Top Ten and Then Some of 2025

I usually hate it when people talk about “good” and “bad” movie years because it’s all subjective, and somebody’s bad movie year is somebody else’s good year. And there are always good and bad movies; it’s just a stupid thing to say. That written, this was a fucking great movie year. All jokes aside, this top ten wasn’t that hard to come up with, but picking the order of the top five has been in the back of my mind for weeks. Rewatchability is a big deal to me, and there are multiple movies in my top ten that I watched multiple times already. I watched Sinners five times, and I watched Bugonia and Superman four times each. This might be weird to the casual filmgoer, but this means these films created a world I wanted to keep coming back to, and if that doesn’t make it one of the best of the year, then I don’t know what does.

And by “best,” I mean “my favorite.” Once again, all this shit is subjective. These are not the ten best movies of the year; they are my top ten favorite movies of the year. Anyway, I’ll get to it. And this year, I’m adding some randomness after the list to acknowledge the stuff that made an impact on me, but didn’t make the list.

1. Sinners

This has been making plenty of top ten lists, and it won the top prize in my own critics group. So I didn’t want to put it at the top of my list because sometimes I can be a stupid contrarian. But after watching it a couple more times in the last two weeks, I couldn’t deny it: this is my favorite film of the year. As with all of my top five, click the title for a full article about the film. To keep things short, this is one of those great films that can be simply enjoyed or deeply analyzed. And it’s one I plan on revisiting many more times in the future.

2. Bugonia

Yorgos Lanthimos is my kind of director. He can make something like Bugonia, which should be a tough watch, extremely rewatchable. There’s nothing about the world of this film that is inviting, yet I never want to leave it. It’s the performances, the tone, the score, the camerawork, and the willingness to go anywhere with the story. Any other year, and this is my top pick. 

3. Marty Supreme

The funniest and craziest movie of the year. Much like other Safdie films, it never lets up, but it isn’t a constant nerve-wracking experience. Instead, it’s mostly fun even though you’re following a piece of shit. But Chalamet makes Marty a likeable piece of shit. Maybe “likeable” isn’t the word, but he makes it believable that others would do crazy shit for him, and that’s impressive. 

4. One Battle After Another

As soon as this ended after I watched it in IMAX, I thought this would be my favorite overall. But a few viewings of Sinners and a couple other crazy movies later, this somehow ended up being my fourth favorite. I still love this movie and everything PTA does. I may have liked a few films more than this, but I’ll be okay if this is what finally gets him some Oscars.

5. Eddington

Ari Aster makes films that are tough to watch once, much less multiple times. So when I found out his newest film was going to take place during the heart of the pandemic, I debated ever watching it all (not really, but you know, it doesn’t like a good time at all). He captured the feeling of the moment and also made it entertaining. The dialogue in this film, which often feels like a constant barrage of half arguments drifting into other ideas and back again, is like modern, frustrating poetry. I think that’s a compliment. Anyway, what I assumed would be my least favorite film in his filmography turned out to be the opposite.

6. The Secret Agent

This film is a fantastic slow burn about a point in history that is unfortunately very timely. That alone makes it a great film worth watching. But Wagner Moura elevates it exponentially. He conveys so much with his eyes in this film. It’s a heartbreaking performance that is my favorite of the year.

7. No Other Choice

Last year, I watched every Park Chan-wook film, so I knew this was going to be special. This take on the dehumanizing world of capitalism is so much more than “money makes people do bad stuff.” It’s about the need to be a provider no matter what, and how we see other people when we feel like that is being threatened. In true Park Chan-wook fashion, it’s also still very funny at times.

8. Train Dreams

I love The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, therefore, I also love this movie. It’s beautiful and poetic, and it sucks that I saw this on Netflix instead of a theater, but as the film bittersweetly conveys, things change with time. Also, I want Will Patton to narrate my life.

9. Superman

Comic book movies have left me feeling exhausted the last few years. This one gives me hope. I was considering bumping it from my top ten until I rewatched it one more time. That ending always leaves me smiling. How could I not count it among my favorites?

10. The Tenderness Tour

I watched a lot of documentaries for awards consideration this year, and it bummed me the fuck out. A lot of the “important” docs focused on how shitty things are right now, and I didn’t find much hope in them. The Tenderness Tour addresses medical debt, which is obviously a depressing and maddening subject, but it doesn’t wallow in it. Instead, it shows us people that are working to make things better. It shows people persevering. Most importantly, instead of showing us a terrible situation and saying, “Look how shitty this is,” it tells us there is hope, and everyone can do something. 

