As 2025 draws to a close, epitaphs for the film industry are being written at a rate not seen since the emergence of Netflix, or the rise of prestige cable TV, or the invention of the VHS player, or the miracle of the television. This year’s vintage usually takes into account each of those premature reports of demise but distinguishes the current crisis as categorically more existential. And they might be right. The bell tolling the end of Hollywood may well be the pending sale of Warner Discovery to either the streaming behemoth Netflix, which refuses to firmly commit to a theatrical release model going forward, or to rival studio Paramount, whose parent company has demonstrated more fealty to the ruling regime than to creative, journalistic, or political independence. Maybe “The Movies” have had their run, as we come up on a century since the introduction of sound (another technological advance that many thought would be the death knell of the art form) ushered in a medium that would exert a hold over popular culture like no other in the 20th century.

Or maybe cinema, which is to say the experience of seeing a film in a public, theatrical environment, will become a more specialized pursuit. Going to a movie will be like going to see live theater, or a literary reading, or a symphony—not necessarily an elitist pastime, but with an audience that attends with more intentionality than the average crowd at a matinee for Anaconda this weekend. Maybe this comes from being in a Portland bubble with a high density of excellent independent theaters, but something that makes bland corporate multiplexes either change their approach or go out of business doesn’t seem like a complete disaster.  As it becomes easier and easier to replicate a mediocre theatergoing experience from the comfort of home, there shall perhaps be a winnowing that results in a smaller, but more appreciative demographic, one that can pass the torch of cinephilia to future generations.

In the meantime, there are plenty of great movies getting made, sometimes even by those supposedly senescent major studios. Sadly, the one on the auction block, Warner Brothers, is the one behind two of the best films of the year, both of them exemplars of the superiority of the big-screen experience over anything less. But the end of Hollywood is by no means the end of movies, as the continued vitality of distributors A24 and Neon demonstrate. And if movie theaters find themselves in need of content, there’s more fascinating work by directors around the globe than you can shake a riding crop at for them to choose from. Maybe this all ends with cinematic monoculture in retreat, and a more diverse and interesting array of movies to choose from on the 16 screens with recliner seating and Dolby ATMOS sound. And maybe, just maybe, the concessions will get cheaper.  

Picking the cream of the crop, moviewise, over the preceding twelve months is always something of a crapshoot. For some of these films, it’s the culmination of a salmon-like migration from film festival debuts to distribution deals to critical groundswells to wider exposure to the potential glory of plaudits and prizes, plus the box-office boosts they can provide. For others, the studio films that benefit from star power and marketing budgets, the path has been smoother, even if uppity critics sometimes hold those advantages against them. Regardless, there are (still, in 2025) enough potentially great movies that no one bound by the biological needs to eat and sleep could possibly see them all. For instance, it’s possible that Anaconda deserves a spot, but alas, that one slipped by me. It’s more than likely I’ll see some 2025 release in 2026 and realize it should have displaced one of the titles below. And it’s even more likely that I’ll look back at this list in five years and wonder, regarding at least one selection, what the hell I was thinking. But apologias and qualifications aside, these are, for the moment, the ten best movies of the year.

1. Sorry, Baby: Eva Victor makes a transcendent debut as writer, director and star of this perfectly pitched dramedy about a literature professor at a small New England college living in the wake of a traumatic event that occurred while she was a graduate student at the same school. A visit from a good friend (Naomie Ackie) spurs her to revisit, via flashbacks, the “bad thing” that happened to her, which involved an unctuous faculty adviser (Louis Cancelmi). There’s also a cute kitten, a hilarious mouse invasion, and a fantastic cameo from John Carroll Lynch. But this is Victor’s at-bat, and they knock it out of the park. If you look up “I laughed, I cried” in the dictionary, there’s a picture of this movie next to it. (Available on HBO Max and to buy or rent on demand)

2. Nouvelle Vague: Is this a movie that most people should see? No. If you’ve never experienced Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal 1960 debut Breathless, there’s not much point. But was it the most fun this writer had in a movie theater this year*? You’re damned right it was. Richard Linklater’s meticulous—okay, fetishistic—recreation of that film’s creation combines perfect casting (newcomer Guillaume Malbeck as JLG, Zoey Deutch as American expat actor Jean Seberg) and an authentic visual style, captured by the same type of hand-held 16mm cameras cinematographer Raoul Coutard used 65 years ago, to craft an ode to both Godard’s genius and his foibles. The cast of characters includes nearly every notable figure from the French New Wave, and the whole thing feels like it could have emerged from a time capsule dredged from the Seine. (Available on Netflix)

