THE BEST FILMS OF 2025

Though I still haven't found a new publisher for my film writing, I persist in this expression of my deepest love of films, which continue to be my go-to source of inspiration and solace.  Of the 150 or so films I have seen this year (as I do every year), including all the Oscar-nominated feature-length films that have been available for screening, these are the ones that most impressed and stayed with me and that I think most deserve an audience.  So, to start, here is my list of the ten best films of 2025:

1.            One Battle After Another

2.           The Secret Agent

3.           Sinners

4.            It Was Just An Accident

5.            Come See Me In The Good Light

6.            East of Wall

7.            Secret Mall Apartment

8.            Deaf President Now

9.            A Nice Indian Boy

10.          Sirat

As usual, it's an eclectic mix, though with more overlap than usual between those at the top of my list and those at the top of the lists of critics generally and even of the Motion Picture Academy.  There are three documentaries on this list and three films originating from outside the U.S.  One is directed by a woman and all of them explore the experiences of those at the margins. 

I'll likely move this to another platform soon but welcome any leads or connections as to places to publish.  For now I continue in the tradition of all the artists who keep creating in the face of the odds--some of whom are reflected in this list of the best films of the year--with a commitment to keep writing and keep offering what is mine to offer, whether or not it is seen or heard. 

1.  One Battle After Another - I could make a case for any of my top three films as the best film of the year.  All reflect the world-building of directors who also wrote their screenplays. All deal with themes that feel especially urgent in these times of such upheaval.  All feature beautifully built ensemble casts offering some of the very best performances of the year.  In the end, though, "One Battle After Another" edges out the others by a nose.  For me, it resonates most deeply. 

Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson adapted his screenplay from "Vineland," a novel by Thomas Pynchon.  The director has said that the film is "inspired by" the book, which I haven't read, and that he has lifted elements of the book that he found most resonant, while shifting the time period and significantly altering the story.  I'd take the class where someone mines all of those choices for meaning, as I'm curious about how much of what moved me most finds roots in the novel and how much reflects where Anderson took the elements he found there.

Here are some bits of what I saw.  Somehow--though I'm not sure how--Anderson has captured a sense of waves of revolutionary energy challenging power structures as they exist in the U.S.  It's as though he has found a way to personify and portray the energy itself.  I'm not even sure how he came to the understanding reflected in this work, which captures better than I can remember seeing a sense of the scale of corruption, how readily those with structural power can claim justification for unspeakable acts while wrapping themselves in the language of moral high ground, and also the waves of opposition often characterized by courage and heart but also calamitous hubris or weakness or tactical errors--and, of course, being vastly overmatched in fire power.  The white supremacists here with their "Christmas Adventurers Club" may seem extreme to some viewers, but their portrayal actually captures with surprising clarity the ways in which such power operates. 

Conflicts like these could be set in any time; similar dynamics resonate in "one battle after another," for sure.  But given that the Pynchon novel is set in a different, earlier time, and given the number of years that Anderson has been working to adapt it, it's remarkable how accurately this film captures some of the exact dynamics we are seeing manifest in real time.  Mistakes are made in all directions, but the characters here are specific and extraordinarily resonant, from the smallest roles (including many played by folks with little or no professional experience) to the justly celebrated work of Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Chase Infiniti, and the great Teyana Taylor. 

Best of all, this film contains perhaps my favorite character and performance of this or any year--the "Sensei" played by the great Benecio Del Toro.  In a world where one battle after another is fought, he is one of those who knows best how to fight--remembering to breathe, not taking himself too seriously but taking the scale of what deserves fighting much more seriously than most can manage.  He is cool and clear-headed, assessing quickly the reasons to help the chaotic Bob (DiCaprio), directing an extremely effective underground operation ("a little Latino Harriet Tubman situation") that manages to save scores of unseen people who otherwise can claim no rights or human dignity in the overculture.  With a practiced eye, he quickly and accurately discerns the best response to each moment, clocking the exits and when it is best for him to take a fall for "a few small beers."  Watching him navigate this world is a true inspiration.  "Ocean waves.  Ocean waves." 

