Forget the Oscars—this is the ultimate resource for the best movies of 2025. Here are the 20 films that stuck with me from the last year.

(Check JustWatch to see if and where they are available to stream, or your local library for the DVD/Blu-ray. See this list on Letterboxd.)

20. An Autumn Summer

There’s just no way I wasn’t gonna go for this, a sincere coming-of-age story with timeless and universal themes at its center like friendship, love, and taking the next step at the precipice of adulthood. Kudos to director Jared Isaac and cinematographer Brandon Somerhalder for so lovingly capturing summer in the Northwoods of the upper Midwest, where the lakes and forests and sand dunes play host to the kind of playful and probing conversations that only a group of eighteen year olds untainted by cynicism can hold.

19. Blue Moon

Ethan Hawke is an all-time talker, whether as a podcast guest, motivational speaker, or at the helm of a Richard Linklater movie as he’s been many times—including here in one of his best performances as the renowned Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart. More of a filmed play than cinematic achievement, this is a showcase of great writing and great actors who bring it to life.

18. Eephus

On top of being a great fall movie, baseball movie, and hangout movie, Carson Lund’s indie about the last game being played at a rec stadium by an amateur league before its destruction is a touching tribute to the things we hold onto. I know Interstellar already beat it to death, but the Dylan Thomas poem “Do not go gentle into that good night” is an excellent readalike.

17. Bugonia

Essentially a two-hander between Emma Stone as a pharma executive who may or may not be an alien and Jesse Plemons as a conspiracy theorist who kidnaps her, Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest has a few images/moments I’ll be thinking about for a long time. And while I’m eager for Stone and Lanthimos to find new creative partners after four straight movies together, there’s no denying their complete commitment to a kind of acidic absurdity that’s unique in contemporary cinema.

16. Presence

Steven Soderbergh described the conceit of this low-budget haunted-house thriller—one of two films he released this year—as “the camera is the ghost.” It’s a high-concept, solid-execution kind of movie, which I’ll take any day of the week. Also a great double feature with Here, another unjustly maligned single-house story.

15. Marty Supreme

Basically a sports movie (in a good way) set in 1950s New York City with ‘80s music, Josh Safdie’s electrifying, quasi-nonfictional saga of table tennis hustler Marty Mauser triggered the disconcerting feeling of half-hating and half-rooting for a narcissist who creates a lot of wreckage on his quest—but also a lot of fist-pump moments.

14. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

We’re in a rather challenging phase of parenthood at the moment, so this visceral, Safdie-esque anxiety dream of a movie from writer-director Mary Bronstein (who’s married to Marty Supreme co-writer Ronald Bronstein) starring Rose Byrne as a beleaguered mother really spoke to me. (As did the various men featured throughout, but in a “well, at least I’m not that bad” kind of way.)

13. Wake Up Dead Man

Rian Johnson’s latest Benoit Blanc mystery returns to the gothic roots of Knives Out with another elaborate whodunit, this time with Josh O’Connor as a former boxer turned Catholic priest at the center. During the press tour Johnson revealed insights from his evangelical past that not only made me appreciate him even more as a writer and filmmaker, but also explain why this was a shoo-in for my Best 21st Century Religion Movies list.

12. It Was Just An Accident

In this Jafar Panahi film that’s part morality play, part screwball comedy, part skin-tingling thriller, a makeshift group of former Iranian political prisoners wrestle with whether to exact revenge on their captor. How each ensnared person deals with this dilemma is how all of us would. Somehow this was my first Panahi picture, but it won’t be the last.

11. The Assessment

It’s been a minute since a movie gave me as many belly laughs of recognition as chills up my spine like this one did. Set in a dystopian near-future when reproduction is strictly regulated by the state and prospective parents must pass an immersive seven-day assessment, Fleur Fortuné’s directorial debut establishes a rather Villeneuvean tone and aesthetic early on—sleek, serious, slightly sci-fi—only to puncture it with very relatable vignettes depicting the harsh realities of child-rearing, while also addressing the pain of wanting to raise a child but being unable to do so. 

