The Top Ten Films of 2025.

 

For someone who has way too much free time, I did not watch a lot of movies in 2025. After spending seven hours watching The Brutalist last year, I decided not to go out of my way to watch movies I'd probably hate—and I may have taken that too far. I still watched fifty more than most adults you know, so don't be too disappointed in me just because the synopsis of Sirat terrified me. I know my true sin is that I didn't see any of the movies people actually asked me if I saw (Zootopia 2, K-Pop Demon Hunters, and Wicked: For Good), which demonstrates that my inner circle is now filled solely with parents and one three-year-old niece.

Anyway, let's get the obvious one from everyone else's top ten out of the way:

The Top Ten Films of 2024.

 
If you had asked me how I felt about 2024 movies in September, I would have told you that the outlook is promising. By then, I could have already made a respectable top ten list, and I'd barely touched any likely awards contenders. By September, we already had Dune—now a real movie and not just a trailer, two Dan Stevens movies, a bunch of unexpectedly high-quality horror movies, and Netflix had released several movies that actually might have been written by a human being instead of artificial intelligence. Now in February, if I am assessing objectively, I will report that 2024 was fine; but if I'm forced to watch another 2024 movie I am going to scream—unless it's at the behest of someone I love and respect, which is approximately three and a half people. I am giving up. I would rather rewatch Megalopolis twice than watch three more adequately made but uninspiring dramas. There are several foreign movies I should watch, but am not going to. I may give in and watch the Almodóvar movie after I calm down; but I can't allocate any more hopeful optimism towards random indies, and I may never watch another Luca Guadagnino movie in my life. There is too much good television to ever be bothered with Challengers again.

The Top Ten Films of 2023.

Most people only saw two movies this year, and I don't blame them. As always, there were good movies, but (with a few exceptions) it took some work to find the ones worth remembering. Of course, the Internet wants you to think that 2023 was the greatest year for film since 2019, but the Internet is 90% bots and probably still believes in trickle-down economics. 2023 was maybe a better year for film than 2021. My hottest takes of the year are that no one would care about Killers of the Flower Moon if it were directed by a normal person, and Oppenheimer might be better than Tenet. It's close. Keep in mind that I didn't watch any animated films or documentaries, and I once made the ridiculous claim that 2010 was a bad movie year, so my opinions are questionable.

The Top Fifteen Films of 2022.

After watching 160 movies from 2022, I can confidently say it's been the best year for movies since 2021. There were probably fifty movies released that I wouldn't be mad to see in a top ten list—and while this is partially due to there only being a handful of clear standouts—sometimes it's good enough to be mildly amused relatively often. With that said, while I'm clearly the ultimate authority for cinematic quality, make sure you don't believe everything you read on the Internet. Every movie in existence now gets an 80% or greater on Rotten Tomatoes except for Don't Worry Darling (okay, they got one right), and I'm really sick of getting tricked into watching dull movies about abortion, historical figures, or spiraling alcoholics who won the lottery once. This was at least the year I put my foot down and refused to watch the Gaspar Noe film, so you might say I'm on the path to making better choices.

But wait, this is supposed to be a "best of" list, not an airing of grievances. I watch the trash so you don't have to. If you're a fan of donkeys, cannibalism, or locking people up in your basement; it was a great year for cinema. Do you love films with naked elderly people? It was a great year for you too. How do you feel about mediocre horror films? Because there were a lot. There are always a lot; maybe that's not the best example. Okay, enough about your kinks. Let's talk about mine.

The Top Ten Films of 2021.

Much to my disappointment, movies have started being released in theaters again. As I now refuse to leave my house for any reason; I convinced myself to wait until Licorice Pizza, Parallel Mothers and West Side Story were released on streaming before finalizing this list. Spoiler Alert: West Side Story was somehow the best movie of that group, but I'm still going to compare it to the time Gus Van Sant remade Psycho with Vince Vaughn. Critics don't agree with me because they're too nervous to scold legends, but 2021 was the year of big misses by big directors. Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza), Pedro Almodovar (Parallel Mothers), and Guillermo del Toro (Nightmare Alley) should all be ashamed of their 2021 films. Joel Coen made a very pretty version of Macbeth but like...it's still Macbeth. Ridley Scott's The Last Duel was actually good, but its quality is overshadowed by my need to mock him for being angry that no one went to see his 100 million dollar medieval rape movie. Unfortunately, we didn't get a movie from Denis Villenueve this year, but he did release a pretty good two and a half hour trailer for Dune. At least we were able to rely on the never-changing Wes Anderson, who once again released the exact same movie he's been making over and over again for the last ten years.

But as always, I found some films I liked. Maybe you'll like them too. Four and two halves of them are  in English for those of you who can't read. Before we get to the top ten, let's talk about my should-have-been fan-favorite Oscar vote, and give the annual reminder that all animated movies and documentaries are good, so I didn't bother watching them.

The Top Ten Films of 2020.

I usually post this right before the Oscars, but this year they've been pushed back to late April—which means the Academy is an even bigger procrastinator than I am. With that pushback also comes the expansion of eligibility requirements to films released through February 2021. I don't like to pretend 2020 didn't end in December, so some of the Oscar nominees don't qualify for this list. I have very strict requirements for how I define what films were released in 2020 (I check IMDB). So, since Minari was released in 2021, maybe we'll see it on next year's list (we probably will). Like most of you, I didn't see a single 2020 movie in theaters and I probably wouldn't have gone even if I could have. Thankfully, due to Covid, you can now watch movies at home for approximately $40 instead of going to the theater, which seems like an affordable, sustainable model.

Anyways, some movies came out in 2020. Hopefully, you watched some of them since you weren't allowed to do much else. Here's a list of my favorites, as well as the rest of the riff-raff.

The Top Fifteen Films of 2019.

Sometimes, when narrowing down a top ten list, it becomes overwhelming and you decide to cheat and make a top fifteen instead. There were a lot of strong films in 2019; and while I am extremely annoyed that a lot of them barely got limited December releases, soon we will have successfully killed off the theater industry and we'll be able to watch the Oscar-grabs on Netflix instead of only in LA and New York. Not that I want the industry to die—it's just going to happen and I've accepted it. Even Scorsese is sold on Netflix, and he won't even watch a superhero movie. I suppose I'll quit rambling now and get to it.