My Favorite Movies of 2025

In which I host a superior Oscars ceremony

Another year, another slate of Oscar-nominated movies I’ve mostly ignored, because by and large the Academy tends not to nominate the kind of movies I actually like. I hear this time it’s going to come down to the wire between the virulently reverse racist movie with 16 nominations and [checks notes] the other virulently reverse racist movie with 13 nominations. Oh, the suspense!

The good news is, there were some good movies in 2025, and as we settle in for a winter storm, I’m helpfully putting them all in one place for you. You’re welcome. The full list is reserved for paid readers, but you can read about my personal Best Picture for free. I also wrote two pieces last year on the documentaries We Will Dance Again (about the October 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival) and I Like Me (about John Candy). You can browse more of my film writing here. As always, thanks for visiting this corner of the Internet.

Best Picture: Homebound

Where to watch: Netflix

“Bollywood” is the popular name for Hindi cinema, a portmanteau of “Bombay” and “Hollywood.” As a genre, it’s not taken very seriously. Its chief export is kitschy song-and-dance musicals. But writer-director Neeraj Ghaywan has been quietly working to make India a contender in serious realist cinema. Homebound is not just one of the best foreign films I’ve seen in recent years, but one of the best films, period.

The script is loosely based on a true story, but I recommend going into it as cold as possible, because too much googling will spoil the ending. It’s a coming-of-age story about two best friends, both of whom are struggling to provide for their families in the face of harsh prejudice. Chandan is a Dalit, born on the lowest rung of India’s caste ladder. Shoaib is a Muslim, a distinctly unwelcome minority. Both boys dream of earning police badges and the social status that comes with them. But when dreams wither and die, they must find another way to live.

This movie doesn’t over-explain itself for a Western audience, which is refreshing but might leave viewers a bit confused at times. One running tension is Chandan’s inner struggle over how to identify himself on forms—as a member of a “scheduled” caste, which includes Dalits, or a member of a “regular” caste. Officially, the scheduled castes are eligible for affirmative action under the Indian constitution. The father of that constitution, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, hovers in the background of several scenes as families display his portrait in a place of honor. Chandan keeps checking the “regular” box, ashamed to own his identity. Yet he can’t fool the police administrator who looks right through him with a curl of the lip, casually sneering at those “quota rats.”

None other than Martin Scorsese served as the project’s executive producer and gave Ghaywan script notes, including the wise instruction to “stay with the boys” and resist the temptation to pursue too many side threads. (Watch a touching conversation between them here.) There are a few strong supporting performances, but the boys are indeed the film’s heart and soul—impulsive, imperfect, determined to cheat the hands fate has dealt them. Sometimes a door is closed in their face, sometimes they walk out, head held high. With each humbling test, we slowly begin to see the men they might become, men who might make their exhausted fathers proud.

Among many things I love about this movie is its depiction of male friendship. It’s a very physically affectionate friendship—the boys freely embrace, kiss on the head, and cry together—but there are no sexual undertones. This is increasingly rare in Western films. Maybe it’s easier to depict in a culture where the men are more naturally demonstrative. I’m dancing around spoilers, but there’s an especially pivotal moment that recalls the bond between Frodo and Sam in LOTR (except that unlike Frodo and Sam, the boys are of the same social status).

I wish I’d seen the theatrical cut of the film, which apparently had some scenes that got censored for Netflix at the whim of the Indian government. But the authorities come off looking bad enough to make the point. The final cut was shortlisted for Best International Feature at the Oscars, but it didn’t ultimately earn a nomination, which is a shame. It should have been in the conversation, for acting as well as writing. By a good margin, it’s my best picture of the year.

And now, we turn to various other movies I also liked, organized by some custom categories I just made up.

