I spent many years working in movie theaters (and even a couple in a video store when those were still a thing), and it never ceased to amaze me how frequently total strangers, with no knowledge of my taste in movies or even position at the theater, would ask for recommendations. Why would anyone care what I think? Of course, this question extends to the entire profession of criticism, from yours truly all the way up to those who have actually made it a paying profession. So, as always, this is not an attempt to say what were the “best” movies of 2025, just ten that this particular film cricket particularly enjoyed and wanted to recommend to you, the hypothetical reader. Just one asshole’s opinion, in other words.
The hell of doing these lists is all the great movies that have to be left off, to the point where I feel like I’m shitting on all your favorites by not including them, and even slighting those in the lower half of my own list. It’s silly to rank movies (so silly I do it every year), so just know there are a bunch more I also loved, including One Battle After Another, Train Dreams, Sentimental Value, and whichever others you might be shocked to see missing. Also, as a lifelong fan of the genre I must point out what an especially good year it was for horror movies. One you might have heard of even broke the all-time record for most Oscar nominations. In addition to that one and the others that will be mentioned below, I also want to recognize The Rule of Jenny Pen, The Shrouds, Companion, Final Destination: Bloodlines, Bring Her Back, 28 Years Later…, Presence, and Together.
MARTY SUPREME – I’ve never been much of a sports guy, so when I initially heard of this one, mistakenly thinking it was a straight biopic of a tennis player, I anticipated another Oscars also-ran, strictly take it or leave it for me. Knowing it was from one half of the team that brought us Good Time and Uncut Gems made it more intriguing, but it wasn’t until I saw the full trailer that I realized this scrappy epic underdog of a movie might actually be great. It didn’t disappoint one bit; after a second viewing, I’m not sure I’ve ever had more fun in a movie theater. This is pure, classical cinema, riveting from start to finish, an exhilarating rollercoaster of a character study that also functions as a crime movie, an unlikely romance and, yes, one of the best sports movies I’ve ever seen.
Marty is a wonderful protagonist, not so much likeable as he is undeniable, full of the arrogance of youth but also an enviable belief in himself. This is an all-timer performance from Timothée Chalamet, in a role impossible to imagine anyone else playing, and Josh Safdie puts him through a gauntlet of obstacles (and delightful cameos) on his way to his ultimate goal. It certainly didn’t hurt my enjoyment to see the legendary Abel Ferrara (King of New York, Bad Lieutenant, The Addiction) as a memorably nasty character named Ezra.
BUGONIA – I didn’t know it, but I’d been waiting for this movie for two decades. In 2003, the South Korean mindfuck Save the Green Planet! blew me away, to a degree similar to Yorgos Lanthimos’s breakthrough feature Dogtooth seven years later. I never dreamt Lanthimos would eventually team with producer Ari Aster, another of my absolute favorite filmmakers of the last decade, to remake the cult classic with his frequent muse Emma Stone as the evil CEO suspected of being an alien overlord, but Bugonia exceeds every expectation I never knew I had. Both Stone and Jesse Plemons, as the greasy, emaciated conspiracy theorist who abducts and tortures her, have never been better, and Lanthimos (with screenwriter Will Tracy) manages a faithful adaptation of the original that still surprises and delights at every turn. Wildly entertaining, visually inventive, and wickedly funny.
THE LIFE OF CHUCK – I’ve been an obsessive Stephen King fan almost as long as I’ve been in love with the movies, and 2025 was a banner year for us Constant Readers, with four theatrical features based on Uncle Stevie’s work. Much as I absolutely loved (LOVED) The Monkey, The Long Walk, and The Running Man, and was tempted to populate nearly half of this list with SK adaptations, I decided to show some self-restraint and pick just one, and the one that resonates with me the most is Mike Flanagan’s masterful adaptation of one of King’s shortest and most profoundly simple stories. Flanagan has been wowing me for many years, especially with his serialized masterpieces for Netflix, such as The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass, and I think this marvelously faithful exploration of the multitudes contained within even the most ordinary human is his finest big-screen work yet. This is a movie that makes me cry. A lot.
WEAPONS – Barbarian writer-director and Whitest Kid U’ Know Zach Cregger follows up his batshit awesome debut with the even more ambitious Weapons, a tantalizing suburban mystery that starts out eerie and darkly funny before rising to a fever-pitch crescendo of insanity and violence. The horror comes from familiar sources—the loss of a child, feelings of persecution, elderly relatives coming for extended visits—but goes to unexpected, even mythic, lengths as the story progresses. Amy Madigan gives us a new horror icon as Aunt Gladys, a diminutive but cheerfully terrifying figure who resembles a slightly more evil Ronald McDonald and haunts the movie long before she is properly introduced over halfway through. The rest of the cast is equally at the top of their game, and Cregger’s smartly structured script gives them all thoroughly realized characters to sink their teeth into.
