According to Barack Obama, These Are the Best Movies of 2025

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Ignacio Weil

Entertainment - December 25th 2025, 17:00 GMT+1

One Battle After Another cropped processed by imagy — One Battle After Another

Revolutions don’t usually look this chaotic on screen, which is probably why it lands: it treats political conviction like something that can get messy, funny, and a little dangerous without turning into a lecture. The story follows a former radical trying to keep his daughter safe while the past keeps kicking down the door, and the tone bounces between tension and dark comedy like it’s daring you to keep up. The performances do a lot of heavy lifting – equal parts weary, furious, and oddly tender – while the film’s style stays sharp and restless, always hinting that stability is a temporary illusion. *One Battle After Another* also has the kind of precise filmmaking that makes even a quiet scene feel loaded, like every pause has an agenda. It’s the sort of pick that makes sense as a “best of the year” choice: ambitious, prickly, and hard to forget once it gets under your skin. | © Warner Bros. Pictures

Cropped Sinners — Sinners

Vampires plus the Jim Crow-era South is already a premise that raises your eyebrows; then the movie goes and makes it feel purposeful instead of gimmicky. The setting is soaked in atmosphere – heat, music, dread – and the horror isn’t just supernatural, it’s cultural, historical, and personal in a way that keeps the tension humming even when nobody’s screaming. Michael B. Jordan’s dual performance gives the story a restless energy, like two different survival strategies fighting for control of the same life. What makes *Sinners* stand out is how it uses genre to carry bigger ideas without flattening into “message mode,” letting the scares and the emotion do the talking. It’s stylish, intense, and confident enough to swing between brutality and beauty without asking permission. No wonder it ended up singled out as one of the year’s standout films – this one leaves marks. | © Proximity Media

It was just an accident cropped processed by imagy — It Was Just an Accident

The title sounds casual, almost like a shrug, which is exactly why it hits so hard when the story starts tightening its grip. A group of former political prisoners believe they’ve found the man who tortured them, and suddenly the question isn’t “what happened,” it’s “what are you allowed to do about it when you’re not even fully sure?” The film moves with a tense, darkly comic momentum, letting absurdity and trauma sit in the same frame without canceling each other out. *It Was Just an Accident* doesn’t hand out easy catharsis; it forces every character to weigh revenge, justice, fear, and doubt like they’re carrying the same heavy object in different ways. It’s harrowing, sharp, and painfully human – one of those movies where the moral problem keeps echoing after the credits. | © Jafar Panahi Productions

Hamnet cropped processed by imagy — Hamnet

Grief stories can turn abstract fast, but this one stays tactile – hands, breath, routine, the stubborn weight of daily life after something shatters. The focus isn’t Shakespeare-as-legend; it’s a family trying to exist after losing a child, with emotion portrayed as a force that rearranges everything it touches. Jessie Buckley’s Agnes feels anchored in the earth and the body, while the film’s mood moves like memory: fluid, vivid, and occasionally dreamlike without slipping into emptiness. *Hamnet* has a quiet intensity that makes even gentle moments feel enormous, the kind of drama that doesn’t need volume to devastate you. It’s intimate, aching, and visually thoughtful – exactly the kind of “best of the year” pick that says, without bragging, “Yes, cinema can still do this.” | © Hera Pictures

Sentimental value cropped processed by imagy — Sentimental Value

Some family stories don’t explode; they seep. *Sentimental Value* sits in that uncomfortable space where love is real, history is heavier, and everyone keeps talking around the thing they actually mean. It follows a filmmaker father and his two adult daughters, with old wounds resurfacing in the most casually devastating ways – half-finished conversations, lingering looks, and memories that refuse to stay archived. The tone has that Joachim Trier knack for making ordinary moments feel charged, like someone hid a live wire under the dinner table. It’s funny in small, human flashes, then quietly brutal a beat later, and the whiplash feels honest rather than manipulative. The result is a drama about art, attention, and family gravity – what you inherit, what you resent, and what you still want anyway. | © Mer Film

No Other Choice cropped processed by imagy 1 — No Other Choice

Here’s the kind of premise that sounds simple until it starts tightening like a knot: lose your job, lose your footing, and then discover just how far a person can rationalize “survival.” *No Other Choice* leans into satirical darkness, turning modern anxiety – money, status, employability – into something sharp enough to cut. Park Chan-wook stages it with his usual precision, so the humor doesn’t float away into silliness; it stays pinned to the discomfort. The film plays with morality like it’s a sliding puzzle that keeps rearranging itself, and it never lets anyone feel fully innocent, including the audience enjoying the ride. It’s tense, wickedly funny, and uncomfortably plausible in the way the best black comedies tend to be. | © CJ Entertainment

