For the last couple of years, I have outlined the best and worst new film releases for our final issue. Making end-of-the-year lists, placing every piece of art you’ve consumed on the scales and measuring which hold up after the credits roll and which you would rather memory-hole until the end of your days? That’s just part of the fun in loving movies.
At the time of this writing, I have seen 66 of the hundreds of films released in 2025. I’ve professionally reviewed sixteen of them. Having kept an ongoing, highly subjective ranking since the summer, where I moved new films up and down a column like the tournament tower from Mortal Kombat, I have arrived at a top 10 that can and likely will change before the ball drops on New Year’s Eve. But rather than include comical lacerations of the worst films of the year, we’ll stick to the cream of the crop, presented in alphabetical order.
“Black Bag”
Tirelessly prolific filmmaker Steven Soderbergh has directed 11 feature films since his brief flirtation with retirement a decade ago. Two of them came out this year — the experimental ghost story “Presence” and this one, a sharp, sexy spy thriller that has flown under the radar since its brief theatrical run. “Black Bag” is a lean affair that leverages the genre’s inherent necessity for duplicity to explore the complexity of monogamy. In the film, British intelligence officer George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is placed on a collision course with his wife and colleague Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett) when he’s tasked to ferret out a mole within the agency and she is the number one suspect.
Soderbergh toys with his usual pet themes, exploring the intersection between capitalism and morality, as one of our most dedicated storytellers when it comes to exploring the drama of one’s vocation and the ways our financial situations shape our actions. Even in something as fantastical as the world of spies, he’s still grounded by the limits and challenges of everyday life. It’s one of his most effective and impressive flicks in years.
“Black Bag” is streaming exclusively on Prime Video.
“Friendship”
Fans of the Netflix sketch comedy series “I Think You Should Leave” are already familiar with the peculiar comedy of Tim Robinson, an ex-”SNL” cast member whose stage presence and sense of humor were far too off-kilter for that bastion of monoculture to contain. In this film, the debut feature from writer/director Andrew DeYoung, Robinson weaponizes what has made him such a meme-able, hilarious figure to craft a pitiful but endearing portrait of the male loneliness epidemic.
Presented like a mirror world version of the early ‘00s Judd Apatow comedies, Robinson plays Craig Waterman, a marketing executive and unsuspecting loser failing in his marriage. When he meets Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd), the town’s new weatherman who just moved in up the street, it’s love at first sight. For the first time in his life, he feels like he’s found a kindred spirit, someone who makes him feel seen, someone he wants so desperately to impress. But their bromance takes a dark turn and the ensuing tragicomic entanglement provides one of the strangest and most oddly moving character studies of the year. It’s hilarious, yes. Unsettling, too. Downright frightening at times. But it will stick to your bones.
“Friendship” is streaming exclusively on HBO Max.
“Hedda”
I literally just reviewed this for The Beat, so it may seem like craven recency bias, but “Hedda” was one of the most enjoyable and impressive viewing experiences I was lucky enough to have this year. Between the gorgeous cinematography, Nia DaCosta’s shrewd direction, and the excellent lead performances from Tessa Thompson and Nina Hoss, this charming adaptation is likely to stick with me for some time. I look forward to reminiscing about this inflection point in DaCosta’s career as her future projects prove this was just the beginning.
“Hedda” is streaming exclusively on Prime Video.
“Marty Supreme”
My review of this for another publication may or may not be live by the time you read this, but few films are this relentless in their ambition without exceeding the filmmakers’ grasp. If you’re wondering why you keep seeing Timothee Chalamet everywhere surrounded by guys with enormous orange orbs for heads, it’s to promote his role as Marty Mauser, a charismatic narcissist who lives his life in the pursuit of greatness.
Set in 1950s New York City, Mauser is aiming to become the world champion at table tennis so he can bring ping-pong to the preeminence in the United States. Unfortunately for everyone in his orbit, he is perfectly willing and able to sacrifice anyone he meets to get him to where he wants to be, making anyone susceptible to his charms collateral damage in his selfish quest for self-actualization. Director Josh Safdie was one half of the brotherly duo who gave us “Uncut Gems,” and “Marty Supreme” makes that film look like the warm-up. It has all the brashness, texture, and stomach-churning dread in its frenetic pacing that picture had, but on a grander and more dense scale. It’s out this Christmas and no other movie in the future will ever feature Tyler, The Creator; Kevin O’Leary; AND Isaac Mizrahi in its supporting cast.
“Marty Supreme” opens exclusively in theaters on Christmas Day.
“M3GAN 2.0”
I didn’t get a chance to see this in theaters, and most of the reviews I read implied that this was a weak sequel incapable of recapturing the magic of the original, an amusing and campy horror flick that became an inescapable meme. But finally seeing it a few months back streaming on Peacock, “M3GAN 2.0” is an absolute delight. On paper, it’s basically “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” but with a sassy, sentient doll getting a chance at redemption by defeating an evil-er sentient doll. But in execution, it’s a funny and smart look at how inexorably entwined technology has become in our lives.
The first film was primarily a horror flick with lots of carnage from M3GAN (voiced by Amie Donald) taking her programming to protect her paired companion Cady (Violet McGraw) entirely too far — Chucky from “Child’s Play” if he was an overprotective nanny. “2.0” pivots into being a sci-fi actioner, with M3GAN getting a stronger, more mature body to fight AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno). The movie has a unique perspective and a singular tone somewhere between catty, self-aware comedy and sharp social commentary, but while watching it, it’s such an entertaining and lovable sequel. They can make ten more of these like the “Fast & Furious” franchise and I’ll follow M3GAN wherever she goes next.
