2025 marked yet another year of massive change in the film industry. For the first time in over a decade, only one superhero movie managed to barely crack the top ten grossing movies of the year. Outside of pure dollars and cents, some of the year’s most talked about films were original concepts and not franchise entries. Still, the business continues to inch toward uncertainty as a legacy studio appears poised to end as we know it and artificial intelligence threatens to change the way movies are made forever.
Still, the ability of films like Sinners, Marty Supreme, and One Battle After Another to connect with general audiences in a way that non-comic book, adult focused movies haven’t in years feels like a shift in movie culture even if we’re unsure of what that will ultimately look like Below is our ranking of the best releases we watched this year.
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One Battle After Another
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Sinners
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Weapons
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It Was Just an Accident
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Marty Supreme
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No Other Choice
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Rental Family
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The Secret Agent
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A House of Dynamite
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Left-Handed Girl
- Magazine Dreams
- Warfare
- Wake Up Dead Man
- Frankenstein
- F1: The Movie
- Nouvelle Vague
- Materialists
- Avatar: Fire and Ash
- Bugonia
- Companion
- The Long Walk
- Presence
- Wicked: For Good
- Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
- Train Dreams
- Drop
- Die My Love
- Hamnet
- Christy
- Sentimental Value
- Ballerina
- Heart Eyes
- Black Bag
- The Naked Gun
- Caught Stealing
- Jay Kelly
- The Testament of Ann Lee
- Together
- Highest 2 Lowest
- The Monkey
- Death of a Unicorn
- Ballad of a Small Player
- Splitsville
- The Smashing Machine
- Eddington
- Kiss of the Spider Woman
- Wolf Man
- Blue Moon
- Sorry, Baby
- Mickey 17
- Good Boy
- Him
- After The Hunt
- If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
- The Old Guard 2
- Hurry Up Tomorrow
- Anemone
