The Top 15 of 2025

The Top 15 of 2025

2025 was a year, wasn’t it? It sure was 365 days. Certainly had 52 weeks. You might even say it contained 12 month. Had four seasons even. If I’m not being too vague here 2025 was not my year. I won’t go into any of that here but there is one last thing to do before bidding adieu to 2025 and that is celebrate one truly great thing in this year. Da’ Movies! The movies of 2025 ruled! There was something for everyone this year and if there’s a film on this list you think is missing it’s probably because I haven’t gotten around to seeing it yet. The following list of 15 is the movies I saw in a theater and enjoyed most this year!

But first –

Honorable Mention #1 –  MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM FRANCHISE. 

I use a Peloton to workout and stay in shape and am constantly on the hunt for something to watch to distract my mind while I push myself physically. For years my go to move was to use a movie or a Netflix show as my distraction tool but in early 2025 I turned to the rich and varied world of GUNDAM. According to Wikipedia the mega-franchise, – which is made up of tonally different TV series, films, original video animations and more – runs over 50 titles. I’ve kept my watches to the franchises’ main timeline, known as The Universal Century, and for the entirety of 2025 Gundam has kept me entertained and motivated to work out three to five times a week! Every series or movie I’ve had the pleasure of seeing so far has been an absolute delight! Over the past 12 months I’ve worked out/watched the following TV series- Mobile Suit Gundam, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ, Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team, Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memories, Mobile Suit Gundam: Unicorn, Mobile Suit Gundam: GQuuuuuuX and a grab bag of original films in the franchise. Each show has offered me something that truly hit me on a personal level. I found the 1979 original show to be a better Star Wars than Star Wars – a franchise I admittedly have never been a fan of – while Zeta was a dark stonecold masterpiece; ZZ was mixed with some true highpoints and fun characters; War in the Pocket was a perfect summation of the franchise’s magic; The 08th MS Team gave me a fun on-the-ground mech battle experience while also hitting me with one of my favorite unexpected romances ever; Stardust Memories was a stellar tale until a messy final episode, Unicorn found a captivating way unite all the previous shows into one epic saga; The Origin gave everything context and depth; GQuuuuuuX was a messy but absolutely beautiful experience from the madmen at Studio Khara and the movies have all been a hit in one way or another. It’s been great to see all these anime filmmakers take this one brand and use it to tell wild and tonally different tales using aesthetics from the various eras of the medium. I have much more Gundam to experience and will continue to do so in 2026!

Honorable Mention #2 –  IMAX & Theatrical Re-Releases. 

In 2025 I really got into the act of revisiting old favorites in a movie theater. Over the past 12 months I got to be completley enthralled by Hayao Miyazaki’s PRINCESS MONONOKE in IMAX, awed by Darren Aronofsky’s BLACK SWAN during it’s IMAX re-release and was able to return to the magic of Pandora by the IMAX 3D re-release of AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER. As an extra treat, in traditional non-IMAX screenings I got to re-experience the masterpiece that are Hideaki Anno/Shinji Higuchi’s SHIN GODZILLA and Quentin Tarantino’s final complete cut KILL BILL: THE WHOLE BLOODY AFFAIR. All of these are among my favorite movie experiences of the year and while I excluded from the list below it feels wrong not to give them all a shout out. The complete cut of KILL BILL in particular was a whole new experience and I hope that gets a 4K release in the near future. Fingers crossed some more classics and favorites of mine get a wide theatrical re-release cause if they do I’ll be there. And if you see one of your favorite movies is playing in a theater sometime in the near future you should go and luxuriate in the joy of re-experiencing a favorite on a big screen the way it was meant to be.

THE TOP 15 FILMS OF 2025

Note: These first ten films are listed alphabetically.

BLUE MOON. (Dir. Richard Linklater.)

Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke make up one of those director/actor partnerships that should be spoken in the same breath as DeNiro/Scorsese, DiCaprio/Scorsese and even Mifune/Kurosawa. These two artists have been bringing out the best in each other creatively for most of my life. In Blue Moon, Linklater takes what is essentially a theatrical play – aside from two small scenes at the start the entire film takes place inside one restaurant – and forms it into a movie celebrating (and mourning) the art of making theatrical plays. Hawke shouldn’t really work in the role of Lorenz Hart, a famous diminutive gay balding lyricist, but Hawke has the heart and soul of a true artist with the gift for insight and he makes the many monologues Hart has completley soar. The movie runs a tight 100 minutes and I was very glad to spend most of that runtime time listening to Hawke eloquently, and yet pathetically, dig Hart into a deeper and deeper grave. Blue Moon is a powerful and sad tale that quietly works on you. If you can, you should immediately follow this up with Linklater’s other 2025 movie about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, the Netflix release Nouvelle Vague, so you can experience a double feature from one of our best modern directors telling very different tales about the pains and joys of making art.

EDDINGTON. (Dir. Ari Aster.)

Marketed and sold as being about the Pandemic Year of 2020 this really is a more cutting and angry film about the destructive way America is now too online. If you’re not a little bit too-online – I sometimes think I am but then I come across someone who really is and realize I still have some vague connection with the real world – this movie will just be a bunch of weird sequences but if you are it HOPEFULLY will click with you. I say “hopefully” because based on the reviews there is a weird conundrum where if you’re too-online the film will fly right past you and you’ll argue “This movie is too far on the right or too far on the left“. Maybe more so than any film before, this is Ari Aster’s riskiest tightrope of a flick and for me it was a complete success but I am not surprised the reviews and audience reaction was generally mixed. For over two hours of the runtime you’re on a highly entertaining dark journey watching the small town of Eddington being ripped apart by people feuding over their petty – and sometimes severe – politicial differences and it isn’t until the closing moments the real evil that’s tearing the town apart shows its stupid face. A gloriously angry Anti AI movie.

HIGHEST 2 LOWEST. (Dir. Spike Lee.)

I love me some Spike Lee! His “reinterpretation” of High And Low, one of Akira Kurosawa’s greatest movies, never reaches the heights of that timeless Cinema Classic but his take has a spirit and idiosyncrasy I wish we got far more often in movies! Essentially buried by AppleTV+ after they realized they didn’t have a Best Picture frontrunner, this is still one of Lee’s more entertaining movies in recent years. This starts with an infectiously fun title credit sequence and then intentionally becomes a bit stagey for the first act before exploding into life when the story takes us out of the stiffling rich palatial apartment and to the vibrant streets of NYC. Denzel Washington really cooks playing another captivating lead performance that builds off his insane natural charisma that then adds nuance and depth on top of that. In a real shocker, the two highpoints of the film are confrontational scenes between Washington and the criminal, played by A$ap Rocky, that fly off into wild visual and aural directions that only Lee would have the balls to attmept! This is a fun and crazy watch! The movie isn’t perfect. Far from it. The score is a bit goofy and there’s a third act action scene that feels really out of place and is only in the flick so Washington can have a “tough guy” moment. Also, because Lee aligns so personally with Washington’s character the film regrettably leans a little too hard on a unpleasant idea that “lazy poor failures will always steal from the rich who earned it” message. Despite any issues I have with it the movie is a blast and on a good final note – this movie is very anti-AI.

THE LONG WALK. (Dir. Francis Lawrence.)

