Top 13 Movies of 2025
Time for the timely time of the year when we all reflect on our favorite movies of the past year on a yearly basis (yearly). As each year passes, it appears that the 2020s are going to serve to be one of the most significant decades in cinematic history. It could be like the 1960s where more and more people realize that flooding the industry with over-budgeted crap isn’t healthy and we’ll eventually go back into another Hollywood New Wave revolution (or, honestly, I’ll just settle for the 90s-2000s era at this point). Or the theaters will implode due to outrageous costs and the industry will never go back to the way it was. Who knows? Regardless, 2025 was actually a pretty solid year for movies in my opinion. Not one of the all-time greats but the majority of films I saw in theaters, I liked, and I even saw a few that were quite excellent. While I don’t think anything quite reached the levels of love I had for Hundreds of Beavers from last year, there were still some that came close. So, here’s my top 13 for good luck and, like last year, we won’t be numbering them but splitting them into categories. “Great but flawed movies” speaks for itself and will include the flaws in question in case they’d be something that might ruin the movie for you. “Genuinely excellent films” are the ones I found the most affecting and would probably be what I would say are the “best,” most boundary-pushing movies of the year. “Personal favorites of the year” refers to the ones that I don’t necessarily think are the best but are simply the ones I left the theater feeling the most delighted and would most like to watch again if given the chance. Happy reading and hopefully you’ll find some flicks to check out!
Climbing Walls~Isabella Summers - Dust Bunny
Out of all the movies on this list, Dust Bunny is far and away the most bonkers and the fact that it has this budget and this level of creative control for a feature directorial debut is a marvel of nature. Eight-year-old Aurora (Sophie Sloan) lives with her parents (Caspar Phillipson and Line Kruse) in an apartment building and is scared of what she thinks is a monster under her bed that will eat anyone who walks on her floor. One morning, she wakes up and her parents are gone. Understandably scared, Aurora approaches her next-door neighbor (Mads Mikkelsen) and asks him to kill the monster. The neighbor, who is actually a professional hit man, takes Aurora in whilst trying to figure out the mystery that led to her parents’ death, taking Aurora with him into the criminal underworld. Only there is no mystery. Aurora really does have a giant monster under her bed that devours anything that steps on her bedroom floor, including the dangerous criminals who are now trying to lay siege to the apartment.
This movie is so creative and cool. Not only in the very unusual story but also in the world it creates. Dust Bunny has a very hyper-violent edge but the cinematography, colors and slightly off-kilter acting seem to reflect the way that a young child sees the world. Honestly, when you see the weapons the hit men use, the monster under the bed (which has an awesome design) is the least bizarre part of this environment. Nunchuks, stilettos with guns in the heels, a stuffed chicken that’s been turned into a lamp, you really couldn’t make some of this stuff up. The best way I can describe it is most similar to a Wes Anderson movie but with a much darker sense of humor. Also, Mads Mikkelsen is one of my favorite actors and his droll, reserved way of acting just makes his character that much funnier when he goes bug-eyed with shock upon meeting Aurora's monster.
Dust Bunny would’ve been much higher on the list but, unfortunately, it falls back on what I consider my most hated cliché in movies: the fakeout death. This refers to when a director/screenwriter pretends to kill off a character for sympathy only to reveal that they’re still alive. It’s a very cheap ploy to manipulate the audience and it pisses me off every time I see it. I consider it even worse in this movie than most others because Dust Bunny is so creative and takes so many weird twists that I actually believed they would have had the balls to kill off a main character like that. But, no, they didn’t, sad as it is to say.
Directed by Bryan Fuller (directorial debut)
Written by Bryan Fuller (Star Trek: Discovery, Hannibal, Pushing Daisies)
Genre: Fantasy, action
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour 46 minutes
Where Can I Stream It? Amazon Prime, Apple TV+
Out of all the movies on this list, Dust Bunny is far and away the most bonkers and the fact that it has this budget and this level of creative control for a feature directorial debut is a marvel of nature. Eight-year-old Aurora (Sophie Sloan) lives with her parents (Caspar Phillipson and Line Kruse) in an apartment building and is scared of what she thinks is a monster under her bed that will eat anyone who walks on her floor. One morning, she wakes up and her parents are gone. Understandably scared, Aurora approaches her next-door neighbor (Mads Mikkelsen) and asks him to kill the monster. The neighbor, who is actually a professional hit man, takes Aurora in whilst trying to figure out the mystery that led to her parents’ death, taking Aurora with him into the criminal underworld. Only there is no mystery. Aurora really does have a giant monster under her bed that devours anything that steps on her bedroom floor, including the dangerous criminals who are now trying to lay siege to the apartment.
This movie is so creative and cool. Not only in the very unusual story but also in the world it creates. Dust Bunny has a very hyper-violent edge but the cinematography, colors and slightly off-kilter acting seem to reflect the way that a young child sees the world. Honestly, when you see the weapons the hit men use, the monster under the bed (which has an awesome design) is the least bizarre part of this environment. Nunchuks, stilettos with guns in the heels, a stuffed chicken that’s been turned into a lamp, you really couldn’t make some of this stuff up. The best way I can describe it is most similar to a Wes Anderson movie but with a much darker sense of humor. Also, Mads Mikkelsen is one of my favorite actors and his droll, reserved way of acting just makes his character that much funnier when he goes bug-eyed with shock upon meeting Aurora's monster.
Dust Bunny would’ve been much higher on the list but, unfortunately, it falls back on what I consider my most hated cliché in movies: the fakeout death. This refers to when a director/screenwriter pretends to kill off a character for sympathy only to reveal that they’re still alive. It’s a very cheap ploy to manipulate the audience and it pisses me off every time I see it. I consider it even worse in this movie than most others because Dust Bunny is so creative and takes so many weird twists that I actually believed they would have had the balls to kill off a main character like that. But, no, they didn’t, sad as it is to say.
Piano Concerto No. 21 - Andante~Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Directed by Park Chan-wook (Heeojil Gyeolsim (Decision to Leave), Agassi (The Handmaiden), Oldeuboi (Oldboy))
Written by Park Chan-wook (Heeojil Gyeolsim (Decision to Leave), Agassi (The Handmaiden), Oldeuboi (Oldboy)), Lee Kyoung-mi (Pereusona (Persona), Bimireun Eopda (The Truth Beneath), Misseu Hongdangmu (Crush and Blush)), Don McKellar (This Movie Is Broken, Blindness, Childstar) and Lee Ja-hye (Jeon Ran (Uprising), Heeojil Gyeolsim (Decision to Leave), Agassi (The Handmaiden))
Genre: Thriller
Rating: R
Running Time: 2 hours 19 minutes
Where Can I Stream It? Amazon Prime, Apple TV+
Korean cinema has taken the world a little bit by storm over the past decade or so. Income inequality is something that has hit most of the world but movies like Okja, Parasite and, now, No Other Choice seem to do stories about this problem more artfully than anywhere else, mostly by creating situations that show a comedically unvarnished truth of how things work. In this movie, Yoo Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) is a comfortably middle class family man who’s a veteran employee of the paper mill. Much to his dismay, most of the workforce is laid off after the mill is automated by AI, leaving it so that only one employee can possibly get rehired there. Man-su endeavors that it should be him and so embarks on a series of Count of Monte Cristo-esque schemes to murder all of the candidates for the position who are more well-qualified than he is.
Considering how this is from the same twisted mind that made the Korean classic, Oldboy, it should come as no surprise as to how expertly Park Chan-wook manages to mix dark comedy with the real tragedy of the situation. What makes the movie great is how painstakingly they show Man-su and his family struggling to make ends meet. The truly difficult decisions that a family scraping by on a budget have to do from the terrible jobs that he must settle for to the medical surgeries he has to put off. Plus there’s a great level of suspense as this schmuck clearly has no idea how to actually kill people and we’re always constantly on eggshells thinking he’ll get discovered.
