2025 has come and gone, but determining the best films of the year is still a hotly debated conversation. Eight of our TV & Film writers threw their respective hats into the ring, submitting their personal top 10 movies. The result formed the following aggregate list, which our analysts will break down film-by-film. Without further ado, here are the best movies of 2025, ranked.
How the Rankings Scoring System Works
- Each writer submitted their list ranking the top 10 films of 2025
- The No. 1 film in each list earned 10 points, the No. 2 film earned nine points, and so on
Honorable Mentions
- Thunderbolts (14 Points)
- Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man (12 Points)
- Eternity (12 Points)
No. 10: Hamnet (15 Points)
Jeff Pratt: How Hamnet lands so low in these rankings quite frankly astonishes me. Jessie Buckley delivers the best performance of the year across the board, regardless of category. It should come as no surprise that out of all the best actor/actress nominations, she is by far the heaviest favorite to take home hardware from her respective group. Buckley immaculately toes the line between her character’s almost mythical, profound connection with nature and the unavoidable hardships that so many mothers faced in the late 1500s. As an audience, we experience the highest of highs and lowest of lows through her, all while she carves out a life for herself alongside one of history’s most infamous characters in William Shakespeare.
In a film with such a commanding leading performance, it would have been easy for the rest of the act to pale in comparison. That’s not the case with Hamnet. Paul Mescal grounds the larger than life persona of Shakespeare into a mere man with simple dreams, gifts, and flaws. Jacobi Jupe gives so much life to the character of Hamnet that when it is inevitably ripped away, we grieve as if we’ve lost our own wonderful, gifted child. His brother, Noah, ties together the final act and pulls it across the finish line with a brilliant performance as Hamlet. This is a film that will stick with me for far longer than when Buckley walks across the stage to accept her Oscar in March, and it deserved a better showing than 10th on this list.
T-8: Sentimental Value & Bugonia (22 Points)
Dan Johnson: While Sentimental Value isn’t Trier’s most lovely film, it might be his most tender—this grown-up, patiently accruing family drama that keeps finding new rooms inside the same wound. The setup is deceptively simple, almost wickedly so: a once-celebrated filmmaker returns to Oslo after a death in the family, and he tries to pull his estranged daughter—now a stage actress—back into orbit by casting her in his comeback picture. She refuses, so he pivots to a young Hollywood star, and suddenly the art becomes both apology and weapon. That’s Trier at his best, right there: affection with teeth, intimacy with stakes, bloody love.
What also makes it quintessentially Trier—and what makes it feel cut from the same cloth as his 2016 Norwegian-American debut, Louder Than Bombs—is that the movie isn’t just about grief or estrangement, but about how narrative itself becomes a coping mechanism. In Louder Than Bombs, memory is a contested terrain, a family each holding a different map and insisting it’s the only true one. Here, Trier folds that same fracture into form: scenes, rehearsals, film-within-film textures, the slippery overlap of lived history and performed history, like the past is always trying to scramble and shoulder its way back into the present. You can feel the lineage, too, from Reprise’s chaptered electricity and The Worst Person in the World’s structural playfulness—except the play is sadder now, wiser, less interested in being clever than in being honest. The house itself becomes a kind of thesis. Homes as inherited spaces which are themselves records of all that’s happened there. Inexorable rot. For it’s a question we ask of ourselves, structurally, is it not: how is it possible for us to remain standing and architecturally-sound beneath the weight of all our heavy humanity & harrowed histories?
Sentimental Value‘s acting is the kind of calibrated, quietly-ferocious work Trier seems to summon ritually from his casts. Stellan Skarsgård’s filmmaker-father isn’t a monster, which is the whole problem; he’s charismatic enough to keep fooling himself. And, maybe, you. Renate Reinsve plays the daughter with that Trierian specialty blend—competence as armor, volatility as the leak beneath it—so every interaction feels like a negotiation between the person she is and the person she was forced to become. And Elle Fanning, as the outsider star who gets invited into the family’s unresolved weather system, does something especially sharp: she doesn’t save the story, she complicates it, the way a new witness changes the testimony. By the end, Trier lands a final beat that barely needs words, the kind of closing gesture that doesn’t resolve the fracture so much as teach you how to live with its outline. And if that sounds—ahem—sentimental, he’s already ahead of you—because he knows sentiment is only embarrassing when it isn’t earned.
