There was a strong box office earning in 2025, thanks to sequels like Zootopia 2 and Avatar: Fire and Ash, as well as, original horror IPs like Weapons and Sinners. The use of AI in moviemaking was also hotly debated. In 2024, The Brutalist utilised the AI tool Respeecher to improve Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones’ Hungarian dialogue and in 2025, the Russo Brothers—they of the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday flick—used “AI for voice modulation” in The Electric State. The discourse over the use of AI in films rages on as major movie studios are hellbent on maintaining or elevating quality while lowering production course (ie, cutting down on human labour).
The year 2025 also saw a near-monopolisation of movie and TV content courtesy of Netflix's proposed acquisition of Warner Bros Studios. Industry figures, lawmakers and critics bemoan that the merger with the streaming giant could incur job losses, reduce creative control and affect the future of movie theatres. It is the latter that I'm more concerned with, having seen The Projector shutter its doors due to rising rents and operational costs and consumer preference towards streaming.
But the movies beckon. Whether it be in a darkened room with other strangers or during lunchtime in front of the laptop monitor, you're lost in the spectacle. Many entertained, others grappled with themes about power and the cost of obsession (a reflection of our current climate?). Regardless, these seek to remind us that cinema still matter, not only as a distraction but as a space where our complicated reality is filtered through light and sound. Here are the films of 2025 that were unforgettable.
Paul Thomas Anderson is never one to take the easy way out. He was inspired by Thomas Pynchon's V, Anderson made The Master and adapted Pynchon's Inherent Vice—a book that was deemed "unfilmable"—for the big screen. Anderson took inspiration from another Pynchon book, Vineland, to tell a story about Pat Calhoun (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) an ex-revolutionary who is forced back into his former combative lifestyle when he and his daughter (Chase Infiniti) are pursued by a corrupt military officer (Sean Penn).
One Battle After Another is about the conflicts that never end; with victories only setting up the next struggle. The cast handled their role beautifully, especially a burnt-out Calhoun, who is trying to do right by his daughter in spite of his own personal failings. There's also a chase scene, unlike any other, that takes place across desert hills. Keeping to the pursuer's POV, we don't see the road ahead until we have crested the top. Like the characters, the viewers won't know what's ahead.
It's good to see director Park Chan-wook at the helm of another feature. This time, he takes on Donald Westlake's The Ax, where Man-su (played with aplomb by Lee Byung-hun) has to take out his competition to be assured of the job he seeks.
It's a thriller that makes you feel the cost of every decision. In No Other Choice, characters are forced to reckon with a world where survival might compromise one's morality. Can you take another life to ensure you maintain your own way of life? Every camera movement, cut, and score cue reinforces tension without over-explaining it and with a runtime of 139 minutes, it doesn't feel sluggish.
Oh, and the performances anchor the experience. You have a cast of fully-realised characters, each mired in their own ethical dilemma and then, you realised that you recognised yourself in them. Someone whose choices might mirror your own hidden impulses.
Ryan Coogler understood that genre is a language, which makes him a polyglot. With Sinners, Coogler tackles the horror genre by working in the dread, while espousing social commentary of being an Other in white America.
Working once again with Michael B Jordan (who plays twins) and composer Ludwig Göransson, Sinners displays Coogler's masterful visual storytelling. Sure there's the threat of vampires but what looms larger, the pervasive stink of racism, is ever-lurking; the supernatural doesn't cut as deep as cultural erasure.
And the music. Göransson hits it home with the soundtrack. Much of the music was composed and recorded directly on set with the cast, which added a stronger connection between the music and the beats of the movie. You won't ever see a movie like this in a long while. For now, let us revel in Coogler's genius.
I wanna say that George Harrison's "Beware of Darkness" playing during Weapons' opening sequence of the kids running out of their houses in the night was a moment that cemented what I already knew in the pit of my stomach: that this was a horror film unlike any other. But that's not true; it's actually one of many occurrences that gave me faith that the horror genre is in director and writer Zach Cregger's good hands.
Weapons is a modern take on a familiar cautionary fairytale where unanswered questions yield to a blame that no one knows who to pin it on. Where the survivors reach for the first scapegoat they see, that becomes its own form of violence. It's a delicious walk through the woods of doubt, where at the end of it is a satisfying punishment that leaves room for more unanswered questions.
I've watched all of Rian Johnson's Knives Out movies and as a big mystery fan, this third instalment feels like something that John Dickson Carr (pioneer of the locked-room mysteries and impossible crimes) would approve.
In Wake Up Dead Man, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) only makes an appearance at 40 minutes and even so acts as a sort of deuteragonist to Josh O'Connor's Father Jud. Even with Blanc's scant presence, we get his fully-realised character, all against the backdrop of a wickedly good murder mystery and a look into faith and its misuse.
Spy films are formulaic but Black Bag turns the espionage genre on its head. Steven Soderbergh directs a killer cast (Cate Blanchett; Michael Fassbender; Naomie Harris; Regé-Jean Page) in a cat-and-mouse chase to discover the agency's mole. It's a taut, confident thriller that eschews explosions and shoot-outs for plot revelations.
Playing with the interaction between the husband-and-wife spies (Fassbender and Blanchett, respectively), we see the blurring of where intimacy and their working selves start and end. How can you be truthful to those closest to you when you're damn good at tradecraft?
When the trailer for Mickey 17 dropped, people were doubtful: is that really how Robert Pattinson is gonna sound like as the protagonist? But I knew... oh, I knew what the deal was with the voice.
Pattinson can go a tad overboard with his characters (see The Devil All the Time) but he brings that perfect hangdog demeanour to the protagonist, who slowly finds his footing as a hero of his own story. Bong Joon Ho brings his directing chops to the movie, balancing pathos and social commentary. Sure, the talks about existentialism can be sobering but Mickey 17 is never boring.
Frankenstein was Guillermo del Toro's pet project. In his hands, the film turns into an examination of failed parenting, if you believe it. Where del Toro forfeits ambiguity and sides firmly with the created over the creator. Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) is what every parent fears to be, one who creates without responsibility; the Creature (Jacob Elordi) is portrayed as a child trying to survive in a world that does not understand or accept him.
Visually, the film is unmistakably del Toro. The gothic textures are lush; decay and rot feel tactile, not decorative. His play with light is utilised in such a way that while it casts the environment in darkness, but is something that the Creature still reach toward. In a world where Frankenstein adaptations do not paint the monster in a favourable light, this iteration gives hope to the Creature, who is drawn towards it.
I've a soft spot for Superman. He was my gateway to movie superheroes. Ever since Christopher Reeve came on screen in the familiar red-and-blue outfit, no one has come close to what he brought to the character. Reeve's Superman was kind, yet strong; he made people believe not only that Superman can fly, he genuinely wanted to do good.
James Gunn's Superman brought back that similar emotional grammar, where hope, not only thrives but is radical in this day and age. David Corenswet portray an unchanging Superman—that comic book Superman from the 80s—who brings with him decency, goodness and heroism, traits that might feel subversive in today's climate.
Do you know how hard it is to convince this K-pop atheist to watch this movie, who then likes it; and not only does he feature this as one of the films of the year, he also low-key hums to "Golden" whenever that music plays? Well, do you?
