What I Watched: The Best Movies of 2025

Happy Holidays, friends. I hope that this finds you all well. As always, in addition to writing (and publishing) my own work this year, my family and I watched a lot of movies, a lot of documentaries and stand up comedy specials, and in particular, a LOT of TV. 

I’ve said before that we are in a platinum age of television programing. With all the streamers throwing money at creative people, *cough cough, I’m available for hire,* there is simply a veritable plethora of quality shows being written, acted and filmed. 

But today, I’m looking at the movies that I watched this year, some in theaters, others from the comfort of my 1990 La-Z-Boy, inherited from my father. I like my chair, but we went to the theaters a fair amount this year. 

This list does not include older films that I watched for the first time, but rather thirty-three films that were new or newish that I saw during this calendar year. 

• A Complete Unknown
• A Real Pain
• Anora
• Captain America Brave New World
• Conclave
• Dog Man
• Downton Abbey: Grand Finale
• Fantastic Four
• Fountain of Youth
• Hamnet
• Happy Gilmore 2
• Highest 2 Lowest
• Jay Kelly
• Mountainhead
• Nobody 2
• Nonnas
• Paddington in Peru
• Queen of the Ring
• Saturday Night
• Sing Sing
• Sinners
• Springsteen: Deliver me From Nowhere
• Superman
• The Apprentice
• The Green Knight
• The Phoenician Scheme
• The Roses
• The Substance
• The Woman in Cabin Ten
• Thunderbolts
• Thursday Murder Club
• Wallace and Gromit-Vengeance Most Fowl
• Wicked: For Good

So, that’s a fair amount of films, I think. There were some critics darlings and award-winners in there that I thought were absolute rubbish, Like The Substance and Anora. I mean, I really hated both of those. There were a lot of fun films that won’t make most lists, like Queen of the Ring, Dog Man, and the Marvel films, but they were fun. Anything Wallace and Gromit is going to please me, and they remain in a category all their own.

But, we are here for my top five movies of the year. Well, at least that’s what I’m here for. This will be my list with my thoughts and what I remember about how each film struck me. These are not meant to be full reviews. 

So, without further ado:

#5: A Complete Unknown

I have been a huge Bob Dylan fan for as long as I can remember. My early days as a kid trying to learn to write songs and play guitar were filled with deep dives into the catalog of Dylan, and Paul Simon, (And others…keep reading) and so I loved the portrayal of Dylan as a young, hungry, driven artist bent on doing things his own way. I don’t understand the people who gripe about Chalamet. He’s always good, he’s always a thoughtful performer, and he hustles. He spent years learning to play guitar for this role and I thought he really shone. 

That they shot much of the film minutes from my home in Jersey was a real treat. I really enjoyed his performance and the story they chose to tell. 

You can’t do a biopic on a person of his stature (I just noticed a theme in my top five) so you have to pick segments of their lives. I thought this was a poignant, clever, and insightful film. And stop hating on the Chalamet. He is among the top talents of his generation. 

#4: Nonnas

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Vince Vaughn act in anything where it wasn’t clear that he was having fun. I loved him in the “Bad Monkey” series, which made my list for TV last year, and I loved him in this. Based on the real-life story of a man who loses his mother and chooses to work through his grief by opening a restaurant featuring meals made by older women who themselves are looking for a place to belong and matter. 

The fact that none of them have any experience in the restaurant industry made it funnier for me, with my own decades of experience to make clear their missteps, but it was really just a heartwarming tale of people trying to build something they can be about. That really spoke to me. Readers of my work will know that it often deals with loss, and food.

This is by far the lightest fare here on my top five, but it was delightful. And the food scenes were for real, so don’t watch it without snacks. 

#3: Sinners

I finally saw this last week. My kids saw it in the theaters and messaged me while watching the opening credits that I needed to see it immediately. They didn’t tell me why, but there was something they were worried I would have something very special spoiled for me. Amazingly, I did not get it spoiled, somehow. 

It’s a powerful film on its own. Michael B. Jordan was amazing playing a set of twins who are very different, but driven by similar goals and demons. Director Ryan Coogler (who we call “cousin Ryan” despite the difference in last name spelling) created an amazing visual spectacle and made the setting, deep in the Mississippi Delta, its own character in the film. It was breathtaking. The commentary on race, violence, sexuality, and family are powerful and thought-provoking.

I won’t spoil the plot here in case you haven’t seen it, but for me, the real heart of the film was the music. The performances were outrageously good including a debuting Miles Caton, who was 18-19 when it was filmed. Music, like the setting, was really a character in this film. 

I won’t reveal the spoiler at the end here either. If you haven’t seen it, so see it and then email me and we can talk about it, but let’s just say, if you know me at all, or even if you only know my writings, you’ll likely understand why the last five minutes of the film made me nearly jump out of my seat. 

This film should win awards. 

