2025 has been one of the best years for film in recent memory. With incredible blockbusters that truly stand as some of the best of the year (Avatar: Fire and Ash, F1: The Movie) and some incredible studio horror films (Sinners, Weapons) that all will be some films I talk about for years to come despite not making it in my Top Ten. There are so many films I feel such a huge love for that land outside my top ten but I deeply have a personal connection with (Is This Thing On?, Wick is Pain, Sorry, Baby) and despite not being officially in my Top Ten, are some films I truly love.

2025 was such a hard year for me, personally, professionally, and financially. I found such a solace in seeking out not only films I connected with in such varying aspects but allowing me the space to disappear for a few hours. Nicole Kidman wasn’t lying when she said we go somewhere when the lights begin to dim. I struggled with personal relationships and my own identity. Being able to see Is This Thing On? and feel slightly seen with how you lose yourself in a marriage. Train Dreams allowed me to feel a connection to the idea of it’s not simple to just live a life, having a child, and wonder what you’re leaving in this giant world. F1: The Movie reminded me of the summers growing up seeking out air conditioning, a good time with friends, and a killer movie soundtrack, we really don’t get them like this anymore! Wick is Pain is such a special film I love for many reasons, but most of all reminded me so much of how special bonus features that were a constant on physical media were and why the John Wick franchise is such a labor of love of both the story of Wick but also cinema in general.

It was such a battle to land on not only an order for my Top Ten but what of those last few actually landed on the inside. 2025 has been such an incredible year for film with such a variety of what you could see in the theater and the experiences of seeing so many of these films will be some of my favorite since the decade started. Living in Los Angeles is a blessing as fan of cinema as seeing films such as Sinners or One Battle After Another in a sold out true IMAX screen on 70 mm felt life changing and I don’t take it for granted one bit.

After some deliberation on my end, this is how I’m landing on my personal Top Ten films of 2025.

10. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Dir. Rungano Nyoni)

One of the best endings of any film this year, Rungano Nyoni delivers such a moving, haunting film exploring suffering and how your family can skirt through issues that wreck your entire existence, how they’re so eager to just move through something versus confront it. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is arresting and while entirely gut wrenching, it’s also darkly funny. The idea of traditions and your family’s ease to just avoid conflict can lead to a distancing as you grow up. Your visibility into your past grows as you age and the haunting memory of your family willingly allowing something so dark becomes too much to bare. Susan Chardy is unreal, absolutely magnetic in one of the strongest performances of the year.

9. Frankenstein (Dir. Guillermo del Toro)

Guillermo del Toro was born to make Frankenstein, but I think we’re lucky we had to wait so long for him to create this film; this iteration with his normal crew (Production Designer Tamara Deverell, Costume Designer Kate Hawley, Composer Alexandre Desplat) and this incredible ensemble of Oscar Isaac, Mia Goth, David Bradley and, of course, Jacob Elordi. This was the perfect unison of all moving parts to deliver one of the best films of del Toro’s career. I think we all knew he’d adapt this as such a father-son tale but there is something so moving about combining the ideas of self-love, through both the creature and Victor. A loss of identity from Victor as he achieved his dreams of creating life yet at what cost to both him and the creature? For the creature, he yearns for not just anyone to love him, but the person who should love him so effortlessly. Elordi is absolutely transcendent in Frankenstein; despite having worked with some of the greats so far, this is an undeniable performance.

8. One Battle After Another (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

“Are you happy? Do you have love? Will you try to change the world like I did?” One Battle After Another is definitely a politically charged movie of the moment but what makes this film ascend is the focus on the pillar characters of the story. For me, Perfidia Beverly Hills is the character that with each watch I find the story building around her despite limited screen time. A large part of the reason her character is so impactful is the magnetic performance from Teyana Taylor that delivers so many emotions, so many ideas and the importance of the movement she yearns to carry through. “What do you love? What do you want to be?” The tenderness and ferociousness Taylor brings to Perfidia is remarkable and no actress was better suited for the role. One Battle After Another would make a perfect double feature with First Reformed on how terrifying parenthood has become.

7. The Shrouds (Dir. David Cronenberg)

Everything is romantic! Yes, this is absolutely digital voyeurism at its most intimate yet there’s such a haunting yet loving look at how consuming grief is and can be, especially losing someone to cancer. Watching someone disintegrate before your eyes is a pain indescribable and when they finally pass on, you may think it would be simple as you’ve been preparing for this moment, but you’re never ready. David Cronenberg dove very personal in The Shrouds but it’s a universal dread of wondering how to process your grief. The world moves on despite feeling like your world has stopped. What is the best way through this grief, this loss? The Shrouds is deeply funny at times yet beautifully tender as it ends up exploring how to be here, in the present.

