The biggest news coming out of Hollywood in 2025 was less about the movies themselves than about the future of the business. Just this month, the pending purchase of the legacy studio Warner Bros. by the streamer Netflix set the town abuzz. (Paramount Studios later launched a competing $108 billion bid to buy Warner Bros. directly from shareholders, without approval from its management.)
Artificial intelligence continues to cast its long shadow on the filmmaking process – from acting to screenwriting to everything in between. Boon or blight? Too soon to say.
But the movie business is not monolithic. Hollywood may be relying more than ever on sequels and formulas, but the indie realm is looking particularly good these days. An impressive number of films by young, often first-time, directors came out this past year. The range of performances, even in iffy movies, was equally impressive. If you know where to look, the art of movies, and the deep pleasures they can provide, is alive and well.
Why We Wrote This
Peter Rainer, the Monitor’s longtime film critic, turns the spotlight on the 10 movies that moved him over the past year. They include Richard Linklater’s “Blue Moon,” “The Ballad of Wallis Island,” and “Train Dreams.”
Before I roll out my Top 10 – OK, I cheated, it’s really 11! – here are a few celebrated films you won’t see on that list.
The abundantly gifted Paul Thomas Anderson’s knockabout “One Battle After Another,” about a frazzled ex-revolutionary played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is being touted as the movie for our politically polarized times. Despite some brilliant stretches, it seemed more like a mildewed blast from the past – a mostly contemporary-set movie with a 1960s-era Boomerized mindset. I found Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” set mostly in a juke joint in 1932 Mississippi, flagrantly impressive until the gory vampirism took over. “Hamnet,” the high-art tearjerker of the year about the death of Shakespeare’s son, left me, if not cold, then lukewarm. I recognize that this movie affects some people on a very deep level. But its most sorrowful moments felt unduly coercive to me, despite wrenching work from Jessie Buckley as Shakespeare’s wife. In any case, I don’t buy the assumption that any film that moves us to tears is by definition great. If this was true, “Old Yeller” would be the greatest film ever made.
Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, here, in alphabetical order, are my best picks of the year.
A Little Prayer – In Angus MacLachlan’s immensely touching drama, David Strathairn plays a church-going Vietnam vet and Jane Levy plays his daughter-in-law, with whom he shares a deep emotional bond. Both performers are extraordinary. The final scene between them, about the love one human being can have for another, is the finest moment of any movie I saw this year. (Rated R) Read the full review here.
Blue Moon – Richard Linklater is having quite a run. “Nouvelle Vague,” about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless,” was an exhilarating ode to moviemaking. “Blue Moon” – set mostly in 1943 in the famous Broadway hangout Sardi’s and starring a terrific Ethan Hawke as the legendary, dissolute Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart – is even better. I don’t mind a movie with this much talking if the dialogue (by Robert Kaplow) is this good. In supporting roles, Margaret Qualley, and Andrew Scott, as Richard Rodgers, are standouts. (R) Read the full review here.
It Was Just an Accident – Jafar Panahi’s mordant black comedy is about a group of former Iranian political prisoners holding hostage a man they believe was their torturer. Based in part on Panahi’s own experiences as a former prisoner, the film deservedly won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, that festival’s highest honor. A parallel drama is currently being played out in Panahi’s own life, as the Islamic Republic of Iran has sentenced him in absentia to a year in prison for “propaganda activities.” (PG-13; with subtitles) Read the full review here.
Left-Handed Girl – With her two daughters, a single mother relocates to Taipei to open a food stand in the Taiwanese capital’s night market. Their interlocking lives, a portrait of disarray, are beautifully balanced by first-time solo director Shih-Ching Tsou – a longtime associate of Sean Baker (“Anora”), with whom she co-wrote the script. As the older daughter, Shih-Yuan Ma gives one of the year’s most vibrant performances. (R; with subtitles)
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain – This first feature from the animators Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han, adapted from an autobiographical novel by Amélie Nothomb, nestles us inside the mindscape of a very young Belgian girl living with her parents in postwar Japan. The bond she shares with her Japanese housekeeper and surrogate mother is a rich testament to the restorative power of loving-kindness. Little Amélie is both astonished by the beauty of the natural world and increasingly aware of its transience. The animation is digital but looks handcrafted. (PG; with subtitles)
Preparation for the Next Life – In his first dramatic feature, the documentarian Bing Liu, and his screenwriter Martyna Majok, have done a smashing job of adapting Atticus Lish’s novel about two New York itinerants living on the margins of society. Fred Hechinger movingly plays a troubled, recently discharged vet and the extraordinary Sebiye Behtiyar, who has never acted in a feature film before, is an unauthorized Uyghur immigrant. Their vicissitudes are both timely and for all time. (R) Read the full review here.
Sorry, Baby – This first feature from director-writer-star Eva Victor is one of the most honest and authentic portrayals of recovery from trauma I’ve ever seen. Victor’s Agnes is sexually assaulted – we never see the assault – but the film is about restoration, not victimization. As I wrote in my review at the time, the movie is “a diary of personal reclamation.” (R) Read the full review here.
The Ballad of Wallis Island – The most sheerly enjoyable movie of the year. Tom Basden, who co-wrote the script with Tim Key, plays an over-the-hill rock star who unknowingly is paired with his bitter ex-partner, played by Carey Mulligan, for a private concert on a remote Welsh island. The eccentric millionaire who arranges the pairing is played, most eccentrically, by Key. Directed by James Griffiths, it’s a charmer. (PG-13) Read the full review here.
The Choral – Directed by Nicholas Hytner and written by Alan Bennett – the same dream team that gave us “The Madness of King George” – it’s old-fashioned in the best sense. Beautifully structured and acted, it’s about a beleaguered choirmaster in a Yorkshire town that’s losing all its men to the Great War. Ralph Fiennes plays the choirmaster. That’s all ye need to know. (R; in theaters Dec. 25)
The President’s Cake – This remarkable debut feature from writer-director Hasan Hadi is set in a remote Iraqi village in the 1990s during Saddam Hussein’s brutal reign. Young Lamia, played by the amazing child actor Baneen Ahmed Nayyef, is required to bake a cake for the dictator’s mandatory nationwide birthday celebration. Seen through a child’s eyes, the film is an allegory that never loses its grounding in stark reality. (PG-13; with subtitles; in theaters February 2026) Read festival review here.
Courtesy of The President’s Cake
Train Dreams – Clint Bentley’s adaptation of the Denis Johnson novella looks at a vanishing way of life with such immediacy that we never think of it as a “period” film. Joel Edgerton, in his best performance to date, plays a logger in the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the 20th century. Replete with joy and heartbreak, it’s a film about what ultimately makes life worth living. (PG-13) Read the full review here.
Some other worthies: “Eephus,” “The Life of Chuck,” “Merrily We Roll Along,” “Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost,” “The Alabama Solution,” “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,” “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” “The Musicians,” “Tatami,” and “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.”
Peter Rainer is the Monitor’s film critic.
