2025 In 50 Films - Part One

I don’t write top ten lists anymore.

I did it for many years, and it always struck me as an exercise in frustration. When I went through on Letterboxd and made lists of my favorite films from every year I’ve been alive, I decided to pick my top 30 films, and even then, it felt like I left out a lot of movies I love. In a good film year, I often enjoy far more than I am able to spotlight at the end of the year, and I feel like the ultimate test comes later, when I look at my library of movies and I see which ones I keep and revisit and value over time and which ones fade away. The only reason I make lists or use Letterboxd or write about films is to create connections to other film fans. I present these things as a way of reaching out into darkness and saying “Here are the things that I love. I hold them up like a light to see who else is drawn to them.” Movies are a way of connecting us, and even when it’s just one person who watches a film and feels something, that single connection matters. That’s why we do this. We tell stories we need to tell, we push them out into the world, and then we hope they find the people they’re supposed to find. All the rest of it is noise.

I’m going to publish five articles, covering ten movies in each one, and in doing so, I hope I offer up a snapshot of just how exciting and interesting the year in movies has been. Every single one of these films is going to live with me. I’m going to hold all of them dear for different reasons, and while they are “ranked,” that’s just about my own personal preferences. All of them are great. All of them are worthy. All of them are films I would encourage you to see. My top ten are films that I am going to personally hold close, and that I've already absorbed into my worldview in some way, and when we get to them, I hope I'm able to convey what it is that makes them that little bit more special. But starting at number 50, these are all films that I love. I could do double this number and I wouldn't run out of films I thought were genuinely great this year.

2025 was a great time to love movies even if it often feels like Hollywood is a mall on the edge of town that no one visits anymore and half the stores are closed and the only reason you go at this point is out of habit, instead of any genuine need. Sometimes you have to do the legwork yourself because there is no mono-culture now. It’s easy to miss things. The theatrical window used to be gigantic, and now it feels like a peephole in a door more than a window. Tracking down the eventual streaming home of things can be a pain in the ass. I understand all of that. This list is to give you things that will reward whatever effort it takes to see them.

I hope you had as good a film year as I did, and I’d really love to hear feedback from all of you in the comments about what you loved and what mattered most to you. I’m sure there are things I didn’t see that would have made my year even better, and I want to know which things landed hardest for all of you.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

PART ONE (50 - 41)

50. No Other Choice

Park Chan-Wook has only increased in technical command over the years, and at this point, he wields his camera like a surgical blade, carving out these chilly, pointed stories about the ugliest corners of the human heart. His latest, adapted from a savage Donald Westlake novel, is frequently funny, and Lee Byung-hun gives one of the strangest and richest performances of his iconic career. When a paper executive is downsized, he finds himself unable to land a new job, and he eventually decides to take out his competition in an effort to guarantee that he gets hired for a prized job. While the thriller side of things is masterfully handled, it doesn’t feel like that’s what interests him the most. The dark comedy and the futile ways we dress up the crushing daily failures of capitalism are much more interesting to him, and it feels like as bleak an ending as he’s ever offered up.