The 11 Best Movies of 2025, So Far

What are the best movies of 2025? Though the year film got off to a rocky start—with some bad IP stinking up multiplexes and smaller genre movies turning out to be disappointing—there have been a few diamonds in the rough, as well as at least one unquestionable commercial and critical smash hit. That movie (guess what it’s called!) and these ten more are the best movies of 2025 (so far), a variety of films worth seeking out as we head toward the mega popcorn season of summer.

Black Bag

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Notable cast members: Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, Tom Burke, Marisa Abela
Synopsis: British spy George Woodhouse must identify the source of a devastating leak—and the answer may be his own wife.

Another of Steven Soderbergh’s cool, propulsive genre exercises, Black Bag imagines a marriage between spies—Michael Fassbender’s human lie detector and Cate Blanchett’s steely field operative—tested by a hint of mistrust. The film becomes a kind of dinner party whodunit involving the couple’s petty, bickering, perhaps lethal colleagues. They’re played by a hip ensemble of actors: Furiosa’s Tom Burke, Industry’s Marisa Abela, Bridgerton’s Regé-Jean Page, and the always wonderful Naomie Harris. Though it’s an espionage movie that’s more about talk than action, Black Bag is nonetheless an exciting, suspenseful reminder that smart grown-up entertainment is still possible. Now go and watch it so the powers that be will be convinced to make more.

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy

Director: Michael Morris
Notable cast members: Renée Zellweger, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Leo Woodall, Hugh Grant
Synopsis: After the death of her beloved Mark Darcy, Bridget Jones must muddle through middle age, motherhood, and new romance.

Arriving nearly nine years after the clumsy, neurotic Brit’s last outing—and almost a quarter century after her first—Mad About the Boy could easily have been a depressing and wholly unnecessary sequel that sullied a once beloved character. But in the hands of director Michael Morris, the film is instead a wistful, warmly amusing pleasure, dreamy with romantic possibility while a bit sad about all that’s irretrievable in the past. Renée Zellweger is winsome as ever as the diarist turned TV producer turned widowed stay-at-home mum. Yes, I did say widowed. Colin Firth’s Mark Darcy—the great love of Bridget’s life—has died, which the film does not merely present as a convenient way to explain Firth’s absence from the film. It is a foundational thematic element of Mad About the Boy, intertwined with Bridget’s nervous reentry into the dating world. She’s got a pair of charming men to greet her, at least: Chiwetel Ejiofor as a prim science teacher at the Darcy kids’ school and soulful hunk Leo Woodall as, well, a soulful hunk. It’s cozy and shimmering, a spirited hug of a movie that is easily the franchise’s best since the original.

Caught by the Tides

Director: Jia Zhangke
Notable cast members: Zhao Tao
Synopsis: A working-class woman goes on a quest across China to find her long-lost ex-lover.

One might accuse the great Chinese director Jia Zhangke of repeating himself. After all, Caught by the Tides is yet another look at the social, cultural, and economic upheaval of 21st-century China, as a nation lurches out of its agrarian past and into a (supposedly) glittering urban future. And, indeed, Jia uses outtakes from past films and from documentary footage he’s been shooting for over 20 years to piece his latest work together. But Caught by the Tides is more than mere rehash. It is a collage that expands on his past inquests into what’s been swallowed up by all this change. Jia’s frequent collaborator Zhao Tao plays a woman looking for a lost lover across two decades of national shift, giving Jia the opportunity to peek into the many lives—existing somewhere between fact and fiction—encountered or simply passed by on that journey. Abstract and almost experimental, Caught by the Tides is still very recognizably a Jia work, complete with one of his typically breathtaking closing scenes, another vital snapshot of a person and a people in all the glory and melancholy of forward motion.

Familiar Touch

Director: Sarah Friedland
Notable cast members: Kathleen Chalfant, Carolyn Michelle Smith, Andy McQueen, H. Jon Benjamin
Synopsis: An 80-something grapples with her own cognitive decline.

Delicate and despondent, Sarah Friedland’s award-winning debut feature stars the great New York theater actor Kathleen Chalfant as a proud woman losing her grip on independence as she recedes further into dementia. We’ve seen stories like this before, in difficult and thoroughly depressing films like Amour, Vortex, and The Father. Friedland takes a more moderate tack, though Familiar Touch is not without its own bone-deep sadness. It is also thoroughly humane, affording Chalfant’s character all the dignity she’s earned by sheer dint of living a life. It’s a thrill to see Chalfant in a juicy lead role like this, as it is to watch a new director so confidently announce their arrival.

Love

Director: Dag Johan Haugerud
Notable cast members: Andrea Bræin Hovig, Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen
Synopsis: Two people strike up a romance.

The third part of Dag Johan Haugerud’s Love, Sex, Dreams trilogy, this often whisper-quiet film follows two Oslo hospital workers—doctor Marianne (Andrea Bræin Hovig) and nurse Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen)—as they embark on adventures of the heart over the course of a summer month. Haugerud’s characters are kind and thoughtful, prodding softly at the borders of their lives in search of connection and, maybe, deeper meaning. Love features, among other things, a sensitive depiction of postdivorce dating; a bittersweet rumination on the progress of gay rights and sexual health; and a lovely and complicated appreciation for the city of Oslo, captured with such dreamy allure in this gentle hug of a film. If Haugerud’s fellow Norwegian Joachim Trier’s films are just too busy for you, maybe Love’s elegant hush and simplicity will be slightly more your speed. And if you love it, there are two other films ready for you to savor.

