Last year, I began by saying that 2024 followed up on 2023’s incredible runs wonderfully, and this year, history is repeating itself once again. Reflecting on this year, it’s clear that 2025 will be a year for movie lovers to look back on fondly. From original films like Sinners and Sorry, Baby to adaptations like Frankenstein and Hamnet, it’s been a treat to watch the majority of films released this year, with only a few trips not being worth the price. Needless to say, it’s always difficult to dwindle down so many choices to just 10, especially when logging well over 100 new releases. But here’s a shot at showcasing 10 of my favorite films from 2025, and here’s to an even more entertaining year next year!

Outside of the films featured here, some of those that just missed it are: One Battle After Another, Cloud, Red Sonja, Sirāt, 28 Years Later, Die My Love, and Friendship.

10. It Was Just an Accident – Jafar Panahi

There isn’t a film this year that has a final scene as effective as It Was Just an Accident; it’s enough to make your neck hairs stand up. Admittedly, this is my first time watching a Jafar Panahi film, and I couldn’t be more moved by his work. It Was Just an Accident is a thriller that weighs the impact trauma has on victims, and how memories are awakened by sights, sounds, and smells. Panahi’s Palme d’Or–winning film centers around a man who crosses paths with someone he believes is his former abuser, until the weight of doubt sets in. Surprisingly, the film has funny moments laced throughout and carries a powerful anti-imperial message. A brave film from an equally brave filmmaker.

9. The Shrouds – David Cronenberg

Films from the beginning of the year are usually touted as lesser by audiences, especially the months ramping up to summer blockbuster season. But David Cronenberg’s film The Shrouds has been on some variation of my top list since seeing it. A morbidly romantic piece of filmmaking, it explores how grief evolves with technology, and how it’s hard to heal with constant connection to those memories. With our current society fixated on reviving lost loved ones through AI, Cronenberg perfectly captures a possessive longing to never truly say goodbye. And not to mention Diane Kruger, who plays three separate roles—a performance that doesn’t nearly get the attention it deserves.

8. The Testament of Ann Lee – Mona Fastvold

If you had told me last year that a song from a film about a group of Quakers—specifically the Shakers—would be stuck in my head, I definitely wouldn’t have believed you. But this year has been surprise after surprise, and I have been totally transfixed by Mona Fastvold’s praiseworthy film The Testament of Ann Lee. Films about religion often don’t appeal to me, but seeing this through the life of Ann Lee was fascinating. Learning about the reasoning behind her beliefs—a utopian society where those who believe sing and dance—was captivating. Seyfried delivers one of the best performances of the year, a truly dedicated portrayal of a woman using her lived experience to strive for a better world through her vision.

7. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You – Mary Bronstein

As a child, I had to watch my mother deal with having a sick child—how much of a toll it took on her, and how she never complained. It’s a unique experience to witness, but If I Had Legs I’d Kick You gives a window into the hardships mothers go through daily. It shows how moms are expected to handle everything, including sick kids, household repairs, doctors’ demands, and maintaining a career. Bronstein shows how overwhelming the world can be, and that everyone could benefit from showing mothers more kindness. Rose Byrne is undeniably talented, but her work in this film is unlike anything I’ve seen from her before, and it’s moving to witness.

6. No Other Choice – Park Chan-wook

It’s safe to say that this year has brought a lot of insecurity when it comes to basically anything involving basic human needs, like having a stable job. So while watching No Other Choice from legendary filmmaker Park Chan-wook, the unease was at an all-time high. It’s a story that starts out with an unfortunately common premise: a man who has dedicated a quarter century of his life to his job is suddenly laid off. But that’s not where No Other Choice leaves Yoo Man-su (Lee Byung-hun), as he devises a plan to become the most desired candidate in his field of work. It’s best not to watch this film with a toothache—you’ll thank me later!

