2025 was a poster child for my concept of a Movie Year that ends on Oscar night instead of New Year’s Eve. It makes perfect sense for denizens of Los Angeles and New York and other capital cities of cinephilia to look backward then, but six of the 17 films on the following list had not yet arrived in Ithaca or on a streaming video platform I subscribe to as of January 1. Meanwhile, one of my other selections appeared on a number of critics’ 2024 top ten lists, but never played here theatrically and didn’t arrive on Hulu until last November. So the system works and I’m going to stick with it!
Perceptive readers may have noticed I said 17 films. This is because I’ve decided to codify something this year’s list has in common with the one I posted last March, which is that they both recognize the top 10% in the class, so to speak. If you’re curious, the full roster of 174 titles I deemed eligible for consideration as the best of Movie Year 2025 can be found here. More importantly for calibration purposes, I saw everything on the IndieWire Critics Poll and CriticsTop10 aggregate Top 50 lists save April, and 48/50 Oscars nominees. In other words, any omission that strikes you as conspicuous likely IS intentional. Which isn’t necessarily to say that I think whatever it is sucked! While a number of this year’s critical darlings strike me as being a bit overrated, there aren’t any I’d want to go to the mat to take down except maybe Bring Her Back, and I don’t know that it even earned that label. Without further ado, here’s what I liked best:
10. One Battle After Another. Contains many of my favorite individual sights and sounds of the year, including the climactic car chase over hills that, because I saw it for the first time five days after watching Patriot Games, will always remind me of waves and Jonny Greenwood’s pitch-perfect use of Shepard Tone in the theme he wrote for Teyana Taylor’s Perfidia Beverly Hills.
9. The Tale of Silyan. This retelling of a Macedonian folk tale proudly proclaims at the outset of its end titles that “THERE WAS NO AI USED IN THE MAKING OF THIS FILM.” Although I’m not sure about the economic validity of its proposed return to agrarian roots, the live-action imagery reminiscent of Studio Ghibli represents a fine poetic pole star to navigate by during our present era of rapid technological change. With a runtime of just 80 minutes, Silyan would also be a terrific antipodal partner for the modern Merrie Melody No Other Choice, a cautionary tale about what can happen when you mistake the means for the end that I’d like even more if it weren’t quite so long.
8. 7 Walks with Mark Brown. The titular paleobotanist who guides a filmmaking crew through the Pays de Caux region to “collect” primeval plants for a cinematic herbarium could be this blog’s patron saint, and the 16mm second half of its diptych comprises some of the most satisfying long shots I’ve ever seen.
7. 28 Years Later. In which the Infected of 28 Days and Weeks Later are intriguingly developed into just another set of tribes groping their way back toward civilization in a vividly-realized neo-Dark Ages landscape à la A Canticle for Liebowitz. It’s a tragic waste of good timing that we aren’t looking forward to fêting Ralph Fiennes for his supporting turn as an orange-skinned anti-Trump, and the reappearance of Jack O’Connell’s character’s evil St. Jimmy at the end is a pop-powerful reminder that false messiahs are a symptom, not the disease. The Testament of Ann Lee, on the other hand, translates the appeal of the Shaker movement Amanda Seyfried’s title character founded into contemporary terms and offers it up as an example of the kind of egalitarian, pacifist religion that we could use more of to tap the brakes as we careen toward apocalypse.
6. Sirât. And that brings me to the film I’m most likely to think is in the wrong place when I look back on this list in the future. Having now seen more than half of the other competition titles from Cannes 2025, I think it’s almost certainly the one I would have favored for the Palme d’Or and maybe my pick for best of the fest, but I can’t bring myself to place something I watched for the first time barely 48 hours ago in my top five.
