite what people continue to say year after year. I firmly maintain my stance that, if you can’t find a litany of great films, you’re not looking with any enthusiasm or gusto.
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As always, I feel the need to state that this is a purely subjective list and should be called a “favorite films of the year” list. Any one who claims to have an objective, unbiased list is full of it. But you all know that already. I am also full of it, but in different ways.
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I feel like I slacked on some of the bigger, buzzed-about horror titles this year. I’m not sure why, but weird. There are also a few other gaps, probably most notably the new Park Chan-wook (No Other Choice) and Julia Ducournau (Alpha) films, though, while technically 2025 releases, they’ll both primarily hit theaters in 2026.
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In 2025, I watched somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 new releases, and these are my favorites. When it comes to the order, the first movie I talk about is my number one. Things get random after that. Just know that if I include a movie here, or in the traditionally lengthy honorable mention section at the end, I love it and believe it is well worth your time and energy. For whatever that’s worth to you.
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If you feel the spirit, feel free to sound off in the comments with your favorites, rebuttals of my favorites, random thoughts on my thoughts, or anything you watched in 2025 that blew your hair back.
Sinners
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is, by a decent margin, my movie of 2025. It looks gorgeous, the music is incredible, it has a unique, distinctive perspective, Michael B. Jordan gives a fantastic performance, and newcomer Miles Caton is a revelation. Add to that Wunmi Mosaku, Delroy Lindo, Hailee Steinfeld, Li Jun Li, Jack O’Connell, and more all doing bang up work, and you’re cooking. I dig this a ton, back to front. And bonus points for knowing how goddamn cool Saul Williams is and including him in the cast. Also, you know, vampires. And be sure to watch one of the best post-credits scenes.
The Furious
I began my review, “Kenji Tanigaki’s The Furious is the action movie of the year. It may be the action movie of a few years, because holy hell does it go hard.” Nothing has changed since I wrote that. This is on par with the first time you saw Ong Bak or The Raid or Fury Road or The Night Comes for Us. It feels like you’re watching the game level up. Not only does the badass stunt coordinator take over the big chair, he also enlisted the great Kensuke Sonomura (whose fingerprints are all over this list) as his action director. With a cast fronted by Miao Xie and Joe Taslim, and heavily featuring Brian Le, Joey Iwanaga, Yayan Ruhian, and even the great Jeeja Yanin, the results are spectacular. The bad news is, I saw this at a film festival, so it’s not readily available. The good news, however, is that it got picked up for distribution and should be spread far and wide in 2026. I called this “acition-movie-fan-Christmas” for good reason.
When I call Den of Thieves “shitty Heat,” I mean that as a high compliment. And with Den of Thieves: Pantera, the gang gets back together to take the roadshow international. There is, of course, a banger heist to hang your hat on, but the core of the movie is the testosterone-saturated banter and, dare I say adorable bro-mance between O’Shea Jackson Jr’s slick thief Donnie and Gerard Butler’s sweaty, swaggering cop, Big Nick. I would watch an entire movie that’s just those two drunkenly riding scooters through picturesque French streets and bonding over late-night shawarma. The action is great, and there’s plenty of macho posturing to go around, but that’s the heart and soul and joy of the film. This is the good stuff, right here.
I’m not usually a fan of anthology movies, but in Freaky Tales, a series of four interconnected stories from Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck blend together more like a Pulp Fiction than typical stitched-together entries. Set in 1987 and infused with a mysterious, magical guiding force, this is Oakland down to the genetic level. The opening segment set at Gilman Street will warm any cold, dead punk heart, especially the violent thrashing of a bunch of nazis. Add in twists on real-world events involving Too Short and Danger Zone, NBA star Sleepy Floyd having the game of his life, and also killing white supremacists, and Pedro Pascal’s hitman talking movies with the most unexpected cameo of the year. Wild, rowdy, and inventive, this is a damn blast.
Ghost Killer
An unassuming college student is occasionally possessed by the ghost of a vicious hitman who hijacks her body to exact revenge on those who have wronged him. You know, that old story. We already mentioned Kensuke Sonomura as the action director of The Furious, but Ghost Killer sees him take the helm. Starring Akari Takaishi (one half of the Baby Assassins) and Masanori Mimoto (Hydra), both doing wonderful work, this injects earnest emotionality into a violent gangster story at the same time it tinkers with ghost story tropes and traditions. And, of course, in the hands of Sonomura and these actors, the action is top tier. With clever editing, we see both Takaishi and Mimoto in the fights, and each can more than handle their business. It’s fun and sweet and will kick you in the face. What more do you need?
