Best Movies of 2025

Ne Zha II (2025) is the highest-grossing film of 2025. Currently, it stands at over $2 billion in the box office. $1.9 billion of that came from China alone. Of the top three films in the box office, including Zootopia 2 (2025) and Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025), the majority of their money came from China. The latter two films got the majority of their money from international territories or places outside the United States. The fortune of Ne Zha II came from one country by itself. It got a limited theatrical release in America early in 2025. Once it got nearly 2 billion in the Chinese box office, the American company known as A24 re-released it in the United States. It only achieved $23 million domestically, which ranks it #65 in the domestic charts.

This is opposed to Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle (2025), which got ranked #18 domestically and is ranked #7 worldwide with $779 million. There's always been an audience and appetite for Japanese anime. It has seemed to explode in the wake of the pandemic. The style of the Chinese blockbuster might not be appealing in mass. The anime style though does seem to have mass appeal or at least a growing one in America. What also has a growing audience in America and probably elsewhere is K-Pop music, which is why Netflix gave a limited theatrical release to KPop Demon Hunters (2025), which is probably the online hit of the year by a landslide.

The other major story in the box office was yet another film with animated connections. Disney's Lilo & Stitch (2025) is the live-action remake of the 2002 animated feature. It grossed $1.03 billion, making it the only other film other than Ne Zha II, Zootopia 2 and Avatar: Fire and Ash to pass the billion-dollar benchmark. Disney is by far the most successful studio in terms of dollars and cents, but in the super-hero franchise wars, many have argued that Warner Bros. is the winner. The company appointed James Gunn to reboot its DC Comics studio and Gunn's Superman (2025) made over $616 million in the box office, which is more than any film in Disney's MCU. It's not as if the MCU films were any worse than previous ones over the past decade, but some have speculated about a super-hero fatigue at the multiplex.

In general, Warner Bros. was probably the most-talked about studio of the year. So many news stories and headlines were generated about that company. Those news stories were both good and bad or sheer questions. On the positive side, Warner Bros. is the only distributor to have an original film in the Top 10 domestic box office, that of Sinners (2025) by Ryan Coogler. The studio really became a flashpoint of conversation in the media when it was announced that it had made a deal to sell itself to Netflix for $82 billion. This is not the first time that Warner Bros. has been bought and sold, and it's not even the first-time that it's done so by a large tech company. Some thought that the buyer would be Paramount Skydance, which itself recently formed when Skydance Media bought Paramount Pictures, closing the deal this past summer. Paramount didn't have a single film in the Top 10 box office, and only one film in the Top 20, that of Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025). Paramount's only other notable films were The Naked Gun (2025) and The SpongeBob Movie: Search for Squarepants (2025), which both ranked in the Top 40 domestically.

In terms of the upcoming 98th Academy Awards, which will honor the so-called best films of 2025, the film that will likely win the ultimate prize of Best Picture is Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another (2025). Many are saying that it's a done deal in terms of Anderson's anointment, but there have been critics of the film like Van Lathan Jr., Briahna Joy Gray and Jouelzy. They have argued the film's politics being empty or disrespectful to Black revolutionary women. I thought Anderson's film was entertaining and had some good craft, but I agree with their arguments completely that I'm not including it on my top ten or best of the year list.

I do have some honorable mentions. I enjoyed a Maryland-made comedy, that of Jay Duplass' The Baltimorons (2025). Shout-out has to go to a few films that are technically from 2024 but didn't get a proper theatrical release until 2025. They include Mike Leigh's Hard Truths, the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land and Pete Browngardt's The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie.

Otherwise, these are my favorite films of 2025.

10. F1: THE MOVIE by Joseph Kosinski.

9. SOULEYMANE'S STORY by Boris Lojkine.

8. HIGHEST 2 LOWEST by Spike Lee.

7. THUNDERBOLTS* by Jake Schreier. 

6. IN YOUR DREAMS by Alex Woo.

5. LAYLA by Amrou Al-Kadhi

4. PONYBOI by Esteban Arango

3. PLAINCLOTHES by Carmen Emmi

2. ONE OF THEM DAYS by Lawrence Lamont

1. MAGAZINE DREAMS by Elijah Bynum