1. WEAPONS
It‘s not just the catchy hook and mystery of the premise (all but one of the students in a third grade Pennsylvania classroom vanish one night without a trace). It‘s not just the eerie image of the children (and others later in the story) racing off with their arms flung back like they’re not so much running away as falling into a void. And it’s not simply writer/director Zach Cregger’s clever asynchronous plotting that shows events from different characters’ perspectives until we reach the center of his narrative labyrinth. Instead, the ultimate power of Weapons in a year of endless unpunished evil is one glorious sequence of perfect climactic schadenfreude more satisfying than just about any other scene, headline, or pop culture moment of 2025, including…
2. ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER
…a white-knuckle Paul Thomas Anderson joint which has more timely elements than Weapons (e.g., white nationalist raids on communities of color with secretive fascist cabals pulling the strings, etc.) yet somehow flip-flops genres with the former, succeeding less as political commentary than suspenseful slapstick horror. At the center of it all is a hapless stoner everyman (Leonardo DiCaprio in likably shambolic Dude mode) desperate to save his mixed family from a relentless, seemingly unkillable monster (embodied with scenery chewing fervor by Sean Penn, cranked to 11 in the psychotically uptight form of a self-loathing, Jack D. Ripper-esque racial purity goon called Lockjaw).
3. SECRET MALL APARTMENT
The title (mostly) explains the premise: a group of Rhode Islanders furnished and occupied unused space within the Providence Place shopping complex for several years in the early 2000s, siphoning off heat and electricity from the unwitting owners of the building. But the main focus of Jeremy Workman’s charming, inspiring documentary is the endless tenacity of artists in rebellion against relentless corporate colonialism, exemplified here by eight talented bohos reacting to the gentrification of their downtown studios by transforming the capitalist invaders’ own temple of materialism into a speakeasy performance piece created with the sole intention of daring the squares to find and destroy it.
4. SUPERMAN
Enough already with emo superheroes moping around like bad acting class Hamlets. Writer/director James Gunn understands genre stories can tackle serious subjects like the sociopathic billionaire class (represented here by Nicholas Hoult’s hissably bratty Lex Luthor) poisoning truth, justice, and the American way without making all the inherently goofy mutant/robot/alien action a humorless slog of sophomoric faux-tragic “profundity.” Instead, David Corenswet delivers buckets of charm as a funny, good-natured Superman finally worth rooting for again as he banters and bickers with the sharpest, pluckiest Lois Lane in decades (Rachel Brosnahan channeling Margot Kidder) and a memorable menagerie of supporting characters from the Justice Gang and a party-hearty Supergirl (Milly Alcock) to Krypto the wonder pup, getting his long-awaited live action close-up.
5. I’M CARL LEWIS!
This essential reevaluation of an undervalued trailblazer resetting expectations and possibilities for those who followed in his (stylish) footsteps explores the question of why the nine-time gold medal winning Olympic legend Carl Lewis isn’t held in the same high regard as similarly accomplished icons from Jesse Owens to Simone Biles. Or, as the titular star of this consistently entertaining sports doc by Julie Anderson and Chris Hay explains in the film’s opening minutes, “The biggest preconception is that I’m an asshole.” The origins of that belief are explored over the course of 98 fast-paced, history-spanning, globe-trotting minutes during which Lewis attempts to follow in the footsteps of Owens (his idol) while chafing under the constraints of social expectations for black males and athletes.
6. BUGONIA
Though based on the 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet!, this 2025 Yorgos Lanthimos feature seems to share at least a bit of spiritual DNA with Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, not only stylistically (with its blend of default naturalism spiced with unexpected bursts of grim surrealistic beauty) but also in the use of science fiction as a framing device for explorations of human perception and behavior — specifically, in the case of Bugonia, the certainty of conspiracy theorists who can’t be dissuaded from nonsensical or even dangerous beliefs once they’ve “done their own research” (see: Jesse Plemmons as an obsessively charismatic beekeeper determined to convince his neurodivergent cousin, played by Aidan Delbis in a should-be star-making role, that Emma Stone’s kidnapped Big Pharma exec is secretly an extraterrestrial operative).