Bryan Armetta: At least half of Bugonia’s runtime takes place inside a basement. The dialogue is almost entirely between three characters. Still, this film manages to keep viewers on their toes for almost two hours. Emma Stone is fantastic as always, earning a well-deserved Best Actress nomination. However, the standout in this one might be Jesse Plemons. He manages to capture the paranoid, at times incoherent state of a conspiracy-brained man turned societal afterthought.
Another collaboration between Stone and director Yorgos Lanthimos elicited some eye-rolls from filmgoers. As someone who didn’t care for 2023’s ‘Poor Things’, I understand why. With that being said, the duo are firing on all cylinders in ‘Bugonia’. It’s the type of film that manages to say something without coming off as condescending or losing any entertainment value in the process. And that ending? Even if it wasn’t your cup of tea, you have to admire directors that take big swings. Love it or hate it, this is a difficult film to forget.
No. 7: 28 Years Later (23 Points)
Blake Krass: Over two decades after releasing the genre-defining cult classic, 28 Days Later, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland dove back into the world of the infected with 28 Years Later. There was a 2007 sequel, 28 Weeks Later, but it was not written by Garland or directed by Boyle, so many in the 28 fandom don’t recognize it as canon. In fact, in the opening title sequence of 28 Years Later all but erases the ending of Weeks from the universe. It was unclear where Boyle and Garland had planned to take this franchise all these years later, but this entry exceeded all expectations. In 2003, they forever changed the zombie genre with the simple question: “What if zombies could run?” In 2025, they once again flipped the genre on its head with a profound exploration of family, loss, and isolationism.
The film follows a family, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer and Alfie Williams, navigating the world 28 years after the infection first came to England. Their island community, which has survived all of these years, acts as an allegory to the modern-day British Empire in a post-Brexit world. For fans who just love epic showdowns with the infected, there is no shortage of those. However, the third act of the film is defined by a show-stopping Ralph Fiennes performance. Fiennes brings a humanity to this film that is rarely seen in the horror genre. The thematic writing, innovative directing and beautiful performances make this one of the best horror films of the century, and one of the best films of 2025. Memento Mori.
No. 6: Eddington (29 Points)
Nick Friar: Ari Aster continues to be unapologetic with his screenwriting and direction. After coming out the gates swinging with Hereditary in 2018 and Midsommar in 2019, he further raised the bar with 2025’s Eddington.
Joaquin Phoenix shines as the Sheriff Joe Cross, setting the tone for an anxiety-inducing ride. While stars alongside Emma Stone, Pedro Pascal and Austin Butler, who all put forth strong performances, it was Deirdre O’Connell who wound up stealing the show every time she was on screen.
If nothing else, this is a reminder that A24 Productions continues to be at the forefront of powerful big-screen storytelling.
No. 5: Weapons (33 Points)
Dan Johnson: While I’ve got Weapons as my third-best film this year officially, it’s neck-and-neck with Train Dreams for perhaps my favorite, or the one by which I was the most charmed. I mean that unironically, too; the euphoric ending of this flick, man—you know what I’m talking about!—was as enchanting and earned an in-theater experience I can remember since the catharsis of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood…’s last twenty minutes. As a fan of Cregger’s first horror-adjacent installment, Barbarian, it was refreshing to see him apply so many of the same stylistic, cinematographic flourishes to Weapons, which is undeniably a premise more appealing to the masses: the entire attendance roster of a second-grade class, all asleep in their separate homes, up and disappears one night with no explanation—except one boy, and the class’s young teacher.
The film is acted impeccably as this small American town of parents, public servants, vagrants, and remaining children work to piece together this unspeakable tragedy. Cregger’s editing touch is deft; he knows how to use characters as overlapping acts, different points of view as competing/conflicting subnarratives that push forward the major plot points. He hard-switches between his ensemble’s characters, as if each character is a chapter. And there’s almost a relief in the shifts, isn’t there? Because sometimes Cregger’s writing gets a little too weird, the mystery gets a little too impenetrable, and the characters get a little too trite (see Julie Garner taking a frosty vodka bottle to bed) to linger on overlong. You can always count on Cregger to hot-potato the camera’s eye when one character lane runs barren. For his horrorscapes are always brewing mysteries. We are following characters-as-clues. He keeps us molten on the trail, and it’s what keeps Weapons deliciously propulsive, as excruciatingly-paced as it sometimes intends to be.