Adapting Stephen King is a difficult task. For all his massive popular success King is actually a wild writer who takes his stories and characters into weird and awkward places and if a filmmaker sticks too close to King’s text they’ could end up making a Dreamcatcher, a weird and dumb mess, but if they stray too far from the text they might make The Dark Tower, a dull and boring mess. The secret to properly adapt the Master of Horror is to capture the heart in a Stephen King novel and bring that to the screen above all else. Francis Lawrence’s adaptation of King’s first novel, which was published after the release of Carrie under his Richard Bachman pseudonym, makes some missteps in the telling of the tale but it perfectly captures the wounded emotional heart of the novel. The director of four – soon to be five – of The Hunger Games movies makes the antithesis to everything he pulled off in those movies here. There is no pompt and no flash and all the R-rated violence and horror these poor kids undergo are cleanly captured so we can see these poor boys bleed as they are executed for the countries’ “betterment”. Lawrence and his team make some genius practical filmmaking decisions in their adaptation – in the novel the Long Walk is comprised of 100 Walkers but the movie cuts it down to 50 with one boy representing each state and by doing this they make it easier to pick out and connect with our lead characters AND it helps stretch the budget without having to need all those other extras – but does fumble in a few areas and sadly that includes the ending. The novel ends on an unavoidably bleak ending, one that highlights the pointlessness of the Long Walk, while the movie goes with a last minute misdirect from the novel that tries to add a triumphant final note to the whole thing. It doesn’t work. But, considering this was the King novel I MOST wanted to adapt myself the mere fact I love this until the end is a very high endorsement. My version would’ve ruled but I’m mostly happy with this version. And in a just world the two titanic central performances of Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson would be getting all the awards attention but this is not a just world. At least the world isn’t so bad we have our own Long Walk every year… yet.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING. (Dir. Christopher McQuarrie.)

How can a movie be both a disappointment AND one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen? For about the first hour of what is said to be the final MISSION, it really felt like Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie had finally fucked up. That they’d made a bad movie. A movie that was far too full of expositional monologues. A movie that relied far too much on fan pandering nostalgia and callbacks to previous entries. A movie that almost lacked a pulse. Even in a packed IMAX theater, surrounded by other Mission Geeks, I just wasn’t feeling that special magic Cruise and his team had managed to pull off SEVEN TIMES(!!!) before. Had they really dropped the ball at the very end? But then suddenly Cruise finds himself having an epic fistfight on a submarine while elsewhere his team goes up against a bunch of Russians in a burning house and that feeling returned! The Final Reckoning takes a while but EXPLODES with movie magic in the second half. The extended Sunken Submarine setpiece is exquisitely done with so many stunts and gags it would make Buster Keaton proud and James Cameron jealous! And somehow the Biplane setpiece one ups it! The Biplane scene fucking rocks! For the last hour M:I 8 is everything I dreamed it would be and is worth the journey! Mission: Impossible may end on a rocky final chapter but when it works IT WORKS. The greatest franchise comes to a messy but wonderful end!

PRESENCE. (Dir. Steven Soderbergh.)

Steven Soderbergh and David Koepp should find a way to make a movie together every year until they retire. These two bring out the best in each other with Koepp’s finely tuned narrative structuring meshing perfectly with the artistry of Soderbergh’s filmmaking. Here the two take what is a very simple set up, the classic haunted house, and turns the whole concept on its head by placing us in the mind of the ghost. Shot on Sony’s tiny Alpha 9 iii, we are placed in the head of the ghost and watch as a family is “haunted” by a spirit who reacts to them in odd and strangely human ways. This is not really a horror film but a family drama where we question what we are being shown by our mystery POV. These questions built to what may be the most powerful final shot of any film released in 2025. The first time I watched Presence I enjoyed it as a fun Soderbergh experiment but when the last scene happened I was suddenly a crying mess feeling ALL THE EMOTIONS at once and like any true twist ending it made the second watch an entirely new and more powerful experience! A huge recommend!

ROOFMAN. (Dir. Derek Cianfrance.)

A decade or so ago, before Netflix and the major studio’s panic driven decisions over streaming, this would have been a huge movie. Saw this in an almost empty theater back in October and was completely taken away by the expertly written script, the luscious 35mm cinematographry, the knife sharp direction and the absolutely insane chemistry between Channing Tatum and Kristen Dunst. This is easily’s Tatum’s best movie star performance IMO! Jeffrey Manchester, the titual Roofman, is described in one scene as “brilliant, an incredible genius, but also a complete idiot” and Tatum brings that to life wonderfully in such a way where we can’t argue with that damning statement but also want to go along on a journey with this Brilliant Idiot. I recently rewatched this with my sister and dad – their first time seeing it – and the movie worked for me even more on a second visit! Roofman is the kind of wonderful and very fun theatrical joy made for adults that we used to get pretty regularly only a few years ago. I fear these kinds of movies are now few and far between but as long as they get made I plan to give each one their day in Movie Court as long as the opportunity still exists.

