Boy Culture's 25 Best Films of 2025
Movies that moved the needle
December 24, 2025
It was a turbulent year for media, but still a great year for film — I found it all too easy to come up with 25 that I deeply liked.
I tend to like awkwardly funny and offbeat, but this year’s list also has a strong vein of horror.
Please comment with your own faves. I’m especially interested in any you liked that others haven’t found so compelling.
Performances of the year:
Actor: Dylan O’Brien, Twinless
Runner-Up: Joel Edgerton, Train Dreams
Actress: Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
Runner-Up: Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Supporting Actress: Amy Madigan, Weapons
Runner-Up: Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners
Supporting Actor: Sean Penn, One Battle After Another
Runner-Up: Jacobi Jupe, Hamnet
Memorable Lines of the year:
“For something to be remembered, other things must be forgotten.” — Riefenstahl
“I overstand.” — Highest 2 Lowest
“The body is a battlefield.” — Love
“Is there a person in there?” — Jay Kelly
“Why don’t you wash my ass, father? It’s Tuesday, not Sunday.” — Dead Man’s Wire
“You eat his shit with a spoon and come back for seconds.” — Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
“Imagine waking up and seeing that sturdy red pine!” — No Other Choice
“I’ll unbuckle, I’ll come over to your seat and you’ll fuck me?” — Die My Love
“Of course, you know you’re in trouble when you’re lookin’ for the meaning of life in a book with the word ‘bondage’ in the title.” — Blue Moon
“I’m a Supreme Court justice — I tend to frown on executing men without a trial.” — Nuremberg
“I read Gammy’s death book, okay, alright, I mean, there’s like a thousand house-related deaths …” — Final Destination Bloodlines
“Everybody you know is going to die — you know that.” — The History of Sound
“I’ll rip that unibrow right off his fuckin’ forehead!” — Marty Supreme
“You went fast from assault to feminism.” — Dreams
“They — go away!” — After the Hunt
Boy Culture’s Top 25 Films of 2025:
(25) Frankenstein, dir. Guillermo del Toro: A luxurious Goth and emo reimagining of the time-worn Mary Shelley story, Frankenstein elicits cries of, “It’s alive!” Oscar Isaac’s cunning turn as Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant visionary with body parts who seems to lack heart, and Jacob Elordi’s heartbreakingly vulnerable performance — even cloaked, even buried in makeup and prosthetics — conspire to create a whole new look at this enduring myth. Mia Goth, cleverly cast in two roles, is an MVP in a project worthy of a place alongside the original. A new-old classic. (Netflix)
(24) Materialists, dir. Celine Song: I didn’t expect to like this film, whose summary makes it sound like a Jennifer Lopez rom-com — but I kind of loved it. Lucy Mason (Dakota Johnson) is working as a high-end matchmaker who speaks in certainties about what makes the ideal man (height, social standing, money). Meanwhile, she’s still not over a failed relationship with John (Chris Evans), the hottest cater-waiter of all time, when she’s swept off her feet by tall, connected, rich Harry (Pedro Pascal), the dashing brother of a client. There is something hypnotic about the direction and tone of the film that left me fully satisfied, like I went on a blind date and came home smiling. A minor but expertly crafted fairy tale. (A24)
(23) Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter, dir. Zeberiah Newman: The sort of matter-of-fact doc we all dreamed we would get about Richard Simmons (before it was too late), by director Zeberiah Newman is the result of him locating Susan Powter, the reclusive “Stop the Insanity!” lady from the ‘90s, and DMing her via her job as an Uber Eats driver. Her decision to entrust her life story to him paid off with a sympathetic portrait of a woman whose desire to be a team player led to her financial ruin. Always told she is “too much,” she was for a spell exactly the right amount, generating a reported $200 million in business, only to wind up with not nearly enough. As a recent Q&A after a screening in NYC proved, she still has a fighting spirit (and a killer body) at 67, and her self-awareness and humility in this film make it an important watch, especially in a society where speaking about money problems is taboo. That Jamie Lee Curtis — Powter’s doppelgänger — executive produced makes sense on a molecular level, and their Susan and God meet-up is just one of several emotionally resonant moments Newman has patiently captured, and that Powter has riskily offered, in this riveting 87-minute cautionary tale. (Obscured)
(22) Sorry, Baby, dir. Eva Victor: This quietly unsettling film is one that has lingered with me ever since I saw it. It begins harmlessly, as a sort of meandering Gen Z/cusp of Millennial slice of life about Agnes (writer-director Eva Victor), a New England professor contemplating her future. Out of nowhere, she is sexually assaulted by a handsome, cool-seeming senior professor (Louis Cancelmi). The rest of the film covers her awkward coming to terms with what happened and how to proceed, if not exactly move on. One thing that stood out for me, other than Victor’s naturalistic performance and dry comic timing, is how the assault was conveyed — the camera simply stays on a shot of the assailant’s home as time passes; the rest is left to the imagination. The device suggested to me that if we were to look out at any skyline, the number of bad things happening just out of view would be immeasurable. But the film is not dreary or sad, it’s fresh and real, a triumph for Victor. (A24)