Best Quirky Melancomedy: The Ballad of Wallis Island

Where to watch: Free on Amazon Prime

Quirky little indie movies tend to be hit or miss for me. They’re either really my thing or really not my thing. The Ballad of Wallis Island is an odd duck, but somehow it’s my thing. It’s hard to summarize, but it’s like a mashup of This is Spinal Tap and Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Like the former, it has some fun at the expense of musicians who are past their prime and a little too high on their own supply. Like the latter, it’s an odd couple comedy piece for a gruff straight man (Tom Basden as Herb McGwyer, our washed-up folk star) and a childlike funny man who absolutely, positively will not shut up (Tim Key as Charles, Herb’s innocently adoring audience of one). Basden and Key are long-time comedy partners, and they adapted the script together from an old short film, first made when they were really too young to play the characters. With age has come the wisdom to expand the idea into something that works as more than a comedy. The music isn’t half bad either.

Herb arrives on Wallis Island (not the actual island in the Pacific, but a fictitious island off the British coast) to play what he understands will be a small gig. But he quickly learns that “small” literally means just Charles, a lonely widower mysteriously flush with cash. Charles is happy to talk about where the cash came from though (along with everything else). He won the lottery not just once but twice, you see. The first time, he traveled the world with his beloved wife. The second time, they decided to put the money in a suitcase. But it’s been five years since she died, and now all he wants is to get her favorite folk duo back together one last time. Because before McGwyer, there was McGwyer and Mortimer.

There are a few directions this premise could have gone. While I’m not completely satisfied with the execution, I mostly approve of its chosen path. In the end, it correctly recognizes that the story really isn’t about McGwyer and Mortimer. It’s about how to let go of a lost past and love the people life has put in our present path, with or without our consent. It’s about generously sharing a gift with whoever appreciates it, whether or not it’s the audience you wanted. In the process, it’s kind to both Herb and Charles—an affectionate tribute to the talented, self-absorbed, messy people who write our favorite songs and to the fans who love them.

Best Dad Movie: Last Breath

I’m a real sucker for Dad Movies, and this is a good one. Think Apollo 13, but smaller-scale. Based on a remarkable true story about the rescue of a diver deep under the North Sea, it’s one of those movies that depends on the execution, because everyone knows there wouldn’t have been a movie if they didn’t save the guy. But there are all kinds of little touches that just make it work. Woody Harrelson is great as the team’s grizzled leader, trying to joke through his sadness at being ushered into an early retirement. The two young divers under the sea with him are established with admirable economy as distinct, likable characters. It’s tricky to write good setup banter before the Big Disaster in a film like this, but it doesn’t feel forced here. Instead of checking your watch, you actually wouldn’t mind spending a little more time watching these guys bond. And in the Apollo 13 spirit, smaller players also get little moments to shine. In short, this film understands that it has exactly one job, and it does that job perfectly. Your dad will love it.

Honorable mention: The Lost Bus is another based-on-true-story, about a heroic bus driver who drove a bus full of kids out of a California wildfire. Matthew McConaughey does strong work as ever, nicely supported by America Ferreira as the kids’ teacher. The movie is bogged down by a sluggish first act, which tries to cake on way too much expository dialogue about just how miserable our hero’s life is and exactly how many vectors of Family Conflict we need to be aware of. But once things, um, heat up (sorry), then it really starts to cook (sorry, sorry).

Other movies that might work in this category are Warfare and Not Without Hope, but only if your dad doesn’t mind being depressed.

Best Mom Movie: Song Sung Blue

Where to watch: On Amazon VOD, but currently still at that ridiculous new film pricing where they charge you an arm and a leg just to rent it.

This is another based-on-a-true-story that you really, really shouldn’t google if you’re planning to watch it. Seriously, if you care, avoid as much prior knowledge about this movie and its characters as you can, except what I’m about to give you of course. I like the trailer though, which for once actually does what a trailer is supposed to do and only teases the picture without speed-running/spoiling the whole thing.

When I first saw the poster, I thought this was a Neil Diamond biopic, but no, it is in fact the story of a Neil Diamond impersonator—or excuse me, Neil Diamond interpreter. The difference matters. Hugh Jackman plays Mike Sardina, half of a musical power couple who rose to 90s fame as a tribute act who was just that extra bit better than an average tribute act. Kate Hudson is Claire, who first catches Mike’s eye with a Patsy Cline impression on what happens to be his 20th birthday—sober birthday, that is. They hit it off like lightning and thunder, which becomes the name of their double act.