5. Highest 2 Lowest. I’m not usually one to carry on about so-called Oscar snubs, and it’s not like it could have beaten “Golden” or “I Lied to You” anyway, but how did Aiyana-Lee’s title song not even wrangle a nomination? Music plays a huge role in creating the striking tonal contrasts that define the latest Spike Lee joint, from the full orchestra associated with Denzel Washington’s record producer “King David” King’s swanky “ebony tower” penthouse to A$AP Rocky’s Noriega music torture track “Trunks” to the opening credits sequence set to the tune of Norm Lewis performing “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin.'” Speaking of which: Robert Kaplow’s screenplay for Blue Moon, which tells the tale of how Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) whiled away the evening Oklahoma! debuted on Broadway, contains the precise mix of deep and crass that my personal sense of humor aspires to. But the best movie this year which was *actually* set in that state was Thieves Highway.
4. Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point. I was disappointed when this Cannes 2024 (Directors’ Fortnight) selection never arrived in Ithaca, but while I do hope to see it on the big screen someday, like all true holiday classics it plays just fine on the one in your living room with your Christmas tree reflecting off it. Cinematographer Carson Lund’s upside-down colored lights opening credits sequence, the slow motion close-up of green and red M&Ms 30 minutes in, and a handful of other shots will stand the test of time, as will the cut I wrote about in January. While The Baltimorons lacks any such singular moments (except maybe, for those with ties to the city it’s set in, the nighttime exteriors of the Francis Scott Key Bridge that now function as a memorial), it too has earned a spot in my regular December rotation, the expansion of which might be my single favorite thing about this year in movies.
3. Magellan. I made a point of mentioning how grateful I was to Cinemapolis for programming this film in every single one of my conversations with someone who works there for a solid month because I didn’t think it was high-profile enough to *ever* play here, let alone during its first run in theaters! Like 28 Years Later it is, for me, first and foremost a quasi-adaptation of a great science fiction novel I never expected to get to see on the big screen, in this case Orson Scott Card’s Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus, which postulates that if just one or two things had gone differently, we could easily be living in a world where Mesoamericans “discovered” and subjugated Europe instead of vice versa. Here Gael García Bernal’s titular explorer is depicted as not much more than a crab in a metal carapace, washed up on a beach at the beginning of the film and ready for the boil by the end of it. Producer Albert Serra earned first runner-up honors for my Movie Year 2025 MVP by also directing Afternoons of Solitude, which works in a similarly myth-puncturing vein to put bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey under the microscope.
2. L’Empire. This oblique celebration and send-up in equal measure of Star Wars and other sci fi/fantasy texts with simplistic Manichean worldviews questions what you might call our culture’s “John the Baptist complex”: the problem with waiting to be recognized as the secret weapon in someone else’s war instead of choosing your own battles is that you may never gain understanding of just what it is you’re fighting for. When a spaceship appeared modeled on Saint-Chapelle, a building I genuinely think might just represent one of human kind’s crowning achievements, I knew I was watching the resourceful reimagining I’ve been waiting for ever since Peter Jackson’s depressingly literal Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings launched a thousand arguments between me and all my friends who loved it 25 years ago. The long shots of France’s Côte d’Opale, site of numerous key events during World War II, simultaneously wonders at how any place can become a stage where grand drama unfolds and laughs at the insistence of ubiquitous IP like the Marvel Cinematic Universe that *all* roads must lead to planet Earth just because we happen to live on it. The two films couldn’t be more different otherwise, but the sprawlingly ambitious documentary mixtape BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions effectively leverages a different set of artistic traditions as the basis for a futuristic alternative reality that it also uses as a lens through which to examine our actual present.
1. Eephus. The first great baseball movie since Major League–which, not to put too fine a point on it, was released two weeks before Field of Dreams–and for my money instantly the best one ever. I knew this was a home run for me from the crack of the bat, so here’s an excerpt from my original Letterboxd review:
Coyly hints at veering off into the mythology of W.P. Kinsella’s novel The Iowa Baseball Confederacy but wisely never does because it doesn’t need to: every hit, out, and other component part of a baseball game at any level is a “Glory Days” conflation of past, present, and future waiting to happen. Some stories that rattled through my head included: getting tossed out of a Little League game by my father the umpire for arguing a called third strike a tad too vociferously, keeping score for his church league softball team, and most recently running out onto my back porch like a madman and screaming into the Ithaca, NY night “Pete did it!” during Game 3 of last year’s NL Wild Card round. Fun apropos fact: the building I took most of my film studies classes in at the University of Pittsburgh was built on the spot of Forbes Field and you can stand on its home plate to this day! Humorous not because it’s a comedy, but because its characters are, and every bit as attuned to the fascinating things athletes do when no one is looking as Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait.
