Movies have always reflected the times in which they’re made—sometimes deliberately, sometimes unconsciously. And filmmakers today are up against it: their industry is being stripped for parts, original visions are eclipsed by endlessly recycled franchises, and pop culture has a TikTok attention span.
2025 was a weird, turbulent year, and the movies were, too. In spite of it, there was a lot of good stuff out there. Here are my 10 favorites.
At 10, I have Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, about the effects of abuse rippling through a patriarchal community in Zambia. It’s colorful, dreamy and quietly surreal, and it delivers a real blow to the gut.
Next: Universal Language, directed by Matthew Rankin, a United Nations of comic influences set in an alternate version of Winnipeg that’s half Canadian and half Iranian. It’s silly and melancholy, and a genuine plea for cross-cultural harmony.
Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent comes in at #8. It’s a thick pulp novel of a movie, and another of the writer-director’s eccentric, textured, free-floating portraits of Brazil’s political and cinematic history.
Sentimental Value ranks at #7. Directed by Joachim Trier, it’s a multigenerational saga of a Norwegian family of artists, who’d rather channel their personal regrets into their work than actually deal with them.
My 6th favorite film of 2025 is Sorry, Baby, a brilliant debut from writer-director-star Eva Victor. It’s like a collection of interconnected short stories, about a young woman grappling with sexual assault while finding comfort in the places it happened.
At the halfway point in my list is Sinners, one of the great unifiers of the year. It’s the rare blockbuster that’s not just about spectacle: It’s drunk on period detail, music, mysticism, eroticism, monster-movie thrills and thorny ideas that make you want to talk about them after.
I have Kelly Reichardt’s sneakily funny The Mastermind at #4. Josh O’Connor plays a layabout who plans a doomed art heist, but the movie ultimately reveals itself to be about the tumult of 1970s America, which is always humming in the background.
#3 is the sleeper of the year, Carson Lund’s shaggy, microbudget baseball comedy Eephus, which lets us hang out with an adult baseball league on the last game of its season. The film is wistful, hilarious, full of malaise and a twinge of magic.
In my runner-up slot is South Korean master Park Chan-wook’s latest, a violent, pitch-black farce called No Other Choice. Based on a Donald Westlake noir, it pushes the dog-eat-dog nature of the business class to its breaking point. It’s set to open in Spokane theaters in a couple weeks.
And finally, no surprise here, my pick for the best movie of 2025 is Paul Thomas Anderson’s profane, irreverent epic One Battle After Another. It’s full of weird characters, bold set pieces and provocative ideas about revolution and parenthood, but it’s also a pure thriller. The movie is timely because it reflects the violent absurdity of 2025 America. But it’ll be timeless because, as the movie’s most pivotal line reminds us, time marches on and things don’t really change.
Nathan Weinbender is a co-host of Spokane Public Radio’s Movies 101, heard Friday evenings at 6:30 PM and Saturday afternoons at 2 PM on SPR News.
