My 2025 began with a holiday carryover (Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point) and ended with a reboot that doubled as the making of a reboot (Anaconda). I saw and wrote about 131 new releases. I’m pleased to share the top 7.6% of the heap. All of the individual reviews can be found under the tag 2025 Top Ten, or you can click on any hyperlink below.
Top Ten Movies of 2025
- SINNERS – For coming out so early in the year, I’m thrilled that it stood the test of time, and is appearing on every Oscar predictions list. The first half is a compelling history lesson, and then the second half becomes From Dusk Till Dawn when vampires show up. It has my favorite score of the year. Michael B. Jordan gives us two distinct performances as a set of twins. It’s a bold, wild ride, and my best movie of the year.
- THE LIFE OF CHUCK – This, unfortunately, wasn’t as successful when it came to sticking in peoples’ memories. It was a critical darling that got overshadowed because there was still a lot of year left. The street-dancing scene made me feel like I was seeing the next iconic movie scene, that would be recreated and parodied for years and years to come.
- WEAPONS – It juggles multiple storylines with the finesse of Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino, coupling it with a horror story that filled me with wide-eyed wonderment, like the best of something Stephen King might write.
- TWINLESS – Writer/director James Sweeney gives us a sad but thought provoking drama. He is also in the movie, but didn’t give himself the lead role. Dylan O’Brien plays twins, in two of the best performances of the year.
- TRAIN DREAMS – A birth-to-death character study, and therefore a perfect bookend with The Life of Chuck. Joel Edgerton carries the movie, Felicity Jones is lovely, and Williams H. Macy gives one of the best performances of his career. It will open your eyes to the beauty of life, and make you want to stick around as long as you can.
- A LITTLE PRAYER – The best family drama movie I have seen since 1991’s Once Around. Director Angus MacLachlan really makes us feel the quaint suburban environment, and gives us a large family that is deeper than a sitcom and did not come from a cookie cutter.
- BOB TREVINO LIKES IT – This year’s warm hug, in the vein of A Real Pain from last year and The Holdovers from 2023. I can’t wait to see what 2026’s Holdovers/Real Pain/Bob Trevino Likes It will be.
- THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND – It combines the gorgeous, lulling folk music motif of Once with the quirky, small island town local flavor of The Banshees of Inisherin. Carey Mulligan is great here. It’s a perfect comfort meal of a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup on an overcast, windy, cold day at the seashore.
- MY DEAD FRIEND ZOE – The first A I gave this year. It has a wonderful cast that includes Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman. It’s a touching, uplifting, forthright exploration of relationships among post-war PTSD.
- MARTY SUPREME – It’s all over the place, the soundtrack is anachronistic, but it has energy for miles, and I’ve never seen Timothée Chalamet better. With all the balls it has in the air (no pun intended), you could call it One Battle After Another – and I liked it better than the film that bears that name.
Final Grade Tally
131 movies. Once again, B is the winner, with 26.
B- is close behind it with 24.
C+ has 17.
C has 14.
B+ has 12.
A, the coveted grade, made it to double digits, with 10.
A- has 9.
C- has 7.
D has 5.
D- has 4.
D+ has 3.
No F movies this year!
B- and C+ is my pass/fail cutoff. If you think I’m a tough critic, this year I had 81 movies that were a B- or higher, and 50 were C+ and lower. I liked more films than I disliked.
The Honorable Mentions
Together – It hasn’t left my mind since I saw it. It would have made my top ten list if I had less than 10 A grades, and needed to go fishing in the A- pond. In a strange way, it made me feel romantic, and want to get closer to my loved one.
Friendship – So many viewers kept talking about how funny it is, and it can be – but more than anything, what I got out of it was an all-too-relatable tale of social rejection, and what might happen as a result of that. I was heavily affected by it. It left me hoping I wasn’t like the main character.
The Threesome – Headed up by lead performances from three impossibly beautiful people, this is so much more meaningful than the title suggests. You are in for more than what you might think.
The Guilty Pleasures
You’re Cordially Invited – A derivative, but fun romcom romp, starring Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon.
Final Destination: Bloodlines – This many movies into it, it manages to entertain, with a large cast of characters that I liked and could keep track of.
Clown in a Cornfield – An exercise in style. The title is straightforward, and the movie stays in its lane, without any delusions that it’s anything more than a film about a clown in a cornfield.
Dangerous Animals – The Silence of the Lambs meets Jaws.
Ick – It slunk in and out of theaters as a Fathom Event. It’s intentionally cheap and campy, with one of the best soundtracks of the year. If you remember when arms were wide open and someone’s mom had it going on, these needle-drops will be your speed.
The Naked Gun – Liam Neeson ably carries the torch as Frank Drebin Jr, and the series has been done proud.
Twinning
This year had several actors playing twins and/or clones, sharing the screen with themselves, as if it was two different people. I want to highlight these 5 actors.
Robert Pattinson in Mickey 17.
Michael B. Jordan in Sinners.
Dylan O’Brien in Twinless.
Christian Convery and Theo James in The Monkey.
The Multitaskers
Here are some people I saw more than once this year, who I’d like to highlight. First of all, the winner is Stephen King, with four great film adaptations from his stories (The Monkey, The Life of Chuck, The Long Walk, The Running Man). I also have to mention the team of director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp, who collaborated on Presence and Black Bag, within a few months. Now to the actors:
Jack Quaid (Companion, Novocaine)
Robert Pattinson (Mickey 17, Die My Love)
Sydney Sweeney (Americana, Christy, The Housemaid, Echo Valley)
Dylan O’Brien (Twinless, Anniversary)
Julia Garner (Wolf Man, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Weapons)
Josh Brolin (Weapons, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery)
Geraldine Viswanathan (You’re Cordially Invited, Thunderbolts*, Oh, Hi!)
Paul Rudd (Death of a Unicorn, Friendship, Anaconda)
Will Poulter (Death of a Unicorn, On Swift Horses, Warfare)
Jacob Elordi (On Swift Horses, Frankenstein)
Ben Foster (Sharp Corner, Christy)
Brandon Sklenar (Drop, The Housemaid)
Mark Hamill (The Life of Chuck, The Long Walk)
Emma Mackey (Hot Milk, Ella McCay)
Emma Stone (Eddington, Bugonia)
Mckenna Grace (Regretting You, Anniversary, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2)
Kate Hudson (Shell, Song Sung Blue)
Pedro Pascal (Materialists, Eddington, The Fantastic Four: First Steps)
Thank you for being a reader. I hope you have a blessed, healthy, and safe 2026. I hope you find yourself better on 12/31/26 than you will be on 1/1/26.
Film Reviews by Mark 
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