*non-repertory division

3. One Battle After Another: This could easily be ranked higher, and likely is or will be on enough other lists and nomination rolls that there’s no risk of it being underpraised. It’s not Paul Thomas Anderson’s best film, or even his second or third best, but it’s his most politically pungent. Taking Thomas Pynchon’s novel of dissipated 1970s radicalism Vineland and morphing it into a present-day(ish) parable about a long-retired revolutionary (Leonardo DiCaprio) trying to protect his daughter (Chase Infiniti), who’s being pursued by a paragon of repressed American masculinity (Sean Penn) trying to ensure his membership in a secret White Christian Nationalist cabal known as the Christmas Adventurer’s Club. Zany at points and chilling at others, with a climactic desert chase scene that’s not quite like anything you’ve seen in a movie before. And they have, as noted, been making them for well over a century. (Available on HBO Max)

4. It Was Just an Accident: Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi will soon add one of two adjectives to his name: “exiled” or “imprisoned.” An Iranian court sentenced the director in absentia to a year in prison for “propaganda against the regime,” and Panahi, currently in the U.S., has said he plans to return to his home country in January to face the sentence. The charges are almost certainly related to his latest, which was secretly shot without government approval as usual and follows a former political prisoner who comes across the man who tortured him during his imprisonment, kidnaps him, and invites his fellow ex-inmates to collaborate on determining his fate. It is, also as usual for Panahi, a masterful examination of moral conundrums faced by compelling characters in desperate situations. One only hopes Panahi’s ethical integrity doesn’t cost him his creative, or bodily, freedom. Thank goodness nothing like that could happen here. (Available to rent or buy on demand)

5. Marty Supreme: The eternally boyish Timothée Chalamet finally, fully comes of age in this hurtling, inventive, mostly imagined biography of a Jewish-American go-getter in the 1950s who’s bound and determined to become the best damned table tennis player in the world. Along the way, he seduces a famous movie star (Gwyneth Paltrow), abandons a pregnant girlfriend (Odessa d’Azion), and makes enemies from London to Tokyo. Josh Safdie, directing his first film since parting ways with his brother Benny (The Smashing Machine), leans into the propulsive desperation of their last collaboration, Uncut Gems, but with greater geographic and psychological scope. (Opens Dec. 25 in theaters)

6. Orwell: 2+2=5: If a documentary provides context for our current political nightmare through the words of a writer who died in 1950, does that make it retroactively prescient? Raoul Peck, who previously brought James Baldwin to the screen in I Am Not Your Negro, uses George Orwell’s life and work as a lens through which to view the global rise of populist authoritarianism over the last decade. 1984 gets a workout, naturally, but Peck incorporates the Indian-born British author’s memoirs, as well as a carefully curated, expertly edited collage of film clips and newsreel footage, to illustrate recent episodes such as the January 6 riots, the genocide of the Rohingya minority in Burma, and the deployment of China’s “Social Credit System.” If you miss the work of the British essay-film specialist Adam Curtis (The Power of Nightmares), this one’s for you. Peck makes the convincing case that, cliché or not, we are living in Orwellian times, and the vision in his novels and essays merits the adjectivization of his name. Personally, however, I’d prefer a Felliniesque world.

7. The Testament of Ann Lee: Who says I don’t like musicals? This unique biopic from director Mona Fastvold follows the life of Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried), the founder of the Shakers religious sect. From obscurity in Northern England to a thriving colony in revolutionary-era New York state, Lee established herself as a charismatic mystic, a rare female religious leader, and a proselytizer for both ecstatic shaking and complete chastity as ways to connect with God. Fastvold and co-writer Brady Corbet (the pair also collaborated on the screenplay for Corbet’s The Brutalist) try to capture that ecstasy through primally choreographed dances with vocals drawing on Shaker hymns. Seyfried is at her best, and between this and The Housemaid demonstrates spectacular range. (Opens Jan. 15 at The Hollywood Theatre and Cinema 21.)

