What the Best Movies of 2025 Have in Common
From the daily newsletter: the films that moved our critics this year.
The movies our critics loved this year embraced the political and the spectacular. Today, on the year’s great movie holiday, they discuss their top picks. Plus:
• What kind of new world is being born?
• The organists improving silent-film soundtracks
• Thelma Golden’s favorite Harlem books
Photograph courtesy A24
The best movies of the year, according to our film critics Richard Brody and Justin Chang, may at first seem like an eclectic bunch. What could Leonardo DiCaprio as the perma-stoned, would-be revolutionary in “One Battle After Another” have in common with the Jim Crow-era vampires whom Michael B. Jordan (times two) battles in “Sinners”? Today, Brody and Chang join forces to discuss the big ideas in their favorite films of 2025.
Richard Brody: Although our year-end lists diverge in many ways, one thing we agree on is that 2025 has been a terrific year for movies—albeit an awful one in most other ways. Is there anything that the best movies of this year have in common, or that distinguishes them from those of recent years?
Justin Chang: Our lists do diverge, which is all to the good; how tedious, and unlikely, it would be if we were in complete alignment. We both admire the grandeur and political imagination of “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another,” the wicked neo-Hitchcockian pleasures of “Misericordia,” the immense tension and verve of “Marty Supreme” and “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” for starters.
That’s a lot of titles to accommodate under one umbrella, though I’m taken with a point you made, about how many of the year’s best films—and I’d include “Sirāt,” “Resurrection,” and “Sound of Falling” among them—achieved a thrilling redefinition of cinematic spectacle.
Brody: I think that, to a large extent, the prevalence and innovation of spectacle reflects the economics of the business: for theatrical viewing, audiences have been avoiding quieter, plainer movies, in favor of large-scale, action-filled films.
But I think there’s more to it: the spectacular movies we’re discussing aren’t the latest action-franchise or superhero-I.P. entries. They’re substantial films made by serious and independent-minded directors, for whom spectacle is a way to confront big-world issues of politics and power.
For some filmmakers—for instance, Nia DaCosta, whose “Hedda” is as ingeniously literary as it is melodramatically explosive and flamboyantly stylish—the turn to spectacle is liberating. But there are directors whose observational gifts and dramatic curiosity are overwhelmed by the drive for size and sensation, such as Paul Thomas Anderson, whose “One Battle After Another,” which I admire, gains its thrills and its conceptual politics at the expense of the fine-grained intimacy and experiential insights of his previous film, “Licorice Pizza,” which I love.
Chang: We can agree that Anderson’s talent has nearly as many notes as Jonny Greenwood’s frenzied score. “One Battle After Another” isn’t my favorite of their collaborations, either, though I surrendered to its gonzo bigheartedness early and often. What you’re saying about the political applications of spectacle dovetails nicely with the themes of solidarity and courage that seemed to enfold so many of my favorite movies in one sweaty embrace.
In addition to “Sirāt,” which is about the strength and value of human compassion, even in places where it would seem a scarcer resource than water, I’m thinking of Kleber Mendonça Filho’s marvellously rich and surprising “The Secret Agent,” prominently placed on both our lists; Julia Loktev’s “My Undesirable Friends: Part I—Last Air in Moscow,” my top documentary of the year; and Jafar Panahi’s electrifying tale of retribution, “It Was Just an Accident.” All these pictures can be described as political thrillers.
Brody: Many of the year’s best political spectacles also share a fascination with history—“Sinners,” set in 1932; “The Mastermind,” in 1970; and “The Secret Agent,” mainly in 1977. It’s a recognition that there’s no honest confrontation with present-day crises without a truthful view of the past, and these films are among the ones that seek it.
There are many ways into history, though—including the low-budget microspectacle of Courtney Stephens’s and Callie Hernandez’s metafictional “Invention.” Another film (and form) of historical and political power, which most critics seem to have forgotten about in their year-end lists, is “The Phoenician Scheme.” Its director, Wes Anderson, is a more fundamentally political, and more essentially rebellious, filmmaker than Paul Thomas Anderson, and in this elaborately confected fantasy he freely twists and tweaks actual events, real people, and even classic movies to expose the tangle of forces and ideas, the principles and the perversions of power, on which modernity itself is built. At the same time, it’s exquisite, as all of his films are, and inventive, a trait it shares with all the year’s best movies, which, despite their confrontational substance, aren’t position papers but works of art, as original in style as in ambition.
Chang: I didn’t forget about “The Phoenician Scheme,” though I’m grateful for your mention of it; the performances of Benicio del Toro (of whom both Andersons were beneficiaries this year), Michael Cera, and Mia Threapleton have lingered especially in my memory. As to history, how gratifying it was to see Richard Linklater sail past the usual bio-pic pitfalls with “Blue Moon” and “Nouvelle Vague,” each one a fierce defense of artistic principles in the face of so much faux-populist, bottom-line-minded thinking. Inspiring emblems for what we loved about movies in 2025, and what we’ll look for again in 2026.
Editor’s Pick
Photograph by Tom Huber / Connected Archives
What Kind of New World Is Being Born?
A Christmas essay by Vinson Cunningham. Read or listen to the story »
More Top Stories
- The Organists Improvising Soundtracks to Silent Films
- Shouts & Murmurs: “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Edited by Someone in Couples Therapy
Our Culture Picks
- Read: Thelma Golden, the director of the Studio Museum, recommends “The Street,” by Ann Petry, the story of a young Black mother who lives in Harlem in the nineteen-forties.
- Watch: Our TV critic named “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” one of the best shows of the year.
- Listen: Bon Iver’s “SABLE, fABLE” is one of the year’s top albums—a collection of songs about devastation, self-acceptance, ecstatic love, and gruelling rebirth.
Daily Cartoon
Cartoon by Jeremy Nguyen
“Hold on, let me take a picture to confirm I delivered it.”
Puzzles & Games
- The Holiday Crossword: Today’s theme—2025 in theatre.
- Shuffalo: Can you make a longer word with each new letter?
P.S. Timothée Chalamet’s much anticipated (and much promoted) movie “Marty Supreme” is out today. Let us know if you agree with Richard Brody’s review.
Hannah Jocelyn contributed to today’s edition.