Just when cinema needed a Superman, James Gunn gave us JustOKMan, but 2025 was a middling year at the movies at overall. I wanted Paul Thomas Anderson to bounce back from the bad taste of Licorice Pizza, but One Battle After Another only gathered glimpses of PTA’s generational genius. James Cameron made another Avatar film. Among the tepid reviews and empty seats at the local cineplex, some unexpected treasures glimmered among quirky genre films, intimate dramas, historical throwbacks and true stories more frightening than fiction.
Eden
Welcome to the Jude Law-less era. One of my picks for best ensemble, Ron Howard’s true story drama pits man against nature and Ana de Armas against all. European settlers flee 1930s fascism for a remote Galapagos island, only to discover paradise breeds its own varieties of violence. De Armas captivates as a flamboyant Baroness disrupting an already fragile community, while Law and Vanessa Kirby play philosophical hermits whose utopian experiment crumbles under the weight of human nature. Sydney Sweeney and Daniel Brühl play a young German couple who struggle to maintain traditional family values amidst the chaos. Come for the sumptuous cinematography and poetic editing. Stay for a masterclass in welding seamless performances to smart, savage text about what happens when civilization tries to escape itself.
Frankenstein
Gothic, Romantic, operatic, and visionary — Guillermo del Toro’s long-gestating passion project was one of the most anticipated films of 2025 and it didn’t disappoint. Writer-director GDT pays homage to the lit/film Frankenverse while adding a uniquely monstrous chapter of his own. Frankenstein delivers the most theatrically artful horror costumes and makeup since Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Jacob Elordi’s portrayal of the Monster makes him an electrifying horror icon for the ages. Mia Goth’s Freudian dual roles add unsettling psychological depth to del Toro’s tragic opera, which highlights the humanity in Mary Shelley’s immortal tale of creation and consequence.
Eddington
Eddington is the most politically sophisticated American film I saw this year. One Battle After Another is draped in radical window dressing, but Eddington’s politics put believable everyday characters inside a pressure cooker of psycho-social agitators during the pandemic era. Joaquin Phoenix’s Sheriff and Pedro Pascal’s Mayor wage personal war as conspiracy theories — antifa paranoia, leaking labs, QAnon rabbit holes — and big tech manipulation infect their community. Eddington — in the best way — reads like a big-screen television episode about a small town in Texas, where the risks and benefits of violence and extremism are splattered in crimson on the dusty streets of The Twilight Zone.
Bugonia
Bugonia is another one of my picks for best ensemble. Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons are solid, with Aidan Delbis stealing scenes as Plemons’ guileless sidekick. Conspiracy theory culture, space invaders lore, class conflict and humanity’s role in the global ecosystem all tangle together in Bugonia. Often feeling like a three-person play staged in a dingy basement, it’s a film that balances deep introspection and off-kilter humor. Yorgos Lanthimos transforms a kidnapping thriller into a cosmic meditation on whether we might be the aliens who’ve come to destroy the earth.
Friendship
The best film of 2025 is director Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship. DeYoung and writer-actor Tim Robinson had a moment in 2025 with this movie and Robinson’s groundbreaking HBOMax cringe comedy The Chair Company. When Craig Waterman (Robinson) takes a mismailed package to neighbor Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd), Friendship blossoms into a black orchid of male loneliness, social isolation, awful awkwardness, and the funniest, most brilliant, most fearless black comedy of the year.
Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.