Carson Lund directed, so *he’s* my MVP of Movie Year 2025.
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Eephus can stand toe-to-toe with my favorite film from each of the past five years and everything on the list above up until 28 Years Later would have at least made it onto all of those top tens, so 2025 was a good year for new movies in my opinion! The real highlights were my first-time viewings of repertory fare, though, which resulted in unprecedented turnover on my all-time favorites list. Here’s what made the biggest impression on me:
5. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. I called this a “post-humanist popcorn movie masterpiece” on Letterboxd last March. I haven’t gotten around to workshopping that phrase yet, but I know what I’m trying to say, so: stay tuned!
4. Wanda. My buddy Anthony recently referred to this one as “a weird, sad fairy tale without an ending,” which, there’s the title of the blog post I’m planning to write about it!
3. Wife! Be Like a Rose! The star of last year’s Nitrate Picture Show. Watching the “Directed by Mikio Naruse” collection on the Criterion Channel in its entirety is my cinephile resolution for 2026.
2. The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes. Another one I have stuff to say about but haven’t gotten around to developing the ideas yet: the placeholder is “cinematic rendering of the Holy of Holies.”
1. Le Bonheur. It has been at least two decades since the last time I watched a film and immediately knew that it was one of my favorites ever, so encountering this one years after I probably should have was actually an awesome experience!
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Last year I managed to see 48/49 Oscar nominees before the ceremony, but while my batting average may have dipped 20 points since then, at least it wasn’t my fault: unlike my previous omission Porcelain War, neither Cutting Through Rocks nor Kokuhô ever played Ithaca theaters. While I certainly don’t take the Academy Awards seriously as an indicator of quality, my family does like to watch the ceremony as an appropriately celebratory way to the ring in the new Movie Year. And if I’m going to watch, I want to have seen as many nominated films as possible so that I know which ones I’m rooting for. To wit:
Actor in a Leading Role: As much as I loved Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon, I think I’ve got to go with Michael B. Jordan here for Sinners.
Actor in a Supporting Role: Benicio Del Toro – One Battle After Another. I’d also be fine with Delroy Lindo winning for Sinners.
Actress in a Leading Role: Rose Byrne – If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Actress in a Supporting Role: Amy Madigan – Weapons
Animated Feature Film: Arco. But I have no objection to KPop Demon Hunters winning this award.
Animated Short Film: Butterfly. I’d also be fine with The Girl Who Cried Pearls.
Casting: Gabriel Domingues – The Secret Agent. But I have no objection to Francine Maisler winning for Sinners.
Cinematography: Michael Bauman – One Battle After Another
Costume Design: Ruth E. Carter – Sinners. But I have no objection to Kate Hawley winning for Frankenstein.
Directing: Paul Thomas Anderson – One Battle After Another
Documentary Feature: The Alabama Solution
Documentary Short Film: Perfectly a Strangeness
Film Editing: Andy Jurgensen – One Battle After Another
International Feature Film: Sirât
Live Action Short Film: The Singers
Makeup and Hairstyling: Thomas Foldberg and Anne Cathrine Sauerberg – The Ugly Stepsister
Music (Original Score): Jonny Greenwood – One Battle After Another. But I have no objection to Ludwig Göransson winning for Sinners.
Music (Original Song): “Golden” – KPop Demon Hunters. I’d also be fine with “I Lied to You” winning for Sinners.
Best Picture: One Battle After Another
Production Design: Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau – Frankenstein
Sound: Sirât. But I have no objection to F1: The Movie winning this award.
Visual Effects: The Lost Bus
Writing (Adapted Screenplay): Paul Thomas Anderson – One Battle After Another
Writing (Original Screenplay): Robert Kaplow – Blue Moon
The Prodigal Cinephile 