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Sinners? Seriously? I haven't seen a lot of 2025 films yet (14 to be exact), but I did watch this. I must really be missing out on some conversation, because literally no one I know liked this film. Sinners is a meh.
of the films I did see, which didn't include One Battle After Another, I liked 28 Years Later and Frankenstein the most. If I had to pick, I would go 28 Years Later - I had high expectations going in after seeing the trailer, but was still blown away. Such a breath of fresh air given all the films made for the dopamine addicted generation. Takes some time to build characters, build up tension and my oh my, what an ending. Can't wait for the follow up. All hail Danny Boyle!
I'm a Sinners guy, but I also need to see way more films. Having a newborn kind of limits you there.
My surprise second pick? Ne Zha 2. Go see it, folks. It's the heat.
At this point, Sentimental Value is sitting at the top of my 2025 list. It’s astonishing how many plates Trier can spin without this movie feeling messy or overstuffed. The supporting characters of Sentimental Value (including a house) are more fleshed out than most protagonists, allowing the pitch-perfect ending to hit even harder.
It's too early for me to choose my #1 of the year, as so many 2025 releases won't reach Seattle until January or February of 2026. My ritual is to wait until Oscar night before posting favorites, and even then I still have work to do. But if I'm choosing my favorite SO FAR, it's a near toss-up between Steven Soderbergh's entrancing, funny, unpredictable, and oh-so-satisfying Black Bag, and Rungano Nyoni's On Becoming a Guinea Fowl. For this poll, I'm choosing the latter.
Nyoni's film begins with an awkwardly funny and tense sequence in which a young woman, returning late at night from a costume party and dressed as Missy Elliott, discovers a dead body on the road and realizes it's someone she knows. Things get weird fast. And then, infuriating. Tragic. And motivational. This is an essential film about the destruction wrought by patriarchal systems — and yet, it's not all grief and agony. It's also darkly funny and unpredictable.
And it's not just showing us how power corrupts, and how giving power to men corrupts them into insufferable Man Babies who have no accountability, and who become ritual abusers. "Believe women" — yes, indeed! But it also makes the more surprising and unsettling case that, in cultures where prevalent rape and abuse continue from generation to generation, such horrors are often enabled by women who decide it's safer to suffer in silence, and to silence others who suffer, than it is to take the risks of confrontation and change.
I've been thinking about it — and its haunting final shot — since I saw it back in March. It's the 2025 release that I'd nominate most highly for a Criterion edition.
It's a strange feeling to watch a masterpiece that leaves you walking out of a theater on a high only to discover that pretty much no one feels the same way. That was Bugonia for me this year. I was blown away by the last thing I expected from a Yorgos movie: a real empathy and understanding of its characters who would come off as one-dimensional punchlines in any other film.
It's downright alienating to be the only person right about something, but that's okay---I know just the movie for that feeling.
I can't believe I'm going to bat for the highest-grossing film of 2025 (pre-Avatar, anyway), but Ne Zha II isn't getting enough love in the States. Not only is it a visual spectacle beyond anything Cameron could deliver, it's a surprisingly-sophisticated portrayal of how those in power make the oppressed complicit in their own oppression. OBAA and Sinners are good; Weapons is great; Sentimental Value, Marty Supreme, and Hamnet--and many others--I have yet to see. But with Ne Zha II mixing the most potent cocktail of electrifying action and raw pathos since The Return of the King, how could it not be my film of the year? (Plus, it's about time we got a movie willing to rip off the climax of Toy Story 3 and audacious enough to actually kill characters in the process.)
One Battle After Another held my top slot for quite a long time but then I caught up with Train Dreams! It's obviously gorgeous to look at but what really got me was its deep understanding of grief and longing along with its scatging dismissal of societal progress and the "greater good," when it comes at the exploitation of others. I could write endlessly about how much this work exudes love and care but nothing sums it up better than the fact that, in order to not fell trees unnecessarily, they made props of wood and fiberglass for the actors to cut into and digitally extended those into trees in post. The film cares so deeply for the world that they couldn't even harm trees unnecessarily! Wonderful.