While No Other Choice is a great movie and has been routinely regarded as one of the year’s best films by every critic of note, I do think that something that no one has complained about yet is that the pacing is somewhat uneven. One of Man-su’s targets has a much, much longer subplot dedicated to him than the other ones, to the extent that it feels like we wandered into a completely different movie for a little while. There’s also a subplot that goes nowhere dedicated to Man-su’s underdeveloped son (Kim Woo Seung) just to have a red herring. These sound like nitpicks but they add up to make the movie feel its length. On the flip side though, unlike the other movies in this section, No Other Choice does nail the ending.
The Sidle of Evening~The Newton Brothers - The Life of Chuck
Directed by Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House, Gerald's Game, Hush)
Written by Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House, Gerald's Game, Hush)
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour 51 minutes
Where Can I Stream It? Hulu, Kanopy, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+
2025 was a surprisingly prolific year for Stephen King adaptations. There was The Monkey, The Long Walk, The Running Man but for my money, the best was The Life of Chuck, although I will be the first to admit that it is an uneven film and, honestly, the reason why it’s on this list is mostly for the first act.
The Life of Chuck opens with the final days of Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a suburban schoolteacher who is noticing the signs of Armageddon. Natural disasters are getting worse, the internet is losing connection, people are dying en masse and society as we know it is collapsing. This part of the movie, while showing the signature Stephen King pulpiness, was very effective. All of the characters look so scared and, considering the times we the audience live in, it felt chillingly prescient. The way everyone talks about and prepares to confront the end of the world and how they ultimately choose to spend their last hours on Earth is their overriding question. This is a great way to suck us into the story as things go from real-world disasters to growing slowly more and more supernatural as, besides the death and destruction, for some reason, everyone also keeps noticing that what little of pieces of pop culture that remain keep posting news bulletins about an enigmatic man named Chuck (Cody Flanagan as a 7-year-old, Benjamin Pajak as an 11-year-old, Jacob Tremblay as a 17-year-old, Tom Hiddleston as an adult). Who is he and what does he have to do with all this chaos?
This whole chunk would've been great on its own as a short film and you could've ended it right there and left the audience satisfied. But, no, it keeps going into the second third of the movie which is also pretty dang good. After introducing us to this world, we finally meet the man Chuck during a day in his life as we find him to be a stodgy accountant who is also full of surprises. But the way they show it is a bit more unusual and not at all how you would expect them to do so, showing an encounter between Chuck and a couple of buskers. It’s surprisingly very charming, likable and makes us want to know more about the guy.
Where the movie loses me is in the last third when we flash back to Chuck’s childhood to show how he became the man he grew into. To be clear, this isn’t bad but it’s definitely not as dark as the rest of the movie and a lot cornier. Characters start talking more in movie platitudes, the pacing slows down, the explanation given for the mysteries of the first act is predictable and this movie has another one of my most hated clichés: actors who are miscast well outside of their age range (Chuck’s grandmother (Mia Sara) is the most impossibly hot GILF in movie history). On the other hand, it’s not bad per se and I understand that a darker movie is not what this is trying to be so maybe it's just not my cup of tea. The Life of Chuck is basically three different movies crammed into one and I only really liked two of them but, hey, two for three for a compilation film ain't bad.
Where the movie loses me is in the last third when we flash back to Chuck’s childhood to show how he became the man he grew into. To be clear, this isn’t bad but it’s definitely not as dark as the rest of the movie and a lot cornier. Characters start talking more in movie platitudes, the pacing slows down, the explanation given for the mysteries of the first act is predictable and this movie has another one of my most hated clichés: actors who are miscast well outside of their age range (Chuck’s grandmother (Mia Sara) is the most impossibly hot GILF in movie history). On the other hand, it’s not bad per se and I understand that a darker movie is not what this is trying to be so maybe it's just not my cup of tea. The Life of Chuck is basically three different movies crammed into one and I only really liked two of them but, hey, two for three for a compilation film ain't bad.
Twinless Main Theme~Jung Jae-il - Twinless
Another oddly specific subgenre of movies we saw in 2025 were dramas about the connections we have with our fellow human beings, re-examining them in a world that is increasingly digitizing and thus cheapening these connections. Twinless is a film that examines these connections in the very thought-provoking way of love between siblings. The set-up is pretty simple as a man named Roman (Dylan O’Brien) has recently lost his gay twin and is feeling the utter void that is left behind as someone he used to do everything with is no longer there. While at a grief support group, he meets a gay man named Dennis (James Sweeney) who claims to have lost his straight twin. Hitting it off, the two start hanging out, basically becoming each other’s new surrogate twin.
From here, Twinless takes a few fun twists and turns that I won’t dare spoil for you but I will say it’s great. The acting from these two is phenomenal and this is the first movie I’ve ever seen that made me understand what it feels like to be gay in a world that seems designed for straight people. The sheer loneliness the two feel and yet the ability of one being able to move on (relatively) quicker than the other is gotten down very well. On top of that, this film has truly next-level cinematography, with its usage of montages and cameras feeling like something out of the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul universe. One sequence in particular shows the two parallel romantic experiences at a house party and the way it’s shot and edited blew me away.
This is almost one of the best indie films of the 2020s but it’s dragged down by two problems and they’re sadly very big ones. First is that this movie has a needlessly graphic, and I mean graphic, sex scene. You might call me a prude but this is another thing that bothers me in movies as it basically precludes me from being able to recommend the movie to older generations (who kinda need to see a movie like this) and also because I can’t imagine making the actors do this unless the story really needed them to. In this case, while it is important to establish these two characters having sex, I don’t know why they couldn’t do it like they used to in older movies where they just showed the two characters lying in bed under the covers. (Then I found out that one of the characters in the scene was the director of this movie and I had even more questions.) Also, the ending of Twinless is terrible. There’s an age-old question in critic circles about how much a bad ending can ruin an otherwise great movie. While I don’t think Twinless’ tonally ridiculous ending ruins the rest of the movie, it is a problem and is worth noting for those who do think it can.
Directed by James Sweeney (Straight Up)
Written by James Sweeney (Straight Up)
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour 40 minutes
Where Can I Stream It? Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+
Another oddly specific subgenre of movies we saw in 2025 were dramas about the connections we have with our fellow human beings, re-examining them in a world that is increasingly digitizing and thus cheapening these connections. Twinless is a film that examines these connections in the very thought-provoking way of love between siblings. The set-up is pretty simple as a man named Roman (Dylan O’Brien) has recently lost his gay twin and is feeling the utter void that is left behind as someone he used to do everything with is no longer there. While at a grief support group, he meets a gay man named Dennis (James Sweeney) who claims to have lost his straight twin. Hitting it off, the two start hanging out, basically becoming each other’s new surrogate twin.
From here, Twinless takes a few fun twists and turns that I won’t dare spoil for you but I will say it’s great. The acting from these two is phenomenal and this is the first movie I’ve ever seen that made me understand what it feels like to be gay in a world that seems designed for straight people. The sheer loneliness the two feel and yet the ability of one being able to move on (relatively) quicker than the other is gotten down very well. On top of that, this film has truly next-level cinematography, with its usage of montages and cameras feeling like something out of the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul universe. One sequence in particular shows the two parallel romantic experiences at a house party and the way it’s shot and edited blew me away.