Both Mike and Claire bring an assortment of baggage, regrets, and children from previous marriages into the relationship. But they’re so earnestly committed to each other, so happy when their proudly uncool music makes proudly uncool people happy, you immediately root for them. They make me like Neil Diamond, and I’ve never even especially liked Neil Diamond. Mike is anxious to make sure you know Diamond had other and better songs besides “Sweet Caroline,” which he’s also willing to play, but only if people insist. (I admit I started laughing when I recognized a tune from Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs, the one with the line “And no one heard at all, not even the chair.”)

With a title like “Song Sung Blue,” you can guess there are going to be some sad moments in this story, but provided you do what I say and don’t google it, the twists will take you by surprise. Jackman and Hudson don’t strike a single false note together. What I like about their performances is that Mike and Claire were such unfussy, down-to-earth working-class people, and they’re portrayed here with such love and dignity. I’ve always thought Jackman was one of the most unpretentious actors in Hollywood, and one of the most versatile—he does his own singing here, as does Hudson, who’s earned a well-deserved Oscar nod.

Praise is also due to the young actors playing their children, who tolerate their “scattered” parents with admirable grace and affection. (An unexpected pro-life subplot emerges when one of them becomes pregnant out of wedlock.) However, not all of the couple’s children are featured here, which I gather really didn’t make one of them happy. Michael’s son from a previous marriage, Michael Jr., is generally upset about the various fictionalizing changes, and while I guess I can sympathize to a point, it seems like he doesn’t understand how movies work. The movie Shadowlands cut one of C. S. Lewis’s stepsons, partly because Douglas Gresham was keeping his brother’s mental illness private, partly because it would have completely disrupted the film’s arc as a film. Similarly, when Sardina’s son alludes to the violent tensions between himself and his stepbrother growing up, the editing choices are obvious to anyone who knows anything about screenwriting. And the film already explores darker territory as Mike and Claire navigate the “for worse” part of their wedding vows.

I’ve rambled longer than I’d planned to about this movie, but I just love it so much, except for one scene where Mike and Claire are getting a little, uh, excited, and we see her take off far too many clothes before the camera looks away. Moments like this in otherwise not risqué films especially frustrate me. I guess that’s my inner mom coming out. But with that caveat, your mom will love it (once the rental price comes down).

Best Teen Movie: Brave the Dark

Where to watch: VOD everywhere or streaming with an Angel subscription

I wouldn’t have predicted that I’d put an Angel Studios movie on my best of the year list, but this one snuck up on me. As a former teacher, I really have a soft spot for “teacher + troubled yooth” stories, especially when they honor a real-life teacher like this one does. Jared Harris is very compelling as Stan Deen, a small-town drama teacher who poured his whole career into mentoring high school students. This obituary captures the scope of his legacy. Brave the Dark tells the story of an orphaned teenager whose life was so profoundly changed by Stan, he took the name “Deen” for himself.

Angel is known for faith-based content, but it’s been acquiring more films that are more generically family-oriented than faith-based per se. Although Deen was a Christian, and I would have liked seeing more of that come through in this screenplay, I wouldn’t call it a Christian movie. It’s just a very good redemptive story. Characters like Nathan, the boy, are very tricky to write, because they need to be both flawed and likable enough for the audience to root for them. He’s capable of deeply hurting Stan, but you can still see what Stan sees in him.

On a small technical note, the movie’s hair and costuming isn’t quite consistent with the 80s setting. Pictures of the real Nate Deen show him with a mullet, and most of his male peers should probably be sporting the same. But maybe the filmmakers thought this would hurt the film’s appeal to today’s yooth. In any case, a good film to watch with mature teens who can handle darker content, including some non-graphic but intense flashbacks to a murder-suicide in young Nate’s deep past.