On Any Other Day, These Might Have Made the List:

Weapons - Equal parts creepy and hilarious. Just a great time if you don’t get too hung up on the mystery and whatnot.

Wake Up Dead Man - Easily my favorite of the series, probably because Blanc takes a bit of a backseat for most of it. I like the character, but the accent gets to me after a while. Amazing supporting cast.

The Naked Gun - Time will tell on this one. I found it consistently funny, but I can’t put it alongside the originals (yes, even the third one; fuck you, I like it). But it has definitely been added to my rotation of silly ass movies to fall asleep to. 

Splitsville - This movie had my favorite car stunt and fight scene. It’s also a romantic comedy.

Bring Her Back - The scene with the knife will never leave my memory.

The Life of Chuck - Man, I am hearing all kinds of hate from folks on podcasts and shit about this movie all of a sudden, but I really liked it. Maybe it’s the Stephen King fan in me. Anyway, I meant to watch it again and just didn’t find the time. 

Liked, but Didn’t Love, So Here Are My Letterboxd Posts About Them:*

Avatar: Fire and Ash - I kind of loved this? Still too much whale stuff, and a lot of character shit leftover from The Way of Water is still annoying (Jake Sully, just listen to your kids!). But overall, I dug this maybe the most of the entire series. When you stop and think of it, the shit with Spider and Quaritch is absolutely fucking wild. If therapy exists on Pandora, Spider is going to need some.

Ultimately, I came away feeling the same way I did after Water: if Cameron just wants to make these for the rest of his life, I'll keep watching them.

Grand Theft Hamlet -  This is the kind of wonderful shit Jim Carrey promised would happen in his speech on the satellite dish in The Cable Guy.

Cloud -  This was a wild one. I had no idea where it was going from scene to scene, and every character seemed legitimately insane. It's a nightmare scenario in which everything you've done to be rude or screw people over, no matter how minor or impersonal, is taken deathly seriously. And somehow, it's kind of fun, too? This was a wild one.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning - I have to admit that I zoned out every time this got lost in exposition mode explaining a plan or whatever the Entity was doing, but I don't care. There are big set pieces and crazy shit throughout as you'd expect. And it has the most stacked cast of the franchise. It's also nice that they became self aware at the end and admitted these people are simply action heroes and nothing more. They fight to save the whole planet yet they don't have any personal relationships beyond the team. There's nothing wrong with that; I'm just glad they flat out said it.

Jay Kelly - This worked for me because I've seen plenty of movies about characters like this that need a team of handlers to take care of every aspect of their lives, but rarely do they stop and wonder if they even had a life in the end. This film is focused not only on whether or not the star being tended had a life, but if the handlers had a life, either.

As a father, it absolutely floors me when characters like this let down their children over and over again. So I was glad to see some realistic repercussions here.

Predator: Badlands - I'm okay with Trachtenberg just dicking around with Predator for his entire career.

The Plague - Dance like no one's...staring at your blood-stained shirt.

An intentionally tough watch that works so well because all the young actors in this are almost too good. At times, it felt like a fucked up documentary, and that's a compliment.

And I know part of the point of this is the lack of adult supervision or ability to see the bigger issues going on, but I couldn't help but think about this whole film from Joel Edgerton's perspective. Every couple days he must've been thinking, "What the fuck is happening here?"

Sister Midnight - Wasn't expecting to hear perhaps my favorite cinematic insult of the year ("Go fuck a shovel!") in this, but I didn’t know what to expect at all going in to this, and I imagine that's the best way to watch it.

It does seem to spin its wheels a bit in the last half hour, but I was certainly never bored with it.

I like the sound the goats make.

The Shrouds - At first, I was surprised by the ending. Surprised because I thought there must be at least twenty minutes left to wrap up the multiple questions the film posed. Then I remembered this was a film about grief, not a detective story. Grief has no definitive answer, and neither does this movie.

But that doesn’t make for a totally compelling watch. I was interested throughout, but this is a very sleepy movie.

Bonus half star for the bits of dark humor, like the digital assistant becoming a koala, Cassel taking a first date to his wife's grave, etc.

Sentimental Value - Skarsgård's character was pretty unlikeable at first, but he won me over when he gave his grandson copies of Irreversible and The Piano Teacher for his ninth birthday.