[In English and Spanish; rated R for pervasive language, violence, sexual content, and  drug use; nominated for 13 Academy Awards, including Best Picture (which it deserves to win), Best Director (Paul Thomas Anderson, who deserves to win), Best Adapted Screenplay (Paul Thomas Anderson, who deserves to win), Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), Best Supporting Actor (Benecio Del Toro, who deserves to win, and also Sean Penn), Best Supporting Actress (Teyana Taylor, who deserves to win), Best Casting (Cassandra Kulukundis, who deserves to win), and Best Original Score.  The best reviewed film of the year ranked by Metascore on metacritic.com; available to stream on several platforms.]

2.  The Secret Agent offers windows of profound insight into life under authoritarianism.  Set in the 1970s during Brazil's military dictatorship and drawing from writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho's own memories from his childhood in Recife, the film centers on the experiences of Armando (a brilliant Wagner Moura), a former professor caught up in political turmoil that endangers his life.  The film is rich with detail about life in that time, conveyed by a cast of characters that includes a community where Armando is offered refuge, surrounded by others in hiding, and also an array of thugs inside and outside the state apparatus where official power is wielded brutally and with impunity. 

Filho unfolds this story with consummate skill.  We gradually learn in bits and pieces the actions that placed Armando in jeopardy, and find that the punishment aimed at him makes no actual sense.  We come to realize that he is not a secret agent in the usual sense but has been robbed of any ability to exist as himself; those who wield power are free to target him and to steal and rewrite his identity so that even his own son will never know who he actually was.  Like the people in the community where Armando briefly finds solace, their offenses are never named; they have been forced to erase themselves in hopes of safety, enabling the state to write whatever story it wants about them.

It is rare to see a film that conveys so much so indirectly.  We are treated to a view of life under authoritarianism where the truth is nowhere to be found in the official news and where joy and celebration coexist with violence--indeed, where joy and celebration can provide a cover for violence.  One senses levels of awareness, where some try to exist as best they can without seeing the peril that surrounds them while others whose circumstances compel them to see more find ways to locate each other and collaborate in the underground where they are forced to live.  Among the things I was left to contemplate is how one could improve the possibility of developing that second sight rapidly and with sufficient facility to make a difference in that underground. 

[In Portuguese, German, and English; rated R for strong bloody violence, sexual content, language, and some full nudity; nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best International Feature (which it deserves to win), Best Actor (Wagner Moura), and Best Casting.  #4 on the list of the best reviewed films of the year ranked by Metascore on metacritic.com; available to stream on several platforms.]

3.  Sinners is a work of the most profound originality.  Writer-director Ryan Coogler has reimagined music and genre conventions to illuminate what pulses underneath our shallow collective understanding of Black experience and the gears that drive white supremacy. A vibrant work of historical fiction becomes an even more vibrant horror story, as Coogler expands what stories can be told.  Like his protagonists, the twins played masterfully by Michael B. Jordan, Coogler is determined to build a bigger space to house Black genius and flavor and inventiveness and brilliance.

The talent assembled here is dazzling.  I especially hope that Michael B. Jordan is honored for the work he did in embodying the twins with such specificity.  The film has broken the record for most Oscar nominations, reflecting the remarkable artistry that animates every aspect of this film.  I especially loved how Coogler managed to capture some of the dynamics of how oppressed people come to sell each other out as they attempt to find leverage inside a system that so incessantly rewards exploitation and perverts attempts at liberation. 

There is a central scene in the film in which Black artists (seers) as embodied throughout time and space all dance together for a delicious moment.   It's a scene that will live in my memory, a vision of the insistence on life and creativity that pulses through Black experience and that white supremacy can't seem to resist exploiting.  I'm not sure I'm satisfied with how Coogler resolves what he is sensing here, but as he did with the "Black Panther" movies, he has elevated our collective vision of Black power.  There is more to explore in these themes, and I'm anxious to see what Coogler's voracious vision may illuminate next. 