Honorable mention: The Netflix movie Steve, starring Cillian Murphy, is playing with similar themes, though it doesn’t succeed as well. It’s based on a novella called Shy, which chronicles a single day in the life of a troubled teen in a reformatory school. The film, adapted by the author, tells the story of that same day from the perspective of Steve, his science teacher. It’s one of those days from Hell where every possible thing that can go wrong will go wrong. Although Murphy does fine work as a good man crushed by the weight of circumstance, it’s hard to lock into the film as a whole because the pace is so frenetically artsy (or artsily frenetic). I haven’t read the novella, but I gather that’s the writer’s style, and I suppose it’s not quite my tea. The whole thing seems inexorably headed towards the worst possible ending for both Steve and Shy, until, mercifully, the worst thing doesn’t actually happen. Yet many loose ends remain, which you could say is honest and realistic, but it’s rough going for the viewer. Still, worth mention as a worthy tribute to those unsung heroes who care enough to do the thankless work no one else will.

Best Incredibly Depressing Movie I’m Never Watching Again: Souleymane’s Story

Where to watch: On Amazon VOD

This is a haunting little film about a few days in the life of a Guinean migrant racing against the clock to procure what he needs for an asylum application in Paris. The significance of the title, “Souleymane’s Story,” gradually becomes clear as we realize he’s being coached to tell the interviewer a story that is not, in fact, his own. Nor is it the story of other men like him who have received similar coaching. The more urgently it’s impressed on him that the details of this untrue story will matter, the more lost he becomes.

As we watch him hustle around the city doing DoorDash-style deliveries on his bike, we’re so immersed in his world we can almost smell it. All sorts of characters weave in and out of his path. There’s Emmanuel, who’s renting his digital ID to Souleymane so he can work…for a heavy price. There’s the blind old man in a 7th-floor apartment whose son places long-distance orders for him, so vulnerable that Souleymane spends a few moments he doesn’t have to ask if there’s anything the man needs. There’s the eager fellow migrant who keeps annoyingly popping up full of optimism and hope that Souleymane can help him out. There are the gendarmes who lightly harass Souleymane after he delivers food to them, wryly shaking their heads when he tells them how he’s forced to split his earnings 50/50 with the man renting him his work account. They could arrest him, but it’s late, and they’re hungry.

Then there’s the kind man who encourages him at a homeless shelter with the words “You are not a liar.” In one sense, this is true: Lying doesn’t come naturally to Souleymane.

You could say this is a movie with its thumb on the political scales when it comes to immigration, but it has a light enough touch that I didn’t find it too overbearing. It’s certainly all too realistic about how immigrants can prey on each other as they clamber to the top of the pecking order in a foreign land. (The most overtly racist dialogue in the film is uttered by Souleymane’s fellow Africans.) To me, it’s a film that simply recognizes the tragedy of existence. For some reason, my mind kept going back to this monologue by Jordan Peterson about oppression and the suffering individual. Of course oppression is real, he says. Everyone could tell a story: “Well, I’m a black woman who has two children and one of them isn’t very healthy. And then well, I’m a Hispanic woman and I have a genius son who doesn’t have any money, so that he can’t go to university, and you know, I had a hell of a time getting across the border, it was really hard on me to get my citizenship, my husband is an alcoholic brute… It’s like, well yeah, that sucks too, and so... Well, so let’s fix all your oppressive...oppression, and we’ll take every single thing into account. And then we’ll fix yours too. We’ll take every single thing into account. It’s like ‘No, you won’t’, because you can’t! You can’t!”

There’s a small moment in that homeless shelter when a local man gets confused about which bed is his and tries to take Souleymane’s. There’s no dramatic scene as he’s kindly guided over to his actual bed. But it’s a poignant reminder: The people of France have their own tragedies. Is there room for all the rest of the world’s tragedies? This movie has no easy answers. It can only tell Souleymane’s story.

Honorable mention: Ethan Hawke is a dark horse contender for Best Actor in Blue Moon, a stagey piece about the decline of forgotten tunesmith Lorenz Hart. Hart most famously collaborated with Richard Rodgers on the movie’s titular song, but little of his other work has really endured in popular memory. I first heard of him while watching an episode of American Idol where a girl was covering “My Funny Valentine” under Harry Connick, Jr.’s coaching. Connick, Jr. gently but firmly scolded the girl for trying to sing the song on autopilot without carefully considering the pain behind its lyrics. He pointed out that they were clearly written by a man who struggled with self-esteem, with not feeling attractive. Somehow, through the trickery of makeup and clever staging, Hawke brings that man to acutely painful life.