10. A Little Prayer

Twenty years after his feature debut Junebug scored an Oscar nomination for Amy Adams, writer/director Angus MacLachlan revisits similar ground here with a quiet, unpretentious dramedy tightly focused on the domestic travails of a small-town family reckoning with each other and themselves. Jane Levy gives a quiet knockout of a performance as the unassuming daughter-in-law, whose endearing relationship with David Strathairn’s patriarch forms the emotional anchor of the film. 

9. The Naked Gun

Cheers to a movie that knows exactly what it is and how to be that for just the right amount of time—in this case a joke-a-minute reboot of the classic Leslie Nielsen spoof from Lonely Islander Akiva Schaffer. Casting Liam Neeson was an inspired choice given his ability to blend gruff gravitas with solid comedy chops. I still giggle about random bits months later. 

8. The Summer Book

Writer-director Charlie McDowell beautifully captures the spirit of Swedish-Finnish author (and Moomin creator) Tove Jansson’s autobiographical novel, which is not an easy feat given the book’s languorous vibe and sparse plot. If you’re willing to dive in and surrender to its gentle, deliberately paced wavelength, you’ll be rewarded with a moving, nature-drenched meditation on loss, parenting, and coming of age before you’re ready to.

7. Sinners

This has several A+, capital-C Cinematic sequences that had me thinking “Here we go, hell yeah.” It’s always a pleasure to watch an exciting original story told within genre traditions by a talented auteur with a point of view and brought to vibrant life with visual panache by a kickass cast and crew. How blessed we are to be alive at the same exact time stories like this are channeled through conjurers of the cinematic arts like Ryan Coogler.

6. The Testament of Ann Lee

A biopic has to try really hard to avoid the pitfalls of the genre for me to enjoy it. While this technically does fit the bill as a cradle-to-grave story of the founder of the Shakers movement, any stumble it makes just subsumes itself into an ecstatic communal dance of a film—the likes of which I’ve just never seen (or heard) before. Amanda Seyfried FTW.

5. The Condor Daughter

A discovery from the Chicago International Film Festival, this story of an Andean midwife’s apprentice caught between following her indigenous traditions and pursuing her dreams in the big city knocked with me out with its stunning natural-light cinematography, incisive cultural commentary, and captivating stillness.

4. Weapons

I’m typically a matinee guy but I stayed up past my bedtime to go see this in a theater, and I’m glad I did because we were all in this thing together. (I’ll never forget experiencing that nighttime car scene. IYKYK.) The confidence with which writer-director Zach Cregger both establishes a world and propels us through it is such a thrill to behold. And it’s why this former horror scaredy cat now has season tickets to whatever screwed-up stories Cregger comes up with next.

3. Black Bag

“Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender in a Steven Soderbergh spy thriller” is all I needed to know before wanting to see Black Bag, which not only lives up to the potential of that combination but elevates beyond it thanks to its stylistic choices and delightfully twisty story. It’s a dinner-party-worthy meal of a movie with delicious, edge-of-your-seat drama.

2. Train Dreams

My word if this kaleidoscopic fable of the life of an early 20th century logger isn’t a gosh-darn movie. There’s just nothing like seeing real humans walking amongst real trees with real sunlight and firelight on their faces, experiencing real joys and tragedies and the fleeting moments in between of feeling connected to it all. Shame it’s destined for the Netflix abyss and not the biggest screens possible.

1. One Battle After Another

The more I think about Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest saga the more I love it. Synthesizing the ambitious scope of There Will Be Blood with the propulsive dramedy of Punch-Drunk Love—the two other PTA films I love that also have crazy-good scores, lead performances, and supporting casts among other things—One Battle After Another feels both set out of time and fiercely of the current moment. To quote Bob: Life, man. Life! (Double feature that comes to mind: Anora, a similarly ambitious, distinctively three-act saga with chases and violence and slapstick comedy and a scrappy rebel just trying to survive against brutal systemic forces. “American Girl” indeed.)

Still haven’t seen: Sentimental Value, Hamnet, Frankenstein, The Secret Agent