Baby Assassins: Nice Days
2025 also delivered the Baby Assassins: Nice Days, the third installment of writer/director Yugo Sakamoto’s adorably violent junior assassin saga. (If you’re keeping score, Sakamoto penned the script for Ghost Killer.) While on a well-deserved coastal vacation, slacker hit-teens Chisato (Akari Takaishi again) and Marhiro (Saori Izawa) wind up on a job that pits them against another vicious killer. This is charming and goofy and a portrait of deep, earnest friendship. And it whips all the ass. Kensuke Sonomura, who directed Ghost Killer and served as action director on The Furious, fills that latter role here. (Told you there was a great deal of cross-pollination.) The result understandably features incredible fight choreography and execution. Once again, the Baby Assassins deliver a warm hug of a movie that features plenty of face punching and spin kicking action mayhem. If they keep making these, I will keep watching and probably loving them.
Final Destination Bloodlines
You know what to expect from the sixth movie in the Final Destination series, and you know what movie you want. More importantly, Final Destination Bloodlines, from Freaks directors Zack Lipovsky and Adam Stein, also know what you want and expect, and deliver that by the bucket full. Not particularly deep, interesting, or emotionally engaging, I don’t know that I had more fun watching a movie this year. Witnessing death’s Rube Goldberg machinations, complete with buckets of blood, is both deeply silly and terrifically entertaining. I would watch an entire movie of just the two shithead brothers impotently staving off death as best they can. It’s a hoot in the best sense of the words.
WTO/99
Using a deep slate of archival footage, documentary WTO/99 looks back at that time in 1999 when tens-of-thousands of people took to the streets to disrupt the then-fledgling World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle. It’s a riveting, largely boots-on-the-ground examination of a moment in time that sparked a global movement. The film showcases the complicitness of local politicians, media, and law enforcement, both local and national, and serves as both a fiery call-to-arms and an illustration of a missed opportunity and unfulfilled potential. Bonus points because there are multiple scenes where we get to see people I know get beat up by cops.
Striking Rescue
Despite a questionable title, Striking Rescue is Tony Jaa doing Tony Jaa shit. The action is absolutely electric and Jaa operates at the top of his game. It’s been 20+ years since Ong Bak and Tom-Yum-Goong, but feels of a piece with those films. The surrounding movie is whatever, but the fight choreography is brutal and inventive. I wrote, “The beauty of Tony Jaa flying across a room and elbowing a dude in the top of the skull cannot be overstated, and this is a prime showcase for his superhuman feats of ass-kickery,” and I’ve never put truer words on paper.
Redux Redux
A woman stands in the desert twilight, watching a man tied to a chair burn to death. It’s a hell of an introduction to Kevin and Matthew McManus’s indie sci-fi thriller Redux Redux. The woman is a mother travelling from one dimension to the next, killing every version of the serial killer who murdered her daughter. What I wrote about it at Fantasia this year still holds true: “Redux Redux is the kind of science fiction that favors ideas and inventiveness over spectacle; where character and theme take precedence over eye-candy. With intricate, thoughtful framing, sweeping shots, and excellent use of locations, even with a limited budget, it never feels small or constrained by its resources. Thrilling and clever, it wrestles with ideas of grief, revenge, fate, what it means to be alive, and more, and packs one emotional wallop after another…this is something fantastic and special.” Hopefully it sees a real release in 2026.
Secret Mall Apartment
In 2003, a group of Rhode Island artists created a secret apartment in a forgotten space in a busy mall, where they lived off and on in some capacity for a number of years. That’s the hook, a wacky, stranger-than-fiction tale. And the film delivers on that. This is an odd, engaging story full of colorful, interesting weirdos. It’s also something much deeper, more meaningful, and inspirational. What began as an experiment to push boundaries and see how far they could go, ultimately explores class, gentrification in a changing city, race, the line between life and art, and the bonds of intentional community. The participants, most of whom were unidentified until this film, find joy and beauty and value and utility in things and places where most people never even look. A singular, subversive story, this is also a testament to the power of how much you can get away with if you project confidence and act like you’re supposed to be there. The subjects of the film also have deep ties to the RI DIY and arts scene of the early 2000s, and is thus the second film on this list I have a somewhat personal connection to. Also, it’s the only movie of the year to make me look at blue masking tape and go, aww.