SINNERS. (Dir. Ryan Coogler.)

The ultimate crowdpleaser and a confirmation that Ryan Coogler & Michael B Jordan have that special chemistry that can make them Cinematic Legends! Sinners is an original blockbuster with a real voice behind it and a personal view that soars in a time when most big budget studio entertainment are designed to be as milquetoast and devoid of a personal identity as possible. Blockbusters don’t approach current world issues but are about how whatever IP a studio owns is the best and being a fan is the coolest! Buy more merchandise! Sinners is a movie about something and never lets you forget it! This also pulls off the rare movie trick of almost being a tatal genre switcher cause aside from one or two short scenes the first 90 minutes is really a fun hang out movie and only gets into the vampire horror business in teh last hour. The whole movie fucks, especially with a crowd, and I hope this becomes a movie that regularly returns to theaters so I can see it with an audience again.

WAKE UP DEAD MAN. (Dir. Rian Johnson.)

The secret trick of the Tales of Benoit Blanc series is none of these movies are about Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig, of course pulling off insane movie magic again) because the World’s Greatest Detective is above the drama. Sure, he does form a connection of some sort to each one of these cases and has opinions on what each movie is really about – this chapter deals with the way charismatic strong men preach anger to build themselves up and destroy everything around them, sound familiar? – but Blanc himself is too calm, too collected and too smart to engage us emotionally. Blanc’s an absolute riot and we love hanging out with him but there’s not much for us the audience to latch onto with him. Instead each films finds a true emotional center in one of the suspects and Josh O’Connor is a very captivating lead in this flick. While it has always been easy to figure out who did the crimes in these the real joy has been all the magic details filling in the world around the whodunnit. The way these are very much about our current times is a welcome gift and I hope Johnson + Craig make a dozen more! Even better, now that the Netflix contract is over a fourth movie could be made at a studio and given a genuine wide theatrical release again.

WARFARE. (Dir. Alex Garland.)

Maybe the most misunderstood movie of 2025. If you made the mistake of logging on to Bluesky in 2025 you’d likely see a post from somebody who saw the trailer only and snarkily was all “Oh, Alex Garland is now making conservative war movies for maga. I never liked him.” or some other such nonsense. This movie is NOT that. Running a tight 90 minutes, Warfare is a savage portrayal of the pointlessness of the US military presence in Iraq and how the War achieved nothing for anyone except for pain and death. As presented in the film these soldiers achieve nothing during their mission. All they end up doing is breaking into the homes of two families, get severly wounded and then run away leaving the village broken and the civilians scared and angry. It’s a damning statement of the whole war and if it weren’t for an ending photo montage – one that feels very forced on the production – I’d call this movie a masterpiece. I’m a big fan of Alex Garland and Warfare is not one of his works I’ll revisit often because it’s such a brutal and cold tale, but it is one I have and will think about a lot going forward. An expert case of the film itself being the message. Too bad in the mad era of social media too many people don’t engage with art beyond the superficial because it might get in the way of their hot takes.

THE TOP 5

Note: These are my favorite films of the year and listed in numerical order from favorite to MOST favorite.

05. ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTEHR. (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson.)