(21) Weapons, dir. Zach Cregger: It isn’t easy to invent a character that captures the imaginations of moviegoers like Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan) has — it takes a village, from producer-writer-director Zach Cregger to the sublime Madigan to the hair, makeup and wardrobe creatives on Weapons. But they did it, so well that the movie crafted around ghoulish, garish, witchy Aunt Gladys hardly matters. But Weapons is a very good film nonetheless, its DNA part Night of the Living Dead and part Rosemary’s Baby. Julia Garner is perfect as a teacher spooked by the fact that all but one of her young students ran from their homes one night, arms outstretched, and utterly vanished, spooked but also vilified by the town folk. Nobody realizes until it’s too late that they’re captive weapons of Aunt Gladys, a zombie priestess and a visiting relative all too ready to overstay her welcome. As good as Weapons is, it does bear pointing out that Benedict Wong and Clayton Ferris’s characters — that Wong’s principal is gay is weirdly presented as a surprise — are characterized as hopeless cliches before the film’s by-far grossest snuff scene. I think it’s okay to wonder what was up with that, while still admiring the wider piece. (Warner Bros.)
(20) Keeper, dir. Osgood Perkins: Osgood Perkins, the son of the late Tony Perkins and the late Berry Berenson, is one of horror’s most cerebral and prolific auteurs, with Keeper his third film in 24 months. In it, Tatiana Maslany of Orphan Black delivers an Oscar-worthy (shades of Toni Collette in Hereditary) performance as a flawed young woman whisked away to her doctor boyfriend’s (Rossif Sutherland) tricked-out home deep in the woods, only to begin sensing not only that something is wrong, but that nothing is right. The first 2/3 of the film is a slow burn of cold dread, with Sutherland particularly effective in his dull-boyfriend monotone. But the conclusion is where Maslany’s abilities, the script and the imagination of the FX team combine for a truly haunting and haunted reveal. An impeccably stylized ghost story of a different breed that answers the question: Can we have our cake and eat it, too? (Neon)
(19) The Perfect Neighbor, dir. Geeta Gandbhir: A gut-punch of a doc, and it’s largely achieved through the use of pre-existing bodycam and other police footage, The Perfect Neighbor dispassionately lays out the series of events that led to the murder off Ajike Owens, a young Black mom, by Susan Lorincz, her older white neighbor. The film never sentimentalizes, instead opting for a just-the-facts approach that winds up making the story all the more appalling and moving, a dead-serious variation on all those Karen videos we gloss over on social media. It’s painfully ironic that Owens had to be killed to be listened to. An indictment of our system, of racial politics in the U.S. and of the police. (Netflix)
(18) Belén, dir. Dolores Fonzi: A near-past period piece about abortion rights in Argentina, this film is everything After the Hunt is not — it addresses an issue with precision and clarity of voice, and does so with a pair of faultless, affecting performances, one by director Dolores Fonzi as a steely defense attorney and the other by Camila Pláate as the forlorn, exhausted title character accused of murdering her fetus. It may be a procedural drama, but it has heart and genuine suspense. A gem. (Amazon MGM)
(17) Descendent, dir. Peter Cilella: This sci fi thriller is my kind of film — every moment is pregnant, and where we are going is not easily guessed. Sean Bruner (Ross Marquand) is a security guard anxiously awaiting the birth of his first child with his wife (Sarah Bolger) when he has an experience that leads him to believe he may have been abducted by aliens. Not as literal as most taken scenarios, his encounter seems to have disturbed his psyche in a way that continues to reverberate — it’s like emotional radiation. Descendent is an audacious experiment in narrative that pleasingly stretches the genre. (RLJE Films)
(16) Friendship, dir. Andrew de Young: Tim Robinson is the new crown king of the socially awkward, and is never more so than in this pitch-black comedy about the neighborhood dork who develops an intense man-crush on the neighborhood bad-ass (Paul Rudd). Craig Waterman’s remote wife (Kate Mara), to whom George Costanza might say, “You could do better!,” gets lost in a series of tunnels courtesy of Craig, rendering her Baby Jessica and Craig the idiot who let her wander into the well. Through all that happens, the film focuses on Craig’s genetic-level desire to connect, connect, connect. Best “wait, what?” ending since 1972’s Beware! The Blob.
