Continuing my countdown of last year’s best films…

Best Films of 2025
#6. Eddington

Writer/director Ari Aster’s Eddington is the first film to tackle the insanity of America in 2020 — that discombobulating period when anti-COVID measures collided with the post-George Floyd social justice movement. The movie interrogates both sides of a country divided right down the middle and does so with humor, smarts, and a healthy dose of cynicism.

Some liberals disliked the film because it pokes fun at young social justice warriors and those who were overly cautious about COVID. But to the extent that Eddington takes sides, I see the more biting satire aimed at the right. This is a movie in which a planeload of heavily armed ANTIFA crisis actors descend on the town like something out of a Fox News fever dream.

Ultimately, Eddington isn’t about left vs. right, but rather the layer of rich, powerful, corrupt capitalists who sit above all the nonsense and pull everyone’s strings. One character has fallen under the thrall of a literal cult leader, but the whole town has been seduced by the prospect of a new data center.

The film opens and closes with shots of the data center site, as if to suggest that all of the chaos and violence in between was simply a distraction to make sure that site was developed.

As distractions go, the central plot, in which sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) faces off against mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) for control of Eddington’s future, is a riveting one. Both actors are in peak form, and the story takes them to fascinating, disturbing places. Phoenix, in particular, thrives on playing morally questionable creeps you root for until you can’t anymore.

Eddington was last year’s ballsiest film and its most thought-provoking. Those qualities, along with Aster’s mastery of tone and fluid camerawork, put it on this list. It gets bonus points for also being damn funny. As a time capsule of one of America’s most surreal periods, we could do a lot worse.