Gari’s 10 Best Movies of 2025
I’m loath to remind you, smart reader, that this personal top 10 of the year is by definition flawed - I’m still yet to see many movies released in 2025, particularly smaller releases and foreign films still lingering on my watch-list, so best to treat this list as a best of what I’ve seen (as of Dec 2025), rather than anything truly comprehensive. For this reason, films like Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams or Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident have not yet been considered.
Nevertheless, I do find Top 10 lists fun, if for nothing other than a place for seek out some recommendations and start some conversations. The only rule was the movies had to be officially released in the calendar year 2025. I’ll be updating this top 10 on Letterboxd in the future, so feel free to follow me for future updates. Some honorable mentions are also included underneath. Happy New Year for 2026!
10 - From The World of John Wick: Ballerina
If you had told me in January a Len Wiseman movie would make my top 10, I’d tell you to take your medication. Yet since there were re-shoots and adjustments made by producer and action-scene maestro Chad Stahelski, it’s hard to know how much to credit Wiseman for the absurdly fun and creative ballet of violence on display in Ballerina. The delicious simplicity of casting Gabriel Byrne as the villain, coupled with the fact that the John Wick crew are the best action movie technicians in Hollywood history, pound-for-pound, elevates Ballerina into a joyous celebration of female, muscular cinema. Pitting Ana de Armas’ 5.5 foot frame against her male co-stars offers a fresh creative direction for the series’ ruthlessly pulverizing combat, where the balance between a sharp brain and a brutal roundhouse has never been more delicate. Read my full review here.
9 - Megadoc
It’s true that the moment one watches Francis Ford Coppola’s 40 year long gestating Megalopolis, you conclude that a documentary about the making of it would be much more interesting than the $120 million dollar film itself. Luckily for us, Mike Figgis agrees. Megadoc provides exactly the kind of behind-the-curtain peak I had hoped. There’s the on set footage of endless pretentious discussions on what the incomprehensible plot means; there’s a sassy Aubrey Plaza calling Coppola very repressed; there’s the insufferable, argumentative, and boundary crossing Shia LaBeouf pushing his director and co-stars to their limits; there’s Figgis speaking about how he was told by Nathalie Emmanuel’s agent not to film her eating; and there’s the talking-head interviews with the disagreeable old guard of Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, both unaware of the turkey they’re starring in. As Mike Figgis himself said, the more of a train-wreck Megalopolis became, the better his documentary would turn out to be. It almost makes watching Megalopolis worth it.
8 - Thunderbolts*
Another surprise was that Marvel produced their best movie in 6 years, such is the extent of their decline in quality since Avengers: Endgame. Thunderbolts* managed to combine their trademark quippy comedy with a genuinely heartfelt and deftly layered message on depression and loneliness, replacing scale and explosions with a more emotional core that when channeled through the eyes of the captivating Florence Pugh, managed to make the explosions meaningful again.
7 - Grenfell Uncovered
Informative and infuriating, Grenfell Uncovered’s tragic coverage of the Grenfell tower block fire in West London is a heartrending and vital decent into the stolen lives of working class people, whose ignored value as human beings resulted in a devastating 60 hour-fire that took the lives of 72 innocent people. Who we blame is the worst part - the documentary details the misconduct of the tenant organization, architectural and construction firms, the fire brigade response, and the (Conservative) government that failed to set building regulations to protect those individuals. The failure was so broad and encompassing, the depressing takeaway was how alive and well class disparity still exists in the very homes we live in.
6 - Nouvelle Vague
The feeling of watching Nouvelle Vague is one of magic - that a film this delightfully playful, arty and insistent to exist for fans of Godard’s 1960 monolith of cool, Breathless, is a real treat. As someone with many French New Wave classics on their top films of all time (Elevator to the Gallows is very high), Nouvelle Vague is a french fantasy of black and white Parisian beauty and creativity. Who could resist drinking a glass of fine red in Café de la Rotonde, waiting for Godard to come up with another idea before filming begins, all the whilst the bustling streets of Paris buzz outside? Yes, Richard Linklater’s film may be more an exercise in style rather than insight, but when the style is this cheeky, this authentic, it’s forms a dream that’s irresistible.
