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The best films of 2025, according to critic Sean Burns
Editor's note: Check out film critic Erin Trahan's favorite movies of 2025 here.
When I tell people what I do for a living, a lot of them feel compelled to confess that they don’t bother going to the movies anymore. It’s weird how often this happens. Especially since it’s kind of rude when you think about it. (“What’s your profession? Oh, I don’t care about that.”) In the introduction to his fantastic new book “Algorithm of the Night,” film critic and former Brattle Theatre projectionist A. S. Hamrah calls this “evidence of their cultural stagnation,” observing that for a certain segment of the couch potato public, “saying at every opportunity that no one goes to the movies anymore justifies their lack of interest.”
I feel sorry for these folks because they’re really missing out. The Greater Boston film community is thriving like I haven’t seen in the five decades I’ve been going to movies here. Sure, you have to look past the chain multiplexes, but one would be foolish to expect a decent meal from McDonald’s. We’re blessed to have so many carefully curated independent theaters run by people passionate about cinema presentation, and we’ve got adventurous audiences who faithfully show up for some of the most exciting film programming in the country. Thanks to the Brattle, the Somerville Theatre, the Coolidge Corner Theatre, the Harvard Film Archive and the Independent Film Festival Boston, it’s an embarrassment of riches — so many wild and diverse screening options every night of the week that some enterprising area cinephiles built the Screen Boston website just to keep track of them all.
I went to the movies 204 times in the first 11 months of 2025. Nearly half of those occasions were to see repertory screenings of older films. I might not be getting any younger, but the rep audiences sure are. In May, I went to the Brattle for a sold-out, Monday night show of “Chungking Express” — a movie widely available on DVD and streaming — and most of the capacity crowd hadn’t been born yet when Wong Kar Wai’s masterpiece first hit theaters in 1994. When I was growing up, the Brattle was where old men (and young critics) went to watch Westerns. Now it’s for the cool kids, it seems. Some of this is the vinyl effect: 35mm and 70mm screenings are like collectible rarities now for audiences who never got to experience them the first time around. They make movies into events instead of mere content in an endless digital stream.
The Coolidge was one of four theaters in the world to project Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” in its native VistaVision, the antiquated, eye-popping format that runs on literal museum pieces from the George Eastman estate. (The Coolidge was the only venue in the U.S. not to lose a show due to technical issues. Bravo to the projection staff.) Things like that and the Somerville’s annual 70mm and Widescreen Festival provide experiences you can’t have anywhere else. A friend of mine went into a depressive funk for a few days after seeing “Lawrence of Arabia” on 70mm at the Somerville this summer. No matter what else he tried to watch, it all looked lame in comparison. (“That was fine, Burns. But it wasn’t ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’”)
Contrary to what some people believe, critics don’t get into this racket because we hate movies. Quite the opposite, actually. We love them so much we want to share them with people. I write these pieces because I want you to enjoy cool stuff. That’s why I keep going out to see movies I could more easily watch at home. I go for the collective experience, to feel other people’s reactions in a dark, giant room, with all of us looking up into the light at the same shared dream. It’s this sense of community that I treasure at our local theaters, whether we’re all getting together to mourn departed legends like David Lynch, Gene Hackman and Val Kilmer or celebrating what would have been the 100th birthday of Robert Altman.
Some of my most cherished moviegoing experiences this year included cheering on Indiana Jones, Steve McQueen and the Blues Brothers as they fought fascists at the Somerville Theatre’s regrettably necessary “F**k the Nazis” series. I had the great honor of hosting a wild Q&A with “Eephus” director Carson Lund and Red Sox legend Bill “Spaceman” Lee, the latter living up to his nickname and ensuring that any future moderating gigs would seem staid in comparison. And I don’t think anyone who was at IFFBoston’s opening night will forget seeing poet Andrea Gibson make one of her last public appearances, chatting with us all via Zoom after a screening of the beautiful documentary portrait “Come See Me in the Good Light.”
But the biggest bucket list moment for me was when Francis Ford Coppola came to the Coolidge in April to host screenings of his nutzoid magnum opus “Megalopolis.” The theater’s deputy director, Beth Gilligan, was kind enough to introduce me as a local critic who had written a rave review of his divisive dream project. Coppola shook my hand and immediately started complaining about a New York Times pan of “Apocalypse Now” that was published 46 years ago. So don’t let anyone tell you that nobody remembers what critics say.
'Eephus'
Or, “Twilight of the Massholes.” My favorite film of 2025 is a comedy about fading traditions and the fragility of communities. Former Harvard Film Archive usher Carson Lund’s staggeringly accomplished debut follows the last game played by two adult Sunday league baseball teams on a public field slated for demolition in Douglas, Massachusetts. “Eephus” is a funny, melancholy marvel of emotionally constipated New England masculinity, full of characters who can only communicate by busting each other’s chops. One of them asks, “Is there anything more beautiful than the sun setting on a fat man stealing second base?” Nothing I saw this year came close. Available on VOD.
