The 2025 Livvies
Almost all of the important Oscar precursors have occurred. But one important industry announcement has yet to be made public - what I think! At long last, below are my superlatives for 2025 in film.
Biggest Impact with the least amount of screentime
Bridget Everett, Wake Up Dead Man
Best Supporting Actor
Adam Sandler, Jay Kelly
Alden Ehrenreich, Weapons
John Carrol Lynch, Sorry, Baby
Josh Brolin, Wake Up Dead Man
Teng-Hui Huang, Left-Handed Girl
Ask me in a couple hours and I’ll have a different answer, as this was a tight year in supporting performances. But, at least right now, let’s hand it to this wonderful role in a very under-seen and underrated movie, bringing what looks like a little bit of hope to a neighboring family struggling in a modest life.
Worst Needle Drop
“Happy Together”, The Roses
“Happy Together” is a song that should have been banned for ironic overuse in film since, say, a whole movie was named after it in 1997. Here, nearly thirty years later, using the song twice in one movie should be punishable by shunning.
Best Needle Drop
Little April Shower, Die My Love
Best Supporting Actress
Kirsten Dunst, Roofman
Naomi Ackie, Sorry, Baby
Nina Hoss, Hedda
Pamela Anderson, The Naked Gun
Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners
More on the adaptation below - the unique choices in this Hedda Gabler adaptation could not have worked without Hoss' assured performance.
Most Interesting Trend
‘Eating out’
Sex is back in the movies, baby! After a Me-Too inspired drought, 2025 was an explosion of carnal pleasure on the big screen. Strangely enough, it all seemed to be the exact same kind of sex. Over and over again, in Sinners, 28 Years Later, Hedda, Marty Supreme, Mickey 17, Honey Don’t, we had a veritable renaissance of, well, "lip service."
If I’m optimistic, this is writing a historical wrong by centering women’s pleasure. If I’m cynical, I wonder if studios are too skittish to depict any other kind of sex.
Most Crying
Materialists
As long as Celine Song keeps on making movies dedicated to the melancholic hold that old relationships have in our lives, I will continue to get dehydrated.
Best Actor
Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon
Jesse Plemons, Bugonia
Josh O’Connor, The Mastermind
Josh O’Connor, Wake Up Dead Man
Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
I’m glad people like Bugonia for their own reasons. Some love whatever Emma Stone knocks out of the part. Some like seeing a kooky satire. Some are in the Yorgos bag (and I’m hot and cold on that one). Me? I expected a kooky satire, and instead found myself in the middle of a deeply empathetic portrait of the kind of lost people who probably don’t have a high opinion of me. And none of that would be possible without Jesse Plemons’ heartfelt central performance of a complicated figure.
Biggest Disappointment
Hayley Atwell's character, Mission: Impossble - The Final Reckoning
You know what blockbuster series usually has incredible female characters? Mission: Impossible. From Thandiwe Newton doing a modern "Notorious" in II, to Michelle Monaghan humanizing our hero in III, to Paula Patton on her own arc of retribution in Ghost Protocol, to the incomparable Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust, the only non-Cruise character in the series worthy of her own movie.
Dead Reckoning Part I gave us an intriguing new archetype to introduce to this world: Catwoman. Hayley Atwell was given such a fun toy box to play around in - here is a woman, accidentally involved in this spy game, with no scruples of her own, playing along with our heroes only as long as it benefits her. Another interesting element added to the cast to make the missions more, ahem, impossible. How will this character develop in the next movie, as tensions rise, loyalties are tested, and nuclear war is on the brink?
Two ways: by having boobs and pulling a flash drive quickly.
Most Pleasant Surprise
Freakier Friday
Best Actress
Eva Victor, Sorry, Baby
Janel Tsai, Left-Handed Girl
Jennifer Lawrence, Die My Love
Keke Palmer, One Of Them Days
Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
Because they don’t have any shot at netting $500 million, studios aren’t regularly investing in comedies anymore. So I’m prone to just be happy any comedy movie exists. One Of Them Days is a movie, overall, that I’m very happy exists. But the reason I’ll be seeing the sequel on opening weekend is Keke Palmer - charm incarnate.