And, of course, the film’s greatest achievement—Gladys. There may be fewer things I find more impressive in writing than the wacky, vaudeville narrative establishment of a villain whose lurid, imaginative eccentricities—see Aunt Gladys’s rust-red wig, her caricatured pout, her quite-stylish kimono—make their deliberate, ruthless, and so-serious-as-to-not-whatsoever-fuck-around-ever evil somewhat disarming. Just juxtapose Gladys’s sing-song vocal tone with the gory mess she *snaps* Martin into making. And there’s a bit of the Longlegs Mr. Downstairs to her, isn’t there—a little Osgood Perkins dark magic—with that threshold of salt outside her room? With that obsidian bonsai. A supernatural mystique that’ll make her origin story (Cregger’s next film) one of great intrigue. We meet her in Weapons when she is at her most desperate. What happened when she was at her most powerful? If you haven’t already, go see how she fits into all of the above, and try to stomach the thought of Campbell’s soup after the credits roll.
No. 4: No Other Choice (35 Points)
Charlie Cummings: A true love letter to the cinephile, No Other Choice has it all. The cast, led by Lee Byung-hun, brings it in every scene. The cinematography is a testament to Park Chan-wook’s creative eye, a movie you could marvel at in still photos. And it brings thematic elements that appeal to everyone: the desperation of unemployment and the lengths that parents will go to in order to protect their family.
It’s a shame that this movie was so heavily snubbed for Oscar consideration. As fellow Korean director Bong Joon-ho said, when accepting his Golden Globe for “Parasite”: once you conquer the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films. Don’t let those barriers stop you from experiencing this movie.
No. 3: Marty Supreme (38 Points)
Cooper Albers: Timothée Chalamet delivers a career-defining performance, an EF5 tornado personified, tearing through the film as his titular character leaves devastation in his wake.
Part period drama. Part ping pong epic. Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme is, at its core, a cautionary coming-of-age story that leaves viewers with no nails left to bite, no room left on their seats to lean any further — and maybe even a newfound appreciation for the color orange.
No. 2: Sinners (51 Points)
Sam Connon: Ryan Coogler spent a decade of his career tied almost exclusively to massive franchises in Creed and Black Panther. Prior to last year, his only fully original feature was Fruitvale Station, which came out all the way back in 2013. Coogler didn’t hold back in his fifth directorial effort, blending his signature authorial touch with the blockbuster tricks he learned along the way to deliver Sinners. Even before the movie turns into a gruesome vampire bloodbath, Coogler paints an incredibly detailed and engaging picture of a prohibition-era Mississippi. Michael B. Jordan’s dual-performance as twins Smoke and Stack is worth all the awards attention it’s getting, as are the supporting performances from Wunmi Mosaku, Delroy Lindo, Hailee Steinfeld and Jack O’Connell. Miles Caton, making his acting debut, is the true anchor or the story, though, and not just because of his elite musical talents. Sinners is about ancestry, the blues and Black exploitation, so much of which rests on Caton’s Preacherboy. Between an enthralling musical sequence around the midpoint and a truly unique epilogue, Sinners and its themes do not work without Preacherboy.
Add to that all the narratives around the film’s release, from Coogler’s ownership of the rights to its surprise box office explosion, and you’ve got the defining film of 2025.
No. 1: One Battle After Another (57 Points)
Charlie Cummings: Paul Thomas Anderson is nothing if not consistent. Greed and selfishness getting in the way of family and morality? Ball on tee, squared up, and launched. One Battle After Another is perhaps his magnum opus on this topic.
It blends the gut-wrenching interpersonal drama of There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread with the irreverent, often slapstick humor of Boogie Nights and Inherent Vice. In short, all of the best elements of PTA movies. Throw that kind of storytelling in a contemporary setting that could not be more relevant to the struggles of today, and you have a classic. Landing the plane with a seat-gripping final sequence made this the year’s top movie. Hats off to all involved in making this masterpiece.
Those are the 10 best movies of 2025, ranked! Stay tuned for more film content ahead of the 2026 Oscars.