Misericordia

Director: Alain Guiraudie
Notable cast members: Féliz Kysyl, Catherine Frot, Jean-Baptiste Durand, Jacques Develay
Synopsis: Violence and deception grip a village in France.

I’m almost reluctant to recommend this one, as it’s such a strange, withholding, and occasionally frustrating little oddity. But French provocateur Alain Guiraudie’s minimalist thriller lingered with me for days after I watched it—which must mean something. Guiraudie brings the audience into a faded, desolate village in rural France. Its few residents are plagued by loneliness and jealousy, all of which comes burbling to the surface when a son of the town returns for a funeral after many years away. A curious queerness runs through Misericordia, which poses more questions than it ultimately answers. That elusiveness can be a bit grating, but there is also something gripping, alarming, and darkly funny about the way the film murmurs with secrets and hidden meaning. It’s worth seeking out for yourself; maybe you can crack its code better than I was able to.

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

Director: Rungano Nyoni
Notable cast members: Susan Chardy, Elizageth Chisela, Henry B.J. Phiri
Synopsis: A woman discovers the body of her uncle, leading to the unspooling of several family secrets.

One of the knockout films at last year’s Cannes, Rungano Nyoni’s dazzling, inventive drama is a look at gender roles in contemporary Zambia. It’s also something of a ghost story, as well as a #MeToo story—and, like Misericordia, it’s an examination of the ripples made by a homecoming. Nyoni builds the film with meticulous craft, composing one arresting shot after another. Susan Chardy is mesmerizing in the lead role, playing a woman who guards her grief and anger behind a wall of placid dispassion. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is a fascinating depiction of one culture’s mourning process and an emerging generational schism in countries like Zambia, between the oncoming rush of modernity and the demands of tradition.

One of Them Days

Director: Lawrence Lamont
Notable cast members: Keke Palmer, SZA, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Lil Rel Howery
Synopsis: Two best friends and roommates race to cobble together their rent in this antic comedy.

A lively throwback to 1990s high-concept comedies, Lawrence Lamont’s film sends a lively pair on a ticking-clock tear through South Central Los Angeles as they scramble to get their hands on some money to stave off eviction. Those two friends are played by the tireless fount of charisma that is Keke Palmer and the singer SZA, making an auspicious film debut. One of Them Days is broad and slapstick at times, more clever and shrewd at others. It’s a winning blend of styles, enlivened by a game array of supporting players, including Janelle James, Katt Williams, and breakout actor Aziza Scott, an adept physical performer who steals many of her scenes. One of Them Days is a lo-fi delight, and its box office success hopefully augurs that comedy may be creeping back into the multiplexes.

Sharp Corner

Director: Jason Buxton
Notable cast members: Ben Foster, Cobie Smulders
Synopsis: A father grows fixated on the titular bend in the road.

Writer-director James Buxton’s grim little thriller is about yet another average husband and father losing himself to the pressures of contemporary masculinity. But Buxton finds interesting ways to articulate that familiar descent, adapting Russell Wangersky’s short story with a mind toward shivery ambiguity. Ben Foster plays a man whose family has just relocated to their exurban dream house, only to discover that the bend in the road just past their front yard is the site of frequent car accidents. He becomes obsessed with this proximity to peril and death, alienating his wife (a persuasive Cobie Smulders) and small child in the process. Buxton avoids grand conclusions, instead shrewdly letting his audience wonder what exactly has caused this serious fracture in the psyche of one regular guy. Compelling and dreadful, Sharp Corner is the best argument for never leaving the city that I’ve heard this year.

Sinners

Director: Ryan Coogler
Notable cast members: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O’Connell
Synopsis: Twin brothers find their new juke joint overrun with the undead in 1930s Mississippi.

Ryan Coogler sets his franchises aside to do something new with old lore. Sinners is a thrilling riff on the vampire genre, using it as a vessel to explore matters of race, class, and art in 20th-century (and, really, 21st-century) America. Michael B. Jordan plays two roles with equal soul and fire, twin brothers determined to carve out a place of prosperity and relative peace in the depths of the Jim Crow South. Coogler uses all the resources provided to him by a major studio to make something rich and a little risky, a bold commercial entertainment that also asks audiences to confront the brutality of history. Sensual, gory, and full of song, Sinners is the rare contemporary Hollywood movie that reminds us of the industry’s once glorious, now faded capacity for invention and urgency. Many more like it, please.

You’re Cordially Invited

Director: Nicholas Stoller
Notable cast members: Reese Witherspoon, Will Ferrell, Geraldine Viswanathan, Meredith Hagner
Synopsis: Comic chaos ensues after a picturesque wedding venue is accidentally double booked.

Far better than streaming-service fodder, Nicholas Stoller’s amiable film finds much to laugh about in the most dreaded of wedding-planning fiascos: a double booking. Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon use their star power more effectively than either has in a long while, gracefully managing the film’s swings from absurdity to sentimentality. They’ve got great help from, among others, Celia Weston, Meredith Hagner, Jimmy Tatro, and Leanne Morgan. Bright and busy and almost approximating the high gloss of the rom-com’s golden age, You’re Cordially Invited is the perfect complement to a breezy Saturday night at home. But yes, it would have been more fun in theaters.