[In English and Chinese; rated R for strong bloody violence, sexual content, and language; nominated for 16 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay (Ryan Coogler, who deserves to win), Best Actor (Michael B. Jordan, who deserves to win), Best Supporting Actor (Delroy Lindo), Best Supporting Actress (Wunmi Mosaku), and Best Original Score (Ludwig Goransson, who deserves to win).  #28 on the list of the best reviewed films of the year ranked by Metascore on metacritic.com; available to stream on several platforms.]

4.  It Was Just An Accident serves up big questions, brings us into dialogue with those questions, and knows better than to fully resolve them.  Filmmaker Jafar Panahi knows what it is like to navigate an oppressive government; he has been imprisoned by the Iranian government for films that craftily tell the truth (deemed "propaganda against the Islamic Republic"), and has continued to make films while banned from doing so.  Drawing on conversations he engaged and overheard while in prison, Panahi builds this story around the dilemma of what a person would or should do if given the chance to kill the person who tortured them and ruined their life. 

In this film, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, a mechanic who endured torture while blindfolded in prison thinks his tormenter has come into his shop, identifiable by his distinctive walk with a squeaky artificial leg.  The mechanic follows and kidnaps the man, intending to kill him but, uncertain that he has the right person, spends the next 24 hours seeking confirmation, enlisting a series of former detainees who also endured torture from the notorious interrogator while blindfolded.  They give voice to a variety of instincts for processing the grief, trauma, and ongoing pain of oppression and abuse.

The film, amazingly, was made inside Iran, a feat of incredible daring for the director and for the cast and crew, offering a fascinating window onto city streets in Iran.  Panahi somehow manages to find the humor and absurdity in the situation, as the characters wrestle with the most vexing of questions.  When is violent retribution justified?  What price does it exact?  What does it solve?  What is the cost of leaving a terrible person free to strike again?  In what way is he a terrible person?  Which choices can you live with, and what will that life look like?

No one can hold such questions like Panahi, still fighting to illuminate truth at great cost.  When someone with this sort of skill, practice, and moral authority invites you to consider questions like these, you ought not look away. 

[In Persian and Azerbaijani; rated PG-13 for thematic elements, violence, strong language, and smoking; nominated for Academy Awards for Best International Feature and Best Original Screenplay; #5 on the list of the best reviewed films of the year ranked by Metascore on metacritic.com; available to stream on several platforms.]

5.  Come See Me In The Good Light was the best film I saw at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.  That was in April, before its subject, poet Andrea Gibson, finally passed away in July after a long battle with ovarian cancer .  I don't expect that there is a way to describe the film that will capture its pleasures; one wouldn't expect to savor a film that invites you into the final months in the life of a gravely ill person as they navigate the agony of cancer treatment with their wife and soulmate.  Director Ryan White commented at the screening I attended that he didn't know of Gibson's work and didn't see the appeal of the concept when it was first pitched to him by a posse of "celesbians" that included Tig Notaro and Brandi Carlile (credited as producers).  But once he met Gibson and their wife, poet Megan Falley, he understood why the film had to made.  You can't miss it.

Gibson writes with clarity borne of struggle and an open heart, and the love between Gibson and Falley functions from similar clarity and openheartedness.  Gibson was genderqueer and has written beautifully of their struggle to forge an identify inside an upbringing that was strictly religious and socially conservative.  They struggled with health issues and depression for much of their life and found their voice through spoken word poetry while in their 20s.  If you are not yet familiar with their written work, as I wasn't, the film will send you to experience its pleasures, which I have been savoring over the last few months.

Gibson and Falley don't sugarcoat the agonies they are experiencing, but it is profoundly moving to witness the ways the two find to savor life and love under circumstances where taking those gifts for granted is no longer possible.  As someone who lost my love after a long painful illness but with far less support than these two had, watching was a complex experience for me, as it may be for others for their own personal reasons.  Among my reactions was gratitude for the opportunity to be a witness to a love that, like my own, was founded in struggle but that, unlike mine, was celebrated as it should have been, at least some of the time.  Suffering can show us the way, if we want to follow.

[In English; nominated for, and should win, the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; available to stream on Apple TV.]

