The year in cinema: 2025’s unforgettable films

2025 has been a remarkable year for movie fans, keeping everyone on their toes. With Netflix taking over Warner Bros, and the cinema experience feeling increasingly fragile, it’s more important than ever to celebrate the culture of film. From layered vampire blockbusters to retellings of film history, this year has delivered a rich mix of movies from both veteran voices and exciting newcomers. Here are some standout picks from 2025’s credit roll.

Sorry, Baby

Sorry, Baby marks a confident and quietly assured debut from Eva Victor. Funny, fractured, and often uncomfortable, the film follows a young college professor living in the long aftermath of a traumatic event. Rather than building toward resolution, it stays with the mess of it all. Victor knows when to hold back. Much of the film’s power comes from what’s left off-screen, aided by sound design that lets conversations trail in from other rooms or end before they feel complete. Comparisons to Phoebe Waller-Bridge are inevitable, but Sorry, Baby is less interested in cleverness than in lingering discomfort. Supported by strong turns from Naomi Ackie and Lucas Hedges, the film announces Victor as a filmmaker who understands timing and when to let silence do the work.

Sinners

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners refuses to sit still. Part historical drama, part vampire film, part musical, it approaches genre as a cultural language rather than a formula. Set in the Jim Crow–era South, the film reframes the blues as a form of survival and spellwork, drawing on Black histories while fully embracing spectacle. Michael B. Jordan delivers a commanding dual performance as twin brothers, anchoring the film even as it spirals outward. Vampirism becomes a metaphor rather than a gimmick, staging questions of assimilation, freedom, and cultural survival through spectacle that is often deliberately too much. The film is overambitious at times, but that overreach is also the point. Sinners isn’t interested in restraint; it’s interested in legacy, and what it costs to keep it intact.

Sentimental Value

Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value is a quiet, aching study of family and generational trauma. Working again with co-writer Eskil Vogt and star Renate Reinsve, Trier spins a morality tale about a once-prominent director attempting a comeback, and the tensions that arise when he offers a role to his daughter, played by Reinsve, before casting an American star instead. The film is set in their real family house, grounding the drama in a vivid, lived-in world. Reinsve carries the film with understated precision, while Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, who plays the sister Agnes, delivers a breakthrough turn, capturing the push and pull of filial frustration and unspoken resentment. At the same time, the story reflects on how storytelling can both mask hurt and open a path to understanding. Sentimental Value rewards repeated viewing, leaving the audience moved and deeply reflective.

No Other Choice

Park Chan-wook turns Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 novel into a pitch-black comedy that is as horrifying as it is laugh-out-loud. Lee Byung-hun stars as a long-serving paper-company manager in Seoul whose middle-class life unravels after being laid off. With family obligations mounting and no other jobs in sight, he turns to murder as a practical solution. The film balances slapstick and satire, skewering the mercenary realities of the job market, the pressures of late capitalism, and the absurdity of performing oneself to survive. Park’s touch ensures the chaos is never cold: he cares deeply for his hapless anti-hero, using gory, imaginative set pieces to ask questions about pride and survival. No Other Choice is bleak yet darkly funny. A perfectly twisted morality tale for our times.

Nouvelle Vague

Nouvelle Vague is a love letter to the French New Wave, full of careful observation and sly humour. Richard Linklater stages the making of Breathless like a time-capsule diary, letting the chaos and improvisation of 1960s Paris spill into every frame. Guillaume Marbeck embodies Godard as a quote-spouting, charming enfant terrible, while Zoey Deutch captures Seberg’s transformation from sceptic to believer. Aubry Dullin’s Jean-Paul Belmondo is a big, goofy grin of a tribute, and the cameos of Cahiers du Cinéma legends feel like assembling superheroes for cinephiles. Linklater doesn’t just recreate history; he inhabits it, making every shot feel lived-in and alive. For anyone who loves movies, the film is a joyous, intimate ride through a pivotal moment in cinema.