This is almost one of the best indie films of the 2020s but it’s dragged down by two problems and they’re sadly very big ones. First is that this movie has a needlessly graphic, and I mean graphic, sex scene. You might call me a prude but this is another thing that bothers me in movies as it basically precludes me from being able to recommend the movie to older generations (who kinda need to see a movie like this) and also because I can’t imagine making the actors do this unless the story really needed them to. In this case, while it is important to establish these two characters having sex, I don’t know why they couldn’t do it like they used to in older movies where they just showed the two characters lying in bed under the covers. (Then I found out that one of the characters in the scene was the director of this movie and I had even more questions.) Also, the ending of Twinless is terrible. There’s an age-old question in critic circles about how much a bad ending can ruin an otherwise great movie. While I don’t think Twinless’ tonally ridiculous ending ruins the rest of the movie, it is a problem and is worth noting for those who do think it can.
GENUINELY EXCELLENT FILMS
Breaking the Circle~Cornel Wilczek - Bring Her Back
Yeah, seems like your typical “wicked stepmother and demonic child” set-up that’s relatively common in horror movies. But good God, the levels of gaslighting and abuse that Laura inflicts upon Andy and Piper is horrific and goes to lengths that I think/hope the average person would never be able to predict. When Bring Her Back began, I was rolling my eyes a bit at the predictable set-up but by the end, we had seen so many horrible actions from Laura that I was genuinely afraid and wondering how our protagonists were possibly going to find a way out or even if they would at all.
Horror has had a fun resurgence in the 2020s but within that genre, there are two main types of subgenres. First you have your pulpy horror movies, the ones that are fun like haunted house decorations. Bring Her Back is in the second, increasingly rare category of truly scary movies. Like, I seriously think this ranks high up there with The Fly and the original Candyman as one of the scariest movies ever made. There’s one scene in particular that was so hard to watch that I actually had to close my eyes because I couldn’t stand to watch it. I haven’t done that while watching a movie since I was a teenager and the fact that this managed to accomplish that, especially with some of the fucked-up shit that I enjoy watching, is quite a feat.
Directed by Danny and Michael Philippou (Talk To Me)
Written by Danny Philippou (Talk To Me) and Bill Hinzman (Talk To Me)
Genre: Horror
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour 44 minutes
Where Can I Stream It? HBO MAX, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+
Another common argument in film criticism circles is at what point does a plot become so clichéd that it becomes a problem? If you see a movie with a set-up that you’ve seen before, how do you distinguish one that is unoriginal and boring versus one that is tropey but fun? Bring Her Back is a movie that perfectly manages to straddle that line between the familiar and the fresh. Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: two (step)siblings, Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong), have lost their parents and so are adopted by a foster mother, Laura (Sally Hawkins). Also in Laura’s care is another kid named Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) whose disturbing behavior seems to border almost on the supernatural at times. Laura ends up being a pretty abusive stepmother and the big mystery of the film is our heroes trying to survive her wrath whilst figuring out what exactly is wrong with Oliver.
Yeah, seems like your typical “wicked stepmother and demonic child” set-up that’s relatively common in horror movies. But good God, the levels of gaslighting and abuse that Laura inflicts upon Andy and Piper is horrific and goes to lengths that I think/hope the average person would never be able to predict. When Bring Her Back began, I was rolling my eyes a bit at the predictable set-up but by the end, we had seen so many horrible actions from Laura that I was genuinely afraid and wondering how our protagonists were possibly going to find a way out or even if they would at all.
Horror has had a fun resurgence in the 2020s but within that genre, there are two main types of subgenres. First you have your pulpy horror movies, the ones that are fun like haunted house decorations. Bring Her Back is in the second, increasingly rare category of truly scary movies. Like, I seriously think this ranks high up there with The Fly and the original Candyman as one of the scariest movies ever made. There’s one scene in particular that was so hard to watch that I actually had to close my eyes because I couldn’t stand to watch it. I haven’t done that while watching a movie since I was a teenager and the fact that this managed to accomplish that, especially with some of the fucked-up shit that I enjoy watching, is quite a feat.
Fricatives~Jonathan Deering
I also like to call this Nervous Breakdown: The Movie. Linda (Rose Byrne) is a psychotherapist, which is a job where she often has to encounter people confronting their worst demons on a day-to-day basis. And she also has to care for her toddler daughter (Delaney Quinn), who has an eating disorder and must subsist on a feeding tube. And her house collapses because of a water leak. And her landlord is dragging their feet about repairing it while she lives in a motel. And her husband (Christian Slater) isn’t around, meaning she has to do it alone. And the parking guard (Mark Stolzenberg) at her daughter’s doctor keeps giving her a hard time. And she feels that her own psychotherapist (Conan O’Brien) isn’t giving her the emotional tools she needs to get through all of this. And the only coping mechanism she has is drinking entire bottles of wine at 1 in the morning after her daughter has fallen asleep.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is just my right level of avant-garde. There is a plot that is easy to follow but the director makes some very specific choices that elicit Linda’s deteriorating mental state and leaves some things up to your interpretation. The movie is very Safdie Brothers-esque with the frenetic camera movement and choppy editing to make you feel stressed. I also like that you almost never see the daughter and only hear her voice, deliberately dehumanizing her into just a thing that Linda feels she has to take care of (and the actress who plays the daughter has a very annoying voice which is also a great choice). Occasionally, though, other imagery pops up from time to time that are so clearly not real that you really wonder just how insane Linda is actually becoming. Yet it also doesn’t fall into the trap that a lot of other psychological horror movies go by becoming full avant-garde at the end that it loses the audience. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You stays somewhat in reality the whole time, making the strange imagery that much creepier.
If I had to pick a choice for what I consider the best movie of the year, although not necessarily my personal favorite, I think I’d give it to If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. I don’t know if I’d be in a rush to watch it again but the level of stress it creates and lets you endure definitely did more to push the envelope of filmmaking than anything else I’d seen this year. And, yes, just like everyone else is saying, Rose Byrne does give the performance of a lifetime.
One final piece of praise I’ll give, because I love this sort of attention to detail, is that the movie takes place (and was shot) on Long Island and, speaking as someone from there, Rose Byrne’s accent was spot-on perfect. For an actress who is Australian, she doesn’t just put on the generic American accent that a lot of foreign actors do; she sounds like she’s actually from Long Island.
Directed by Mary Bronstein (Yeast)
Written by Mary Bronstein (Yeast)
Genre: Psychological thriller, psychological horror
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour 54 minutes
Where Can I Stream It? HBO MAX, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+
I also like to call this Nervous Breakdown: The Movie. Linda (Rose Byrne) is a psychotherapist, which is a job where she often has to encounter people confronting their worst demons on a day-to-day basis. And she also has to care for her toddler daughter (Delaney Quinn), who has an eating disorder and must subsist on a feeding tube. And her house collapses because of a water leak. And her landlord is dragging their feet about repairing it while she lives in a motel. And her husband (Christian Slater) isn’t around, meaning she has to do it alone. And the parking guard (Mark Stolzenberg) at her daughter’s doctor keeps giving her a hard time. And she feels that her own psychotherapist (Conan O’Brien) isn’t giving her the emotional tools she needs to get through all of this. And the only coping mechanism she has is drinking entire bottles of wine at 1 in the morning after her daughter has fallen asleep.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is just my right level of avant-garde. There is a plot that is easy to follow but the director makes some very specific choices that elicit Linda’s deteriorating mental state and leaves some things up to your interpretation. The movie is very Safdie Brothers-esque with the frenetic camera movement and choppy editing to make you feel stressed. I also like that you almost never see the daughter and only hear her voice, deliberately dehumanizing her into just a thing that Linda feels she has to take care of (and the actress who plays the daughter has a very annoying voice which is also a great choice). Occasionally, though, other imagery pops up from time to time that are so clearly not real that you really wonder just how insane Linda is actually becoming. Yet it also doesn’t fall into the trap that a lot of other psychological horror movies go by becoming full avant-garde at the end that it loses the audience. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You stays somewhat in reality the whole time, making the strange imagery that much creepier.
