CAPC’s Favorite Films of 2025 – Christ and Pop Culture

Over the last few months, the CAPC team has compiled a list of our favorite pop culture artifacts from the previous year. Unlike most year-end lists, we don’t claim that these are the “best.” Rather, these are the things that brought us the most joy and satisfaction throughout the last 12 months.

For 2025, our favorite films include the latest from Iran’s greatest living director, a meditative look at one man’s life, a priestly murder mystery, and something about K-Pop and demon hunters.

Eephus by Carson Lund

The premise is simple: baseball. Alright, to give a more detailed synopsis, Eephus is about a group of men playing one final rec league game of baseball before their local field is torn down. The film’s confines are limited almost completely to the boundaries of the field and the game. We see the players arrive and warm up, we watch them play, and we see them venture off after the light grows too dim to keep going.

Eephus has perhaps the smallest stakes of any movie on this list, but its themes are weighty. We are inherently social creatures, seeking out and stitching together community wherever we can. But community can be a tenuous thing once a uniting thread is cut. Our social institutions large and small are vital for our communal flourishing, but those institutions seem to be increasingly dying out. Looking beyond just community, Eephus also considers our relationship to the things we love: the spaces, the activities, the oddities. For we are also creatures who treasure things, sometimes things that have little meaning to others. Like a patchy, run down baseball field. Or our favorite glove worn thin from years of use. Or the ability to play a game like baseball, to imbue this objectively insignificant activity with substance. So what do we do when the things we love finally fade? How do we treasure them in their last light?

In this way, Eephus becomes a contemplation of devotion. It’s about community, about mourning, about our reluctance to move on, about the ephemeral things that bring us into relationship with one another. And, at the end of the day, it’s also just a baseball game.

—Micah Rickard

Frankenstein by Guillermo del Toro

Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic work proved to be a massive hit for Netflix, quickly becoming one of the ten most-streamed movies of the year despite only being released in November. Some highlights of this new film include some breathtaking visuals and a rather gripping performance from Oscar Isaac.

Thematically, the film made some unusual and significant departures from Shelley’s work, stripping away many of the monster’s corrupt and spiteful qualities to transform the story into a more simplistic tale of an evil creator fighting a good creation. While in line with del Toro’s previous work and tendencies to humanize monsters, Shelley’s work painted the monster with significantly more nuance. These themes may become more troubling when considering how Shelley’s original work analogized the creator and monster’s relationship to God and man, though del Toro shied away from making these comparisons as directly.

Its cultural popularity may point to the attractiveness of simple oppressed vs. oppressor story lines, even when they lack the complications of many real world dynamics.

—Josiah DeGraaf

It Was Just an Accident by Jafar Panahi

Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident is my favorite film from 2025. It confronts us with uncomfortable questions and moral quandaries that it knows it can’t solve. But maybe something like grace and justice will shine through as we wrestle with those questions.

The Iranian film follows Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), a man who was previously imprisoned and tortured by the government for protesting missing wages. Now, he’s just trying to move on with his life despite the chronic back pain that serves as a constant reminder and a continuing wound of his suffering. But the past won’t leave him alone. One day he thinks he recognizes one of his captors, not by his face (Vahid’s head was covered during his torture) but by the squeak of the man’s prosthetic leg. 

Being thrown back into his trauma panics Vahid, and he acts rashly, kidnapping the man and threatening to bury him alive in the desert as retribution. As the man pleads innocence, however, Vahid’s vengeance is obstructed by indecision. What if he’s got the wrong guy? Thus begins a road movie, as Vahid tracks down other victims with the goal of verifying that this is indeed their torturer. While filled with a moral tension, It Was Just an Accident is also a surprisingly funny film, with absurd images and situations often arising out of Vahid’s innate goodness.

Panahi’s film is about resisting evil and trying to rebuild a life after. It’s about the personal deformation that results from societal injustice. It’s about mercy and the uncertain consequences that follow. It’s gripping, probing, self-aware, and vital.

—Micah Rickard

Kpop Demon Hunters by Chris Appelhans and Maggie Kang

When Netflix released the animated musical KPop Demon Hunters in June, no one was expecting it to turn into a global cultural juggernaut. Within a few short months, though, it became the most-watched film in Netflix history, surpassing 500 million views before year’s end. The movie inspired six of the year’s top ten trending Halloween costumes, reshaped Korea’s tourism map, and received numerous awards and nominations. The related music album broke major records, including becoming the first soundtrack to have four songs on the Billboard Hot 100 Top 10. It’s no wonder KPop Demon Hunters was named TIME’s 2025 Breakthrough of the Year.

The film’s success is due in large part to the enormous popularity of its songs, but the animation style and thematically rich storyline no doubt contributed. In fact, the script’s exploration of sin and shame, as well as the nature of idolatry, resonate with eternal truths that speak to our need for redemption. Here’s hoping the sequel, slated for a 2029 release, proves a worthy successor to the original.

—Cap Stewart

The Mastermind by Kelly Reichardt

It’s the first breath of the 1970s, and America is raging. As the Vietnam War continues, countless young men are pulled away from their families and friends and forced into service, while countless others embrace the counterculture in campus protests and on the open road. None of that really affects reality for JB Mooney (Josh O’Connor), though. He has his own dreams that begin with stealing a few Arthur Dove paintings from his local museum. As for what comes after the art heist, well… JB might not have thought that far ahead. 

