Tina Kakadelis
As another year comes to an end, it’s time for the team at Film Obsessive to come together and remember the movies from 2025 that captured our imaginations. From conniving dinner parties that end in murder to whodunnits, alien conspiracy theories, good sandwiches, love letters to the movie star of yore, and monsters who play god, take a look at part one of Film Obsessive’s Best of 2025. Stay tuned for part two tomorrow!
Hedda
Nia DaCosta is a director who has unfortunately been put through the franchise ringer. Her IP work has shown flashes of brilliance, but it’s clear she’s been somewhat held back by these larger franchises and audience expectations. Hedda is a full return to form. In this sensual, propulsive period drama based on the classic stage play, Hedda Gabler. DaCosta directs this thing like her life was on the line. The camera is rarely still; it’s always finding the most interesting angle to capture the action. There’s a moving dolly shot that would make Spike Lee sit up in his seat. This film sizzles off of the screen and DaCosta’s direction is the driving force of that.
Tessa Thompson is stunning in the titular role. It can’t be easy to play a flawed character that still needs to drive the narrative. Thompson injects the part with enough empathy to really sell it. She’s surrounded by an incredible supporting cast. Nina Hoss and Nicholas Pinnock, in particular, were standouts here. The score might as well have been it’s own character. It reacts to the scenes along with the characters. The music shifts from lush tones to spare percussion at the drop of a dime; just like how the film shifts from steamy romance to attempted murder on a dime. — Matthew Percefull
Wake Up Dead Man
Rian Johnson, ever the man to “subvert our expectations,” has already cemented himself as Agatha Christie’s cinematic descendant with Knives Out and Glass Onion (condolences to Branagh). And yet, it’s with Wake Up Dead Man, the third murder mystery we’ve seen detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) tasked with solving, that this series has managed to find its stride in a way its already-phenomenal predecessors haven’t reached before. Centering itself around the killing of Wicks (Josh Brolin), a hateful, embittered conservative priest in a small-town New York church, and Jud (Josh O’Connor), the younger, new-arrival pastor who’s the prime suspect to have committed the deed, Wake Up Dead Man merges religious fiction with the whodunnit structure to astonishingly alchemical results.
Like Blanc himself initially does in this film, it’s easy to take a genre renowned for its fixation on rationality and try cynically demolishing the appeal of institutionalized religion with it. And yet, O’Connor’s phenomenal performance as the devoted, earnest, and thornily conflicted Father Jud, is the true key to awakening the ever-evolving heart of this film, which beats more strongly than most other films about Christianity in recent memory. Among Wake Up Dead Man’s myriad surprises is that it’s a shockingly soulful experience — a stark departure from Knives Out’s laser-focus on immigration and Glass Onion’s shattering of the “reality distortion field.” Here, Johnson utilizes another airtight mystery and a stellar ensemble to deconstruct how Christianity has been manipulating, perverting, and fracturing the collective American consciousness, while steadfastly believing in the solace, catharsis, and absolution that Christianity strives to provide at its most compassionate and open-hearted. It’s a display of introspection near-unprecedented in this series or genre that preserves its predecessors’ raw entertainment value and narrative structural integrity. — James Y. Lee
Bugonia
Yorgos Lanthimos is no stranger to the bizarre. His latest, Bugonia, based on the 2003 South Korean black comedy Save the Green Planet!, proves his affinity for the peculiar as it follows two conspiracy theorist cousins Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and Don (Aidan Delbis) who kidnap a CEO named Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), convinced that she is an evil being from beyond this world. Timely and brimming with love for humanity (despite its grim ending), Bugonia is another successful attempt from the Greek filmmaker at questioning the status quo and unraveling the many mysteries of modern-day life, themes that fit alongside several renowned filmmakers’ comebacks this year, including Bong Joon Ho’s sci-fi Mickey 17 and Ari Aster’s contentious Eddington.
