Here are The Associated Press’ Film Writers Lindsey Bahr and Jake Coyle’s picks for the best movies of 2025:
Lindsey Bahr’s top movies of 2025
1.”One Battle After Another”
Paul Thomas Anderson took us on ride of the year with “One Battle After Another,” which is so many things — a clever farce, a frenetic thrill ride, a poignant drama about single parenting, a buddy comedy — it’s nearly impossible to describe compellingly or coherently. (In theaters)
2.”If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”
Mary Bronstein turned her own domestic nightmare into a raw and surreal cinematic expression of maternal exhaustion and madness in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.” Anchored by an utterly fearless performance from Rose Byrne, Bronstein’s film is an exposed nerve come to life. (Available for digital rental)
3.”Marty Supreme”
Great filmmakers can make anything exciting, like, say, the adventures of a broke table tennis player, and true SOB Marty Mauser, in mid-century New York. Josh Safdie and his cowriter and editor Ronald Bronstein built an enormously entertaining, white-knuckle spectacle of ambition and ego giving us the defining Timothée Chalamet performance we’ve been waiting for. (In theaters Dec. 25)
4.”Sentimental Value”
The ghosts of the past and things unsaid linger in cracks and floorboards of the quiet home at the heart of Joachim Trier’s latest, a textured and mature portrait of family, grief, forgiveness and the loneliness of a life in the arts. With a moving turn from Stellan Skarsgård as an acclaimed filmmaker trying to reconnect with the daughters he cast aside for his career. (In theaters)
5.”The Naked Gun”
Finally, a great studio comedy and in the most unlikely of packages: A self-consciously shameless reboot/sequel/remake that stands on its own through Akiva Schaffer’s total commitment to absolute silliness. Only “Hamnet” elicited more tears. (Streaming on Paramount+)
6.”Sinners”
Another deeply personal, go-for-broke film that only Ryan Coogler could have made, “Sinners” is the bluesy, vampire, gangster musical we never knew we needed. Vibrantly filmed and told, with an extraordinary ensemble cast (and two Michael B. Jordans), its surface pleasures alone are worth celebrating. (Streaming on HBO Max)
7.”Sound of Falling”
Past and present also blur in Mascha Schilinski’s haunting and ethereal second feature. It’s both disorienting and transfixing in telling the stories of four young women, in four different times, on the same North German farm, somehow both coming-of-age and ghost story at once. (Wide release in theaters Jan. 16)
8.”It Was Just an Accident”
Tense, devastating and even a darkly funny, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi sets up an enthralling moral conundrum in his first film since his own imprisonment. What does justice look like after imprisonment and torture? (In theaters)
9.“The Voice of Hind Rajab”
Kaouther Ben Hania also confronted modern atrocities using the language of cinematic storytelling, and the real audio of a young girl’s call for help, in “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” a shattering document of the Israel-Hamas war. (In theaters Dec. 17)
10. “Urchin,” “The Chronology of Water” and “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight”
Three wonderful films this year came from familiar faces, all making their feature debuts. Harris Dickinson channeled the social realism of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh to tell a compassionate but clear-eyed story about the cycles of homelessness in “Urchin.” Kristen Stewart proved to be as bold behind the camera as she is in front of it with “The Chronology of Water.” (“Urchin” is available to rent or buy. “The Chronology of Water” is in select theaters this week, expanding in January. “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” is available to rent or buy.)
Jake Coyle’s top movies of 2025/
1.”One Battle After Another”
For a movie that feels so enthrallingly of the moment, Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest is curiously out of time. The echoes of the Black Panther and Weather Underground movements seem to belong to another era. Yet Anderson’s scruffy opus makes its own history and its own resistance. (In theaters)
2.”No Other Choice”
In Park Chan-wook’s masterful, midnight-black comedy, a newly out-of-work man (Lee Byung-hun) decides his best option to get a leg up on similarly qualified job applicants is to kill them, one by one. It’s an ingenious narrative that Park extrapolates in increasingly profound ways. (In theaters Dec. 25)
3.”It Was Just an Accident”
Jafar Panahi has made a lot of great films, many of them in extraordinary circumstances. All of them, despite the hardships they document and exist in, are also playful and entertaining. So, see his latest not just because it’s an important Iranian film, shot through with pain and fury. (In theaters)
4.”Marty Supreme”
The annals of great New York movies have a new one. Josh Safdie’s picaresque pingpong epic, starring Timothée Chalamet as a tireless striver, is the giddiest, most breathless movie of the year. And I’m not just saying that in the hope that a Chalamet-induced table tennis resurgence displaces pickleball. (In theaters Dec. 25)
5.”Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery”
Underestimate Rian Johnson’s whodunits at your peril. The latest chapter in the endlessly entertaining adventures of Benoit Blanc may be the best of the bunch. It’s certainly the most moving one. (In theaters; on Netflix Dec. 12)
6.”April”
Easily the most haunting movie of the year. Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili’s second film is about a solitary obstetrician, Nina (an extraordinary Ia Sukhitashvili), who traverses the country’s dark countryside serving women while enduring oppressive vilification. (Not yet available for digital rental)
7.”Sinners”
Swaggering big-screen genre mashups like this don’t come along too often. Hollywood is desperate for more of them. It should start with whatever Ryan Coogler wants. (Streaming on HBO Max)
8.”Secret Mall Apartment”
The hook of this gem of a documentary is a goofy one: In 2003, eight young Rhode Islanders built and often lived in a hidden space within a Providence mall for years. But when director Jeremy Workman digs into the stranger-than-fiction story, he reveals much more than a prank, uncovering something thoughtful and inspiring. (Available for digital rental)
9.”Blue Moon”
What extraordinarily good company Ethan Hawke’s Lorenz Hart is in Richard Linklater’s delightful and melancholy chamber drama, one of two excellent films in 2025 from the director. (In theaters)
10. “Afternoons of Solitude”
Albert Serra’s documentary close-up of bullfighting makes no overt judgment of the Spanish corridas. Instead, it stays rigorously trained on one bullfighter, Andrés Roca Rey, and the bulls he faces in the ring. (Available for digital rental)
