2025 was not great for movies. The strikes left little in the pipeline. What did come out was decent. Not great. But let’s celebrate the good stuff anyway.
Note: This year’s list skews heavily toward horror and thrillers. Watch trailers at your discretion.
Weapons
Weapons announced itself this April with the creepiest teaser I have ever seen. In just 44 seconds, it tells you two things. One, the movie is about a town where a bunch of kids run out of their houses into the night, never to be seen again. Two, holy shit.
Weapons is a superb horror movie and something stranger. Without spoilers, director Zach Creggar has a couple obvious metaphors and some less obvious ones. Weapons is proudly weird. It focuses on surprising subjects. It’s funnier than I expected.
Creggar’s last movie, Barbarian, was a pure scarefest with Swiss-watch timing. Weapons shows him growing as an artist - exploring new themes, tones and techniques, all without losing the audience.
The more Weapons has sat with me, the more I like it. Another tremendous film from one of the best young horror directors working today.
Superman
James Gunn is getting soft, in the best possible way. The cynical edgelord who used to churn out shock-a-minute schlock for Troma has become open-hearted and sentimental in his older age. Just look at Guardians of the Galaxy, a loving tribute to found families and second chances.
With 2025’s Superman, Gunn has reimagined the Man of Steel as many in Hollywood dare not - a hero. Gunn’s Superman believes in Truth, Justice, and the American Way. He’s so earnest, other characters can’t help but dunk on him. And yet, the film is on his side. It believes there is nothing more radical than sincerity. It literally states being a nice guy is punk rock.
That’s what I want from Superman. I want a guy who believes in something. A guy who believes in believing.
It Was Just an Accident
One day, an Iranian mechanic hears a noise. He hasn’t heard the noise in years, but it haunts his dreams. He thinks it’s the odd squeak of the false leg belonging to a government intelligence officer who tortured him. So he impulsively kidnaps him. There’s just one problem - he’s not sure the guy tied up in the back of his van is the right one.
It Was Just an Accident is a powerful study in human response to trauma. As the mechanic finds other victims of the torturer (hoping one can identify him), they react with forgiveness, avoidance, rage and more. There’s no right way to handle a man who’s committed an unforgiveable crime against you.
The ending is unforgettable. Some of the most riveting dialogue you’ll see in a movie this year.
Wake Up Dead Man
Rian Johnson’s gifted us another fantastic Benoit Blanc mystery for Christmas. This time, a priest has been killed inside a small room when no one was near him. It is, as Daniel Craig says in his delightful Foghorn Leghorn accent, a “perfect crime.”
The mystery isn’t even the best part. Johnson uses its setting in an old Catholic parish to explore religion - what it is, what it isn’t, and what it can be.
Every actor in Wake Up Dead Man is good, but I must give special mention to Josh O’Connor as the young priest. He killed it last year in Challengers, and he’s even better here.
One of O’Connor’s scenes sticks with me even now. He’s on the phone with a secretary trying to get an essential clue, but she keeps getting sidetracked. You can see him get more and more frustrated, until the secretary tells him her mother’s dying. They fought in their last conversation, and she’s afraid it’ll be the last thing she ever said to her. Could the father pray with her?
The way O’Connor’s body deflates at this is phenomenal. All his frustration falls away as he remembers he is a priest. This woman is not just a clue-giver. She’s going through one of the most important times in her life, and he needs to be there for her. To Rian Johnson, there is no higher or nobler purpose for religion.
28 Years Later
In 2002, director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland reinvigorated the zombie movie with 28 Days Later. They leaned into fears of terrorism, disease and civil unrest to make a supremely stressful tale set in the immediate aftermath of England’s zombie apocalypse. It was quite post-9/11.
Now, 23 years later, they have re-teamed to show us how it’s done. 28 Years Later is set decades after the fall of England. The survivors have created new societies through careful scavenging and avoiding the infected at all costs.
