The 25 Best Movies of 2025 -Part Two

We have counted down fifteen excellent movies. Now, the Ten Best of 2025!

10. Nouvelle Vague -written by Holly Gent and Vincent Palmo, directed by Richard Linklater

The French New Wave can often feel like an inaccessible corner of cinematic history, especially for people in the English-speaking world; but Richard Linklater not only found a way to present it in relatable terms, he did so while bringing a tangible sense of fun back into the filmmaking process. Nouvelle Vague tells the story of the making of Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard's influential classic and a landmark of the movement. Removing any vestige of self-seriousness in the bizarre style and personality of Godard, played by a fantastic Guillaume Marbeck in his debut role, the movie casts its collection of artists as creative, rebel youths seeking out experimentation as much for the thrill as for artistic merit. And for a figure so closely associated with the image of the auteur, Linklater aptly spotlights the communal effort of filmmaking, showcasing the personality, agency, and input of the crew and cast around Godard. It is as smart and naturalistically funny as any of Linklater's other movies, its casual air makes it a very mellow experience to be transported by. All the while the craft of the film is meticulous and enthralling, the world is open and inviting. Presenting its history in such a way, it's the kind of movie designed to spur creativity, to make young filmmakers. One of the noblest things a movie can do.

Nouvelle Vague is not yet available to stream, rent, or buy. 

9. Materialists -written and directed by Celine Song

It really takes a lot to find what feels like a wholly new subject in a modern movie, but Materialists kind of does it. Celine Song's interest in class dynamics and prejudices within the dating world is what manifested this intelligent, heartfelt romance that also intently critiques the industry of matchmaking and superficial attraction more broadly -both with humour and grim seriousness. A movie that takes love and those looking for it well into their thirties seriously, it is built on compassion -which it expresses for its lead characters in spite of some glaring personality flaws. Both Dakota Johnson and Chris Evans are excellent as the exes who may have another shot at happiness together, if not for her arbitrary standards of compatibility masking her true sense of self and his lack of personal drive. Heart on sleeve, Song crafts a moral about a deeper kind of love unrestrained by the cynicism of modern dating, formulas of attraction and love taken as commodity, or barriers of status and income. That sounds quaint and idealistic but it is in fact extremely mature in the capable hands of Song and her cast of talented actors, that also include a sweetly humble Pedro Pascal and a searing Zoë Winters. It is a beautiful movie aesthetically and thematically, earnestly romantic while challenging sociological precepts of romance and how they have been warped. A movie that actually believes in true love.

Materialists is streaming on Crave and available on VOD, DVD, and Blu-ray. 

8. Sorry, Baby -written and directed by Eva Victor

The quiet devastation of trauma has rarely been so well-articulated as in Sorry, Baby, in which its weird and awkward reverberations are given licence to be acknowledged, its lasting discomfort given room to breathe. The magnificent debut of Eva Victor, as writer-director and star, is unique in its study of the psychological aftermath of a sexual assault. It is entirely tasteful without diminishing any of the gravity, from an artful portrayal of the "bad thing" all the way through the various coping mechanisms that often have more to do with an awkward relationship to the incident than the violation itself. The tone emanates from the sensibility of Victor and their alter ego Agnes, couching the profound and difficult material in strange idiosyncrasies and wry dark humour. Lucas Hedges and Naomi Ackie are vital counterpoints through the movie, Ackie especially epitomizing the perfect supportive best friend whom Agnes feels palpably lost in her life without. In just about every facet the movie is subdued -there is no great emotional outpouring of anguish or rage. But the pain and sadness are still there in a kind of chemistry with the tedium of everyday life and the random curious episodes we visit over the film's five-year span that does at least end on some catharsis. Assaults make the news, but they also happen every day to ordinary women in all walks of life. This movie understands what they go through, perhaps better than any other.

Sorry, Baby is available on VOD, DVD, and Blu-ray. 

7. Sound of Falling -written and directed by Mascha Schilinski

It was the movie I saw at TIFF that left me the most stunned. And the one, of all the films I saw in 2025, that still haunts me the most. This is a triumph of Mascha Schilinski, who sets a mood of constant tension drawn by brilliant sound engineering, an eerie score, and nebulous imagery hinting towards something tragic. Sound of Falling is concerned primarily with two things: the pattern of unspoken traumas and gendered anxieties in the experiences of girls living on a farmhouse in northern Germany across the span of a century, and a morbid fixation each of them have on the subject of death. It manifests in different ways, connects to them in specific contexts, but it is ever present and powerful -perhaps emanating from the house, perhaps something else, internal to each character. The film is distinctly feminine to its roots, its perspectives sharply informed by common experiences and nuances of girlhood. Indeed, Schilinski might in some respects be merely replicating in her tone the everyday insecurities, discomforts, and even dangers girls have had to deal with, from misogynist mores of society to the sexual attentions of older men and the consequent psychological effects. The film is viscerally dreamlike in structure, moving casually between its timelines and thematic tenets; it is an enigma of a movie, mysterious and captivating as it is foreboding. And its spirits linger long and powerfully after its final harrowing shot.

