So, well… that’s 2025. Woohoo? On a global level, I think few would call it one of their favorite trips around the sun—and yet, if you’re reading this, you’re still here, and I say that counts for a lot. In the meantime, too, some pretty remarkable movies debuted on our screens! In deciding which to see, and what I then loved, I’ll admit it: I’m no tastemaker. I like what I like, and that typically involves at least one explosion or zombie per reel. Per usual, too, a lot of critical darlings didn’t grab my attention, so you won’t find Hamnet or Sentimental Value among my annual accolades. Still, visual storytelling means a lot to me, and ten motion pictures in particular this year went down as prospective classics!
(If you like these reviews, I’ve got expanded versions and much, much more on my Letterboxd!)
HONORABLE MENTIONS
i. Havoc
Scumbag cinema. Everybody here sucks and/or is having a bad time, while the script is like a stoic parody of edgy Aughts gangland thrillers, but—as expected from Gareth Evans—my God are these fights glorious. When I envision a melee in one of my own works, this is what it looks like: fast, loud, and tightly choreographed yet plausibly chaotic. Most of this schlock, you can take or leave, but when Tom Hardy shuts his mouth and picks up a weapon, lock in.
ii. The Home
Pete Davidson’s questionable comedy gig choices aside, The Home is—for a good while—just generic horror teeming with scattershot editing and flaccid jump scares. Stick around for that third act, though, and you’ll be treated to a hard left into what rivals Weapons (see below) as the most satisfying climax of 2025 that also involves… well, just see it. Especially if you’re under 35.
10) Hallow Road
A spooky little thriller that plays like a horror version of Locke, as our protagonists embark on a feature-length midnight car ride which grows increasingly ill-advised. A couple of cheesy visual flourishes do cramp an otherwise grounded presentation—looking at you, cyberpunkish text reflections (or rather, you’re looking at me). Nevertheless, this overall made for great pre-Halloween viewing, haunting score and all! Simple yet mysterious, and with an eminently applicable moral: don’t go driving off into the middle of the woods.
9) Bugonia
Everything and everybody kinda sucks. In the new Roaring Twenties (that’s pain you’re hearing, not partying), this is hardly an earth-shattering observation. Still, Greek/freak director Yorgos Lanthimos puts enough of his alarming, absurdist sauce on contemporary malaise to get Bugonia buzzing. Jesse Plemons (forever having a bad time) and Emma Stone, girlboss hostage, facing off is the main draw, but the sound deserves credit as well, in a sparse yet thunderous score which heightens dread amidst its humble setting. From a simple premise—an embittered conspiracy theorist and his autistic-coded cousin kidnap a CEO, believing her an evil alien—comes a stage for both galling violence and self-aware dialogues on how internet poisoning can be as toxic as any pesticide. From where does our own “colony collapse disorder” come? And wouldn’t it be nice if just one person was to blame? Well… be careful what you go looking for.
8) Sisu: Road to Revenge
Grindhouse Looney Tunes, just like I ordered. With double the budget of 2022’s Sisu comes double the thrills: a bigger bad guy (Stephen Lang, Soviet psycho), bigger stakes (with “The Immortal” toting a morose mobile home), and most critically, even gorier yet goofier action beats set along scenic expanses. It’s conventional yet niche (my theater had two screenings and zero attendees outside family), but as a descendant of Finns with a taste for tales of relentless retribution, that’s my favorite flavor of cheese. A silent protagonist, buckets of blood, and minimal regard for the laws of gravity—what more do you require?
7) Bring Her Back
If there’s ever a Mad Maxian gas shortage in Australia, that’ll be because director-bros Danny and Michael Philippou cooked with so much of it. While I liked but didn’t love Talk to Me, Bring Her Back is a sophomore escalation in all the right ways: greater scale, a higher-profile cast, but still a chiller that goes for the heart. Sally Hawkins is a standout like never before, warping her affable screen persona into something far darker and more desperate as a foster mom with designs for her new charges. Nauseating sound design, an alarming score, and ever-tense camerawork are in full force as well. You may predict the plot’s broad strokes, but gore comes swiftly and without mercy, and it’s seeing the lengths to which this villain will go and why that make the picture. Indeed, the recurrent circular imagery couldn’t be clearer: this is a story about cycles of grief, of violence, of life and death. If someone you loved was stolen from you forever… what wouldn’t you do to undo that?
6) Weapons
There’s hooks, and then there’s hooks. With as much as I enjoyed writer/director/Whitest Kid I Knew Zach Cregger’s Barbarian, I was sold as soon as I saw this front-of-the-poster premise. As I should’ve seen coming, though, the follow-through isn’t a grim, linear thriller but rather a comic mystery box, splitting skulls and sides in equal measure. Weapons taps an ensemble cast for a quasi-anthology about an Everytown upended when a classroom’s worth of kids go missing, where modern American fears and foibles—teachers, child-snatchers, digital witch hunts, bad cops, the homeless—come alive in relentless succession. Unlike Ari Aster’s Eddington, though (all I’ll say here on that is: too soon, man), such timely themes and imagery aren’t a cushion but a springboard, launching viewers somewhere between suburban fantasy and a love letter to the greats (Kubrick, Lynch, Raimi, et al.). The closing minutes may abandon physics in favor of applause, but with how twisted both its plot and imagery get, this journey matters so much more than the destination.
