I’ll forever remember 2025 as the year in which I discovered a 4DX movie theater in downtown Denver.
Alright, maybe there were other reasons besides that discovery that made 2025 special… but my first time at a 4DX movie was nothing short of amazing. When Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith had a spring rerelease for its 20th anniversary, I researched showings and found that select theaters offered a special format that promised to take one of my five favorite movies to another level.
The 4DX version included all the familiar lightsaber battles and meme fodder, but this viewing watching a movie I’ve seen countless times felt unique with the literal added dimension. Seats tilted with the flight paths of starfighters, while lightsaber clashes shook the chairs. Water sprays and smoke scents, among the 30 or so special effects possible in 4DX movies, helped CGI Star Wars planets come to life. By the end of the movie, the violence of the experience made the viewing feel more like a roller coaster than a typical movie theater trip, and I felt like I had survived Order 66 myself.
All that to say, 2025 was a memorable and thrilling year for entertainment. To sum it all up, I’ve compiled top-five lists for my favorite shows and movies from the year, along with some honorable and dishonorable mentions.
Here’s to hoping for an even better entertainment year in 2026!
Shows
Andor: Season 2 — Andor takes place in the Star Wars universe, but the award-winning Disney+ series has been prestige TV ever since its start. Its second and final season had a high standard to clear after a surprisingly strong first season… and Andor shattered it. The season is grouped into multi-episode arcs, with yearlong time jumps in between, culminating in the leadup to the 2016 spinoff movie Rogue One. The show has a lot to say about revolutions and dictatorships, and events like the Ghorman Massacre and Death Star plan leaks are compelling and weighty regardless of their relation to familiar events in the Star Wars universe. The last several episodes are absolutely jaw-dropping and end the series — one I had no expectation would be one of my favorites back when the Andor show was announced — on a mountain peak of a high note.
The White Lotus: Season 3 — The White Lotus was the show I was most excited to watch in 2025 and proved to be the most fun experience. The third season of the satirical drama, which follows entitled guests at the fictional White Lotus resort before evolving into a murder mystery, is based in the resort’s Thailand location and delves into issues of spirituality, violence and relationships across its eight-episode season. This was my first time watching the White Lotus as it came out (I binged the first two seasons, which take place in Hawaii and Italy respectively, in two days), and listening to podcasts and theories after each drop made this show even more worthy of the appointment viewing label each Sunday. The star-studded cast lives up to the previous seasons’ ensembles, and the score kept me on edge in every scene. Watching depraved, egotistical tourists has never been so fun.
The Hunting Wives: Season 1 — What a wild show. The Hunting Wives takes a stab at the same drama/thriller genre as The White Lotus but veers toward guilty pleasure more than prestige TV with its soapy and gratuitous plot twists. The Netflix show follows Sophie and Graham, a New England family that moves to the Texas suburbs with their child. Sophie becomes part of a clique led by Graham’s boss’s wife, Margo Banks, and joins the women on hunting expeditions and lake house trips… only to become a leading suspect when a teenager is shot and killed in the woods. I could barely get the show out of my mind between episodes, and though I questioned some (okay, maybe most) of the show’s directions and choices, the chaos made for a great binge watch.
The Chair Company: Season 1 — Comedian Tim Robinson barely missed the cut in the movie category for his A24 movie Friendship, but his HBO Max show The Chair Company deserves enshrinement in my year-end “Best of 2025” list. The eight-episode cringe comedy series tags along with Robinson as Ron Trosper, an eccentric mall developer, as he investigates what he believes to be a widespread conspiracy when the chair he sits on in a presentation collapses under his weight. Trosper’s obsession threatens his career and family life and leads him to hilarious interactions and alliances with shady characters. The narrative toes the line between a serious investigation that could plausibly happen in real life and absurd comedy. Like Robinson’s previous work in SNL, the sketch show I Think You Should Leave and the comedy show Detroiters, the series dialogue is eminently quotable and each interaction could qualify as a social norm horror genre. The absurdity will not be for everyone and the ending is certainly unique, but this show was a fun watch and I still have the Red Ball Market Global jingle stuck in my head.
Severance: Season 2 — Full disclosure: I did not watch a ton of shows that came out specifically in 2025 (The Wire was a classic from the 2000s that captured some of my TV time), so my fifth spot has relative slim pickings. The contenders for this “honor” are the third season of The Summer I Turned Pretty, which I convinced my fiancee to start watching and then turned into a full-blown finale watching party by the end of the season, and Severance, a show that I do not really like but is an objectively well-made and interesting show. I’m giving Severance the nod over the hate watch of TSITP, because its plot and visuals are nothing short of incredible. The premise of the Apple TV show is that Mark S. is an employee at the mysterious and seemingly monotonous company Lumon, but what makes his job unique is that he is a “severed” worker who has a different consciousness when he is at his cubicle and when he leaves the office for the day, courtesy of an off-screen procedure in Season 1 and an elevator that toggles between Mark’s inner self and outer self. Season 1 leaves off on a cliffhanger, and Season 2 takes that start, adds more and more layers of intrigue and finally unspools the mystery at the heart of Lumon, the “Cold Harbor” project. I’ll begrudgingly admit that the finale was incredible (I hated the ending even if it was well-done and made narrative sense), but the ingenious premise and plot of the show makes it worth the watch, and I found the satirical examination of corporations to be dialed up to a perfect degree.
