My Top Ten Movies of 2025

Here are my choices for the ten best films of 2025.

1. Sketch – This is, I think, the best film of the year and the crowning achievement of the new Christian powerhouse film company Angel Studios. The macabre drawings of a disturbed eight-year-old girl come to life and terrorize a town, which sounds bizarre and horrifying, except it’s funny, thrilling, and deeply moving. It also contains some of the best writing, scoring, and acting of the 2020s.

2. Light of the World – Due to its long speeches and abstract imagery, the gospel of John is rarely used as a source for adaptations of the greatest story ever told. Yet here is a fantastic work of the story from John himself, which brilliantly uses light imagery and the faith of a child.

3. Triumph of the Heart – St. Maximillian Kolbe is the patron saint of “our difficult century,” and this beautiful film imagines his last weeks alive in the starvation bunker. What starts as a pit of despair and anger is transformed by his witness into a place of hope and salvation. The same could be said of Christ and the world.

4. The Fantastic Four: First Steps – The Fantastic Four had a bad go in the film world, probably because The Incredibles made a better adaptation than they ever could. That changed this year with First Steps, a towering homage to Fifties nostalgia with a strong pro-life and natalist message.

5. The King of Kings – Angel Studios has been on a roll over the last few years. The King of Kings is currently a great animated adaptation of the gospel story, told through the lens of one of the finest authors of all time.

6. A House of Dynamite – Kathryn Bigelow is currently the best political/military director in the business, and her latest picture is no exception. Tense, thrilling, and profound, it is a sobering look at overdependence on protocol and the necessity of divine providence.

7. Soul on Fire – The suffering of children is one of the most profound evils of existence, yet the story of John O’Leary, who survived being burned over 90% of his body at age seven, demonstrates that even this can be used for God’s glory.

8. Hazel’s Heart – This film is a prime example that you don’t need much to make a great film. It contains only a handful of actors, minimal sets, and the story doesn’t even last 24 hours. However, in a year filled with adaptations of the gospel story, this is one of the best examples of Christ’s self-sacrificial love.

9. Last Days – This film gives a compelling account of missionary John Chau’s heroic attempt to bring the gospel to one of the last uncontacted tribes on Earth. While it trips at the end, it’s still an incredibly well-executed film.

10. Train Dreams – There are only a few trains and dreams in this film, but what it lacks in ferroequinology it makes up for in a slow, beautiful look at early 20th-century life in the Rocky Mountains through the eyes of a man struggling to find meaning.

Honorable Mentions: Bau, Artist at War, Broken Mary: The Kevin Matthews Story, David, Superman, Triumph Over Evil: Battle of the Exorcists