The 10 Best Films of 2025 (as chosen by a cranky old person!)

 

A very strange thing happened to me in the final months of 2025: I lost much of my enthusiasm for moviegoing.  At some point, my need to see each and every acclaimed film began to feel like a dreaded homework assignment rather than a pleasurable adventure.  I backed out of moviegoing plans again and again.  

To date, I have yet to see any of the following films, although I've more than sufficient opportunities to do so: Marty Supreme, Hamnet, Train Dreams, Frankenstein. I started, but couldn't bring myself to finish: Bring Her Back, Die My Love, Caught by the Tides.  I was actually able to finish these films, but only after two or three attempts to get fully invested in them: Eddington,  The Mastermind, Nouvelle Vague, Weapons, Sinners.

Why is my interest in films on the wane?  I haven't entirely worked that out yet.  Certainly, the perilous state of our country  - and the world in general - has preoccupied me. I’ve spent too much time doom scrolling through news sites and social media; as a result, my attention span is now noticeably impaired. I find slow or difficult movies tougher to stick with, as evidenced by the stats reported above.

Then too, the moviegoing experience has changed drastically since the pandemic, and not for the better. I can’t remember the last time I was part of anything close to a sold-out theater audience. Nevertheless, every theater chain (but especially AMC) has cranked up the sound in its auditoriums to ear-splitting levels. I wear earplugs every time I go to the movies, and sometimes even that isn’t enough. At a recent matinee of Sentimental Value (a sensitive Norwegian drama that was mostly subtitled for English-speaking audiences, and in NO WAY required extra-amplified sound) I was literally in pain, despite having my earplugs in. I finally went to the lobby where I asked the young woman at the ticket desk if the volume could be turned down. She did so, after realizing that the volume in our auditorium was set 25%  higher (!) than it was supposed to be. Since then, I’ve made a habit of waiting for most films to become available on streaming. I have a 55-inch UHD television on which I can control the volume myself, and movies look very good on it (although it's still totally worth the big screen experience for some films - F1, for example.) I sometimes miss the buzz of communal moviegoing, but I value protecting my hearing more.

And yet...

There were at least ten movies released last year that moved, excited or even exhilarated me - movies well worth praising here.  Some of these are critical darlings and entirely predictable choices. But some are overlooked or under-appreciated gems. This year, of all years, I have no real right to post a ten best list. (To date, I've seen just 64 films released in 2025. When I published last year’s list, I’d seen 96 films released in 2024.) But I'm going to do it anyway, because it wouldn't be January if I didn't.

Some notes about what qualified for my list:

I only consider films which were in general release for the first time in the Chicago area between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2025, inclusive. "General release" means that film festival screenings don't count. It also means that some 2024 films will be considered for this list (including The Brutalist, Sing Sing, The Last Showgirl, Flow and No Other Land.) It also means that quite a few films generally considered to be 2025 releasees will be eligible for my 2026 list. (Among them: The Secret Agent, Is This Thing On?, Sitar, Pillion, The Voice of Hind Rijab, No Other Choice and The Testament of Ann Lee).

Here are my personal choices for the best films of 2025, presented in ascending order of preference:

10. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (director: Michael Morris)

I will make NO apologies to any serious cinephile for including the latest Bridget Jones film in this list! Well-made cinematic comfort food is an absolute necessity in these stressful times, and this one hits all the right notes.

The Bridget Jones franchise has had its up and downs over the last 24 years, but the most recent installment is, far and away, the best of the lot. It opens five years after the death of Mark Darcy, with Bridget slowly emerging from her grief, looking after her two small children, and tentatively re-entering the dating market.  Loosely based on author/Bridget creator Helen Fielding's own experience as a suddenly widowed mother, the new film keeps Bridget's buoyant, gaffe-prone spirit intact while handling her sadness with tender sensitivity. It's every bit as funny as the preceding films when it needs to be, but also heartbreaking and even profound at just the right moments. Renee Zellweger slips easily back into Bridget's skin.  And Hugh Grant is also back for a few brief scenes that deliver a kick of naughty humor at just the moments when it's needed, even as they humanize his rascally Daniel Cleaver character.

9. Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5 (director: Raoul Peck)

Here's the flipside of the Bridget Jones endorsement above: just as surely as we need occasional respite from the world's horrors, we have an equal need to face our harsh realities with clear eyes. This documentary is a great starting point.