6. 28 Years Later (Dir. Danny Boyle)

I saw 28 Days Later opening weekend in theaters (at the West Plano Cinemark) and have cherished the film as one of the most dynamic, visceral, game changing films I’ve seen opening weekend. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland reuniting for 28 Years Later delivered that same feeling. Anthony Dod Mantle’s brilliant cinematography with an outstanding ensemble deliver the most unsettling yet beautiful films of 2025. I knew Boyle and Garland would deliver something we didn’t expect but 28 Years Later is an emotional, deeply earnest film that explores the finality of death that pushes the boundaries of filmmaking with some of the best visuals of the year. 

5. Resurrection (Dir. Bi Gan)

Trying not to be hyperbolic but this is one of the best films I’ve seen in my lifetime. It seems low on the list to say that but it’s one of those films, no matter how far you get from it, you’re back there experiencing it or thinking of a feeling it planted in your mind. Resurrection presents the  idea of it better to be dead and dreaming instead of simply being alive. “I’ve lived for ages. I’ve been dead for ages. I don’t know what the point is.” Every day feels worse than the previous, the state of the world, the state of the film industry, which sounds crazy to pair them but as I mentioned before, I seek solace in the world of cinema and seeing one bad thing after another with the film industry, it feels catastrophic to lose a sense of safety in a world that feels its slowly suffocating the life out of you. Bi Gan crafts a film challenging the idea of the reason for existence but also the future of film. We haven’t seen the best to come, the new filmmaking method has yet to come. Dreams may be dying but someone will find a way to make them live.

4. The Testament of Ann Lee (Dir. Mona Fastvold)

The Testament of Ann Lee is what Mona Fastvold’s career has been building to. I’m sure to many it’s unsuspecting that this is a film of the moment, but the story of Ann Lee combined with the poignant writing of Fastvold and Corbet is a lethal combination. The Shakers had an impassioned dedication and it’s clear Fastvold idenitifies with that, as many creatives, particularly women, will know you have to lock in on your beliefs and passions to get your point across and your objectives met. There is a place for everything and everything in its place. There’s no place I’d rather be than a world with Fastvold making films. Praise be!

3. April (Dir. Dea Kulumbegashvili)

What it must feel like to work a traumatizing, thankless job… Dea Kulumbegashvili is able to bring that feeling to the screen alongside the overwhelming loneliness that arises from navigating such a heavy career. This pro-abortion film is relentless in its uncompromising visuals and soundscape drowning you in the risk, the real life horrors associated with women’s healthcare. April features a creature appearing throughout the film you’d think was haunting the doctor but it feels like a physical representation of her helplessness at work, in her life. I saw April at AFI in 2024 and it has never left my mind. The visuals, the score, the unflinching look at stillbirth and abortion. It’s maybe not a film you’d revisit but it’s unreal in how it stays with you. One of the best of the decade for me, easily.

2. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Dir. Mary Bronstein)

My dear friend Kelsey saw this at Sundance and said it was sort of like Uncut Gems but if it happened to a woman and this is the first Uncut Gems comparison that is true. I’ve always described motherhood as that scene in Gems where Howie is trying to get the door lock to work and putting the magnet droppings into the lock while Demany is trying to get in and someone else in the shop is trying to time the unlocking, but nothing is working and everyone is yelling at Howie. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is that scene but for the entire film and as Kelsey said, but happening to a woman, a mother. Mary Bronstein and Rose Byrne deliver the ultimate ‘I see you’ film for mothers and what’s special about this film is that in a year of films about or featuring motherhood (Die My Love, Hamnet, The Testament of Ann Lee, One Battle After Another, 28 Years Later, Avatar: Fire and Ash, the list could go on forever), but If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is by mothers and for mothers not of a newborn or grieving, but just a mother with a kid. The constant pull of not doing enough at home because you’re at work but not doing enough at work because you’re needed at home. The amount of calls you get from both sides distracting you, you constantly feel like a failure and it’s thrown in your face nonstop how easy it is for other parents. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is special that it recognizes without patronizing (the scene discussing this in the film is one of the best of the year) but it’s there for you. This film feels like it ripped the rug out from under me but in the best way possible.

1. Die My Love (Dir. Lynne Ramsay)

“I’m right here, you just can’t see me.” After becoming a parent, you feel no one really understands you and it’s the hardest when it’s your partner. This lack of them understanding or hearing you. Die My Love embodies the suffocating feeling of postpartum depression and anxiety in film form. How those first few months every day feels the same but there’s no way out. Despite your brief run ins with other moms telling you they get it, you feel frustrated that’s not exactly what this feeling is. While Lynne Ramsay has said the film isn’t pointedly about postpartum conditions, as someone who experienced both postpartum depression and anxiety, it felt like capturing the experience in a way I had not been able to describe. The film and my postpartum journey feel like this fever dream you can’t place or dissect what was real or what was something you imagined. This beautiful, hypnotizing nightmare of a film captures the itch for a life raft you feel should be your partner but they can’t seem to figure out what you need, no matter how many times you ask.