Top 10 movies of 2025

By Willie Wittezehler
Reader Contributor

Editor’s note: Willie was press-ganged into providing this “top 10” list of 2025 films during a chance meeting in the alley next to the Reader office. Despite being an all-around heckuva guy, he’s also a real-life filmmaker and a fine writer, and we appreciate his contribution this year. 

— Zach Hagadone

10. The Naked Gun 

I haven’t laughed this hard in a movie theater in years. The jokes hit with manic precision, and Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson are utterly charming. It also serves as a sobering cautionary tale: Think twice before summoning a sentient snowman on your next romantic getaway. 

9. Nouvelle Vague 

Do yourself a favor and cue up this double feature: start with Breathless, the French New Wave classic that plays with all the style and kineticism of a jazz musician getting lost in the ecstasy of a solo, then wash it down with Richard Linklater’s lovingly crafted imagining of its making. Watching them together was an intoxicating reminder of why creative rebellion matters, and why cinema can — and should — be constantly reinvented. 

8. Boys Go To Jupiter 

Absurd, surreal and entirely on its own wavelength, this animated fever dream takes place in the liminal space between Christmas and New Year’s, making it a whimsically bizarre holiday watch. Its humor and tone won’t be for everyone, but if you tune into it like I did, you’ll discover a one-of-a-kind, oddly charming brilliance. 

7. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery 

Astonishingly, Rian Johnson has pulled it off again. This might be his smartest script in the series yet — not just because it’s clever and twisty, but because it’s layered with themes of faith, power and redemption, and anchored by real heart. You’ll have to watch more than once to catch the answers hiding in plain sight and to appreciate the layered performances of this awesome cast. 

6. It Was Just An Accident 

Director Jafar Panahi was recently sentenced to one year in prison for making this film, deemed “propaganda against the system” by the Iranian government. I expected a tense, angry, radically defiant political thriller — which it is — but what surprised me was how it maintains tenderness, humanity and unexpected humor, even though it was created in secret under such oppressive conditions. 

5. Marty Supreme 

You know that feeling during the final points of a heated ping-pong match — heart racing, no margin for error? Somehow, this movie sustains that exact energy for two and a half hours. It’s an electric, funny, frantic, wildly unpredictable ride from one chaotic mess to the next. When the title character says, “Everything in my life is falling apart, but I’m going to figure it out,” you may not believe he can — but you won’t be able to look away as this self-deluding narcissist barrels forward anyway.

4. Weapons

The story hooks you in with a horrifying mystery then unravels like a puzzle, keeping you unsettled and off balance in the best way. Beneath the dread, it quietly grapples with grief, trauma and the ways communities respond when something unthinkable shatters their sense of safety — yet somehow still manages to be genuinely fun (my theater erupted in applause and laughter at the gruesome climax). 

3. One Battle After Another 

Big, messy, exhilarating and deeply alive, this movie feels like cinema operating at full capacity. It’s thrilling to see brilliant artists engage so deftly and directly with the political fractures of our present moment and still deliver something so thoroughly entertaining. Nobody does it like Paul Thomas Anderson — this is what movies are all about. Viva la revolución! 

2. Sinners 

The blues — not just the music, but the culture from which it was born — pumps like a beating heart at the center of this film, grounding a vampire story in something that feels more like modern American folklore. There’s a mid-film musical sequence that becomes something transcendent, collapsing time and history into a surreal rush that I’m still thinking about. It’s inspiring to see a big box office film this ambitious and audacious, reminding us just how expansive mainstream cinema can be when it dares to mean something. 

1. Train Dreams 

OK, I’ll admit this may not be objectively the best film of the year, but for us North Idahoans, it feels like a small miracle: a story set in our own backyard, rendered with such care that the people who once populated this area feel alive again on screen. It’s based on a book I absolutely cherish, so yes, I have to be that “the-book-was-better” person. But watching this adaptation, I was deeply moved — filled with quiet awe for the pivotal time it evokes, and a profound gratitude that a film like this exists at all. 

Honorable Mentions: Sentimental Value, which just barely missed my top 10, and Hamnet, which I haven’t seen yet but sounds like we’ll be hearing a lot about this awards season. Other films I had a lot of fun with include Caught Stealing, 28 Years Later, Black Bag, Relay, Sisu: Road to Revenge and Friendship; also the documentary SNL: 50 Years of Music. Speaking of music, shout out to the Nine Inch Nails soundtrack for Tron: Ares — bad movie, awesome soundtrack. 

Willie Wittezehler is a filmmaker, author and executive producer of the PBS documentary series Roadtrip Nation.