The BeMovieSeeMovie 2025 Halftime Top 10 Films…So Far
I turn 40 this year. Like my 1985 birth year, I don’t demand a lot out of my movie life. It’d be nice to have one perfect film (I’m very picky, so I realize that’s ambitious), and at least a smattering of interesting stuff, with hopefully a bit of international flare.
While there’s not a lot of international fare in my Top 10, genre wise we’re trying some cool things…and zombies. Very few IP based items are on the list as well…but they’re bangers, and earned their spot on there. Overall, it’s been a year of the evildoers. The best stuff so far has involved mostly darkness: horror abounds across the top 10.
Cruelty also abounds in the Honorable Mentions, well, except for Audrey Evans. Turns out bad people, or very very good people, make pretty great films:
The most swoony love story of 2025 is this gem. Karan Soni and Jonathan Groff melt your heart away with their adorable, culture crossing courtship. And like all great romcoms, the supporting cast of Sunita Mani, Harish Patel, and especially Zarna Garg give wonderful supporting performances to make the movie rise above the rest.
There are plenty of movies about soldiers and PTSD, but this one was made by an actual veteran, Kyle Hausmann-Stokes. As such, his script and characters feel honest, explaining what the journey to recovery looks like via a should be star making turn from Sonequa Martin-Green. But it’s Natalie Morales that’s the engine of this film: the titular Zoe giving a wonderfully Rorschach like performance as the script needs without ever falling into sappy manipulation.
Gotta love Mike Flanagan. The horror and now trusted Stephen King director takes a shot at a fantasy drama short story King wrote. Flanagan keeps all the great parts of King’s tale and prevents it from falling into melodrama. That’s also in large part thanks to Flanagan’s Wes Anderson like growing list of collaborators…including a beautiful return from Mia Sara after over a decade away from movies. And Tom Hiddleston’s dance moves, incredible stuff!
Of course Danny Boyle and Alex Garland couldn’t just rest on their laurels! They revive this decades old franchise with aplomb. The first half captures the magical scares the 2002 OG film introduced with faster zombies. But it’s the 2nd half that elevates this story into one of the best of the year: using creepy, bold, fascinating storytelling choices to transform this film into something special.
The biggest surprise of the year so far. Dan Trachtenberg made this movie in secret, and frankly I wish he hadn’t. Because everything about this film needs to be seen. This anthology series shows Trachtenberg understands that the Predator is just a killing machine plot device. Around it he builds 3 simple but powerful action tales and spices them up with a Predator intervention. That we’ve seen before, but we haven’t seen animation like this before: in the ballpark of Across the SpiderVerse and any Makoto Shinkai film; but with very r rated violence and blood splatter. You’re gonna shout Hell Yeah more than a few times.
I was happy to get a double Steven Soderbergh dip for my 40th. This one is the better of the two films. Even though the spycraft is exciting and interesting, thanks to great supporting players like Marisa Arbela and Naomie Harris, what Black Bag really is is a story about how to be married. Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender paint with Soderbergh almost a loving tribute to how a couple in a marriage works, showing how communication and trust can work even under the most high stress environments possible.
Talk about a swing, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck! The directing duo tries a Sin City like approach to 1987 Oakland California. And for the most part, they succeed. 4 tales to plant us in that specifically interesting time and place, whether it be the skinhead vs. punk rock street wars, Sleepy Floyd and his on and off the court doings, Too $hort rap battles, or Pedro Pascal in a video store, this movie is more about a place and a time, and at its best, makes you wish you were there yourself.
The best international entry so far is not for the faint of heart. But every woman knows that. Beauty is pain. And that sentiment has never been as fully shown as this truly gross, excruciating take on Cinderella. And, more importantly, how maybe the Ugly Stepsister wasn’t made this way: she was forged from the cruel, terrible world she came from. They will definitely not be showing this one on Disney Plus anytime soon, that’s for sure.
The best war reenactment ever made. Alex Garland teams up with Ray Mendoza to blur the line between movie and documentary. The result? The best movie made about modern warfare, the last 20 years or so. It’s completely plot driven and tactical, with a cast that knows what they signed up for and give the movie their full attention and intensity, with Garland providing the necessary terrifying desert backdrop these guys have to work together to find a way to survive.
There’s no doubt what the best movie of the year is so far though, at least for me. Ryan Coogler, free from IP based moviemaking, gives us this incredibly rich tale we all can sink our teeth into, just like the vampires in his story. But this isn’t just some monster movies: it’s also a complex love letter to the 1920s Mississippi Delta region, where Blues began and set in motion 100 years of music and culture. Everyone brings their A game to make this work, including unknown Miles Caton, and Michael B. Jordan, giving 2 career best performances. The musical number in the middle is the stuff only someone as brilliant as Coogler could conjure with that much electricity to glue your eyes to the screen, wowed by what is unfolding.
