Yes, it’s once again that glorious time my friends. The dream we all dream of – boy vs girl in the World Series of love. No, wait, scratch that. It’s movie rating time! Woooo! Party party party! Fireworks! Explosions! Excitement!
As has become tradition, before we just jump into the rankings of these 266 fine films, we will start with a little amuse bouche of the best TV shows I watched in 2025. That’s right, you get extra bonus Tom opinions! You lucky little scamps, you. Just be thankful that I don’t (yet) rank all the TV shows I saw in a year!
There was a ton of good TV this year! I know this must be shocking to all of you, but it’s like we’re living in a golden age of television or something. I just coined that, anyone who uses it owes me money now.
Honorable Mentions
In making this list I went through and put down all the stuff that I watched this year that I thought might be good enough to make the list, and it was twice as many as I was willing to rank. So the next 10, in alpha order:
The Agency s1
The Bear s4
Black Doves s1
Day of the Jackel s1
Death by Lightning
The Gentlemen s1
Ludwig
The Recruit s1
The Residence
Task s1
Top Ten
In countdown order, DUH. All season 1 unless otherwise noted.
10. Dept. Q
Good solid mystery, I love a misanthropic detective (see: House), and Akram is the second-best character find of 2025.
9. Murderbot
A solid translation of one of my favorite book series to television. Even if you didn’t like this though you should still try to books, which have more of a focus just on Murderbot and its interiority and less as an ensamble.
8. Alien: Earth
Too much Peter Pan and the season finale was pretty bad, but everything else was kinda great. I also love a quality horror series (see: the long-forgotten by everyone else Exorcist tv series)
7. Slow Horses s5
To quote myself from last year, “they keep making these and I’ll keep ranking them.” The most reliable franchise on TV. I am vastly enjoying reading the books also.
6. Peacemaker s2
Not as transcendant as the first one but still great.
5. The Studio
I’d like to thank Sal Saperstein. The Globes episodes alone were enough to get this on the list, but the rest was great too.
4. Adolescence
Yikes
3. The Pitt
I had no idea how much a I missed a standard-ish procedural! And of course Dr. Robbie is our daddy. But the best character find of 2025 is clearly Dr. Mel King, and if anything bad ever happens to her I will storm the ramparts.
2. Severance s2
More Britt! So much more Britt! And some actual answers while still leaving plenty of compelling mystery! And, I mean:
1. Andor s2
As though there was any other possible choice. If you need me to tell you that this was great and why then you’ve already lost.
Up Next: The Rankings Begin!
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I have recently undertaken to finish watching everything in the NYT list of the top 100 movies from the first 25 (26 actually since they start with 2000) years of the 21st century. I’ve gotten through 99 of them (apologies to #100 Superbad) and figured what the heck, why not make my own list.
Notwithstanding my normal inclination toward ranking things, these are presented in alphabetical order. Are there some I like more than others? Duh, of course, but that’s not the point for today.
There are 33 films on my list, a number carefully chosen because that was a cut-off point that I was comfortable with. #34 – Almost Famous was just under what felt like a good line.
So with no further ado:
Barbarian (2022)
Masterful setup to the ultimate crazy-go-nuts movie, complete with the shocking turn in the middle to introduce Justin Long’s character. I ended up laughing at the audacity and the brazen way they pulled it off.
Bo Burnham Inside (2021)
For my money, the definitive movie about the non- medical aspects of the COVID-19 period. And also hugely goddamn funny. How the World Works is legit one of my favorite songs.
Burning (2018)
Nothing against Parasite, which is a really good movie, but this is the Korean mystery/psychological thriller/drama that should have got all of the attention. The three member main cast is so good and totally believable and while you never fully sense where it’s going, in the end you realize that it turned out the only way it could have.
Chime (2024)
I just spent a bunch of words on this so I don’t need to go on here, but Kurosawa is a master and his canvas is exactly the kind of films I adore – they reward multiple watches and deep attention without giving anything away.
The Dark Knight (2008)
The ultimate expression of a superhero movie, with Heath Ledger giving the ultimate portrayal of a character that has had a lot of great performances in it.
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
As big a fan of Wes Anderson’s movies generally, it’s his stop-motion pictures that really blow me away. It’s the best possible combination of artist and medium. And Clooney is totally perfect here, playing off his public identity and charm.
Frances Ha (2012)
A drama about becoming an adult that is both heartfelt and really funny. Gerwig’s Frances is so uncomfortable in her own skin and unsure how to get what she wants and even really what she wants out of life at all. You can feel her thinking that she needs to stop talking when she’s in the middle of saying something that is coming out wrong but she just…can’t….stop – a feeling I identified with perhaps a bit too well.
Game Night (2018)
Classic better-than-it-had-to-be movie that totally pays off. The one on this list that you can safely recommend to all of your friends and relatives too.
