Supplementing the podcast once again, but not every year and only when I feel like it (maybe just like the Olympics), it is time to tier my favorite movies of 2025. I maintain my previous take on straight rankings v tiers. But if you like rankings, I have a vibes-based Letterboxd list.
Listen to the whole podcast here, if you’d like.
(Movies within tiers sorted alphabetically.)
These are the best movies of 2025, in my eyes
- Left-Handed Girl
- Hamnet
- Happyend
- No Other Choice
- Rental Family
- Sinners
I talked about most of these at length on the podcast, but for the couple I didn’t…
I think Chloé Zhao is one of the more interesting filmmakers out there right now. She is incredible at depicting character and their stories, starting with Songs My Brothers Taught Me and continuing through Hamnet. Depicting not just the rise of William Shakespeare – the bard, the writer, the poet, the literary genius – but also a family in strife. Shakespeare is never around, because he needs to be off writing, like a compulsion. But the plague rolls on through and takes Hamnet. He’s never the same, and no one is. The scene between Hamnet and Judith is absolutely beautiful and the final scene with Agnes is also beautiful. Zhao did wonderfully with this story.
The film I did not talk about at all, because I had not seen it yet, is Rental Family. As Chris mentioned on the podcast, there’s a cottage industry of actors playing real life people in a customer’s real life. In this one, Brendan Fraser (playing Phillip Vanderploeg, a toothpaste man, and myriad other roles) begins to play key roles in people’s lives. A father. An interviewer, and maybe only friend. A husband. He wants to do right by these people, and his boss Shinji (Takehiro Hira) basically tells him to toe up to the line as far as he can get. He maybe goes too far, at least from the job description on paper. But he becomes true friends with a lot of people. And it’s just so wonderful.
I still really like these, but not as much as the ones previously mentioned
- Blue Moon
- Bob Trevino Likes It
- Eephus
- If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
- Mickey 17
- Wake Up Dead Man
- Weapons
- The Wedding Banquet
Here’s what I wrote about If I Had Legs I’d Kick You on Letterboxd: What a movie. A perfect encapsulation of being well beyond your absolute wit’s end, but still having to soldier on.
It’s an incredible movie.
Extremely fun romps that were also great movies
- 28 Years Later
- KPop Demon Hunters
- Predator: Badlands
- Superman
I talked about Superman and Predator: Badlands at some length on the podcast, so skipping over them.
For KPop Demon Hunters, I’ll focus in on Zoey, my favorite character, who plays the fill in character for all Asian Americans in this movie. The lyrics: “I lived two lives, tried to play both sides / But I couldn’t find my own place” are quite poignant. She’s not Korean enough for Koreans and not American enough for USians. She had the same taunts and insults as many have had thrown at her, I’m sure. She’s gone back “home” to Korea and been told she’s not enough or she acts too American.
And 28 Years Later is as great a meditation on death in any action movie of its ilk. The no spoilers version of my Letterboxd review: In the first act, Spike’s mom. In the second, the infected. And in the third, Kelson. Simply incredible, and The Bone Temple makes it even better.
I liked these only slightly less than the previous category
- Cloud
- On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
- One Battle After Another
- The Ugly Stepsister
I have said enough about The Ugly Stepsister, so I will skip that one. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl was so heartbreaking in so many ways, but also a representation about how people (in this case, also people in different cultures than the US) deal with loss and death. It’s much different from 28 Years Later, but so, so brilliant.
I dunno where to put these, besides here, but I liked all of these quite a bit
- 100 Meters
- Black Bag
- Dust Bunny
- Frankenstein
- Paddington in Peru
- Presence
- Who Killed the Montreal Expos?
It’s continually extremely infuriating to see cities lose teams because of incompetent ownership, greed, politics, and any myriad things. But watching Who Killed the Montreal Expos? was one of those experiences. I hope we look back in 30 years on the Las Vegas Athletics and ask again how John Fisher killed the team in Oakland.
The rest of these – with the exception of Presence, which I loved for what it was even with the ending – are all very fun for a variety of reasons. Guillermo del Toro is obviously having so much fun creating Frankenstein, and it comes through on the screen. Dust Bunny is Bryan Fuller finally bringing his extreme talents on screen, and Mads is so good in it. Steven Soderbergh continues to be able to make a very fun thriller movie with Black Bag (Presence falls more on the side of experimental, and it works in some ways). And I will say nothing bad about Paddington, even if Paddington in Peru isn’t as good as its predecessors.
100 Meters suffers more adapting five manga volumes into one anime (the Blue Giant, A Silent Voice, many other anime movies problem), but it got its point across and did it very well.
These were, like, good, but not great
- Becoming Led Zeppelin
- The Fantastic Four: First Steps
- Havoc
- Highest 2 Lowest
- In Your Dreams
- Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II – The Ashes of Rage
- Nouvelle Vague
- Sacramento
- Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
- Thunderbolts*
- The Thursday Murder Club
- Together
Not going to touch on all of these, but here’s some random thoughts that come to my brain as I see these titles.
I really liked Sacramento as a friend movie, a early-mid-life crisis movie, a buddy movie. It suffered from a lack of Kristen Stewart.
Unlike Blue Moon, Linklater’s other movie Nouvelle Vague didn’t capture me as much. I watched Breathless in prep for watching Nouvella Vague, and I don’t know if there’s a way to capture the magic of that movie, especially the way that Linklater is clearly reverent toward Goddard and Breathless. Zoey Deutch, like the woman she was portraying Jean Seberg, is a force.
I loved In Your Dreams for being a kids movie about accepting that things can be different from your ideal and still be ok.
Havoc was not that good, but do I want to see Tom Hardy in Gareth Evans action set pieces? Yes.
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere steps slightly above the other two biopics below this tier for having an arc.
These were not that good
- A Complete Unknown
- F1
- The Smashing Machine
- Wicked For Good
A Complete Unknown completely skipped over Bob Dylan’s entire character arc in a time skip. The Smashing Machine had a legitimately incredible performance from The Rock, but suffered from being a movie about two people who should not be together and seemed to hate each other. Wicked For Good I will also say nothing bad about, but oof (I just want to see them sing, and it delivered). And F1 seems to be a cynical cash grab with very little substance, but it does at minimum hit some good sports movie highs.
This was the worst movie I saw all year
- Captain America: Brave New World
GOD. Captain America: Brave New World was a Hulk movie and a The Incredible Hulk sequel, disguised as a Captain America movie and it’s incredibly depressing. Sam Wilson deserves better. I ranted about it on Letterboxd.