{"id":473418,"date":"2025-12-26T19:21:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T19:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/473418\/"},"modified":"2025-12-26T19:21:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T19:21:14","slug":"the-best-movies-of-2025-have-one-thing-in-common","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/473418\/","title":{"rendered":"The best movies of 2025 have one thing in common."},"content":{"rendered":"

In Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s\u00a0One Battle After Another<\/a>, Gil Scott-Heron\u2019s 1971 spoken-word song \u201cThe Revolution Will Not Be Televised\u201d serves as both a secret password and background noise. The members of the defunct resistance group the French 75 use its lyrics as a call-and-response sign and countersign: If you know what comes after \u201cGreen Acres,\u00a0Beverly Hillbillies, and\u00a0Hooterville Junction,\u201d you must be one of the good guys. But when former revolutionary Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), who has resurfaced after 15 years in hiding, tries to reach out to his old comrades, Scott-Heron\u2019s song is the music he hears when they put him on hold. What was once an anthem about opposing the numbing effects of popular culture has been consumed by it, a golden oldie you might absently nod your head to in the aisles of a chain drugstore.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not surprising that so many of the movies that hit hardest in 2025 were about the struggle against authoritarianism. That\u2019s true not just of the movies that make up an unbreakable tie for first on my Top 10 list\u2014One Battle, Jafar Panahi\u2019s\u00a0It Was Just an Accident<\/a>, and Julia Loktev\u2019s\u00a0My Undesirable Friends: Part 1\u2014Last Air in Moscow<\/a>\u2014but of others slightly further down, like Ryan Coogler\u2019s\u00a0Sinners<\/a>, Ari Aster\u2019s\u00a0Eddington<\/a>, even Mona Fastvold\u2019s\u00a0The Testament of Ann Lee. With the exception of\u00a0Jesse Armstrong<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0Mountainhead<\/a>, conceived in November and shot in March, none of these movies was made knowing the climate in which it would land, a country in which entire government agencies were gutted in a matter of weeks and masked agents swiped people off the streets. But they understood in advance that such a world was possible\u2014that it could, and might well, happen here. It\u2019s endearing to watch the beleaguered Russian journalists in Loktev\u2019s expansive documentary swap\u00a0Harry Potter\u00a0references as Vladimir Putin\u2019s government rips away what few freedoms they still have. But the realization that\u00a0they\u2019re just like us!\u00a0comes with a darker flip side: We are no different from them.<\/p>\n

For years, some of the movies most vital to understanding the state of the U.S. have come from other countries. Watch Walter Salles\u2019\u00a0I\u2019m Still Here<\/a>, about the tightening noose of Brazil\u2019s military dictatorship in the 1970s, or Petra Costa\u2019s documentaries\u00a0The Edge of Democracy<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Apocalypse in the Tropics<\/a>, about the country\u2019s recent surge of Christian nationalism, and it\u2019s easier to spot the patterns that have taken root here, the tendency to deny and diminish, to write off the loss of this or that right as a temporary inconvenience as long as your life remains relatively unchanged. As Loktev told me, even on the night that Putin started bombing Ukraine, people in Moscow were\u00a0still going on Tinder dates<\/a>. \u201cYou feel like you\u2019re going crazy,\u201d she said in August. \u201cLike,\u00a0Is this really happening? There\u2019s still matcha lattes everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Loktev\u2019s heroes, many of whom work for the independent network TV Rain, keep up the good fight even as the walls close in. But the movie ends with them fleeing for safety, and although the upcoming\u00a0Part 2, which will cover their lives in exile, may offer some slight rays of hope, we know that this story doesn\u2019t end well, at least for now. Panahi\u2019s\u00a0It Was Just an Accident\u00a0follows an Iranian political prisoner\u2019s attempt to settle the score with his former torturer, whom he discovers by chance, kidnaps, and begins to bury alive. But the man\u2019s screamed denials sow a seed of doubt, and though he seeks out some of the torturer\u2019s other victims to confirm his initial identification, no one is quite sure enough. With no state apparatus to relieve their conscience, they\u2019re stuck with those doubts and have to choose between living with fear or with guilt. Either way, they\u2019ll never be free again.<\/p>\n

