At the movies, 2025 was the year of the disappointing, absentee, or otherwise inadequate father.
In One Battle After Another, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Pat Calhoun is too brain fried to be of much use to his kidnapped daughter. In Jay Kelly, George Clooney’s titular movie star all but ignored his children as he doggedly chased his own fame. Ditto for Stellan Skarsgård’s Gustav Borg, a successful director who suddenly rues his lack of closeness with his adult daughters, in Sentimental Value.
There’s also Paul Mescal’s “Will” Shakespeare in Hamnet, too busy writing masterpieces, I guess, to be of any use to his family when catastrophe strikes. The same goes for Joel Edgerton’s lumberjack father in Train Dreams. In The Secret Agent, Wagner Moura’s Armando is hiding from the dictatorial government and therefore incapable of raising his young son. And in 28 Years Later, Aaron-Taylor Johnson’s Jamie is idolized by his boy, until the kid discovers his father is not the man he thought he was.
Draw your own conclusions as to why movies are preoccupied with the lack of strong and moral father figures right now.
Dud dads aside, it was a solid year in film, but not quite a great one. Generally when I write these lists, recency bias takes over and I gush a little too hard (I’ve looked back at a few past year-end lists and cringed over the hyperbole). That’s not the case this year. I admired all these films a lot, but didn’t fall madly in love with any of them. (Maybe the opposite will happen and they will grow in my estimation as the years go on.)
Anyway, with that somewhat uninspiring preamble (sorry!), here are my favorite films of 2025. (In some cases, I excerpted from my own reviews.)
10. 28 Years Later
Danny Boyle’s latest installment of the “28” series is a classic coming of age narrative that just happens to be set in a zombie apocalypse. In this one, an isolated small town lives uneasily in the shadow of the zombie’s turf. Periodically they send out their men into enemy territory to kill zombies and get supplies.
Against the will of his sickly mother (Jodie Comer), young Spike (Alfie Williams) accompanies his father (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) on such an expedition. Spike idolizes his father—until he discovers some shattering truths. Eventually Spike and his mother venture into zombie land, hoping to find a cure for her sickness—there, they encounter zombies, of course, but also the eccentric Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), who collects human skulls as a way of honoring the dead—or so he says. Part two arrives next month. I can’t wait.
9. The Baltimorons
The Baltimorons was released in September, but real ones know it’s a Christmas film, with a major scene set on our own Miracle on 34th Street. It’s a May-December romance about two misfits who fit perfectly together.
Baltimore native Michael Strassner, who co-wrote the film based loosely on his own life, exudes an everyman, teddy-bear charm and Liz Larsen, as the dentist he falls for, has an earthy, funny sex appeal. The film is directed with heart, humor, and style by Jay Duplass, but it remains clear-eyed about its characters, never succumbing to sentimentality. Baltimore approves. My review.
8. It Was Just An Accident
In the latest offering from Iranian master Jafar Panahi, a mechanic (sad-faced Vahid Mobasseri) overhears the distinctive footsteps of a one-legged man and becomes convinced that he was the notorious jailer, “Peg Leg,” who tortured him when he was a political prisoner. He aims to kill him, but needs to be sure, so he knocks the man out, throws him the back of his grimy old van and tracks down other fellow prisoners to see if they recognize him. He ends up driving around with a motley crew of his fellow dissidents (including one wearing a wedding dress) as they try to hatch a plan.
The prisoners have moved on with their lives, to an extent, but are still easily triggered and haunted by the very thought of Peg Leg. These are good people contemplating doing a terrible thing—and the longer they drive around weighing their options, the more absurd their quandary becomes.
7. Blue Moon
Richard Linklater has given another plum role to his longtime friend and collaborator Ethan Hawke, and it might be the veteran actor’s best performance yet. He plays the lyricist Lorenz Hart, who watches in horror as his longtime collaborator, the composer Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott), has an unqualified triumph with Oklahoma!, the musical he wrote with his new librettist, Oscar Hammerstein. It’s not just that Hart’s jealous—although he is. It’s that he finds the Hammerstein work to be lowbrow kitsch—it insults his pride and his sensibilities.