6.  East of Wall isn't easy to categorize, not unlike the characters who are its focus.  Its first-time writer-director, Kate Beecroft, was traveling in South Dakota looking for film subjects when she was directed to a ranch east of Wall, a town known as the gateway to Badlands National Park.  There she encountered Tabatha Zimiga, a gifted horse trainer who also serves as a den mother to a group of wayward teenagers, who she also trains to work with and ride the horses.  Beecroft was so struck by their compelling, hard-scrabble community that she embedded there for the next three years, built trust with Zimiga and her family, and ultimately assembled a narrative film from the reality of their lives and experiences. 

The film feels like a mixture of documentary and fiction; much of it simply embeds you in the lives of these characters, who most of us won't encounter and might well misread if we did.  Many of the cast members are not professional actors, but tough elders weathered by years of struggle and kids cast off by society who find a haven on the backs of the feral horses they learn to ride on Zimiga's 3000-acre ranch.  Jennifer Ehle and Scoot Nairy are well-cast, respectively, as Zimiga's moonshine-brewing mother and a visiting Texas rancher posing as a benefactor.  But the film's real pleasures involve the kids swimming and riding and tousling and talking back, Zimiga's daughter Porshia (a TikTok star and rodeo queen) riding thunderbolt on a horse, and Zimiga herself, her long dyed-blond hair shaved on one side, fighting the systems that see her and her brood so much differently than they see themselves.  Zimiga's own ability to gently but firmly build connection with a feral horse is one of the more prominent clues that she is a seer.  Beecroft helps us see her, and the community, the way they deserve to be seen--and they do deserve to be seen. 

[In English; rated R for language throughout; available to stream on Netflix and Prime Video.]

7.   Secret Mall Apartment takes you between the walls of the massive Providence Place shopping mall, where a group of eight Rhode Island artists constructed a secret apartment and occupied it for four years before being discovered.  Led by a visionary artist, Michael Townsend, most were his students, and the film doesn't close down questions about the perils Townsend led them to navigate, hoisting building materials and furniture up through dangerous crevices they were not authorized to occupy.  All except Townsend's then wife, Adriana Valdez Young, are white, and they appropriately notice how that fact likely impacted their ability to pull off an extended trespass that even included an encounter with mall security.  Yet they speak with reverence of the experience, which they pulled off while also working on other ambitious projects, including tape art in a children's hospital and in public spaces all over Manhattan and Oklahoma City. 

The film locates the story in the social context of the mall's construction, which was meant to revitalize the city but which heedlessly displaced many of its residents, including an underground art community.  The mall itself isn't meant for everyone; it is mostly inaccessible to foot traffic from the streets of the city itself.  Townsend, with an iconoclast's eye for truth hidden between the lines and years of practice claiming unused spaces for artistic expression, detected unused space within the mall itself and, together, the group imagined it into a space that they could occupy.  Using their memories and footage the apartment builders captured in documenting their work, the filmmakers and the original artists also assemble for the film a replica of the apartment, which mall personnel dismantled after they discovered it.  The space was remarkably comfortable, furnished with a sofa, a TV and game system, a microwave, and a cinderblock wall.

It's a story rich with challenges to under-examined ideas of ownership and of who is entitled to claim space and for what purposes.  It's also an inspiring foray into what art practice can look like--and, indeed, what it might look like to honor other gifts as well.  Townsend is a compelling, if occasionally exasperating character; he was the only one of the eight who was publicly associated with the project until this film was released and was convicted of trespass and banned from the mall until after the documentary brought the story to light, along with identifying the other participants.  The film offers fascinating windows into the ripples Townsend leaves in his wake--but you may well find yourself inspired by the work he did here, as I most certainly was. 

[In English; available to stream on Netflix and Prime Video.]

8.  Deaf President Now! offers well-deserved attention to a 1988 student uprising at Gallaudet University after a hearing candidate was elected president by the board over deaf candidates for the job of leading the university, whose students are deaf and hard of hearing.  The students refused to accept that their university would once again be led by a hearing person.  The film wisely centers deaf voices, which adds to its resonance; one of its two directors, Nyle DiMarco, is himself a deaf activist, and the story is told largely by four of the students who led the protests, reflecting back on how they viewed the controversy and each other. 