5. Frankenstein – Guillermo del Toro

Going into 2025, Frankenstein was my most anticipated film. Whenever my mind wandered during whatever current film I was watching, I was thinking to myself, “Man, I just want to be watching Frankenstein instead.” Thankfully, Guillermo del Toro delivered a film that lived up to my expectations. Beautifully crafted in every way, with Jacob Elordi giving a career-best performance as the Creature, del Toro captures a sense of yearning for life and humanity that was needed this year. Living in a world where del Toro makes art is a treat, especially when that art is a project he was born to adapt.

4. Resurrection – Bi Gan

If there were ever a film this year to remind me of the utter magic that movies can be, it’s Bi Gan’s time-traveling film Resurrection. Would life be as vivid and filled with joy if we were no longer able to dream? And if we lived in a world without dreams, would it even be worth it? The film spans decades with its lavishly designed sets, silent-film opening, and extensive one-shot action moments. Those are just a sampling of what Resurrection has to offer audiences willing to get swept up in it. Bi Gan isn’t interested in telling a story that is easily consumable or has a simple pace to follow, and his love for all walks of cinema is felt in a way that makes me feel romantic about cinema.

3. Marty Supreme – Josh Safdie

This year, two sports dramas that partially take place in Japan were released, both helmed separately by each of the Safdie brothers. But for me, Marty Supreme from Josh Safdie stands above, with the help of an all-star cast led by Timothée Chalamet. Taking place during the 1950s in a post–WWII world, it follows a young Jewish man whose dreams stretch beyond his imagination. Everyone in their life has, at one point, known a Marty Mauser—someone who will do whatever it takes to succeed, with a win-at-any-means-necessary mindset. It’s intoxicating to watch, especially the matches between Marty and Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), a real-life ping-pong star. However, the women of Marty Supreme, specifically Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Rachel Mizler (Odessa A’zion), impressed me the most, as they both remind and introduce audiences to the talent they possess.

2. Sinners – Ryan Coogler

Another film that has stuck with me since watching it is Sinners, the first original film from Ryan Coogler. There’s so much to be said about this film that a single paragraph can’t capture; it’s a profoundly layered piece that explores generations of culture from around the world and the hardships endured. An impressive dual role of twins Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan) guides audiences through the 1930s Jim Crow South. The music by Ludwig Göransson and cinematography by Autumn Durald Arkapaw are among the best work done in film this year. We should all be thanking Ryan Coogler for standing his ground when it comes to the making of Sinners, because it’s a masterpiece through and through.

1. Sorry, Baby – Eva Victor

It’s always refreshing when a film with such dark moments as Sorry, Baby is handled with immense care and perspective. Sexual assault is used far too often in films to give a female character some kind of story without showing how these moments impact someone in every aspect of life. Eva Victor’s directorial debut was a healing experience for me, using humor, shame, guilt, passion, and friendship to explore what it feels like to be violated in such a dehumanizing way. One of the best moments of the film reflects on how the guilt that victims feel never goes away, but evolves into something different, always there in your mind. Needless to say, after the film ended, my shirt was drenched with tears—not because I was sad, but because Victor’s film reminded me that the beauty of life continues, and it’s begging for us to join in.

It’s time for the Jay annual top performances list. It’s a habit that I am keen on preserving as years go by, even though some years are more difficult than others. In 2025, there has been a cacophony of good performances. Actors and actresses of all races, ages, cultures, backgrounds, and varying levels of fame have delivered excellent performances across the films they starred in. There has been the subtle decay of Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Teyana Taylor’s wild energy in One Battle After Another, Joaquin Phoenix’s broken masculinity in Eddington, Emma Stone’s continuation of playing hot freaks in Bugonia, and Paul Mescal’s tormented genius in Hamnet. But it will always be my habit to pick only 10 performances that left me breathless, enamored, or aroused. My picks vary from pure acting genius to movie star rizz on the big screen, and I try to include as many overlooked performances as possible.

