Happy New Year. It’s time to look back and name my top ten movies, the cream of the cinematic crop for 2025. 10) THE SECRET AGENT is an oddly structured but involving Brazilian paranoia thriller set during that country’s political strife in 1977. 9) WEAPONS is an extremely original and genuinely unnerving horror chiller about 17 children who mysteriously disappear from the same grade school class. 8) IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT is a harrowing, secretly filmed Iranian drama about former political prisoners who kidnap a man they believe was their tormentor. 7) THE LIFE OF CHUCK is a thoughtful philosophical and ultimately life affirming comic drama about a terminal cancer victim but told in reverse chronological order. 6) BLACK BAG is a clever and twisty drama that plays like “Who’s Afraid of Virgina Wolf?” but with spies. 5) MARTY SUPREME is an offbeat character study about a brilliant but manipulative and conceited ping pong champ, set in the 1950s. 4) SENTIMENTAL VALUE is an insightful Danish drama about a filmmaker who tries to make up with his estranged daughters by making a film about his family. 3) HAMNET tells an absorbing speculative tale about William Shakespeare and his wife whose personal tragedy inspired his most acclaimed play, “Hamlet.” 2) SINNERS is a grisly vampire film that’s really about racism, Jim Crow, the Blues…and much more. 1) ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER is a wildly entertaining thinking man’s action film dealing with wannabe revolutionaries. Smart and skillfully made, it’s the best film of 2025.