(15) Riefenstahl, dir. Andres Veiel: When I worked as an editorial assistant at St. Martin’s Press in the ‘90s, an editor brought up the idea of publishing her book Olympia. Some were vehemently opposed, but the idea of free speech prevailed and the book came out. That push and pull characterized Riefenstahl’s entire post-WWII existence. Plenty of evidence existed the trailblazing female director had been a willing Nazi collaborator, Hitler’s chosen purveyor of image, and yet her excuses provided enough cover on which her supporters could hang their brown shirts. Following in the footsteps of The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, a 1993 German doc that attempted to present her as a whole person, Riefenstahl cuts right through all the crap, using outtakes from that earlier film, astounding historical footage, private recordings of her supporters disparaging Jews and Riefenstahl’s own words. It presents a shocking portrait of a woman who, like Donald Trump, was a shameless self-inventor, opportunist, survivor and fabulist. She seems to have been such a narcissist she believed her own lies with a religious zeal. And if not, well, she certainly wasn’t about to stand still if someone dared to tell the truth. She’s long gone now, but the evergreen enthusiasm for Nazism (now we have Black rapper Nazis, oy vey) means that an unsparing doc like this is never out of date, unfortunately. Scrupulously shot and edited, Riefenstahl ruthlessly vivisects the talented filmmaker’s soulless living legacy. Good double-feature with Nuremberg. (Kino Lorber)
(12, 13 & 14 — in any order) The Oslo Trilogy: Love, Dreams & Sex, dir. Dan Johan Haugerud: An incredible suite of three stylistically identical but separate films shot by novelist Dan Johan Haugerud and acted with an absorbingly upfront naturalism.
I was hooked after watching Love, my favorite of the three, which provides something I’ve never seen in a film — an explicit exploration of a gay man’s life post-prostatectomy. The same film offers Andrea Bræin Hovig as an oncologist with strict morals but a casually detached relationship with sex whose conversations with her gay nurse (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen) as he bonds with a patient post-surgery are remarkably real, free and unlike any you’ll find in a Hollywood production.
In Dreams, a teen’s (a radiant Ella Øverbye) romantic desire for her teacher (Selome Emnetu) unlocks a discourse on feminism, what constitutes sexual abuse and commercialism among three generations of women as adroitly as if it were a documentary. In one memorable scene, the making of tea is rendered as a tender sexual flowering.
Sex is about sex, yet contains none. Instead, it follows a man (Jan Gunnar Røise) offhandedly telling the two people closest to him — including his shocked wife (Siri Forberg) — that he has impulsively had sex with a man just because he felt so desired. His naive approach is disarming, and altogether unsatisfying to those around him, but it makes for a hell of a My Dinner with Andre situation. That dynamic shares the film with his friend (Thorbjorn Harr), who — bowled over by his friend’s dalliance and loosened up by a suspicious David Bowie dream of his own — begins to explore a “feminine” side via singing in his local choir. It’s a movie all about men unlike any other movie all about men.
