The Big 2025 Film Post

My favorite films released this past year!

I’ve been writing end-of-year film lists for years— 13 years, to be exact, ever since I started obsessively cataloguing the films I saw on an Excel spreadsheet. First I would just list the! big! list! on Facebook, then Instagram/Twitter, and now here. This past year I saw 187 films. This list represents my favorites from those released in the United States in the past year. I remain somewhere between annoyed and skeptical re: Letterboxd, so please do not ask (no judgement, it just isn’t for me). If you have friends who would like to see this list, please feel free to pass it on! And if you enjoy the list, feel free to hit that like button (as the kids say), and share in whatever social media platform you prefer! It’s always appreciated. And let me know what you think about some of these if you’ve seen them, or after! xo-J

1. Sentimental Value - Joachim Trier

I did not like The Worst Person in the World— to be honest I found it quite sexist and cynical— but I love the actress Renate Reinsve, and loved other films by this director (i.e. Oslo, 31 August). I was so touched by this (otherwise, well-trodden) narrative about a bad and absent father (Stellan John Skarsgård, at his sociopathic peak) who is also a filmmaker, wanting to make a film starring his estranged actress daughter. Sentimental Value is somehow both gentle and intense, Scandinavian minimalist but charged with blood and fire, without the slightest hint of melodrama. When a profoundly hate-able Dakota Fanning is added to the list as an American starlet, a dry, cynical humor abounds. A recipe for perfection if I’ve ever seen one!

2. Jeunes Mères - Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Translated as Young Mothers in English, this film by the Dardenne brothers is definitely my favorite of theirs. The Belgian Dardennes are known for making dry, complicated, difficult-to-watch films about people in the throes of poverty. I’ve previously found them a little too… grim? Dark? Lars von Trier, with less sociopathy, and more sociology? Young Mothers treads ground already covered with other films by theirs such as L’Enfant and Two Days One Night, but somehow has so much more heart. As its title indicates, the film is about young (usually teen) mothers who are living temporarily in a maternity shelter in Belgium. Some have addiction, some are in the midst of intense domestic abuse, some have mental health problems, most are deeply impoverished, some have absolutely insane family members that prevent them from easily living in the world. A beautiful, tender family abolition movie that is not against gestation. Leftist family abolitionists who want to feel intensely, this film is resoundingly for you!

3. Marty Supreme - Josh Safdie

I did not want to like this film as much as I did. For one, I have trouble with the Safdies (let’s not even get into their politics). I did not like Uncut Gems. I spent the entirety of that viewing experience screaming under a blanket, and it didn’t help that it was the last film I watched before all hell broke loose in March 2020 (the next day I found out that classes were moved online for the remainder of the semester). I also think Timothée Chalamet is beyond overrated. It is to my utmost annoyance that I admit that Marty Supreme is fun as hell. It is the story of an American Jewish kid from New York who tries to make it big on the international stage by playing professional ping pong, but can’t seem to make enough money for the international trips he needs to make to compete. Is it a prequel to Uncut Gems? Is it, basically, all of what it means to be American in a nutshell (the stupid gusto! the big dreams! did I mention the absolute stupidity?) This is a popcorn flick if I’ve ever seen one, and a good one at that.

4. Bugonia - Yorgos Lanthimos

After Kinds of Kindness, I thought I was done with Lanthimos, although The Lobster and Killing of a Sacred Deer are some of my very favorite films. Bugonia is everything Kinds of Kindness wished it could be, with a fun magical twist (no spoilers, I promise! Except… well, the ending kind of makes the film). Emma Stone is a high powered CEO who is kidnapped by two hapless idiots (well, technically one idiot and one mastermind) and forced to admit to a conspiracy theory as hanus as anything on fourchan. It is a film that tests the limits of class hatred, solidarity, skepticism, and liberal handwringing. It is also beautifully shot, and deeply funny. In all? A fucking good time. Go see this.

5. The Secret Agent - Kleber Mendonça Filho

This film would have been higher up on this list if it wasn’t quite so long, and a tad confusing. But boy is it prescient, and beautiful. It makes a gorgeous pair with the Salles film below, as two films emerging in a post-Bolsonaro moment in Brazil, both of which speak to the horrors of fascism in the 1970s. In The Secret Agent, a man is on the run from the government, for what seems like the most miniscule act of resistance against the regime, if anything. I’ve been a fan of Mendonça Filho since Bacurau and Aquarius before that, and this is his version of a political heist film-cum-period-piece, sans heist, but with all that gorgeous shot-on-film, summer in Brazil in the 1970s, rich earthiness aesthetic. Plus, a jump into the importance of archival work in the present day! Also there is enough cinephilia to appease any film nerd. If this film was a smell it would be fruit, tropical sweat, cassette dust, and burning celluloid.