What strikes me is that these movies are not just about resistance but about failure\u2014and that only makes them more important to a moment when there\u2019s a lot more bad ahead than good.\u00a0Sinners\u2019 Smoke (Michael B. Jordan) goes out in a blaze of glory, mowing down a bunch of Mississippi Klansmen, but it\u2019s his twin brother Stack who survives into the second half of the century, accepting an undead existence over a valiant death. Eddington\u2019s Sheriff Joe<\/a> (Joaquin Phoenix) knocks off his political rivals and achieves the small-town mayorship he so desperately craves, but at the price of becoming a part of the conspiracy he thought he was unraveling. For all the movie\u2019s fevered imaginings, it can\u2019t envision a way out.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Dana Stevens
\n The 10 Best Movies of 2025
\n Read More<\/b>\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

These movies aren\u2019t hopeless, exactly, but they testify to the idea that the struggle, whether it be against encroaching fascism, the temptations of the flesh, or the dark side of human nature, is not a battle to be won but a life to be lived. Bob Ferguson and his French 75 comrades want fast, decisive change, even if they have to blow up a few buildings to get it, but by 40, they\u2019re fugitives and burnouts, unable to pass on to the next generation anything more than an overarching sense that the world is out to get them. Meanwhile, Bob\u2019s daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), is being mentored by her judo instructor, Sergio (Benicio del Toro), whose underground network for sheltering migrants is so low profile it doesn\u2019t even have a name.<\/p>\n

David Osit\u2019s documentary\u00a0Predators<\/a>\u00a0models another kind of lifelong defiance, excavating personal trauma by examining the legacy of\u00a0To Catch a Predator. It\u2019s a bold subject to begin with, given that any attempt to consider the show\u2019s targets as human beings risks the charge of coddling the worst people alive\u2014a phenomenon that\u00a0TCAP, as its fans call it, not only embodies but exploits, considering that there\u2019s no ethical line it can\u2019t justify crossing in the name of dispensing justice. (Charlie Shackleton\u2019s Zodiac Killer Project<\/a> takes on a similar, if much more slippery, project, deconstructing the language of true-crime documentaries by rebuilding an unrealized film as a feature-length metacritique.) But\u00a0Predators\u00a0takes it further, questioning whether the on-air humiliation that not only fueled the show\u2019s success but inspired a legion of rogue copycats acts as a meaningful deterrent for potential offenders or provides any sense of healing for their victims. In a climate where the government is pushing harsh penalties for minor offenses while shielding the associates of a child sex trafficker, Osit\u2019s movie stands in opposition to both.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n <\/p>\n

    What\u2019s Fact and Fiction in Marty Supreme
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n

  2. \n <\/p>\n

    There\u2019s a Confusing Moment in the Latest Stranger Things Episodes. It Goes Back to the Awful Play.
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Like\u00a0The Brutalist\u00a0but with catchier tunes, Mona Fastvold\u2019s\u00a0The Testament of Ann Lee\u00a0is about the building of America\u2014not as a place made of concrete and steel, but one inhabited by religious extremists who found space to take their beliefs as far as they would go. And Lynne Ramsay\u2019s\u00a0Die My Love\u00a0explores how women\u2019s most intense beliefs\u2014in this case postpartum psychosis exacerbated by the protagonist\u2019s isolation and her inattentive husband\u2014are often stigmatized and shunned, left to smolder in private until they burst out in flame. It\u2019s the converse of the men of Mountainhead<\/a>, whose moneyed tech bros have built themselves a world in which their every half-assed idea is a stroke of visionary genius and anyone who might disagree has long since been removed from their orbit. The movie was made for HBO and never got a theatrical release, but that\u2019s a problem more for movie theaters than for film critics, who ought to recognize great work no matter which distribution channel it manages to escape through. The revolution might not be televised, but it may end up on streaming.<\/p>\n

    Sam Adams\u2019 Top 10 Movies of 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n

    It Was Just an Accident<\/a>
    My Undesirable Friends: Part I\u2014Last Air in Moscow<\/a>
    One Battle After Another<\/a>
    Predators<\/a>
    Die My Love
    Mountainhead<\/a>
    Sinners<\/a>
    The Testament of Ann Lee
    Eddington<\/a>
    Zodiac Killer Project<\/a><\/p>\n

    Read more about the best of 2025<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Get the best of movies, TV, books, music, and more.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s\u00a0One Battle After Another, Gil Scott-Heron\u2019s 1971 spoken-word song \u201cThe Revolution Will Not Be Televised\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":473419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[10802,434,171,53,80,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-473418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-best-of-2025","9":"tag-documentaries","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-politics","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115787497209347361","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}