This past December marked the end of one of the more tumultuous years in recent times. If 2024 promised a year full of horrifying prospects, 2025 delivered. Perhaps that is why our top 15 best movies list this year reflects a reckoning with the difficult present. But this reckoning isn’t hopeless. Rather, it betrays a hidden strength. The best films of 2025 demand us to look directly at the terrors of our time.

In No Other Choice, Park retains the core premise of Westlake’s novel: a middle-management man is laid off from his job at a paper company, tries to find a new job but is unsuccessful, and eventually resorts to killing job candidates that could compete for his spot.

At the core of it, the Materialists is a pretty interesting movie. It’s not romantic nor funny enough to be a rom-com. It’s not “deep” enough to be a thought piece. It sort of just exists as a movie that sparks discussions about a topical subject — dating.