As 2025 comes to a close, it’s a great time to look back at all of the great movies that were released throughout the year. Netflix may not have had as strong a year as Warner Bros. or Disney, but the service did manage to release several great movies that are worth talking about and revisiting. While there may have been a lot of Netflix films that you skipped this year, there are at least 10 good ones that deserve a look.
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So here you’ll find the 10 best movies released on Netflix in 2025, ranked from tenth to first. This is obviously just one person’s opinion and isn’t based on viewership or overall reviews. But I watch a lot of movies and spend most of my time at work writing about streaming, and these are the Netflix films in 2025 I believe we should spend more time talking about.
10. Nonnas
This one snuck under a lot of people’s radars, but it makes the list because it is such a joy to watch. A warm hug in movie form, one that’s easily accessible and endlessly rewatchable.
Nonnas, based on the true story of a man who owns an Italian restaurant and employs real grandmothers as the chefs, is a showcase not only for the comfortable adult dramadies that we desperately need more of, but also the power that earnestness can provide a film. This is the most sincere Vince Vaughn has been in years (maybe ever), and his supporting cast of “nonnas” is excellent. Susan Sarandon, Lorraine Bracco, Talia Shire, and Brenda Vaccaro shine in every scene of this movie.
9. The Thursday Murder Club
Speaking of great casts, The Thursday Murder Club has one of the best core ensembles of any Netflix movie this year. Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie make for a fantastic foursome of golden sleuths, and they’re supported by some truly phenomenal turns from Tom Ellis, Naomi Ackie, and David Tennant.
Directed by Home Alone‘s Chris Columbus, and based on the book by Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club follows a group of retirees who form a club to solve cold cases, only to stumble into a current mystery.
8. Ballad of a Small Player
While the first two movies on this list focused on ensemble casts, Ballad of a Small Player makes the Top 10 because of a single performance. If you like Colin Farrell, you’re going to want to watch this.
Farrell and Conclave director Edward Berger team up for a frantic and frenzied dark comedy about a debt-riddled gambler trying to run from the truth of his past. It’s a little over the place, but you’d be hard-pressed to call Ballad of a Small Player boring, and Farrell brings that “silly, but with a deadly edge” kind of energy that he has perfected over the years. This may not be for everybody, but Farrell’s performance makes it more than worth it.
7. Steve
Another movie anchored by a great performance, Steve is absolute showcase for Cillian Murphy. Fresh off winning his Oscar for Oppenheimer, Murphy stars in Steve as a teacher at a reform school trying to balance the needs of his students with his own instability.
The film surrounding Murphy in Steve is much stronger all-around than what Farrell has in Ballad of a Small Player, and it’s less of an acquired taste. It’s sharp, focused, and it packs a punch when you aren’t quite expecting it.
6. Jay Kelly
The latest film from Noah Baumbach put two absolute legends of the screen opposite one another for most of its runtime, and the fireworks are exactly as magical as you’d expect. George Clooney is still one of the most interesting leading men we’ve ever seen in Hollywood, and Adam Sandler continues to prove that he’s far more than the comedian we all grew up watching. While Clooney plays the titular Jay, it’s honestly Sandler that steals the show.
Jay Kelly is a deeply funny but thoroughly heartbreaking exploration of what a life well lived really looks (and doesn’t look) like. The ending packs an absolute wallop, so be prepared to end on a reflective, melancholy note.
5. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
It would be shocking if a new Wallace & Gromit movie — featuring the decades-in-the-making return of iconic cartoon villain Feathers McGraw — wasn’t totally great. This is one series that has yet to let us down, and the folks at Aardman Animation didn’t start here.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl doesn’t quite hit the highs of something like Curse of the Were-Rabbit, but that’s an impossibly high bar. This hilarious movie deals with our reliance on technology and how deep friendships face challenges over the years, bringing forth a well-rounded picture that stacks up against just about any other animated feature this year.
4. Train Dreams
Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar’s latest collaboration has been making “Best Of” lists left and right, and for good reason. Train Dreams, inspired heavily by Terrence Malick, is a dramatic and thoughtful journey through the entirety of one man’s life.
Joel Edgerton gives the performance of a lifetime as a man who settles down and starts a family out in Idaho, and spends much of his life working for the rail company. This is a beautiful movie, both in its picture and its soul, and reflects one of the truest American stories we’ve had in years.
3. Frankenstein
Guillermo del Toro is one of the best and most original filmmakers alive, and he has spent years telling anyone who would listen that the original Frankenstein is his favorite movie. The fingerprints of Mary Shelley’s haunting tale are all over the fabric of every movie GDT has directed throughout his career. He finally got the money to bring his own version of the story to life, and we should all be grateful Netflix was willing to shell out for it.
This is as deeply del Toro a movie as you’ll see. It’s a gothic romance (like of all of GDT’s best stories) that leans more into the emotions of the destined-to-fail love story at its center, rather than the horrors that come from making a “monster.” And like every great Frankenstein adaptation, the film makes sure there’s no mistaking who the real monsters are.
2. KPop Demon Hunters
This is the biggest movie in Netflix history for a good reason. Unlike previous Netflix record-holders, like Red One or Bird Box, KPop Demon Hunters absolutely earns its spot. It’s honestly hard to think about something ever beating the numbers that Demon Hunters has pulled in.
We’re sitting here in December and not a day has gone by since KPop Demon Hunters premiered that the movie hasn’t occupied a space on the Netflix Top 10 Movies list. The film was released in June. Every day for six straight months, Sony’s animated hit has been one of the biggest movies on Netflix. Let that sink in for a minute.
It’s one thing to be popular, but KPop Demon Hunters backs it up with a level of quality you might not expect when you glance at the poster on the Netflix home page. The animation, like so many other recent Sony Animation projects, is out of this world. It takes all of 3 minutes to fall in love with the trio of characters at the center of Demon Hunters and you’ll be singing their songs long after the movie ends.
1. Wake Up Dead Man
Whenever Rian Johnson releases a movie, there’s a good chance that movie is going to be one of the best of that year. Wake Up Dead Man, the third installment in his Knives Out whodunit franchise, is possibly the best of the series so far.
A little more serious than the two previous installments, Wake Up Dead Man sees Benoit Blanc tackle the case of a dead priest in a Catholic church, and it feels like the truest murder mystery of the bunch. Daniel Craig is back to lead yet another all-star cast, this one including Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Chile Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, Thomas Haden Church, and Jeffrey Wright.
If you’re going to watch one Netflix movie before 2025 comes to a close, it should be Wake Up Dead Man. That said, you can’t go wrong with any of the titles on this list — just do yourself a favor and pass on The Electric State.
What was your favorite Netflix movie this year? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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Official art by Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme -
A photo of the Retrovolt Arcade taken in 2017, showing several classic arcade cabinets and stools.