6. No Other Choice - Park Chan-wook

I’ve liked all of Park Chan-wook’s films I’ve seen, with some gradations (who doesn’t like Oldboy? And I’m a Cyborg but That’s Ok?) I even loved Stoker and Thirst, his two takes on the vampire flick. No Other Choice brings him back to his roots in stylish, violent absurdity, pre-Handmaiden (which I also loved!). The film participates in the Bugonia-adjacent critique of capitalism, embodying a somewhat-surreal parallel universe in which paper engineering is the modern-day tech boom. Our protagonist loses his job, and, feeling unable to keep up his luxurious lifestyle (a glamorous tennis-playing wife! Two kids, including a mostly-mute cello prodigy! two perfect golden retrievers! a completely unnecessary greenhouse and bonsai-trimming hobby!), decides to cut down the competition to attain a high-paying managerial position in a different company. Sexy, slick, ridiculous, prescient. Will leave you hooting and hollering. Also, weirdly, a great date film? See in a theatre if at all possible

7. It Was Just an Accident - Jafar Panahi

Another film about fascism, in the year of our lord 2025! (Do you think the higher-ups will ever get the picture?) Like the Brazilian films on this list, Panahi’s film starts with the premise of our age: that the Right-wing totalitarian dictatorship won, and leftists are given the choice to pursue a quasi-vigilante justice or safely hide in the guise of alleged normalcy. The brilliance of this film, following a man on a quest to avenge his own torture, is that it immediately places the audience in a moral quandary. Like so many media events of the last two years (insert autobiographical aside here), this film asks the question: what is the last frontier in our critique of violence? Can vengeance ever be ethical? What if it is to save your own life, and the life of those you love? Also, featuring three very ghostly dogs. Seeing this film sparked a very random (and very New York) discussion with a stranger on the MTA, which is how you know it’s good. The last act is a showstopper. Watch it!

8. Boys Go to Jupiter - Julian Glander

Most people who are film buffs have probably heard of the earlier films on this list. Probably, Glander’s bizarre, psychedelic animated film didn’t make the cut, since it only played a week or two in the middle of the summer— hardly an exciting time for film for anyone besides Marvel and DC bros. This is the only animated film on this list (no way am I watching Zootopia 2 copaganda), but it is one hundred percent worth your while. Boys Go to Jupiter features comedians and pop culture icons from at least 3 generations: Janeane Garofalo, Julio Torres, Tavi Genvinson, Chris Fleming, and musician Miya Folick (the film features some of her music!!), amongst many others. Animated in a psychedelic and nostalgic early 2010s style made through 3D modeling software Blendr, the film vaguely follows gig worker Billy 5000, embodying Gen Alpha and some of Gen Z’s hustle mindset, as he tries to make $5000 in a short amount of time. A strange shapeshifting alien appears, and Billy becomes enamored with a hippie, vaguely leftist heiress to the orange factory that wields disturbing power over their grimy Florida town. I saw this fully sober and somehow left high out of my mind. Watch with snacks.

9. Secret Mall Apartment - Jeremy Workman

The first documentary on a list that contains many documentaries! Secret Mall Apartment is exactly what is sounds like: a secret apartment that crustpunks took over in a secluded corner of a Providence, RI mall for (spoiler alert) FOUR YEARS?? How did they do it?? And why?? The film answers these questions, and so much more. At heart, it a reflection on anarchism, gentrification, performance, the commons, and art-as-life, with extremely comforting slacker Gen X vibes. It truly made me want to become a squatter. My favorite part of the film includes a recreation of the apartment in a modern-day studio, with every detail lovingly reconstructed, in the vein of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal but with deep love instead of sarcastic critique.

10. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life - Laura Piani

The only romantic comedy on this list! (Unsurprisingly, it is European). Piani’s film follows a struggling writer who works at the Parisian Shakespeare & Co bookstore and generally has a pretty ok existence: she has a series of unfortunate love affairs that go nowhere, but her job and coworkers are lovely, and her sister and nibling provide her with comfort and fun… until her coworker (and possible love interest?? hmmmm) applies to a Jane Austen-themed writing residency in the UK. The problem? She can’t write a word, and the relatives of Austen who control the residency itself are annoying douchebags. Or so it seems?? I love this movie because the romantic bits are self-aware, and suffused with a sincere and profound love of literature. And I don’t even like Jane Austen! Let’s say, notes of Crossing Delancey but with a distinct London-Paris casually cool braininess.