Sound of Falling is not yet available to stream, rent, or buy.

6. Marty Supreme -written and directed by Josh Safdie

Everybody wants to rule the world. Marty Supreme isn’t really about table tennis. The sport takes up just a thin fraction of Josh Safdie’s highly exuberant film. It is a movie about ego and desperate ambition, and all of the people and things that get caught in the cross-hairs of these. It is about a grown kid whose whole being is completely governed by a rash obsession, who seemingly has no concept of consequence and whose every relationship is worth sacrificing in pursuit of a singular goal. The fact that is to be a ping-pong champion is perhaps the film’s great absurd joke, but Timothée Chalamet, in what might be his best performance yet, wholly encapsulates the weight of seriousness this vocation has for him, a flaky and delusional wisecracking New York asshole with few other prospects in life. In his every poor choice and awful deed, he is an excitingly flawed character, filled to the brim with energy and cocky charisma -his world turning upside down over and over again through a long, twisted odyssey to find whatever way he can of achieving his dream. There aren’t a lot of filmmakers as gifted with intensity as Safdie, who ratchets up the wild, uncomfortable circumstances for Marty and his dwindling collection of allies every chance he gets, shooting the world of 1950s New York with a grimy, claustrophobic 1980s sensibility -which accounts too for all the anachronistic needle-drops. A fantastically entertaining movie bursting at the seams with spontaneity, and more humane than it initially appears.

Marty Supreme is currently playing in theatres.

5. Hamnet -written by Chloé Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell, directed by Chloé Zhao

It should be understood that most of Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet is speculation. Not a lot is known of the details of Shakespeare’s personal life, least of all whether the death of his young son had any creative impact on his play Hamlet. But while the movie presents some arguments towards this supposition, that isn’t the point. Rather, Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell (who wrote the book the film is based on) as well as stars Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal appropriate this notion as context in which to examine themes of love and grief, especially towards those unfortunate enough to have lost a child. This beat is played with a traumatizing tenderness, its aftermath strongly characterizing that impression of lingering emptiness in need of catharsis. There is a very primal note overhanging the film’s atmosphere, a connection to the natural world on the part of Buckley’s Agnes that is a crucial aspect of how the virtues and pains of life are related to her. It’s spiritualism is a counterpoint to the poetry of Shakespeare that Zhao illustrates potently in her breathtaking sights and sounds of the ancient organic world, even her lack of artifice in the film’s other corners -genuine sets and natural light. Buckley’s emotionality in the movie feels immeasurable, her relationship to her children honest and pure. And in the film’s exquisite climax -one of the year’s finest scenes, that Mescal plays beautifully as well- it crescendos impeccably in a soulful articulation of the healing power of art. A worthy refrain.

Hamnet is currently playing in limited theatrical release, not yet available to stream, rent, or buy.

4. Die My Love -written by Enda Walsh, Lynne Ramsay, and Alice Birch, directed by Lynne Ramsay

Maybe no film in 2025 was as radical as Die My Love, a manic, visceral, feverish movie of no equal in terms of style, presentation, and subject matter. Lynne Ramsay takes to the topic of postpartum depression with characteristic eccentricity and vigor, pushing its effects to extreme ends as a way of commenting on motherhood, feminine sexuality and sexual agency, and psychological loneliness. These and the brazen subjectivity of their interpretation extends to the movie’s structure itself, which is hypnotic, only vaguely chronological, and intentionally unclear on the difference between the real and the metaphorical. But it perfectly makes sense in representing its featured troubled mindset. Channeling her inner Gena Rowlands, Jennifer Lawrence gives the performance of her career (it’s a travesty she’s getting such little recognition for it) in this blisteringly eccentric yet deeply resonating portrait of a woman stifled by expectation and social circumstance as she processes her boredom, frustration, and disillusionment in raw, instinctual and sometimes violent terms. The film is often a cry of anguish and desperation, and it feels most powerful in beats like the wedding sequence. But it is also coloured by a deranged humour in the manner of Lawrence’s behaviour, though also that of her partner, played by a terrific Robert Pattinson, and the various methods sought out to mitigate these unfiltered feelings. It is a passionate display and a wholly original one, Ramsay’s filmmaking eclectic and compelling all throughout. She and Lawrence understand completely what they are saying and doing with this film. An unpredictable and uncompromising movie like nothing else.

Die My Love is streaming on MUBI and available on VOD.