Paul Thomas Anderson knows how to make damn good movies! He seemingly always had and I guess he always will. With OBAA the guy intentionally made his most audience appealing movie since Boogie Nights and it damn well delivered. The first act of this is some of the most insane and economical storytelling in recent years and I would gladly watch an entrie movie about Perfidia Beverly Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor stealing the entire show even though she exits the movie about 40 minutes in). 2025 was a very good year where movies finally started being about the now and I don’t know if PTA knew America would re-elect a fascist to be President so he can enact a full on government sanctioned terrorist acts in support of white power bullshit but it’s great to have a major movie be about how much evil shit needs to be stopped now and not about how stuff that happened fifty years ago. Fuck the racists of today and fuck the fascists of today too. One Battle is an incredibly entertaining movie that also has something to say! And it hleps that the chase scene in the third act is absolutely perfect!

04. CHAINSAW MAN – THE MOVIE: REZE ARC. (Dir. Tatsuya Yoshiara.)

Maybe the biggest movie surprise for me this year. I watched the first season of Chainsaw Man a while ago and had fun but it wasn’t something I fell in love with. I liked the gimmick of each episode having a unique ending credit song but otherwise it was a well animated show I enjoyed and would gladly continue whenever a second season dropped. When the movie was announced I initially figured I’d wait for streaming but when the good word of mouth started and my preferred IMAX theater scheduled showtimes I figured to give the thing a shot. And then the movie proceeded to melt my fucking mind! When that opening credit sequence set to Kenshi Yonezu’s IRIS OUT started playing and the speakers in the theater literally started shaking I was off on a wild trip and had an unforgettable time! Aside from the stellar animation, the beautiful shot compositions and the haunting musical score I think my favorite thing in this film is how bifurcated it is. Reze Arc runs just a little over 90 minutes and aside from a few small moments the first half is comprised almost entirely of romantic scenes with some of the most alluring sunlit romantic imagry I’ve seen in ages. Then roughly at the midpoint a major shift occurs and the rest of the flick is made up of the most absolutely bonkers, explosive and wildly kinetic action setpieces you’ve ever seen! For an animation buff like myself it is a perfect movie! Caught it three times in theaters and I still think that wasn’t enough.

03. 28 YEARS LATER. (Dir. Danny Boyle.)

Danny Boyle might be the sneakiest filmmaker alive. He’s not a dude I think of when I consider who my favorite filmmakers are and yet, like clockwork, every few years he knocks out a movie I feel is an absolute stonecold masterpiece! I wasn’t particularly excited for 28 Years Later when it was announced, I admire the original film 28 Days Later and understand what it did for early digital cinema but it’s not a movie I have any personal affection for and the less said the miserable 28 Weeks Later the better. But when the film was announced I was interested in the idea of Alex Garland returning to his role as as screenwriter and I expected he and Boyle would do something far more original than simply make another nostalgia bait Legacy Sequel. These dudes can’t repeat themselves. And they sure as hell aren’t playing the hits in 28 Years Later! This is an anti-nostaliga sequel. There are no callbacks or cute homages to the original film and instead the original film is only used in order to setup what is a contemporary Grimm fantasy tale of a young boy learning to grow up in a world stuck in the past and devastated by rage filled zombies. This goddamn movie is magical! It twists and turns in ways that are completely unexpected and when Ralph Fiennes shows up in the third act giving what may well be my favorite performance of the year, 28 Years Later was working on me emotionally in ways I had not anticipated or prepared for. The last thing I expected to do at this was cry and cry I did. I’m so very glad I don’t have to wait long for part two of this trilogy, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, and I’m excited to know Danny Boyle and Alex Garland intend to return to close off the saga in the third and final chapter. By all accounts Part 2 is a banger and if 3 sticks the landing this could be a new masterpiece trilogy!