11. I’m Still Here - Walter Salles

Like the other Brazilian film on this list (and technically the film was released in 2024 but 2025 in the US), Salles’s film contends with the everyday ramifications of a fascist regime. Specifically: what does a family do when one of its members is jailed by the fascist dictatorship, and then disappears? I saw this in January and it seemed strangely prescient. I kept saying to my friend K: this is our time! Today! The film, like many of this list, is profoundly resonant. When the era of progressive challenge and leftist uprising feels so distant, how does one fight back? Is there a “fighting back” in the sphere of the everyday? The film is lower than The Secret Agent just because it feels like it hinges on a little bit too much faith in the legal industry in the conclusion, but what it lacks in experimentation it makes up for in documentarian force (the film is based on a real-life person, and features recreations of family photographs and archives!)

12. Die My Love - Lynne Ramsay

Ramsay is known for intense films that could vaguely be called family abolitionist. There’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, which might have single-handedly terrified me out of wanting children for at least a decade since it came out. Die My Love is about a woman (Jennifer Lawrence) suffering from post-partum, but in a way that makes her, still, oddly a wonderful mother— she has no problem with her baby, as she constantly says— but she is filled with a deep animosity towards other people, especially her (frankly, dipshit) boyfriend (a drunken fuckboi Robert Pattison) and their larger family/community. The film begins with the two of them moving from NY to the middle-of-nowhere Montana, where a relative left the boyfriend a ramshackle cabin. Ramsay’s film here is the first of several on this list that fall into the “empathizing with crazy mommy” genre, but it’s also resolutely feminist. Tully meets Terrence Malick? Gorgeous shots of wheat abound, and the music is simply stunning. For the fucked up folk music crowd, for sure (S deemed it “Jalopy-coded,” for those in the know!)

13. Nouvelle Vague - Richard Linklater

If anyone has ever seen, and enjoyed, a French new wave film, this will be impossible to hate (and believe me, I tried). Like others on this list, it is an ode to the bizarre beauty of cinema, and the lengths the craziest of us will go to make it. I am not a fan of Jean-Luc Godard (despite writing a book chapter, an article, and a third of my dissertation on the man), and yet I was quite taken by this biographical tale chronicling the making of Breathless. I don’t love Breathless itself, especially compared to Truffaut and Varda’s films from the same era, but it was great to see some of the most famous tales of the film’s creation brought to life. I also loved how much attention the film gave to women film critics from the era! A little surprising! (But it needed more Varda. Films always need more Varda). And I think the portrayal of Jean Seberg could have included a lot more about her radical left politics! (She was blacklisted! And a friend of the Black Panthers!) But, let’s be honest: I’ve never seen a Linklater film I didn’t like.

14. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You - Mary Bronstein

The list’s second contribution to the crazy mommy genre, this film definitely shares spiritual ties with the cringe fest of Safdie’s Marty Supreme. And that’s neither surprising, nor an accident: Bronstein is in the member of the Safdie Brothers’s inner circle, appearing in some of their films, and married to a co-writer of some of their films. The film is notable because it a crazy mommy film that does not show the child itself— a brilliant rhetorical move, as it aids identification with the mother in a much more visceral way (although the cuteness of the child is constantly discussed). The film is about a mother of a child struggling with pediatric feeding disorder, in which a child simply will not eat. Watching this film led to a really horrifying internet rabbit hole that I truly do not recommend. Anyway, at some point a giant gaping hole appears in a ceiling, and strange events ensue. Featuring an incredible performance by A$AP Rocky!!

15. In Excess - Melissa Langer

I’ve discussed this film elsewhere on this Stack and continue to believe it’s the year’s most formally inventive documentary. It is an archive-based reflection on excess, but actually, on waste. And it’s mostly about Philadelphia! The filmmakers received a grant to use footage captured by Philly-area sanitation centers. It also includes archival footage of an insane event from several decades ago in which Philadelphia literally deposited a mountain of waste onto an African city. The powerful political and eco-critical message without a hint of didacticism, and the perfect example of a degrowth movie. Also, it is just an extremely cool and deeply hypnotic watch. See it if you can!

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Honorable mentions: Our Land - Orban Wallace; Folktales - Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady; Sorry, Baby - Eva Victor; Tendaberry - Haley Elizabeth Anderson; The Encampments - Michael T. Workman and Kei Pritsker; Lost for Words - Hannah Papacek Harper; Eephus - Carson Lund