I’ve posted my Best Movies of 2025 – So Far page. Every year, I keep a running list of the best movies I’ve seen this year. By the end of the year, I usually end up with a Top Ten and another 5-15 mentions. Here are my list of Best Movies of 2024 and Best Movies of 2023. To get on my year-end list, a movie has to be one that thrills me while I’m watching it and one that I’m still thinking about a couple of days later.
Of course, I still haven’t seen many of the most promising movies still to be released, including Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, Lynne Ramsey’s Die My Love, Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite, Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-handed Girl, Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, Christian Petzold’s Mirrors No. 3 and the Palm d’Or winner at Cannes, It Was Just an Accident.
Here’s the first incarnation of this year’s list:
- Caught by the Tides: China evolves, she persists. Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango, Criterion.
- Pee-Wee as Himself: a man hidden in his own invention. HBO Max. (just won two Emmys for director Matt Wolf.)
- Twinless: smart, funny, satisfying. In theaters.
- No Sleep Till: turbulent weather, turbulent lives. Was in arthouses, streamed on Metrograph; will let you know when it streams
This year I’ve created an additional separate category in the list for those films that, to this point, haven’t been available to see in a theater or online. These are films that I’ve screened at US film festivals this year and qualify as among the best films of the year. I’m reluctant to tease my readers with a list of movies that they can’t see, so I created this new Festival Films category (follow the link and scroll down). When they get theatrical distribution or a streaming platform, I’ll move them up to the regular list.
Here’s the trailer for Caught by the Tides.