10. Hamnet (Chloe Zhao)

The classic tearjerker lives on. But as evidenced by Chloe Zhao’s newest directorial effort, clichés and staid genres can feel fresh, emotional, and vital in the right hands. Sure, this works famously as a romance, and as a three-hanky tragedy. But it also serves as a wise examination of how an artist’s obsession to create art can alienate them from those around them, even as the end result of that obsession brings redemption and empathy to anyone able to experience it.

Hamnet is currently playing in theaters nationwide.

9. Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh)

Steven Soderbergh’s sharp spy thriller ladles on the double-crosses, skullduggery, and tension with rare sophistication and complexity. Even rarer: The wonderfully lived-in, nuanced romance between married spies Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett generates sparks without offsetting the Swiss-watch narrative precision driving things forward. In the end, it hinges on one question: Is she, or isn’t she? And the path to that answer twists and turns famously.

Black Bag is now streaming at Amazon Prime..

8. Train Dreams (Clint Bentley)

Clint Bentley’s quiet, unaffected drama about logger Robert Grainier weathering loss and the relentless advancement of 20^th century industry delivered one of the most immersive views of the year. Shot in the PNW, it boasts an incredible sense of place and showcases what’s gotta be a career-best performance from Joel Edgerton—he flat-out disappears into the role of Grainier.

Train Dreams is now streaming on Netflix..

7. Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos)

It’s likely simple coincidence, but Bugonia marks the second movie on my list of 2025 favorites that effectively mines suspense from a crucial, is-she or isn’t-she question. And like the inveterate spy/suspected mole played by Cate Blanchett in Black Bag, Emma Stone’s high-powered exec/possible extraterrestrial navigates that answer with texture, ambiguity, and presence to spare. Bugonia worked for me on a level that Poor Things almost (but never quite) did: The smaller scale coaxes suspense, biting satire, and humanity from director Yorgos Lanthimos’ very affected style. And Jesse Plemons’ riveting, strangely sympathetic work gives this movie something that only surfaces intermittently in Lanthimos’ filmography: Specifically, an unmistakable (if very dark) soul.

Bugonia is currently streaming on Netflix.

6. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle)

I already blathered on in lengthier fashion last June about Danny Boyle’s very different, and very awesome, sequel to 28 Days Later (see above link). Suffice it to say, if you avoid this out of irrational attachment to The Same Damn Thing in your sequels, you’re missing out on the best coming-of-age/ dark fantasy/action-horror movie of the year. Its follow up, the Nia Da Costa-directed 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (out in theaters in two weeks), can’t come soon enough.

28 Years Later is now streaming on Demand.

5. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (Rian Johnson)

Like the other two movies in Rian Johnson’s terrific Knives Out franchise, Wake Up Dead Man’s appeal lies in how director Rian Johnson and company wed the comfort food of an all-star-cast mystery with a bracing streak of topicality and wry humor. 

Right from its opening scenes, Wake Up Dead Man takes periodic left turns away from its primary sleuth, raffishly charming Benoit Blanc (a never-more raffishly charming Daniel Craig), to focus on Father Jud (Josh O’Connor). A former boxer and prime murder suspect, Jud’s a young priest wrestling with his own anger, even as his quick temper accidentally pushes him into textbook Wrong Man territory. Wake Up Dead Man serves up an utterly natural leading-man turn for O’Connor, a taut and witty star-studded whodunnit, and a blunt but cogent examination of the nature of faith and how easily it can morph into fanaticism.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is currently streaming on Netflix.

4. Frankenstein (Guillermo Del Toro)

Say what will about Guillermo Del Toro, but he never half-asses it. And Del Toro’s adaptation of the penultimate horror novel reads like top tier GDT to these eyes. It’s everything that Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu should have been but wasn’t—an emotionally involving period drama that also happens to be one seriously, dazzlingly immersive, atmospheric gothic epic. The gestures are grand and operatic, Isaac has never been more charismatic, and Jacob Elordi combines the pathos of Karloff’s performance with the soul and spirit of Mary Shelley’s monster. See it on the biggest screen you can, if it’s at all possible.

Frankenstein is currently streaming on Netflix.

3. Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie)

Marty Supreme hits the ground running, and that velocity’s only one of many parallels with acknowledged influence Martin Scorsese’s best work. The synergy between co-writer/director Josh Safdie’s breakneck pace and editor Darius Khondji’s relentless editing recall Scorsese’s collaborations with the great Thelma Schoonmaker. Both directors showcase a meticulous eye for period-accurate visual detail, and they share an affinity for unlikable but compulsively watchable protagonists. Like Raging Bull, Marty Supreme also explores the deep flaws that often run hand-in-hand with an athlete’s inherent gifts. 

Happily, Safdie’s bullet train of a movie remains its own animal. Timothee Chalamet’s Marty darts, weaves, and sprints through the movie with a seat-of-the-pants restlessness all his own, and Safdie’s integration of ‘80s pop songs with period-appropriate ‘50s tunes proves to be as evocative as it is nervy. The most purely dazzling movie I saw in a theater all year. 

Marty Supreme is currently playing in theaters

2. Sinners (Ryan Coogler)

Writer/director Ryan Coogler’s crafted a Depression-era pulp universe that configures the spirit of the American folktale into something so thrilling and rife with detail, even the most minuscule supporting characters crackle with life (seconding Josh’s motion: Could we get a separate spinoff movie about the charismatic Choctaw who briefly appear in the opening minutes? Pretty please?). And it’s all propelled by a musical sensibility that’s more electric and genuine than any dozen actual contemporary so-called musicals. 

The struggle for Black identity and autonomy amidst the twin threat of Klan-fueled racism and parasitic assimilation via (metaphoric and literal) pseudo-liberal monsters looms large if you care to face it, and it hits like a punch to the face. Plenty of film writers have also pointed out 100 other strands of text and subtext throughout. But the overwhelming sense telegraphed here remains the dark magic, adventure, and visceral danger inherent in the smartest and most effective of genre movies. A phenomenal re-watch. 

Sinners is screening on various streaming platforms.

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

One genre’s not nearly enough for most modern movies. So it goes with One Battle After Another, which is sort of an indie family drama, paranoid conspiracy, coming of age drama, mordant political satire, and exhilarating action movie—all rolled up into one. Somehow, it manages to deliver all of those flavors without shortchanging any of them.

Director Paul Thomas Anderson’s a master of deftly interweaving socio-political complexities with crowd-pleasing cinematic brushstrokes, and few entries in his filmography employ this with more finesse than One Battle.

On the face of it, it’s the story of activists whose efforts on behalf of undocumented immigrants catch up with them, to the tune of relentless hounding, prosecution, and worse at the hands of the US government. 

But Anderson’s also wise enough to stare unblinkingly into the blinding glare when these activists’ stubbornness and raw emotions turn their adherence to ideals into destructive, alienating, and sometimes fatal cudgels. And when Anderson trains his eye on the relationship between activist-in-hiding Bob (Leonardo Di Caprio, flirting with career-best work here) and his gifted, stifled daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti in a star-making turn), things get as emotionally involving as they are thorny and complex. Nothing else this year managed spinning so many plates with more assuredness and command of form.

One Battle After Another is available on various VOD platforms.