Best Movies of 2025: Every Film Worth Watching, Ranked

2025 was one of the strongest years for film in recent memory. A Best Picture winner that felt like a lightning bolt, a horror blockbuster that became a cultural conversation, a PTA epic that swept the Oscars, and a string of smaller films that will be talked about for decades. Whether you love prestige drama, genre films, international cinema, or crowd-pleasing entertainment, 2025 delivered across every category. We have ranked the 18 best films of the year based on critical reception, audience response, and lasting impact — with streaming info for each so you can start watching tonight. This is the definitive guide to the movies that mattered in 2025.

The 18 Best Movies of 2025, Ranked

1. One Battle After Another (2025)

Genre: Action / Comedy / Thriller  |  RT Score: 94% Certified Fresh  |  Where to Watch: VOD

Paul Thomas Anderson’s most purely entertaining film yet — a screwball epic about washed-up ex-revolutionaries who reunite to rescue a missing daughter, adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland. Leonardo DiCaprio is at his loose, shaggy best, and the film is packed with awe-inspiring action set pieces while also being PTA’s thematically richest work. It dominated the 98th Academy Awards, winning six Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director, plus four Golden Globes and six BAFTAs. The dominant film of the year.

2. Sinners (2025)

Genre: Horror / Period Drama  |  RT Score: 97% Certified Fresh  |  Where to Watch: Prime Video, Max

Ryan Coogler’s original horror blockbuster set in the Jim Crow South follows twin brothers who return home and encounter a supernatural evil rooted in American history. Michael B. Jordan plays both brothers in a performance of staggering range, and Coogler fuses blues mythology, period atmosphere, and visceral horror into something genuinely singular. It won four Oscars including Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Score, with 16 total nominations. One of the rare blockbusters that feels like it had to exist.

3. Anora (2024/2025)

Genre: Romantic Comedy / Drama  |  RT Score: 96% Certified Fresh  |  Where to Watch: Hulu

Sean Baker’s wild Cinderella-gone-wrong fairy tale swept the 2025 Oscars with five wins including Best Picture and Best Actress for Mikey Madison. A Brooklyn sex worker impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch — and then everything falls apart in the most chaotic, hilarious, and heartbreaking way imaginable. Madison’s star-making performance is one of the great screen turns of the decade, and Baker’s film is both a sharply observed love story and a devastating class portrait. Available to stream on Hulu right now.

4. Marty Supreme (2025)

Genre: Sports Drama  |  RT Score: 95% Certified Fresh  |  Where to Watch: Max (April 24, 2026)

One of the best sports movies in recent memory, Josh Safdie turns ping-pong into a blood sport, and Timothee Chalamet turns a 1950s table-tennis hustler into one of the year’s most indelible characters. Marty Supreme brings Safdie’s signature frenetic energy to a period setting, lensed by Darius Khondji, and Chalamet has never been better — he won the Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice Award for Best Actor. A24’s highest-grossing film ever at $179.7 million worldwide, with nine Oscar nominations total. Arrives on Max April 24, 2026.

5. Sorry, Baby (2025)

Genre: Black Comedy / Drama  |  RT Score: 97% Certified Fresh  |  Where to Watch: Max, Prime Video

Eva Victor’s debut feature follows a reclusive college lit professor navigating depression and trauma following a sexual assault — but this is anything but a bleak film. Formally inventive, darkly funny, and utterly captivating in how it refuses easy catharsis, it was the sensation of Sundance 2025. Victor won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama, and announced herself as a major new voice in American cinema. Do not miss it.

6. The Brutalist (2024/2025)

Genre: Epic Drama  |  RT Score: 94% Certified Fresh  |  Where to Watch: Max (May 16, 2026)

Brady Corbet’s three-and-a-half-hour masterwork follows a Hungarian-Jewish architect rebuilding his life in postwar America. Adrien Brody’s performance is one for the ages — soulful, weathered, and complex — and Lol Crawley’s VistaVision cinematography is nothing short of stunning. It won three Oscars including Best Actor for Brody, with ten total nominations. Dense and demanding, but deeply rewarding. Coming to Max on May 16, 2026, and worth scheduling time for.

7. Warfare (2025)

Genre: War Drama  |  RT Score: 93% Certified Fresh  |  Where to Watch: Max

Alex Garland and co-director Ray Mendoza — a Navy SEAL veteran — reconstruct a platoon’s harrowing experience during the 2006 Battle of Ramadi in near-real time. Garland strips away all politics and heroism, leaving only chaos, confusion, and camaraderie. The ensemble cast (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Joseph Quinn, Will Poulter, Charles Melton, Kit Connor) is extraordinary. Critics compared it favorably to Saving Private Ryan and Come and See. Garland’s highest-rated film, now streaming on Max.

8. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025)

Genre: Mystery / Thriller  |  RT Score: 92% Certified Fresh  |  Where to Watch: Netflix

Rian Johnson’s third Benoit Blanc mystery is the best of the trilogy — a gothic whodunit with genuine soul, anchored by a scene-stealing Josh O’Connor performance as a man of faith caught in the middle of a sprawling conspiracy. Daniel Craig is as charming as ever, the massive ensemble cast makes every scene a treat, and Johnson’s plotting is as intricate and clever as anything he has ever written. Now streaming on Netflix.

