My Top 5s of 2025

Jessie Buckley in Hamnet.

For me, 2025 was the year of communal entertainment—movie theaters, concerts, TV show viewing parties, etc. These spaces have always been available to me and, in years past, I’ve taken adequate advantage of them, but I have never appreciated them so much as in 2025. Because they are now under threat. Yes, public gathering spaces (specifically for the arts) have been at risk before. Yes, they have survived in one way or another. But by no means should that reassure us. It should not be license to sit back and let history take its course. I, for one, want to have some semblance of say in what my future looks like.

Reflecting on this year, I think about watching Materialists at the Burbank AMC with my friend Alyssa. It was our event of the summer, our Super Bowl. I think about watching The Pitt on a couch in Chicago with my friend Rhea, who’s in med school and gleefully pointed out every term or procedure she knew. I think about seeing HAIM in concert with my friend Millan and dancing to “Million years” like I was in church, moved by the spirit of God. I think about watching Hamnet alone, mid-afternoon on a weekday, surrounded by a group of old ladies who had walked over from the nearby retirement home. While I cried over Paul Mescal’s performance, they were complaining about how loud the sound was. It was beautiful.

Change is coming in 2026—that fact is unavoidable. Change comes every year. But I worry especially about the Warner Brothers/Netflix deal, about one final blow to live network television, about mega-corporations buying up everything small and local. It rubs me the wrong way when people talk about the inevitability of change but really mean “let everything be changed.” Change is inevitable, I can admit that, but not everything needs to be changed. I believe some things can stay just the way they are. They should stay just the way they are. Like movie theaters. It just takes a concerted effort.

Let us not forget our battle cry, spoken by one of history’s last great oracles, Nicole Kidman: “We come to this place for magic. We come to AMC theaters to laugh, to cry, to care. Because we need that, all of us, that indescribable feeling we get when the lights begin to dim. And we go somewhere we’ve never been before. Not just entertained, but somehow reborn. Together.”

With that, I step down from my soapbox and present to you my favorite films, shows, and albums from 2025. It was a good year for art and an even better year of experiencing art together.

Top 5 Films of the Year

1. Hamnet (dir. Chloé Zhao)

Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel of the same name, Hamnet is the fictionalized, behind-the-scenes account of how Shakespeare’s Hamlet came to be. Agnes (Jessie Buckley) is the eldest daughter of a family who doesn’t like her very much and she finds refuge with the new Latin tutor next door, a man we only know as Will (Paul Mescal). The two fall in love and begin a family, all while Agnes supports Will’s burgeoning career as a playwright. Fractures proliferate when Will moves to London to pursue theater, leaving Agnes and the kids behind in the countryside—leaving them to fend for themselves when the plague arrives.

Best: Adaptation of a novel maybe ever

2. Sentimental Value (dir. Joachim Trier)

Nora (Renate Reinsve) is an up-and-coming actress in Norway, who gets knocked off track when her estranged father and famous director (Stellan Skarsgård) reenters her life, offering her a role in his new film. She refuses him, and he proceeds filming without her, but they’re back in each others lives now. Back in the same house. Back with the same memories. They each have to reckon with their pasts before their relationship has any future.

Best: Screenplay

3. Materialists (dir. Celine Song)

Despite being a successful matchmaker, Lucy (Dakota Johnson) has had less success in her own love life. She broke up with her last boyfriend, John (Chris Evans), because he couldn’t afford the kind of lifestyle she wanted for them, so when she meets Harry (Pedro Pascal) she thinks she has found the One. Harry is rich and handsome and kind. There’s only one snag. He’s not John.

Best: Casting

4. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (dir. Laura Piani)

Agathe (Camille Rutherford) feels stuck in life. She wants to be a writer, but she’s stalling by working at a bookstore. She wants to fall in love, but she blames Jane Austen for setting her expectations for men too high. Her luck begins to change when she’s accepted into a Jane Austen writers residency, a dedicated two-week retreat to work on her new novel. But instead of writing, she finds herself suddenly in the middle of a very Austenian love triangle. Is her life finally beginning, or has she just found another way to stall?

Best: Movie that feels specifically made for me

5. One Battle After Another (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

Once a revolutionary, Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) is now a paranoid single father hiding from the world. His past comes back to haunt him when his former nemesis, Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn), returns to hunt down every last member of the Bob’s former guerilla group. His daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), is kidnapped and Bob must jump into action, rallying his old crew, to save her from Lockjaw.

Best: Car chase scene outside of the Fast & Furious franchise

Top 5 TV Shows of the Year:

1. The Pitt (HBO Max)

One day—a fifteen-hour shift—in the life of the doctors and nurses in a Pittsburgh emergency room. Noah Wyle, of ER fame, returns to his old stomping grounds.

Best: Unflinching portrayal of modern day America

2. Hal & Harper (Mubi)

Hal (Cooper Raiff) and Harper (Lili Reinhart) are inseparable siblings, clinging together as they stumble into adulthood. When their father (Mark Ruffalo) announces his new girlfriend is pregnant, Hal and Harper are forced to reflect on their own traumatic childhood and finally tackle the toxic tendencies they’ve been avoiding.

Best: Acting

3. Dept Q (Netflix)

After being shot and nearly killed on the job, Detective Carl Morck (Matthew Goode) returns to work with a vendetta. He’s going to find the person responsible for the shooting if it’s the last thing he does. Though, Carl’s boss has other plans and sticks him into a probationary role of solving cold cases. It feels like dead-end job, until one of the cold cases proves hot.

Best: Location (Scotland, duh)

4. Adults (Hulu)

Four friends, right out of college, move into a house in Queens together—they’re spottily employed, falling in love with the wrong people, and figuring out how to be, well, adults.

Best: Show about friends since New Girl

5. Task (HBO Max)

FBI Agent Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo) is put in charge of a special task force, comprised of three utter newbies, to investigate a string of robberies linked to the local motorcycle gang. While Brandis tries to build camaraderie and trust within his little team, his own family is falling apart behind the scenes.

Best: Penultimate episode

Honorable Mentions: Two shows that surprised me this year were Chad Powers and Heated Rivalry. Chad Powers is a sports sitcom on Hulu, co-created by and starring Glen Powell in his funniest role yet. It’s reminiscent of Ted Lasso but more absurd and borderline slapstick. As for Heated Rivalry, I do not need to be another straight woman adding to the discourse so feel free to Google the show yourself. All I will say is that it’s on HBO Max, is not suitable for children, and completely caught me off guard with its depth.

Top 5 Albums of the Year:

1. “The Art of Loving” - Olivia Dean

Perfectly captures the highs and lows of being a girl in her twenties. For a dance, listen to “So Easy (To Fall in Love.” For a cry, “I’ve Seen It.”

2. “I quit” - HAIM

A no-skips album with some kind of addictive amphetamine in it. For a dance, listen to “Million years.” For a cry, “The farm.”

3. “Open Wide” - Inhaler

Inhaler’s best work to date. They’re picking up where the Arctic Monkeys and Catfish & the Bottlemen left off. For a dance, listen to “A Question of You.” For another dance, “So Young.” They don’t make sad music.

4. “Clams Casino” - Brian Dunne

I’ve never heard of Brian Dunne until this album dropped and then I listened to it on repeat for three months straight. “Feel good” music in the truest sense. For a dance, listen to “Play the Hits.” For a cry, “Some Room Left.”

5. “The Crux” - Djo

This was released on my one and only day as a juror for the Los Angeles County Court System. It sounds like springtime, iced coffee, and freedom. For a dance, listen to “Link.” For a cry, “Back on You.”

That’s all, folks. See you at the movies!