Our Favorite Movies of 2025

Movies are back, and so, our butts return to the theater seats (and our comfy couches, thanks to streaming.) This year's had a lot of exciting returns to the big screen and a lot of great new things to explore, and as a team full of film junkies, we're excited to share our favorites from this past year. Let's jump in.

One Battle After Another

I don't think there is a movie that speaks as loudly to me as One Battle After Another this year. A post modern fairytale where the revolutionary violence of the 60s and 70s still exists in modern America and the racist and governmental overstepping feels a little too lose to reality. OBAA expertly blends everything that Paul Thomas Anderson does best and adds some new, breathtaking tricks. Never has there been a PTA movie that is so exhilarating and tense. It's also easily the most digestible PTA, for better and worse. I see all the seams, like the revolutionaries at the start of the film fighting for a nebulous idea of freedom (although I would argue that with the consistent throughline of immigration, it's pretty clear what they're fighting for) or the more fantastical moments (the secret society of deranged racists, the ending, etc), but they all come together as an incredible film. - Julian

Weapons

Zach Cregger is a comedian at heart, having started with The Whitest Kids U’Know, so you know Weapons is rife with dark comedy. When a classroom of children disappears, save one kind hearted boy, the town devolves into sadness as they maneuver through what happened. Cregger wrote this in the shadow of his TWKU'K cohort Trevor Moore's tragic passing and it acts as a really great mediation on grief, alcoholism, making sense of senseless things. I know that may sound like a way to excuse the enormous machine gun that is randomly inserted in the sky of one character’s dream (something that Cregger admits to not knowing what it means), but I think that's the point. You see something and want to attribute meaning to it in order tp move forward with whatever tragedy is weighing on you only for the resolution to be something as absurd and frightening as a clownish witch (portrayed fantastically by Amy Madigan). Or something. - Julian

War of the Worlds

JK, this really did in fact suck. -Julian

Blue Moon

Richard Linklater's hang out story of Lorenz Hart’s late night at the bar on the evening of his former writing partner Richard Rodgers first play with new collaborator Oscar Hammerstein is as charming as charming gets. But don't go into it expecting real account of how any of these people were. No, far from it which I know has painted the film as trite and dishonest. And I get it, Hart's true life story as a gay man will certainly make for an incredible film someday. But Blue Moon isn't about that, it's more about a troubled man who's just trying to find an out wherever he can.

-Julian 

The Monkey 

This has been the year of some of my favorite filmmakers making two movies. For some it's gone really well (see Steven Soderberg) and for others... they're hitting 50/50. That's not to say I didn't like Osgood Perkins’ Keeper, but The Monkey hit all the right notes for me. It's a twisted and deranged Black comedy about a toy monkey that once it is turned on, causes increasingly hilarious Rube Goldberg machine-like deaths. From Theo James great dual performance as the twin brothers at the heart of the movie to the pitch perfect absurd ending that doesn't stop when it should, The Monkey is just a mean, gnarly little horror film that doesn't care if you like it or not. The Monkey is Perkins obscene idea of a pop movie and I'm here for it. - Julian

Black Bag

If you happen to be a spy caught in a game of cat and mouse and your fellow spy spouse’s life on the line with international consequences, then this movie is for you. And if you're not, it's even more for you!. Soderberg is a master of storytelling and Black Bag is such a wonderfully layered but easy to follow spy thriller that adds a little sexiness to the whole affair. It is the perfect movie for people who watch romantic comedies and think to themselves “if they would just tell each other what is going on. Everything could be fixed”. Because guess what, you're right, it does fix everything. Cate Blanchett and Micahel Fassbender prove that with the portrayal of the perfect spy couple. - Julian

Kumail Nanjiani: Night Thoughts

Sometimes you fall away from something because it stops being good, and sometimes you just turn your attention elsewhere. I used to be a person who listened to a whole lot of standup comedy, and went to quite a few comedy shows, but in recent years, that’s fallen off. And oddly,the group of comedians I’d last been serious followers of - Jonah Ray, Pete Holmes, and Kumail Nanjiani - had all turned their attention to other projects. Nanjiani specifically has been through a whole alternate timeline that involved a lot of working out, an award winning film he co-wrote with his wife, Emily V. Gordon, and a stint with Marvel. But he’s back to standup, his original love, and back in Chicago, the place it all started from him. Even more exciting: it’s like he was never away. Kumail Nanjiani Night Thoughts more than just pop culture/nerd jokes and taking stabs at the arrival of his new abs - it’s insightful comedy coupled with absurdity and an end message that actually makes you want to hug him. That means that if you liked him before, you’ll be right at home, and if you’ve never heard his standup before, you’ll quickly be a convert. Bonus points if you catch feelings for his cat Bagel, who Hulu posthumously honored on the show poster and gave a credit to. - Marielle