Mia Khalifa’s Top 10 Movies of 2025

Is the key to on-screen chemistry for co-stars to start sleeping with each other again (or pretend to)? Before you start arguing with my list of the top 10 movies of 2025, I want you to look in the mirror and ask yourself: “Am I writing a list of my top 10 movies of 2025 for GQ?” The answer is probably no, so sit down and read or keep it moving. In all seriousness, it was difficult to narrow down my list, because I’m a pedant and don’t feel that it’s completely fair to compile it before all the movies I want to see have come out. That said, Christmas came early and I got to screen Marty Supreme. My heart rate should be back to normal any day now.

10. Tie: Hamnet (directed by Chloe Zhao), Hamlet (Aneil Karia)

These two were fistfighting for a spot on my list, so I’m gonna pretend I’m managing Joe Alwyn—he’s in both—and split my No. 10 spot.

First, Hamnet: I don’t care if it’s fiction, it’s my truth! I love believing that Shakespeare’s wife Agnes was a forest witch and his muse, inspiring him to write his beautiful, devastating masterpieces. I cried so many times during this movie; the heartbreak is exacerbated by never-ending takes. The amount of time we spend on people’s faces through unrelenting grief feels invasive and uncomfortable, and while I wanted to look away many times. I had too much respect for these characters, especially their child Hamnet, to do so. Chloe Zhao must’ve felt like Bobby Bowden recruiting Deion Sanders when she cast Jacobi Jupe because that boy is going to be a STAR!!!

As for Hamlet, I was lucky enough to screen this a couple months ago, when director Aneil Karia and star Riz Ahmed were celebrating the confirmation of its theatrical release in the UK, which will be in February. I highly recommend you plan to see it if you can. It’s remarkable to have two such fresh, earnest, and caring takes on this play in the span of months year—and both with Joe Alwyn, who is sweet and soft as Bartholomew in Hamnet, and explosive as Laertes here. Set in a modern London, it preserves the original Shakespearean dialogue but bends the story to tell the Succession-esque arc of a wealthy South East Asian family. It includes my favorite title card on this list, and Riz Ahmed’s “to be or not to be” is my pick for line reading of the year. I love when artists nail it and makes the classics cool, because they fucking ARE!

9. The Naked Gun (Akiva Schaffer)

COMEDY IS BACK, BABY! This is what happens when you pay for real actors for your out-of-nowhere reboot instead of stunt-casting TikTokers (though if any casting directors are reading this, please note that I’m more of a tweeter than a TikToker). Not that the rollout was free from stunts: Making Pamela Anderson the femme fatale-slash-straight man was an attention-getting choice, but an inspired one. Her locked-the-fuck-in performance was adorable, her comedic timing tight, and her chemistry with Liam Neeson palpable. Their off-set romance may have been a stunt, but this movie had me convinced that costars really have to start sleeping with each other again. I’ve been conditioned to recoil at the assault that is cameos and forced nostalgia in remakes and sequels, but I left The Naked Gun unscathed, except for the sore abs I got from laughing. The pacing builds to a crescendo; before you finish laughing at one joke, you’re hit with another, and it never stops.

8. No Other Land (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor)

Having to self-release an Oscar-winning documentary because the filmmakers couldn’t find a distributor is the dystopian mirror that No Other Land holds up to Hollywood. Bestowed with the town’s highest honor, it was silenced everywhere else, including when one of the film’s contributors was shot and killed by an Israeli settler in the occupied West Bank earlier this year and when co-director Hamdan Ballal was attacked by settlers and detained by occupation forces over the summer. Buy this movie. If you’re having friends over to watch it, make them buy it on iTunes before coming in the door. This is the most important film of the year to support. Don’t say you care about independent film making if you don’t stand ten toes down for No Other Land.

7. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (Scott Cooper)

Jeremy Allen White needs to take this show on tour or book a sequel ASAP because that was the best biopic musical performance of the decade. I really appreciate this honed-in, toned-down look into Springsteen’s life. It’s a humanizing peek into a superhuman man, one we’re so used to seeing loud and in control, isolated in doubt over his life choices. Full-method Jeremy Strong kills yet another role, Stephen Graham is gut-wrenching as usual, and White is just magic when he sings. People were saying that this movie was made for the deep-cut Bruce guys, but I went in as a casual listener and left a hardcore fan.

6. The Baltimorons (Jay Duplass)

I hope The Baltimorons gets the recognition it deserves this holiday season, because it is this year’s Holdovers for me. Michael Strassner co-wrote and stars in this funny and charming (no pun intended, hon) story about a newly sober comedian in Baltimore getting emergency dental work on Christmas eve and ending up on an adventure of comedy and love, in a Baltimore way. I grew up in Maryland, so seeing the Natty Boh references and locals-only jokes had me sitting on my couch like Leonardo DiCaprio, pointing at the TV.

5. Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh)

The only thing that offends me more than generative AI is a film that assumes its audience is dumb. The slippery and sophisticated Black Bag made me feel like I was dumb, which was a refreshing change. A spy classic (yes, i’m already calling it a classic) paced like a play (because it originally was), dialogue-heavy, very smart, very sexy, very British, this is Steven Soderbergh’s bi-panic-inducing fever dream. We’re lucky to get a movie like this in 2025, in which absolute PROFESSIONALS put on a masterclass on how to not let being stressed interfere with being horny.

4. Highest 2 Lowest (Spike Lee)

Probably my most polarizing pick on this list, but I am a Spike Lee stan until I die! Like M. Night Shyamalan, Lee is an auteur best appreciated when you let the pleasure of watching take precedence over reasoning. There’s a campy aspect to his work that doesn’t always benefit from close scrutiny; Highest to Lowest is a “the movie is the message” type of joint, respectfully. Denzel and ASAP Rocky need another run at the contentious mentor/mentee dynamic because that was electric, and I still can’t get “back out the trunk, from the front to the back” out of my head. If that’s all I get before Don’t Be Dumb drops, I’ll take it.

3. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

The same man that gave us Phantom Thread gave us a “Mo Bamba” needle drop in 2025. Paul Thomas Anderson, I hope you’re getting forehead kisses every night. I saw this movie four times and loved it more with each watch. Chase Infiniti’s introduction to us is so heartwarming it will forever be embedded with me; I carry a protectiveness over her as though we were once young girls picking apples in papa’s orchard. The only downside to this movie is that I’ll never get a spin-off with Teyana Taylor’s Perfida and Chase’s Willa getting to know each other—they stole the whole show.

2. Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie)

The first thing I did when I got this job was to ask if it makes me eligible to attend early screenings of movies. The answer is yes, yes it does, and I got to see this whiplash epic an entire month before the rest of you get to see it (yes, I think that makes me better than you!). Timothée Chalamet, either your Oscar is either being polished or our pitchforks are being sharpened. The knack that this guy has for playing a deplorable character that you just can’t help but root for (on Christmas Day, no less) should be studied. This film has no climax, it just steadily spikes your blood pressure. There’s no time to catch a breath before you have to figure out if a joke is tasteless or perfect (it’s always perfect) or deciding between shielding your ears or your eyes from what must be the most violent case of bad luck in history. All for some PING PONG!

1. Sinners (Ryan Coogler)

Ryan Coogler, come get your baddie chain. My top movie of the year, proudly watched on IMAX 70mm as god intended, and for good reason because this movie is gorgeous. You’re engulfed into the sticky, thick air of the south; you feel claustrophobic, like you can’t breathe, like your life is closing in on you. And that’s just how well Coogler captures the humidity, never mind the vampires. The story is supernatural, but the subject matter is too real: Coogler respects the regional history and customs, from the practice of hoodoo to the shared Chinese and Black American presence in the segregated Delta South. A perfect movie, down to its flawless use of aspect ratio changes to underscore disorienting moments.