Entertainment
From three movies with Massachusetts ties to the undeniable masterpiece “One Battle After Another,” these are the best movies of 2025.
While mulling over the Herculean task of choosing the best movies of 2025, my mind kept returning to another massive project I helmed this year: Boston.com’s Massachusetts Movie Madness, a month-long bracket-style competition to choose the ultimate Boston (or Massachusetts) movie.
The bracket was a fun exercise in discussing and debating more than a half-century of Bay State filmmaking. (Even Seth Meyers weighed in!) But it was also a reminder that although the Massachusetts film canon features an incredible diversity of talent and subject matter, the prevalence of the Boston crime movie genre makes it easy for outsiders to stereotype Boston based on titles like “The Departed” and characters like Will Hunting.
That’s why it was so gratifying to discover that some of the best movies of 2025 were either set in or filmed in Massachusetts, with nary a Damon, Affleck, or Wahlberg in sight.
Two of the year’s best came from first-time directors who trusted the Massachusetts film industry to bring their stories to life. A third film used the history of Massachusetts as inspiration for a fictional art heist. (If you predicted that one of the best movies of 2025 would be set in Framingham, you’re lying.)
This year’s best-of list also serves as a reminder to Bostonians that we are lucky enough to live in one of the great film cities in America.
Seeing “One Battle After Another” in VistaVision at the Coolidge Corner Theatre – one of only four theaters in the world to present the film in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s preferred format — was a highlight. So too were in-person Q&As with Josh Safdie (“Marty Supreme”), Carson Lund (“Eephus”), Ethan Hawke (“Blue Moon”), and Eva Victor (“Sorry, Baby”) at the Coolidge and Somerville Theatre. Not a single one of my top ten movies is currently streaming on Netflix, and for many of the titles, the best opportunity to see them was during their theatrical runs.
In a year capped by Netflix (or maybe Paramount?) acquiring Warner Bros. and putting the future of the theatrical release model in question, I was galvanized by scores of twenty- and thirty-somethings showing up over and over again for special screenings. On Halloween night, instead of doing a spooky bar crawl, I saw the newest “Knives Out” movie at a sold-out Brattle Theatre, surrounded by young people invested in the future of the medium.
There’s a reason why Gen Z and Gen Alpha use “absolute cinema” as memetic shorthand for something of the highest quality. Now it’s time for older generations to re-embrace the “dinner and a movie” date night before it’s gone forever.
Here are the ten best movies of 2025, as well as ten more honorable mentions at the bottom of the list.
Best Movies of 2025
10. “Eddington”
Director Ari Aster, along with Yorgos Lanthimos and his latest film, “Bugonia,” captured the current political moment like no other pair of directors in 2025. Watching Joaquin Phoenix’s small-town sheriff go from (somewhat) rational actor to deranged, conspiracy-peddling lunatic in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic is harrowing enough, but “Eddington” is unsparing in its satirization of the full political spectrum. The way in which Pedro Pascal’s pandering liberal mayor (and his loathsome son) weaponize the cultural zeitgeist — and in one memorable scene, the Katy Perry anthem “Firework” — should be a wakeup call to Democrats who don’t understand why they are no longer the party in power.
How to watch: “Eddington” is streaming on HBO Max.
9. “Splitsville”
No movie made me laugh more in 2025 than “The Naked Gun.” But no individual scene made me laugh harder than one in “Splitsville,” a romantic comedy about two best friends (Kyle Marvin, Michael Angelo Covino) and their wives (Adria Arjona, Dakota Johnson), whose lives are upended by (in order): A separation, an open marriage, a successful consummation of said open marriage, a confession, and a no-holds-barred brawl that has better fight choreography than any action movie this year. And that’s just the first 30 minutes.
How to watch: “Splitsville” is available to rent on various streaming platforms.
8. “Blue Moon”
Richard Linklater pulled off an impressive double act in 2025, releasing his French New Wave paean “Nouvelle Vague” and this biopic of lyricist Lorenz Hart, whose name has been largely forgotten thanks to Hart’s Broadway partner Richard Rodgers finding greater success with Oscar Hammerstein. Filmed entirely in a single bar, Ethan Hawke brings deep, agonizing pathos to the role of Hart, regaling anyone who will listen with stories of his past glories and of future dreams that will clearly never come to fruition.
How to watch: “Blue Moon” is available to rent on various streaming platforms.