#2: Hamnet

I read the novel when it came out. It took me a few chapters to quite understand what the author was doing, as it jumped back and forth in time a bit. Once I got a handle on what she was doing, I was blown away. 

As mentioned above, it’s hard to take a figure like Shakespeare, Dylan, MLK, and Mandella, and tell their life stories in a single film. They are simply too big to truncate their lives down to a few hours. The book didn’t do that and neither did the film. Both are triumphs. 

In Hamnet, we meet Will as a young man, much like Dylan above and someone else below. We meet him before he’s really the person that history would later proclaim him to be. He was young, hungry, in love, and trying to make sense of the voices in his head desperate to have their stories told. 

I’m not Shakespeare, but I understand feeling all of those things. The story leans into his relationship with his wife and their children, and eventually, how Will handles the loss of his child. 

The writing in both the novel and the film are truly remarkable. Do we know that he wrote Hamlet in honor of his son? Or as an exercise in exorcising his grief? We don’t. Is it outside the plausible to think that writing a play with essentially the same name as his dead son was a coincidence? 

I never thought so and I don’t think so now. The final scene, which I won’t spoil here, is as beautiful as it is heartbreaking. As someone who’s absolutely tried to “write my way through it,” this film and the novel it’s based on is truly a touchstone. The acting is brilliant, in particular the two leads and the young man who plays their son. There’s a small but brilliant performance at the end by a young actor playing the title role of Hamlet at the very end of the play which was outrageously powerful in a small but vital scene. 

A beautifully shot, written, acted, and overall executed film. 

#1: Springsteen: Deliver me from Nowhere

I can see the eyes rolling all over, wanting to call me a Bruce Superfan and say that I’m biased and that while good, this film isn’t at the top of anyone’s best of the year list. I can hear the “C’mon, Kugs…” from many corners of the world.

First off, all those critics who make a living doing this are allowed to be wrong.

Secondly, hear me out. 

I honestly had not made the connection between why this film, along with Hamnet and A Complete Unknown resonated with me the way they did, but now that I do it’s pretty obvious. But that does not make them any less the remarkable films that they are, this one in particular. 

Yes, I’m from Jersey. Yes, I grew up close to Freehold, where he grew up and to Asbury Park, where he truly started his steady march towards greatness. Yes, I’m a huge, huge fan who’s seen him live many times. I disclose all of that. I will even admit to experiencing the transformational effect of his live shows, having been transported outside of myself in my own engagement in the shared experience of the nearly evangelical stylings of arguably the greatest live performer in rock and roll history. 

The last time we saw him live, just last year, we brought friends who’d never seen him before. As the show was about to start, I turned to them and said, “hey-have a great time, I’ll see you in a few hours.” It’s just the way it is. It’s the most free I’ve ever felt in my life, and I’m not someone who is particularly afraid of self-expression. 

So, all of that on the table, it’s a powerful movie, and if you’re not a fan and you haven’t seen it, it’s not likely the movie you think it is. 

The film looks at its title character as a young man, hungry, ambitious, talented, and trying desperately to figure himself and the world around him out. In later years, Bruce has been open about his struggles with depression and anxiety, but in the time in which this film is set, the early 1980s, he wasn’t yet himself certain what was going on with him. He was famous and successful, but he had not yet reached the levels of fame that awaited him. 

He had trouble with relationships. He had trauma from his family to deal with. He was afraid. He was everything that the rest of us get to do in private while becoming one of the biggest rock stars in the world. When the people around him told him what to do, he wanted to do something else. On the cusp of even bigger success, he wanted to look inward. He needed to look inward. 

But he didn’t really know how to. 

I won’t spoil the whole story but I will say that it’s an absolutely masterful performance by Jeremy Allen White as Bruce and a powerful performance by Jeremy Strong as Bruce’s manager and arguably best advocate/friend Jon Landau. Throw in a banger of a turn by “Stingray” from Kobra Kai, and it’s a really good movie. Stephen Graham, who you’ll be hearing about in my TV column is excellent as Bruce’s father, with whom he has a fair bit of drama. 

If you’re thinking this is a rah-rah film about Bruce and Rock and Roll and the excesses of the 1980s, you’re mistaken. It’s a poignant statement about what it means to not be OK and not knowing what to do about it. Depression and anxiety affect everyone. The music is excellent, but with a few exceptions, notably the recording session for “Born in the U.S.A.” the music itself is not the main character. It’s Jeremy Allen White channeling the hopes, the faith, the beliefs, and the fears of a remarkable artist who in that moment was on the cusp of falling apart. It should win awards. Please see and and let me know what you think. 


I really didn’t see the connection between these 3 of my top 5 until I sat down to write this. That’s a fun realization for me to continue to unpack as this year comes to a close. Those realizations are kinda the reason I write these sorts of things. 

I’ll be back soon with my countdown of the best TV Dramas, TV Comedies, Documentaries, and a few other categories, including, not ironically, my favorite books of the year. 

So, stay tuned and let me know what you liked this year!