Each year, like to celebrate those movies that gave me the most personal enjoyment last year. Not necessarily a top five, but a most fun five. So here are my favorites for 2025.
In March, Steven Soderbergh released what was already his second movie that year, the spy thriller Black Bag. Soderbergh is justifiably known for being one of the most stylish directors of the past few decades, and this movie just reinforces that reputation, showing off the absurd ease with which he makes us feel incredibly cool as we watch his movies.
Stanley Nelson and Nicole London’s documentary We Want the Funk! came my way in April, and it’s an ideal example of the form, a music documentary that puts its subject into social, cultural, political, and historical context, all while bringing us the stankiest grooves imaginable.
Early in the 2025 baseball season came Eephus, one of the best baseball movies you’ll ever see, a film that follows a single game between two beer league teams on the final day of their final season before the baseball field is demolished. It’s funny, and sad, and opens us up to all sorts of unexpected feelings.
I mentioned Steven Soderbergh’s style, but if we’re talking style, there’s no one like Spike Lee. And in September, I saw what may be his best movie in decades, the crime thriller Highest 2 Lowest. Lee is good at a lot of things, but when his sense of rhythm, music, crackling visuals, and his love of experimentation all come together, there’s no one like him.
And then right at the end of the year I caught Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon, which stars Ethan Hawke as the famed lyricist Lorenz Hart on the night his former partner, Richard Rodgers, opened Oklahoma! with new partner Oscar Hammerstein. This is career-best work for Hawke and the whole thing is as purely delightful as anything I saw in 2025.
