The New Yorker called 2025, “A brilliant year for movies, and a terrible one for almost everything else.” I might be a little more bearish on the year in cinema – when can we have another Barbenheimer weekend? – there was a lot to admire.
I spent a lot of time thinking about another New Yorker essay, this one about the “New Literalism” that is affecting movies right now. Namwali Serpell wrote, “Complaints about our inability to read, interpret, or discern irony, subtlety, and nuance are as old as art. What feels new is the expectation, on the part of both makers and audiences, that there is such a thing as knowing definitively what a work of art means or stands for, aesthetically and politically. This strikes me as a blatant redefinition of art itself.” Me too, me too.
At the beginning of 2024, I started this project where I would force myself to read a short story, essay, and poem every day. It meant I stopped having (as much) time for hot takes and doomscrolling, but it also gave me the opportunity to recalibrate how I think and how I view, well, everything. Under that context, I found myself looking for movies that don’t fall into this trap, that don’t feel compelled to announce its righteousness or that allow for ambiguity and nuance. I didn’t always succeed, but there was a lot I did really enjoy. 2025 did provide an embarrassment of riches for cinema, once I learned where to look for it.
10. The Naked Gun (Akiva Schaffer)
This is quite possibly the dumbest movie of the year, which I say with some affection. For me, though, it is unquestionably the funniest. A reboot of the classic Leslie Nielsen films with Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin, Jr., The Naked Gun throws so many gags at you you can’t help but be in a constant state of laughter. Or at least I couldn’t.
The Naked Gun is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
9. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Josh and Morgen both have this new Paul Thomas Anderson joint as their #1 movie, and I understand why. It’s a tense and exciting film with excellent performances all around. After Inherent Vice, it’s the second Thomas Pynchon novel PTA has adapted. I liked this movie quite a bit but it mines similar territory to Alex Garland’s Civil War, one of my favorite movies of 2024. I prefer the latter, if only on points and with the advantage of incumbency.
One Battle After Another is currently streaming on HBO Max.
8. Hamnet (Chloe Zhao)
Chloe Zhao just wasn’t cut out for the MCU. This is better anyway. Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley both give Oscar-worthy performances as William Shakespeare and Anne (nee Agnes) Hathaway as history’s greatest playwright/absentee father is overcome with such grief over his young son’s death that he pours that into history’s greatest play.
Hamnet is currently in theaters.
7. F1® The Movie (Joseph Kosinski)
F1 is full of sports cliches and is often predictable, but I can’t be bothered to care because this is the most fun movie I watched all year. The racing scenes feel like you’re inside an F1 car. Brad Pitt is good as a washed up racer given another opportunity to rediscover his potential.
F1 is currently streaming on Apple TV.
6. By Design (Amanda Kramer)
The weirdest feature I saw at SIFF this year is also my favorite. Juliette Lewis stars as a woman who covets a specific chair (it is quite the chair) and when it’s sold from under her nose, she becomes the chair. It’s not a movie for everybody but I am the type of weirdo who appreciates stuff like this.
By Design is currently unavailable for streaming but should have a theatrical and streaming release sometime in 2026.
5. Wicked: For Good (John M. Chu)
Oh the things you can do when budgets don’t matter. I’ve become quite taken with both films in the Wicked saga, largely due to my fondness for The Wizard of Oz, but John M. Chu’s stands on its own because of the wondrousness that is Oz.
Wicked: For Good is currently in theaters.
4. Kiss of the Spider Woman (Bill Condon)
Wicked is only the second best musical this year thanks to this Bill Condon film set in the waning days of Argentina’s military dictatorship in the 1980’s. J. Lo and Diego Luna are predictably quite good but Tonatiuh is the breakout star. Expect big things from him in the near and distant future.
Kiss of the Spider Woman is available to rent on VOD.
3. Suburban Fury (Robinson Devor)
For me, the idea that Gerald Ford could serve as both vice president and president while being elected to neither is an interesting trivia fact, but to Sara Jane Moore, it was an outrage that should have fatal consequences for the president. Robinson Devor’s documentary tells the story of Moore through her own words. It’s a haunting look inside the mind of an otherwise normal figure who just happened to want to kill the president.
Suburban Fury is expected to have a theatrical release in 2026.
2. Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh)
Steven Soderbergh’s stylish thriller is probably the coolest movie of the year. It’s a fun and sexy game of cat and mouse with Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett as the Woodhouses, British espionage’s power company. He’s trusted with finding the mole inside his elite spy organization and no one is beyond suspicion, including Mrs. Woodhouse.
Black Bag is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
1. Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie)
Wow. Though working without his brother Benny, Josh Safdie continues the project of documenting the experiences of the American dirtbag. Here, the focus is on Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet, in probably his best-ever role), a table tennis prodigy who sees everyone as a mark for his hustle. He has this Trumpian habit of believing there’s one lie or promise he can make that will carry him until he collects the winnings from a big tournament. Yet he underestimates everyone’s appetite for his BS and is always running to be one step ahead of the other shoe dropping. It’s riveting.
Marty Supreme is currently in theaters.
🎉📽️🎬 All of the Sunbreak’s 2025 Year-end lists: Chris | Josh | Marina | Morgen | Tony