The Best Films of 2025

HBO's Game of Thrones is back with yet another spinoff, this time based on George R.R. Martin's Dunk and Egg novellas. A departure from the palace intrigue and massive scale of both Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms digs into more lighthearted slice-of-life drama, at least until its explosive climax. We discuss the short first season, its pitch-perfect casting, and its memorable roster of Westerosi characters.

Gore Verbinski returns with his first film in nine years with his time travel comedy "anthology" film: Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die. This time around, he tries his hand at satire and topicality — a movie about our obsession with screens, our inability to cope with tragedy-filled modernity, and the encroaching threat of AI. Is he successful? Tune in and find out.

2026 has blessed us with a new Sam Raimi original in the form of Send Help, a deserted island survival thriller. Do Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien have what it takes to return Raimi to his roots? After years in the IP game — Oz, Doctor Strange — has the Drag Me to Hell and Evil Dead mastermind retained his horror chops?

Keeping with tradition, we follow up our best of 2025 episode with its natural companion: our episode on the most anticipated films of 2026. After an odd 2025 where many of our most exciting picks turned out to fall short of expectations, we can only hope that 2026 might fare better. Indie gems, huge blockbusters in Nolan's The Odyssey and Dune: Messiah, and other new projects from beloved auteurs, 2026 is shaping up to pack quite a punch. Tune in and find out our individual picks!

Hot off a placement of 28 Years Later on all of our 2025 top ten lists last week, its sequel — The Bone Temple — has quite large shoes to fill. Can Nia Dacosta capture the same humanist magic of one of last year's best movies? We discuss the villainous Jimmies, Ralph Fiennes continuing barn burner performance as Dr. Kelson, and yet another surprising ending in the 28 franchise.

It's that time of year again. We're counting down Derek, Jeff, and Amir's favorite movies of last year. 2025 was a year of great movies but also a year of crushing disappointments: many films we were looking forward to the most fizzled out. Fortunately that makes room for plenty of big surprises and dark horses in our top ten lists. What made the cut? What were some of the honorable mentions? Tune in and find out!

For our first TV review of 2026, we discuss Vince Gilligan's Apple TV smash hit, Pluribus, which just wrapped its first season on Christmas Eve of last year. We dive deep into Gilligan's illustrious pedigree, the state of streaming and TV, and the many ways in which Pluribus is bucking convention.

Happy New Year from The Strange Harbors Podcast! For the first episode of 2026, we review Josh Safdie's Marty Supreme, a 1950s sports comedy-drama in the world of professional table tennis. We discuss Timothée Chalamet's barn burner performance, his Marty Mauser marketing persona, and what makes a Safdie movie a Safdie movie. Is Marty Supreme just Uncut Gems or Good Time with $50 million tacked onto its budget? Or is there much, much more under the hood?

The Strange Harbors Podcast returns to Pandora as we review the third installment of the mega-blockbuster sci-fi epic, Avatar. We once again catch up with the Sully clan in their quest to liberate their world from human colonization, this time with the added wrinkle of a new Na'vi threat. The gang is all here: Jake, Neytiri, their kids, Quaritch, and our boy Payakan, but is Fire and Ash a worthy successor to The Way of Water? Or is it just treading the Pandoran seas? Tune in and find out.

This week, we review the third film in the whodunnit series of Benoit Blanc mysteries: Wake Up Dead Man. After Knives Out and Glass Onion, director Rian Johnson returns to the reins of his favorite genre. We discuss the franchise's increasingly charismatic roster of secondary protagonists, the year of Josh O'Connor, and whether or not Johnson's penchant for heavy-handed topicality once again derails a Benoit Blanc tale.