A review in Rolling Stone called this "the scariest movie of 2025," and that's probably not an exaggeration. Director Raoul Peck uses Orwell's own words and autobiographical remembrances (voiced by Damian Lewis) to draw subtle but disturbing parallels between Orwell's fictional worlds and our real, current-day experiences.  (Most startling and enlightening is Orwell's realization, while unhappily working as an imperial police officer in Burma, that the British Empire - and the privilege it afforded men of his social class  - were underlying causes of the unrest there.)

As Peck demonstrates, 1984 and Animal Farm weren't just works of fiction; they were primers on how authoritarian systems gain and sustain power. That might seem like an obvious or facile observation, but this film drives the point home with terrifying clarity.  Made with the full cooperation of George Orwell's estate, this feels like the definitive analysis of the author's work and its continuing relevance.

8. Flow (director: Gints Zibalodis)

Five animals - a cat, a dog, a capybara, a lemur and a bird - band together to find dry land during a devastating flood. Their journey is fraught with peril, but they find a way to support each other in their escape. And no human actors’ voices are given to them; all the drama is in their exquisitely animated faces and movements. I don't know much about how capybaras and lemurs move, but I guarantee the animators must have studied the movements of cats, dogs and birds in great detail before working on this film. The realism of their work is stunning. Flow was the first ever Latvian film to win an Academy Award, and it was very well deserved.

7. Bugonia (director: Yorgos Lanthimos)

You don't come to a Yorgos Lanthimos film expecting a feel-good experience. In fact, his most recent work (Poor Things, Kind of Kindness) has been disturbing to the point of repulsiveness.  And some may find Bugonia to be just more of same indulgent nastiness.

But, for me, Bugonia was greatly redeemed by the superb performance of Jesse Plemons (cruelly overlooked in this year's Oscar nominations) whose portrayal of a passionate conspiracy theorist is dazzling in its virtuosity.  Plemons kidnaps the CEO of a nearby megacorporation (Emma Stone, great as always - and particularly funny when doling out commands in well-practiced, but meaningless, corporate-speak). He imprisons Stone in his basement where the ensuing cat-and-mouse game 

between them is, by turns, unnerving and uncomfortably funny. Meanwhile, Plemons' backstory is gradually teased out to reveal the origins of his obsessions.

The final minutes of Bugonia go somewhat off the rails, with a 11th hour revelation that appears to contradict everything that has come before it.  But those last minutes were so compelling to me that I just accepted the turn of events and appreciated Lanthimos' audacity. Not everyone who sees it can make that same leap; consider yourselves warned.

6. The Baltimorons (director: Jay Duplass)

One of the year’s sweetest surprises. This amiable, low-budget comedy - devoid of recognizable stars or predictable comic beats - follows two seemingly mismatched people through an eventful Christmas Eve.  

Cliff (Michael Strassner)- in his early weeks of sobriety and struggling to keep an anxious fiancée happy - needs emergency dental work on Christmas Eve.  Didi (Liz Larsen) is the only dentist available - a weary divorcee who's entirely resistant to Cliff's shambling, earnest charms.  Through a series of complications, they wind up spending the rest of the evening together. Their rambling journey around Baltimore includes a drop-in at the wedding reception of Didi's ex-husband, futile attempts to get dinner at any of the fully booked restaurants, and a climactic trip to the improv comedy club where Cliff once performed. 

There's nothing new about the idea of mismatched people stumbling their way to a deep emotional connection, but this unassuming little film manages to make that journey feel fresh and authentic. Larsen and Strassner have an easy, lovely chemistry together, and their performances make this film a great candidate for comforting re-watches.

5. The Friend (directors: Scott McGehee, David Siegel )

Unfairly overlooked in a year of otherwise over-hyped cinema, this fine adaptation of Sigrid Nunez' novel features what might be the greatest performance ever given by a canine performer.  Naomi Watts plays a lonely academic who inherits a particularly charismatic Great Dane from her late friend/colleague/former lover (Bill Murray). Her slow, stumbling road to accepting - and ultimately loving - this unexpected companion is depicted with great humor and sensitivity.