3. Sinners -written and directed by Ryan Coogler

Sinners was the great movie triumph of 2025. An original box office hit that shattered illusions of what audiences will turn out for and on top of that marked a historic achievement for director Ryan Coogler in negotiating his own eventual ownership of his art. But of course more than being just a sensation, it was a movie imbued with so much depth and meaning in spite of what might seem like a gimmick to its core premise of black Prohibition gangsters fighting vampires in the south. What these vampires represent is important, Coogler making a profound statement on black cultural anthropology and the various means of white hegemony exploiting and appropriating it. And this theme is weaved in brilliantly through the movie’s mood and design, its visual language and its music. No movie this year had better music (sorry KPop Demon Hunters), the jazz and blues songs and rhythms the very lifeblood of this movie as illustrated soulfully in perhaps the greatest single movie sequence of the year, conveying a whole tapestry of pride and excellence across time, pure and uncompromised. The action and horror elements are thrilling and effective, at the end of a long road of essential build-up establishing the heart of a community soon to be under siege. Jack O’Connell is a terrifically fun villain leading this charge, while in his dual roles Michael B. Jordan is remarkably distinct and enthralling. Miles Caton makes a striking debut as the kid with the enchanting voice and Wunmi Mosaku is radiant, sharp, and formidable. Exquisite and intense, emotional and poetic, this is a movie that will be with us for years to come.

Sinners is streaming on Crave and available on VOD, DVD, and Blu-ray.

2. One Battle After Another -written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Even in just the four months since its release, One Battle After Another has only grown more powerful and more resonant. For some reasons that are obvious -the militarized raid on a sanctuary city of immigrants hits profoundly close to home in this moment in time. But also broadly the spirit of the movie itself has felt so much more immediate and vital, one that espouses revolution and change yes -but also the importance of the basic human virtues like dignity, survival, and family that motivate such causes. It is a showcase of some of the best, most exciting filmmaking of Paul Thomas Anderson’s career, from a long-take sequence at the midpoint so astonishingly graceful amid severe dramatic tension to his hypnotic illustration of a chase down an endless desert highway. And he creates these stunning sequences and intriguing tableaus while never letting his foot off the gas. His script is thrilling and witty; in its political lens, he threads the needle of satirizing grandstanding activists and the arm of white supremacist government alike by never equating the two -and sticking it to the racist fascists with a lot more venom. Sean Penn is the perfect picture of toxic masculine violence, absurdity, and insecurity, Leonardo DiCaprio gives his wildest performance in years, Teyana Taylor exudes grit and gravity, Benicio del Toro is the rock-solid soul of the film, and Chase Infiniti announces herself as an effortless new star. The necessity of persistence is emphasized by the film, its episode just one of a continuous series of battles to fight against pillars of authoritarianism. Anderson understands the weight of that, and who it is on the front lines. This movie gives energy to that fight, a fuel that is urgent.

One Battle After Another is available on VOD, DVD, and Blu-ray.

1. Sentimental Value -written by Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier, directed by Joachim Trier

There is a great power in art as a means of expressing oneself, framing and interpreting a feeling or experience through the artistic process as a way of better connecting with it. But art cannot be the only means of reckoning, the hard work must be done too. This is one of the central themes under scrutiny in Sentimental Value, the second masterpiece in a row from Joachim Trier -a family drama about artists and the deep wounds that art alone can’t calcify. Achingly poignant and sincere in its image of an estranged relationship between a famous filmmaker father and his stage actress daughter at a time when he dares to mine family trauma for his next film, Trier explores this distinct pain and bitterness in a wholly considerate, relatable way. Harsh but never overwrought, the ramifications of a lifetime’s neglect are illustrated in potent ways, but so too are the faults and insecurities that plague both characters and lend credence to their vantage points. The great balancing act is carried out by Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgård, each in a stunning showcase of nuance and gravitas -Reinsve’s desperation for affection contrasted with Skarsgård’s incapacity to demonstrate it in tangible terms. But he is a tragic figure more than a vile one, and Trier understands this. So too does Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas as the second daughter, a crucial stabilizing force between the two. Rounding out the cast, Elle Fanning’s turn as a young actress conflicted by her part in this family drama is lovely. Trier directs with intelligence and tenderness, particularly around the movie’s vital sense of place, a historic home in Oslo that plays itself in cathartic dramatization and has stood to witness each chapter of this family’s dysfunction. Art and life intersect in several ways in the film, and Trier doesn’t have an answer to bridging the complexities of that relationship and its effects both harmful and healing. But he creates an endearingly rich tapestry in which to grapple with those questions and find an equilibrium of sentimental value that is enough. A work that is tremendously soulful and moving, idiosyncratic and biting (especially around the film industry material), and with a wealth of excellence in mood, theme, and performance outpacing anything in 2025. Humbly, the best film of the year.

Sentimental Value is available on VOD.

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