Honorable Mention: Pop Culture Jeopardy
Dishonorable Mention: The Summer I Turned Pretty
Movies
Wake Up, Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery — The third Knives Out installment was my most highly-anticipated movie of 2025, and I’m so glad I went to the theater to see it. Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) returns to the scene of the crime, but Josh O’Connor takes the lead as Father Jud, a former boxer turned priest who is assigned to a parish with a charismatic but vindictive leader (Josh Brolin), Reverend Wicks. Wicks is murdered during a service in what Blanc later considers to be an “impossible crime,” and the cult-like following Wicks has built casts blame on Father Jud. This sequel puts up a fight to be my favorite installment of the Knives Out trilogy: between the horror, comedic and mystery genre elements, Wake Up, Dead Man accomplishes everything it sets out to achieve. A winding and complex mystery moves the pace along quickly, but the main narrative doesn’t overpower deeper contemplations on religion, hatred and fear. Like any terrific mystery, the ending satisfies and pays homage not only to the Clue board (the main nod of the first movie) but to prominent titles of the mystery genre and the concept of the impossible murder. My favorite movie of 2025, by far.
F1: The Movie — F1 makes the podium as not only the best sports movie of the year, but one of the best of this century. I’m not going to make the conjecture that F1 is such a profound movie that it transcends the sports genre. It is unabashedly a sports movie, and its indulgence in the thrills of Formula One racing make the film an unprecedented achievement and simply exhilarating. Brad Pitt and Damson Idris are excellent as a pair of racers on an underwhelming Formula One team (one that races against real life racers and teams like Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton), and the dynamic’s evolution makes the story more interesting than just a parade through the sport’s most iconic courses. I attended the 4DX showing for this movie as well, which was a wild experience and probably the most ideal pairing of movie and format, but even based on the camera angles and sound effects, the action felt authentic to F1 — that the filmmakers were leaning into the sport, not trying to pass it off for the Hollywood screen by not leaning in too closely. This movie ranks highly among my movies to rewatch soon.
Sinners — This well-made vampire horror/survival flick by Black Panther director Ryan Coogler didn’t seem like my cup of tea when I first saw the trailers, but the movie surpassed all of my expectations and makes the top three. Michael B. Jordan plays twin gangster brothers who move back to Mississippi to open a juke joint near where they grew up, but a band of vampires, attracted by the joint’s music on its opening night, threaten to terrorize the establishment and its guests. The blood and guts obviously made the cut as a vampire movie, but I appreciated most the thriller and historical fiction elements to Coogler’s story and the originality of the movie. Maybe the greatest testament to this movie is that I endured the worst movie theater experience of my life with a rowdy crowd of teenagers in front of me and still associate the night more with the movie than with the tomfoolery.
The Naked Gun — From an Academy Awards favorite to the sequel of a movie that depicted the Academy Awards devolving into gunfire and mayhem. Liam Neeson starred in this reboot of the Naked Gun trilogy, and the film offers a similar premise to its predecessors — an established dramatic actor showcasing his deadpan comedy skills in a police procedural gone hilariously awry. I have never, ever laughed so hard in a theater as I did watching Neeson and Pamela Anderson meander around Los Angeles to spoil a terrorist plot. The film feels like a rightful heir to the ZAZ throne that once featured Airplane!, the Naked Guns and Top Secret and marked a rare triumph in the box office for the neglected comedy genre. Naked Gun is certainly silly and far from reality, but it absolutely met my expectations and surpassed early leader Friendship as the most sidesplitting movie of the year.
One Battle After Another — Leonardo DiCaprio plays a father who is on the run and hiding with/looking for his daughter years after contributing to the French 75 revolutionary group, while Sean Penn steals the show as a corrupt military officer who has made it his life’s mission to track both of them down and have them answer for their crimes. The story alternates tense, theater armrest-gripping action sequences with comedic stretches of paranoia and dysfunction from DiCaprio and tender moments between family members, bringing each together to form a cohesive story that evokes all sorts of emotions. Based on the book Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, the movie flourishes under Paul Thomas Anderson’s direction and has rightfully established itself as a Best Picture contender at the next Academy Awards.
Honorable Mentions: Friendship, Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning, Now You See Me 3, The Materialists
Dishonorable Mentions: Him
Riker's Block 