8. The History of Sound: The year’s best romance is set in WWI-era Boston, where two music students meet cute in a pub. Lionel (Paul Mescal) is a scholarship student from backwoods Kentucky, while David (the ubiquitous Josh O’Connor) comes from a more rarified background. Despite their disparate origins, they fall madly in love before their relationship is tested when one is drafted and heads to Europe. Reunited, they work as ethnomusicologists capturing the folk songs of the rural Northeast before fate, and the discretion the times demanded, presents more challenges. Quietly stunning lead performances, the lovely period atmosphere conjured by director Oliver Hermanus, and the clear, true notes of traditional American airs combine to leave a beautifully haunting impact. (Available to stream on MUBI and to buy or rent on demand)

9. Sinners: Ryan Coogler’s fifth feature (and first original screenplay since his fact-based debut, Fruitvale Station) does something that barely seems possible making a vampire movie that uses the tried-and-true mythos in a way that’s both original and topical. And extremely entertaining. Michael B. Jordan, Coogler’s frequent collaborator, plays the dual role of Black twins who return to their hometown in the Depression-era Mississippi Delta to open up a juke joint. When the music that is the lifeblood of the local, multiracial community flows into the air on the place’s opening night, it attracts the attention of an undead Irishman whose interested in sucking both blood and culture from the people inside. Big, cinematic action-horror meets an insightful take on cultural appropriation—what’s not to love? (Available on HBO Max and to buy or rent on demand)

10. The Secret Agent: For the second year in a row, a story set in 1970s Brazil, during the rule of a military dictatorship, strikes a nerve among American audiences and becomes a leading candidate for at least a couple of Oscar nominations. Following up Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here, writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho serves up a more stylish, surreal take on the period. A laconic Wagner Moura plays a college professor who’s on the outs with the powers that be and trying to arrange passage abroad for himself and his young son from the northeastern city of Recife. He finds himself staying in a safe house full of other political refugees and, through no fault of his own, pursued by a pair of hit men. Meanwhile, Filho flashes forward in time and throws in some of the genre insanity that characterized his last narrative feature, 2019’s Bacurau. With the languorous but predestined feel of a classic film noir, The Secret Agent captures what it feels like to live in an unpredictable country. (Currently playing at Cinema 21 and Regal Bridgeport Village.)

Honorable mentions

Neil Diamond Division: Song Sung Blue

International Division: Sentimental Value; La Grazia; Left-Handed Girl; Caught by the Tides; Sister Midnight; Universal Language; Drowning Dry

Trauma Division: The Chronology of Water; Hamnet; The Shrouds; Twinless; Magazine Dreams; Sharp Corner

Comedy Division: Fackham Hall; Ebony & Ivory; Friendship; Pavements

Superhero Division: Thunderbolts* (The New Avengers); Superman

Genre Division: Freaky Tales; Good Boy; Weapons

Documentary Division: Predators; Rainier: A Beer Odyssey

The worst films of 2025

Captain America: Brave New World; Wolf Man; Spinal Tap II: The End Continues; Death of a Unicorn; Now You See Me, Now You Don’t

More 2025 in Review stories

• Visual Arts 2025: A look at the year that was. From the Portland Art Museum’s $116 million reinvigoration to a bevy of innovative exhibitions, it’s been a good art year in Oregon despite the Trump Administration’s war on arts and culture.
• Books 2025: A year of Triumphs and tensions. It was generally a good year for books and readers in Oregon, with local writers winning honors and drawing crowds.
• Theater 2025: Frogs on the street, thrills and chills onstage. A year on the boards: Even costumed characters protesting in front of an ICE facility couldn’t upstage the stellar performances from Oregon’s theater community this year.
• Arts & politics 2025: Trump assaults top the year’s cultural news. The Trump Administration’s war on culture, DEI, and federal arts agencies has slashed money for arts groups across the nation, including Oregon, and is likely to continue.
• Oregon arts 2025: Comings and goings. Major shifts in leadership at All Classical Radio, Portland Art Museum, the state’s arts & cultural agencies, Eugene Ballet and many other groups made 2025 a year of realignment.
• Music 2025: The light shines in darkness. In a long, sometimes stressful, and often beautifully sounding year, the most important thing we do is talk to each other.
• In memorium: Arts figures we lost in 2025. From novelist Todd Grimson to actor Denis Arndt, painter Isaka Shamsud-Din, gallerist Donna Guardino, jazz vocalist Nancy King, singer/songwriter Jack McMahon and more, remembering Oregon artists who died in 2025.
• DanceWatch: Looking back and ahead. Jamuna Chiarini spotlights leading dance events coming up in January and looks back on highlights, changes, and significant events in the Oregon dance world in 2025.
• A last look at 2025 (and a peek into ’26). It’s been a year of highs and lows, from the Oregon Symphony jamming with the Dandy Warhols and the Portland Art Museum reinvigorating itself to the closing of the Five Oaks Museum and the federal administration’s fiscal war on arts. Time for 2026 to step up and take over!