ILT’s Top 10 Films of 2025!

The lengths people will go to for the ones they love versus the lengths they will go to for themselves will always equate to pure CINEMA.

Relive a soul-stirring year with ILT’s top 10 films of 2025…Follow ILT on twitter @iltfilm
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10. The Smashing Machine

Dir: Benny Safdie

Having waited six years for a follow up to Uncut Gems, two Safdie pictures, individual or not, were a sight for sore eyes in 2025. Benny’s The Smashing Machine may be the more lowkey effort, but it is as emotionally hard-hitting as it is narratively unconventional. The trailer teased us with classic sports movie beats, covering the trials and tribulations of Dwayne Johnson’s MMA pioneer Mark Kerr as he fights in and out of the ring. Naturally, Safdie’s final cut gives us so much more. This is not a standard biopic by any stretch of the imagination, as Safdie takes the big swing of contracting the world around his subject until there is nothing more to give, gradually taking us from the outside in, where Mark is alone, and just a man. It is without doubt Johnson’s finest performance to date and one that deserves more recognition, for The Smashing Machine is not Oscar bait. It is far, far better than that.
Watch the trailer here…

9. Train Dreams

Dir: Clint Bentley

We need more filmmaking tag-teams like Clint Bentley and Greg Kweder, a modern screenwriting duo who trade director credits as they un-romanticize America in the search for lost humanity along its roughest edges. Following up Sing Sing – last year’s quite beautiful prison drama directed by Kweder – is Train Dreams, a deep cut though the early 20th century forests of the Pacific Northwest at the hands of those who pulled the saws. Bentley is in the director’s chair this time and his sense of pacing is in perfect step with the astonishing photography of Adolpho Veloso, while Joel Edgerton was born for the quietly colossal role of railroad builder and logger Robert Grainier. Surveying the ho-hum reality of ground-up nation building in the western cinematic context, Train Dreams declares the American Dream dead on arrival and steams past its trope-ridden corpse to the hope-tinged nightmare that waits for us all.
Watch the trailer here…

8. No Other Choice

Dir: Park Chan-wook

Park Chan-wook has long had his finger so firmly on the pulse of the 21st century that each new release feels less like a warning and more like a legitimate threat. Even through the delicious, multi-layered comedic tones of No Other Choice, it is clear from the outset that no one is going to win here (or anywhere, for that matter). That does not stop the homicidal journey of recently laid off paper man Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) being any less mesmerizing, as Park stitches together a damning inditement of late-stage capitalism in the form of one man’s desperation to be part of the system he knows and loves. Lee’s versatility as a leading man makes for the the ideal embodiment of Park’s vision, bringing out our grotesque empathy for a man on the absolute worst kind of mission, while giving us a much needed comedy fix in one of the driest spells for the genre on record.
Watch the trailer here…

7. Blue Moon

Dir: Richard Linklater

Ethan Hawke probably won’t win Best Actor at the upcoming Academy Awards, but by GAWD he is doing all of the acting in Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon. And that isn’t taking the piss; it’s a truly stellar old school Hollywood performance from Hawke, appropriate for the early-1940s setting and stage show-on-film vibe that he and Linklater absolutely nail in their depiction of the spiraling lyrical maestro, Lorenz Hart. Finding yourself near the bottom of the bottle without fully realizing that there is no way to reverse the flow is a cinematic tale as old as the finest vintage. Hawke brings that somber tragedy to Hart through a series of interactions with loved ones who have long decided to let him go, despite his last ditch attempts to equalize his fading relationships and crippling addiction. A fantastic supporting turn by Andrew Scott makes for the most brutal showdown, but when the curtain comes down it is Hawke who takes the fully deserved final bow.
Watch the trailer here…
Read ILT’s full review here…

6. The Phoenician Scheme

Dir: Wes Anderson

Has Wes Anderson ever been less relevant? The all time leader atop the filmmaking whimsicality table is not so much flying under the critical radar as he has been buried in a discourse black site somewhere in the Nevada desert. His pictures are met with the politest of comments and golf claps that add up to the not-so-subtle yet rather tired idea that everything he makes is all style and no substance. Now, all of this is only subjectively incorrect, of course, but it can still be bloody difficult to get your head around when recent efforts Asteroid City and The Phoenician Scheme represent Anderson’s most thoughtful and entertaining work since Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom. It is easy to knock Anderson’s refusal to deviate or evolve from his distinct visual style, but as a rare director in the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” category, it is even easier to just sit back and let the man cook up a comforting delight in the form of the The Phoenician Scheme, the epitome of relaxing satire with people you know and like, complete with an absolute peak performance from Benicio del Toro to pair with his standout supporting role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another.
Watch the trailer here…

5. It Ends

Dir: Alexander Ullom

Excited murmurs of the next great indie horror are not all that uncommon out of South by Southwest. The rate at which those flicks live up to the hype may be hit and miss, but when one hits, it’s time to buckle up. It Ends is one of those flicks. The debut feature of writer-director Alexander Ullom, this is a generational horror film that plants its terror inside the minds of four Zoomer friends, after they turn onto a road with no exits, and seemingly no end. While we have long had Gen Z actors aplenty, Gen Z filmmakers are now coming of age. If It Ends is anything to go by then we are in for a fascinating era, as Ullom accelerates head-on into the deep existential crisis felt by a generation that lost several of its most important years to the pandemic. The arc of being stuck in limbo, what it means to each us, and the anxiety and stress of trying to break out of it are developed and portrayed so effectively by Ullom and his actors, who theorize on and buy into the rules of the doomed road while suffering their own individual meltdowns. It’s great stuff that deserves to be seen by a wide audience. Credit to Letterboxd for putting it on its video rental service, but if you have the patience, see it on the big screen later this year.
There is currently no trailer for It Ends. Go and see its theatrical release in 2026.

