In some ways, 2025 felt like cultural stagnation, devoid of memorable “wow” moments. Despite a modest box-office rebound from previous years, most news out of Hollywood this year was ominous: AI’s growing threat, Netflix gobbling up legacy studio Warner Bros., the “spooky convergence” of everything not already television turning into television.
Speaking of television, Apple TV’s reflexive The Studio hilariously captured the frantic state of the entertainment industry. Severance’s second season raised all sorts of philosophical and theological questions. And Vince Gilligan’s new series Pluribus explored the eerie implications of AI superintelligence better than anything else I’ve yet seen. That these series—among the most buzz-worthy TV shows of 2025—are all Apple TV originals tells you something about the entertainment industry’s shifting dynamics.
One welcome trend in 2025’s film and television landscape was the increased prominence of Bible stories and faith themes. Bible series like House of David and The Chosen became hits for Prime Video, while the just-released David from Angel Studios has already surpassed box-office expectations. Meanwhile, secular films like Sinners, Frankenstein, and Wake Up Dead Man wrestled with Christianity in substantive, thought-provoking, if theologically muddled ways. Even comedies and rom-coms like Good Fortune and Eternity have played with theological motifs. It’s enough to have The New York Times asking, “Is Hollywood Getting God?”
One welcome trend in 2025’s film and television landscape was the increased prominence of Bible stories and faith themes.
A few of my favorite 2025 movies are part of this faith-friendly trend; others are examples of redemptive storytelling where common-grace truths are evident and laudable virtues celebrated. This list is my attempt to highlight bright spots in an otherwise dark cinematic landscape—outliers of goodness, truth, and beauty in a sea of ugliness.
Some of my picks might not be easy to watch, either because their stories are intense or because their pacing is slower than what Marvel-shaped audiences have come to expect. But for patient Christian viewers, these movies can provide windows into diverse human experiences, conflicts, longings, and struggles—dramatic snapshots that stir our hearts to better love God and neighbor.
Don’t take my commendations as wholesale endorsements of the content. Just because I loved a film doesn’t mean I loved everything in it. A movie that contains valuable truth isn’t necessarily free of falsehoods, and a “best” movie doesn’t mean an appropriate movie for all audiences. Though the films listed below are all (in my view) commendable and praiseworthy from a Christian perspective, a few are rated R and should only be viewed with caution and discernment.
Here are my 10 favorites, 5 honorable mentions, and 5 excellent documentaries released in 2025.
Top 10
1. Train Dreams
Joel Edgerton is superb in Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams, a beautifully immersive period drama based on Denis Johnson’s novella. Edgerton plays railroad worker and family man Robert Grainier, whose humble life in the early 20th-century Pacific Northwest is both quiet and dramatic. Inspired by Terrence Malick’s style and thematic interests (e.g., cosmic truths juxtaposed with quotidian life), Train Dreams ponders big questions about suffering and meaning in a world that seems both graced and cursed, where trees (as one of many examples) both give life and take life.
The film accepts William Blake’s invitation “to see a world in a grain of sand”—or in this case (forgive me) a “Grainier of sand.” And it does so in a gorgeous way that basks in the good, true, and beautiful—a mode of filmmaking all too rare in our jaded, disenchanted world where elites tend to favor artistic and moral transgression over straightforward goodness and beauty.
My only knock against this film is that it’s a Netflix original—meaning most viewers won’t ever experience it on a big screen and (ugh) might watch it on their phone while toggling between other apps. Do yourself a favor and watch Train Dreams in one sitting, with your full attention, on the most theatrical TV and sound system you have. Watch on Netflix. Rated PG-13.
2. Roofman
At a time when quality comedic dramas (and comedies generally) are increasingly rare, Derek Cianfrance’s Roofman feels like a gift. The film is based on the stranger-than-fiction true story of Jeffrey Manchester (played by Channing Tatum), who, in the early 2000s, turned to robbery as a way to provide for his young daughter. He went to prison, escaped from prison, and lived in hiding inside a Toys “R” Us for months. The film honors Manchester’s fatherly instincts to provide, even as it laments and never condones Manchester’s poor choices.