Stone and Plemons are a duo to be reckoned with as they elevate Will Tracy’s screenplay to the highest capacity with their top-notch performances as no-nonsense, mysterious Fuller and obsessed, desperate Teddy. Sympathetic and comedic supporting characters Don and Casey (Stavros Halkias) only add to the sheer absurdity that permeates every scene of Bugonia. Finally, the film is beautifully shot by Lanthimos’s frequent collaborator Robbie Ryan, its bold use of symmetry and color making every trip down this rabbit hole of a story pop off the silver screen.
A witty critique of the wealthy, Big Pharma, and the internet’s radicalizing nature, Bugonia leaves no stone unturned even in its shocking third act, making it one of Lanthimos’s strongest features to date, a feat he’s sure to top in the years to come. — Natalie D.C.
Eddington
The great majority of critics and cinephiles (and future Oscar voters) are crowning Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another as the most topical and polarizing movie of 2025. With its ability to pepper all sorts of social commentary with shotgun blasts of thrills, I can see why. But for polarizing, I think the more shocking and more jarring takedown of current sociopolitical parallels came two months before PTA’s film with Ari Aster’s pandemic satire Eddington.
Where One Battle After Another acts like a treadmill to work up the sweat caused by its hefty themes, Eddington churns like a meat grinder, where everything involved and disturbed gets bloodier and more beaten the closer it gets to the drama. The source of the movie’s strife is Joaquin Phoenix’s petulant town sheriff, who gets it in his inflated and petty mind to run for mayor against the clean-cut Pedro Pascal during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. When he clearly can’t beat the incumbent, and the town is tearing itself apart with the reverberations of a government shutdown and the onset of #BlackLivesMatter, Phoenix’s lawman veers off the straight path with caustic and violent results.
With Eddington and plenty of 20/20 hindsight, Ari Aster is not afraid to rub both the audience and societal noses in the putrid mistakes made during that fateful year of 2021. While the script’s worth of spoken vitriol is meant to destroy fictional lives, one cannot watch Eddington and not shiver at the broken morality and discarded empathy that existed in the not-too-distant past that still lingers on many levels today. This bold film shows mistakes being made that are still occurring today, with often uglier and scarier results. I call that a riskier and more slippery slope than where PTA ventures. — Don Shanahan
One Battle After Another
Who knew Paul Thomas Anderson had a movie like this in him — a strikingly urgent, modern-day action thriller epic charged with the energy of leftist revolution, unapologetic about the modes of resistance it wants us to adopt in our steadily backsliding country? Up until this point, Anderson’s greatest sources of renown have been in his immaculately built, character-focused period pieces — the anti-capitalist polemic of There Will Be Blood, the deconstruction of Scientology in The Master, and the rivetingly perverse romance of Phantom Thread. But with One Battle After Another, Anderson raises yet another film into his pantheon of modern classics, a rocketingly potent current-day saga that unfurls the diversely revolutionary corners of America, and revels in their collective spirit to resist and defeat the forces of white supremacy that have long dominated the echelons of power in this country.
This is a film with an impressively assembled cast, from Teyana Taylor’s energetic yet haunting turn all the way to one of DiCaprio’s finest hours yet — alongside the luminary introduction of up-and-comer Chase Infiniti, as well as the lip-puckering, macho-posturing, militant-fascist villainy of Sean Penn’s performance. All of their work — alongside the VistaVision-laden formal craft refined to jaw-droppingly propulsive, grippingly action-packed perfection on a level not seen since Mad Max: Fury Road — works in synergistic tandem for one of the timeliest films of recent memory. It’s nothing short of a masterwork, with a true-hearted understanding that family is an irreplaceable facet of revolution; that oppressed minority peoples have served as the most potent contributors to the modern face of revolution; and that “one battle after another” is the way we’ve always fought, and the way we must continue to fight. — James Y. Lee
Sorry, Baby
Eva Victor is a French-American actor and writer best known for their work in Billions, Boys Go to Jupiter, and, now, their directorial debut Sorry, Baby. The A24 dramedy follows Agnes (Eva Victor), an English professor at her alma mater in New England, who feels stuck compared to her successful best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) years after a “Bad Thing” happened to her. Darkly funny, tender, and heartbreaking in all the right places, Sorry, Baby reminds viewers how mundane, yet beautiful life can be, even in the aftermath of a deeply traumatic event.