If I had to pick a choice for what I consider the best movie of the year, although not necessarily my personal favorite, I think I’d give it to If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. I don’t know if I’d be in a rush to watch it again but the level of stress it creates and lets you endure definitely did more to push the envelope of filmmaking than anything else I’d seen this year. And, yes, just like everyone else is saying, Rose Byrne does give the performance of a lifetime.
One final piece of praise I’ll give, because I love this sort of attention to detail, is that the movie takes place (and was shot) on Long Island and, speaking as someone from there, Rose Byrne’s accent was spot-on perfect. For an actress who is Australian, she doesn’t just put on the generic American accent that a lot of foreign actors do; she sounds like she’s actually from Long Island.
Forever Young~Alphaville
Speaking of the Safdie Brothers, if you’ve heard anything at all about movies in the past year, you’ve heard of Marty Supreme. Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) is a young, poor Jewish clerk in early 1950s New York City who moonlights as a professional table tennis player. He manages to work his way up to the British Open and successfully competes all the way to the finals. After his success, he wants to do it again for another international championship in Tokyo. Given that Tokyo is much farther away than England, and he already spent what little money he had on the first trip, Marty must find a way to scrounge up enough cash to make the trip to Japan.
Marty Supreme can best be described as a cross between Rocky and Uncut Gems. It has the signature Safdie Brothers style, who have one of the most unique voices of any currently-working directors (I am probably obligated to mention at this point that this was actually only directed by one of the Safdie Brothers, with the other directing The Smashing Machine; the two movies are pretty stylistically similar although Marty Supreme has a much stronger story). It basically revolves around making the camera and editing feel very choppy combined with most of the actors shouting over each other to create a constant sense of stress for the audience. Unlike their previous movies, this is their first time trying a period piece and they succeed fluently, giving Marty Supreme an identity all of its own. The costumes and set design of this period are on-point accurate, making you feel like you were transported back in time to post-WWII America. Yet, the music is strangely anachronistic, sounding more like something out of the 80s, which sounds strange at first but the synth-heavy soundtrack succeeds at making the movie that much more intense.
What I find most impressive about Marty Supreme is that when it came time for the climax of the film, I realized that it’s actually not that atypical of a story in the grand scheme of things. What is atypical, however, is how the story was told. We’ve seen movies of characters trying to win the big game but I don’t think I’ve seen one where the conflict is just being able to afford it. Nor have I seen one where their solution is a journey into petty crime with a delightful and memorable cast of scumbags with such unique casting (Penn Jillette from Penn & Teller and Kevin O’Leary, a leading figure in Canada’s Conservative Party, are just two strange choices for actors appearing in this movie who knock their roles out of the park). Nor have I seen one where the main character is such an obnoxious prick yet still comes off as this likable. Timothée Chalamet has been one of Hollywood’s biggest rising stars of the 2020s and Marty Supreme is the movie that pushes him beyond just a pretty boy movie star into showing his chops as a truly excellent and chameleonic actor.
Directed by Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems, Good Time, Heaven Knows What)
Written by Ronald Bronstein (Uncut Gems, Good Time, Heaven Knows What) and Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems, Good Time, Heaven Knows What)
Genre: Sports drama, thriller
Rating: R
Running Time: 2 hours 30 minutes
Where Can I Stream It? Amazon Prime, Apple TV+
Speaking of the Safdie Brothers, if you’ve heard anything at all about movies in the past year, you’ve heard of Marty Supreme. Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) is a young, poor Jewish clerk in early 1950s New York City who moonlights as a professional table tennis player. He manages to work his way up to the British Open and successfully competes all the way to the finals. After his success, he wants to do it again for another international championship in Tokyo. Given that Tokyo is much farther away than England, and he already spent what little money he had on the first trip, Marty must find a way to scrounge up enough cash to make the trip to Japan.
Marty Supreme can best be described as a cross between Rocky and Uncut Gems. It has the signature Safdie Brothers style, who have one of the most unique voices of any currently-working directors (I am probably obligated to mention at this point that this was actually only directed by one of the Safdie Brothers, with the other directing The Smashing Machine; the two movies are pretty stylistically similar although Marty Supreme has a much stronger story). It basically revolves around making the camera and editing feel very choppy combined with most of the actors shouting over each other to create a constant sense of stress for the audience. Unlike their previous movies, this is their first time trying a period piece and they succeed fluently, giving Marty Supreme an identity all of its own. The costumes and set design of this period are on-point accurate, making you feel like you were transported back in time to post-WWII America. Yet, the music is strangely anachronistic, sounding more like something out of the 80s, which sounds strange at first but the synth-heavy soundtrack succeeds at making the movie that much more intense.
What I find most impressive about Marty Supreme is that when it came time for the climax of the film, I realized that it’s actually not that atypical of a story in the grand scheme of things. What is atypical, however, is how the story was told. We’ve seen movies of characters trying to win the big game but I don’t think I’ve seen one where the conflict is just being able to afford it. Nor have I seen one where their solution is a journey into petty crime with a delightful and memorable cast of scumbags with such unique casting (Penn Jillette from Penn & Teller and Kevin O’Leary, a leading figure in Canada’s Conservative Party, are just two strange choices for actors appearing in this movie who knock their roles out of the park). Nor have I seen one where the main character is such an obnoxious prick yet still comes off as this likable. Timothée Chalamet has been one of Hollywood’s biggest rising stars of the 2020s and Marty Supreme is the movie that pushes him beyond just a pretty boy movie star into showing his chops as a truly excellent and chameleonic actor.
Music Box~Jónsi and Alex Somers - Rental Family
As mentioned above, there was a trend of movies in 2025 that wanted to analyze our human connections in a world that seems to cheapen them more and more. By far the best of these was Rental Family. Phillip Vanderploeg (Brendan Fraser) is an American actor living in Tokyo who comes upon a gig where he works for a staffing company that hires actors to play roles in people’s lives. So, like if you’re a lonely person and you need someone to act as your best friend, you contact this company and they send someone out to just hang out with you. Vanderploeg picks up this job and the rest of the movie is a character study of him undertaking these fake roles to give emotional relief to strangers, with the main plot being him pretending to be the long-lost father of a little girl named Mia Kawasaki (Shannon Mahina Gorman).
In order to contextualize why Rental Family is a both great and important movie, I think it bears mentioning that this is not a fun concept that was made up for satirical purposes. Rental family services are an absolutely very real thing in Japan and have even started making some inroads here in America. When you think about it for any amount of time, this is an emotionally bankrupt and horrible idea and Rental Family does not shy away from this fact. Like, sure, for Vanderploeg, it’s just a gig, but at a certain point, he and the audience both know that this is a pretty sleazy way to make money. Setting it as an American in a foreign country also adds to the implicit loneliness of the character as he so rarely gets to enjoy these sort of connections and makes him more attuned to how he is helping to cheapen the emotional needs of vulnerable people.
Rental Family could have so easily gone awry and become too sappy but I think it avoids the trap because of its comedy, authenticity and respect for Japanese culture. The movie actually has a great sense of humor about itself as it doesn’t shy away from how utterly ridiculous both this concept and Japanese media is. But it also isn’t afraid to let the characters confront their emotions and I don’t mean this in that soapy, sappy way that you might initially think. Some of the problems that many of Vanderploeg’s clients have are very real ones, which makes what he does surprisingly uncomfortable at times. And, just like Lost in Translation before it, this movie is a great dive into Japanese culture, classic and modern, showing a respect for the beauty of this country while also criticizing it's increasingly tech-heavy culture that is leaving a generation of Japanese having to literally pay people for human companionship.