The Green Knight (2021)
A fantasy tale that is really a deep dive into silly meaningless questions like what kind of person you want to be and how you define yourself to yourself. And fantastic fantasy trappings on top of it. A legitimate epic that could be told around campfires.
Happy Death Day (2017)
Every now and then a movie comes along that feels like it was made expressly and personally for me. I love love love love this movie.
Hereditary (2018)
My favorite horror movie, and as you all know I am a huge fan of the genre. This avoids all the tropes that drive me nuts and pays off perfectly. As a side personal note, this is one of only two movies I’ve watched at home where when something happened (you know what) I had to pause the film and walk around just to clear my head.
Hit Man (2024)
Sexy, cool, fun.
I Saw the TV Glow (2024)
If I had my #2 and #3 from this year on the list, #1 was obviously going to make it – I certainly revise my mental rankings over time but doing so that quickly would be déclassé. So many insights in this movie! Make many many more, Jane.
In the Mood for Love (2001)
Pretty much a perfect movie.
Josie and the Pussycats (2001)
Totally jerkin!
Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003)
Would deserve to be on the list just for the deranged fight scene against the Crazy 88s. A master at the top of his crazy violent form.
Kill List (2012)
Roughly as f****d up as Barbarian, but explained less – a pure example of a guy thrust into a situation that he thinks he understands but he really, really doesn’t. And the ending, while totally whacked out, is perfect.
Let the Right One In (2008)
The Swedish one, not the US remake, to be clear. Great concept, fantastic execution – both leads are just perfect and it really wouldn’t work otherwise.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Impossible to leave off the list. Just an incredible achievement of what by all rights should’ve been unfilmable – and the only meaningful thing they cut was the already-questionable Tom Bombadil stuff.
Lost in Translation (2003)
Usually I want to think about what a movie means and what it’s trying to get at, but sometimes I just want to luxuriate in how I felt while watching it. I love the relationship between these two and how they quickly recognize a connection and they don’t have to explain or analyze it and, unlike virtually evert other movie ever, it doesn’t have to be romantic.
Memories of Murder (2005)
A great murder procedural and a great buddy comedy and a great study of small town Korea. I don’t know how it manages to juggle everything going on and all of the tone changes without being a mess but somehow Bong Joon Ho pulls it off.
Michael Clayton (2007)
The perfect political thriller without the politics – all back room contortions and hidden (and not-so-hidden) motivations and wheels within wheels. But it’s also the perfect work movie – Clayton is the consummate professional within his world, leading to the best quote – “I’m not the guy that you kill! I’m the guy you buy! As you so f***ing blind that you don’t even see what I am?”
Mission: Impossible – Fallout
The best episode of the best action/thriller series of the 2000s.
Ocean’s 11 (2001)
The heist movie that all other heist movies are compared to. You even have a reason to root for these guys besides their likeability – but they’re so likable! Clooney at his most debonair, Pitt at his most rakishly charming, a young cute Damon, everyone is great.
Paddington 2 (2017)
A good test for people is to ask them what they think of Paddington 2. If they haven’t seen it yet, they are to be pitied and directed to the nearest streaming service. If their face lights up and they can talk of nothing else for 20 minutes, then they are good people and you should treasure them. If they say that they didn’t like it then shoot them dead and consider it a mercy killing.
Pulse (2001)
The best ghost story I’ve seen, and it’s not really a ghost story. Kurosawa is the best.
The Raid: Redemption (2012)
My comment about Kill Bill above notwithstanding, one fight sequence isn’t enough to make a great film. But if the entire film is make up of one great fight sequence….
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Either you like Wes Anderson or you don’t – if you do, this is perhaps the best most fundamental expression of his whole deal.
RRR (2022)
I love a movie that goes all-out go-for-it crazy, and nothing was more batshit out of its mind than this. I can’t say that much of the plot made sense per se but goddamn if I wasn’t into it all the damn way.
Scott Pilgrim vs the World (2010)
The other movie (one of the others perhaps?) that I love waaaaaaay more than everyone else. And the Brie Larson version of Black Sheep BANGS.
Shutter Island (2010)
Leo’s best performance and a killer whodunnit, and I love an unreliable narrative.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse(2018)
Spider-Pig!
Zodiac (2007)
Really glad they wrapped all this up in a tidy little bow.
So first off, there is of course a level on which this movie is working that I cannot speak to. There is clearly a trans allegory happening here and given how masterful the rest of the movie is I am just going to assume that it nails that as well.
But what really spoke to me is how perfectly this gets the way in which you can really immerse yourself in something and use it to be part of your identity, especially in those early teen years when you’re just trying to figure out who you are and what you like and how to define yourself in the world.