7. “Sorry, Baby”
I caught this one at IFFBoston back in the spring and was blown away by the unique voice of Eva Victor, the film’s star, writer, and director. Filmed in Ipswich (but set in Maine), it’s the story of a young professor (Victor) who uses humor, friendship, and an adorable kitten to help grapple with a personal tragedy that has her stuck in place. Unlike other post-#MeToo films that dwell on trauma to the point of emotional torture, “Sorry, Baby” is a reminder that everyone processes in their own, equally valid ways. It’s simultaneously hilarious, heartbreaking, and life-affirming.
How to watch: “Sorry, Baby” is streaming on HBO Max.
6. “The Mastermind”
Kelly Reichardt is the queen of slow cinema, primarily directing languorous character studies like “First Cow” and “Showing Up,” and almost always setting her films in Oregon. So, it was doubly surprising when the filmmaker released a heist film, albeit a slower one, set in Framingham, Massachusetts. Josh O’Connor, so earnest in the newest “Knives Out” film, completely switches gears as the arrogant “mastermind” of a small art museum robbery, wholly convinced of his intellect and righteousness.
How to watch: “The Mastermind” is streaming on Mubi.
5. “Sinners”
When considering the story beyond the story of Ryan Coogler’s film, it has to be considered the most successful movie of 2025. The director not only brought a wholly original vision to life — straddling genres and generations with his Southern gothic Depression-era vampire musical epic — but he did so while smashing box office expectations and retaining ownership of the project in an unprecedented pact with Warner Bros. Even if every audacious swing Coogler takes in the film doesn’t land, his tale of twin criminals/entrepreneurs (Michael B. Jordan) opening a “juke joint” in their hometown is one for the ages.
How to watch: “Sinners” is streaming on HBO Max.
4. “If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You”
To paraphrase the late David Foster Wallace, this Mary Bronstein movie, billed as a comedy, is a supposedly fun film I may never watch again. As an overworked mother losing touch with reality while caring for her chronically ill daughter, Rose Byrne isn’t keeping a bunch of plates spinning; she’s getting plates thrown directly at her head, and then frantically sweeping up the jagged shards before anyone can blame her for making a mess. As a chronically anxious person, I watched this through my fingers.
How to watch: “If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You” is available to rent, and begins streaming on HBO Max January 30, 2026.
3. “Marty Supreme”
Josh Safdie, half of the sibling directing duo that made “Uncut Gems,” brings us another adrenaline-fueled story set on the streets of New York City about a pure narcissist in over his head. Instead of Adam Sandler’s Howard Ratner feeding a bottomless gambling addiction by running two-bit schemes and screwing over anyone foolish enough to enter his orbit, Marty Mauser (Timothee Chalamet, in an Oscar-worthy performance) does the same thing (this time in a post-WWII NYC) to fulfill his destiny as the world’s greatest ping-pong champion. Marty’s motives couldn’t be more transparent, but you understand why people (including a never-better Gwyneth Paltrow) keep falling for him.
How to watch: “Marty Supreme” is in theaters December 25.
2. “Eephus”
For his feature film debut, Nashua native Carson Lund used a nondescript baseball field in Douglas, Mass. to tell a story of two beer league squads playing one last game before the diamond is bulldozed to make way for a school. When the game, already laboriously slow due to the age of its participants, heads to extra innings, the film’s central preoccupations — the passage of time, the importance of tradition, the emotional constipation of New England men of a certain age — are thrown into sharp relief. Maybe it’s because of a memorable phone call I received about a year before its release, but no movie in 2025 resonated more deeply with me than “Eephus.”
How to watch: “Eephus” is streaming on Mubi.
1. “One Battle After Another”
From the very first frame of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” it is obvious that you are witnessing a current and future masterpiece. It’s the director’s most purely entertaining film to date, an alchemic mix of political intrigue, thrilling action, and giddy comedy, all undergirded by some of the most technically spectacular filmmaking in recent memory. As “Bob,” a weed-smoking, bathrobe-wearing paranoiac trying to hide from his anarchist past, Leonardo DiCaprio has rarely been better. As the cartoonish manifestation of Bob’s fear, Sean Penn turns in a villain performance for the ages. Seeing this movie in VistaVision at the Coolidge Corner Theatre was, to quote the Martin Scorsese meme, absolute cinema.
How to watch: “One Battle After Another” is streaming on HBO Max.
Honorable mentions: “28 Years Later,” “Bugonia,” “Highest 2 Lowest,” “It Was Just An Accident,” “The Naked Gun,” “The Secret Agent,” “Sentimental Value,” “Train Dreams,” “Wake Up, Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” “Weapons”
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