Directed by Mitsuyo Miyazaki/Hikari (Beef, Tokyo Vice, 37 Seconds)
Written by Mitsuyo Miyazaki/Hikari (37 Seconds)
Genre: Drama, comedy
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour 50 minutes
Where Can I Stream It? Amazon Prime, Apple TV+
As mentioned above, there was a trend of movies in 2025 that wanted to analyze our human connections in a world that seems to cheapen them more and more. By far the best of these was Rental Family. Phillip Vanderploeg (Brendan Fraser) is an American actor living in Tokyo who comes upon a gig where he works for a staffing company that hires actors to play roles in people’s lives. So, like if you’re a lonely person and you need someone to act as your best friend, you contact this company and they send someone out to just hang out with you. Vanderploeg picks up this job and the rest of the movie is a character study of him undertaking these fake roles to give emotional relief to strangers, with the main plot being him pretending to be the long-lost father of a little girl named Mia Kawasaki (Shannon Mahina Gorman).
In order to contextualize why Rental Family is a both great and important movie, I think it bears mentioning that this is not a fun concept that was made up for satirical purposes. Rental family services are an absolutely very real thing in Japan and have even started making some inroads here in America. When you think about it for any amount of time, this is an emotionally bankrupt and horrible idea and Rental Family does not shy away from this fact. Like, sure, for Vanderploeg, it’s just a gig, but at a certain point, he and the audience both know that this is a pretty sleazy way to make money. Setting it as an American in a foreign country also adds to the implicit loneliness of the character as he so rarely gets to enjoy these sort of connections and makes him more attuned to how he is helping to cheapen the emotional needs of vulnerable people.
Rental Family could have so easily gone awry and become too sappy but I think it avoids the trap because of its comedy, authenticity and respect for Japanese culture. The movie actually has a great sense of humor about itself as it doesn’t shy away from how utterly ridiculous both this concept and Japanese media is. But it also isn’t afraid to let the characters confront their emotions and I don’t mean this in that soapy, sappy way that you might initially think. Some of the problems that many of Vanderploeg’s clients have are very real ones, which makes what he does surprisingly uncomfortable at times. And, just like Lost in Translation before it, this movie is a great dive into Japanese culture, classic and modern, showing a respect for the beauty of this country while also criticizing it's increasingly tech-heavy culture that is leaving a generation of Japanese having to literally pay people for human companionship.
Sorry, Baby (Piano)~Lia Ouyang Rusli - Sorry, Baby
This description might be a bit shorter as Sorry, Baby is one of those movies where the less you know going in, the better it’ll be. Sorry, Baby is a character study of a young woman named Agnes (Eva Victor) who has suffered a trauma and the rest of the movie is about how she deals with said trauma. I will not be saying what said trauma is as the movie has a lot of build-up to make you wonder what it is which is a flaw of Sorry, Baby as, honestly, just from the way it’s foreshadowed, hinted at in the trailer and probably just by this description, you can almost certainly guess what it is. So much so, that the length of build-up makes the first act feel like it’s spinning its wheels a bit but I digress.
That having been said, Sorry, Baby is an emotionally brutal portrayal of anxiety and depression that shows how what might have been one day in one person’s life can come to define another’s. The film has a bit of a quirky sense of humor that feels perfectly in-character for Agnes and manages to elevate the film without feeling like it’s undercutting her emotions, which is a very tough and delicate needle to thread.
I would love to gush more about Sorry, Baby as I think this is the one that haunted me the most after leaving the theater and has stayed with me the longest. If some pacing issues were fixed, I’d venture to say this was the best movie of 2025. At the same time, however, this might be too harsh of a barometer as for a first-time director, Sorry, Baby is a very impressive and empathetic film.
Directed by Eva Victor (directorial debut)
Written by Eva Victor (screenwriting debut)
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour 44 minutes
Where Can I Stream It? HBO MAX, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+
This description might be a bit shorter as Sorry, Baby is one of those movies where the less you know going in, the better it’ll be. Sorry, Baby is a character study of a young woman named Agnes (Eva Victor) who has suffered a trauma and the rest of the movie is about how she deals with said trauma. I will not be saying what said trauma is as the movie has a lot of build-up to make you wonder what it is which is a flaw of Sorry, Baby as, honestly, just from the way it’s foreshadowed, hinted at in the trailer and probably just by this description, you can almost certainly guess what it is. So much so, that the length of build-up makes the first act feel like it’s spinning its wheels a bit but I digress.
That having been said, Sorry, Baby is an emotionally brutal portrayal of anxiety and depression that shows how what might have been one day in one person’s life can come to define another’s. The film has a bit of a quirky sense of humor that feels perfectly in-character for Agnes and manages to elevate the film without feeling like it’s undercutting her emotions, which is a very tough and delicate needle to thread.
I would love to gush more about Sorry, Baby as I think this is the one that haunted me the most after leaving the theater and has stayed with me the longest. If some pacing issues were fixed, I’d venture to say this was the best movie of 2025. At the same time, however, this might be too harsh of a barometer as for a first-time director, Sorry, Baby is a very impressive and empathetic film.
PERSONAL FAVORITES OF THE YEAR
Police & Thieves~IDLES - Caught Stealing
Directed by Darren Aronofsky (The Whale, The Wrestler, Requiem for a Dream)
Written by Charlie Huston (Gotham, Powers, All Signs of Death)
Genre: Crime thriller
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour 47 minutes
Where Can I Stream It? Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+
It’s a damn shame that this movie bombed as badly as it did as this is the type of medium-budget, fun thriller that Hollywood so rarely makes anymore. And, to be fair, part of that blame can be laid on the misleading marketing and the terrible trailer that was everywhere this past summer. Watching it, you would think Caught Stealing is a Guy Ritchie-esque quirky crime comedy, akin to something like Snatch or Get Shorty, and that is not at all the type of movie this is. Instead, Caught Stealing is probably most tonally similar to Breaking Bad. While there is an element of fun and adventure to this movie, taking the hero and the audience around most of New York City, it does not shy away from the sheer brutality and terror of this situation that our protagonist finds himself in.
Caught Stealing takes place back in the glory days of the Lower East Side nightlife in the 1990s as a washed-up bartender, Hank (Austin Butler), gets mistaken for his drug dealing neighbor (Matt Smith) by a group of criminals. As an example of the brutal tone of this movie, the inciting incident is when Hank gets beat up by a couple of thugs. This happens in a lot of crime movies but, here, they beat him so badly that he ends up pissing blood the next day. This is a great example of how you use gore well. We are so not used to seeing this level of violence in movies like this that you feel the danger that much more. When characters get hurt in this movie, they don’t just shrug it off, they stay hurt with one bad guy dying because of injuries sustained over 20 minutes of running time beforehand.
On top of that, Caught Stealing also has a whip-smart script. So many forced contrivances you see in movies like this aren’t here. They do a great job at sucking Hank deeper and deeper into this world and really making it feel like he’s running out of options to simply survive. I also surprisingly got really into the romance in this. Austin Butler and Zoë Kravitz have excellent chemistry and when she gets involved in Hank’s terrible journey, I was surprised by how much I cared and how I didn’t want to see her get hurt. The fact that I gave a crap about a character whose whole character is just to be the girlfriend is so rare and a real testament to this film.
The only thing that keeps Caught Stealing from being a total masterpiece in my eyes is that the main villain of this movie is horribly miscast. The actor playing this person must have been a producer on the film or helped out with funding or something because I do not believe for one minute that they are who they say they are. And it’s a shame because the character’s not even written poorly. They’re a good villain, it’s just the wrong actor for the part which is an unfortunate distraction from what is an otherwise realistic yet still fun crime movie.