And then having shown that so perfectly we have the first of several codas where the main character goes back after a long time and revisits the show that was so important to them back in the day and it’s completely different from how they remembered it, both because the memory was old and everything felt different and because it played such an outsized important role in their life and watching it later just inherently could never life up to that memory.
Also, obviously, I appreciated the obvious Buffy-ness of The Pink Opaque. Duh.
I appreciated Joan Schoenbrun’s first feature We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, but this is a major step forward and I’m really looking forward to what they’re going to do next.
Thanks to all two of you still reading for sticking with me through a ridiculously protracted posting schedule. I just checked and I’m actually right now up to the same number of movies at this point in 2025 as for all of 2024 so I’l try not to draw it out as long next year….
Congratulations, it’s a movie that you’ve never heard of and that’s almost impossible for you to watch! Hooray!
So I have to actually get into the technicalities here – to be able to watch this damn movie you have to go to a Japanese site (https://roadstead.io/ – it apparently has an English version now but didn’t when I rented) and rent the movie by getting a loan of its limited NFT from some rando who owns it….yeah, really, it’s an impressive series of hoops.
Normally of course I would say the hell with that, but a new movie from Kiyoshi Kurosawa (who wrote and directed my beloved Pulse and the excellent Cure) is one of the very few occasions where I would dare it, and man this was just made for me.
A man teaches a cooking class. One of his students begins to complain that he can hear a tone that sounds like a chime and is giving him messages. Events transpire
A haunting horror-esque mystery that is never actually explained; I have a theory that feels right to me, but I can’t swear to it. There are so many details – my rental lasted for a period of time not a number of views so I rewatched it a few times to see what I could pick up. Eventually I had to stop but I was still noticing new things each time.
I really wish this was more widely available because I think it’s just awesome. Rather short (45 minutes) but a complete movie, so it’s easy to get through but difficult to get a handle on. If this sounds at all interesting to you it will be worth your time to go get it and I’m pretty sure that I didn’t get any computer viruses from my experience….
First off let me just say that the space separating the top three movies this year is a flimsy and fragile thing – ask me tomorrow and this might well be #1. It took me a long time just to try to order these last movies.
Incredible star-making turns from both Glen Powell and Adria Arjona – although his career seems to have taken off much more than hers, they are both flaming-star great in this. I finished this desperate to watch more things that they were in and I very much look forward to continuing in that quest.
Linklater’s writing and direction are both top-notch here, balancing the humor of the fake hit setups with the danger of his, um, side hustle and the sexiness of their developing relationship. And boy howdy is this a sexy movie, not in a gross 15 year old way or even in a Fatal Attraction / Basic Instinct fashion.
Almost certainly the most pure fun I’ve had watching a movie in 2024. Really really great.
Just a perfect little movie. Nothing monumental, nothing that makes it stand out and make lists of the Top 100 movies of the 2000s (for example), but everything is just RIGHT.
Start with the best David Mamet script possible – sharp and witty but with heart and without some of the most egregious Mametisms that draw too much attention to themselves and take you out of the film. Then the entire cast is impeccable – William H, Macy, Sarah Jessica Parker, Charles Dunning and Patti LuPone, even Alec Baldwin is perfect as the pretty-yikes cad character.
But obviously the real key is my guy Philip Seymour Hoffman. Amazingly (or not I suppose) he plays great in a role that I’m not used to seeing him in – the shy ingenue writer who needs to figure out whether he can deal with these Hollywood crazies and what to do about this nice woman who seems interested.
It’s hardly a breakthrough or anything, but it’s just a prime example of its form. Funny and sweet and just nice.
I’m around 80% sure that understand the plot in full with all of the twists, turns, flashbacks, and reveals, but while normally that would be annoying in this particular instance it didn’t bother me at all. It actually kind of multiplied the effect of the non-stop chaos.
As for that chaos, Korea sure does know how to make a crazy-ass action movie doesn’t it? This kicks off with an extended “kill everyone in this building” sequence and never really slows down from there. I mean, it’s not The Raid: Redemption, let’s be reasonable, but it’s a whole lotta fun.
#5: Anatome d’une Chute (Anatomy of a Fall) (2023)
Tense not-technically-a-thriller is fascinating in a bunch of different ways – I’m still not sure of what happened with respect to the murder / accident, the French legal system was bizarre to watch (although arguably more sensible than ours), I’m not sure if the son truly believes his ultimate testimony or if he just decided on the outcome he wanted, and overall I just enjoyed the unusual feeling of not knowing how this was going to go at any given time.
But the reason why this movie is this far up is Sandra Hüller’s incredible command performance in the lead. You can just feel the depth behind her character’s icy facade and sense how she is processing everything – is she a cold, calculated killer? Driven by buried passions to a sudden act of violence? Not a killer at all, actually? If you know for sure, kindly inform me.
