List making is a uniquely personal endeavor. When I make my list of the top films of the year, I never want it to fully align with someone else’s. Because I do not want to live in a world where we all love the very same films, and frown upon the same others. Life would then be awfully boring.
Each person sitting down in a theater seat to watch a film brings something different to it, their life’s experiences, their implicit biases, their previous conditioning to a particular type of film, heck even what kind of day they are having then.
That is a lot of highfaluting text to say that we should celebrate all reactions to a film. All opinions on film are valid. We feel what we feel when we watch a film, and I have learned to not be too quick to toss my reaction to a film just because it runs contrary to mainstream thinking.
So here is my own list of the better films from 2025. They all, in some way or another switched on something within my emotional circuitry. I hope you, reader, can also make a similar list. And that it is nothing like mine.
- SINNERS – Pound for pound, this was the most ambitious, original, accomplished and genre-bending film of the year. It resists categorization, and so easily straddles incisive commentary (racism is literally a vampire sucking the blood out of minority culture!) and outrageous entertainment.
- TWINLESS – This film is not on anyone’s year-end list, but I believe no film in 2025 had a better script: sly, acerbic, funny, and deviously adept at pulling the rug from under your feet. The film begins with two individuals who develop a friendship after meeting at a support group for siblings who have recently lost their twin. And then that marvelous script starts its alchemy.
- BUGONIA – Yorgos Lanthimos was precariously at a point of becoming a parody of himself. But he is back in fine form with this film, coming back to his hallmark giddily weird ways. Two men kidnap the CEO of a pharmaceutical company, convinced that she is an alien wreaking havoc. And thus starts a cat and mouse game between captors and prey. Which goes marvelously off page.
- IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT – Very well the most topically relevant film for our current time, the simple structure of this film belies how masterfully it has been constructed. If in the real world, you saw your torturer from the time when the government wrongfully imprisoned you, what action on your part is justified. Exacting revenge? Letting the past not ruin the present? What is the moral imperative.
- ROOFMAN / THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND / A NICE INDIAN BOY – while most films trying to elbow for attention at this of the year tend to be serious and weighed down by so many tough issues, one learns to appreciate films that are kind and sweet and have a big heart, standing in relief to heavier cinema. And the three films here were the equivalent of a great big hug to me. ROOFMAN is based on the mostly true story of a man who escaped prison and for months slept in the local Toys R Us at night; Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst bring their considerable charms to a surprisingly wholesome movie-watching experience. THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND is about a popular musician brought to an island to perform a concert for a rich client only to find that the truth may be a little further from what he was told. And finally, A NICE INDIAN BOY reminds us that there is still juice remaining in the age-old story of bringing your love to meet the parents.
- MARTY SUPREME: Let’s face it, Marty is a selfish jerk and elicits chaos in the lives of every single person he encounters. The obsession to get to his championship dreams is absolute. And he will remove everyone in his way. Why should a film about this character be worthy of anyone’s time? It is because of how this film is made, with all guns firing, and with a pace that is determined to have you forget to breathe. The bravura filmmaking is the reason to get to know Marty.
- A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE: How much have we missed you, Kathryn Bigelow. No one does nail-biting tension as well as her. This film is on nobody’s list. For one and only one reason: it is the way the film ends. The film’s shrewd decision to withhold the final outcome of this story has frustrated most, who feel betrayed. But I see it as Bigelow asking the audience to ponder on how we may see this end in the real world; I found this rich for introspection especially in our current world where nuclear annihilation seems that much more likely. P.S. Someone please compensate Rebecca Ferguson for the Best Supporting Female Actor Oscar nomination that she was robbed out of.
- THE SECRET AGENT: This film is alchemy. A glorious immersion into 1970s Brazil when the government was clamping down on dissenters, the film tells the story of a teacher forced to go into hiding as adversaries are close on his heels. Of course, the film is an indictment of authoritarianism, but it is also time-travel to another time and place. It is also playful and mischievous, while being tragic yet unsentimental. It is also rich with so many fully realized side characters. And it is blessed by a lead performance for the ages by Wagner Moura, at once so soulful and quietly human.
