Josh’s Favorite Movies of 2025 — Part Three!
We’re halfway into my list of my favorite movies of 2025! Click here for part one and click here for part two.
And now, let’s begin my TOP TEN:
10. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl — One of the great blessings of 2025 was the return of Wallace and Gromit, for their first adventure since 2008!! Vengeance Most Fowl is a sequel to the second (and, arguably, the very best) Wallace and Gromit adventure: The Wrong Trousers. The villainous penguin Feathers McGraw is back and plotting his revenge on Wallace & Gromit. He gets his chance with Wallace’s latest invention: a mechanical gnome designed to take care of his and his neighbors’ gardening needs. When Feathers corrupts the gnome to evil — at which point it builds a score of evil gnome duplicates — this horde of evil robots begins to wreak havoc on the neighborhood. Can Wallace and Gromit (let’s face it, mostly Gromit) find a way to save the day? Of course! This was a joyous delight from start to finish, brought to life with beautiful stop-motion animation. Click here for my full review. Click here to watch it now on Netflix.
9. The Life of Chuck — Mike Flanagan (who seems to have inherited from Frank Darabont the title of best movie-maker caretaker of Stephen King’s work) faithfully adapted this beautiful novella by Mr. King, cleverly preserving its unusual structure of three “acts” only tangentially connected. It’s a sweet, slightly perplexing yarn, one that is at times somber and tinged with melancholy, but ultimately life-affirming. I don’t want to write too much about the movie’s plot, because a pleasure of watching this movie is in figuring out how the very different pieces of this story fit together. I will say that the spectacular cast absolutely shines: Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Mia Sara (back in a movie for the first time in forever!), Mark Hamill (making his second appearance on this list, after The Long Walk, another great Stephen King adaptation!), Jacob Tremblay, Matthew Lillard, Benjamin Pajak, Annalise Basso, Taylor Gordon, and the voice of Nick Offerman. This is a beautiful movie. Click here to read my full review. Click here to watch it now on Hulu, or click here to watch it now on Amazon Prime Video.
8. Black Bag — I was bowled away by how much I loved this delightfully taut and twisty spy caper for adults, starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender as married spies Kathryn St. Jean & George Woodhouse. These two spies seem to have a marriage that works, despite their being able to share little with one another about what they’re each doing. But their happy status quo is broken when George is brought evidence that Kathryn is among a list of six possible suspects who might have committed treason by stealing and selling a dangerous weapon code-named Severus. Now George must investigate Kathryn and try to avoid having to choose between his wife and his country. The cast is tremendous: Ms. Blanchett and Mr. Fassbender are magnetic together, and I was impressed by how well-crafted all the supporting roles were, magnificently brought to life by Naomie Harris, Tom Burke, Marisa Abela, Regé-Jean Page, and the perfectly-cast Pierce Brosnan as an aging spymaster. Black Bag was directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by David Koepp, and it’s a pleasure to see these two movie masters operating at the height of their powers. Click here to read by full review. Click here to watch it now on Amazon Prime Video.
7. Fantastic Four: First Steps — After suffering through many previous Fantastic Four movies that ranged from unsatisfying to downright awful, it was a pleasure to see Kevin Feige and the MCU team take a whack at this beloved franchise and show everyone how it’s done. Fantastic Four: First Steps is not only easily the best Fantastic Four movie (that’s a low bar), it’s a great movie! I was delighted that director Matt Shakman and his team found a way to get back to a pure, good, wholesome version of these characters in a movie that also felt fun and modern. They got the tone exactly right. It’s a bonus that this Fantastic Four movie is completely stand-alone; there’s not a whit of homework required; you don’t have to have seen or remembered any other Marvel movies to enjoy this one. I adore the retro-futuristic world in which this story is set, brought to gorgeous life by the film’s incredible production team and visual effects. The sets, the props, the costumes are all amazing. The cast is note-perfect. This movie even has a great superhero theme (something absent from most superhero movies these days, including most MCU films). I’ve already seen this film several times, and I’m sure it will continue to be in heavy rotation moving forward. Click here to read my full review. Click here to watch it now on Amazon Prime Video. (It’s also streaming on Disney+.)
6. The Phoenician Scheme — It’s a sign of how strong this year was that this great Wes Anderson film didn’t make it into my top five! Wealthy industrialist (and possibly also criminal/arms dealer?) Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda (Benicio del Toro) narrowly survive an assassination attempt, which prompts him to try to reconnect with his estranged daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton), who is about to take her vows as a nun. Liesl reluctantly agrees to assist Zsa-Zsa with his latest complicated scheme, and the two set off on an adventure, encountering one oddball character after another, brought to life by: Michael Cera, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Riz Ahmed, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, Hope Davis, Willem Dafoe, F. Murray Abraham, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Richard Ayoade, and, lest I forget, Bill Murray as God. What a cast! This was a deliciously fun romp that was tinged with the melancholy present in many of Mr. Anderson’s films. No one else makes movies like Wes Anderson! He is a master of this specific tone, and once again here he demonstrates his incredible ability to mine humor from bleak circumstances and messed-up, broken characters. And his visual style continues to shine like none other. I liked this film a lot when I first saw it, and it has grown on me even further in the time since. This is a heck of a movie. Click here to read my full review. Click here to watch it now on Amazon Prime Video.
Thanks so much for reading! I hope you’ll rejoin me here tomorrow for my TOP FIVE favorite movies of 2025!
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