Six hours later, I was left thinking: Perhaps more novelists should become directors. (Strand)
(11) Bugonia, dir. Yorgos Lanthimos: Lanthimos turns in a film that lives at the intersection of “bleak” and “laugh-out-loud funny,” a paranoid’s fantasyland in which we’re never sure who is crazier, the psycho-bitch CEO (Emma Stone, who never misses) or the conspiracy-theorist nutjobs who kidnap her (Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis). Even before the story goes wide, there is an aspect of the film that feels like watching an ant farm; everything is big when you imagine it through the eyes of the ants, and small when you zoom in on a couple of determined workers tending to their queen. A masterfully, darkly witty film in which climate change is a character, Bugonia is also something you need to watch through the entire credits. (Focus Features)
(10) Familiar Touch, dir. Sarah Friedland: Kathleen Chalfant is radiant in this microscopically well-observed story of an elderly cook coming to terms with her memory loss in a care facility. The film reflects sadness and fear, but also humor, self-discovery, beauty and sexuality. This debut feature is like one long, undulating painting, and is a masterpiece that takes care to treat food as an uncredited character. (Music Box)
(9) If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, dir. Mary Bronstein: Rose Byrne brings to life Linda, a character who feels like an instant cinematic icon, an overstressed mother and therapist whose blood type is wine and whose patience for the needs of her chronically ill daughter — who is on a feeding tube and requires 24/7 reassurances — has worn desperately, comically thin. Most ominously, she has a literal and metaphorical hole in her ceiling caused by an overhead leak that never seems to get closer to being repaired, leaving her and her kid stranded in a threadbare motel. Her own therapist (played by Conan O’Brien in a performance that neatly wipes away his entire image up to this point) is a similar train wreck, and her goddamned husband (Christian Slater, half of whose performance is via phone) is of no help at all. While the film loses steam via an amateurish performance by A$AP Rocky as the motel super, Byrne is so transcendent it hardly matters. Most inventively, director Mary Bronstein carefully avoids showing the child who is draining Linda’s strength, making If I Had Legs I’d Kick You a sort of body horror wherein motherhood is the suspected malignancy. (A24)
(8) Train Dreams, dir. Clint Bentley: An exquisitely observed and acted slice of bittersweet Americana that draws honest tears as it follows a simple man (Joel Edgerton) making his way through the most eventful 70 years or so of upheaval and change in the U.S., working on the railroad and as a logger, and always seeming to fall back two steps for every step forward he takes. Edgerton connects deeply with this meditative material, and Felicity Jones and William H. Macy are right there with him in small, achingly beautiful supporting roles. A film that presents tragedy without the need for triumph — just the small victories we all make each day we awaken and take a breath. (Netflix)
(7) My Mom Jayne, dir. Mariska Hargitay: Pursuing truth informs nearly every frame of My Mom Jayne, actor Mariska Hargitay’s (Law & Order: SVU) feature directorial debut and a coming to terms with her previous ambivalence toward and even embarrassment over being the daughter of gone-too-soon sex kitten Jayne Mansfield. A daughter’s doc to reinvent her mom’s lightweight image could have come off as a vanity project, but here, the story is not just Mansfield’s career and hidden talents, but about a family secret that, amid the shocking trappings of the bombshell’s larger-than-life journey, is actually universally relatable. In the space of two hours, Hargitay completely redefines who her biological mother really was, but that co-stars with her discovery of who her biological father really was. The two stories need each other to be complete, just as — it appears — Mariska needed Jayne’s story in order to feel complete. Thanks in part to superfan Sabin Gray’s unparalleled collection of photography, the archival on this film is staggering and there is no awkward AI, no cheap gimmicks. Rather, Hargitay finds the perfect image for every sentence uttered, in the process creating one of the year’s best docs. (HBO)
(6) Marty Supreme, dir. Josh Safdie: Only Safdie can take the story of an obnoxious ping-pong champ into an emotional roller coaster. But only Timothée Chalamet could make Marty Mauser (based on the real-life Marty Reisman) into someone we root for, even through the hubris.
