2025 has been a helluva year at the movies. These are the very best that the cinema has had to offer.
TOP 15
15. THE NORTH
Bart Schrijver’s independent film is a contemplative and deeply affecting meditation on masculinity and the ways male friendships evolve over time. The two lead performances, from Bart Harder and Carles Pulido, are sensational, the cinematography is frequently breathtaking, and the entire film unfolds as an immersive, experiential journey. It’s an underseen but truly astounding work.
14. THE NAKED GUN
Akiva Schaffer brought mainstream comedy films roaring back to the theater with his Naked Gun reboot, which is a goddamn perfect film. A Liam Neeson-starring film is a skewering of modern action movies, legacy sequels, and the exact kinds of movies that Neeson has been making for the past decade. It is Neeson’s greatest performance of his entire career, and the hardest I have laughed in a theater in several years. Unbelievably goofy and unrelentingly hilarious. Grade-A slapstick shit.
13. WEAPONS
I wasn’t a fan of Zach Cregger’s first film, Barbarian, so I didn’t have much riding on his sophomore effort, Weapons. To my surprise, I was completely proven wrong. Weapons is a fantastic, measured, darkly funny, and deeply effective horror film. The performances are strong across the board, the script is tight and impressively balanced in its shifting tones, and Cregger’s direction feels confident and assured. It absolutely deserves every bit of praise it’s been getting — a genuinely great movie.
12. THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME
At a certain point, it feels like people started taking Wes Anderson for granted. He’s a filmmaker with an unmistakable voice, and while some treat that consistency as a flaw, I’ve always seen it as a feature. More than that, I think he’s been on a genuine hot streak lately. Asteroid City ranks among my favorites in his entire filmography, and The Phoenician Scheme more than lives up to that high bar.
Beautifully crafted and packed with great performances, the film is powered by a scene-stealing Michael Cera and an exquisite lead turn from Benicio del Toro. Anderson applies his signature Jacques Tati–meets–Stanley Kubrick sensibility to an old-school, serialized adventure framework, and the result absolutely works. The Phoenician Scheme feels playful, precise, and deeply confident — a reminder of how rewarding Anderson’s cinema can be when he’s firing on all cylinders.
11. EDDINGTON
Ari Aster is a filmmaker I will always go to bat for, as he is one of the most audacious voices in the game today. As if that wasn’t already painfully apparent after the monumental and transcendently odd masterpiece that was Beau is Afraid, Aster came careening back into the mainstream this year with the release of his latest film, Eddington, a COVID-set western starring Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal. The film is arguably even more unhinged than Aster’s previous films, delivering an absolutely harrowing encapsulation of modern America through the lens of the storied western genre. It is a searing, unflinching indictment of the modern world, and one that time will only prove to be even more prescient than it already is. No one else could or would have made this, and that’s why I can’t help but love Aster.
10. HAMNET
After being disrespectfully and idiotically chewed up and spat out by Marvel Studios with Eternals, Academy Award-winning director Chloé Zhao returned to form this year with her very best film to-date. Hamnet is an achingly intimate tale of perseverance and creativity in the face of bone-rattling tragedy, and it also just happens to be about William Shakespeare. Led by two miraculous performances from Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, the film is an emotional and ultimately soaring look at the ways in which art can connect and heal. Zhao’s direction is also stupendous, blurring the line between stageplay and film in such glorious fashion and lending the work a real sense of tactility and presence. An incredibly affecting work that cuts straight to the core.
9. FRANKENSTEIN
Guillermo del Toro is mad scientist unto himself, and this year, he finally got to make the film he’s long dreamed of making: his own version of Frankenstein. As a longtime fan of both Guillermo and Mary Shelley’s original Frankenstein novel, this film was mana from heaven for me, personally. A glorious melding of those two primary creatives, the film is anchored by powerhouse performances from Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, and Mia Goth, all of whom fill the Guillermo’s incandescent frames with such vibrant life. A phenomenal piece of work that felt like watching a final puzzle piece of Guillermo’s overarching oeuvre slot into place in immensely satisfying fashion.
8. AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH
James Cameron, you crazy son of a bitch. Avatar: Fire and Ash is the blockbuster to end all blockbusters, and I love it dearly.