It’s a funny-sad movie that captures the tension many fathers feel between provision and presence, and it warns dads not to sacrifice the latter in pursuit of the former. In the end, Roofman is both a portrait of fatherhood and a moral fable. As I wrote in my full review, “Roofman’s ending is redemptive and cathartic, but also a gut-punch. What might have been? What kind of home and legacy could Jeff have built, had his good fatherly desires been channeled in healthier ways?” Watch on Paramount+. Rated R for language and brief nudity.
3. The Ballad of Wallis Island
I miss movies like this: relatively clean, good-hearted romantic comedies that know how to make audiences both laugh and cry. It’s a shame The Ballad of Wallis Island came and went with such little fanfare. The British production, directed by James Griffiths, is an elegant and entertaining gem.
The sweet story follows a pair of once romantically linked musicians (Carey Mulligan and Tom Basden) invited by an eccentric millionaire (Tim Key) to awkwardly reunite for a private concert on the fictional Wallis Island off the Welsh coast.
Comedic actor Key is a standout here, but the whole cast is great. It’s a movie with no shred of cynicism but a generous heaping of love—a celebration of the beauty of small and large acts of kindness and the power of putting aside personal baggage when faced with an opportunity to steward our gifts to serve others. Watch on Prime Video. Rated PG-13.
4. Souleymane’s Story
We rarely interact with them aside from a doorbell ring and a wave goodbye. But the food-courier gig workers who deliver dinner to our door are humans, each with his or her own struggle and story. The French film Souleymane’s Story, directed by Boris Lojkine, focuses our attention on this unseen, unappreciated world.
Souleymane (Abou Sangaré) migrated from West Africa to Paris, where he rides a bicycle around the bustling city (precariously at times), delivering food for an Uber Eats–style app. The film follows him in the days leading up to a pivotal asylum application interview.
At times echoing the redemptive social realism of the Dardenne brothers, or the neo-realist classic Bicycle Thieves (1948), Lojkine’s film doesn’t delve into the politics of immigration or asylum programs. It simply asks us to observe one immigrant’s story and sit in his vulnerable shoes for 90 minutes. As it does, the film invites us to see this man not as a cog in an economic machine or a statistic in an immigration “problem” but rather as a precious human being created in God’s image. Available to rent. Not rated, but a few instances of language.
5. Sentimental Value
The latest Oslo-set contemporary drama from acclaimed Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier is his best. Sentimental Value follows one family as it seeks to break a pattern of intergenerational tragedy.
Stellan Skarsgård shines as aging filmmaker Gustav Borg, whose celebrated career thrived while his family life suffered (another film this year, George Clooney’s Jay Kelly, has a similar plotline, though not as well executed). As an attempt to heal his relationship with adult daughters Nora and Agnes (superbly played by Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), Borg writes a script for a movie he hopes will redeem some of his family’s pain. He asks Nora, an accomplished actress, to star in the film despite her bitterness toward him.
Without delving into Hallmark-style sentimentality, Sentimental Value captures the unique pain a father can inflict on his children—but also the profound opportunity he has to facilitate reconciliation and healing before it’s too late. It’s also a movie about the healthy hunger for a stable family and home—an admirable ambition made all the more urgent in the wake of generations of brokenness. In theaters. Rated R for language and brief nudity.
6. David
This was my biggest surprise of 2025. I had low expectations. An animated musical about the biblical David? Probably not gonna be great.
But I sat astonished—and often moved—when I first screened the film in October with my 7-year-old son. David is written and directed by Brent Dawes and Phil Cunningham out of Cape Town’s Sunrise Animation Studios, and distributed by Angel Studios. It’s a triumph of faith-based artistry.
The filmmakers narrate the big beats of David’s rise from sling-armed shepherd boy (voiced by Brandon Engman) to Israel’s leader (voiced by Phil Wickham), all while incorporating surprisingly catchy songs, jaw-dropping visuals, and overall artistic quality that matches the likes of Disney or Pixar. I’ll take my three oldest kids to see it over the Christmas break, and you should take your children too. In theaters. Rated PG.
7. The Mastermind
Kelly Reichardt’s revisionist take on the heist genre is characteristically radical and thought-provoking. This is about as far from Ocean’s Eleven as you can get. Josh O’Connor plays a suburban husband and father who, in 1970 Massachusetts, attempts an art theft from a local fine art museum.
