Theater owners and executives used the phrase “survive ‘til ‘25” as a motto to relieve fears that the business was on the verge of collapse, but this last 12 months saw Hollywood sabotage itself. The dominance of artificial intelligence and looming media mergers may indicate that the industry has given up, but they also can’t be blamed for audience taste. In a year where Jurassic World Rebirth was a smash hit and two Steven Soderbergh movies flew under-the-radar, it's possible that quality cinema might end up being a niche market.
The reason to have hope is that many of the best films of the year were ambitious works made by artists who either wrangled resources out from under studios or succeeded with the odds slanted against them. Not all of them will end up nominated for awards, but they’re likely to age well.
10. Weapons: The obsession with “elevated horror” has created a misperception that the genre is at its best when films make obvious allusions to current topical issues that are bound to feel outdated in a matter of months. Weapons is an old-fashioned chiller that can be enjoyed as a nasty fairy tale. With the sinister Aunt Gladys, Amy Madigan created the most original horror villain in years.
9. Sentimental Value: Joachim Trier made a more nuanced, heartbreaking version of a romantic-dramedy with The Worst Person in the World a few years back, and Sentimental Value is his version of a dysfunctional family story. Trier’s observations about the traits, both good and bad, that are passed from parents to children are as insightful as they are authentic.
8. It Was Just An Accident: Jafar Panahi risked his livelihood to make a timely political thriller about the abuses of power in the Iranian regime, and snuck footage out of his home country to avoid house arrest. The importance of It Was Just An Accident as a work of protest art doesn’t supersede that it's an entertaining, humorous take on the lies people tell themselves in order to justify their most pugnacious desires.
7. Eddington: It’s not a surprise that Eddington was divisive because Ari Aster’s pandemic-set dark comedy is unsparing in its depiction of how the Covid crisis revealed the vapid sentiments used to create a false sense of integrity and security. Those that accused Aster’s film of having a “both sides” approach to its political rhetoric may have overlooked the ending of Eddington, which made it clear that it’s only anti-humanism and corporatism that’s benefited from a divided America.
6. No Other Choice: Park Chan-wook’s latest pitch-black thriller is his funniest and most pointed film to date because it took the frustration about a fractured job market to its absurdist extreme. The performance by Lee Byung-hun as Yoo Man-su, a former manager at a papermaking company who’s fired after years of service, is one of the best of the year; he’s pathetic, scary, goofy, and sympathetic all at once.
5. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You: There were several 2025 films about the weight of expectations felt by parents, but If I Had Legs I’d Kick You has the understanding of being ignored and silenced by apathetic onlookers. It’s a feverish living nightmare that’s able to find emotional truth within its jarring, surrealist moments, and a has a performance by Rose Byrne that’s leagues above her peers; in a just world, all the accolades given to Jessie Buckley’s phlegmatic work in Hamnet would go to Byrne.
4. The Testament of Ann Lee: After co-writing The Brutalist with her husband, Brady Corbet, director Mona Fastvold made the first musical in years that challenged the form by being more than a staged version of a production intended for live theaters. The songs are half-lyrical, half-chants, and the ambiguity The Testament of Ann Lee has about the ramifications of its titular protagonist’s ideology has made it worthy of academic study.
3. Blue Moon: Leave it to Richard Linklater to make a biopic that doesn’t adhere to any cliches of Hollywood’s favorite method to bait awards voters. Blue Moon is a tribute to all of the great artists that never reached their potential and were forgotten by history, even if it does have a sense of humor about how pompous and self-important insular creative communities can be. It’s not only the most mature and personable role Ethan Hawke has had since his collaborations with Linklater on Before Sunrise and its two sequels, but easily his most impressive physical transformation.
2. Marty Supreme: As much as Timothee Chalamet’s self-congratulatory press cycle might ruffle some feathers, it's hard to criticize him when he’s made a film as immersive and entertaining as Marty Supreme; he also might still be in character as the determined, aggravatingly ambitious titular anti-hero. There’s not another 150-minute long experience where something interesting can occur in nearly every scene, nor is there a period piece made with such urgency and specificity.
1. One Battle After Another: One Battle After Another demythologized revolutionary sentiments as a means to show how America has fluctuated with each generation, and why a passing-of-the-torch doesn’t need to be painful. Paul Thomas Anderson doesn’t just pull from the maximalism of Boogie Nights and the scope of There Will Be Blood, but achieved a feat of action spectacle more impressive than all four superhero films released this year. Leonardo DiCaprio has proven once more that he's far better at playing schlubby losers than dark, brooding loners, and Sean Penn’s role as a Vincent McMahon-esque militia leader is the villain of an era.
Honorable mentions: The Secret Agent, Is This Thing On?, Bugonia, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, Jay Kelly, Train Dreams, The Life of Chuck, A Little Prayer, 28 Years Later, Warfare, Splitsville, Black Bag, Die My Love, Rebuilding, Urchin.
Television fared slightly better than film in 2025 because there was a diversity of options and a willingness to take bold swings on behalf of the streamers. A few high-profile shows like The Last of Us and Squid Game flamed out, but there were a number of great programs, both new and returning.
10. Murderbot: The best of Apple TV’s robust slate of science fiction programming is a clever revamp of classic space opera serials with a fascinating performance by Alexander Skarsgård as a lazy, reluctantly heroic android.
9. Death by Lightning: The story of a one-sided relationship between President James Garfield (Michael Shannon) and his assassin, Charles J. Guiteau (Matthew Macfadyen), has more to say about the fallacy of the American dream than most shows that triple its four-episode length.
8. The Studio: The Studio is a modernization of Robert Altman’s The Player that gave homage to a dozen classic films and featured innumerable celebrity cameos, all while it made a compelling case that Hollywood executives could occasionally be on the right side of history.
7. The Chair Company: Tim Robinson utilized his knack for bizarre sketch comedy to make a surprisingly riveting conspiracy satire that has as much in common with Twin Peaks as it does with any of his prior sitcoms.
6. The Lowdown: The Lowdown is a detective-based mystery and a “hangout” show that’s reliant om niche pop culture references and Ethan Hawke in a performance indebted to Elliot Gould’s Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye.
5. Severance: After a three-year gap, Severance returned with another season of mystery boxes and speculations, and incorporated stirring work from Adam Scott as two versions of the same character who vie for control of their shared physical essence.
4. Task: It’s unclear what exactly HBO has planned with a second season of Task, but the first season is as perfect of a cat-and-mouse crime thriller as could be expected, and doubled as a thought-provoking expose on faith and forgiveness.
3. The Pitt: Even if it more than likely originated as an E.R. reboot aimed at network audiences, The Pitt utilized the all-consuming “ticking time clock” approach of 24 to shine a spotlight on understaffed emergency room workers left without proper resources in the wake of Covid.
2. Andor: The best feat of Star Wars storytelling in 45 years doesn’t require any knowledge of franchise mythology to be enjoyed as a World War II-inspired espionage series about the birth of a rebellion; instead of lightsabers and puppets, Andor had the pristine writing of Michael Clayton’s Tony Gilroy.
1. The Rehearsal: Nathan Fielder is either sincere to a fault or ironic in ways not understood, because The Rehearsal interrogated real issues about airline safety before it doubled back to question the ethics of its existence and put its creators body of work into a new context.
Honorable mentions: Long Story Short, The White Lotus, The Righteous Gemstones, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Beast in Me, Alien: Earth, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Paradise, Dept. Q, The Gilded Age, Dying for Sex, A Man on the Inside, American Primeval, Black Rabbit, The Bear.