2025 Recap – Best of the Rest (Part Two)

by Sara Michelle Fetters - January 2nd, 2026 - Features

TWENTY-FIVE MORE – Because I can (Part Two)

26. Superman (Dir: James Gunn)

I still believe a man can fly. Seriously, though, James Gunn’s take on Superman is a hope-fueled triumph that gets better with each viewing. This Man of Steel soars.

27. The Ballad of Wallis Island (Dir: James Griffiths)

A love song of catharsis and longing, this dream of a musical melodrama sings out truth with sparkling clarity. Tim Key delivers one of 2025’s most memorable supporting performances.

28. Queens of the Dead (Dir: Tina Romero)

The dead return in Tina Romero’s magnificently Queer zombie sensation, their luminous sparkly bloodlust only exceeded by the human found-family doing everything they can to make it out of New York City alive. A fabulously effective — and gory! — good time. [Interview with Tina Romero]

29. The Secret Agent (Dir: Kleber Mendonça Filho)

Tense, haunting, and emotionally shattering, this paranoid retro-thriller is a pulse-pounding procedural that takes its time to fully rev its engines before delivering an overwhelming wallop of a conclusion. Wagner Moura is outstanding.

30. A House of Dynamite (Dir: Kathryn Bigelow)

A ticking-clock nuclear terror dynamically directed by a never-better Kathryn Bigelow, this real-life thriller is an atomic age Rashomon that leaves the audience breathlessly wondering what happens next. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and no one feels fine.

31. 40 Acres (Dir: R.T. Thorne)

A post-apocalyptic nightmare about a Canadian family, led by a rarely-better Danielle Deadwyler, struggling to raise crops in a silently austere Canadian nowhere and fighting off cannibalistic invaders who want everything they’ve meticulously built for themselves, including their flesh and blood. Superbly directed by R.T. Thorne.

32. Zootopia 2 (Dir: Jared Bush, Byron Howard)

Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) return to solve a twisted mystery involving exiled reptiles and duplicitous lynxes that will change Zootopia forever. That rare animated sequel that’s even better than the film that preceded it.

33. The Naked Gun (Dir: Akiva Schaffer)

Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson (along with an outstanding supporting ensemble) resurrect the Naked Gun franchise with wit, silliness, confidence, and stupidity, while filmmaker Akiva Schaffer puts a goofy Lonely Island spin on a Zucker-Abrams-Zucker perennial. Features 2025’s biggest and most agreeably juvenile laughs.

34. Companion (Dir: Drew Hancock)

Androids don’t so much dream of electric sheep as they do untethered autonomy in Drew Hancock’s clever and cagy sci-fi what-if morality play. An incandescent Sophie Thatcher shines as a pleasure companion who comes to realize her egotistically misogynist “owner” (a deliciously nasty Jack Quaid) doesn’t exactly have her best interests lurking inside his greedy, coal-covered heart.

35. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Dir: Mary Bronstein)

Rose Byrne is a ferociously feral marvel as an emotionally fraught mother and therapist who’s falling to pieces as her only child deals with a life-threatening illness and one of her patients abandons their newborn child in her office. Then there’s the gaping hole that’s expanding like a destructive black hole in the bedroom ceiling of her apartment, its abyssal emptiness potentially a sign that the end is nigh — and there’s nothing she can do about it.

Honorable Mentions (in alphabetic order)

Beast of War (Dir: Kiah Roache-Turner), Black Phone 2 (Dir: Scott Derrickson), Dangerous Animals (Dir: Sean Byrne), Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale (Dir: Simon Curtis), Drop (Dir: Christopher Landon), The Housemaid (Dir: Paul Feig), Influencers (Dir: Kurtis David Harder), The Life of Chuck (Dir: Mike Flanagan), The Luckiest Man in America (Dir: Samir Oliveros), Materialists (Dir: Celine Song), The Monkey (Dir: Osgood Perkins), My Dead Friend Zoe (Dir: Kyle Hausmann-Stokes), Paddington in Peru (Dir: Dougal Wilson), The Phoenician Scheme (Dir: Wes Anderson), Predator: Killer of Killers (Dir: Dan Trachtenberg), Presence (Dir: Steven Soderbergh), Rental Family (Dir: Hikari), Roofman (Dir: Derek Cianfrance), Silent Night, Deadly Night (Dir: Mike P. Nelson), Sisu: Road to Revenge (Dir: Jalmari Helander), The Testament of Ann Lee (Dir: Mona Fastvold), Thunderbolts* (Dir: Jake Schreier), Weapons (Dir: Zach Cregger)