In some ways, the film would be a great double feature with Roofman, as both focus on fathers who tragically turn to thievery. But unlike Manchester in Roofman, O’Connor’s motives in The Mastermind feel driven by acedia more than altruism. As the plot unfolds, Reichardt goes out of her way to accentuate the unglamorous, clunky, ill-conceived, and ultimately harmful nature of this man’s existential miscue.
What becomes clear as the film progresses is how the 1970 setting is an interpretive key. Everything in The Mastermind—including its sepia palette and slow, long-take pace—is meant to convey the malaise and stagnation of the 1970s in contrast to the flower-power idealism of the 1960s. I’ve not seen a film better capture the “1960s comedown” vibe of that transitional era. It’s a movie about how to cope—and how not to cope—when reality doesn’t match our lofty ideals. Available to rent. Rated R for some language.
8. It Was Just an Accident
Despite being imprisoned and banned in his home country for critiquing the political regime, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panâhi managed to film his latest feature in secret and unpermitted, in and around Tehran. The result is a fascinating look inside contemporary Iranian life and its political complexities. But It Was Just an Accident is also a riveting thriller that explores themes of retributive justice, breaking cycles of revenge, and the possibility of grace.
A worthy winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the film is made in such a way that you don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s intense but rewarding, full of constantly surprising turns, unexpected moments of grace, and a final 10 minutes that will leave you breathless as Panâhi’s quietly potent point comes into clearer view. In theaters. Rated PG-13.
9. Warfare
This movie reminded me of the medium’s visceral power. As more and more of us (particularly younger people) rarely watch anything on a screen bigger than a phone or laptop, audiences need to be reminded of the power of theatrical cinema.
Written and directed by Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza, based on Mendoza’s experiences in the Iraq War, Warfare deploys all the tools of filmmaking to put the viewer into the combat boots of a Navy SEAL platoon facing a harrowing situation after 2006’s Battle of Ramadi.
“Intense” is too slight a word to describe the viewing experience. As it captures the unique terror of contemporary urban warfare, the film reminded me of Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down (2001)—which Quentin Tarantino just named the best movie of the 21st century. Warfare isn’t a political take on the Iraq War; it’s a human take. This is the horror veterans went through, the film reminds us. Honor them. Support them. Be grateful for their sacrificial service. Watch on HBO Max or rent. Rated R for violence and language.
10. Rebuilding
In some ways, Rebuilding echoes Train Dreams as it captures both the natural beauty and also the harshness of the American West. Both films follow men who must rebuild after a devastating wildfire. But although Josh O’Connor shines as a broken cowboy seeking redemption, this contemporary drama—the second feature of 32-year-old Telluride-based filmmaker Max Walker-Silverman—is less a portrait of one man’s resilience as it is an ode to the collective grit of the family and community of which he’s part.
Set in Southern Colorado, where the desert meets the mountains, Rebuilding is a gentle, profoundly hopeful film about how we help each other begin again. It’s about lamenting what’s lost, being grateful for what hasn’t been lost, and showing up for one another in times of need. It’s one of the most redemptive movies I’ve seen this year. In theaters. Rated PG.
5 Honorable Mentions
Of the films I enjoyed this year that didn’t make my top 10, these stand out.
Eephus
Carson Lund’s Eephus is set during the final game of an amateur baseball league in New England before their beloved field is demolished to make way for a new school. It’s a celebration of—maybe an elegy for—the kinds of male friendships and third-space social environments increasingly lost in contemporary life.
The film feels like a kindred spirit to Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone or last year’s Putnam-inspired documentary Join or Die. It’s a general lament over the pain of time’s passage and a specific lament over the ways men used to bond with one another IRL. Available to rent. Not rated but includes R-rated language.
Frankenstein
Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s gothic sci-fi classic may include a few questionable changes from the novel. But the part it gets right—the novel’s searing warning about “playing God” with science and technology—it gets very right.
The movie [read my full review] is both old-school in its cinematic scale and goth-romanticism and timely in its critique of AI “tech bros.” Watch on Netflix. Rated R for violence and brief nudity.