It Was Just An Accident

Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident was made under the shadow of Iran’s censorship, yet it brims with humour and moral tension. Vahid Mobasseri stars as Vahid, a mechanic who thinks he recognises the voice of the guard who tortured him as a political prisoner. Unable to be certain, he abducts the man and drives around Tehran, enlisting other ex-prisoners to confirm the identity. Panahi turns a dark premise into a tightly scripted misadventure that balances suspense, absurdity, and social commentary. The film unfolds like a cross between Lady Vengeance and Taxi, moving through trauma, vengeance, and the tangled memories of those who survived. Every frame feels lived-in, full of the small, unsettling details that make Vahid’s story real. Panahi balances the darkness with moments of humour and insight, so that even in its tense, often grim situations, the film never loses its sense of humanity. It’s a Palme d’Or-winning moral thriller that asks difficult questions about justice and memory, about how the past lingers, and about what it takes to live with it.

Black Bag

Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag begins as a spy story and slowly reveals itself as something more intimate. Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett play married intelligence agents whose professional lives start bleeding into their private one, until suspicion becomes impossible to contain. When George is asked to uncover a leak inside his unit, the investigation leads uncomfortably close to home. What follows isn’t about gadgets or global stakes so much as control, desire, and the quiet negotiations of marriage. Dinner scenes carry as much tension as interrogations. Glances linger longer than they should. Soderbergh keeps the film light on its feet, letting dialogue and performance do the heavy lifting. Fassbender and Blanchett circle each other with precision, aware that love and power rarely sit apart. Black Bag never rushes to explain itself, and in doing so, makes every move count.

The Mastermind

It’s been a strong year for Josh O’Connor, but his most interesting work arrives in Kelly Reichardt’s 1970s-set art heist film, where confidence slowly reveals itself as self-delusion. O’Connor plays James, a carpenter who fancies himself sharper than he is, and Reichardt follows his half-baked museum robbery as it unravels into something quietly damning. The farther James gets from the crime, the more obvious it becomes that he’s sabotaged by his own misplaced certainty. Reichardt, long attuned to people living just beyond their depth, lets the film drift rather than escalate, allowing the irony to settle in on its own terms. O’Connor leans into the character’s blindness, turning his easy charm against him. The final turn doesn’t shock so much as confirm what’s been there all along: a reckoning you only miss if you weren’t paying attention.

Homebound

It takes so long for big studios to pick up stories that have been relevant forever, which makes it all the more striking when one finally does. Homebound, based on a New York Times essay by Basharat Peer, worked closely with its journalist source to tell a story that India(BHARAT)n audiences should not miss. Beautifully shot and featuring Ishaan Khatter at his best, this Martin Scorsese-produced Bollywood drama has a Big Movie sheen but remains approachable. Neeraj Ghaywan, who impressed with Masaan, embeds a deep male friendship within the muddy waters of caste and religion: Chandan (Vishal Jethwa) is Dalit, Mohammed (Khatter) is Muslim. The film doesn’t flinch in showing the systemic injustices and subtle violence of casteism and Islamophobia, and yet, the two friends brim with joy, teasing each other, sitting by the water, dreaming about their futures. Then the pandemic hits, and the film’s quiet heartbreak lands hard.

One Battle After Another

One Battle After Another feels loose in the way only Paul Thomas Anderson movies can: funny, jumpy, occasionally chaotic, but never careless. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Bob Ferguson as a man who once believed in everything and now isn’t sure what’s left to hold on to. He’s ridiculous and oddly moving, especially opposite Chase Infiniti as his daughter, whose presence quietly grounds the film. Inspired by Vineland but rooted firmly in the present, Anderson looks at what happens when belief ages or softens. At times, it’s not always clear whether the film’s sprawl is a political strategy or just Anderson indulging his freedom. The film keeps circling a simple idea: that revolution isn’t something you finish, it’s something you keep choosing.