Best of 2025

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28 Years Later

Nearly 20 years after 28 Weeks Later, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland come together again for a sequel. Some skepticism felt warranted. Would the lo-fi style of the earlier films feel dated in 2025, or would they update their methods and lose something essential to the series along the way?

The answer to both is no. Boyle (and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle) once again turned in iconic, instantly recognizable work using consumer technology. Garland’s script provides perhaps the most affecting horror climax of the year, immediately followed by a truly insane coda to ease audiences into next year’s sequel. Don’t miss it.

Aliens Vs. Avengers

A crossover that did not disappoint, it was 2025’s best xenomorph-based storytelling.

The American Revolution

Ken Burns set his sights on the birth of the nation ahead of America’s 250th anniversary. Much of the chronological and biographical information provided here is fairly well beaten into us by the American educational system, but what I appreciate most about this series are the animations breaking down battlefield strategies and outcomes.

Andor

All there is to say about Andor has been said already. It’s very, very good Star Wars.

Avatar: Fire and Ash

The latest Avatar combines everything that’s great about the first two, adds Varang, and cranks up the Sully family drama. I love these movies.

Ball x Pit

It’s a rogue Breakout (core gameplay) meets Vampire Survivors (collecting gems for upgrades) with a little Cult of the Lamb (village management between runs) thrown in.

Black Bag

Black Bag is a tight little spy thriller with great acting and an engaging story. Michael Fassbender’s character has to find the traitor, and his wife is on the suspect list. No time wasted on this one.

Bleeds – Wednesday

Wednesday is one of the excellent bands I first heard this year (thanks Apple Music algorithm). It’s guitar-forward (with MJ Lenderman on guitar in fact) alt rock with a light country flavor (Appalachia, not Texas). Try “The Way Love Goes” and “Elderberry Wine.”

Bloodless – Samia

Bloodless is my album of the year. I hadn’t heard of Samia before this one came out in April. I’ve since gone back and listened to all her albums. Bloodless stands out for its interesting, eerie, and intricate instrumentation. I love the guitar tone and the vocal melodies on this album in particular.

As far as the songs go, Bovine Excision and maybe Hole In A Frame are the standouts, though my favorites would be Lizard, Fair Game, Proof, and the tantalizingly brief Craziest Person. Also try: Bloodless Tour – Live From First Avenue, the live album Samia put out in November.

Blue Prince

Playing Blue Prince is like stepping inside Betrayal at House on the Hill, a board game my friends and I sunk many hours into during our college years. There’s no horror here, just a mysterious mansion to explore, but both the mystery and the mansion are deep. If you’re the kind of person who likes to take notes while you play, this is the game for you.

The Chair Company

Uzumaki by way of Tim Robinson, The Chair Company is the story of a normal man who, after a humiliation at work, falls into a spiral of conspiracy thinking. Unfortunately for him, the conspiracy appears to exist, and it escalates constantly throughout the series. It’s equally hilarious and unpredictable.

Common Side Effects

A hippie genius discovers a mushroom that heals all ailments, including death, but it comes with a strange side effect. Then he reconnects with a former friend who secretly works for a pharmaceutical company. That company and the federal government want to hide the drug, or own it, or both. Meanwhile two federal agents on the case from various angles start to put the pieces together on their own.

Common Side Effects is from the team that brought us the excellent Scavengers Reign, along with some of the King of the Hill team (and the voice of Mike Judge). This is great television.

Companion

Companion is a fantastic popcorn slasher/thriller.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor

I’m always looking for a good phone game to play offline. DRG:S, with its twist on the formula Vampire Survivors hooked me with a few years ago, is my favorite of 2025. Technically it came out last year, but the mobile version was just released about a month ago, so I’ve barely cracked the surface even a few hours in. This is what I played on Thanksgiving when it wasn’t my turn in the family Mario Kart competition.