Agnes is a remarkable protagonist, her relatable moments of downplaying her self-worth or fawning over a lost kitten put into stark perspective when the film eventually reveals what happened to Agnes within its fragmented, yet effective structure. Victor shines in this role; their ability to capture what it truly means to survive within their performance, original screenplay, and direction (all within their debut, no less!) is an impressive feat to behold. Ackie’s outgoing portrayal of Lydie—Agnes’s foil who has moved forward with her life in New York with her girlfriend and baby on the way—plays well off of Victor’s introverted demeanor, making their dynamic as long-distance best friends that much more realistic.
Sorry, Baby is a gem of a film whose flowers are more than well-deserved. A poignant and lovingly shot tale of mental health, friendship, and moving forward in spite of it all, the indie darling is sure to leave no dry eyes this award season. — Natalie D.C.
It Was Just an Accident
Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or-winning It Was Just an Accident follows Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), a mechanic who was once imprisoned by Iranian authorities. During his sentence, he was interrogated blindfolded. When a man comes into his shop one day for a repair, Vahid hears a squeaking prosthetic leg and recognizes it from one of his former torturers. What follows is a tense tale of morality and vengeance.
Shot in secret without permits from the Islamic Republic, Panahi, who has been in conflict with the Iranian government several times, made a rebellious, political, passionate film that is also a top-notch thriller and surprisingly funny. It’s a tale of vengeance, but also a comedy of errors, as Vahid and the group he recruits to figure out if the squeaky-legged man is who he thinks he is, go through the wringer to solve this, while also going back and forth between wanting to kill a man who tortured them and not being sure if this man might be innocent. The events that transpire are unpredictable and masterfully staged, and the film concludes with the best final scene of 2025 and possibly the decade. It Was Just an Accident is a worthy Palme winner and arguably the best film from an icon of world cinema. — Kevin Wozniak
Bunny
Played out over 24 hours in and near a single Lower East Side tenement, Bunny is a brilliant little nugget of an independent crime-caper comedy co-written by lead actor Mo Stark and Stefan Marolachakis and directed by co-star Ben Jacobson. The plot has its titular protagonist sex worker Bunny (Stark) in a panic, trying to juggle the demands of his co-tenants alongside one very problematic dead body in a wild farce full of sly comic moments.
With Bunny‘s hectic pace, street-smart plot, and mix of comedy and action, there is so, so much going on, and the film’s location—Stark’s actual apartment and the others in that same single tenement—makes for a perfect set for Jackson Hunt’s constantly roving camera. The narrow halls and steep stairways guarantee the characters frequently interrupt each other and have next to no privacy. All of that makes for a fun, frenetic pace and plenty of comic foibles as Bunny and his best friend Dino (Jacobson) try to hide the body. More importantly, though, Bunny makes for a sweet love letter to New York City, a film that succeeds superbly in capturing the eccentricities of its denizens. — J Paul Johnson
Jay Kelly
Over the years, the inflated egos of big stars have led to a fair share of so-called “vanity projects,” made purely for their benefit and enjoyment. Normally, the selfishness and overindulgence of those movies are plain to see and often become an audience deterrent. On the surface, Jay Kelly feels like exactly that sort of glamour spotlight for two-time Oscar winner George Clooney. He plays the title character, an aging Hollywood actor experiencing a late-career crisis that leads to little episodes of memory and happenstance. But in the hands of dramedy director extraordinaire Noah Baumbach, Jay Kelly and George Clooney, for that matter, feel different.