5 - Sinners
The joy of watching Sinners is in its amalgamation of segregation, gangster noir, vampire horror, and music - a colliding mix of creative choices perfectly intertwined in a film dripping with confidence and blood. Ryan Coogler manages to undo the Marvel handcuffs to make his most ambitious film to date, one which sizzles off the screen with such sex, violence, music, death and swagger, you’d wonder how he’d managed to keep such talent hidden this long. Michael B. Jordan was so good, he even played two characters. As the most financially successful original film, it was a beautiful time during Easter 2025 when world of mouth drove cinemagoers to finally embrace a new property that was made by adults for adults. Read my full review here.
4 - Black Bag
Black Bag sneaks up on you in exactly the way Steven Soderbergh movies are prone to do - subtle, sly, sub-textual, sensuous, and adult - it was again a relief to watch a high quality movie made by a filmmaker fluent in the cheeky language of adults with power. The flirtatious and dangerous chemistry of Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender leap off screen as they tip-toed through the realistically rendered world of low-tech government agency spy work and double-agent hi-jinks. Neutering the over adored world of secret agents and satellites into a low-temperature mystery of interpersonal work relationships and Agatha Christie inspired dinner party revelations proved a wonderful distraction in theaters too often full of trite experiences that only wish to could be as smart as Black Bag.
3 - Wake Up Dead Man
After the disappointing Glass Onion, I wasn’t expecting Rian Johnson’s third entry in the Knives Out series to be its best. So competently balanced as a mystery whodunit, I was amazed at Johnson’s ability to once again tailor an experience that walks so fine a line between comedy and drama - always providing a sense of humor but never undermining the genuine suspense at the heart of his story. The upstate New York setting of a small Catholic church echos a cozy English setting and offers a stage for a delightfully theatrical Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) to solve a locked room mystery. This was also the film where I realized Josh O’Connor is the real deal - sensitive, smart, charismatic, his down-trodden and relatable priest deftly allows the audience to follow the unconventional brain of Blanc from a healthy distance, giving us space to watch his genius from afar, whilst enjoying the unraveling of a murder just complex enough to keep us guessing but never overwritten enough to become utterly preposterous.
2 - Weapons
With Weapons, Zach Cregger became instantly one of the most vital directors working today. It’s a rare mark of genius that if you took away the genre conventions of the film you’re watching, it would still work as a compelling narrative. As a mystery of missing children, Weapons just happens to be told through the lens of a horror movie - with all the inherent suspense, negative space thrills (I love/hate those), occasional but earned jump scares. To take away the traits of horror would still leave you with a story of a father and a lost teacher desperate to know the truth behind their suffering. The haunted house on a suburban street motif is used to extraordinary effect - outcast teacher Justine (played by horror-movie darling Julia Garner) watches the papered up windows for signs of life, knowing the answer to her questions are both required and devastating. To say the ending is satisfying is an understatement - I left the theater adrenalized and shocked that a horror climax could be as simultaneously funny and disturbing as this.
1 - Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
A divisive choice - one that will no doubt make me somewhat an apologist for a film that, by all accounts, is a mediocre bio-pic of a musician trying to make an album. But as detailed in my review, my personal circumstances and the particular topic and timeline this film covers makes the result an impossible one to ignore. Scott Cooper’s prior work has made little impact on me, but his take on Springsteen’s depressed expression of working class folk blues created an emotional and humble (in as humble as Hollywood can be) experience of repression and recovery that I couldn’t fail to be completely floored by. It helps that Jeremy Allen White’s performance is outstanding. It also helps that this isn’t a story about glorification (like every other biography), but one about quiet recovery, about the introspective struggles that are difficult to express. Introspective themes may not naturally make universally compelling cinema, but I’m extremely thankful there are films still exploring them.
Honorable Mentions
The Lost Music of Auschwitz - A fascinating and emotional hour long documentary produced by SKY that lets the music do the talking. Removed as it fitted more into TV territory.
Surviving Ohio State - HBO’s documentary about the disturbing and anger inducing sexual abuse committed by student doctor Richard Strauss at Ohio State University. Just outside of my Top 10.
Together - Outstanding horror on the nature of toxic relationships. Dave Franco and Alison Brie feel extremely authentic in their pursuit to disturb and disgust you in this brilliant depiction of a declining marriage.
KPop Demon Hunters - Delightful, joyous animated fun with strong female characters and a beautiful message of revealing your authenticity and the consequences of being different. Makes me want to eat ramen.
One Battle After Another - Very good, but not quite as good as some would tell you.
