I usually start these year-end lists with some perfunctory and entirely unnecessary recap of my feelings of the previous year. Not this year. Let’s move on. Our tomorrow must be better than our yesterday.
(The movies were OK).
Honorable Mentions: Sorry, Baby; The Secret Agent; Black Bag; Souleymane’s Story; The Ugly Stepsister; Marty Supreme; On Becoming a Guinea Fowl; Wake Up Dead Man; Eephus; The Mastermind; Hamnet; Caught by the Tides; Weapons; The Naked Gun; Left-Handed Girl
10. KPop Demon Hunters
I arrived very late to Kpop Demon Hunters, the surprise cultural sensation of 2025. And the film lives up to its reputation. Watching it, I couldn’t help but reminisce about the formative animated features of my childhood. My cynical, adult remove from all things wholesome and feel-good makes it so I cannot enjoy a film like Kpop Demon Hunters unabashed—I am far too abashed for my own good, perhaps. Comparing the film to earlier affective experiences, though, I could imagine an alternate history where this stacks up admirably to films I love because I have nostalgia for them. Demon Hunters will become so-called “canonical” because of young people’s future nostalgia, and I think that that is deserved. Also, this is easily the best original music in a film this year, and Sinners came out this year.
9. The Ballad of Wallis Island
The Ballad of Wallis Island has this deceptive Sundance indie vibe. It did, in fact, play last year’s Sundance Film Festival. But while some Sundance indies can sort-of swim lazily in a shallow pool, the relationships created in Tom Basden and Tim Key’s script are breezily constructed while still coming across as lived-in. Also, Tim Key is fantastic playing a distinctly bittersweet comic relief character.
8. Frankenstein
Of all the enduring tales of the monstrous Other, none resonate with me more than Frankenstein. And Guillermo del Toro’s romanticism is a harmonious match for the source material. Del Toro uses Shelley’s novel as a magnifying lens to explode his major preoccupations. This allows Jacob Elordi’s Monster an airport of runway on which to explore the contours of isolation and desire. From what I gather, reception on this was all over the map, but I found a lot to latch onto with this soulful piece.
7. Reflection in a Dead Diamond
I have a lot of affection for Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet’s grindhouse genre pastiche, and their latest is their best yet. Reflection in a Dead Diamond takes on the pulp spy film with a delirious nonlinearity and a self-aware flare. The film is airy in a way that makes me think it won’t make many year-end lists. But I can’t deny my enjoyment of the psychotronic interrogation of the image of the debonair spy. Reflection in a Dead Diamond squares with perfect angles to fit into my taste profile.
6. One Battle After Another
While it didn’t floor me as it did many, and while I find aspects of its first act to be unbalanced, the highs of Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another are very high. There are sequences in this that are among Anderson’s best work, and, as a purely formal exercise, it is fairly astonishing. And Benicio Del Toro gives the best supporting performance of the year.
5. No Other Choice
Park Chan-wook has reached a glorious point in his career. He has always been a fantastic storyteller with a skill for deliberate, needling plotting. With his last few films, his formalism has reached a zenith that arguably places him among the best of them. The Handmaiden reaches a level of alchemy between the two that Park may never surpass, but Decision to Leave and No Other Choice are both easily watchable while also being dense with ideas and beautiful moments. Grim and funny and sad and bitingly satirical, No Other Choice is simply very, very good.
4. It Was Just an Accident
Jafar Panahi’s life is as fascinating as his films, and (in true Iranian New Wave fashion) the two share enough connective tissue that it is difficult to watch his films without consideration of the larger real-world conditions at play. It Was Just an Accident—made in secret as most of Panahi’s films have been—is a response to Panahi’s political imprisonment in 2022, where he was denied legal representation for seven months and often kept blindfolded while under interrogation. Panahi’s films are fantastic and urgent, but It Was Just an Accident stands above as something uniquely emotionally complex.
3. Friendship
Friendship would only sit fonder in my mind if its star, comedian Tim Robinson, had not outdone himself this year with The Chair Company, the absurdist mystery series Robinson co-created with Zach Kanin. The show channels the hanging-on-by-just-a-thread absurdity of Robinson’s comic persona best. The film, meanwhile, taps into the darkness inside a specific image of middle-aged, middle American man. It is exquisitely dark and extremely funny. We need more feel-bad comedies in this feel-bad world.
2. Sentimental Value
I feel it is rare that a film is the “whole package,” as it were. I can admire good elements in bad movies, and I can love movies that have a few glaring flaws. But sometimes a film presents itself as so confidently constructed on all fronts that it is difficult to find fault in it. Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value comes close to the whole package, perhaps the closest of any film this year. From design, to framing, to editing, to performance, to character, to narrative structure, the film achieves high marks.
1. Sinners
Enough has been said about Ryan Coogler’s Sinners already. From the myopic and entirely misplaced discourse about its finances to its much-deserved praise, the film has already spoken for itself and been spoken about, a lot. I’m content to simply mark it the superior film of the year and move on. Also, this is easily the best music in a film this year, and Kpop Demon Hunters came out this year … hang on. Why does this sound familiar?
As always, thanks for reading!
—Alex Brannan (Letterboxd)
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