While plenty of the Hollywood good life is on display, Noah and co-writer/actress Emily Mortimer have crafted a journey of melancholic regret alongside reminders of friendship for a man who’s done little to feel the proper worth of either one. Clooney steps beyond possible autobiographical parallels to squeeze the right drama out of this lark of a road movie. Adam Sandler stands out from an excellent ensemble cast as Jay Kelly’s loyal and beleaguered manager, Ron Sukenick. He damn near steals the whole movie as his character weathers his own doubts and sense of commitment. The overall blend of prestige filmmaking with casual relatability gives Jay Kelly a combination of high quality and wide appeal. — Don Shanahan
Caught Stealing
Darren Aronofsky’s action crime thriller Caught Stealing is an ode to the caper film and is one of those movies that stayed with me days after watching it, and that’s largely because of Austin Butler’s grounded and heartbreaking performance. Set in the gritty streets of 1990s New York City, Butler is the film’s protagonist, Hank, a once-promising high school baseball star turned into a depressed alcoholic whose life was ruined by an immensely tragic accident. Hank’s ordinary world becomes turbulent and violent when gangsters pursue him, and he doesn’t know why. Zoe Kravitz plays his girlfriend, Yvonne, and their chemistry is magnetic. I cared about these characters and am rooting for them throughout this wild journey.
In many ways, the movie is an exhausting watch due to its abject brutality, yet the dark comedic elements are nicely balanced with the action sequences. Aronofsky’s smooth directing skills lend to a palpably chaotic yet beautiful story with a somewhat satisfying ending (depending on the perspective). At its core, the film is about Hank battling his inner demons and navigating the grief over what his life could have been. Given that he runs away from all of his problems instead of proactively facing them, we can only hope that the underdog finds peace within himself and his past. — Lilli Keeve
Kontinental ’25
Kontinental ‘25 is a difficult film to class in terms of “genre.” One might call it an absurdist tragedy, but Romanian director Radu Jude’s films are constructed of finer and more surprising elements than genre classifications can carry. The initial sequences involving the rambling, struggling Ion (Gabriel Spahiu, a Jude regular who will also show up in this year’s Dracula) making his way through an animatronic dinosaur park are some of the most oddly striking images I’ve seen in any movie this year. Truly strange and wonderful.
The story involves Orsoyla (Eszter Tompa, who also shows up as a Dracula in Jude’s Dracula), a bailiff in the Romanian city of Cluj who is tasked with evicting Ion from his basement dwelling. The property is the future site of the titular Kontinental, a boutique hotel. Rather than give up his spot, Ion does himself in defiantly, brutally. The death of Ion is a perfect example of how Jude can pull different tonal threads from a scene, as when Orsoyla tries to revive Ion with CPR while her dopey stormtrooper chants the Bee Gee’s “Stayin’ Alive” overhead in ponderous time. Jude plays Ion’s death for all it’s absurd reality, and also makes it the inciting incident of the film, which proceeds to be centered on Orsoyla’s inability to reconcile Ion’s death and cope with her trauma.
Yet, to talk about American films that are exploring “trauma” means something very different than what Jude achieves in Kontinental ’25, where Orsoyla’s trauma is tied to a social context in a pronounced Brechtian fashion. We like Orsoyla—she’s rightfully messed up by the tragedy of Ion, but she’s smart and independent and gets laid on her own terms. She quotes Brecht in desperation, reminding her separatist Transylvanian mother: “man equals man.” Tompa as Orsoyla gives a remarkable performance in how increasingly complex and endearing she renders the character, which makes the tension between her pain and the bureaucracy of her situation particularly resonant.
Jude’s final sequence in Kontinental ’25 is a risky but concise landing. It’s a montage of housing developments that carries a weight similar to the extended montage of roadside memorials in Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, a reminder of those who earn a living in their cars and die behind the wheel. The shots of those housing developments in Kontinental ’25 are haunting, symbolizing what some see as progress and others experience as dinosaur-age devastation. — Jason Hedrick
Resurrection
Trying to define cinema, an over-century-old medium, can provide a thrilling and terrifying proposition. Yes, in the grand scheme of the universe and art, cinema and motion pictures are just getting started. But if you talk to literally anyone who covers this business or thinks about movies, it’s usually with a thought of doom and some vaguely defined era coming to an end.