Eddington

I put off watching Eddington until it was on HBO because I generally haven’t enjoyed Ari Aster’s work and this one was particularly poorly received by critical audiences. I should have done the math on that. It’s easily my favorite Aster film.

Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time

I just started this game in the final week of December, so it’s kind of a cheat addition to the list, but the original Fantasy Life was one of my most played 3DS games. I’m confident I’ll sink many dozens of hours into this one in the long run.

Fortnite Gorillaz collab

I’ve been asking for this crossover to happen for years. Finally it did. I bought all the skins.

Fortnite had a great year overall. The Star Wars mini season from May was my favorite ever. The Simpsons mini season from the end of the year transformed the whole island into a cel shaded Springfield. Fortnite remains my ultimate chill time-killer.

Foundation

Foundation hit a peak this year, especially in the half of the storyline following Empire and Demerzel. Apple TV+ is in the lead when it comes to science fiction, and Foundation is the best it has.

Friend – james K

My favorite beeps and boops of 2025.

Getting Killed – Geese

Everyone loves Geese right now. I’m a particularly big fan of “Husbands.”

Hades 2

Hades 2 is more Hades. Is more Hades better Hades? That’s for the player to decide. I find the gameplay to be improved here, though the more streamlined story was stronger the first time around.

Heavy Metal – Cameron Winter

Technically this one came out in December of 2024, but I’m including it here because I prefer it to this year’s Geese album. It’s a little more mellow, with Springsteen vibes and sometimes some horns. Try “Cancer of the Skull” or “Can’t Keep Anything.”

KPop Demon Hunters

The first time we watched this movie I had to basically force it. I like the Demon Hunter anime, so I just wanted to see more demons get hunted, even if I’d have to put up with music along the way. My daughter thought it looked too scary.

The next three times we watched it were all her idea.

KPop Demon Hunters has strong animation and catchy music, yes, but what makes it exceptional in my book is it’s flawless ending. The whole “What it Sounds Like” sequence is undeniable.

Last One Laughing UK

In LoL, a bunch of comedians are locked in a room and the last one to laugh wins. It’s a simple premise with hilarious results.

Lumin Rain – Arc De Soleil

I had Arc De Soleil’s psychedelic surf funk on repeat a lot this year as I worked on my own guitar noodling. Watch it!

Mario Kart World

Mario Kart World doesn’t do what it couldn’t possibly do, and that’s stand up to the franchise-culminating Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. MKW is, however, the perfect game to bundle with the Switch 2. It’s quirky and gorgeous and fun and, critically, built for split screen multiplayer.

Mario Kart games tend to have gimmicks. The free roam feature was sold as the gimmick for MKW, but really it’s the intermission tracks. Instead of doing three laps around a course, most races in MKW involve a long, mostly straight drive to the course, then one single lap. This allowed the developers to imagine dynamic, vertical courses where the end doesn’t have to lead to the beginning for a second lap. It’s also fun to see the course looming in the distance as you approach. It can be annoying, though, have your opportunity for late game success limited to a single lap.

It’s the game I pull out when guests are around to play.

The Minecraft Movie

Jared Hess, Jack Black, and Jason Momoa bring a type of stupidity to the The Minecraft Movie that I really appreciate. “Whoever divorced you is a complete idiot” wins my Funniest Line of 2025 award.

Monster Hunter Wilds

Behold the huntress Tiramisu, an insect glaive expert who brings a bow along on all her hunts now that Wilds added the ability to carry two weapons.

That’s just one of the many many tweaks to the MH formula I love about this game. Seikrets are wonderful mounts. The graphics are gorgeous. The environments are alive. Online play is fast and fun. I know the PC version ate a lot of criticism but I have not had any problems on PS5.

This was my most anticipated game of the year and it has lived up to my own personal hype.

Murderland

Murderland lured me in as a true crime fan and ended up convincing me everyone over a certain age has a good chance of carrying around a brain full of lead.