In Safdie’s latest epic, we are treated to his usual stunt casting (which bombs with Kevin O’Leary, who is flat as a soulless corporatist, but soars with Gwyneth Paltrow as an uptight retired actress and Fran Drescher as Marty’s drama-queen mom), a confident grasp of the ridiculous (as when Marty plays a set against a walrus after criticizing the Harlem Globetrotters as sad clowns) and to a quirky soundtrack that — in spite of its ‘50s setting — is anchored by British New Wave classics by New Order, Peter Gabriel and Alphaville. Safdie is like our new Woody Allen — and we needed one. (A24)
(5) The History of Sound, dir. Oliver Hermanus: Obscenely underrated romantic drama that adroitly uses music to tell the story of a three-year passionate relationship between two men, musicologist David (Josh O’Connor) and Lionel (Paul Mescal), his innately gifted assistant and true love. They bond over sound on a song-gathering trip through rural America, but are parted by the times (a world war) and by social conventions. Ultimately, their story is bittersweet — how many gay love stories had, realistically, happy endings 100+ years ago? But the film encourages us to find the beauty in the now, because love, like music, is exquisite — even though all things are finite. Mescal and O’Connor continue to demonstrate their prowess as interpreters of emotion, and an all-too-brief appearance by Chris Cooper as older Lionel is a heartbreaker. (Mubi)
(4) Bring Her Back, dir. Danny Philippou: It feels like the horror genre is the one expanding in all directions in recent years; just think of how many films that could be classified as such have been among the year’s best since 2015. Following the ballsy body horror of The Substance, this year’s best horror flick is Bring Her Back, a terrifying Australian tale that gives “forever home” a new, poisonous meaning. It’s about two kids (Billy Barratt and Sora Wong) who are placed in foster care with a sad but sweet-seeming lady (Sally Hawkins) who, of course, is gearing up to use them in a profoundly disturbing occult ritual as a way to Bring Her dead daughter Back from her watery grave. Hawkins is magnificent, as is our hero Barratt, whose valiant teen character can’t seem to break through social constructs (and the presupposition that kids are liars) to expose his new mom as the dark spirit she truly is. Ultimately, though much grotesquery ensues once the kids are placed in danger, Bring Her Back is a meditation on ineffable loss — the scariest thing of all. (A24)
(3) The Plague, dir. Charlie Polinger: A modern-day Lord of the Flies, The Plague stars Everett Blunck as Ben, a 12-year-old at water polo camp who witnesses the ritualized bullying of intensely nerdy Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), then participates in it, then thinks better of that decision — and finally becomes ensnared in it himself. The boys have invented (?) the concept that Eli has the plague, a mysterious, highly infectious agent like an advanced, mutated version of the cooties that presents in the form of social awkwardness and a spreading rash. The implementation of scorn is enough to dredge up every memory you have of being young and vulnerable, and the performances from kids so young are nothing short of a miracle. (IFC)
(2) Hamnet, dir. Chloé Zhao: The ultimate fantasy celebrity biopic, Hamnet — adapted from the novel by Maggie O’Farrell — imagines the emotional life of William Shakespeare, his wife Anne Hathaway and their children, including their son Hamnet, who died at 11. In real life, Hamnet’s tragic death is thought to have colored Shakespeare’s play Hamlet (the film points out the names “Hamnet” and “Hamlet” are actually interchangeable). The film thinks so, too, and beautifully illustrates that theory, but Hamnet is more than a historical puzzle; it represents a monumental achievement in acting, capturing aching, raw performances by Jessie Buckley as Anne and Paul Mescal as Shakespeare. Just as movingly, Jacobi Jupe portrays Hamnet as an open-hearted boy whose love for his twin (Olivia Lynes), their older sister (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) and his mom and dad is what he leads with at all times, even as he unselfishly chooses death. Jupe’s work as a juvenile is incredible, and the film wisely casts his real-life brother Noah Jupe to play his doppelgänger Hamlet onstage, mining their resemblance. So much pain, so much humanity, so many simple visual moments that will live with you for a long time time — Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet shows how to create a historical film that puts the universally relatable experiences of its famous characters front and center. (Focus Features)
(1) Twinless, dir. James Sweeney: In Twinless, producer-writer-director James Sweeney plays Dennis, a young queer man whose most recently stillborn relationship leads him into a bonkers bond with Roman (Dylan O’Brien), a straight man with anger issues who is still grieving the violent death of his gay twin Rocky (also O’Brien). The two enjoy an unlikely friendship, one they realize would never had happened had they not met in a support group for twins mourning their dead siblings. One problem with this is the fact that Dennis’s twin is a fiction, but there are other, bigger problems. Dennis has a Gen Z gift for the emotional grift, his goal is to steal love and smother guilt. At first an offbeat black comedy, this daring and delicate buddy film wrings a surprising amount of drama out of a farfetched premise, not to mention insight and beauty. Aided by the leads’ incredible chemistry — and by Aisling Franciosi and Lauren Graham in key supporting performances — Twinless is without peer this year. (Roadside Attractions)
25 other films I especially liked:
Blue Moon, Dead Man’s Wire, Eleanor the Great, Father Mother Sister Brother, Final Destination Bloodlines, Goodbye June, The Legend of Ochi, The Life of Chuck, The Mastermind, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl …
… Peter Hujar’s Day, Misericordia, Nouvelle Vague; Oh, Hi!; Plainclothes, Predators, A Private Life, Roofman …
… Sauna, Sentimental Value, Sinners, The Smashing Machine, Song Sung Blue, Splitsville, When Fall Is Coming ⚡️
Twinless was a great surprise and wonderful to watch.
Glad to see "History of Sound" land so high on your list. One of the best films I've seen in years.