Good Boy Suite~Sam Boase-Miller - Good Boy
Probably the most famous independent film of last year, Good Boy shows what a filmmaker with practically no budget can do if they get a little creative. Good Boy’s pitch is that it seems like your typical haunted house movie but the protagonist is not the man who just moved in. Instead, the protagonist is his pet Toller Retriever, Indy. At first glance, this just seems like a gimmicky idea for a movie that you see a lot on Shudder but I personally think that Good Boy transcends the gimmick to become a genuinely effective and emotional horror movie.
For starters, Good Boy is paced exceptionally well and is mercifully short, which is admirable that the director did not make it any longer than it needed to be. For another, I think making the main character a dog is a deceptively smart way to make the movie a lot more sympathetic. The secret sauce here is that the director doesn’t anthropomorphize Indy and just lets him act like a real dog in a haunted house. And because most people love dogs, whenever there’s danger or the dog yelps or whines, we’re actually much more scared because we don’t want to see the dog get hurt. Similarly, Indy’s owner (Shane Jensen, doubled by Ben Leonberg), like most characters in horror movies, is kind of a dumbass, which would normally be infuriating but because we see how much Indy loves his owner, we’re also scared of him getting hurt as well.
Plus, the movie isn’t as shallow as it may initially sound with its set-up. There’s actually a good mystery and creep factor and you can debate about what the monster even actually is and how much of it is real versus being symbolic for something less supernatural that is simply given a face by the dog’s heightened senses. This makes Good Boy even better upon rewatches as you can catch little clues pointing one way or the other. Or, if that doesn’t tickle your fancy, you can also rewatch it to see a true masterclass in how editing a movie works. Considering how the director of the movie used his real dog for his lead, the actual production of Good Boy was far more difficult and time-consuming than you may initially think. Good Boy ends up being a masterclass in its usage of the Kuleshov Effect (in case you don't know what that is, here’s a video of Alfred Hitchcock explaining it) and how to get an actor who has no idea that he’s in a movie to act in a movie.
Directed by Ben Leonberg (directorial debut)
Written by Alex Cannon (Natural Causes, All-American Sex Offender) and Ben Leonberg (screenwriting debut)
Genre: Horror
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour 12 minutes
Where Can I Stream It? Shudder, AMC+, Philo, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+
Probably the most famous independent film of last year, Good Boy shows what a filmmaker with practically no budget can do if they get a little creative. Good Boy’s pitch is that it seems like your typical haunted house movie but the protagonist is not the man who just moved in. Instead, the protagonist is his pet Toller Retriever, Indy. At first glance, this just seems like a gimmicky idea for a movie that you see a lot on Shudder but I personally think that Good Boy transcends the gimmick to become a genuinely effective and emotional horror movie.
For starters, Good Boy is paced exceptionally well and is mercifully short, which is admirable that the director did not make it any longer than it needed to be. For another, I think making the main character a dog is a deceptively smart way to make the movie a lot more sympathetic. The secret sauce here is that the director doesn’t anthropomorphize Indy and just lets him act like a real dog in a haunted house. And because most people love dogs, whenever there’s danger or the dog yelps or whines, we’re actually much more scared because we don’t want to see the dog get hurt. Similarly, Indy’s owner (Shane Jensen, doubled by Ben Leonberg), like most characters in horror movies, is kind of a dumbass, which would normally be infuriating but because we see how much Indy loves his owner, we’re also scared of him getting hurt as well.
Plus, the movie isn’t as shallow as it may initially sound with its set-up. There’s actually a good mystery and creep factor and you can debate about what the monster even actually is and how much of it is real versus being symbolic for something less supernatural that is simply given a face by the dog’s heightened senses. This makes Good Boy even better upon rewatches as you can catch little clues pointing one way or the other. Or, if that doesn’t tickle your fancy, you can also rewatch it to see a true masterclass in how editing a movie works. Considering how the director of the movie used his real dog for his lead, the actual production of Good Boy was far more difficult and time-consuming than you may initially think. Good Boy ends up being a masterclass in its usage of the Kuleshov Effect (in case you don't know what that is, here’s a video of Alfred Hitchcock explaining it) and how to get an actor who has no idea that he’s in a movie to act in a movie.
Let’s Get Looney~Joshua Moshier - Porky Pig & Daffy Duck: The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie
The Looney Tunes were the foundation that Warner Bros. Animation was built on. Ever since the classic age of cartoons died out in the late 60s, Warner Bros. would do things with the Looney Tunes that ranged from half-assed to complete sellouts of the brand. The Day The Earth Blew Up, by contrast, was a passion project by an animation director who worked on a Looney Tunes reboot for Cartoon Network and somehow managed to get this project greenlit. Upon completion, the suits at Warner Bros. apparently decided that this movie had no commercial potential (even though it’s become highly-viewed on HBO) and tried to cancel/shut down the movie. Due to some complex legalese, the producers actually were contractually obligated to finish the film and have a theatrical release, which they did in the most limited of releases possible with bare-bones marketing, thereby ensuring a flop. Since I’m the type of person who likes to read about scumbag corporate dealings in Hollywood and was made aware of this, I thought it’d be a nice little rebellion against the man to actually contribute some money towards this passion project. This is how I and a few friends ended up watching in the theaters an obscure kids’ film that Hollywood was trying to bury like a dead hooker.
And I am so glad I did. What made the Looney Tunes so great, and why I think their classic cartoons have aged better than the classic Disney cartoons, is that there was a very sarcastic and cynical wit about them. If you haven’t gone back and watched them since becoming an adult, I recommend you do as they’re still generally pretty funny no matter your age. The Day The Earth Blew Up was made by someone who clearly has a lot of respect and love for these classic characters as he perfectly captures the style while still updating it to the modern day. It’s not an ensemble piece, just revolving around Daffy Duck (Eric Bauza) and Porky Pig (also Eric Bauza) saving the world from aliens; no Bugs Bunny, no Wile E. Coyote, no Tweety and Sylvester, probably the biggest surprise is that the main alien (Peter MacNicol) isn't Marvin the Martian. But that’s all they really needed and, if you go back and watch old Looney Tunes, very rarely would they have the full ensemble.
While The Day The Earth Blew Up is a film that is geared towards children, it’s one that adults will greatly enjoy as well, especially if you grew up with the Looney Tunes. It actually reminds me a lot of the movies that I watched when I was a kid as it has the 90s cynicism to it (complete with the unnecessary pop songs on the soundtrack). The jokes are also genuinely funny; slapstick is obviously the big draw here but there’s also some adult jokes that go over the kids’ heads, some blink-and-you’ll-miss-it jokes in the background and even one character (who got the biggest laugh) where the gag is how different his animation is compared to everyone else. And while there are a few jokes that are groaners, to be fair, they’re the same type of bad jokes that Tex Avery would’ve made if he were alive today. Many movies over the past 30 years have tried cashing in on the Looney Tunes but, for my money, this is the only one I’ve seen that has successfully captured the spirit of the classic cartoons.
Directed by Pete Browngardt (directorial debut)
Written by Kevin Costello (Tom & Jerry, Jean-Claude Van Johnson, Brigsby Bear), Pete Browngardt (Looney Tunes Cartoons, Adventure Time, The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack) and about 8 other storyboard artists who reviewed the script and received writing credits and I don't feel like listing all of their names and previous works
Genre: Slapstick comedy, sci-fi
Rating: PG
Running Time: 1 hour 31 minutes
Where Can I Stream It? HBO MAX, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+
The Looney Tunes were the foundation that Warner Bros. Animation was built on. Ever since the classic age of cartoons died out in the late 60s, Warner Bros. would do things with the Looney Tunes that ranged from half-assed to complete sellouts of the brand. The Day The Earth Blew Up, by contrast, was a passion project by an animation director who worked on a Looney Tunes reboot for Cartoon Network and somehow managed to get this project greenlit. Upon completion, the suits at Warner Bros. apparently decided that this movie had no commercial potential (even though it’s become highly-viewed on HBO) and tried to cancel/shut down the movie. Due to some complex legalese, the producers actually were contractually obligated to finish the film and have a theatrical release, which they did in the most limited of releases possible with bare-bones marketing, thereby ensuring a flop. Since I’m the type of person who likes to read about scumbag corporate dealings in Hollywood and was made aware of this, I thought it’d be a nice little rebellion against the man to actually contribute some money towards this passion project. This is how I and a few friends ended up watching in the theaters an obscure kids’ film that Hollywood was trying to bury like a dead hooker.