4. Marty Supreme

Dir: Josh Safdie

It is amusing to compare the toned down introspection of Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine with his brother Josh’s decision to return to the director’s chair brandishing another tale of a self-obsessed arsehole running around New York while shamelessly exploiting those close to him in a bid to achieve something that will forever be out reach. Yes, Marty Supreme shares its foundations with 2019’s Uncut Gems, but beyond that is a bigger, arguably better (recency bias will likely always win here), and certainly more mature production that is somehow unendingly meticulous while staking everything on its lead performance (OK, that last part is very Uncut Gems). There are of course zero stakes in this regard when your lead actor is that little known up-and-comer known as Timothée bloody Chalamet, and our boy comes through with a career performance, bouncing off the wonderful supporting cast and backed by a dreamy banger of a score by frequent Safdie collaborator Daniel Lopatin. There’s also table tennis, post-war Jewishness through post-war Japan, and an annoyingly good performance from that cunt Kevin O’Leary (I’m Canadian so I can say that).
Watch the trailer here…

3. Akashi

Dir: Mayumi Yoshida

The Vancouver International Film Festival does not quite have the prestige of it’s distant cousin across the way there in Toronto, but every now and then VIFF programs and premieres a feature to rival anything the glitz and glamour of TIFF has to offer. At VIFF 2025, that film was Akashi, written and directed by Mayumi Yoshida, who also stars as Kana, a Japanese Canadian artist who travels from Vancouver to Tokyo for her grandmother’s funeral. Lost family relationships and secrets await, but to say anymore would be a disservice to Yoshida’s gorgeously woven script and aesthetically stunning directorial debut, with cinematographer Jaryl Lim’s mix of black and white and colour photography taking maximum advantage of the contemporary and period Tokyo settings. Yoshida bats for the cycle with a great lead performance, matching Hana Kino’s sparkling, heartbreaking performance as her emotionally conflicted Grandma. A devastating examination of why generation after generation struggles with love, Akashi comes full circle to insist that there is always hope.
Watch a clip from Akashi here…
Read ILT’s interview with Mayumi Yoshida here…

2. Sentimental Value

Dir: Joachim Trier

There are few theatrical experiences more satisfying than the perfectly crafted opening scene. It isn’t necessarily big, but it sure is clever enough to have your brain inform you that what you’ve sat down to watch is going to be an absolute banger. Sentimental Value has that opening. It may just be candid shots of rooms in an Oslo house, but it’s so well constructed by writer-director Joachim Trier that by the time it’s over you could not be more invested in this house and the family that resides there. What follows is nothing short of masterful filmmaking, dissecting family dysfunction through missed connections, grief, and the passage of time, as Stellan Skarsgård’s Gustav Borg, a legendary film director, returns home in a bid to cast his daughter in his highly personal new project. Renate Reinsve is the daughter in question and is one third of a set of magnificent female performances, with Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning completing the trio. Each has their own uniquely troubled relationship with Borg and Trier nails the payoff for all three with grace, wit, and elegant emotional intelligence. From the writing to the production design, everything in Sentimental Value comes together like that one house we all remember that will forever be our own internal sanctuary.
Watch the trailer here…

1. Sinners

Dir: Ryan Coogler

Sinners went into the No. 1 spot upon its April release and has since held on to it with ease, save for the late suggestion of a flip-flop with Sentimental Value, which was quickly dismissed. It is just impossible to see past Ryan Coogler’s unapologetically maniacal telling of the Black experience in the Jim Crow South, by way of the blues, spirituality, and an Irish-immigrant vampire played by Cook from Skins. It is funny to think back to the lead up to Sinners, when most promotional materials (thankfully) revealed little of the plot, the drift into musical territory, and crucially the straight-as-an-arrow dramatic nature of the first act. We did not know quite what to expect going into that opening week screening, but it quickly became apparent that the set up to this random original horror was fueled by a premium script and executed to near perfection from behind and in front of the camera. Michael B. Jordan, Jack O’Connell, Delroy Lindo, and Hailee Steinfeld, to name but a few, are so fucking good in this, turning themselves over to Coogler’s vision without even blinking. Jordan has never been cooler on screen and has the luxury of realizing it twice over as twins Smoke and Stack Moore, while O’Connell is on his first big-time heater between his British television exploits and the recently released 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, as Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, a character so fucked up yet brutally effective it deserves an Oscar nomination for the tracksuit alone.

The key scene and true heart of Sinners is of course Miles Caton’s mesmerizing juke joint blues performance. The spiritual element of the scene is not without its critics, but at our screening it could not have gone over any better, acting as the perfect pivot from the slow-burn, boys-are-back-in town opening, to the explosive final act as our hive mind friends take things over with a blood-soaked smile and a little jig of their own. The balls on Coogler to even conceive of, let alone pull this sequence off is certainly right up there on the badman charts, sitting pretty next to his insistence that he retain ownership of Sinners from 2050, taking it back from Warner Bros. and cementing a huge win for the director.

The final word on Sinners will come at the Academy Awards, where Coogler is a good shout for Best Original Screenplay, but really deserves so much more. Even if Sinners is all but shut out in spite of its 16 nominations, which is entirely possible knowing the Academy, Coogler has already won, having produced a truly memorable and richly thematic ode to pure entertainment that also happens to be one of the coolest films of the decade.
Watch the trailer here…

Looking for more great movie recommendations?
Check out ILT’s Top 10 Films of:
2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015