I’m sure I’m not the only one who felt that 2025 was a year filled with anxiety. The newsfeed was packed with stories about inflation, job losses, never-ending wars, and—oh, I don’t know—the dismantling of democracy, led by a leader who couldn’t seem to shut his pie hole. Many of this year’s releases probably had no idea how timely they would feel when they were filmed a year or two ago. More than once, I found myself jarred in the movie theater: from Lex Luthor assassinating an innocent man to break the Man of Steel in an otherwise popcorny Superman reboot; to One Battle After Another’s white-supremacist secret society pulling all the political strings; to the murky backlash against DEI and the #MeToo movement in the polarizing academic potboiler After the Hunt.

It was also a great year for fresh horror movies. Weapons chilled with the image of an entire classroom of children disappearing into the night (not to mention Amy Madigan as the worst aunt ever). Sally Hawkins’ sadistic foster mother in Bring Her Back was a complicated villain driven by grief. And then, of course, there was a certain thrilling vampire movie—but I’ll get to that. Here are ten films that stuck with me.

MY FAVORITE MOVIES OF THE YEAR

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You — Touted as a raw portrayal of motherhood, I saw it instead as a visceral dive into caregiver fatigue. Rose Byrne (fantastic) plays Linda, a super-stressed woman caring for an ill, constantly whining child (always off-camera). She isn’t a bad mom—just doing her best under unsustainable circumstances: a husband away on business, a demanding job as a therapist, and a child whose illness won’t improve. Framed around a literal hole opening in her ceiling, splooshing debris into her life, the film is a claustrophobic, anxiety-inducing, and absurdly funny nightmare. (Streaming)

Hamnet — I’m getting weepy again just thinking about it! Chloé Zhao’s devastating yet cathartic adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel imagines how William Shakespeare was inspired to write the tragedy of Hamlet. The playwright (Paul Mescal), however, is a supporting character to his wife Agnes (Jessie Buckley), a mother facing an incomprehensible loss who eventually finds healing through her husband’s art. It’s rare I can call a movie’s ending perfect, but this one is profoundly moving—an emotional release for the characters and the audience. (Streaming)

Between Goodbyes — My favorite documentary of the year explores the complicated legacy of international adoption. We follow Mieke, a queer Korean adoptee raised in the Netherlands who is reunited with her birth family as a young adult. Expectations are high, leading to an emotional rollercoaster of regret, miscommunication, and a desperation to make up for lost time. The film gives equal weight to both sides: the family’s poverty, lies, and lost years, and Mieke’s overwhelmed retreat from a connection that comes too fast. It’s raw, emotional, and deeply human. (Streaming on YouTube and PBS)

Train Dreams — It’s rare to see a movie this beautiful, and even rarer to see one that captures the dense forests of the Pacific Northwest with such reverence. Joel Edgerton plays Robert Granier, a quiet early-20th-century migrant logger who finds peace in the forests and an anchor with his young family that he is forced to leave for months at a time. A lovely, heartrending epic of one man’s life, the film, along with Robert, watches the 20th century unfold with wonder. You might cry along with him at the beauty of it all. (Streaming)

Sinners — Ryan Coogler’s sexy, gritty, wildly entertaining Depression-era vampire movie comes with a killer soundtrack and real bite. Set in the Deep South, it refreshes the genre by weaving race and class into the mix, adding extra allure to the undead while still delivering real terror. Michael B. Jordan pulls double-duty as hustler twins who return from big-city Chicago to open a juke joint. They just should have been more careful who they invited to opening night. (Streaming)

Raptures — Based on true events in the 1930s, this film follows an isolated community on the border of Sweden and Finland as religious extremism takes hold. An ethnic minority becomes a religious minority when they reject the nationally approved doctrine in favor of their own interpretation of the Bible. Unsurprisingly, the charismatic man leading the movement soon declares—via direct messages from God—that free love, among other convenient reinterpretations, is part of God’s will (much to the shock of his pious wife). After all, the rapture is coming, and they are the chosen few. You can imagine this does not end well. (At festivals)

Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight — Told from the perspective of Bobo, a scrappy, almost feral blonde girl (an astonishing Lexi Venter, who was only seven when she made this film), Dogs presents a white child’s view of Zimbabwe’s war of independence in 1980. Bobo roams freely on her family’s Rhodesian farm—her parents are largely absent, and she happily explores, seemingly in a constant state of filth. Meanwhile, the Black staff begrudgingly try to keep her in line while being acutely aware that their country is undergoing drastic change. In her directorial debut, Embeth Davitz (who also plays Bobo’s unstable mother) creates a fascinating, immersive portrait of a place, a time, and a history I knew little about. (Streaming)

Marty Supreme — This is absolutely not what I expected from a sports movie. Set in the 1950s, Josh Safdie’s portrait of a ping-pong champion establishes its quirkiness immediately by queuing up it’s ’80s soundtrack. Timothée Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, a supremely confident weasel of a man who sees his destiny as the world table tennis champion. Annoying as he is, he actually has a real shot—and he’s more than willing to grift, hustle, steal, and lie his way to the top. Frenetic, wild, and outlandishly funny, it feels like a classic sports trope filtered through the grit of a Scorsese flick. (In theaters)

One Battle After Another — From its opening moments when a ragtag group of revolutionaries invades and liberates an immigration detention facility, Paul Thomas Anderson’s action epic is electric. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bob goes into hiding after his activist group, the French 75, scatters in the wake of a government crackdown. Fifteen years later, Corporal Lockjaw (Sean Penn, gloriously over the top) resurfaces to hunt down Bob and his now-teenage daughter to destroy the revolution once and for all. It won’t be so easy. The film never wears out its long runtime, boasts an incredible supporting cast, and features one of the most weirdly thrilling, near–slow-motion car chases I can remember.

Song Sung Blue — The end-of-the-year gift that I didn’t know I needed, this charming jukebox movie was a total surprise. Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson play Neil Diamond tribute entertainers Lightning & Thunder, who become big enough in Milwaukee that they open for Pearl Jam… until tragedy strikes. The characters are so darn likable and the musical joy so infectious that I immediately knew that this was a movie I’d happily to watch again. In the meantime, I’ll just be putting Neil Diamond on repeat. (In theaters)

Plus another 10 well-worth checking out…

Twinless
The History of Sound
The Perfect Neighbor
Is This Thing On?
Weapons
The Ballad of Wallis Island
The Ugly Stepsister
Bob Trevino Likes It
Time Travel is Dangerous
To Kill a Wolf