And I am so glad I did. What made the Looney Tunes so great, and why I think their classic cartoons have aged better than the classic Disney cartoons, is that there was a very sarcastic and cynical wit about them. If you haven’t gone back and watched them since becoming an adult, I recommend you do as they’re still generally pretty funny no matter your age. The Day The Earth Blew Up was made by someone who clearly has a lot of respect and love for these classic characters as he perfectly captures the style while still updating it to the modern day. It’s not an ensemble piece, just revolving around Daffy Duck (Eric Bauza) and Porky Pig (also Eric Bauza) saving the world from aliens; no Bugs Bunny, no Wile E. Coyote, no Tweety and Sylvester, probably the biggest surprise is that the main alien (Peter MacNicol) isn't Marvin the Martian. But that’s all they really needed and, if you go back and watch old Looney Tunes, very rarely would they have the full ensemble.
While The Day The Earth Blew Up is a film that is geared towards children, it’s one that adults will greatly enjoy as well, especially if you grew up with the Looney Tunes. It actually reminds me a lot of the movies that I watched when I was a kid as it has the 90s cynicism to it (complete with the unnecessary pop songs on the soundtrack). The jokes are also genuinely funny; slapstick is obviously the big draw here but there’s also some adult jokes that go over the kids’ heads, some blink-and-you’ll-miss-it jokes in the background and even one character (who got the biggest laugh) where the gag is how different his animation is compared to everyone else. And while there are a few jokes that are groaners, to be fair, they’re the same type of bad jokes that Tex Avery would’ve made if he were alive today. Many movies over the past 30 years have tried cashing in on the Looney Tunes but, for my money, this is the only one I’ve seen that has successfully captured the spirit of the classic cartoons.
Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now~Starship
Rounding off our retrospective of the best movies of 2025 is another nostalgic throwback that was made by someone with real respect for the original subject matter instead of just being cheap corporate nostalgiabait. Though with that in mind, it’s a bit depressing that the Lonely Island needed to reboot The Naked Gun instead of making this story an original IP since that’s the only way this would make any money and that they continue the annoying tendency of naming a reboot just the original title (they seriously couldn’t just call this movie The Naked Gun: The New Version?) but I digress. Comedy films suffered an ignominious death sometime in the mid-2010s and every comedy since then has been mediocre at best, obnoxious at worst and afraid to take any chances.
The Naked Gun doesn’t do any of that. The original trilogy of movies were a spoof of the hyper-violent cop films of the 80s mixed with the Zucker Brothers’ trademark humor of dumb pun jokes played as seriously and deadpan as possible. The new Naked Gun pays perfect tribute to this while updating the jokes to the modern day… kinda. If you didn't know that this came out this year, you'd probably think that this movie was from, say, 2012 or so but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Similarly, not every joke is a bullseye but there’s so many thrown at you so fast that if one misses the mark, you move right on to the next one. There’s cartoonish jokes, nonsensical jokes, political jokes, dark jokes, borderline offensive jokes that are funny because of how horrible our protagonist is and even some jokes that take you a second to fully get.
Liam Neeson at first seems like a surprising choice to replace Leslie Nielsen as Sergeant-Detective-Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr. but, within the first 5 minutes, all worries go right out the window. While Liam Neeson’s career in recent years revolved around second-rate action pictures, I think a lot of people forget that he is a genuinely excellent and versatile actor. Furthermore, his hyper-serious way of speaking and audience association with melodramas adds a cognitive dissonance here that makes Drebin’s violent stupidity even funnier. On a meta level, it’s actually a fitting tribute to the original actor as a lot of people don’t know that Leslie Nielsen used to be a serious actor in his youth before taking a turn to comedies in the early 80s. None of the other side-characters are particularly memorable though, to be fair, that was also an issue with some of the original Naked Gun trilogy as well. And, honestly, if you’re going to watch The Naked Gun looking for commentary or character arcs, you’re looking in the wrong place.
It’s been a big talking point in comedic circles that comedies have gotten so terrible in the past 10 years which makes something like The Naked Gun more important than ever. If this came out 15 years ago, it would probably have gotten good reviews, made some money yet ultimately blend into the crowd. But because we've been so starved for some silly comedies for so long, that really helps The Naked Gun stand out as one of the best and most entertaining movies of 2025. This isn’t a movie that wants to lecture you about what you can or can’t say or complain about how certain things can't be said anymore or just do minimalist and safe screwballs. It just wants to make you laugh and never once apologizes for any of it. If you’re looking for a fun way to spend 90 minutes, which is the first and primary goal that a movie should strive for, I cannot recommend The Naked Gun enough.
Directed by Akiva Schaffer (Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, Hot Rod)
Written by Dan Gregor (Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, How I Met Your Mother), Doug Mand (Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, How I Met Your Mother) and Akiva Schaffer (Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, Saturday Night Live, The Lonely Island)
Genre: Comedy
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour 25 minutes
Where Can I Stream It? MGM+, Philo, Plex, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+
Rounding off our retrospective of the best movies of 2025 is another nostalgic throwback that was made by someone with real respect for the original subject matter instead of just being cheap corporate nostalgiabait. Though with that in mind, it’s a bit depressing that the Lonely Island needed to reboot The Naked Gun instead of making this story an original IP since that’s the only way this would make any money and that they continue the annoying tendency of naming a reboot just the original title (they seriously couldn’t just call this movie The Naked Gun: The New Version?) but I digress. Comedy films suffered an ignominious death sometime in the mid-2010s and every comedy since then has been mediocre at best, obnoxious at worst and afraid to take any chances.
The Naked Gun doesn’t do any of that. The original trilogy of movies were a spoof of the hyper-violent cop films of the 80s mixed with the Zucker Brothers’ trademark humor of dumb pun jokes played as seriously and deadpan as possible. The new Naked Gun pays perfect tribute to this while updating the jokes to the modern day… kinda. If you didn't know that this came out this year, you'd probably think that this movie was from, say, 2012 or so but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Similarly, not every joke is a bullseye but there’s so many thrown at you so fast that if one misses the mark, you move right on to the next one. There’s cartoonish jokes, nonsensical jokes, political jokes, dark jokes, borderline offensive jokes that are funny because of how horrible our protagonist is and even some jokes that take you a second to fully get.
Liam Neeson at first seems like a surprising choice to replace Leslie Nielsen as Sergeant-Detective-Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr. but, within the first 5 minutes, all worries go right out the window. While Liam Neeson’s career in recent years revolved around second-rate action pictures, I think a lot of people forget that he is a genuinely excellent and versatile actor. Furthermore, his hyper-serious way of speaking and audience association with melodramas adds a cognitive dissonance here that makes Drebin’s violent stupidity even funnier. On a meta level, it’s actually a fitting tribute to the original actor as a lot of people don’t know that Leslie Nielsen used to be a serious actor in his youth before taking a turn to comedies in the early 80s. None of the other side-characters are particularly memorable though, to be fair, that was also an issue with some of the original Naked Gun trilogy as well. And, honestly, if you’re going to watch The Naked Gun looking for commentary or character arcs, you’re looking in the wrong place.