1. Josh O’Connor – History of Sound

Unfortunately, this swan song of a WWI American ballad failed to attract the attention of critics and audiences, which is highly unfair. Oliver Hermanus’s yearning piece of music, masculinity, and latent desires has captured two powerful performances from two of the best actors of this generation in Hollywood, Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor. But I don’t consider a performances list complete unless I add O’Connor in particular to it, because his acting choices are director-oriented and brave. He challenges everything, even his peers’ relentless seeking of the spotlight and the most coveted projects. And, as David, he is cocky, flirty, slightly arrogant, and harboring a deep sadness that seeps through his skin as he blows cigarette smoke in Mescal’s face. O’Connor may not be the chameleonic actor of the generation, he brings out his O’Connorness into every role he plays, but with his shy personality, and his turn as characters that are dangerously delicious and completely different from his subdued truth, he captures the attention in every role he plays.

2. Joel Edgerton – Train Dreams

There’s something about the fractured masculinity that Joel Edgerton portrays in Train Dreams that is both sweet and heartbreaking. It’s an elegy to the façade of the American dream and the futility of the man’s burden. Edgerton plays Robert Grainier, a railroad construction worker struggling to understand the meaning of life after a personal tragedy that shakes him to his core, yet he never finds that elusive truth. Edgerton captures that existential core of a tormented character, a simple man with a head full of questions, but, expertly, director Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar (Sing Sing will forever hold a special place in my heart) don’t offer easy answers or resolutions to his turmoil. Edgerton, as Grainier, immerses himself in the skin of a man so complex that his layers are like an onion, yet as invisible as an alien skin There’s a scene where Grainier loses hope of finding his wife and child, breaking down as every muscle, pore, and molecule inside Edgerton begins to shake with the catastrophic realization. A performance nothing short of brilliant.

3. Jacob Elordi – Frankenstein

Jacob Elordi is the surprise of this award season. His poetic performance as The Creature in Guillermo del Toro’s tale of absent fathers and abandoned children, a.k.a the latest Frankenstein adaptation, Elordi proves that he has mastered the craft. He separates his physicality from his inner child, creating a strange domineering figure of brokenness and fragility, a role that no one would be meant to play but him. Yes, he played a brilliant dark Elvis in Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, and a sultry seductive rich playboy in Saltburn. But nothing could’ve prepared audiences for what he delivers here. He is a poet among his peers. A galvanizing giant of an energy receptor. His tenderness and his rage are both contained within a precise thermometer, and this is why his performance deserves all the awards and accolades that it will receive. The young Australian heartthrob is also ready to give his take on the tormented, begrudging Heathcliff in Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, and after his genius interpretation of The Creature, every role he plays will command attention and fuel anticipation.

4. Ana Sophia Heger – She Rides Shotgun

It is always tricky with child actors. There have been multiple great performances from children this year in film. Jacobi Jupe in Hamnet, and Nina Ye in Left-Handed Girl delivered performances that blew everyone away and deserve all kinds of award recognition. But it’s Ana Sophia Heger that delivered the best child acting in this turbulent, hectic season. And strangely it’s in a small, low-budget American thriller titled She Rides Shotgun. Nick Rowland directs this adrenaline-fueled action thriller, and while it’s not an Oscar-deserving masterpiece, the performances are top-tier. Whether Taron Egerton, Heger, or Odessa A’zion in a small but scene-stealing performance. But without Heger, and the complex array of emotions that show on her face, altogether at once, or one after the other, this movie wouldn’t have stuck in my memory the way it does. Heger plays Polly with every trick up her sleeve. Her childish haunted eyes, and her attempts to put on her big girl shoes and bury her trauma leave me heartbroken and rooting for her survival against all odds.