The Testament of Ann Lee - I knew Amanda Seyfried was destined for more than just predicting the weather with her breasts.

Also, imagine your wife disliking sex with you so much that she starts a religion in which the first and most important rule is to never have sex again.

Bob Trevino Likes It - This destroyed me.

And French Stewart from out of nowhere as a total shitbag. I like it.

Frankenstein - If some dudes could just admit they're not cut out to be fathers early on it would save people a lot of trouble.

Oh, and in this film's case, if dudes could just accept their syphilis diagnosis, then it would save people a lot of trouble.

The Baltimorons - This put a smile on my face.

 

Die My Love - I know this is more about post-partum, but if my partner had brought home a mangy, constantly barking nightmare of a dog without talking to me about it while we had a newborn, I would go insane, too.

Friendship - I love you, Toad Boy.

Highest 2 Lowest - Bonus half star for making a "Mayhem" reference in a movie with Dean Winters.

 

28 Years Later - This could've been six or seven different movies: coming of age realization about a parent, post-apocalyptic secluded community and how it all works, zombies!, giant zombie cock! (just joking, but it's a legal requirement to mention the dicks in this movie), zombie baby!, old doctor's bone farm, the Swedish soldiers getting stuck in the quarantine zone, accepting death of a loved one, Jimmy Savile look-alike zombie-fighting squad, etc.

If it had solely been any of those movies, I probably wouldn't have liked this all that much. But since it's all of them, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

I've missed classic Boyle frenetic energy.

The Phoenician Scheme - Some of these really work for me, while others are just okay, and I have no idea why. But everything is always interesting to watch, and I'll watch them all as long as he keeps making them.

Mickey 17 - Not since Upgrayedd from Idiocracy has a character been so determined to get their money.

Sketch - This was the first time my son brought a movie to my attention. As a kid who has been in a little trouble for his artwork at school, the premise spoke to him, I guess.

A bigger budget could have made this a lot more fun, but for a low budget effects-driven family film about dealing with the grief of a dead parent, it was fine. It did a good job of toeing the line between sappy and wacky.

Minus half star for some wonky (I'm assuming AI-assisted) effects (there's a spray can flamethrower moment that looks quite bad) and the shameless mid-credits ad for the film's tie-in app.

Roofman - The surprise of the year for me just because I completely forgot it existed until a few days ago. A lot of fun and perfectly rides the line between drama and comedy.

*I hope the five or six of you who have made it this far appreciate how long it took me to copy and paste all my Letterboxd shit. 

Yeah, I get it, that’s a lot of movies, but as I said, this was a great year for movies for me. In fact, I could have added a few more, but it started to feel ridiculous, and I’m tired of typing this. And yes, there were some movies I didn’t like, but I usually skip shit I know is not for me, so I’m not making a “worst of” list or anything like that. I want to like movies, so I try to focus on shit I like. And hey, if you want to keep up with absolutely everything I watch, just follow me on Letterboxd.

Sinners - "We Was Never Gonna Be Free. Until This."

This is my favorite film of the year, and I’ve seen it five times now, but I’ve avoided writing about it. Sinners is everything I love about movies because it can be enjoyed at surface level as a period horror film, or you can consider the imagery and/or metaphors on a plethora of subjects like racism, cultural appropriation, true freedom, etc. There’s too much to say about this movie, so it made more sense for me to just stay quiet and enjoy it. But I’ve written a full article about the rest of my top five (coming later this week), so I can’t have my favorite be the only one I didn’t write about. And rather than try to focus on one or all subjects that occurred to me throughout watching it, I decided to address a couple complaints I’ve come across about the movie. SPOILERS ahead.

I try not to read a lot of criticism about films I might write about at some point, but I’ve listened to a few podcast episodes about Sinners, and I’ve skimmed plenty of Letterboxd entries, and two quasi-complaints stood out: this didn’t need to be a vampire movie, and the killing of the Klansmen at the end was unnecessary. Most people admit these elements were enjoyable, but they found the film compelling without them, insinuating that Coogler included them simply to add some entertainment value and wish fulfillment. Yes, the vampire stuff is entertaining, and watching Smoke kill an entire faction of Klan members is absolutely gratifying, there’s more to it than that.

First, the vampire element. I agree that this is still a great movie without vampires. Just watching the twins put everything together, the characters sharing stories and music, the one day of true freedom, etc. That’s all great, but without the vampires it becomes too simple and familiar. If there are no vampires, then Hogwood (what a great piece of shit from the South name) is the only threat. There would still be the battle at the end, but simply dealing with overt racism is too common. 