Pretty sure this is the highest-ranking movie in the history of doing these lists that I am NOT going to recommend that anyone see.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s great – so well done, masterful horror – but OH MY FUCKING GOD do you not want to have seen this. Trust me.
Look….a couple of times in the movie characters use the somewhat trite line of “God is dead.” But in this movie I’m pretty sure that they mean it literally. Like, there was a loving God, but that God is dead and gone now. Probably murdered. Because, man, the stuff that happens in this movie goes beyond casting doubt on such things. It’s just definite. God is dead, dude.
There were multiple times when I was just starting to wonder if they were going to go there when WHOMP they were right there in the middle of it. So yeah, if you’re a true sicko or if you need to be a completist about seeing all the best horror movies (because this is going to be on some lists) then sure, but don’t say you weren’t warned.
#7: Late Night With the Devil (2024)
Hooray for original horror that doesn’t make you want to gouge your own soul out!
Delightfully tense thriller that has you on the edge of your seat – you know that something is going to go horribly wrong, you just don’t know what. And there are plenty of candidates and ways that it could happen, too. Everything set up, even things that you don’t realize are part of the set up, pays off nicely in the end.
Never trifle with forces that you don’t understand, kids!
Huzzah! Yes, I haven’t completely forgotten. Good for me, etc etc.
Onward!
#10: Election (1999)
One of the best recent(ish) political films while also being an incredibly funny observational comedy. It also spoke to me via the Broderick character who cannot disconnect his life from the high school where he teaches – he wants to teach but he also cannot stop viewing himself as a participant in the life of the school that is actually run by the students. He really, truly should not care who wins the school election. It has no bearing on his life or his job. But in part because of that (although really because of the other plotline in the movie, which also, um, involves a high schooler) his entire life is destroyed. Be a grown up dude.
But anyway, just an extremely funny movie, mostly by having funny characters and an excellent starring performance from Witherspoon.
#9: Saltburn (2023)
I liked this more than pretty much anyone else, and the final scene is one of my favorites of the year. If you’re going to sell your soul, you may as well enjoy it you know?
This is more or less a vampire movie without any literal vampires, but it has the gothic feel and the sensual omnivorousness of a vampire movie, as well as the overall ever-present doom brought on them all from inviting this outsider inside.
I did feel a little betrayed by the penultimate scene where they spelled everything out in case you weren’t paying attention at all and that knocked the movie out of consideration for the top spot, but this was so well produced and acted and mostly original, just a world of fun. You know, as long as you don’t need to have a decent person to root for.
I figured that this would be a decent time-killer and boy was I surprised – this thing is nonstop tension and you never really know exactly where it’s going (I mean, it’s an Omen movie, you have some idea, but you don’t know exactly what and how and when and who, etc). I worry that this ranking is overrated because it beat my expectations by so much, but it was a really good time.
#15: MadS (2024)
Frickin’ WILD, man. Totally original beyond the basics of the premise, which is essentially a one-shot (not really but in that style) of an outbreak….of…..zombies? Maybe? Something like that? I love it when a movie doesn’t explain things beyond what the characters would actually know and these people largely don’t even know what the hell is happening right next to them let alone how and why it’s happening. But this is nonstop crazy did-that-just-happen?
#14: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar / Poison / The Rat Catcher / The Swan (2024)
At this point you either like Wes Anderson or you don’t and I’m heavily on the side of like. So I found these Dahl featurettes in his customary style to be a pure delight. The only question was how to consider them within the rankings, but because they all came out at the same time on Netflix I think I can consider it an anthology. I think Poison is my favorite.
#13: Joint Security Area (2000)
Park Chan-wook’s breakout film, this is one of the vanishingly few examples of it working when we start with the big event (or fallout therefrom) and then go back in time to see how it happened. Just an incredible cast too, as the three leads would all somehow go on to even better movies – Memories of Murder (Song Kang-ho), Lady Vengeance (Lee Yeong-ae), and I Saw the Devil (Lee Byung-hun – also the Front Man in Squid Game). I’m deliberately not saying anything about the plot because I bet y’all haven’t seen this one and I don’t want to give the plot away.
#12: A Most Wanted Man (2014)
Classic Le Carre adaptation – morally ambiguous people doing morally ambiguous things for potentially good reasons in the midst of a complicated plot with shifting alliances. I really miss Philip Seymour Hoffman. I actually only allow myself to watch his remaining movies infrequently.
#11: Booksmart (2019)
Look, we all have types of movies that we find particularly appealing ok, we don’t have to make a big thing about it all the time.
Also I’ve been a Kaitlyn Dever fan from the Justified days, even though she does have some Last of Us related ‘splainin to do. And Beanie Feldstein is also great. So there. Shut up. You don’t know me.
Pointless Blatherings 