5. Jessie Buckley – Hamnet

This year’s top performances list can’t be complete without the Queen of this year’s performances. Jessie Buckley portrays a complex side of femininity, the witchy kindness of the feminine spirit. The soul of the earth, the mother, the lover, and the griever. Her performance is a mosaic, a constellation of feelings. She portrays grief with the same mastery she showcases passion. The scenes when she is giving birth, or immersing her fingers in the dirt with her children, are as powerful as the scenes when she holds her babies for the first time, or going through all the monstrous stages of grief over losing a child. It is obvious that Buckley will be reaping all the awards as Agnes, and deservedly so. I have a thing for Lawrence’s wild and unhinged performance as Grace in Die My Love, but Buckley is a planet eater, she devours while Lawrence claws her way through the wall. Both are talented actresses playing complex and vibrant women, but Buckley’s Agnes is equally as kind as she is rapturous. That, in itself, is acting genius, purified.

6. Olivia Taylor Dudley – Abigail Before Beatrice

The most difficult performances are those with heartbreak at their core, and Olivia Taylor Dudley’s Maddie/Beatrice is fractured, sad, wounded, shaken at her core, and messy. To play a character with a stolen identity, a cult survivor in all her scary gaslit vulnerability and delusion is no easy task, even for veteran actors of the finest caliber. It’s no easy task to portray humiliation, sexual submission, and lack of sense of self on screen, Dudley perfectly portrayed a lost woman, who easily uses sex to gain approval and admiration from others after being brainwashed in a cult by a heinous predator to use herself as a fabric for others to sew and shape into whatever form they please. What’s even more interesting about this film is the tragic sapphic relationship that was born in captivity between Maddie/Beatrice and Sarah/Abigail (Riley Dandy). The scenes between both of them are magical, and they wouldn’t have worked without Dudley’s eyes shining with mad devotion and infatuation, both with Dandy and their cult leader. 

7. Delroy Lindo – Sinners

No one in the entire film industry does it like Lindo. He’s massively talented, combining bitterness, rage, and the demonic claws of addiction as he plays Delta Slim, drinking himself to exhaustion and decay, playing his harmonica and bantering with the Smokestack twins. It’s a performance that shines out in a film with a massively talented and impressive cast, and with the opulent tricks up every actor’s sleeve in this epic about music, vampirism, obsession, and survival in 1930s Clarksdale, Mississippi, it’s an impossible task to pick a favorite performance out of the wonderful characters that Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, and Wunmi Mosaku play. Despite him getting almost zero award recognition, something inside me reveres what Lindo has done here. It’s not easy gaining sympathy when he’s a sweaty, drunkard, foul-mouthed old man who wastes his musical talent, just to get a few coins to spend on booze. But Lindo gives dimensions to the character. He is not just a thief and a drunk, but a rebel against oppressive systems and societies which are -of course- predominantly white.

8. Jennifer Lawrence – Die My Love

I don’t think I loved a movie as much as I loved Die My Love this year. There’s a case for crazy women unraveling onscreen that makes a movie immediately more desirable in my eyes. When it comes to crazy women, Jennifer Lawrence plays them best. She unravels like a ball of yarn, layer by layer, her deadpanned stare, her fits of rage, her outbursts of violence and self-harm, all of her wild chaotic energy revealed in one scene after the other. J-Law doesn’t slow down. She is merciless with herself and her spectators. She subjects herself and the audience to all kinds of emotional and psychological horrors, and she’s not even starring in horror movies. Her dramatic roles are chaotic, panic-striking, and self-indulgent. Lynne Ramsay’s toxic romantic drama has Lawrence playing everyone’s least favorite woman on screen. She is the moral opposite of Agnes in Hamnet, she’s not sacrificial, she’s greedy, sloppy, lacks that encompassing maternal side, and displays a lack of affection for everyone in her wake except her child, whom she loves in her wild, feral way, not what is expected of her. To be all of those traits and still beloved -at least by me- is a testament to Lawrence’s excellence as an actress.

