The 11 Best Movies of 2025

What are the best movies of 2025? Though the year in film got off to a rocky start—with some bad IP that stunk up multiplexes and smaller genre movies that wound up disappointing both audiences and critics—things picked up as soon as Ryan Coogler’s Sinners blazed onto screens in April, single-handedly (or double-handedly?) reigniting the box office. Then a strong crop of Oscar contenders emerged in the late summer and fall, promising an exciting and competitive awards season—though, if you ask some pundits, the best-picture and best-director races may already be all sewn up, thanks to the early dominance of Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another.

The other films that caught our eye this year include everything from small chamber pieces that unfold like theater to bombastic period epics that demand tissues to wipe away either copious tears or stress-induced flop sweat. Some are American; others hail from Norway, Iran, and Brazil. More than one may give you lasting nightmares, depending on what frightens you most: atmospheric horror? The death of a child? The comedic stylings of Tim Robinson?

Not all of these are necessarily the biggest films of 2025, but all are worthy of special elevation. Read on to find the Vanity Fair staff’s alphabetical accounting of the best movies of 2025—a year strong enough that we couldn’t stop counting at just 10.

Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

Blue Moon

Who would have thought that Oklahoma!’s opening night would be dramatic enough to inspire its own movie? Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon is a small gem of a film that, fittingly, unfolds like a play. The drama happens in real time as lyricist Lorenz Hart, an unreliable alcoholic played by Ethan Hawke, reminisces about the good old days: when he was the toast of Broadway with composer Richard Rodgers, played by Andrew Scott. As he drinks, he anxiously awaits the reviews for Rodgers’s new musical, written with a new collaborator. (Spoiler alert from 1943: they were raves, much to Hart’s chagrin.) Though small in scale, Linklater’s film is buoyed by its exceptional performances. Hawke is pitch-perfect as Hart, both a force of nature and exceedingly pitiful, a once great artist attempting to put on a brave face. Scott portrays Rodgers with gusto, cocky and condescending and sympathetic and understanding all at once. Their nuanced work in Blue Moon shows that a professional breakup can be just as painful and personal as a romantic one. —Chris Murphy

Courtesy of A24.

Friendship

Is Tim Robinson’s first big-screen starring vehicle a contemporary riff on I Love You, Man, a Judd Apatow–esque 2009 comedy about the unique challenges of male friendship that also stars Paul Rudd? Well, yes. Is it cringey and idiosyncratic and probably inscrutable to anyone who isn’t already a fan of Robinson’s particular brand of off-putting humor? Also most likely yes. But if you do vibe with Robinson—even if you’ve merely chuckled at a few clips from I Think You Should Leave—Friendship is a sharp, silly marvel. It’s the kind of movie 15-year-olds would sit around quoting all day, if 15-year-olds still did that sort of thing. —Hillary Busis

From the Everett Collection.

Hamnet

Author Maggie O’Farrell crafted a heartbreaking story of love and loss with her 2020 novel, Hamnet, which Chloé Zhao has transformed into a gorgeous cinematic experience. Woven into the fabric of this film is Zhao’s meditative, mystical filmmaking style, which captures a mother’s devastating grief and a father’s attempt to understand that grief through a creative outlet. Jessie Buckley’s portrayal of Agnes is brimming with primordial rawness and vulnerability—a high point in a career that’s been full of them. While the story is a tearjerker, the film’s knockout ending peels back that grief to reveal glimmers of hope and healing. —Rebecca Ford

From the Everett Collection.

It Was Just an Accident

The winner of this year’s Cannes Palme d’Or, Jafar Panahi’s film is a masterclass in tone. A tense interrogation scene gives way to slapstick comedy as a ragtag group, including a woman in a wedding dress, pushes a van down a street. Overseen by a lesser filmmaker, this sequence might be jarring—but somehow Panahi blends the two together to make an affecting meditation on trauma and everyday life. Panahi, who has been in and out of Iranian jails during his filmmaking career, takes the audience on a moral journey that never feels preachy. Remarkably, the film was also shot in secret using hidden handheld cameras. —John Ross

Courtesy of A24.

Marty Supreme

If Uncut Gems gave you an ulcer, grab some Tums: the first movie Josh Safdie made without involvement from his brother, Benny, is bigger, longer, and somehow even more stressful. Which should be taken as a compliment. Timothée Chalamet exceeds his own high bar as the title character, a talented athlete with the heart and the horrible, often self-defeating luck of a hustler. You’ll gape and cringe in equal measure as Marty goes to extraordinary lengths to pursue his dreams of Ping-Pong glory, heedless of the hearts, windows, and bones he’ll break along the way. Safdie gives Marty’s midcentury Manhattan extraordinary texture, through both exacting production design and a cast stacked with veterans (including Gwyneth Paltrow, returning to the big screen for her first non-Marvel narrative film since [checks notes] Mortdecai!?) and newcomers (like Odessa A’zion and businessman Kevin O’Leary, who’s great as a fictional tycoon) alike. It’s a sumptuous feast, the need for antacids notwithstanding. —H.B.