The Naked Gun

Rebooting the Naked Gun franchise is a stupid thing to do, and this is a stupid movie. But it’s the exact right kind of stupid. Absolutely hilarious.

One Battle After Another

I saved this one to write last because I know my sentences here will be inadequate. One Battle After Another has become one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s like The Big Lebowski if the Dude was a burned out militant revolutionary and the rug was his daughter. It’s perfect. I need to watch it again and again and again.

Prehistoric Planet

Apple TV’s Prehistoric Planet documentary series entered the ice age in season three, walking viewers through the evolution and eventual extinction of some of the Earth’s most iconic mammals.

Mammoths, wooly rhinos, ground sloths, moa, saber tooth cats, and plenty I’d never heard of before return to life through glorious Planet Earth-style cinematography.

Sinners

Sinners sits high in the musical horror category with The Wicker Man (one of my all-time favorites). It’s earned the place it will hold in horror history as One of the Greats.

Smiling Friends

I don’t know what happened behind the scenes with Smiling Friends between the last two seasons, but the animation team went wild this year. No one else is pulling off so many different techniques at such a high level as unpredictably as the people who make this show. It barely holds together in a way that makes any sense.

Sorry, Baby

I used to follow the mumblecore movement in moviemaking pretty closely. I haven’t revisited any of those in almost 15 years, but I have a feeling they don’t hold up that well. Sorry, Baby is what I imagine they were trying to do. It feels like a slice of real life, but it’s clearly got an intentionally scripted narrative structure.

I don’t know why I’m writing so much about storytelling and structure and narrative in this year’s list but that’s what’s happening.

Straight Line Was A Lie – The Beths

It’s always a relief when a brand new album from a band you really love ends up being actually very good. Try “Metal” or “Mosquitoes” or “Til My Heart Stops.”

Switch 2

Nintendo’s follow-up to the perfect video game console is the new perfect video game console.

Task

I appreciate efficiency in storytelling. This is why I believe movies are the ideal narrative art form. Task is a short, self-contained, single season story built on believable portrayals of complicated characters. Which is a long way of saying I liked it a lot.

There Is No Antimemetics Division

QNTM’s web serial turned novel reminds me of Remedy’s Control in some positive ways. As the Alan Wake Remedyverse slowly climbs my list of favorite fictions ever, any work that comes across as evocative without being derivative is going to rate pretty highly for me. I’m just biased.

To further evaluate this in terms of a video game I like – TINAD is basically a whole story about one Object Of Power. There are containment rooms and everything. A whole secret organization – in this case something called the SCP Foundation, in Control it’s the Federal Bureau of Control – working to contain dangerous extradimentional or paranatural entities.

The book comes from a webseries that started in 2015, so it did not copy the 2019 video game to which I’m comparing it now, but I will take any opportunity I can to praise and recommend Control.

The Valley

Kristen finally got engaged and Jax finally crossed Bravo’s invisible line. Danny got a hero edit while Janet’s attempt to self produce and control the story (probably as advised by Jax) backfired. Brittany was, unfortunately, still there. I can’t wait for season three!

Train Dreams

I do love a quiet, mediative movie about one person’s entire life. Train Dreams is beautiful.

Traitors

The best reality competition show on TV, this time featuring Boston Rob vs. Bob the Drag Queen vs. Tom Sandoval vs. Gabby Windey vs. Carolyn Wiger. I was sad to see some of the greats get kicked off early but that’s the way it goes.

Weapons

How lucky were we to get two genuinely great horror movies in one year? I loved the anthology style storytelling in Weapons. I loved the creepy premise and the grainy security camera footage of the children running away. I loved the ending.

I have not seen/played/heard the following, but I will probably like them when I do: The Alters, Bugonia, Citizen Sleeper 2, Death Stranding 2, Dispatch, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, Mafia: The Old Country, The Outer Worlds 2, Sentimental Value, Silent Hill f