7. SINNERS
If you were old enough to watch Sinners in a theater without being accompanied by a parent or guardian and later proclaimed how much the movie totally opened your eyes to the realities of racism in America, then, um…well…it’s possible you maybe should’ve paid a wee bit more attention to your history classes (not to mention the lived experiences of countless individuals and several centuries of artistic, journalistic, and political references to the topic predating this curious genre mashup about a step dancing Irish vampire attempting to infiltrate a 1930s Mississippi juke joint). Yet regardless of your contextual starting point, Ryan Coogler’s musical phantasmagoria succeeds and resonates in many ways on multiple levels from visceral suspense to provocative food for thought.
8. PRESENCE
Some movies barely register even as you’re watching them, yet Presence still resonates vividly a year after its early 2025 release thanks to the simple yet effective gimmick at the heart of Steven Soderbergh’s eerie suburban ghost story. Set almost entirely within a single house, the gliding camera of cinematographer Peter Andrews represents the perspective of some type of mysterious unseen entity as it follows, observes, and impacts the lives of the humans within until the major, minor, and even deadly secrets of the dwelling’s earthly and supernatural inhabitants are inevitably revealed.
9. UVALDE MOM
During the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, 19 students and two adults were gunned down by a teenager with an M1 military carbine while the 376 responding police officers who eventually wound up on the scene spent most of the lengthy standoff safely out of harm’s way, checking their phones or screaming at, tasing, and arresting agitated parents outside the building who dared to demand action or attempt their own rescues of the children trapped within. Nevertheless, one young mother named Angeli Rose Gomez did manage to get past the authorities and pull her kids to safety — and director Anayansi Prado’s frequently infuriating, quietly powerful documentary chronicles her eponymous subject’s ongoing demands for answers, change, and justice in the aftermath of trauma.
10. THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME
Wes Anderson’s fussy, detailed cinematic style can sometimes calcify into pretty art installations incorporating actors as little more than mise-en-scène props. On the other hand, even his chilliest dioramas tend to warrant big screen viewings and The Phoenician Scheme offers more than the simple pleasures of maximalist production design thanks to a fun, fast-paced story with more cohesion and emotional resonance than some of the auteur’s recent films, Benicio del Toro’s second most charismatic performance of the year (trailing his happy warrior supporting role in One Battle After Another), tons of Looney Tune sight gags, and Bill Murray as God.
Honorable Mention: The Last Showgirl, Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius), Arrest the Midwife, The Penguin Lessons, PeeWee as Himself, Friendship, Sorry/Not Sorry, My Mom Jayne, Sunday Best: The Untold Story of Ed Sullivan, John Candy: I Like Me, Blue Moon, If I Had Legs I Would Kick You
Notable 2025 Moments & Performances: Questlove’s masterpiece montage at the start of Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music, the Pamela Anderson of The Last Showgirl & Naked Gun, the “Rocky Road to Dublin” and time-traveling “I Lied To You” production numbers in Sinners, the Friendship toad trip, Amy Madigan in Weapons, the Christmas Adventurers, Teyana Taylor’s intense AF Perfidia Beverly Hills, and Bob forgetting the code in One Battle After Another, Patrick Kennedy’s E. B. White in Blue Moon, Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg in Nouvelle Vague, and Conan O’Brien’s startlingly understated and effective If I Had Legs I Would Kick You, acting duets with the equally great Rose Byrne.
Best Lovely Tim Burton Movie Not Directed or (Badly) Scripted by Tim Burton: Frankenstein
Best Walk Hard Sequel I May Have Been Wise To Skip: Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
Wildcards (potentially list-worthy movies as yet unseen by moi): Eephus,Father Mother Sister Brother, Hamnet, Song Sung Blue, Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror, Train Story, Zootopia 2…and people keep saying Marty Supreme is good so…maybe I’ll have to check that one out someday, as well.
