As at least some have already noted, 2025 was a strange film year. By the most objective standards—the best example, of course, being my entirely rigorous and entirely non-subjective color-coding system that I stole from Dan Sallitt—this was a slightly weaker year than the riches of the past few years: I barely had ten films I considered genuinely great films, and it’s the first year where I haven’t had a single Hong Sang-soo film on my top 10 when there was an eligible title. But at the same time, with both Hong and many others (to be listed in the honorable mentions below), plenty of the big films of the year were terrific, considered and interesting works that I didn’t embrace quite as closely as some yet full of intriguing sharp angles that I found to be welcome. Of course, there were a number as always that didn’t come close to that threshold, whether I liked them or not: Sentimental Value, The Voice of Hind Rajab, A House of Dynamite, Eddington, Hamnet, Bugonia, The Testament of Ann Lee, Die My Love, Frankenstein, Sorry, Baby, Wake Up Dead Man, Honey, Don’t!, Train Dreams, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, and plenty of others.

That in-between quality of many of those honorable mentions can also be found in my top 10, and indeed many of this year’s major films: the quality of searching. The many comparisons of my #5 to John Ford’s The Searchers had a substantial impact on this realization, but that sense of searching is inherently a part of the narratives of many key texts, whether it be for a lover (#1, #3) or a family member (#2, #5). But even more crucially, it is encoded in a more ineffable form, where characters search for truth and morality in tandem with their directors, who also search for how to best represent the worlds they inhabit and the perspectives they hold. Even if I preferred some quests for discovery more than others, I found much to admire through the course of this year.

As always, this list is merely meant to capture my feelings about the films I was able to see at this moment in time, strictly limited to the films that were theatrically released in New York City this year.

1. Caught by the Tides. For me, the indisputable greatest film of the year, at once summing up and completely blowing open Jia Zhangke’s monumental project up to this point. A year later, the mysteries of the interplay between its strands of footage, the raucous beauty of its use of music, the eternal dynamism of Zhao Tao’s face have only deepened, and few other recent films have contained as much second-to-second surprise as this one does. Jia, among his many gifts, is a master of capturing the feeling of abandonment and finding solace in that, and this brought that forth with astounding vividness.

2. Sirāt. I don’t ever recall seeing a film that was more immediately divisive within my critical circles than this one, which itself could be considered commendable. But Óliver Laxe’s tour de force wouldn’t be so potent were it not for the intensity of its mixed emotions, recognizing the folly and shortsightedness of its protagonists from the jump but nevertheless treating their journey with such meditative grandeur that it feels like an entire world unto itself. The release that’s present at the end of this film, a fatalism that’s despairing and loving at the same time, was as cathartic as anything I experienced from a film this year.

3. Grand Tour. Not a dissimilar film from Sirāt—or, as many noted last year, Caught by the Tides—but Miguel Gomes is keyed into a particular form of cinematic pleasure, hearkening (for the first but not the last time on this list) back to the silent era in a way nevertheless largely different from the radical experimentation of Tabu. The twin voyages that its characters embark upon couldn’t be more removed from the reality of their places, and that’s the point: what makes Gomes’s accomplishment so great is how he acknowledges the gap between past and present, native people and colonists, and summons all the colors of the world to illustrate their attempts to bridge that chasm.

4. Misericordia. One of those films whose total commitment to what it means to struggle with faith and one’s own place on this planet has only grown for me. It doesn’t hurt that Alain Guiraudie’s ability to meld a murder investigation with a growing web of interactions is as strong as ever, and the evasiveness of his main character is sustained in order to highlight the ruptures of violence and self-consciousness. While this is one of the funnier films of the year, the priest’s willingness to lay himself bare bringing forth the iniquities of himself and humanity at large—especially in tandem with the ambiguity of the final scenes—is what sticks with me the most.

5. One Battle After Another. I’ve come to appreciate Paul Thomas Anderson a lot more even in the relatively scant few years between his previous film and now, but it doesn’t escape notice that easily my two favorite films of his are both Pynchon adaptations. Though I’ve only read (and quite enjoyed) one of the venerable author’s works, there’s something about the source material that activates yet another level of achievement. Here, the increase in scale also brings about an ever-greater attunement to people’s faces, to the way vivid forces move through space, all the way arguing for a vital hope in the future. Even as its cultural embrace was all but pre-ordained, the dexterity and visceral precision of such a film was a total balm.