9. Austin Butler – Caught Stealing

He may be the dreamiest, most handsome of the generation, but he has shown more than once that his acting is top-notch, and his choices are far from what his looks may dictate. Butler has once again proven in Caught Stealing that he was born for the Hollywood leading man game. While his career has taken a turn for the big-budget, Hollywood flashy projects with a list of upcoming action films, it is obvious that Butler is paving the road for dominating Tinseltown. On screen, he is always dangerous and smoldering. As Hank Thompson, Butler gets down and dirty, looking like he always smells of barf, booze, and unwashed hair. He perfects the performance of a vulnerable, broken, hunted man, a deer in headlights caught in the throes of murderous bloodsucking criminals of New York’s underbelly. He has another interesting portrayal this year in Ari Aster’s Eddington, a supporting role that Butler again makes unforgettable, but as Thompson, Butler gets a chance to showcase his rich emotional inventory in its full potential.

10. Cosmo Jarvis – Inside

Cosmo Jarvis is the rare actor that doesn’t have his public persona outshine his performances. That’s why I walk into every film he’s in blindly, expecting nothing, and he never fails to surprise me. The Charles Williams’s directed prison drama, Inside, is a claustrophobic, dramatic masterclass in acting, writing, and reenacting an oppressive environment like prisons. In it, Jarvis plays Mark Shepard, a character hard to describe. Mark is by every means awful, horrible, despicable, but heartbreakingly mad. A convicted sexual predator, he is truly kind to Mel, who is surprisingly within the context of the prison walls, the person I felt was the bad guy of the story for betraying someone who has taken him under his wing. It’s a complex situation but Jarvis is an excellent actor, and that’s why he creates that conflict within his character, making him both repulsive but also sympathetic. It’s one of those rare moments where the humanity of despicable people shows on screen, and it’s very well-made that one can’t argue with the reasoning behind a sympathetic portrayal of a detestable human being like Shepard. In his religious rants, Shepard both quotes the Bible and speaks in gibberish and the scene is both ridiculous and tragic.

It’s tough to want to give an honest recounting of where I found excitement at the theater this year. I feel like this year more than in most years past I’ve slipped into a sort of contrarian opinion. I’m not going to claim a film that is universally derided is good, but I’m definitely going to get side-eye about a few of my choices. Yet, these are my choices. 

Out of the dozens of films I saw this year, these ten are most representative of where I found deep comfort, elegant sadness, and unbridled joy with strangers in the dark. They reflect some personal and professional upheavals as well as a reminder to keep working on myself and the things I want to change. 

A single film isn’t supposed to be everything for everyone no matter what the Hollywood money managers and marketing teams want you to believe. A single film will always sing differently from one heart to another. What affects me deeply is personal to me. I can understand logically the arguments one may make against a film’s merit, but you can’t argue with how it made me feel. These ten films made me feel, want, yearn, and crave the most. 

10. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere

I don’t know much about Bruce Springsteen’s life. I don’t know much of his music more than the hits I’ve heard in passing. What I do know about is feeling that creative drive to try and understand why you act and hurt the way you do. The scene that left me in tatters, wasn’t the truly beautiful scene between Bruce (Jeremy Allen White) and Jon (Jeremy Strong), but it was the scene where Bruce was unable to tell Faye (Odessa Young) what he was feeling. He speeds off in his car and screams into the void. I saw a lot of who I was and a lot of who I still am in this film and it made me feel like I could bring myself out of the dark some day. Maybe I won’t always walk the streets alone.

9. Superman

I love comic books. I love the color, the dynamism, and the storytelling. I’ve never been a Superman reader or that much enamored with the DC pantheon, but what this film did for me was to create a superhero film that wasn’t embarrassed to be a superhero film. It’s vibrant, hilarious, hopeful, joyous, and emotional in ways I would never have suspected. This film isn’t just a superhero film that will connect with other superhero films, but a film that embraces the audacious, complicated, and complex storytelling of the decades of comics that came before it.