Reflection in a Dead Diamond
No one apes and updates hyper-niche sub-genre trappings like Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani, and they’re at it again in Reflection in a Dead Diamond. They set their sights on ‘60s Eurospy thrillers, and hit all the markers, delivering an immaculately stylized tale of a retired spy forced to confront his past. Drifting through time and memory, flawlessly edited, and with an unrivaled visual execution, this is an inventive and dazzling homage. And it stars Fabio Testi, of The Heroin Busters, The Big Racket, and tons more fame, for christ’s sake.
We can go ahead and call this my best-of/favorites-of 2025 list. These are the biggies that come to mind right now. Honestly, this is likely to change. If you ask me six months from now (or six days or six minutes), I’ll probably have a bunch of other titles.
We’re running short on time, so let’s speed run through an honorable mentions section:
The Naked Gun
No movie in 2025 understood exactly what it was doing quite like The Naked Gun. The cast is spot on, they nail the over-serious, pseudo-idiotic tone, and most importantly, it’s really, really goddamn funny. This is one I’m going to rewatch.
Predator: Badlands
After Prey and now Predator: Badlands, if director Dan Trachtenberg wants to keep playing in this pool, I will keep watching, because these movies are awesome. And Elle Fanning should win awards for her role as a peppy robot.
Wake Up Dead Man
The latest in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out/Benoit Blanc whodunnit-verse, Wake Up Dead Man uses a locked-room murder mystery to grapple with faith and morality, ultimately landing on the side of kindness and decency, not anger and retribution. Also a snappy detective yarn, I’ll probably revisit this on the regular, much like the previous installments.
40 Acres
R.T. Thorne’s 40 Acres doesn’t rewrite the post-apocalyptic formula, but it’s a movie that I regularly think about, even months after my first watch. Beautifully filmed and with a killer score, Thorne and a cast of primarily Black and Indigenous actors use a familiar template to explore themes of culture, generational trauma, heritage, and surviving in unprecedented times.
Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted
This portrait of aging blues/country/R&B singer, author, producer, and general multi-hyphenite Swamp Dogg falls into that category of documentary that explores your favorite artist’s favorite artist. He’s the kind of musician other musicians adore, but that isn’t necessarily super mainstream. And he is an all-timer of a character. This doc is fun, funny, engaging, and also deeply moving. I initially put this on as a lark and didn’t expect to cry multiple times, but here we are.
She’s the He
Writer/director Siobhan McCarthy’s She’s the He tells a trans coming out/coming of age story through the lens of a raunchy, problematic ‘80s boner-jam comedy. It’s hilarious, earnest, bawdy, bittersweet, and most importantly, never shies away from being messy. It’s both highly specific in its focus and also hits for anyone who’s ever struggled to figure out who they truly are as the world tries to force them into a pre-defined box. And I would die for Ethan.
The Long Walk
Who expected a movie about a bunch of teens walking to be absolutely riveting? Probably people who read the novella it’s based on, but still. This dystopian tale doesn’t go anywhere unexpected, and it’s not particularly subtle, but damn if it doesn’t deliver an endless barrage of gut-ripping devastation. Most of this is thanks to a stellar cast of young actors all working at a high level. But even then, David Jonsson stands out in one of the best performances of the year. We’re watching him become a star. And if we’re talking 2025 Stephen King adaptations, this is a damn sight better than The Running Man.
Havoc
Gareth Evans’s long-in-the-works Havoc was on my most-anticipated list for multiple years but finally arrived in 2025. Maybe it doesn’t hit the dizzy highs of The Raid (what does?), but I still had a damn fine time with this. I mean, it’s a Gareth Evans movie about a grizzled cop played by Tom Hardy fighting his way through the London underworld and features a nasty ass Timothy Olyphant, there’s no way I’m not going to love that.
Okay, what else did I like this year? Devo is a fun portrait of one of my favorite bands. Steven Soderbergh gave us his spin on a quippy spy thriller with Black Bag. Jason Statham delivers more Jason Statham things with A Working Man, which I swear is another movie originally intended as a kind of send up of this kind of movie, made by people who don’t get the joke. Which only makes me love it more. Sirat left me gaping slack-jawed at the screen in multiple places. Orwell 2+2=5 is an intimate look at the man and his ideals.
I could keep going, and there are going to be many films I realize I will ultimately regret not including. For now, let’s leave it here. Again, if you’re in the mood, let me know in the comments what you loved this year. Aren’t movies awesome?
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