Hamnet
Did Shakespeare write Hamlet as a way to process his grief over the tragedy of his son Hamnet’s death from the bubonic plague? Did a real-life tragedy make possible what is arguably literature’s greatest work of tragedy?
These are the questions Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet ponders, in a way that’s beautifully humane and brilliantly performed by Paul Mescal (as Shakespeare) and Jessie Buckley (as Shakespeare’s wife). In theaters. Rated PG-13.
The Lost Bus
Refreshingly straightforward as a ripped-from-the-headlines disaster movie, Paul Greengrass’s white-knuckle thriller tells a little-known tale from the deadly 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California. Matthew McConaughey shines as a school bus driver who rises to the occasion to heroically save the lives of children evacuating the deadly blaze.
Intense from start to finish (as with Greengrass’s other films), The Lost Bus captures the beauty of sacrificial heroism. Watch on Apple TV. Rated R for language.
Paddington in Peru
I’m a sucker for the Paddington movies, and this third entry in the franchise didn’t disappoint. I saw it in the theater with my kids, and it was a delightfully immersive experience.
Switching up the setting from London to Peru, the jungle adventure celebrates the virtues of family and the goodness of home. Even as the humor is witty and the jokes ubiquitous, there’s no cynicism in this world, just orange-marmalade levels of sweetness. Watch on Netflix. Rated PG.
5 Documentaries
A Faith Under Siege
Many people have sadly become indifferent or oblivious to the ongoing war and suffering happening in Ukraine as Russia continues its occupation. But this feature-length documentary reminds us that one aspect of the ongoing war is Russia’s intense persecution of Ukrainian Christians.
Featuring inspiring and heartbreaking stories of suffering and resilience, the film invites believers to stand in solidarity and prayer with the evangelical church in Ukraine, “Europe’s Bible Belt.” Watch on YouTube. Not rated.
John Candy: I Like Me
Biographic documentaries about celebrities can sometimes feel like tiresome vanity projects. But this new documentary about late comedy actor John Candy does more than rehash Candy’s fun filmography in a nostalgic way. It also sincerely celebrates the virtues of fatherhood, marriage, and family.
By all accounts, Candy was a decent man who loved and lived generously. But even as the film affectionately remembers him, it raises questions about how and when we should speak truth to those we love to keep them from self-destructive behavior. Watch on Prime Video. Rated PG-13.
Listers: A Glimpse into Extreme Birdwatching
Contemporary documentaries tend to be annoyingly partisan—spoiling otherwise interesting subject matters by leveraging them for didactic purposes. Made by twentysomething brothers Owen and Quentin Reiser and released for free on YouTube, Listers has no agenda other than to chronicle a quirky subculture of extreme birders.
Even as it’s irreverent and occasionally crude, Listers is also a funny and often beautiful look at the diversity and oddities of God’s creation—both birds and the humans who delight in watching them. Watch on YouTube. Not rated (but includes R-rated language)
The Perfect Neighbor
The Perfect Neighbor examines a controversial legislative topic—stand-your-ground laws—not by mounting a partisan political argument as much as simply by showing one high-profile 2023 case unfold as it was recorded by police body camera and witness interview footage.
The style is effective, letting an objective form (almost exclusively official police footage) present the evidence in a way that can’t be written off as manipulative or editorialized. It’s harrowing to watch not just because of the specific case’s simmering lead-up and tragic outcome but also for the hard questions it raises about America’s lingering racial tensions and dangerously eroding social trust. Watch on Netflix. Rated R for language.
Riefenstahl
This chilling German-made documentary examines the life and legacy of Nazi filmmaker and propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. Assembling an impressive array of material from Riefenstahl’s own archives, as well as footage of various televised interviews Riefenstahl gave over her 101-year-long life, director Andres Veiel lets Riefenstahl speak for herself but in a way that shows her to be duplicitous and unrepentant. The result is damning.
As much as Riefenstahl tried to rehabilitate her image after World War II, her complicity in the Nazi regime is undeniable, and her affinity for Hitler’s social Darwinist ideals comes through in the documentary. It’s a haunting, urgent film in an age of deadly antisemitism and Holocaust denial. Available to rent. Not rated.
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