2025 was a bizarre year for my movie watching. The theatrical experience, an experience I carry much reverence for, was placed on the backburner and most of the newer movies I watched were either in the comfort of my apartment or on the Delta In-Flight movie catalog. I sought out older films and crossed off multiple blind spots that I’ve had (All the President’s Men is the greatest movie of all time), I’m hoping to catch up on the newer films I missed here soon, and I’m already up to a few new films in the year of the Horse, 2026. While I intend to watch some 2025 releases that I’m certain would shuffle some of my top 10, this is my top 10 of 2025 as the great crystal ball rang in this already bizarre (and terrifying!) new year.
10. The Phoenician Scheme
Wes Anderson is a huge hit or miss type of filmmaker. Some people (like me) will be there, day 1, for whatever new release he has, others find his style insufferable. From the multiple viewings of Rushmore with my dad growing up, I have a huge nostalgic and personal soft spot for his surgically framed and emotionally potent films. The Phoenician Scheme is not one of my favorites out of Wes Anderson’s latest batch of films, but it still got me nonetheless. While Wes Anderson’s films mostly deal with mortality and legacy, these ideas were always on projected onto the characters in the prior films. After COVID, it seems he is in conversation with himself, and by proxy the viewer on what mortality, art, or legacy means. Granted, there were two films that he started after COVID-19 in 2020 (excluding The French Dispatch as that was in production prior to the pandemic), but both Asteroid City and now The Phoenician Scheme seem to grapple mortality and legacy much more in a personal sense rather than a loose theme in the sea of ideas or set pieces he had in his prior films.
9. Ne Zha II
Ne Zha II was a film I was curious about for a while before I got my screening invite. By the time I caught wind of it, it had already ended its first North American theatrical run. Disappointed that I would have to watch it off of something like YouTube, it was then announced that A24 was picking it up in North America and releasing an English dub to go with it (gag). While it would’ve benefitted me to have seen the first film, the film stood entirely on its own with some loose references to the original. Ne Zha II is a spectacle on the big screen and I caught myself in awe of its scope and visual direction at times. The dub itself left a lot to be desired, but once Ne Zha II got going it kept you in its grasp until the end.
8. Splitsville
This was a movie I watched by chance. I was in Phoenix with a good friend of mine to watch Nine Inch Nails, acting amuck for a few extra days, and on the day before we were supposed to leave we saw that there was a screening of this happening next to where we were staying with a Q&A with the film’s two male stars. We said whatever, and gave it a whirl. Splitsville was a really fun time at the movies with the quirky late-80s style of comedy I’d expect from someone like Albert Brooks. It never really punched above its material but it certainly wasn’t a disappointment. A totally content experience and a really fun time overall!
7. Weapons
Zach Cregger has been a creative that I’ve adored since I was in middle school. The Whitest Kids U’Know was a staple for me, and Barbarian absolutely ruled. With Weapons, I was elated that a new labyrinth of a horror film was being made by him since the hammer drop of a twist that came in Barbarian knocked me off of my feet. The twist in Weapons wasn’t as shocking as I had anticipated, but horror Magnolia was so good of an idea I was surprised that it hadn’t been done previously. Also, the Looney Tunes style ending worked for me a little too well – I was hootin’ and hollerin’ in the theater like a fool.
6. The Naked Gun
The Naked Gun (1988) is my favorite movie of all time. I adore it to a sick degree, I show everyone I know The Naked Gun if they say they hadn’t seen it. I even have an on-set polaroid picture of Leslie Nielsen from the costume designer of The Naked Gun 33 ⅓ on my nightstand. The trailers for this new reboot of The Naked Gun looked a little annoying at times, borderline insufferable. My expectations were in the hole and I was preparing to be disappointed. Obviously, I’m teeing this all up as if you don’t see that I have the movie at #6 on my list – which is to say, The Naked Gun (2025) absolutely rocked. No other notes, fun time at the movies! The Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn lost their collective mind and was an all time theater experience.
5. Marty Supreme
In 2019, when Uncut Gems was on the precipice of release, I craved it in a fiendish way. The energy and excitement I had was indescribable, and once it was released I was blown away. The momentum of that film would catapult the directors, Benny and Josh Safdie, into insane star appeal. Now, fast forward to today, neither brother works together anymore, we get Josh Safdie’s return to solo direction work with Marty Supreme. In 2025, my excitement was nowhere near as intense as it was in 2019, but I also wasn’t disappointed by this film. It has its hiccups, but what we do get is one of the most interesting versions of the type of scumbag that Josh Safdie enjoys making movies about. George Gervin, Tyler the Creator, Kevin O’Leary, and Penn Jillette should not have been as good as they were but their presence make the film that much better.
4. Sinners
The tweets regarding the start of Sinner’s production still ring in my head when I think of this movie. A movie from Ryan Coogler – Hollywood’s best blockbuster-locked filmmaker – relieving himself of his superheroic obligations, starring Michael B. Jordan as twins, and it’s a horror movie about vampires. Every bit of that sounded like an ass kicker in moving picture format. Fortunately, the prospect of the film being great held up – Sinners is the best original new film I saw in 2025. Plus it being set in the American south, and having a blues heavy score/soundtrack? #YES. Sultry as all get out, salivatory cinema, Coogler and Co announcing their arrival to theaters with little regard to whatever nonsense was playing that same month (sorry Angel Studio’s The King of Kings). I could rave at length, but it was (as the kids would call it) a hit on every front so the film can clearly speak for itself.
3. Frankenstein
Guillermo del Toro is one of my absolute favorite filmmakers ever, and Frankenstein is one of the most incredible novels ever written. Once it was announced that visionary genius, the aforementioned Guillermo del Toro, was making a film adaptation of Frankenstein there was no reality where I wasn’t going to love this. Guillermo’s adaptation is less pulpy than other adaptations, and it tackles the more sensitive aspects of the novel with a tenderness I’d expect from del Toro. The interpretation of the monster between the novel and the film are severely different, but in terms of the film’s ultimate direction the differences work. We are so fortunate to see a master at work.
2. One Battle After Another
Paul Thomas Anderson making a movie about California is never going to be bad. Leonardo DiCaprio rarely stars in bad movies. I don’t think it’s the masterpiece that a lot of other writers made it out to be, but by no stretch is it a bad movie. This movie feels like a victory lap for Paul Thomas Anderson, every element of this film he has done before in previous films but never all in one go like he has it here. It is The Paul Thomas Anderson film, and could not have been made at a better time. When I watched this, it was an early showing, we were fresh into the fallout of the Charlie Kirk situation – way before the current phase of “Kirkification”. The bleak nature of the world was rearing its ugly head, so for Paul Thomas Anderson to come in at the time that he did and articulate a cinematic call for community was eerily impeccable.
1. 28 Years Later
My favorite kind of movies are like an emotional full course meal. Entrees of drama, tragedy, romance, comedy – hell, a little optimism for dessert – all goes a long way. For my money, Danny Boyle’s latest, 28 Years Later, is the best spread of emotional wealth put to film in 2025. I am a fan of the zombie genre, the original film – 28 Days Later, and Danny Boyle (minus Yesterday), so this was always going to be an easy win for me. However, I did not anticipate just how much I would feel from this film. One moment I’m in disbelief over a scene with a zombie in a train, the next I’m near tears about the fragility and importance of life. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is my most anticipated movie of 2026 at the moment, and the fact that press reactions alone gave Sony enough to fire up the third installment in the Years movies makes me incredibly excited to see where they go next. I didn’t expect this to be my movie of the year, but good lord this was an incredible film.