The film, set over the course of one night, shows Hart to be a bitter alcoholic whose rapier wit is still very much intact. Bobby Cannavale is Eddie, the devoted bartender who tries (in vain) to keep Hart away from the hard stuff, and Margaret Qualley plays the beautiful college student Hart is romantically obsessed with, despite the fact that he’s gay. Blue Moon is a melancholy, mordant character study anchored by Hawke’s captivating performance.
6. Lurker
A parasocial relationship runs amok in Alex Russell’s sly psychological thriller, which plays like The Talented Mr. Ripley for the TikTok age. Would-be videographer Matthew (Theodore Pellerin) obsesses over pop star Oliver (Archie Madekwe) but, on a chance meeting, he plays it cool, pretending not to know him. When he gets invited backstage, and then to the star’s sprawling mansion, Matthew is elated—and he’ll do anything to stay in Oliver’s inner sanctum. But Oliver is selective with his attention, wielding it like a weapon.
When Matthew is cast out of Oliver’s entourage, he becomes desperate. The film is a canny exploration of social media and celebrity and the blurring of lines between our private and online lives.
5. Sorry, Baby
Something really bad happened to Agnes (lovable newcomer Eva Victor, who also wrote and directed the film) and she’s trying to keep her shit together, while living in the same college town where it happened. Keeping her grounded is her best friend and confidante (Naomi Ackie)—the film is ultimately an homage to female friendship.
Yes, there’s a bad man at the center of this film, but there are good ones, too. Agnes’ sweet neighbor, who is romancing her in his own sheepish way (Lucas Hedges) and, in one of the most poignant scenes of the year, a kindly cafe owner (John Carroll Lynch) who see Agnes crying in her car and gives her a comforting ear and a sandwich.
4. The Secret Agent
It’s 1977 in Brazil, during the military dictatorship and there is a spirit of bacchanal in the air. People have a lot of sex, often in public, dance like nobody’s watching, and some wear elaborate, even spooky costumes (the film is set during Carnival). But death is everywhere—also in public—and everyone seems to be either corrupt or corruptible.
In this world, we meet a good man (Wagner Moura) just trying to survive. Kleber Mendonça Filho fills his film with beauty, absurdist humor, and despair. My review.
3. Sentimental Value
An estranged father and daughter (Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve) are more alike than they care to admit. They use their art—he’s a director and she’s an actor—as a means to express themselves, but are completely useless when it comes to communicating in real life.
When Skarsgård’s Gustav Borg asks his daughter to star in his latest film, she refuses, despite his supplications. Left with no choice, he hires an American starlet (Elle Fanning), hoping that by filming in the family’s rambling old house—the keeper of the family’s secrets, history, joy, and shame—they will channel some greater truth. My review.
2. Sinners
In Ryan Coogler’s remarkable film, music is a powerful tool. It can make people dance, lust, lose control; it can bring people together, evoke the past and future, and even summon dark forces. When twin bootleggers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan, making it look easy) open their juke joint in 1932 Mississippi, they have no idea what horrors they are about to unleash.
Coogler combines the Southern Gothic vampire film with a reverent and rousing history of Black music—making a film that is scary, propulsive, and unforgettable.
1. One Battle After Another
Leonardo DiCaprio channels his inner “The Dude” as a reluctant revolutionary who must rouse from his drug-addled torpor to find his kidnapped daughter (Chase Infiniti, a star).
Paul Thomas Anderson’s film is filled with political intrigue—and one helluva car chase—but it’s best seen as an absurdist action comedy. The extended sequence of DiCaprio’s Pat Calhoun—frantic, bumbling, in a bathroom and beanie, desperately trying to charge his phone while under attack—is a masterful comic set piece.
Other all-stars: Sean Penn as a crazed and disturbingly pervy military man; Teyana Taylor as Pat’s girlfriend, a committed revolutionary who’s way more badass than he’ll ever be; and Benicio del Doro as the preternaturally cool “Sensei,” who runs an underground network for undocumented immigrants.
One Battle After Another is that rarest of things these days: an auteurist film made with a big studio budget. Savor it. My review.
Honorable mentions: Frankenstein, Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man, The Mastermind, The Plague, Train Dreams
As of press time, I had not yet seen Timothee Chalamet’s much praised Marty Supreme.