The Friend also contains a stunning fantasy sequence in which Watts confronts her deceased friend about the pain his suicide caused everyone who loved him. It’s not a rant - it’s sensitive and nuanced - but the anger and anguish she expresses are heartbreaking in their authenticity. And it just about wiped me out. Having myself lost someone I loved to suicide,  I can attest to how perfectly this scene captures the emotions of those who are left behind.

4. No Other Land (directors: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor)

This harrowing documentary, made by a team of both Palestinian and Israeli activists, depicts the slow but devastating destruction of a Palestinian village by Israeli soldiers. It's a bit of guerilla filmmaking, but skillfully edited and assembled - and ultimately heartbreaking, although it offers a few, small glimmers of hope.  I'm not qualified to speak in any detail about the conflicts between Israel and Palestine, and fear I'd only sound fatuous if I tried.  But I know this film - shocking, saddening and revelatory - is an important document of that conflict.

3. It Was Just an Accident (director: Jafar Panahi)

 

In this thriller from Iranian director Jafar Panahi, a group of former political prisoners band together to hunt down  - and deliver retribution  to - a certain man with a squeaky prosthetic leg whom they suspect is the same man who oversaw their torture - and deliver retribution. 

Panahi, himself a formerly jailed political prisoner, imbues his film with escalating suspense, moral urgency and unexpected moments of comic relief. (When a policeman requires a cash bribe for a favor, and the person asking has no cash, the policeman promptly produces a credit card reader.)  But he doesn't give us a neat denouement. Just when we think the characters have experienced a catharsis and moved on, Panahi gives us an ambiguous, heart-stopping coda, raising the question of whether these characters can every, truly, put their trauma behind them. The Palme D'Or award this won at Cannes was thoroughly deserved. 

2. The Brutalist (director: Brady Corbet)

An epic film about love, trauma, anti-Semitism, the immigrant experience and the power of great architecture. Adrien Brody plays Lazlo Toth, a brilliant Jewish architect who survives the concentration camps, heads to America, and lives in a relative’s spare room while eking out a meager living. After he supervises the building of a home library for a wealthy industrialist (Guy Pearce), his identity is revealed and he’s put to work designing a community center. 

There are no happy endings here, no moments of genuine triumph. Lazlo, a man with passionate artistic sensibilities and a traumatic history of loss and suffering, keeps bumping up against the prejudice and materialistic values of those who hold his fate in their hands. But, in a stunning epilogue, Corbet allows him to have the last word.

1. One Battle After Another (director Paul Thomas Anderson)

Best described as a "black-comedy action thriller" (not my original words, but definitely the best way to categorize it), Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film is an exhilarating ride. Watching this film is like strapping yourself into a roller coaster, particularly during a brilliantly executed chase scene through hilly desert terrain in its final chapter. It moves fast, tossing out sight gags and plot points in rapid succession, Much of it is breathlessly funny, but some scenes are underscored with mournful poignancy or well-earned moral outrage. And like the best roller coaster rides, it leaves you giddy and anxious to ride again.

In adapting Thomas Pynchon's novel (Vinland), Anderson creates an exaggerated, yet disturbingly accurate picture of contemporary America. Its broadly-drawn characters include: a burned-out former radical who's traded activism for days spent in his bathrobe while doing bong hits (Leonard DiCaprio); an unflappable smuggler of illegal immigrants (Benicio del Toro, delightfully deadpan), and a impenetrably weird military officer (Sean Penn's cold-eyed Colonel Lockjaw) who is recruited by a secret ruling cabal of wealthy white men. Teyana Taylor makes a indelibly angry impression early on as DiCaprio's radical activist partner who abandons him, leaving their daughter behind (Chase Infiniti).

This is political satire on a par with Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. Yet where Strangelove was cold-eyed and efficient, One Battle is endearingly messy with a recurring thread of melancholy stitching together its scenes of comic lunacy.  It might just be Paul Thomas Anderson's greatest film.

A few other distinctions (and disses)...

Honorable Mention:  Sinners, Riefenstahl, Sorry Baby, Highest 2 Lowest, Nouvelle Vague, Lurker

2025 Nominees to the Academy of the Overrated: Blue Moon, Sentimental Value, Friendship 

Worst Movies of the Year: It's a dead heat between After the Hunt (good actors in a film with no discernible through line or cogent point) and Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale (the completely unnecessary - and thoroughly ludicrous - final chapter that no one asked for. This franchise should have died with Maggie Smith.)