Every year is a good year for movies, and 2025 offered some great ones. However, I found it very difficult to put this list together. There was a lot of second guessing, partly because some of my favorites received next to no attention whatsoever, while others felt like echoes of titles I'd picked within the last few years. I find myself being more susceptible to hype these days, and sometimes it takes a while for me to really nail down my feelings about a film. Writing the reviews helped considerably.
My criteria for eligibility require that a film must have been released in its home country during 2025, and film festivals don't count. Picks are unranked and listed in no particular order, and previously posted reviews are linked when available.
Eephus - A poignant, elegeic baseball film that is about the love of the game in face of great adversity - not rival teams or personal demons, but the more existential forces of irrelevance, apathy, and time simply passing by. The stakes of the game may be minor, but it feels like it's signaling the end of an era, and you understand why the players don't want to see it end.
The Ugly Stepsister - A sister film to "The Substance," which marries a subversive fairy tale narrative with extreme body horror. Instead of Hollywood stardom, it's the classic "Cinderella" story that gets gleefully skewered. The important thing here is that "The Ugly Stepsister" is still a solid fairy tale film, albeit one that leans into the older, meaner origins of these stories as cautionary tales.
Weapons - That climactic finale was my favorite moment in the theater this year. Zach Cregger is one of my favorite currently working directors, because I have no idea what's going to happen in his films from moment to moment, and he's so good at paying things off. You can spend hours picking apart what it all means, or you can sit back and enjoy the hysterical carnage, and of course I did both.
Sinners - There's something for everyone here - romance, action, horror, melodrama, and some soaring musical sequences. Deftly blending genres, and presenting a version of the Mississippi Delta you won't find anywhere else, "Sinners" is the kind of project that couldn't have been made by anyone else but Ryan Coogler, with the resources of a major studio willing to give him the chance.
One Battle After Another - I like the pieces better than the whole, but the more you dig into the film, the more there is. The ensemble that really impressed me here, with so many perfectly cast minor roles. You could make dozens of movies about characters who are onscreen only briefly. Chase Infiniti was my favorite, and ironically was the only one of the main cast not to be Oscar nominated.
Kiss of the Spider Woman - Tonatiuh's performance was one of my favorites this year. The film it appeared in was very imperfect, but I so admire the efforts of everyone involved to make "Kiss of the Spider Woman" into a full-throated screen musical. I find it ironic that it was so ignored by the awards race, when it got so much right that "Emilia Perez" got so very wrong the year before.
The Plague - Kids are capable of a level of cruelty that we don't like thinking about. "The Plague" examines the toxic group dynamics and ostracism that are already occurring with a group of eleven year-old boys, behavior that looks like play at first, but is more and more troubling the closer you look. It's one of the most effective horror films of the year because it rings so true to life.
The Alabama Solution - Much of the documentary centers on striking cell-phone camera footage smuggled out of the prisons which was shot by the inmates themselves. This shows us life inside from their perspective, and gives them some control over their own depiction. And it puts the abuses of the system in much starker contrast, as we learn how bad the situation has become.
Hamnet - Of course it's manipulative. However, the kind of catharsis it skillfully evokes is a rare and wondrous thing, and I think we all need a reminder of the power of fictional narratives and communal enjoyment of art. What I really appreciate is the clarity of the storytelling, which makes the film so accessible, whether you have any experience with Shakespeare or not.
Left Handed Girl - This was the last title I added, because I was worried that my affection for the film was rooted too much in how well I felt it captured the Taipei of my childhood. And then I accepted that this was a perfectly good reason to get behind the film. "Left Handed Girl" is a very personal, vibrant picture of a city and one of the families that inhabit it. And it's fantastic.
Honorable mentions:
Wake Up Dead Man
The History of Sound
Train Dreams
The Life of Chuck
Marty Supreme
Frankenstein
F1
Hedda
Nouvelle Vague
Deaf President Now
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