“M3GAN 2.0” is currently streaming exclusively on Peacock.
“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning”
Tom Cruise, one of our last true movie stars, has dedicated the last ten years of his life to the back half of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise, an action thriller series that could once best be described as the American version of the James Bond franchise. In the series’ later entries, however, Cruise’s spy protagonist Ethan Hunt has transformed from a simple instrument of imperialism into something of a superhero. As Alec Baldwin’s Hunley once put it in 2015’s “Rogue Nation,” “he is the living manifestation of destiny.”
“The Final Reckoning” is an overly indulgent, prohibitively expensive finale for a franchise that had its production wounded by the pandemic, but whose very existence once helped keep Hollywood and many of its workers upright through lockdown. Its plot is near incomprehensible. Its many flashbacks to the prior outings are pointless for longtime fans and confusing to newcomers. But its set pieces are some of the most impressive feats of stunt work ever captured on film, and Cruise is so ceaselessly captivating to watch that even the film’s faults feel like perfect imperfections.
“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” is available to rent or buy on all video-on-demand platforms.
“No Other Choice”
In 2019, Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” from South Korea was the first non-English language film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards, largely due to the brilliant, pulpy way it skewered capitalism. This year, his fellow countryman Park Chan-wook has made a film that feels like a piece of “Parasite,” but a louder, funnier, even darker B-side. Loosely based on the Donald E. Westlake novel, “The Ax,” “No Other Choice” is a pitch-black comedy about the casual cruelty of the modern job market and the forced obsolescence of human dignity the advent of AI has brought on.
Lee Byung-hun, who some may remember from recent Netflix phenomena “Squid Game” and “KPop Demon Hunters,” plays Yoo Man-su, a man with an idyllic life, a beautiful wife, two children, and a pair of lovely dogs. His entire identity is bound to his role as a middle manager at a paper company. When he is laid off, his entire world comes unraveled, leading him down a complicated path of attempting to murder his competitors in the job search. While that may sound horrific and torturous, Chan-wook frames and stages this like a 139-minute Daffy Duck movie, a hilarious, sicko-mode cartoon that’s as bloody as it is uproarious, with his usual penchant for fussed-over visuals, slick scene transitions, and inventive camera work. It’s not his best work, but it’s so of the moment and on the nose that it doesn’t even need to be.
“No Other Choice” opens in limited release in theaters on Christmas Day. It will have an Early Access IMAX screening on December 8 at the AMC Columbia 14 and the AMC Rio Cinemas 18 in Gaithersburg.
“One Battle After Another”
For anyone who read the hyperbolic headline for my review of this film a few months ago and wondered if anything else would uncrown it in my mind, your answer is here. “One Battle After Another” is still tops for me. The cast is phenomenal. Chase Infiniti is the star find of the year. “Sinners” is the movie of the moment for a lot of people and I, too, enjoyed it quite a bit. But for my money, “OBAA” feels like the film 2025 truly needed, an expansive and emotionally turbulent snapshot of life in America, the core moral rot at the center of its culture, and the ways in which misogynoir fuels its most reprehensible exploits.
My day job is at a movie theater, and lately we have been playing this film in the auditorium that has walls that align with my office. I’ve made it a daily habit to twice, sometimes thrice a day, pause what I’m doing if I’m able so I can poke in and listen to Perfidia Beverly Hills’ letter to her daughter. When the guitar strums of Tom Petty’s “American Girl” start up not long after, I burst into tears every time.
“One Battle After Another” is available to rent or buy on all video-on-demand platforms.
“The Phoenician Scheme”
Wes Anderson is known for his ornate, dollhouse tableaus and his instantly recognizable visual style. His latest film is one of his most fascinating and most plaintive, while simultaneously being one of the darkest and most cartoonish. Benicio del Toro delivers an iconic performance as Zsa-Zsa Korda, a wealthy arms dealer and industrialist embarking on the business deal of his life. Much like “One Battle After Another,” it fixates on the relationship between father Korda and his estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton), a nun-in-training who Korda is leaving his empire to instead of his many, many sons.
There are attempts on his life, a stacked cast of collaborators (including Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston in scene-stealing roles), and some of the blackest comedy in an Anderson film to date. Like “No Other Choice,” the opening sequence is so inspired by Looney Tunes that it instantly let me know I was in for a real treat. Few other storytellers could weave a tale about a guy who is functionally a supervillain on a global stage and give him a believable and touching arc of redemption, but that’s why Anderson is still such a delight. AI-generated videos can easily capture the broad, geometric basics of his aesthetic, but they could never replicate his heart.
“The Phoenician Scheme” is streaming exclusively on Peacock.
“Superman”
Of all the films on this list, this is the one I’ve already revisited the most. It’s lost very little of its luster since I reviewed it for Baltimore Beat this past summer. Having rewatched it on multiple screens, big and small, it repeatedly filled me with a particular kind of joy few other films have in recent memory. Other films this year were more challenging, more confrontational, and in other ways, more artistically nourishing and rewarding. But there’s something to be said for feeding your inner child. As far as these big-budget superhero flicks we’ve had crammed down our throats for the last several years go, “Superman” has a purity and a buoyancy to its energy that felt more than welcome this year.
“Superman” is currently streaming exclusively on HBO Max.