Bi Gan’s Resurrection isn’t some refutation of any of that, nor is it some ode to the glories of cinema. Rather, Bi’s historiographic look at the first century of cinema finds the artform at its essence: beautiful, messy, terrifying and amorphous. It’s a lot of adjectives to describe the film but Bi doesn’t limit the possibilities of where it will go. He finds beauty, horror and tragedy, while never letting his love for film go even as there’s a feeling of death right around the corner.
Resurrection follows a woman (Shu Qi) who finds a monster (Jackson Yee) that is still able to dream, even though the future they inhabit is one where humanity can no longer dream. What follows over 156 minutes is an exhibition of six of the monsters’ dreams, cinematic vignettes that are basically attuned to the five senses and the mind. There’s no shying away from what this movie is about: Bi is directly looking at how movies serve as dreams, or at the very least reflection of oneself. In our present-day world, where people are increasingly deferring their creativity and intelligent thought to generative artificial intelligence chatbots, Resurrection provides a strong refutation of the abilities of film as a means of expression.
Each chapter in the film follows the monster as a new character and Bi lets each setting have a look and feel of its own; the opening sequence directly has the mise-en-scéne of a silent picture, while the final dream is a daring 36-minute-long one-take that takes place in 1999, a not-so-subtle comment on the world feeling it’s coming to an end and Bi’s insistence on letting us hold onto these dreams for just a little while longer. The chapters have some form of resolution but, like a dream, end when they end with no rhyme or reason to it. Even though Resurrection ends with a funeral, the possibilities Bi opens our eyes to make cinema, possibly in a permanent precarious state, feel as alive as ever. — Henry O’Brien
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is my favorite novel of all time. I’ve read it at least a dozen times, and when I heard that Guillermo del Toro was going to finally make his adaptation of it, I was over the moon. This was something I waited a long time for, and when I saw it in theaters prior to its Netflix release, I sat down, eager to see a proper film version of the novel I love so much. What I got was a del Toro film, and no, I don’t see that as a bad thing.
I was thrown for a loop during the film’s first hour, as I adjusted to the changes, but the thing was that I didn’t see anything wrong with the changes. They were still in the spirit of the book, and I admired that. I also loved the way the film looked. Sorry, but CGI, good or bad, has never bothered me. I’m not an apologist for it; it just doesn’t faze me. So, as I sat there watching the look of the film, from the production design to the costumes, the cinematography, and yes, the visual effects, what struck me most was how much I cared about the characters.
Truth be told, I really only care about the creature when I read the novel. Surely, I’m not cold towards Henry, Elizabeth, or William, and certainly feel downright awful about Justine, but I’ve always believed that Shelley wanted us to care about the creature most of all. This is still true of the film, but del Toro gives more life to Elizabeth, and as a result, I love her. He makes me hate Victor in a way I’ve only intellectually done with the book.
Del Toro has a lot to say about ego and pursuing science simply for the sake of the results and not the consequences, but I appreciate more what he has to say about parents and children, specifically fathers and sons. Is it really all that shocking that Victor is so resentful towards the creature, who is essentially his son, if we consider the idea of the creator as being a parent? Just look at the life he led under the cold thumb of his father, particularly after his mother passed. Of course, the film doesn’t let Victor off the hook. Del Toro doesn’t want to excuse Victor’s behavior.
I don’t believe that Victor is 100% the product of his upbringing. After all, it’s not as if his mother died when he was a baby. He was raised by her, too. He had a younger brother, but there was no real love there. Victor is a particular sort, and ultimately, he’s selfish. It can be difficult to watch a film about a selfish person, but I’m thankful that del Toro spends time with the creature the same way Shelley does. As such, we’re able to see the creature’s behavior as a result of Victor’s “parenting,” even though he also had a loving “mother” in Elizabeth.
The film argues that parents hold a lot of responsibility over their child’s actions, and given the events of the film, at the very least, it’s hard to argue against that. There’s something to be said about Frankenstein’s final moments, which differ from the book, transforming a very tragic ending into something more cathartic, and from my seat, del Toro absolutely earns it. It may not be the adaptation I wanted, but I must say, I loved it. — Michael Suarez
