From big-swing studio comedies to prickly indies and urgent documentaries, 2025 has been a ride. Using Esquire’s mid-year list as our compass, here are the films that have sparked the loudest laughs, fiercest debates, and most memorable performances so far.
The Naked Gun
Akiva Schaffer revives the spoof franchise with Liam Neeson gamely deadpan—and yes, the joke density and timing actually land. A rare modern studio comedy that’s genuinely silly and sharp.
Eddington
Ari Aster turns the chaos of 2020 into a genre blender part satire, part conspiracy thriller, part action, aimed squarely at our internet-poisoned brains. Polarizing, but intentionally.
28 Years Later
Danny Boyle and Alex Garland reunite for a ferocious, tightly wound zombie chapter that doubles as a bracing Brexit allegory.
Sorry, Baby
Eva Victor’s debut balances humor with the lingering fog of trauma, anchored by a performance that’s awkward, warm, and quietly devastating.
Life After
Reid Davenport’s doc interrogates the “right to die” debate through the story of Elizabeth Bouvia probing care, dignity, and societal neglect with uncommon rigor.
No Sleep Till
A hushed, coastal Florida pre-hurricane mood piece from Alexandra Simpson—more atmosphere than spectacle, and that’s the point.
Friendship
The Shrouds 
Cronenberg channels grief into tech-horror (hello, GraveTech), mixing macabre humor with spiraling paranoia—Vincent Cassel is perfectly Cronenbergian.
Vulcanizadora 
Joel Potrykus’s “loser men in the woods” entry is raw, bleakly funny, and unexpectedly empathetic about screw-ups circling their pasts.
Sinners
Ryan Coogler swings for the fences with Michael B. Jordan in dual roles, using genre fireworks to talk race, power, and performance in Jim Crow Mississippi.
Pavements
Alex Ross Perry’s doc refuses hagiography—staging musicals, fake biopics, and a pop-up museum—to capture the contradictions of indie icons Pavement.
Invention
Courtney Stephens and Callie Hernandez craft a micro-budget grief mystery about a dubious “healing device,” where mourning drifts into magical thinking.
Familiar Touch
A dementia drama made tender and specific by Kathleen Chalfant and H. Jon Benjamin; Sarah Friedland keeps it gentle, lived-in, and humane.
The Phoenician Scheme
Wes Anderson—meticulous as ever—delivers a violent, religiously tinged 1950s caper with Benicio del Toro at its center.
April
Dea Kulumbegashvili’s haunting hospital drama follows a Georgian OB-GYN performing underground abortions; the mood lingers long after.
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning
A messy sprawl up front—then a finale of stunt insanity that reminds you why Tom Cruise keeps pushing the form.
Eephus
A last rec-league baseball game becomes a meditation on time, community, and small rituals. Quietly, beautifully observed.
Hard Truths
Mike Leigh returns with a volcanic Marianne Jean-Baptiste—fury, sorrow, and dark humor folded into a family study you won’t shake.
Mickey 17
Bong Joon-ho’s absurd sci-fi comedy riffs on power and disposability as two versions of Robert Pattinson’s “Expendable” vie to survive.
Misericordia
Alain Guiraudie’s genre-slippery, very French curio: horny, noir-ish, and gloriously uncategorizable—if you surrender to its wavelength.
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
Rungano Nyoni unspools a Zambian family’s buried abuse with restraint and cultural specificity, denying easy catharsis.
One to One: John & Yoko
Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards chart Lennon and Ono’s activist New York era toward a 1972 MSG benefit—less “new facts,” more electric presence.
Presence
Soderbergh’s ghost-POV house story is really a crackling family drama in disguise—clever formal play, sticky dynamics.
Universal Language
Matthew Rankin’s Winnipeg—brutalist, beige, Persian-speaking, and tenderly absurd—becomes a hymn to everyday solidarity.
Warfare
Alex Garland and veteran Ray Mendoza recreate a 2006 Ramadi battle with bone-rattling sound design and sobering focus on trauma.
If 2025 keeps this pace, the year’s back half could be even wilder—awards voters will have a headache (the good kind). Which of these are you covering next on your site—deep dives, box office trackers, or spoiler-free reviews?