It's a fascinating, though often aggravating, portrait of how the students' activism was misunderstood and minimized, how they persisted, and how change went from unthinkable to inevitable.  I appreciated windows into thinking errors of not only those with power but also those fighting against it; all are inevitable in such work, but this film doesn't smooth over such thinking errors so much that they aren't visible.  I also marveled at the strategic innovations the students found, born of practice at resourceful navigation of exclusion, and also glimmers of slow evolution in the thinking and experience of the deaf and hard of hearing.  The film--and these students--inspire hope that sometimes the excluded may manage to reject the messages they are meant to internalize; this account of their transformative fight rewards the attention it demands.

[In American Sign Language and English; available to stream on Apple TV.]

9.  A Nice Indian Boy is the sweetest film I saw this year, which is by no means the easiest route to my top ten list.  Adapted by Eric Randall from the play by Madhuri Shekar, and directed by Roshan Sethi, it tells the story of Naveen, a shut-down-but-secretly-romantic Indian-American doctor who falls for a white man adopted by Indian parents.  It helps that that love interest is played by the great Jonathan Groff, who could charm anyone--but he does especially subtle work in this tender romantic comedy, as does the entire cast of mostly Indian-American and Indian actors.  I read that Groff suggested Karan Soni for the role of Naveen, not realizing that Soni is married to the director.  Soni and Groff beautifully capture the delicacy of navigating compounded cultural differences, where one can be both insider and outsider in the same moment. 

While the film revels in the beats of movie romance, including that some of its resolutions are tidier than what feels achievable in real life, it will likely soften even the most resistant and cynical hearts.  That's thanks to an array of beautiful performances (including those of Sunita Mani as Naveen's sister and Zarna Garg and Harish Patel as his parents), to a screenplay (and presumably a play) that make space for nuance, and to Sethi's direction, which balances earnestness, humor, and hope.  It's all impossible to resist--and why try?

[In English; #25 on the list of the best reviewed films of the year ranked by Metascore on metacritic.com; available to stream on several platforms.]

10.  Sirât doesn't spell out its aims directly.  It's a loose story built on a found community of travelers on a journey they are determined to make but that doesn't make obvious sense.  Spaniard Luis travels with his young son Esteban to a rave in Morocco in search of his adult daughter, who they haven't heard from in several months.   When the rave is shut down by military personnel, Luis and Esteban follow a found family of five ravers deeper into the Moroccan desert, skirting the authorities and ignoring signs of a possible impending world war, aiming for another rave.  It turns out they are navigating a sort of Sirât--in Islamic tradition, the bridge connecting Hell and Paradise.

The ravers haven't invited Luis and Esteban to join them, and they advise against the father and son making the journey in their minivan.  They know the terrain, at least somewhat, traveling in much more substantial vehicles with some practice at surviving the desert.  But they soften to the pair, and soon confront the perils of the journey together, combining skills and provisions.  And it turns out that none of them are prepared for the dangers that await them.

The ravers are played by nonprofessional actors whom the director, Oliver Saxe (who cowrote the screenplay with Santiago Fillol), found during time spent inside the rave culture.  They are a compelling group, and not the usual subjects around whom a film is built.  A bit like Beecroft did in "East of Wall," Saxe aims to bring us into their world; some of the film's best moments are in its opening scenes, where speakers are assembled and we watch the intoxicated movements of a field of ravers.  The film's sound design is meant to draw us into what some find so compelling about these spaces of assembled community. 

The film is a harrowing watch, and some will likely grow impatient with its meandering journey and jolted by the shocks of the film's last third.  I'll admit I found myself wishing that Saxe had infused the journey with a bit more meaning--yet that may well be his point, to spur attention to what it is we are looking for to make such a journey feel justified and why that is so.  I recommend it, in the end, because it is a powerful watch, and because the intensity intrigues and provokes.  Follow these travelers if you dare.

[In Spanish, French, English, and Arabic; rated R for language, some violent content and drug use; nominated for Academy Awards for Best International Feature and Best Sound; in limited theatrical release.]