Movies: Here are 2025’s 10 best as cinema stays alive and well in the Bay and beyond

This can’t be said for the rest of the world, but 2025 was a good year for movies. Two encouraging observations emerge: Those endangered wonders of the world known as movie theaters are hanging in there. And wonderful movies are still being released.   

Hit hard during the pandemic years, the local movie landscape become home to several new movie houses, including Alamo Drafthouse sites in Mountain View and Santa Clara and the Apple Cinemas in San Francisco, in 2025.  The Sundown Cinema outdoor movie series returned to the parks after a short hiatus. The soon-to-reopen Castro Theatre will begin showing movies again in March.  The Clay Theatre, shuttered since 2020, also is slated to reopen, as a first-run and repertory cinema. 

Bay Area moviegoers continue to love and support their local arthouses. In 2025, the Roxie Theater, conducting a capital campaign, announced that it was on its way to buying its building — a move that will help ensure the Roxie’s future survival. Cinema SF, which operates San Francisco’s Balboa, Vogue and 4-Star theaters, shifted to nonprofit status as part of its mission to keep neighborhood theaters alive. Festivals galore, from SFFILM to Frameline to CAAMFest to Another Hole in the Head, continued to attract audiences last year.   

As for movies themselves, many fine ones hit the screens — from non-franchise blockbusters like “Sinners” to grand-scale non-blockbusters like “One Battle After Another” to intimate dramas like “Hamnet” to indie gems and international must-sees. In tune with the times, prominent themes included war, authoritarianism, social injustice and the need for human connection.  

Here are my top 10 movies of 2025. 

1. Sirat. Spanish filmmaker Oliver Laxe’s exquisitely cinematic road tale and apocalyptic Western follows a middle-aged father (Sergi Lopez) and his young son as they search for the family’s missing daughter in the Moroccan desert, eventually joined by a makeshift family of nomadic rave-goers. Their journey of hope becomes one of survival when armed soldiers appear. The situation leads to a pulsating, devastating fusion of humanity and horror. 

2. One Battle After Another. Loosely adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s action thriller and satire of America is 162 minutes of crackerjack filmmaking. Leonard DiCaprio excels in comic mode as a drugged-out ex-revolutionary who comes alive when his teenage daughter (Chase Infiniti) is kidnapped. The misadventure includes white supremacists, immigrant detention facilities, police-state interrogations, and, at the core, a moving father-daughter story. Teyana Taylor, Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn costar.  

3. Hamnet. Chloe Zhao, cowriting with novelist Maggie O’Farrell, explores love, loss and the magic of theater in this intimate, imaginative, emotionally amazing rendering of how the death of his son moved William Shakespeare (played by Paul Mescal) to write his greatest play. Jessie Buckley, as the playwright’s grief-consumed wife, Agnes, gives the movie a compelling, anguished heart.  

4. It Was Just an Accident. Jafar Panahi’s latest filmed-in-secret movie is a moral thriller in which a group of Iranian torture survivors must decide what to do with the man they are holding captive, who they believe was their tormenter. Intensely angry, dryly funny and profoundly humane, the movie affirms Panahi’s status as one of the most significant directors working today.  

5. Sentimental Value. Joachim Trier explores generational trauma and unacknowledged love in this beautifully acted Norwegian drama in which two sisters (Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) are forced to address long-harbored resentments when their years-absent, emotionally neglectful moviemaker father (Stellan Skarsgard) reenters their lives. Elle Fanning costars as an American actress caught in the thicket.  

6. The Secret Agent.  Kleber Mendonca Filho’s intelligent 1977-set Brazilian thriller captures the dangerous, paranoid realities of life under a dictatorship. Wagner Moura brings depth and soul to the role of a widowed scientist who arrives in his hometown to collect his young son and leave Brazil, only to find himself pursued by hitmen, corrupt cops and others deeming him unfriendly to the regime.   

7. Sinners. Ryan Coogler’s first original blockbuster is an intensely visual and sonic experience featuring Black music, Black history and vampires. Michael B. Jordan plays the dual role of identical twins who return from gangland Chicago to their Mississippi hometown during the Jim Crow era and open a juke joint. Its exuberant atmosphere attracts some immortal, blood-thirsty revelers. Filled with engaging supporting characters, the movie is both grade-A escapism and a work of art. 

8. Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5. Premier documentarian Raoul Peck demonstrates that the writings of 20th-century British author George Orwell (“1984”) have proved to be more than dystopian fiction in this relevant and riveting film combining a biographical portrait of Orwell with a cinematic college showing how authoritarian leaders maintain control by silencing critics, contradicting truth and intimidating citizens. 

9. The History of Sound. Oliver Hermanus’ underappreciated period drama is a love story, a celebration of traditional American music and a reflection on the transitory nature of life and its shining moments. Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor play World War I–era Boston Conservatory students who bond over a shared interest in regional folksongs and become lovers. Their story, a dramatically dry patch notwithstanding, is immensely affecting. 

10. The Baltimorons. Featuring one of the year’s most appealing movie pairings, Jay Duplass’ walking-and-talking sparkler brings together a troubled comedian (Michael Strassner) and a workaholic dentist (Liz Larsen), who, after the former’s car is towed, wind up spending Christmas Eve together, connecting meaningfully while exploring Baltimore. This one deserves to become an indie holiday classic.