'One Battle After Another'
Paul Thomas Anderson’s rollicking reworking of Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland” shifts the story from the Reagan era to an only slightly more dystopic vision of our present distress. But I don’t feel like it’s explicitly about this political moment. As Benicio del Toro’s Modelo-sipping sensei says, “We’ve been laid siege for hundreds of years… Don’t be selfish.” It’s more concerned with generational exhaustion and how even a bomb-throwing young radical eventually becomes the crabby old guy on the couch who can’t figure out his iPhone, while our kids keep up the fights we couldn’t finish. Available on VOD.
'Blue Moon'
Ethan Hawke gives the performance of the year as jilted lyricist Lorenz Hart, watching his old writing partner Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) soar to unprecedented heights of success without him, in director Richard Linklater’s wistful elegy for an artist realizing the times have passed him by. Set entirely at the premiere party for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!,” it's basically a movie about pretending to be happy at your ex’s wedding, with Hawke spitting catty quips and spinning long-winded stories like he’s afraid that if he stops talking for a second, everyone will realize how sad he is. Available on VOD.
'Peter Hujar's Day'
In 1974, writer Linda Rosenkrantz interviewed her friend Peter Hujar for a proposed book about an ordinary day in the life of New York artists. The book never happened, but a transcript survived. Director Ira Sachs got actors Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall to reenact the interview in a formally striking, self-described “art project” that — in its hyper-focused fixation on mundane, day-to-day details — reveals larger, more philosophical truths. This odd, beguiling movie seems to expand in the viewer’s mind. By the end, you feel like you’ve witnessed something cosmic without ever leaving the apartment. Now playing in select theaters.
'It Was Just an Accident'
The great Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi has spent the past 15 years in and out of prison and under house arrest for making films critical of the country’s regime. He pours all of that frustration into this haunting, sometimes furiously funny story of an auto mechanic and recently released political prisoner who suspects a new customer might be his old torturer, but needs his former cellmates to confirm. The result feels almost like a screwball “Death and the Maiden,” both playful and gravely serious, always exhilaratingly alive to the possibilities of cinema. Now playing in select theaters.
'Father Mother Sister Brother'
Jim Jarmusch’s elegant, deceptively simple triptych spends a short spell with three different families in three different countries, each encounter carrying specific echoes of the last. On the surface, it appears to be a minor key comedy, with Tom Waits as a sly grifter conning his adult kids played by Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik, then Charlotte Rampling slighting daughters played by Cate Blanchett and Vicky Krieps. But there’s a stealthy, cumulative undertow that sneaks up on you during the third segment. All of a sudden I wondered why I was crying. Opens in Boston theaters on Jan. 9.
'Sentimental Value'
As an aging filmmaker and absent father oblivious to the emotional wreckage he’s left behind for his two daughters, Stellan Skarsgård gives a breezy, effortlessly funny performance that feels like a reintroduction to an actor we’ve known for decades. Director Joachim Trier and his regular writing partner Eskil Vogt reteam with “The Worst Person in the World” star Renate Reinsve for this story of a family’s slow surrender toward forgiveness. Basically Ingmar Bergman’s “The Royal Tenenbaums,” it’s a literate, sophisticated comedy about accepting the flawed people in our lives and meeting them where they are. Now in theaters.
'Splitsville'
Boasting more silly sight gags than “The Naked Gun,” this intricately constructed, bawdy bedroom farce from the filmmaking team of Kyle Marvin and Michael Angelo Covino follows two suburban couples pretending to be cool with polyamory when they’re really anything but. It’s the kind of raucous relationship comedy for adults we haven’t seen since the heyday of Blake Edwards, featuring some of this year’s most inventive filmmaking. There’s a slapstick fight that rivals “John Wick” in terms of action choreography, and I still smile every time I think of the goldfish on the rollercoaster. Available on VOD.
'Eddington'
The most misunderstood movie of the year, Ari Aster’s pitch-black pandemic Western sent up all sides of our current culture wars as performative ego trips fueled and funded by Big Tech companies who use them to divide and conquer communities. Skewering sacred cows and picking low-hanging fruit, this flawed, fiendishly funny film drove some viewers to apoplexy. No movie in 2025 inspired more intense arguments, most of them proving comedian Marc Maron’s theory that we progressives have not yet reckoned with the fact that we annoyed half the country into choosing fascism. Streaming on HBO Max and available on VOD.
'Highest 2 Lowest'
I saw someone online dismiss this spirited riff on Akira Kurosawa’s “High and Low” as “Spike and Denzel’s ‘Gran Torino.’” And they said this like it was a bad thing! Lee and Washington’s insouciant music biz kidnapping thriller is an instant classic of old man cinema, a “get off my lawn” movie par excellence, built around the considerable pleasures of watching two seasoned pros swaggering up a storm. The subway train money drop is one of the most exuberant sequences of Spike’s career, featuring some of the New York filmmaker’s funniest Red Sox slander. Streaming on Apple TV+.
Honorable mentions: “A House of Dynamite,” “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” “The Shrouds,” “Sinners,” “Sorry, Baby” and “Zodiac Killer Project.”
The bottom of the barrel: “The Life of Chuck,” “Hamnet,” “Captain America: Brave New World,” “Jay Kelly” and “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.”
