With a Special Spotlight on the Year in Action Movies
Life was tough in and outside of the movies in 2025. Anxiety, regret, and indecision plague onscreen characters every year, but something about their struggle to get through the day reached a zenith in this one. William Shakespeare couldn’t figure out how to be dad, Ethan Hunt faced off with people who spend too much time on the Internet, and should it really have been that expensive for Marty Supreme to play competitive ping pong?
For those of us who love movies, it was an emotional roller coaster of a year offscreen, too. It turns out audiences are willing to spend money on original stories—woohoo! Sinners, Weapons, F1: The Movie, Marty Supreme, and even KPop Demon Hunters pushed back on executives’ insistence we only want to half-watch half-hearted “content” on our couches or our phones. Many of the biggest box office hits of the year were rated PG (A Minecraft Movie, Lilo & Stitch, Zootopia 2, Wicked: For Good, How to Train Your Dragon) proving families with youngins will go to the theaters, too. For every flop and weekend that inspired hand-wringing about the state of cinema, there seemed to be another story about something fresh or unusual resonating, not always translating to cash but perhaps something with more long-term value: cultural capital. You’ll see from my list that streamers platformed impactful films besides KPop Demon Hunters—they’re an awesome resource when they spend their money on more than lowest-common-denominator “content” designed for algorithms before people.
The roller coaster also came with plenty of drops and loop-de-loops.We lost more than a few film titans (including but not limited to Gene Hackman, Diane Keaton, Robert Redford, and Rob Reiner), and we couldn’t avoid sci-fi-worthy stories about artificial intelligence replacing the most human of jobs and generating slop. Though late-night TV has taken the brunt of it so far, censorship became a bigger concern in the U.S. than it ever has been in my lifetime, and the looming sale of Warner Bros. only heightens that concern by consolidating power in fewer hands. Whether Netflix, Paramount, or someone else gobbles up one of the biggest entertainment factories in the world—and one of the most important historical collections of art and popular media—it’s a net loss for everyone except those at the top.
The movies of 2025 feel like we were all processing that tough news together (not to mention the other stories that stressed us out). The Phoenician Scheme, No Other Choice, Good Fortune, and Soulemayne’s Story examined the responsibility of individuals and corporations on the state of the world. A House of Dynamite, Riefenstahl, and Companion challenged us to consider the power and pitfalls of our dependence on technology. Hamnet, F1: The Movie, Eephus, Jay Kelly, and Sentimental Value reckoned with legacy and the consequences one generation leaves for the next. Wake Up Dead Man, Eleanor the Great, and On Becoming a Guinea Fowl grapple with the necessity of objective truth.
Lower-brow entertainment wasn’t exempt from those topics either, which is why my Honorable Mentions include an Action Spotlight. From by-the-numbers genre exercises to big-budget and auteur-driven flexes, 2025 was a fun year for of action fans. Even many of the movies aiming for mere competence found flair in their high-concept plots, death-defying stunts, and rewatchability. Their big (sometimes dumb) spectacles provided a respite from the rigamarole of daily life, even as they acknowledged our fears about Big Tech, widening wealth gaps, and the uphill battles of parenting.
These films were bright spots of my 2025, all providing catharsis, thrills, laughs, or a little bit of hope. Since art is a long-term investment—not one successful opening weekend or a briefly trending topic—they might just do the same for you in 2026.
Taylor Blake’s Top 10 of 2025
10. The Phoenician Scheme
Can I explain the financial scheme motivating and structuring this father-daughter road trip? Goodness, no. But plot mechanics aren’t why we watch Wes Anderson’s works, nor are the twee patterns and divine color palettes. His reliable visual feasts may catch our attention, but we return for the mélange of regret and ache anchored just beneath the dry humor and star-studded ensembles. (Speaking of which, this is my controversial pick for favorite Benicio Del Toro performance of the year.) Splintered families are a frequent subject in his oeuvre, but business ethics and the afterlife? Those are less familiar, pushing back on the (to me, baseless) complaint that his films are redundant.
9. The Naked Gun
The most important metric for a comedy is how much it makes you laugh, and no movie made me laugh more than the reboot of the Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker absurdist police comedy series. Director/co-writer Akiva Schaffer (member of another famous trio, The Lonely Island) captures the joke-a-second spirit of the Leslie Nielsen original, plus we get the added spoof Liam Neeson’s late-stage action career. If you squint, you can try to pull out themes about fragile masculinity and generational snobbery, but let’s be honest with ourselves: We were way more invested in whether Neeson would cave and eat that last chili dog.