It’s been so long, in fact, that the hero of the movie is a teenage boy with no memory of the before times. He’s only ever known this, a world without electricity or safety. But events conspire to push him out of the settlement and into the remnants of England, which are stranger and more dangerous than he knows.
28 Years Later is a good zombie movie, but the thing that has stuck with me for months is Ralph Fiennes’ performance as the “mad” doctor. He teaches the protagonist to remember we must die. Memento mori. It’s unexpectedly profound.
One Battle After Another
There’s madness in this country. Different kinds, different amounts, but madness. Couldn’t tell you why. Maybe it was spending a year alone during COVID. Maybe it’s fury at certain people. Maybe Americans have always been like this.
Regardless, it feels like things got worse in the last few years. People punching flight attendents, talking themselves into taking horse dewormer and letting their children get sick with preventable diseases. A large number of people in this country — a significant number — do not exist in reality.
This year, three movies focused on American madness: Bugonia, Eddington and One Battle After Another.
One Battle After Another is the largest-scale look at the problem. It updates Thomas Pynchon’s postmododern novel Vineland to 2025 politics to depict a country deeply at war with itself, mired in self-loathing, fascistic rage.
But it’s not hopeless. One Battle believes in fighting. It knows you can’t win everything today. You have to do your best and hope you didn’t mess it up too badly for your kids.
No Other Choice
Park Chan-wook is simply the best at unforgettable, so-dark-they’re-funny films.
No Other Choice follows a dad who’s laid off from a paper plant. When applying for a new job, he has an idea. What if he kills every other candidate?
Things spiral from there. Park takes the audience on a wild ride about class, pride, masculinity and capitalism. I couldn’t believe my eyes, but also? I get it.
Sinners
Sinners is unusual. On one hand, it’s a crowd-pleasing horror movie about vampires. On the other, it’s a historically accurate depiction of sharecropping and segregation. It is an incredibly specific story and vision, but it’s also just entertaining. I’d recommend it to anyone with the stomach.
Director Ryan Coogler has a lot on his mind. What does it mean to be a man? How can you fight back against oppressive systems? What role should religion play in our lives?
I also must salute him for the single best individual scene in a movie in 2025. I knew it was coming, and it still had me almost levitating in my chair.
Bugonia
Speaking of madness, Yorgos Lanthimos looked at today’s craziness and had fun with it.
Bugonia follows two guys who kidnap a female CEO and hold her hostage. Their theory is she is an alien, and responsible for everything that’s gone wrong on Earth. They shaved her head so she couldn’t communicate with her mothership.
Jesse Plemmons and Emma Stone are two of our finest living actors and great together. I also loved seeing comedian Stavros Halkias crush a couple scenes as an unhelpful cop.
Bugonia is dark, nihilistic and funny. It’s a nasty little parable about our times: exactly what I want from Yorgos.
The Naked Gun (2025)
I’ve loved The Lonely Island’s work for nearly 20 years. They have made three of the greatest comedies ever: Hot Rod, MacGruber and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. Their movies are so deep in my brain, I still can’t pick up a packet of green tea without muttering, “I’ve been drinkin’ green tea all god-damn day.”
I’m in the bag for anything Akiva Schaeffer directs. Of course I loved The Naked Gun (2025). It’s packed with one-liners, sight gags, and even a Mission: Impossible parody. Impossible to pick a favorite joke. “Me too!“? TiVo?? The snowman???
The worst of the rest
This year, I’ve also decided to name and shame the 5 worst new movies, because screw them.
- Captain America: Brave New World: Ate too much homemade guac and fell asleep during the finale of this excruciatingly boring movie.
- Honey Don’t!: A valid response to “Should I see this movie?“.
- A Minecraft Movie: Best I can say is it got people into theaters.
- Bring Her Back: Boring, predictable and gross.
- The Fantastic 4: First Steps: Love the retro-futurist production design, hate everything else.