5) Frankenstein
Has a man ever spiritually helmed a film as much as Guillermo del Toro has Frankenstein before finally earning the byline? Without doubt, the man’s skills and fixations are on rapturous display: sympathy for the creature (a patchwork yet hunky Jacob Elordi), opulent costumes, grim yet grandiose set design, and formidable genre alums—chief among them, Oscar Isaac as the scenery-chewing Victor (here solidified as an arrogant, controlling creator damaged by an abusive father) and Mia Goth as the macabre bride-to-be who astutely calls him out on his BS. The project accomplishes its own feat of genius by balancing Mary Shelley’s cerebral sci-fi novel with the lurid spectacle of its Universal incarnation: the Monster bodies bystanders with Tromatic zeal, but the truest villain here is the good Doctor, warmonger money in pocket and designs on his brother’s girl while he tries to imitate mommy. I’d hesitate to call this the definitive version, but is it the most lavish, poetic, yet ruthless? I think GdT has that one in the (body)bag.
4) 28 Years Later
Let it be known: this is how you make a belated sequel. It hasn’t actually been that long since director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland’s original collab, but thank goodness they didn’t wait any longer for another crack at a post-apocalyptic U.K. This time, the focus is on island-bound Scots, whose community fractures once a resentful tween resolves to bring his ailing mum to a mainland mad doctor (Ralph Fiennes, in a hell of a pivot from Conclave). Since 28 Days Later, innumerable media took inspiration from its portrait of a city fallen to inhuman hordes, so the tropes here will be familiar to most: agrarian communes, bowhunting, an “alpha” zombie, etc. However, Years delivers not only tension and gross-out moments head and shoulders (and severed spine) above intervening imitators but also artful, iconic sequences like our protagonists fleeing an Infected while seeming to run on water, or pillars of bones which evoke a birch grove. An alternately ethereal and raucous score and rock-solid performances don’t hurt either! Mind only that The Bone Temple could either raise or lower this rating—suffice it to say that Garland must be quite confident in Nia DaCosta’s pending follow-up to end such a shocking, somber picture with what feels like a crunkcore music video.
3) Superman
Good to have you back, Kal-El. The Snyderverse was a bracing diversion, but James Gunn—appointed by DC to save their world in his own right—recaptures the color, optimism, and vulnerability which befit a “Metahuman” powered by sunshine. There’s the irreverence and icky moments for which the writer-director is known, but also his strengths: an exposure-therapy approach to absurd spectacle and a cavalcade of characters as goofy as they are unforgettable. Smartly, this isn’t an origin story, yet for all the expanded-universe ambitions, neither does it require knowledge of prior lore. Classic characters are back and well-cast (I love Nicholas Hoult’s tech-bro take on Lex Luthor), but the new faces are a delight as well, Mr. Terrific in particular (or maybe I’m just biased towards a badass nerd who puts a “T” on everything). Superman ’25 might turn off folks who wanted a more focused, reverent take on the Man of Steel, but I didn’t mind. When it’s time to be serious or scary, Gunn clicks the safety off, and yet an acceptance that we’re here to have fun is ever-present. It was only a matter of time until we got a Superman younger than me, but I feel no less inspired for it—goodness is the power we need, now more than ever.
2) Sinners
God bless that sweet spot where a talented director returns with a fatter check to “one for me” after clocking out of the franchise factory. With a pair of Jordans in tow (the irresistibly named “Smokestack” twins), Ryan Coogler mixes Southern Gothic, gangster drama, erotica, and Hammer horror into a slick, exciting “one crazy night” flick about the perils of assimilation personified by (stay with me here) song ‘n dance vampires. On the surface, we’ve got From Dusk Til Dawn inverted—with a cadre of ‘30s outcasts whose rollicking evening at a new “juke” is upset by the arrival of entitled bloodsuckers—but composer Ludwig Göransson puts music front and center as a force of nature to be reckoned with. It’s been a minute since the blues sounded this powerful on-screen! The theme is exemplified nowhere better than a literally timeless midpoint party, where Coogler’s camera tracks tribal dancers and modern rappers cavorting amid period-appropriate revelers. Rest assured, too, the closet Klansmen who haunt the first act get their comeuppance…
1) One Battle After Another
After years of period pieces that I either sat out or more respected than championed, P.T. Anderson came around the bend and fired a late lock for Best of 2025 right at me. I didn’t know the guy had a contemporary thriller in him, but with Leo in the lead and an electrifying supporting cast—chiefly, Sean Penn as a white-power cop and rebel girl Chase Infiniti—the hours fly by alongside bullets and cars. Casting his camera upon generations of freedom fighters, Anderson presents action with a haste and energy that industry veterans could learn from, while still leaving room for nuanced character development and expansive cinematography, all set against Johnny Greenwood’s jittery score (plus some classic pop drops). There’s plenty of oddball touches and humor, but the burning core of the film is a sincere, timely, yet timeless paean to progress. True life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness means a forever war against those who would subjugate us—but the fight can’t survive without friends and family looking out for each other. Even if one of them is a little too baked to remember the right code words.
Notes&Sketches 