8. Hamnet
Chloé Zhao’s ethereal Shakespearean riff supposes great art may only be possible with great heartache, but also that that art may be essential to healing. Screen depictions of The Bard and his work go back almost to the beginning of cinema itself, but Hamnet refreshes the angle by making him just a supporting player in his family. In one of the best performances of the year, Jessie Buckley’s Agnes is the heartbeat pulling them together with (and in spite of) her premonitions, even when she cannot defy death. As another bard would write a few centuries later, Death will kindly stop for all of us—we are lucky to have art as bewitching as this one to help us process it.
7. F1: The Movie
Joseph Kosinski’s sports drama borrows quite a bit from Top Gun: Maverick, but hey, didn’t everyone on planet Earth like that movie? Kosinski is establishing himself as one of our greatest modern thrill makers, this time by giving the audience an authentic experience behind the wheel. Though Javier Bardem and Damson Idris are scene-stealers, Brad Pitt is reminding us why he’s been a star for so long. His performance is one part Moneyball, one part commentary on his own celebrity, one part Paul Newman homage, as well as the center of gravity needed to prevent this from skidding into melodrama or self-seriousness. That club-ready score from Hans Zimmer doesn’t hurt either.
6. No Other Choice
Nothing sucks more than losing your job—except maybe finding a new one. Park Chan-wook’s dark comedy satirizes our impulse to find meaning in our work and the arbitrary benchmarks we use to determine success. As businesses and technology dehumanize him and his paper-making colleagues, a desperate Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) believes affluence is a zero-sum game worth killing for. Funny, violent, and shocking (but never for the sake of shock value alone), No Other Choice imagines what it might look like to unleash our darkest selves because we feel we have nothing left to lose.
5. Eephus
This baseball comedy set during the final game in a small-town adult league captures the the sport’s elegance, but it also reminds me how nothing I love will last and that I’m going to grow old and die someday. Carson Lund’s knock-it-out-of-the-park first feature left me saying, “Wow wow wow,” the rest of the day.
4. Materialists
Love it or hate it, Materialists left us all with plenty to talk about. I’m a member of the “love it” camp because of its candor on modern dating and the flawed heroine at its center. Celine Song’s second feature grabs the torch from romantic comedies like Broadcast News, His Girl Friday, Pride & Prejudice, Working Girl, and You’ve Got Mail because of its depth of insight into the overlap between romance and money—and because it’s just such a darn pleasure to watch. If she wants it, writer/director Celine Song could fill the vacuum left by Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers.
3. Marty Supreme
In the performance of the year, Timothée Chalamet proves it’s not just big talk when he says he wants to be “one of the greats.” Good luck guessing where Josh Safdie’s barely-a-true-story is headed at any given moment—it’s the rare film with a plot that could be accurately described as “bonkers.” The ‘80s synth soundtrack, the most exciting Gwyneth Paltrow performance in years, the analysis of our innate selfishness—I never would’ve guessed there’s be so much to love in a movie about ping pong.
2. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
This is the fourth Rian Johnson film in a row that feels like he cracked open my skull and made something specifically for my Best of the Year list. (Let me extend an apology to Knives Out for only ranking it 10th in my Best of 2019 while extending none for placing Glass Onion at top of my heap in 2022.) Once again, he pushes genre conventions to their limit, bending them to the will of whatever is on his mind (in this case, the purpose and impact of faith in the 21st century) and pulling out career-best performances. Wake Up Dead Man confirms my belief that entertainment needn’t be mindless or cheap.
1. A House of Dynamite
A House of Dynamite drew a physical reaction out of me I almost never experience. Twitching my fingers, tapping my toes, bouncing in my seat—I’m once again begging Netflix to support longer theatrical runs for films that deserve it.
Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear missile drama, which somehow finds a way to make a giant conference call cinematic, is no retread of Dr. Strangelove or Fail Safe because it’s made for audiences in the age of misinformation, Internet conspiracy theories, and artificial intelligence-powered bots. However, it does ask the same question: Are we the architects of our own destruction? As we round out a decade defined by a constant barrage of dumpster fire news, watching this ensemble of experts (played by an ensemble of ringers) sucked into the quicksand of indecision, I spent less time thinking about global war than the domestic debates we all feel tearing us apart. A feat of editing set to a restless score by Volker Bertelmann, Dynamite can be enjoyed as a top-notch thriller, but it’s the best movie of the year because that would be selling it short.
