Top 10 Movies of the Year: ‘Bugonia,’ ‘Sinners,’ ‘Hamnet,’ ‘Eddington,’ more

Emma Stones stars in “Bugonia,” which is one of Stephen Whitty’s favorite movies of 2025.

Movies are not mirrors.

Although it is commonly said that art reflects the times, cinema is about as fast and responsive as an ocean liner. Frequently taking years to gestate, moving sluggishly from idea to pre-production, production to post-production to release, the finished work is usually less a look at where we are than as to how we got there.

And the best films of 2025 often offered a stark and sobering explanation.

It was a year of movies about paranoia and extremism. About conspiracy and cultural conflict. About women in crisis, and men without purpose. Comedies? Romances? Those were in short supply. Instead, our best filmmakers seemed to sense something in the air — and focused their cameras on families and communities pushed past the breaking point.

They weren’t always easy to watch. But great art often isn’t.

Here are 10 terrific examples, in alphabetical order.

Ethan Hawke, left, and Patrick Kennedy in “Blue Moon.”

“Blue Moon.” Richard Linklater likes breaking the rules: shooting a movie over more than a decade, or turning a live-action film into a cartoon. Here, he created his own strict rules for himself: One set, one main character, shot in real time. And yet the constraints only offer a new kind of freedom as Ethan Hawke — in a career-high performance — plays the closeted, conflicted and dazzlingly witty lyricist Lorenz Hart, barely holding it together on the night of his frenemy Richard Rodgers’ greatest success. Yes, it can feel like a play. But thank heavens it isn’t — and we have this permanent record to enjoy. In theaters.

“Bugonia.” The early word was that this — based on an earlier South Korean film — was director Yorgos Lanthimos’ most accessible ever. Diehard fans need not have worried. Because like its inspiration, 2003’s “Save the Green Planet!,” this is still a wild story about fringe beliefs and conspiracy theories, one that also dares to ask: What if those paranoid loonies are right? And like Lanthimos’ great “Poor Things,” it has mad pleasures beyond those genre thrills, including a typically fearless Emma Stone, and production design that boldly imagines everything from a shabby rural shack to a shiny corporate hell. In theaters.

“Eddington.” COVID lockdowns, contested elections, conspiracy theories — it hasn’t been an easy few years in America. Which makes it all truly ripe material for Ari Aster, a filmmaker whose best films (“Hereditary,” “Midsommar”) deal with dark secrets and encroaching dread. But while the drama is clear, unfolding in a small town torn between Joaquin Phoenix’s ignorant conservative sheriff and Paul Mescal’s scheming liberal mayor, taking sides is a dangerous thing for anyone, including the audience — particularly as alliances shift and things spin further and further out of control. Streaming.

Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in “Hamnet.”

“Hamnet.” Our image of Shakespeare is so encrusted with mythology it’s always refreshing to see a film that looks past the Elizabethan pomp and performance to see the lusty, brilliant, common, impossible success he was. But this film takes a different, even deeper approach, as it spends most of its time on his often ignored or maligned wife — and the loss of their son, a tragedy she may have barely survived. Grim and grimy, Chloé Zhao’s film is full of pain and dirt and an almost pagan connection to nature — and rooted in a nakedly honest performance from Jessie Buckley. In theaters.

“A House of Dynamite.” Today, Cold War dramas about the end of us — “On the Beach,” “Fail Safe,” several “Twilight Zone” episodes — can feel like relics from a different world. They shouldn’t. And Kathryn Bigelow, whose films often focus on cops or soldiers in impossible situations, now finds a new crew of flawed heroes: Washington’s politicians, military experts and security professionals, on a day when an unknown enemy has just launched a nuclear missile at Chicago. A horribly plausible film that offers no answers, and only one question: What would you do, with impact only 15 minutes away? Streaming.

“My Father’s Shadow.” It is June 12, 1993 in Nigeria, and the day that long-absent Folarin decides to return home, pick up his two boys, and take the bus into Lagos to demand the wages long due him. A risky idea, perhaps — especially on the day of a high-stakes national election. A first film from Akinola Davies, this not only takes us into a world most of us don’t know, but right into the heart of the hardworking Folarin, played by Sope Dirisu, a man who deeply loves his children yet had to leave them and his home in search of work. A thrilling debut. Returns to theaters in February.

“No Other Choice.” Korean director Park Chan-wook became famous for his cinema of vengeance, and while his films have grown less gory since the brilliantly disturbed “Oldboy,” they are no more forgiving. His latest, based on a Donald Westlake novel, is perhaps his most cold-blooded, as its murderous antihero is motivated not by revenge but simply a desperate need to preserve his own upper-middle-class status. Three qualified rivals stand between him and his dream job? Well, he has a simple, lethal solution for that. An absolutely icy yet weirdly empathetic thriller. In theaters.

Benicio del Toro in “One Battle After Another.”

“One Battle After Another.” Even more than “Eddington,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling political epic isn’t rooted in reality — there is no widespread revolutionary underground in this country, no matter what Fox News says — but in perception: This extremist vision, the film suggests, is how each side, Left and Right, sees the other. And that is why we are where we are. Brilliantly made and acted, although the real beating heart of the film is Benicio del Toro’s warm and quietly centered martial arts instructor, the only character who seems to truly understand who he is and what needs to be done. Streaming.

“Sinners.” While horror films may be about scaring the audience, for directors they are often about letting go of their own fears — it’s a genre in which you can take any artistic risk you want, as long as it works. So it’s not surprising that Ryan Coogler, who began his career with the righteously angry “Fruitvale Station” and broke through with “Black Panther,” now finds a perfect home for that rage in a monster movie in which the very real vampires also represent bloodsuckers who have been exploiting Black artists for centuries. Fable, shocker or serious, wide-screen period piece — the film works as all three. Streaming.

“Train Dreams.” Clint Bentley made his directorial debut with “Jockey,” a bittersweet study of life on the margins. It was lovely and accomplished, but in no way predicted this ambitious epic, the story of a man trying to find himself as his own country grows up around him. Awash in rich Northwestern landscapes, it follows Joel Edgerton as he labors to build a great railroad — yet finds his own life going disastrously off the rails. A visionary achievement that finds room for both transcendental moments and quirky characters — Kerry Condon as a plucky forest ranger, William H. Macy as a philosophizing logger. Streaming.

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