I tend to be a contrarian and I didn't like either movie that much. In your latest episode you got really close to the flaw in OBAA — it wasn't that Sean Penn's performance was over the top. He did right by the role but the role effing sucked. His character was everything bad about what could otherwise have been a good movie. And of course they had to do the horror-movie cliche of "Wait, he's not really dead!!! He's coming for you!!!" Such a bad element in that movie.
Best movie of the year, in my book: SOULEYMANE'S STORY, which isn't being mentioned by anybody. Best movie more people have seen: HAMNET, maybe. At least the ending. Best movie released in other countries but not North America: GIRL AMERICA, aka, AMERIKANKA, from the Czech Republic. Just stunning. I hope somehow it can come out here.
I really liked both films. OBAA is currently at #3 on my year end ranking and Sinners is #10. So I voted for OBAA in this poll.
OBAA is definitely my favorite of the year. I can't think of another film in recent memory packed this full of stellar performances. The car chase in the Mojave was riveting--one of the best sequences of the year (the high point of my year was seeing it on 70mm with an enthusiastic crowd). That said, Sentimental Value is a close second. Such an understated script with probably my second favorite cast of the year.
Kpop Demon Hunters showed us how it's done done done, so it gets my vote.
To be honest, I have only seen six movies from this year and One Battle After Another and Sinners where not among them, so maybe I shouldn't have taken part in the vote at all. But the great visuals and songs of Kpop Demon Hunters have been in my mind for months and I think the film has not received as much love by film critics as it should have.
OBAA and Sinners are deservedly going to get most of the love this award season, but I want to give my vote to KPop Demon Hunters. This movie has become a cultural sensation in both film and music becoming Netflix's most watched movie of all time and the first Kpop song to top the Billboard Hot 100. It also showed the Sony Pictures Animation is more than just the Spider-verse films as it looks really strong poised to win Grammys and Oscars. On a personal note it brought back a long dormant love of animation for me this year getting me to seek out animation classics new and old, plus the movie is just so much damn fun
Sinners, hands down. I’d only vote One Battle After Another for most overrated movie of the year. PTA fanboys gotta get a grip.
I don’t give five stars very often. I have over 5,800 films logged on Letterboxd, and only 16 earned 5 stars. One Battle After Another is the only 2025 film to earn that rating. I only had two 4.5 star films, and they were Sinners and Weapons. All three are far and away the best of 2025.
(Pardon the repost. I misspelled my own last name. ????)
I don’t give five stars very often. I have over 5,800 films logged on Letterboxd, and only 16 earned 5 stars. One Battle After Another is the only 2025 film to earn that rating. I only had two 4.5 star films, and they were Sinners and Weapons. All three are far and away the best of 2025.
No Weapons love?
What do SINNERS and ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER have in common? They were both, at some point, my #2 film of the year. And, as great as they both are, they just couldn't compete with my #1 film for most of 2025, the masterpiece that is EEPHUS.
I know I am in the minority but I was underwhelmed by One Battle. I really liked Sinners but it does nof break inti my very strong top 7 of the year (based on UK release dates):
Black Bag, September 5, Warfare, The Lost Bus, A House of Dynamite, Late Shift and Hard Truths.
Right now, Sinners and OBAA are battling for my #2 spot this year, so I went with "Other" and wrote it my #1 movie of the year, It Was Just An Accident. As the credits rolled for this film, I just sat in stunned silence until the lights came on. That last shot had me holding my breath. Jafar Panahi is a master filmmaker and what he does with this film is enthralling and ingenious. I hope it's able to pull a Parasite and be nominated for both Best International Film and Best Picture this year, because it really deserves it.
Of these two it's easily OBAA, but the film that truly cast a spell on me this year was Iceland's Oscar entry 'The Love That Remains'. Strange, bafflingly hilarious, and full of spellbinding surprises. A mesmerising wonder.
I'd be lying if I said it didn't come down to these two for me, but man does it feel boring this year. I wish there was a third option that was even close.
Charming as hell! Oui, « charmant en diable » as we say here in Paris. Merci Monsieur Linklater!