Best of 2025: Honorable Mentions
If you could somehow fit more than 10 movies into a Top 10 list, these would be my next picks. I recommend you enjoy them in double features…
Double Feature #1: Artist Dads and Disappointed Daughters
George Clooney’s self-spoofing Jay Kelly and Stellan Skarsgard’s comeback director in Sentimental Value are the dueling comedic and tragic outcomes of their absentee parenting.
Double Feature #2: Delivery Drivers at Their Breaking Points
Another dueling comedy and tragedy. Aziz Ansari’s update to It’s a Wonderful Life, Good Fortune, lets Keanu Reeves cook as a delightfully clumsy angel who swaps the fates of a gig worker and a venture capitalist. First-time film actor Abou Sangare brings the pathos as an Guinean immigrant who can’t catch a break in Souleymane’s Story.
Double Feature #3: Aging Women in Denial
The Nazi Propagandist-in-Chief at the center of the best documentary of the year, Riefenstahl, and June Squibb’s Eleanor the Great both lie about what they were up to in the 1940s. But not all lies are the same, and both demonstrate the need for owning up to the truth. Squibb’s performance is another best-of-the-year, making Eleanor the Official Ugly Cry of Taylor Blakes Everywhere (2025 Edition)™.
Double Feature #4: Survivors in the Aftermath
The Zambian drama (sprinkled with dark comedy) On Becoming a Guinea Fowl gives newcomer Susan Chardy an opportunity to develop an excellent, restrained performance as a death reveals layers of family dysfunction. Iranian writer/director Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident is a tense diamond of a screenplay, putting an ensemble into a moral crisis when they face a possible past torturer.
Double Feature #5: What Even Are Modern Relationships?
Companion is a sneakily thoughtful (light-on-the-)horror movie about using and abusing people in the age of algorithms. Bradley Cooper’s third feature Is This Thing On? finds the (amateur stand-up) comedy in making marriage work when it’s at odds with the modern desire for individual fulfillment.
Best of 2025: Action Spotlight
From the Auteurs…
Though I wasn’t as enthused about Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another as others, they delivered some of the best set pieces of the year. Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest may not have hit every mark, but its motorcycle heist and the recording booth rap battle made for two more of the best scenes of the year. Steven Soderbergh’s 93-minute espionage Black Bag, taking inspiration from ‘70s paranoia thrillers, was my favorite of the auteur bunch this year.
Based on True Stories…
The Alex Garland/Ray Mendoza team and Paul Greengrass also found creative outlets in the genre. Warfare used the next generation of Hollywood leading men to recreate the maelstrom of war in real time, and The Lost Bus made me wonder why the special effects in disaster and survival stories don’t always look this good.
Justifying the Oscars Stunt Category…
Though we won’t award an Oscar for Stunts until 2028, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning would be this year’s top contender with its submarine excavation and dueling plane finale. Ballerina made a case for flame throwers as a weapon of choice, and Karate Kid: Legends combined karate and kung fu for the best Karate Kid since 1984.
Hope for Superheroes…
Have our caped heroes been phoning it in since Avengers: Endgame? Not entirely, but this year’s batting average benefitted from fewer, more strategic at-bats. Thunderbolts* reset the Marvel Cinematic Universe by prioritizing character and comedy over advertising the next installment, and the charming, retrofuturist The Fantastic 4: First Steps relieved us of almost two decades of homework with a standalone adventure. And the best parts of Superman were centered on Clark Kent’s humanity, especially his relationships with Lois Lane and (obviously) Krypto the Superdog.
Destined to be Cable Classics…
Very soon in a hotel room, I will catch no more than 30 minutes at a time of Jason Statham in the formulaic A Working Man, Jack Quaid in the gruesome Novocaine, Rami Malek in the unassuming The Amateur, Austin Butler in the grimy Caught Stealing, Bob Odenkirk in the cartoonish Nobody 2, and Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal in the ludicrous The Accountant². In these cases, “formulaic” and “ludicrous” are the highest of compliments.
The Best of the Rest…
Do you need to turn your brain down a few notches to enjoy Jurassic World: Rebirth and The Running Man? Yep, but if you can ignore their rickety narrative structures, they’re filled with dino and dystopian delights. Even better are the delights in the underrated, action-adjacent franchise hat trick Now You See Me: Now You Don’t.