The movies that saved movies from themselves
Going to the movies last year became one ideological battle after another. It was clear throughout 2025 that movies and media offended our trust under the guise of entertainment content that was often dishonest or dispirited. This year’s Better-Than List opposes that trend and those partisan/seditious lists and critics’ groups that awarded propaganda while pretending to salute art. Film culture reached its nadir immediately after the assassination of Charlie Kirk when, almost by reflex, leftist Hollywood released a particular consensus flick that encouraged racism and political violence. Otherwise, some good, honest art about the human condition awaits your attention.
Twinless > One Battle After Another
James Sweeney’s bromance asserted gender and romantic differences (not diversity) as the basis of our emotional common ground, from grief to friendship and big-L love — the most profound rom-com since Lubitsch’s That Uncertain Feeling. Paul Thomas Anderson’s shallow political farce was the unpopular — but media-favored — flick that mocked unresolved racism and sexism as the justification for civil war.
An Officer and a Spy > It Was Just an Accident
Roman Polanski’s take on the Dreyfus affair finally opened in the U.S. in time to examine rising anti-Jewish bigotry. Jean Dujardin’s commanding performance reveals complex personal integrity without the leaden ironies of Jafar Panahi’s Iranian thriller geared to self-righteous political paranoia.
Song Sung Blue > Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
Craig Brewer finds the spiritual center of Neil Diamond’s music in the true-life tale of working-class showbiz professionals played by Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson. It shames the narcissism and phony Americana of Scott Cooper’s biopic about the country’s phoniest rock star.
Nouvelle Vague > Jay Kelly
Richard Linklater redeems his indie banality through sheer inspiration and admiration. The making of Godard’s Breathless gets deeper inside the art of filmmaking than Noah Baumbach’s trite, never-convincing imitation of Fellini’s 8½.
The Phoenician Scheme > Sentimental Value and Sirât
Wes Anderson’s rococo psychological mirth is appropriate for his great-man theory of history — a Wellesian ploy about how the world works that outclasses both Joachim Trier’s art-movie fakery and the overwrought techno display of Oliver Laxe’s globalist nihilism-adventure film.
Bruno Dumont counters Star Wars juvenilia with an adult eschatological perspective, a heaven-and-earth contrast that is morally piercing and visually amazing, while Zach Cregger taunts social collapse — sex, drugs, schools, parenting — as an occult game.
Jared Hess makes the best-yet video game adaptation, blooming with childhood’s delight. But Ryan Coogler’s childish approach to black American culture — this time as a vampire rampage — insults authentic blues heritage while delighting only Obama-addled libs.
Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel capture the excitement and dread of role-playing by tech-addicted siblings, a perfect contrast to the criminal deception that Josh Safdie celebrates in an ugly biography of a ping-pong champion (Timothée Chalamet) who exploits everyone he encounters. Moral hunger versus moral bankruptcy.
Marcello Mio and The President’s Wife > Hamnet
Catherine Deneuve brings iconic grace to two portraits by, respectively, Christophe Honoré and Léa Domenach of real-life women (herself and Bernadette Chirac) as influential public figures. But Chloe Zhao’s silly, occult biopic of Mrs. Shakespeare fakes female agency merely to steal glory from the dead white male bard.
Auction > When Fall Is Coming > Misericordia
Pascal Bonitzer, François Ozon, and Alain Guiraudie prove it was such a good year for the French (unlike this bad year for Hollywood) that comparing and contrasting three movies about tradition, accountability, and eccentricity measures how a culture understands itself — the essence of filmmaking — on a sliding scale.
Eephus > Train Dreams
Carson Lund laments a season of sports tradition while Clint Bentley mourns a long, wasted life: an authentic melancholic vision versus a pseudo art-flick exercise. Both show the effect of filmmakers unable to shake the trend toward America’s fading identity.
Wild Diamond > If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Agathe Riedinger’s trenchant portrait of a FOMO-obsessed teen Liane (Malou Khebizi) is more recognizable and universal than Mary Bronstein’s self-pitying almost-comedy about a middle-class American Karen.
Demons at Dawn > The Secret Agent
Julián Hernández expands the rom-com genre to illustrate that Millennial movies lack romance as a consequence of politicized sexuality that twists and defies natural identity. Kleber Mendonça Filho confuses genre tropes to distort Brazil’s guilt-ridden political past.
When Fall Is Coming > Eddington
François Ozon revisits the family secrets of a matriarch (Hélène Vincent) to reveal bonds of love, remorse, and forgiveness. Ari Aster’s parallel horror-flick approach — this time spooking the Covidapocalypse — makes remorse impossible, turning recent political history and panic into a disingenuous mess.
Happy Gilmore 2 > One Battle After Another
Kyle Newacheck directed Adam Sandler’s vision of American harmony-among-many — a golf-farce tournament played against the violent conflict of political adversaries. Sandler’s good humor opposed P.T.A.’s unbearable partisan vengeance.
Radu Jude misses when he targets conservative American politics, but at least his over-amped cultural metaphor recognizes there’s something monstrous afoot in this millennium’s embrace of socialist trauma whereas Guillermo del Toro’s sentimental metaphor for the Munchausen-by-proxy trans movement offers a contradiction in terms. Clever versus Unacceptable.