Sometimes no-budget movies that do one thing beautifully, like Listers: A Glimpse Into Extreme Bird Watching, trumps overblown works by accomplished filmmakers with big budgets. A compelling plot with stakes, a road picture filled with interesting encounters, and characters, many moments of unforced beauty and awe, and a simple message that applies to end-of-the-year lists.
I'm with Stephen in that One Battle got my vote because it is the movie FOR this year, not just the best of the year. But Train Dreams is my number one (so far, at least). A beautiful, lyrical, gut-punch of a film.
*Sigh* SINNERS has been my favorite film since I saw it in May. In spite of the great films I've seen this year since May, including ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, SINNERS for me is still the best film of the year and Ryan Coogler IS the best director. Alas though, I see where this train is going in terms of everyone's choice for best film, including the Oscars and other award committees. Don't get me wrong. For the most part, I love OBAA and I think Director Paul Thomas Anderson did some great work but I would put that one astonishingly directed scene alone from SINNERS (and you know what scene I'm talking about) against anything that PTA did in OBAA. Also, I think there have been better PTA films. SINNERS is Ryan Coogler's greatest achievement thus far.
I don't usually have my yearly list finalised until February but at the moment Sinners is number 1.
I voted OBAA, not because it's my number 1 (of what I've seen, Train Dreams and Sentimental Value rank higher), but because its rather undeniable that the year of 2025 will be remembered as the year PTA brought such a fervor to cinemas with his adaptation that was both timeless and prescient. I believe it will be a significant touchpoint in history for both the state of the world and the state of cinema we are currently in.
Voting One Battle After Another, as I did, shortchanges both Sinners and Other, because, while it's too soon to definitively say at this point, I feel there's a reasonable chance that One Battle, Sinners, and It Was Just an Accident, in that order, would be my top 3 films of the six years that so far make up the 2020s. I feel good right now saying that each of them, had they come out in any of the previous six years, would have topped my annual Best Of list.
Both of these films are fine, but wildly overrated
I just went back and re-watched Sinners the other day. All it did was reinforce my opinion that it's the best film I've seen this year. And although I did like One Battle, I'll die on the hill that Eddington is the better film to turn the lens on ourselves.
I'm not answering. I usually don't know my favorite movies of a particular year until Feb of the following year. So many movies I still need to see. One Battle was really good, but I feel myself pushing against all the praise it's getting. Wish it wasn't so focused on the character of Bob.
One Battle After Another is probably better representative of the year 2025, but Sinners might just be the film of the decade. It’s the most special movie I’ve seen in at least that long. It’s deft but bold portrait of simultaneous joy and desperation is staggeringly powerful. All I can say when I recommend it to people is that they’ve never seen anything like it. It also single-handedly brought Irish folk music into the zeitgeist, and I don’t know if anyone but Ryan Coogler could have managed to pull that off.
My two favorite movies of the year so far. I feel bad that I didn't rewatch Sinners to give it a fighting chance against the more recent OBAA.
Bothe great films as is Hamnet and Jafar Panahi's is an astonishing achieves so much with minimal technical artifice. The last scene will stay with many forever. His finest film to date.
Worried that Marty Supreme is still one of the big films that most of us haven't seen and might be at the table. This was a surprisingly good year of 4-4.5 films with 1 or 2 films I would classify as 5 star.
Once folks see Marty Supreme, it will enter the chat.
Hamnet is the correct answer. Jessie Buckley was phenomenal. My favorite film of the year by far.
My two favorite movies of the year. Both incredible experiences in a theater. While I can nitpick both, I don’t want to, because I unabashedly loved each film. While both films reach for moments of transcendence, Sinners is the movie that made me float during and after the “time travel” music scene. Such a gigantic audacious swing that ties together the themes and plot and spirit of the film. That sequence alone has to give it a slight edge. We’re lucky to get either of these movies in any year. To get both in the same year means we all hit the cinematic lottery.
This is hard. Up until One Battle I expected Sinners to be my movie of the year, no contest. I think I'll come back to this later