It’s been a big talking point in comedic circles that comedies have gotten so terrible in the past 10 years which makes something like The Naked Gun more important than ever. If this came out 15 years ago, it would probably have gotten good reviews, made some money yet ultimately blend into the crowd. But because we've been so starved for some silly comedies for so long, that really helps The Naked Gun stand out as one of the best and most entertaining movies of 2025. This isn’t a movie that wants to lecture you about what you can or can’t say or complain about how certain things can't be said anymore or just do minimalist and safe screwballs. It just wants to make you laugh and never once apologizes for any of it. If you’re looking for a fun way to spend 90 minutes, which is the first and primary goal that a movie should strive for, I cannot recommend The Naked Gun enough.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Evening in Paris~Zoot Sims - Nouvelle Vague
A House of Dynamite: An intense thriller about the meltdowns at the highest levels of power during a nuclear threat. Genuinely horrifying and suspenseful but ruined by its Godawful copout of an ending. Probably would’ve gotten on the main list if it had a better ending.
American Sweatshop: A thriller on how social media affects our empathy that, unlike many other tech-based thrillers, was clearly written by someone who actually knows how the internet works. The drama is so good that the thriller aspects feel pretty weak by comparison.
Ballerina: An action movie that doesn’t even pretend to have a plot but makes up for it with some truly creative and awesome action scenes. The flamethrower duel is a particular highlight.
Companion: A fun and funny satire on tech and relationships. This plot/allegory is admittedly getting a bit clichéd at this point but the tongue-in-cheek tone keeps things fresh.
Dangerous Animals: A campy horror romp with a great villain who has an enjoyably bizarre MO. Gets quite stupid but, honestly, it knows what it is and doesn’t care.
Den Stygge Stesøsteren (The Ugly Stepsister): A(n at times painfully) slow body horror twist on the Cinderella story from Norway that is basically the medieval equivalent to The Substance. The tapeworm scene was fucking gnarly.
Drop: One of the best so-bad-that-it’s-good movies ever made that had me practically dying of laughter. In terms of sheer enjoyability, this is my favorite of these honorable mentions and the one I most recommend you watch if you like laughing at stupid movies. I strongly considered putting this on the main list but I ultimately found The Life of Chuck easier to write about.
Eddington: A great character study and one of the best, most even-keeled satires of American politics in recent years. The first 2 hours are great but, good God, Ari Aster really needs a producer to tell him to stop making his movies 3 hours long.
Elio: A fun Pixar adventure with beautiful animation, memorable characters and a heartwarming ending. First act really drags which puts it on the lower half of the studio’s totem pole.
Ick: A fun and funny horror romp with a lovable protagonist. Could’ve been truly something special with a little tinkering and ironing out of its flaws though considering its B-movieness, the fact that it’s as good as it is is pretty impressive.
Materialists: Another movie that examines the cheapening of human relationships in today’s day and age. Terrible ending and some weird plot choices do unfortunately drag it down and I think I admire more what the movie was trying to say than how it said it.
Nouvelle Vague: A biopic about the making of the classic French film, Breathless, in a style aping Breathless. The period piece and style is perfectly on-point though how much you like it will depend a lot on how much you like Breathless (which is famously not the most accessible movie in the world).
Roofman: A fun concept with a likable protagonist that makes you think about your morals after it's over. Some script shortcuts do open some strange plot holes in the movie though.
Sinners: One of the biggest movies of last year. Despite the horror part being the big draw, I actually thought that the buildup examining music and its importance to different cultures was the great part; when the vampires show up, the movie goes downhill.
Superman: The most authentic and likable superhero movie in years with the best Lex Luthor ever put to film. I also admire that this movie doesn’t have a first act and just throws you into the story, although that’s also the main problem with it.
The Long Walk: A brutal allegory about middle America and the Vietnam War that takes full advantage of its concept. Wanted to love it but the film ultimately broke my suspension of disbelief with just how long the walk ended up being (if you stayed up for a full week straight while doing low-level cardio, you wouldn’t just be tired, you’d be speaking in tongues).
The Monkey: If The Long Walk was Stephen King at some of his most brutal, The Monkey is Stephen King at some of his most hilariously batshit crazy. This is another movie that doesn’t even try with the plot but that’s also the beauty of it.
A House of Dynamite: An intense thriller about the meltdowns at the highest levels of power during a nuclear threat. Genuinely horrifying and suspenseful but ruined by its Godawful copout of an ending. Probably would’ve gotten on the main list if it had a better ending.
American Sweatshop: A thriller on how social media affects our empathy that, unlike many other tech-based thrillers, was clearly written by someone who actually knows how the internet works. The drama is so good that the thriller aspects feel pretty weak by comparison.
Ballerina: An action movie that doesn’t even pretend to have a plot but makes up for it with some truly creative and awesome action scenes. The flamethrower duel is a particular highlight.
Companion: A fun and funny satire on tech and relationships. This plot/allegory is admittedly getting a bit clichéd at this point but the tongue-in-cheek tone keeps things fresh.
Dangerous Animals: A campy horror romp with a great villain who has an enjoyably bizarre MO. Gets quite stupid but, honestly, it knows what it is and doesn’t care.
Den Stygge Stesøsteren (The Ugly Stepsister): A(n at times painfully) slow body horror twist on the Cinderella story from Norway that is basically the medieval equivalent to The Substance. The tapeworm scene was fucking gnarly.
Drop: One of the best so-bad-that-it’s-good movies ever made that had me practically dying of laughter. In terms of sheer enjoyability, this is my favorite of these honorable mentions and the one I most recommend you watch if you like laughing at stupid movies. I strongly considered putting this on the main list but I ultimately found The Life of Chuck easier to write about.
Eddington: A great character study and one of the best, most even-keeled satires of American politics in recent years. The first 2 hours are great but, good God, Ari Aster really needs a producer to tell him to stop making his movies 3 hours long.
Elio: A fun Pixar adventure with beautiful animation, memorable characters and a heartwarming ending. First act really drags which puts it on the lower half of the studio’s totem pole.
Ick: A fun and funny horror romp with a lovable protagonist. Could’ve been truly something special with a little tinkering and ironing out of its flaws though considering its B-movieness, the fact that it’s as good as it is is pretty impressive.
Materialists: Another movie that examines the cheapening of human relationships in today’s day and age. Terrible ending and some weird plot choices do unfortunately drag it down and I think I admire more what the movie was trying to say than how it said it.
Nouvelle Vague: A biopic about the making of the classic French film, Breathless, in a style aping Breathless. The period piece and style is perfectly on-point though how much you like it will depend a lot on how much you like Breathless (which is famously not the most accessible movie in the world).
Roofman: A fun concept with a likable protagonist that makes you think about your morals after it's over. Some script shortcuts do open some strange plot holes in the movie though.
Sinners: One of the biggest movies of last year. Despite the horror part being the big draw, I actually thought that the buildup examining music and its importance to different cultures was the great part; when the vampires show up, the movie goes downhill.
Superman: The most authentic and likable superhero movie in years with the best Lex Luthor ever put to film. I also admire that this movie doesn’t have a first act and just throws you into the story, although that’s also the main problem with it.
The Long Walk: A brutal allegory about middle America and the Vietnam War that takes full advantage of its concept. Wanted to love it but the film ultimately broke my suspension of disbelief with just how long the walk ended up being (if you stayed up for a full week straight while doing low-level cardio, you wouldn’t just be tired, you’d be speaking in tongues).
The Monkey: If The Long Walk was Stephen King at some of his most brutal, The Monkey is Stephen King at some of his most hilariously batshit crazy. This is another movie that doesn’t even try with the plot but that’s also the beauty of it.
Weapons: Another major horror movie with a unique set-up that it takes full advantage of. It plays with non-linear time, which is fun, but some of the sub-plots feel pointless and like they could’ve been trimmed for length.
Comments
Post a Comment