- SENTIMENTAL VALUE: What is this film about? Ostensibly about a father trying to make amends with his grown daughters who he ignored while pursuing his career as a filmmaker. But this movie is about so much more. About how so much of what we settle down with in life, is often a pale imitation of what we really want. About how a brick-and-mortar house can come to measure our life and provide a definition of home. About sibling dynamics. About the hungry demands of tough careers. And about seeking redemption despite our crusty, hardened, imperfect selves.
- ALL THAT’S LEFT OF YOU: If the Best International Feature category at this year’s Oscar were not already chockful of marvelous films, this film from Jordan would have a place of pride within the nominations. Tracking three generations of a Jaffa family dealing with merciless displacement, war and questioned alliances, the film, directed by its leading lady, feels like a self-contained epic. That is deeply contemptuous of ordinary people paying the price for generations for the whims of the powerful who call upon war.
- RESURRECTION: Any true lover of cinema needs to do whatever they can to watch this Bi Gan film. Few movies can claim to further the language of cinema itself, through invention, and jaw-dropping bravado. RESURRECTION is that film. It looks back on a hundred years of cinema with awe and glee, while telling three stories filmed in the style and format of moviemaking that was prevalent during the time period in which that story is set. As icing on the cake, the last story is a single unbroken shot of bravura filmmaking. Seek this one out.
- MICKEY 17 / COMPANION: Both films are goofy yet smart. Ambitious yet playful. And,entertaining yet worthy of discourse. MICKEY 17 tells the story of the 17th version of a synthetic in a future world in need of ‘dispensables’ for its experimental warfare. Robert Pattinson proves again how game and supple a performer he can be, especially when paired with gifted filmmakers such as the director of PARASITE here. And COMPANION is a film that is …..best left undescribed and enjoyed for the all the sleights of hand it has in store for the viewer.
- SOVEREIGN / RELAY: These are two films that deserved better at the box-office. Both are exceptionally sturdy, hard-working thrillers. SOVEREIGN, based on a true story, sheds light – and this is key, without judgment – on those who are convinced of conspiracies. Jacob Tremblay plays a teen going through the initial germs of recognition that the father he admires so much could be at violent odds with how everyone else sees the world. RELAY is reminiscent of the pressure-cooker spy thrillers from the seventies that hold up so well even today. Both films need wider exposure.
- WAKE UP DEAD MAN: The third installment in Rian Johnson’s KNIVES OUT films reminds us that this franchise has a lot remaining to say still. And to delight us with. More solemn that the prior two outings – the murder in question here after all happens right in a church in the middle of an active service – the liturgical setting allows Johnson to comment on so many things, the least of which is the nature of faith. Lest anyone worry though, the film doesn’t hold back on the usual labyrinthine plotting leading to the reveal of whodunit.
- BLACK BAG: Delightfully old fashioned as an impossibly clever spy-thriller, and yet gleamingly modern in its sensibility and slick visuals, BLACK BAG is a throwback to times when we all enjoyed a cerebral, smart, cat-and-mouse caper. With a cast that is a gift to cinephiles, Steven Soderbergh gives us a film to consume while smacking our lips at our good fortunes to have him as a prolific filmmaker in our midst.
HONORABLE MENTIONS: Even with some ties in my top fifteen films, many others also deserve recognition. These are films could have proudly taken a top spot in another year, but here they are listed as honorable mentions: THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE, ONE OF THOSE DAYS, HEDDA, ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, IF I HAD LEGS I WOULD KICK YOU, MAGELLAN, HAMNET, LEFT HANDED GIRL, FROM GROUND ZERO, JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE, FANTASTIC FOUR, CAUGHT STEALING, HIGHEST TO LOWEST, PREDATOR: BADLANDS and THE HOUSEMAID.