8. It Was Just an Accident

From its first frame to its last, this film gripped me. I love a story that grapples with complex topics and the ethical questions raised within this film are some of the most complex any human could face. The way the story is structured leaves us guessing with every step the characters take. Not only that, but in spite of its serious subject, the film is often outright funny. It’s an incredible journey and one that demands to be seen and thought about.

7. Splitsville

Relationships are complicated. This film shows how ridiculously complicated they can get when the idea of an open marriage is broached, but not fully understood by both parties. It’s hilarious in so many of the relationship foibles and it takes us on a journey that doesn’t come out the way you expect. It has two superlatives that I dare you to top with any other movie this year. It has the most outrageously funny scene as Carey (Kyle Marvin) attempts to hold onto the half dozen plastic baggies of goldfish won at the carnival while riding a twisting and turning roller coaster and it has the best fight sequence with Carey and Paul (Michael Angelo Covino) going at it. The curveballs thrown during the fight are as glorious as the fight itself.

6. The Mastermind

This film is a gorgeous slow burn. It’s perfectly cast with actors that never outshine each other, but enhance each other’s performances. The strangeness and beauty of it is in the chaos that the heist causes. In any other film these setbacks would have been the whole of the plot, but here they’re another roadblock to the success J.B. (Josh O’Connor) has always envisioned for himself.  It’s not typical or expected. This is Kelly Reichardt at her most meticulous. The details of the opening scene are nearly perfect and the ending is the punchline on a joke you didn’t expect in the telling of the story.

5. Familiar Touch

You don’t think about how much a sense of touch can affect a person until you see it like this. This film is not like other films where the protagonist is struggling with memory loss. It isn’t designed to give you tears because the circumstances are tragic. It’s designed to show you how one sense informs the others and that memory isn’t linear. It shows that a simple gesture is a tremendous gift. The cast is impeccable and I will never get that scene of Ruth (Kathleen Chalfant) in the pool out of my mind. The peace and the calm of that scene are beautiful.

4. Boys Go to Jupiter

It often takes a bizarre, whimsical film to reflect a deeper truth about yourself and your place in the capitalistic pecking order of the world. This is a film full of dreamers, most of whom are dreaming about a future that is never going to happen, but some of whom dream that impossible dream where contentment and real happiness are well within reach. The songs seep into my soul and the animation beautifully fills the screen with the odd shapes and movements only animation can create.

3. Materialists

Celine Song has a way of making films that change shape and evolve into a perfect alchemy of the things left unsaid and the things that need to be said. She understands the modern practicalities of life in your thirties better than many other filmmakers have. The scene between Lucy (Dakota Johnson) and John (Chris Evans) where they dance at the wedding destroys me. There’s a heft to their silence, to the strained nature of their past and the odd circumstances of their present that will affect their future. Much of this film is steeped in these very heavy moments that are terrifically played and shown.

2. Black Bag

A spy thriller is only as good as its cast and this is one of the most capable and complementary casts ever assembled. The film is the most high stakes game of Clue that’s ever been played. The way that Steven Soderbergh shoots it is like a kitchen sink drama of the black ops world. The editing is so good that a beat is never missed even as your heart beats out of your chest. The scenes with each suspect attached to the lie detector test are alternately funny, thrilling, and very steamy with the intimacies it uncovers. I could watch a whole movie of Clarissa (Marisa Abela) trying and failing to seduce George (Michael Fassbender), who then goes home and works out his sexual frustrations with his wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett).

1. Sentimental Value

This is a film of subtlety, of listening to everything in between the words the characters say. It’s a film about two people, Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), who don’t fully understand themselves and can’t communicate with each other, but somehow see each other better than anyone else. There are so many funny and beautiful moments amid the clashing of personalities. Each actor gets their showcase and each actor compliments the other three in the main ensemble. A line that will forever stick with me from this film is, “Praying isn’t really talking to God, it’s acknowledging the despair.” This film isn’t about despair, but acknowledging that we can’t ever get through it alone.