9. Presence (2025)

Genre: Horror / Thriller  |  RT Score: 88% Certified Fresh  |  Where to Watch: Hulu, Disney+

Steven Soderbergh films the entire movie from a ghost’s point of view — a formal experiment that actually works. As a family moves into a new suburban home, we watch them through unseen eyes, and the effect is genuinely unsettling. Lucy Liu leads the cast in this short, sharp thriller (under 90 minutes) that plays with form in ways Hollywood rarely attempts. One of 2025’s most inventive genre entries and a film that rewards attentive viewers who appreciate craft alongside scares.

10. Mickey 17 (2025)

Genre: Sci-Fi / Black Comedy  |  RT Score: 77%  |  Where to Watch: Max

Bong Joon Ho (Parasite) returns with a daffy, biting sci-fi satire about a “disposable” worker who gets cloned every time he dies — until two versions of him exist simultaneously. Robert Pattinson is genuinely hilarious playing against himself, Mark Ruffalo chews scenery as a deranged demagogue, and Bong’s signature social critique cuts sharp beneath the zany surface. It underperformed at the box office but found a massive and devoted audience on streaming. Funny, weird, and worth your time.

11. Superman (2025)

Genre: Superhero / Action  |  RT Score: 83% critics / 91% audience  |  Where to Watch: Max

James Gunn’s DCU reboot skips the origin story and drops you into a Superman who already has a team, a world, and a moral center — and it is a revelation. David Corenswet is humble, charismatic, and arguably the closest anyone has come to matching Christopher Reeve’s interpretation of the character. The film has genuine heart, solid action, and a refreshingly optimistic tone for superhero cinema. It became one of the most-watched Max movies ever, with 13 million views in its first 10 days on streaming.

12. Eddington (2025)

Genre: Neo-Western / Satirical Thriller  |  RT Score: 69% critics (divisive)  |  Where to Watch: Max

Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar) goes full American satire with this COVID-era small-town showdown between a conspiracy-minded sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) and an incumbent mayor (Pedro Pascal). The massive ensemble — Emma Stone, Luke Grimes, Austin Butler, Micheal Ward — is stacked, and Phoenix is electrifying. Divisive at Cannes but found a massive audience on streaming. John Waters named it his best film of 2025. A film that captures something real and uncomfortable about the American present.

13. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (2024/2025)

Genre: Drama / Dark Comedy  |  RT Score: 100% Certified Fresh  |  Where to Watch: Max, HBO

A Zambian woman discovers her uncle’s body at the roadside and must navigate her family’s surreal grief rituals and deeply buried secrets. Rungano Nyoni creates something playfully searing — a pitch-black satire of how families and societies bury the truth beneath ceremony and silence. Utterly original, deeply funny in places, and genuinely moving. Distributed by A24, it is one of the most acclaimed international films of the year and holds a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

14. Souleymane’s Story (2024/2025)

Genre: Drama  |  RT Score: 100% Certified Fresh  |  Where to Watch: VOD (Fandango at Home)

A Guinean asylum seeker in Paris has 48 hours to rehearse his story for his immigration interview while pedaling a food delivery bike through the city’s streets. Shot with breathless urgency, Abou Sangare’s performance is one of the great acting achievements of the year — a genuine revelation. It won the European Film Award for European Actor, the Cesar Award for Best Original Screenplay, and the Lumiere Award for Best Actor. A perfect film that demands to be seen.

15. Universal Language (2024/2025)

Genre: Absurdist Comedy / Drama  |  RT Score: 98% Certified Fresh  |  Where to Watch: VOD / Art Houses

A Canadian filmmaker visits Winnipeg — which for some reason resembles 1970s Tehran — to find his mother. Deadpan, warm, formally strange, and quietly devastating, this small Canadian absurdist gem drew comparisons to Kiarostami and Kaurismaki. One of the year’s most delightful surprises, earning major festival acclaim and a near-perfect score from critics. The kind of film you discover and immediately want to tell everyone about.

16. Caught by the Tides (2024/2025)

Genre: Drama / Art Film  |  RT Score: 99% Certified Fresh  |  Where to Watch: Criterion Channel, Apple TV

A formal miracle: Jia Zhangke spent 22 years collecting footage — some from his own earlier films — to tell a decades-spanning love story between a woman and her restless partner, capturing China’s transformation in the process. Melancholic, intimate, and unlike anything else released this year. It premiered at Cannes 2024 and earned a Metacritic score of 87 (universal acclaim). For viewers willing to engage with it on its own terms, one of the most extraordinary experiences in recent cinema.

17. Conclave (2024/2025)

Genre: Thriller / Drama  |  RT Score: 93% Certified Fresh  |  Where to Watch: Prime Video

What happens when the Pope dies and the cardinals — each carrying secrets — lock themselves in the Vatican to elect a new one? A genuinely tense, beautifully acted thriller that turns ecclesiastical procedure into a page-turner. Ralph Fiennes is magnetic as the conflicted Dean of the College of Cardinals, and the ensemble (Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini) is impeccable. Won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay with eight total nominations. Now streaming on Prime Video.

18. The Phoenician Scheme (2025)

Genre: Action / Comedy / Adventure  |  Where to Watch: VOD

Wes Anderson at his most maximalist — a globe-trotting caper involving a dying tycoon and his eccentric heirs, featuring Benicio Del Toro, Tom Hanks, Riz Ahmed, Scarlett Johansson, and Michael Cera. If you love Anderson’s precisely constructed worlds, deadpan wit, and pastel-drenched visual perfection, this is a pure hit. Made multiple critics’ top-20 lists for 2025 and premiered at Cannes to enthusiastic reception. For Anderson devotees, essential viewing.