2025 was a banner year for cinema. From the relaunching of vaunted franchises like Superman in the hands of James Gunn and Warner Bros, to unique IP driven genre film like Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and amazing auteur fare like P.T. Anderson’s One Battle After Another; 2025 really gave film lovers something unique throughout the year to enjoy. We have our favorites and here’s our Top 10 films of the year from Cult Classics, as well as some honorable mentions. So without further adieu, here’s our favorite films of the year.
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HONORABLE MENTIONS
ICK (2025) – We saw this at the Overlook Film Festival and this film is a tremendous ode to the music and culture of the early 00’s from music video director Joseph Kahn, starring Brandon Routh and Mena Suvari as post millenial sweethearts in an emo world and the consequences of their relationship 20 years later in a world that touches on Gen Z culture, conformity, and that high school mentality you experience growing up. Detention (2009) is one of my favorite horror comedies where Kahn does the same with 90’s culture and that vibe, set in the same universe, seems really striking here, especially with a They Live/Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibe that this film has.
PEE WEE AS HIMSELF (2025) – This documentary, which debuted at Sundance and premiered in the summer on HBO, is a deep portrait of Paul Reubens, the artist who created the character of Pee Wee Herman and how Pee Wee in a sense, made Paul a prisoner of his success at the expense of his personal life. Simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking, this documentary is without a year my favorite one of the year.
THEM PUBLIC ROMANTICS (2025) – This documentary by actress and filmmaker Jennifer Rubin is really unique in that it has a very experimental narrative vibe to it, while simultaneously documenting and giving you a peak into the life of a couple living on the street in Downtown Los Angeles as gentrification and development happens around them as unhoused people living their lives in the open, warts and all, and struggling to survive. While it can be a hard watch seeing the ups and downs of their daily life, it also shows you that people you might look past have their own problems and lives that they struggle with just like you or I.
CAUGHT STEALING (2025) – Austin Butler shines in this film by famed director Darren Aronofsky as a baseball prodigy whose live is thrown into disarray due to a tragedy and how alcohol struggles to destroy him in multiple ways. An unorthodox cast of characters and actors really make this period piece shine set in New York set in the late 1990s.
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10. PREDATOR: BADLANDS (2025) – I love action films and lore heavy movies dealing with mythological characters. This film reinvents the Predator and Alien franchises, giving us a look into a Yautja Predator clan as a coming of age film with a protagonist in Dek who wants to be his own person and grow outside the father’s shower and be his own person. Meanwhile, Elle Fanning plays dual roles as Weyland-Yutani androids, one looking to ascend in the company, the other looking to grow as an individual and how this robot and Dek form a new family unit. Very well-done and amazing to experience in 4DX.
9. WAKE UP DEAD MAN: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY (2025) – A return to basics approach for Rian Johnson’s Benoit Blanc mystery franchise. This has a great cast and a back to basics plot that mirrors that of the origin al film, versus the Love Boat celebrity take on consumerism seen in Glass Onion. Josh Brolin had a lot of hitters this year, but his Monsignor character in this is just a great hammy villian.
8. WEAPONS (2025) – Speaking of the 2025 that was Josh Brolin’s year, Brolin’s character in WEAPONS grounds a sometimes bizarre but compelling multi chapter and character piece that involves a detailed mystery, trying to unveil that and the shocking revelation and conclusion of to what creates the disappearance of an elementary class in the middle of the night. Amy Madigan creates one of 2025’s most viral and unique film creations and what makes this film pop in a sea of great films to distinhuise itself as one of the most unique horror films you’ll experience in 2025.
7. COMPANION (2025) – This film existed in a mystery box in its initial marketing, but the story of a jailbroken sex bot (played with aplomb by Sophie Thatcher of Yellowjackets fame) who is used by her owner to kill his friend’s Russian boyfriend for money is a really compelling Stanford Prison Experiment style psychological thriller of what people will do when given absolute authority. The film works by giving us a lot of the film from the POV of the robot, seeing her as an appliance used for Josh’s pleasure and how she struggles to find herself when circumstances put her on the run. Acquiring a sense of autonomy and self through struggle, which makes you question what defines humanity – biology or ethics.
6. SUPERMAN (2025) – In a year where this film and Fantastic Four both went to the well of reinvention by setting their films in a hyper stylized comic book world inspired by the Silver Age of comics, Superman succeeded by feeling grounded but fantastical. Gunn channels the same kind of energy in finding relatibility and humanity in fantastical circumstances and the existence of the very odd in his past films like Super and Guardians of the Galaxy. Superman feels human in the personage of David Corenswet and Nicholas Hoult plays the definitive Lex Luthor. This is the year’s most compelling comic book movie and enjoyable one as well.
5.THE UGLY STEPSISTER (2025) – We interviewed writer/director Emilie Blichtfeld at the Overlook Film Festival at the premiere of this unique take on the Grimm Brothers’ Cinderella by way of body horror. This film examines beauty standards and female agency when one is forced into a patriarchal society to survive and subverting that by showing how the women here have their own desires and agency outside of the horrors of being chattel through marriage. Emilie told us that The Substance walked so The Ugly Stepsister could run and we agree here.
4. THE LIFE OF CHUCK (2025) – Director Mike Flanagan reunites actors from his oeuvre in the year’s best Stephen King adaptation in a year of great adaptations like Edgar Wright’s THE RUNNING MAN and THE LONG WALK. This film is a meditation on life and death and how even the most ordinary life can contain multitudes. It’s a ghost story with amazing performances throughout and one that is touching and life affirming. A small film that packs a lot of punch, up there with films like Stand By Me.
3. ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (2025) – Perhaps P.T. Anderson’s most audacious film, with some career best performances from Sean Penn and Leonardo Dicaprio. This movie sucks you in as a human story and a caper film. It succeeds as a family drama and a dark comedy, one with shades of Fargo and The Big Lebowski.
2. FRANKENSTEIN (2025) – The culmination of Guillermo Del Toro’s lifelong cinematic love affair with monsters. The Shape of Water and Crimson Peak feel like an audition for this movie, which serves as an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel and James Whale’s Universal Monsters’ films with a dash of Bernie Wrightson. Oscar Isaac claims the namesake title of monster and mad scientist. Jacob Elordi shines as the Creature. Great performances, makeup and production design make this film a stunner and one I feel lucky to have seen on the big screen.
1. SINNERS (2025) – Ryan Coogler’s vampire southern gothic creates a wide wide world we get to dip our toe in as viewers and it is engaging and beautiful. The film is one that pushes how individuality and expressing yourself is the ultimate treasure and escaping conformity, even if it holds life everlasting as a benefit, is the greatest freedom of all. The score, performances and production design are to die for and the film’s two codas beg for more films exploring this lore.