Biggest Eye-Roll
The presence of ‘Weyland-Yutani’, Predator Badlands
Biggest Fashion Inspiration
Julia Roberts’ necklaces, After The Hunt
An easy birthday present for me is an opera- or matinee-length pendant.
Best Original Screenplay
The Mastermind
Sinners
Sorry, Baby
Splitsville
Weapons
Most Superficial Analysis of Hamlet
Hamnet
Did you know that the greatest work of the English language, which has had countless scholars discussing its meaning and significance for over 400 years, actually is about one specific thing? Forget any themes of indecision or sanity or the oedipus complex or horrible men or the power of fiction or whatever. The only actual meaning of this play is that his son died. Duh.
Funniest Moment
‘…Afghanistan’, Friendship
While you’re at it, give "pipe rock theory" a gander, too.
Best Adapted Screenplay
Blue Moon
Bugonia
Hedda
One Battle After Another
Wake Up Dead Man
The best experience I’ve ever had watching live theatre was seeing a simulcast of the 2019 National Theatre production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It changed a big part of the show, but in a way that was completely respectful of the text, interrogating it for depth and meaning instead of making a bold decision for mere shock value. Nia DaCosta’s Hedda is a similar adaptation that loves the source material, and makes its changes to illuminate, not to merely make it its own.
Best scene in a bad movie
The Recording Booth, Highest 2 Lowest
For five minutes, this serviceable, if tepid, remake becomes an electric, poetic sermon by Lee through Washington. What, on paper, is kind of a bummer of an “old man yells at clouds” chastising of “the younger generation” almost wins me over by sheer force and sparkle.
Best Director
Kelly Reichardt, The Mastermind
Lynne Ramsay, Die My Love
Nia DaCosta, Hedda
Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Ryan Coogler, Sinners
In 1976, Paul Simon thanked Stevie Wonder in during his Album of the Year Grammy’s acceptance speech. Wonder won the award in 1974, 1975 and 1977, so Simon how thankful he was that Stevie skipped 1976.
If anyone ever wants to win a Livvie for Best Direction, they better pray Lynne Ramsay didn’t make a movie that year. There is simply no one else better in the game at the artistic use of the moving image.
Governor of the State she was Born and Raised in
Ella McCay
Best Picture
10. Weapons
9. Materialists
8. Left-Handed Girl
7. Sinners
6. Die My Love
5. One Battle After Another
4. Jay Kelly
3. Wake Up Dead Man
2. The Mastermind
1. Sorry, Baby
As terrible, disjointed and brutal as the year 2025 felt in real life, on film it felt pretty uniform. On the one hand, the year brought us a lot of Complicated Parents - bad dads in things like Jay Kelly or Sentimental Value; beleaguered moms in things like Die My Love or If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. On the other hand we had a lot of people unsure of their place in fixing a broken world, like in Bugonia or The Mastermind. The presumptive Oscar Best Picture winner has it all - revolution burnout, a mom who bails, and two bad dads for the price of one.
As much as those themes resonated with me, they didn't really reflect how I was feeling last year. I’d like to tell my future nieces and nephews and niblings how engaged I was in 2025, overthrowing old patriarchal capitalist power structures and forging a brighter future. But that would be a lie. I was just depressed the whole time. I felt beat down. I still do.
Sorry, Baby was the only movie out of the bunch to meet me where I was. Eva Victor’s Agnes goes through a different kind of “year with the bad thing”, and afterward walks through life as a bird who could sing the most beautiful melody, if only its throat wasn’t covered in molasses of despondency. And I felt every moment of it. God, this was a rare year we got a new Lynne Ramsay, and even she didn’t conjure an image I felt more deeply than seeing Agnes’ windows, plastered with paper.
And thank god the movie doesn’t leave us to wither in the fields of despair. Not only is it incredibly funny (I have quoted Agnes' courtroom self-description too many times in the past few months), it offers a way out.
A friend of mine developed a new catchphrase this past year - healing in community. Ever the American, I too often run away whenever it feels like I might need to rely on others. But there is never a more soothing balm than the love of someone who cares about you. The idea can feel like a trite cliche at times, but 2025 was a year that I needed to be knocked over the head with it. Sometimes, the only thing that can pull you out of despair is the care of a kind soul. And maybe a good sandwich.
For my complete ranking of 2025 movies, find my full list on Letterboxd.