02. BLACK BAG. (Dir. Steven Soderbergh.)

Steven Soderbergh and David Koepp show up for the second time on this list. The GOAT Duo delivered a stunner with Presence in January 2025 and then just a few weeks later followed it up with an even grander movie in March! 89 minutes! I have the flick on disc and that number was the first thing I checked when I put it into my player. The end credits for this start at around 89 minutes and in those tight 89 minutes these two madmen storytellers give us more character nuance and thrilling twisty turns than most movies do with a runtime twice that. And it’s so goddamn sexy too! I’d never seen Marisa Abela in anything else before and I walked out of the theater with a very strong crush on her. Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett fuck in their masterclass performances as the still-in-love married spies at the center of this sexy dialogue heavy thriller with both being equally in command of every scene they’re in. The rest of the cat does stellar work and some of them almost, but not quite, match those two powerhouses in this sexy beast of a flick. This was one of the most fun experiences I had in 2025 and it’s a shame more people didn’t also partake in looking into the Black Bag when they had the chance. Soderbergh is a master at economical storytelling and Black Bag is one of his finest works!

01. AVATAR: FIRE & ASH. (Dir. James Cameron.)

All hail Varang, Tsahik of the Mangkwan! I expected to be a fan of the new villain Na’vi the stellar VFX team and Oona Chaplin’s captivating performance was bringing to life in the third AVATAR film but I fucking love her! I worship her! Praise her! Varang the Great is maybe the coolest and most fun character of 2025! She fucks! Now an important thing to understand about me is I am all in on James Cameron’s AVATAR Saga and have been ever since he announced he and his team of writers wrote films 2 through 5 at the same time. These are not traditional sequels! These are not movies where each is written and developed after a previous chapter made a lot of money and they are in hopes of copying what worked before and doing it again. These four new movies Cameron is making are continuing his universe by telling a grand saga! He’s doing what no one else has ever done before and is making his sci-fi movie original version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and thus has turned the original AVATAR film into his own version of The Hobbit. Somewhere in the world out thre are fully written scripts for AVATAR 4 and AVATAR 5 that were conceived back in the mid 2010s. Cameron and his team are committed to this movie original saga – it’s not based on any pre-existing material – and they can’t be swayed by online opinions to deviate from their already set in motion plans.

It’s weird to be an AVATAR fan in this time of extreme cynicism. If you’ve ever gone online you see the same snarky bloggers shaping online film discourse with articles about “How no one remembers AVATAR” and “No one can name three characters from these movies” and “They lack what Star Wars has” and yet I CAN remember everything from these films and I CAN name dozens of characters and these films offer me EVERYTHING I find lacking in the Galaxy Far Far Away. I love these films for being an incredible case of a master filmmaker working at the top of his game to tell an emotional and universal story in an astonishgly rich visual way without sacrificing a sense of risk. These movies are so well made people forget or wave away how wonderfully weird they are! This is filmmaking and storytelling at its very peak – there’s a devastating suicide storyline in Fire & Ash that hit me like a ton of bricks! – but people shrug these movies off because a few lines of dialogue can be a bit blunt and that these movies aren’t part of some franchsie 55 year old’s remember growing up with. All this tired internet noise, while very annoying, ultimately doesn’t matter or affect my enjoyment of these movies and I’m just so glad audiences the world over seem to be on my wavelength because I want, nay, I NEED the final two chapters in this saga to be made! I NEED to know if Jake and Neytiri can get through all this! I NEED to know what kind of adult Lo’ak will grow up be! I NEED to know what is Kiri’s whole deal with Eywa! I NEED to know what is the narrative endgame with Spider! I NEED to see Spiri (the pairing of Spider + Kiri) take center stage! I NEED to see who Tuk becomes when she grows up and has a little more autonomy! I NEED to see where Quaritch, who without a doubt is the most fascinating character in the Saga and is arguably the most fascinating character in mainstream Hollywood cinema since David worked his sick magic in Prometheus & Alien: Covenant, and where his perverse dark mirror version of Jake’s journey ultimately leads to. And I NEED more Varang! We all NEED more Varang! I hope James Cameron and his team of wonderfully talented artists get to make AVATAR 4 & AVATAR 5 and I hope everyone involved is allowed all the time they need to do their work comfortably and make the best films possible! I just, you know, greedily hope we don’t have to wait too long to go back to Pandora..

I adore Pandora and I love da’ movies. They both add so much joy and light to my life!

And that’s that.