Best movies of 2025

[dougo]

When 2025 started, I decided to be a little pickier about movies, and not bother going to see the ones with a low Rotten Tomatoes rating unless I had some reason to suspect I would enjoy it more than the professional reviewers they survey. I'm not sure it made a difference in my movie-watching habits, because I ended up seeing even more new movies than I had around this time last year, and the ratings distribution looks pretty similar—maybe weighted a bit more towards 8s and 7s, which is good. It also didn't help that AMC Theaters expanded their A-List subscription to let you go to four free movies a week instead of "only" three, and I took advantage of this most weeks!

My number one favorite movie of the year is a sports movie, which is pretty unusual for me, although the original Bad News Bears is one of my top five favorites of all time. Eephus does have some of that feel, except instead of Gen X pre-teen losers, the teams are made up of Gen X middle-aged losers. And instead of charting their unlikely ride to the championship game, it's just one game, from the opening pitch to the final out. But it's a great demonstration of how a baseball game can have all the dramatic beats of a complete story, in fact many stories on different levels. I found it absorbing and affecting, and maybe you would too?

My number two movie, the only other one I rated a 9/10, is Fackham Hall, which is an incredibly silly satire of Downton Abbey. It's filled with gags, from puerile to intellectual, and made me laugh way more than anything else this year. It evokes the classic ZAZ comedies much better than this year's Naked Gun sequel did.

The list below is separated into groups by rating out of 10, and in descending order within each group. (I haven't rated anything a 10/10 in years, because in my mind that means "an old favorite that stands the test of time", and nothing recent has aged into that yet. Also, fortunately, I didn't hate anything enough to warrant a 2/10 or 1/10 rating this year.) I saw nearly all of these in movie theaters; the exceptions are marked with an asterisk (except I did see Thunderbolts* in a theater, it just has an asterisk in the title!). As usual, for me the 2025 movie year doesn't end until the Oscars award ceremony, so I'll post a final updated list after that happens—hopefully sooner than my 2024 list I finally just posted yesterday!

9/10 (great):

1. Eephus
2. Fackham Hall

   8/10 (really good):

3. Tornado
4. Predator: Badlands
5. Freakier Friday
6. Honey Don't!
7. Black Bag
8. Train Dreams
9. Trifole
10. The Ballad of Wallis Island
11. Good Fortune
12. Weapons
13. A House of Dynamite
14. Left-Handed Girl*
15. It Was Just an Accident
16. Pavements
17. Relay
18. She Rides Shotgun
19. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera
20. The Phoenician Scheme
    
21. Bugonia
22. After the Hunt
23. The Mastermind
24. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
25. Becoming Led Zeppelin
26. Goodbye June
27. Novocaine
28. Predator: Killer of Killers*
29. Presence
30. Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music*

    7/10 (good):

31. One of Them Days
32. 40 Acres
33. Ash
34. Sovereign*
35. Bring Them Down
36. The Assessment
37. Secret Mall Apartment
38. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
39. The Baltimorons
40. The Shrouds
41. Christy
42. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
43. The Surfer
44. Eddington
45. Die My Love
46. Sorry, Baby
47. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
48. Oh, Hi!
49. Rebuilding
50. Nouvelle Vague
51. Jay Kelly
52. Seven Veils
53. Companion
54. The Knife
55. Splitsville
56. Twinless
57. Caught Stealing
58. I Know Catherine, the Log Lady
59. Abraham's Boys: A Dracula Story
60. Dead of Winter
61. Roofman
62. 28 Years Later
63. Sinners
64. Fairyland
65. Urchin
66. Highest 2 Lowest
67. Watch the Skies
68. Eleanor the Great
69. It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley
70. Americana
71. The Running Man
72. Hung Up on a Dream: The Zombies Documentary
73. Wolf Man
74. Architecton
75. La Grazia
76. The Secret Agent
77. Kerouac's Road: The Beat of a Nation
78. Captain America: Brave New World
79. Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
80. Sketch
81. TRON: Ares
82. F1
83. Spinal Tap II: The End Continues

    6/10 (pretty good):

84. SNL50: The Homecoming Concert*
85. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
86. Blue Moon
87. Hamnet
88. The Naked Gun
89. Misericordia
90. Rental Family
91. Sentimental Value
92. One Battle After Another
93. Sacramento
94. Thunderbolts*
95. A Nice Indian Boy
96. The Wedding Banquet
97. Ballad of a Small Player
98. The Amateur
99. The Alto Knights
100. Warfare
101. Frankenstein
102. Superman
103. The History of Sound
104. Good Boy
105. Gazer
106. My Mother's Wedding
107. The Thing with Feathers
108. The Roses
109. Opus
110. The Fantastic 4: First Steps
111. Cloud
112. The Actor
113. Bone Lake
114. The Accountant²
115. Nuremberg
116. HIM
117. Kiss of the Spider Woman
118. In the Lost Lands
119. Materialists
120. Eternity
121. Ballerina
122. Nobody 2
123. Sisu: Road to Revenge
124. My Dead Friend Zoe
125. The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie
126. Jurassic World Rebirth

     5/10 (okay):

127. Mickey 17
128. 100 Nights of Hero
129. Steve
130. The Life of Chuck
131. Together
132. East of Wall
133. Afterburn
134. M3GAN 2.0
135. Anniversary
136. Caught by the Tides
137. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
138. Now You See Me: Now You Don't
139. The Electric State*

     4/10 (poor):

140. Song Sung Blue
141. Ella McCay
142. The Long Walk
143. The Smashing Machine
144. Love Me
145. Friendship
146. Hollywood Grit

     3/10 (bad):

147. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
148. Orwell: 2+2=5

Here's my current list of 2025 releases I plan to see in theaters soon:

Wicked: For Good
Zootopia 2
Is This Thing On?
The Housemaid
Avatar: Fire & Ash
Marty Supreme
Anaconda
The Plague
No Other Choice
Father Mother Sister Brother
The Choral
The Testament of Ann Lee
Sirat
Dracula: A Love Tale

And a selection of other 2025 releases I would like to catch up with:

2000 Meters to Andriivka
40 Watts from Nowhere
A Useful Ghost
Anemone
Arco
Best Wishes For All
Beyond the Gaze
Blue Sun Palace
Bob Trevino Likes It
Bowie: The Final Act
Bring Her Back
Coexistence My Ass!
Dead Talent Society
Death of a Unicorn
Dig! XX
Eastern Western
Familiar Touch
Four Mothers
Fucktoys
Guns & Moses
Hedda
John Candy: I Like Me
Keeper
Love/Sex/Dreams (Oslo Trilogy)
Lurker
Magazine Dreams
Maya, Give Me A Title
Melomaniac
Merchant Ivory
My Mom Jayne
My Undesirable Friends
Parallel Consequences
Peter Hujar's Day
Predators
Prime Minister
Reflection in a Dead Diamond
Sister Midnight
Slice of Life
Sore: A Wife From the Future
Souleymane's Story
Straatcoaches vs Aliens
The Alabama Solution
The Cure: The Show of a Lost World
The Family McMullen
The Girl Who Stole Time
The Hobby: Tales from the Tabletop
The Ice Tower
The Lost Bus
The Luckiest Man in America
The Propagandist
The Sound of Falling
The Ugly Stepsister
Tim Travers & the Time Travelers Paradox
Violent Ends
We Are Fugazi From Washington DC
Who in the Hell is Regina Jones?

Let me know what else I missed!