6. Resurrection. I have no clue if this would be an easy #1 were it composed of nothing but the first segment’s silent film tribute, but I give more and more credit to Bi Gan for recognizing the value of his juxtaposition of these five (or six) styles and time periods. Less a celebration of Cinema than an examination of why it does what it does and how that’s accomplished, he offers few answers but near-infinite evocations, which aligns almost exactly with my own preferences. In its own way, probably a great piece of filmmaking-as-criticism, though what conclusions may be drawn will take much longer to parse, for the better.

7. Henry Fonda for President. One of the most wonderful acts of homage this year, though what separates Alexander Horwath’s debut directorial feat(ure) from Los Angeles Plays Itself lies in the distinct exactitude of his chronological approach, trusting in the implications that may be formed from how a family and an iconic American developed alongside his nation. Just as in Andersen’s film, the contemporary footage can be overlooked, but its own willingness to experiment alongside the voiceover (including a sensational avant-garde inspired sequence) bring forth much of the vitality of the text.

8. The Shrouds. Possibly the film that’s most blossomed for me post-viewing this year, as David Cronenberg’s deliberately odd excavation of grief was even more revelatory to me than his past work. There’s something in the cold surfaces and the density of performance and doppelgangers which feels particularly invigorating, bound to Cassel’s truly uncanny performance and the deliberate lack of narrative progression. That this just stops, recognizing that an emotional terminus is much more satisfying than a purely narrative one, is only the final in a series of brazen, lovely risks.

9. Afternoons of Solitude. Leave it to Albert Serra to make his most provocative statement yet in the guise of his first documentary. That the carnage on display is actually real is only part of it, as his hypnotic focus on one man’s figure, both grotesquely telegraphed and strangely placid, brings forth all the spectacle and brutality inherent in this tradition. The film would not work without a performer like Roca Rey, or a cinematographer as skilled as Tort, and the attention to “pure” sensation is frightening and seductive in equal measure.

10. Blue Moon. Another film about being trapped in a public space with a bull, which is meant entirely as a compliment to one of Richard Linklater’s finest films and potentially Hawke’s best performance. The gravity of the hero’s presence, his ability to draw the attention of everyone he interacts with even as he’s visibly decaying on screen, is as immense as the amusement of Kaplow’s script, and there’s a delicacy of sentiment that feels just right when placed against the totality of its feelings about art and beauty. In many ways, this embodies Melville’s line in Breathless (“To become immortal, and then die.”) even better than Linklater’s other film this year.

Though I do think that these ten films are on a higher plane than the other films I’ve seen that were released this year, that shouldn’t discount by any means the brilliance of Hong Sang-soo’s By the Stream (one of his greatest ever sequences and plenty to love around it), Philippe Lesage’s Who by Fire (some of the best long takes of the year), Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident (direct and scorching for the better), Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme (a gauntlet of cynical grinding), Pierre Creton & Vincent Barré’s 7 Walks With Mark Brown (imagemaking as a private and collective act of discovery), Julia Loktev’s My Undesirable Friends: Part I—Last Air in Moscow (secretly one of the finest hangout films of the year), Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent (superb in its rendering of a city’s memory), Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother (probably the best major American film that’s gotten lost in the cracks in a long time), Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind (failed sad-sack ambitions captured with great precision), Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme (one of the most magisterial and one of the most daffy performances of the decade), Guillaume Cailleau & Ben Russell’s DIRECT ACTION (fascinating attention to the rhythms of a different way of life), Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague (a total delight of craft and impersonation), Carson Lund’s Eephus (a lovely rendering of the routines we all try to hang onto), Yamada Naoko’s The Colors Within (the magic of creative collaboration and expression), Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s Cloud (the literal hellscape of modern living), Radu Jude’s Dracula (artistic alibi as statement of intent), Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements (piss-taking taken to sublime levels), Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (three brilliant performances and one fantastic formal conceit), and David Osit’s Predators (astoundingly self-questioning). May 2026 bring both just as many strong films and better results in the things and places that matter.