By making the primary antagonists vampires, this becomes about more than open racism. A key moment in this film is when Lisa is asked to get Grace. She leaves their store on the black side of town to get Grace on the white side of town. As she enters the white side, you can hear some background chatter:

“...do nothing but shoot each other up.”

“Glory be, I have no animosity towards the colored folk, but if they…”

“Used to be that they had their side of town, and we had ours.”

No one is out there yelling slurs or making threats. The racism under the surface is just there, and it always will be. And there’s no escaping it, as the twins describe Chicago as “Mississippi with tall buildings instead of plantations.” 

But once Stack is turned, he sees a way: 

“We was never gonna be free. We’ve been running around everywhere looking for freedom. You know damn well you was never gonna find it. Until this. This is the way. Together. Forever.” 

It’s possibly the most compelling argument to become a vampire in all of vampire cinema, and Smoke even starts to go before the rest of them pull him back inside. Becoming a monster might be evil, but it would free them from the racism of the world. 

As compelling as Stack’s argument is, it’s a lie. These are not truly his words; they’re at least partly Remmick’s. Remmick isn’t interested in simply gaining numbers; he really does just want Sammie for his music. There can be a kind of freedom giving in to Remmick, but your identity becomes lost. The larger metaphor is one of assimilation, and how white culture co-opting black culture (largely through music) at worst destroys their cultural identity, and at best changes it. 

By killing Remmick, Smoke frees Stack from being a part of the hive mind while allowing him to remain a vampire and gain a version of true freedom, as well. Yes, becoming a monster dependent on blood, and never being able to see daylight again isn’t exactly free. It’s more like trading one type of suppression for another. It’s not a happy ending, and that’s the point. But just killing Remmick and leaving Stack and Mary wasn’t enough to guarantee their safety.

When Smoke spares Stack, Stack and Mary have to hide somewhere with dawn only minutes away. The only place they could have hidden is the juke. Because of this, the Klan attack in the morning serves two purposes for Smoke: he can protect his brother one last time, and Smoke can gain his own freedom through death. 

If Smoke just runs off or isn’t successful, then the Klan members would inevitably search the juke and find Stack and Mary. Sure, Stack and Mary might have been able to protect themselves, I think they needed Smoke’s help because there were so many of them. 

And Smoke was done with this world. His child and wife are dead, and his brother is undead. Going with his brother would mean potential immortality but also damnation, meaning he would never see his daughter or Annie ever again. Taking off the mojo bag and accepting death was the only path to freedom for Smoke. Once again, not a happy ending exactly, but better than any alternative, and better than Stack and Mary’s, no matter how badass they looked in 1992.

Sinners is a great movie because of vampires and the final action sequence, not despite it. It’s just like the box office bullshit with this movie. For whatever reason, some outlets questioned the film’s profitability after its opening weekend, wondering if it could be profitable even though it seemed like an obvious success. Why? Why did anyone feel the need to break this film’s total budget down in relation to its box office after just one weekend, and a good one at that? Why do people feel the need to say they love this movie, but the vampire and Klan stuff wasn’t really needed? I’m not going to call any of this racist, but it’s hard not to at least consider the possibility when the film in question is primarily about the black experience and search for freedom. 

It’s only when the movie is over that any of this stuff comes to mind or shows up on movie sites and apps. Sinners provides what its characters are striving for: freedom. I think it’s why I’ve returned to it so many times already. Sure, I can get an article out of analyzing any number of themes within the film, but what makes the film special, to me, is how entertaining it is, and how much it makes me care about the characters. Movies have always been about escapism, and Sinners is a perfect example why. To escape the real world, even for a couple hours, can be true freedom.

Random Thoughts

I know that another common complaint is that the music throughout history scene didn’t work for some people, but if that scene “doesn’t work” for you, I don’t know what to say to change that. 

When it flashes back to Annie explaining that the vampires don’t die just because the original dies, there is a shot of Mary running into the night that almost looks like it must’ve been after Smoke spared Stack. But that shot looks like a continuation of her running out of the juke after she turned Stack, especially since it’s her alone. I still think the juke is where they hid until the next night.

I can give one nitpick: I don’t like how Remmick says, “Sammy!” Once would have been okay, but he does it at least twice, and I’m just not a fan of it.