Courtesy of Warner Bros.

One Battle After Another

Paul Thomas Anderson’s propulsive film is truly a movie for and of our wild times. One Battle After Another examines the spirit of rebellion as well as the oppressive forces we must rebel against, capturing both with humor and honesty. A Modelo-drinking, robe-wearing Leonardo DiCaprio is unexpectedly hilarious as ex-revolutionary and consummate girl dad Bob Ferguson, while Sean Penn plays his old foe, Colonel Lockjaw, with a truly twisted rigidity. Their cat-and-mouse chase is as thrilling as it is compelling, holding attention throughout the film’s lengthy run time. One Battle After Another also cements not one, but two new movie stars: There’s multihyphenate Teyana Taylor (a standout in the 2023 film A Thousand and One), who commands the first half of the film with the sheer power of her presence as impulsive revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills. And then there’s Chase Infiniti, a newcomer who more than holds her own opposite stalwarts like Penn and DiCaprio. Add in excellent supporting performances from Regina Hall, Benicio Del Toro, and Tony Goldwyn, and it seems Anderson has pulled off the seemingly impossible: directing the rare politically radical crowd-pleaser. —C.M.

The Secret Agent

Fair warning: This film is about two hours and 40 minutes long. But don’t worry—a lot happens. Both surreal and intense, The Secret Agent takes you on a journey through a very specific time in Brazilian history. Anchored by an incredible performance from Wagner Moura, for which he won best actor at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the movie is immersive and captivating. Moura is very subtle in the film, with his character hardly breaking a sweat even in the most intense situations—including during a scene midway through the film that will leave your jaw on the floor. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. —J.R.

Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival.

Sentimental Value

Sentimental Value is about a house, and a fractured family that can’t quite connect. The Norwegian director Joachim Trier (of Worst Person in the World fame) won the Grand Prix at Cannes for this one, and stars Stellan Skarsgård (as a director), Renate Reinsve (as his stage-actor daughter), Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas (as his other daughter, a researcher and possibly the movie’s breakout), and Elle Fanning (as an American starlet looking to stretch her acting abilities) are all favored for a slew of awards. As you watch the movie, you’ll feel things—not in an ugly-crying way, but in a slightly dour, depressed, and ultimately devastating Nordic way. And there is great architectural porn in the Oslo house, which is a sprawling and slightly menacing Victorian done in the dragestil, a.k.a. “dragon style,” built to recall Viking ships. —Marisa Melzer

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

Sinners

On paper, a history-heavy vampire flick shouldn’t work—but in the capable hands of Ryan Coogler, it became one of the biggest hits of the year. Coogler’s Sinners stars his muse, Michael B. Jordan, doing his typical top-notch work in dual roles as identical twins Smoke and Stack—one taciturn, the other a powder keg. The two want to open a juke joint in the Jim Crow South and, in the process, nab themselves a piece of the American dream. But as if racism weren’t enough, Smoke and Stack must contend with literal vampires too. While Sinners presents as a horror flick, it’s rife with commentary about the intersectionality of race, class, and art in America—beautifully illustrated by aspiring blues musician Sammie Moore (Miles Caton) and his ethereal, ancestor-calling musical performance in the juke joint. Like its subject matter, Sinners is actually an amalgam of genres—part scary movie, part period piece, part musical—blending to create something greater than the sum of the film’s very excellent parts. The result is an unexpected box office smash with something important to say about the culture and its many vultures. —C.M.

Courtesy of Netflix.

Train Dreams

Denis Johnson’s Pulitzer-nominated 2011 novella centers on an ordinary man living during a time of significant change in America. Clint Bentley’s dreamlike adaptation is anything but ordinary; it’s a beautiful, meditative journey exploring life, change, and grief through one man’s soulful eyes. Joel Edgerton’s Robert Grainier is a man of few words, but Edgerton plays him with incredible depth and determination. Bentley, who cowrote the screenplay with his Sing Sing collaborator Greg Kwedar, has created a confident and gently profound character study with an epic spirit. —Rebecca Ford

Courtesy of Warner Bros.

Weapons

This is ostensibly a horror movie about all but one child from a single elementary school class disappearing overnight. And while Weapons is certainly scary, that’s not all it is. Director and screenwriter Zach Cregger follows up Barbarian with a film that’s told in chapters. One, about the teacher of the missing children, is a drama; another, about a parent, unfolds like a suburban detective story; a chapter about a town vagrant feels like a stoner comedy. But when the actor Amy Madigan shows up as the creepy Aunt Gladys, the film reaches both terrifying and comedic levels of greatness. As an added bonus, Aunt Gladys will be an easy Halloween costume for years to come. —M.M.