The secret agent 2025 cropped processed by imagy — The Secret Agent

A political thriller works best when danger feels bureaucratic – paperwork, surveillance, doors closing politely – and *The Secret Agent* understands that kind of fear. Set against Brazil’s 1970s military dictatorship, the film follows a man caught in a tightening net, where the threat isn’t just one villain but a whole system with patience. The noir flavor comes through in the mood: suspicion in daylight, secrets carried like contraband, and a sense that every favor has a price attached. It moves with controlled intensity rather than constant fireworks, making the tension feel earned instead of manufactured. What sticks is how the story balances urgency with atmosphere, letting history weigh on every scene without turning it into a speech. | © CinemaScópio

Joel Edgerton Train Dreams cropped processed by imagy — Train Dreams

Sometimes the most cinematic thing a movie can do is slow down and let a life unfold without trying to “win” every minute. *Train Dreams* follows a working man in early-20th-century America, tracing a path through labor, loss, and the strange loneliness of watching the world modernize around you. The storytelling feels spare in a deliberate way – more observation than explanation – so the emotion lands like a quiet punch instead of a dramatic announcement. It’s a film that trusts textures: weather, distance, routine, the weight of time, the way small decisions echo for decades. The mood stays tender even when it turns harsh, and it carries that lingering feeling you get after finishing a great novella: the story ends, but it doesn’t really leave. | © Black Bear

Jay Kelly cropped processed by imagy — Jay Kelly

Fame looks glamorous until it starts feeling like a costume you can’t take off, and that’s the itch *Jay Kelly* keeps scratching. The story follows a movie star (George Clooney) drifting through Europe with his manager (Adam Sandler), and the laughs land in that uncomfortable zone where everyone is charming and slightly unbearable – like real people, unfortunately. It’s a comedy-drama that doesn’t chase big plot fireworks; it prefers awkward reunions, old resentments, and the creeping realization that success doesn’t automatically make you decent. The film has a restless, midlife-reckoning pulse, but it never turns into a lecture – more like a long exhale you didn’t realize you were holding. And yes, it’s one of Barack Obama’s favorite movies of 2025, which tracks: it’s smart, human, and quietly messy in the way life tends to be. | © Pascal Pictures

Good Fortune cropped processed by imagy — Good Fortune

An angel with a plan sounds comforting until the plan involves body-swapping your way into a moral lesson, and *Good Fortune* leans into that chaos with a straight face. Keanu Reeves plays Gabriel, a well-meaning celestial meddler whose attempt to prove that money won’t fix everything goes sideways in the most sitcom-from-outer-space way. The comedy comes from the film’s refusal to treat “wealth vs. struggle” like a simple before-and-after montage; it keeps showing how privilege rewires behavior, relationships, and even self-respect. Aziz Ansari directs with a light touch, letting awkwardness do the work instead of forcing punchlines, while Seth Rogen brings that specific brand of charisma that feels friendly right up until it doesn’t. It’s funny, a little sharp, occasionally sweet, and just self-aware enough to admit that a life swap would probably teach most people the wrong lesson first. | © Garam Films

Orwell 225 cropped processed by imagy — Orwell: 2+2=5

Here’s a documentary that doesn’t tiptoe around its own urgency – *Orwell: 2+2=5* shows up with receipts, alarms, and a look that says, “We are not doing the polite version today.” Raoul Peck builds the film around George Orwell’s life and ideas, pulling threads from *Nineteen Eighty-Four* into a modern collage of propaganda, surveillance, manufactured truth, and the casual normalization of “say it enough times and it becomes real.” It’s dense, visually punchy, and intentionally unsettling, the kind of watch where the chill isn’t from a jump scare – it’s from recognition. The narration and archival approach keep it grounded in Orwell as a person while the editing keeps dragging you back to the present, like a hand on your shoulder that won’t let you look away. If it feels confrontational, that’s the point, and its spot among Barack Obama’s favorite movies of 2025 makes perfect sense. | © Velvet Film

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Some people wrap gifts in December; Barack Obama wraps up the year by dropping a movie list that instantly turns film Twitter into a town hall. The fun part isn’t just what he picks – it’s the way his choices always feel considered, occasionally unexpected, and somehow capable of making your watchlist look underprepared. If you’re searching for the best movies of 2025 with a little extra cultural weight behind them, this is the kind of list that nudges you off autopilot.

Obama’s 2025 movie picks tend to spark two reactions at once: “Fair, that one rules,” and “Okay, I clearly missed something.” That’s the sweet spot. These are the films he singled out as the year’s standouts – some obvious, some quietly excellent, all worth a closer look if you want a sharper snapshot of 2025 at the movies.