The film is staged as one long night in a bar, the opening night of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! Everyone loves it except Hart, because he recognizes that this is the beginning of his end. So he talks, and drinks, and talks, and talks, to whoever is long-suffering enough to listen, about everything—writing, beauty, love, sex. Even his own sexuality (unrealistically) becomes fair game, as he tries to convince his captive audience that he’s fallen madly in love with a young woman. A number of things in this script aren’t very realistic, but Hawke transcends it, channeling notes of Amadeus and even a little Richard III. Famously short, Hart is a figurative and literal embodiment of St. Augustine’s curvatus in se—curved in self. For all that we pity him, the door to his private hell is locked from the inside.

Best Movie With No Plot That Mostly Works Anyway: Rebuilding

Where to watch: Amazon VOD

Josh O’Connor was the year’s breakout star with a string of notable performances, most popularly the earnest young priest at the heart of Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man. I didn’t like that movie as much as a lot of people did, but O’Connor was very watchable in it, as in everything else. Rebuilding puts a whole solid film around his performance as Dusty, a gentle Colorado cowboy who loses his ranch in a fire. Technically, not much happens in the movie, but some “rebuilding” takes place between Dusty and his little girl, Callie-Rose, whose mom is married to another man. I do have to confess a pet peeve about movies where a sweet single dad wistfully reconnects with his cute kid in a context where everyone has matter-of-factly accepted the mom’s divorce and remarriage. Ant Man bugs me the same way, although at least there the mom could point to the MC’s past in petty thievery. Here, it remains a complete mystery why this marriage failed. The narrative hands it to us and we move on.

Still, there’s a lot to like here, and as Dusty makes his temporary trailer home in a FEMA camp with a few other souls who’ve lost everything, including a woman who lost her husband, the story invites deep reflection on what it means to make a home, or a community. Dusty doesn’t want to think of the trailer as a real home, or the people around him as real neighbors. But then, as naturally as breathing, they become neighbors, everyone offering something someone else needs—a hot meal, a helping hand with the plumbing, a younger pair of eyes to help navigate online red tape. By the end, they don’t want to lose what they’ve built. (Whether they can keep it is I suppose a real plot point, which I won’t spoil.)

I was also affected by a scene where community members are taking turns sharing meaningful things they lost, and Dusty says it actually perturbs him most to think about the things he’s lost that he’ll never remember. Maybe moments like this hit a bit close to home with my recent reflections on decluttering. In another scene, he goes through a couple boxes of things he managed to pack before evacuating. “It’s so strange,” he says to himself, “the things you save.” He pulls out a tiny notebook full of little messages people left when they visited the ranch, which had been passed down to him through generations. His daughter giggles as they read what sounds like a whimsical lover’s poem from one of his great-grandmother’s suitors (or was it great-great-grandmother?) Writer-director Max Walker-Silverman was inspired to write this piece by the fire loss of his grandmother’s house, and that inspiration feels tangible in little scenes like this.

There’s also a beautiful unsung performance here by Amy Madigan as Dusty’s mother-in-law, Bess, who lives with his ex-wife’s family. One night, as they’re filling out a family tree school project with Callie-Rose, Bess suddenly shares that she had a miscarried little brother she never told anyone about. Her voice quavers as she explains haltingly, “I just…didn’t want him to be forgotten.”

This is the kind of film where no one is forgotten, and I guess that’s why I like it.

Honorable mention: Train Dreams is the only film nominated for Best Picture that I’ve actually seen and liked. Like Rebuilding, it’s also a story about a lonely man left behind by modernity who loses everything he’s built in a fire. Except the hero of Train Dreams, a logger who’s not home with his wife and child when the fire comes, is left with even less to go on with. If Wendell Berry and Terrence Malick tried to make a movie together, it might look something like this. In the end, I didn’t think there was enough story meat on the bones to make it a full meal, but it’s a haunting piece, full of beautiful images that will stay with me.

Did you see anything memorable this year? Leave a comment and let me know if I didn’t mention your favorite. I’ve noticed my list is pretty heavy on sad films, even the lighter ones, so I might have missed some happier titles!