I watch a lot of movies. As of this writing, I’ve logged 4,963 films on Letterboxd (and that doesn’t include the hundreds of films I’ve forgotten to log/completely forgotten I watched). I watched 458 this year alone. But while I do watch a lot of movies, I don’t tend to keep up with current movies. I rarely go to the theater anymore, and my tendency is to watch old movies at home. My feeling is that there are so many great older movies that I haven’t seen that there isn’t a lot of reason to try to watch new movies that might not be that good.
With that being said, I did make an effort to watch more new movies this year. I actually made it to the theater on seven different occasions and watched a total of 42 movies made in 2025. For context, I’ve still only watched 34 movies from 2024, and I’ve had an extra year to see them.
That’s not a bad number, but considering there were hundreds of movies that came out this year, it is but a small drop in a very large bucket. So, I can’t really say these are the best movies of 2025, but they are my favorites of the ones I’ve seen.
5. Caught Stealing
This crime thriller from Darren Aronofsky seems to have completely flown under everyone’s radar. That’s too bad because it is a terrific little flick with an incredible cast and some wonderful direction. Austin Butler stars as Hank Thompson, an alcoholic bartender who could have been a contender, but his once promising baseball career ended after a terrible drunk driving accident left him wounded.
When his neighbor (a mohawk-wearing, thickly accented Matt Smith) leaves town and leaves Hank with his cat to take care of, all hell breaks loose. Before the week is up, he’ll be tortured by Russians, threatened by cops, and nearly killed by some Hasidic gangsters. Caught Stealing is light on its feet and gnarly fun.
4. Predator: Badlands
Who would have thought that in the year of our Lord 2025 we’d get yet another Predator movie and that it would be one of the best of the year? Director Dan Trachtenberg, who also helmed the excellent Prey and the pretty good Predator: Killer of Killers knows how to take what was a silly 1980s action flick and turn it into something meaty and good.
All of the other Predator films have basically been Predator vs. human stories. This one turns the Predator into our hero and sets it on the deadliest planet in the universe, where even the plants want to kill you. He’s teamed with Thia (Elle Fanning), a half-broken cyborg created by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation (which is from the Alien franchise, which means we might finally get a good crossover film at some point). They will attempt to not only survive but also kill the universe’s most fearsome creatures.
The world building is terrific, the action is incredible, and Elle Fanning is a blast to watch.
3. Train Dreams
If I were doing a longer list and adding in lots of special categories, I’d call Train Dreams my surprise favorite. I had never heard of the film before I watched it. I hadn’t seen a trailer or a poster, even. Nobody in my social media circles was talking about it. But one day I was looking through a list of movies that came out in 2025, hoping to find something interesting that hadn’t been hyped to death, and I landed on this. I’m so glad I did.
Train Dreams stars Joel Edgerton as a logger living in the early part of the twentieth century. He is a quiet, simple man who faces love and loss while the years roll by and the country around him changes all around him. It is a slow film, never flashy or exciting in an action-packed sort of way, but it is beautiful and profound. Filmed in the Pacific Northwest, the camera lingers on the nature all around him. He’ll meet various characters and find friendship and love, and feel great guilt over the violence he observes. Edgerton has never been better. He says so much with so little dialogue.
This is a tone poem, filled with beauty and wonder, sadness and awe.
2. One Battle After Another
This Paul Thomas Anderson epic is his most political film and his most personal. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Bob, a former revolutionary who settled down once his girlfriend split, leaving him to raise his daughter. Sixteen years pass, and he’s become something of a drug-addled, alcoholic burnout. But when a former nemesis reappears and comes after his daughter, he rejoins the movement and bands together to save her.
There are some current political themes in the films, as migrants are seen being held prisoner inside fenced-in cages, and the villains are racist white nationalists, but mostly it is about this dad trying to connect with his teenaged daughter and keep her safe.
It has a grand scale and a large cast; it is epic, yet personal, tense, and often hilarious. DiCaprio has never been better, Sean Penn is terrific as the hard-nosed military goon going after the girl, but it is Benicio Del Toro that steals the show. He’s a levelheaded sensai who keeps Bob (and the film) grounded. He is the calm in the midst of an insane, chaotic storm.
I watched this one again just a few days ago, and it was even better the second time.
1. Sinners
I watched this one again last week, and it is still mind-blowingly good. Ryan Coogler has managed to make a vampire movie where the vampires are the least interesting thing about it. Michael B. Jordan stars as twin brothers Smoke and Stack, who grew up in the deep south, fought in World War I, then moved to Chicago, where they worked for Al Capone, and now they’ve come back to their hometown to open up a juke joint.
The film takes its time getting to its horror elements. It follows the brothers as they recruit various people into helping them. They talk a Chinese grocer into supplying the food, a fieldworker into being the bouncer, and an old bluesman into making the music. Smoke’s wife will cook, and their nephew will play guitar. These scenes are given time to naturally develop, and they are a joy to watch. Coogler is giving us a tour of the Deep South from an African American perspective. We are ensconced in this culture.
The film could almost be categorized as a musical, as characters routinely play songs and music is a huge part of what this film is. There is one scene in the middle where the cousin plays a song, and it bends time and space. It is one of the greatest all-time scenes ever put to celluloid.
I could live in this world for a long time. It is almost a shame the vampires show up. It isn’t that the horror elements are bad, but I so thoroughly enjoyed watching the brothers build this community that I hate to leave that aspect to bring in the vampires. He does do some interesting things thematically with the vampires. The main ones are Irish, and there is a long history in the United States of prejudice against the Irish. Part of their welcoming call for our heroes to become vampires is that there is no more racism, for vampires aren’t prejudiced.
The battle with the vampires is appropriately thrilling and bloody, and in any other movie I’d be praising that half of the film. But man, that first half is so good I wind up feeling slightly disappointed when the vamps show up. But nevertheless, Sinners is a fantastic film, the rare film that is both thematically rich and thoroughly entertaining.
And that’s it. I won’t say these are the best movies of the year, but they are my favorite films from 2025 that I watched. What were your favorites?
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Train Dreams, One Battle After Another, Sinners, Caught by the Tides, and The Mastermind were my favorites. I also really enjoyed Frankenstein, Weapons, Eddington, The Phoenician Scheme, and Black Bag.