A good year for movies, one shooting after another

The bean counters might say otherwise, but 2025 was a good year for movies. Filmmakers working in and out of the studio system managed to make bold, personal, wildly imaginative and singular works. Some of them even broke through to the mainstream — how extraordinary that “Sinners” is among the highest earning of the year in North America, alongside all those “safe” sequels, reboots and known brands? Most, however, are more likely destined for cult classic status.

Hollywood as we know it is undergoing seismic changes, with yet another studio, Warner Bros., staring down a possible merger. This an industry that’s always under threat, though, and always seems to figure something out. If anything, 2025 was also a year in which audiences showed that they still crave the theatrical experience, whether it was to shout “chicken jockey” at the screen or, despite all logic and polling otherwise, help “KPop Demon Hunters” unofficially top the box office charts two months after hitting Netflix.

More than a few greats were woefully underseen as well. But in a year which also saw the deaths of cinema icons like David Lynch, Robert Redford, Diane Keaton and Gene Hackman, it’s good to remember that box office and awards are just temporary measurements. The films are the things that last.

Here are the MDT/Associated Press picks for the best movies of 2025:

1. “One Battle After Another”

One Battle After Another [AP Photo]

Paul Thomas Anderson took us on ride of the year with “One Battle After Another,” which is so many things — a clever farce, a frenetic thrill ride, a poignant drama about single parenting, a buddy comedy — it’s nearly impossible to describe compellingly or coherently. The performances are excellent from lead to smallest supporting character, the vision is ambitious and singular, and the payoff is a great time and a reminder of an experience that can only really happen at the movies.

2. “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”

Mary Bronstein turned her own domestic nightmare into a raw and surreal cinematic expression of maternal exhaustion and madness in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.” Anchored by an utterly fearless performance from Rose Byrne, Bronstein’s film is an exposed nerve come to life, existential dread manifested. Plus Conan O’Brien and A$AP Rocky. (Available for digital rental)

3. “Marty Supreme”

Marty Supreme [AP Photo]

Great filmmakers can make anything exciting, like, say, the adventures of a broke table tennis player, and true SOB Marty Mauser, in mid-century New York. Josh Safdie and his cowriter and editor Ronald Bronstein (Mary’s husband) built an enormously entertaining, white-knuckle spectacle of ambition and ego giving us the defining Timothée Chalamet performance we’ve been waiting for.

4. “Sentimental Value”

Sentimental Value [AP Photo]

The ghosts of the past and things unsaid linger in cracks and floorboards of the quiet home at the heart of Joachim Trier’s latest, a textured and mature portrait of family, grief, forgiveness and the loneliness of a life in the arts. With a moving turn from Stellan Skarsgård as an acclaimed filmmaker trying to reconnect with the daughters he cast aside for his career, it’s also surprisingly funny in its deft exploration of how difficult it can be to express love to those who matter most, even for artists.

5. “The Naked Gun”

The Naked Gun [[AP Photo]

Finally, a great studio comedy and in the most unlikely of packages: A self-consciously shameless reboot/sequel/remake that stands on its own through Akiva Schaffer’s total commitment to absolute silliness. Only “Hamnet” elicited more tears. (Streaming on Paramount+)

6. “Sinners”

Sinners [AP Photo]

Another deeply personal, go-for-broke film that (in this case) only Ryan Coogler could have made, “Sinners” is the bluesy, vampire, gangster musical we never knew we needed. Vibrantly filmed and told, with an extraordinary ensemble cast (and two Michael B. Jordans), its surface pleasures alone are worth celebrating, but every frame is also imbued with history and symbolism adding up to one of the most profound and original thrillers to grace our movie screens.

7. “Blue Moon”

What extraordinarily good company Ethan Hawke’s Lorenz Hart is in Richard Linklater’s delightful and melancholy chamber drama, one of two excellent films in 2025 from the director, along with the French New Wave ode “Nouvelle Vague.” From the first monologue at Sardi’s the night his former songwriting partner, Richard Rodgers, is opening “Oklahoma!,” Hart’s wit is warming to the soul. I’d have sat by the bar with him (as “Blue Moon” makes you feel you’re doing) for hours more.

8. “It Was Just an Accident”

It Was Just An Accident [AP Photo]

Tense, devastating and even a darkly funny, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi sets up an enthralling moral conundrum in his first film since his own imprisonment. What does justice look like after imprisonment and torture? What should they do to the man who did it? How can they be sure they even have the right guy?

9. “The Voice of Hind Rajab”

Kaouther Ben Hania also confronted modern atrocities using the language of cinematic storytelling, and the real audio of a young girl’s call for help, in “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” a shattering document of the Israel-Hamas war, set entirely inside the dispatch center of the Palestine Red Crescent Society rescue service.

10. “Urchin,” “The Chronology of Water” and “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight”

Three wonderful films this year came from familiar faces, all making their feature debuts. Harris Dickinson channeled the social realism of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh to tell a compassionate but clear-eyed story about the cycles of homelessness in “Urchin.” Kristen Stewart proved to be as bold behind the camera as she is in front of it with “The Chronology of Water,” an utterly electric and alive memory piece of trauma and inspiration. And Embeth Davidtz, drawing on her own experience, confronted a thorny story about the Rhodesian bush war fearlessly and with grace.

Special Mentions: “Hedda,” “My Father’s Shadow,” “The Secret Agent,” “The Testament of Ann Lee,” “The Ballad of Wallis Island,” “The Mastermind,” “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” “Splitsville,” “Sorry, Baby,” “Presence,” “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl.” Jake Coyle, MDT/AP