SINNERS – I’ve heard some complaints about the similarities between Sinners and From Dusk Till Dawn, always with the implication that this influence is somehow a bad thing, as if From Dusk Till Dawn doesn’t kick just absolute mountains of ass. Hogswallop, say I! Anyway, that is hardly the only influence present here, from the cathartically violent historical revisionism of other Tarantino films like Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained to the locked-room paranoia of John Carpenter’s The Thing and another Robert Rodriguez classic writer-director Ryan Coogler has claimed as an influence, The Faculty. In fact, Coogler’s biggest stated non-cinematic influence is none other than Stephen King’s second novel, Salem’s Lot, so it’s no surprise this one resonated with me, but Sinners is up to a lot more than just loving homage to its many influences. Full of historical and religious themes, this bawdy, bloody, sex-positive vampire movie is also probably the best musical of 2025, with all due respect to The Testament of Ann Lee.
EDDINGTON – Easily one of the most divisive movies of the year, Ari Aster’s prickly internet-addled nightmare of small-town New Mexico life can be extremely uncomfortable to watch, which is whence so much of its demented dark humor derives. A surreal, absurdist Western of sorts set in late May 2020, Eddington takes the fever dream of a frightened conservative that was the urban hellscape of his previous feature, Beau Is Afraid, and brings it to a fictional town set to fracture along ideological faultlines in the midst of the pandemic and increased social consciousness around issues of police brutality and accountability. Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal represent diametrically opposed forces at the top of the town’s government, neither likeable but all too recognizable, as are so many of the other town residents. Messy, chaotic, and violent, Eddington may be the quintessential cinematic document of one of the worst times in modern American history.
SECRET MALL APARTMENT – Jeremy Workman’s remarkable documentary chronicling the gradual, years-long building and occupation of a… clandestine shopping-center flat inside the Providence Place mall, beginning in 2003, is an anarchistic delight, and one of the best documentaries I’ve seen in years. The charismatic mastermind of the project, Michael Townsend, has always been an avid video documentarian, and his nearly constant filming of the secret mall apartment project makes dramatic reenactments largely unnecessary. Townsend and the other seven core collaborators on the project repeatedly refer to the apartment as a work of art, though it was obviously designed not to be seen by any audience. Their plan was just crazy enough to work, and in documenting the experience they have revealed this private sanctuary within a highly public place as the work of art that, for almost half a decade, only they knew it was.
THE UGLY STEPSISTER – It is tempting (and not entirely inaccurate) to describe this deliciously nasty fairy tale as “if David Cronenberg directed Cinderella.” Coralie Fargeat (Revenge, The Substance) comes to mind as well, and there is no doubt both she and The Ugly Stepsister writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt have been strongly influenced by the Canadian body-horror master, but like Fargeat before her, Blichfeldt shows a distinct style of her own in this stunning debut feature. The gauzy lighting and immaculate production design one expects from a fairy tale is offset by some truly horrifying practical effects, eschewing the sanitization of Disney and other family-friendly adaptations to get at the grisliness and grotesquerie of the real Grimm fairy tale. Not for the faint of heart or stomach, but for my fellow sickos this is not one to miss.
THE NAKED GUN – 2025 saw a number of surprisingly good reboots of beloved comedies from the 1980s, including Macon Blair’s long awaited The Toxic Avenger, Jay Roach’s The Roses, and Rob Reiner’s final film, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, but none were better or truer to the original than Akiva Schaffer’s The Naked Gun. A perfectly cast (right down to the name) Liam Neeson deadpans through the wildest jokes and setpieces with an aplomb that would do the OG Frank Drebin proud, and Pamela Anderson and Paul Walter Hauser make equally ideal updates for Priscilla Presley and George Kennedy, respectively. Full of pants-pissingly funny moments involving chili dogs and, well… one actual dog, and unforgettably perfect dialogue like “She had a body that carried her head around, and a butt that seemed to say, ‘Hello, I’m a talking butt,’” this is undoubtedly the most I laughed at the movies last year.
GOOD BOY – Ben Leonberg’s wonderfully atmospheric and original debut feature has a novel conceit: a haunted house story from the perspective of the dog. Human faces are rarely seen, with hands being the more common focal point, in keeping with the canine perspective. Rather ingenious, considering how audiences feel about dogs in movies, as opposed to the disposable human counterparts whose deaths we are more inclined to gleefully cheer on. As the protagonist, Indy is a terrifically unreliable narrator, mesmerized by darkened corners of the house, which gradually morph into terrifying humanoid shapes. As Todd succumbs to these dark forces despite Indy’s best efforts to save him, Good Boy achieves the rare but extremely potent symbiosis of the terrifying and the heartbreakingly poignant. At a grim but brisk 72 minutes, this movie is relentlessly gripping and transcends what could have been a mere gimmick in lesser hands.
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