O’Connor gives a sly, self-critical performance (in fact, he’s proving particularly adept at such portrayals) that casts JB as a charming schemer who, underneath it all, is lost in his own self-centeredness. His indifference to current events runs deeper than just his planning—he can’t be bothered by them, and he’d rather not be bothered by his family, or by the law. He’d rather just insist on his own reality.

Kelly Reichardt has crafted another indie film that offers much to consider underneath its apparent simplicity. In the heist’s aftermath, The Mastermind opens up to consider the effects of JB’s solipsism amid the cacophony of 1970s America. The film is by turns playful and contemplative, humorous and insightful. It doesn’t make its themes obvious or explicit, instead allowing the audience to simply exist in its cozy world. But there’s a lot to chew on for those who don’t want to stop thinking about it after the credits roll.

—Micah Rickard

Superman by James Gunn and The Fantastic Four: First Steps by Matt Shakman

The release of both films in short succession this July forms a fascinating case study in our culture’s increasing desire for earnest heroes. In a move away from the tongue-in-cheek nature of past successful superhero films, these protagonists offered a more traditional approach, whether in the cheesy “boy scout” nature of Superman or the relative lack of quips from Marvel’s first family. This retro approach was particularly present in Marvel’s marketing for Fantastic Four, which leaned heavily into its ’60s aesthetic.

Despite the non-equivocally heroic nature of these protagonists, all of them faced pushback in their stories from a world that didn’t quite understand them. Their triumph over such pragmatic cynicism may be read as meta-commentary on a new vision for superheroes that both major comic book film studios are currently leaning into. While both films provided average box office performances, their positive reviews point to audience interest in this kind of approach. Earnestness holds the day over DC’s past grit and Marvel’s past quips, at least for now.

—Josiah DeGraaf

Train Dreams by Clint Bentley

Amid wars and rumors of wars, 2025 was a loud year, and 2026 will probably be just as deafening. Movies can provide invigorating calls to hold fast to hope, but we also need movies to offer calm spaces for reflection. That’s what Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams gives us.

Train Dreams watches the life of Robert Grainier, a fictional, unheralded man who worked as a logger in the Pacific Northwest throughout the early twentieth century. Bentley’s film prioritizes poetic narration over dialogue and arresting imagery over plot mechanics. Grainier works. He loves. He grieves. He wrongs. He watches. He regrets. He dies. And we are invited to journey with him, to witness the profundity of his small life.

But description can’t do justice to what Train Dreams achieves. The experience of the film is received first as a chance to breathe, to slow down from our hectic pace of life. It then becomes an expression and reminder of the aching beauty of the world around us, even as that beauty is constantly fading like the grass. As it unfolds, it becomes a contemplation of heartache and survival, and an exhortation to live with wonder, attentiveness, and care.

—Micah Rickard

Wake Up Dead Man by Rian Johnson

Many viewers have called the third installment in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out franchise the best of the three. While I wouldn’t go quite that far—I think the mystery plot in the first film was tighter and better structured—I’d nonetheless agree that Wake Up Dead Man is special. Along with Johnson’s trademark quirky characters and sharp social commentary, we get a gripping—and timely—conflict between two very different versions of Christianity.

The contrast between the arrogant Monsignor Wicks (Josh Brolin) and the compassionate Father Jud (Josh O’Connor) is woven seamlessly and beautifully into the film, but the most powerful moment is the one that stops the story cold. It’s the moment when Father Jud drops everything to listen to, and pray with, a woman in need. “It is the turning point of the film,” as Kristin Du Mez puts it. “More than a plot twist, it changes the film from one thing into something else entirely.” As the detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) reminds everyone more than once as the plot unfolds, stories matter, and Johnson correctly sensed that what our culturally and politically fraught moment truly needs is a story about the love at the heart of faith.

—Gina Dalfonzo

Wicked: For Good by Jon M. Chu

If you have a daughter in elementary school, then Wicked: For Good has probably been on your radar. My fourth-grades has been singing Ariana Grande’s version of “Popular” nonstop since the first Wicked film came out two years ago, so yes—this sequel was highly anticipated in our house. (Glinda energy’s everywhere: “Toss Toss,” quoted with a hair sway, is frequently quipped in our house.)

What I loved about For Good, especially as a mom, was that it ultimately centered not on romance or spectacle but on friendship. In a pop culture world that often treats female friendship as disposable—or as mere “girl drama”—Wicked insists on something better: friendship can be formative, life-altering, and even make us holy.

In the Christian imagination, friendship is never simply social. It’s vocational. Jesus called his disciples friends, and those friendships helped change the world. God forms us through the people who challenge us, love us, and change us—sometimes even against our will. That’s why the lyric that’s become a household refrain for us—“Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better?”—hits so deeply. When we are in reciprocal relationship, we really can say we’ve been changed for the better.

And that’s what this story does so well. Elphaba and Glinda’s friendship is the point; it’s not a subplot to some seemingly more “important” story. Their love carries moral weight, and their goodbyes—and their willingness to sacrifice for one another—are genuinely moving. (Yes, I cried.) And in classic Oz fashion, it’s also a reminder that the world is very good at labeling women “wicked” when they refuse to be convenient.

I left the theater grateful, not only for the music and spectacle, but also for the message my daughter is absorbing along the way: that being good isn’t the same as being liked, and that friendship can form you “for good” in the truest sense. Also, I regret to inform you that once again, the soundtrack has overtaken our kitchen, our school car line, and probably both my daughter’s and my entire personality until further notice.

—LuElla D’Amico