7. BUGONIA
Speaking of filmmakers who have been on a crazy run, Yorgos Lanthimos has been cranking out some of the best work of his career at a record pace over the course of the past few years. From Poor Things to Kinds of Kindness to now Bugonia, the man and his team of frequent collaborators just kept pushing further into the abyss of the uncanny valley, to increasingly delirious results. By all accounts, Bugonia wasn’t for everyone, but it was very much for me. The politically-charged, science-fiction black comedy features incredible performances from the likes of Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, and a visual style indebted to Orson Welles’ The Trial. Difficult to be more up my alley, I loved this.
6. ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER
Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the defining filmmakers of the past few decades, and he came out swinging this year with his biggest film to date. As a beautiful plus-side on top of that, One Battle After Another manages to deliver high-octane thrills, emotional heft, and gut-busting gags without ever losing an ounce of the filmmaker’s distinct sense of pace, style, and tone. It is a smorgasbord of great performances and features some of the most palpable and compelling action you’re likely to see this decade, especially that final car chase over the hills. A miracle of a movie, still can’t believe it actually exists and isn’t just some fever dream.
5. MARTY SUPREME
After delivering the remarkable Uncut Gems back in 2019, the writing and directing duo of the Safdie Brothers split up and each delivered new films this year, both of which were athletic bio-drama period pieces based on real guys. And while I liked The Smashing Machine just fine, it definitely pales in comparison to the latter. Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme is a masterful, articulately sculpted thrill-ride of a film, anchored by a career-defining turn from Timothée Chalamet. It is hugely ambitious, like its titular subject, and such an utter joy to behold. The greatest Christmas gift of all this year was Marty Supreme.
4. SINNERS
Ryan Coogler’s audacious horror film was an early favorite of mine this year, and kept its spot near the tippy-top of the list for a reason: it fucking rules. An incredibly crafted film full of exquisite performances (especially Michael B. Jordan’s dual-role lead) and one that felt like a true-blue expansion of the kind of distinct and measured filmmaking that Coogler delivered on films like Fruitvale Station and Creed. Sinners is my favorite film of Coogler’s to date, and is one that I genuinely believe will be held in reverence for decades to come. An astonishing feat of filmmaking on every level.
3. WAKE UP DEAD MAN
Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig brought Benoit Blanc back after Knives Out and Glass Onion, delivering a much more intimate, emotionally-charged, and altogether existential installment. By tackling these huge themes inherent to religion, Johnson’s film manages to be both the most boundary-pushing of the films yet and the most classic murder-mystery of the bunch. There’s a fascinating moment around the midpoint of this film that I feel sums up the ingenuity of the whole thing, where the religious themes bump up against the murder-mystery narrative needs, and instead of shying away from it, Johnson lets the themes burst straight through the walls of the narrative. It is such a beautiful, unexpected moment, and one blossoms into the film’s elegant finale. There’s a reason Johnson is among the best working today.
2. 28 YEARS LATER
Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later threequel is a gloriously gonzo horror epic, that delivers show-stopping, heart-pounding setpieces and existential-inducing beauty in equal measure. While I am certainly a fan of the original film, I was flat-out flabbergasted by this new installment, and sent out of the theater reeling from the sheer ambition on-display. I adore Alex Garland’s multi-faceted script and am extremely giddy about getting another one of these next month, in the form of the immediate sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. In a year full of auteur-driven horror, Boyle delivered the goods and then some.
1. DIE MY LOVE
Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love is my favorite fucking movie of the year. Everything about the movie, from the lyrical poetry of Ramsay’s visuals, to the cyclical cinematic storytelling, to the way that themes grow like moss along the side of the narrative until they eclipse it entirely in the final act, to how the film works to actively subvert the expectations an audience might have going in, just absolutely full-tilt worked for me. I saw this with a theater full of people opening weekend who were clearly eager to see former teen-stars Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Lawrence star in a film together, but were thoroughly unprepared for what this was. The result was an uncomfortable and upsetting viewing experience, and I loved every second of it.
Pattinson is great in the film, but Lawrence is straight-up unbelievable. This is her finest performance to-date, and one of my favorite performances I’ve seen on the big screen this decade. A ferocious, feral, and unfathomably bold film on so many levels. It was like watching someone cut out the ugliest and most heinous parts of themselves and put it on-display, for the whole world to see in excruciating detail. I found it incredibly moving and endlessly compelling; I adore this film.
Discover more from RGM
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.