2025 saw an uncommonly good slate of film releases from major studios. While they coexisted with typically underwhelming work, some of 2025’s best films came from the Hollywood studio system. I’ve not yet been able to see some of my most anticipated releases of the year, including “Magellan” and “Resurrection,” but I still have plenty of favorites to recommend.
I usually avoid ranking lists like these, but there’s no doubt in my mind that “28 Years Later” is the best movie of 2025. It’s an exciting return to form for director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland, who’ve crafted a film that’s both a terrifying zombie movie and incisive commentary on the paranoia and isolationism that defines contemporary British politics. That sounds heady, but Garland and Boyle’s presentation is accessible, blending tender character moments with heart-pounding action sequences. It’s a strange film, but not so strange that it’s hostile or unsatisfying.
Another major release suffused with humanism is Rian Johnson’s “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.” It may be a bold take, but I think it’s the best of the three “Knives Out” movies yet. Josh O’Connor’s performance as Father Jud Duplenticy is beautiful, and the film’s ruminations on the importance of faith, the corrosion of religion in America and the rot eating away at many of our nation’s most tight-knit communities are deeply affecting. On top of all that, it’s a very funny movie, as we’ve come to expect from the “Knives Out” series and its sequels. It’s also by far the best mystery in the series thus far, trading on well-worn tropes without feeling generic.
While “Wake Up Dead Man” has plenty of great comedic moments, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” is my pick for the funniest movie of the year. It’s a clever contemporary rework of Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland,” a hilarious and incisive satire on the threat of fascism and the inadequacies of disorganized revolutionary insurgencies. It’s also animated by a throughline of familial love that keeps it from feeling too bleak and adds a dimension to its comedy beyond pure gallows humor.
“Avatar: Fire and Ash” is the biggest and best Hollywood spectacle of 2025. I adored “The Way of Water,” the previous installment of the “Avatar” series, and a lot of the best parts of that movie carry over to “Fire and Ash.” James Cameron has always had an unprecedented talent for awe-inspiring visuals and earnest storytelling, and “Fire and Ash” packs in what feels like five hours’ worth of Cameron’s greatest hits into its three-hour runtime. It’s almost exhausting, but also utterly exhilarating. There are a few transcendent action setpieces, and the evil Colonel Miles Quaritch and his partner in love and crime Varang are two of the most entertaining villains in recent blockbuster memory.
Finally, there’s Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia,” which confounds me more than the rest of the movies on the list. I can’t say I wholeheartedly love it, but its contradictions and deficiencies fascinate me. I love Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone’s lead performances, and the final plot twist adds a really interesting dimension to the movie’s dissection of the conspiracy theorist’s mind. However, I hesitate to embrace it fully because of the way that Aidan Delbis’ character Don is written. Delbis is fantastic in the movie, but his character falls prey to common issues that I have with autistic supporting characters in film.
