Our Annual Report recap of 2025 continues with our rating of the 25 Greatest Motion pictures of the 12 months. Maintain it tuned right here all month for extra accolades, interviews, and lists — together with our 50 Greatest Albums of 2025.
For all of the spectacle and poignancy discovered on the cinema this 12 months, essentially the most hanging factor is simply what number of movies felt eerily timed for this second, tales of resistance and rise up arriving proper after we wanted them. Have been filmmakers tapping into societal undercurrents effervescent below the floor, or did they merely get fortunate with manufacturing schedules? All that may be stated for certain is that if one 12 months wanted the message “kindness is the brand new punk rock,” it was this one.
Nevertheless, this wasn’t only a 12 months of epic battles (one after one other, even). So lots of 2025’s finest films spanned many years, however saved their focus intimate sufficient for audiences to fall in love with their central characters, whether or not they be world-famous film stars, misunderstood monsters, or guitar gamers whose songs can beat again the satan himself.
Music itself additionally performed an enormous function in a few of this 12 months’s finest films, from scores by sudden indie bands or fictional entertainers whose songs protected the world. The general theme, all through: Within the battle for happiness and freedom, artwork is among the mightiest weapons we now have.
— Liz Shannon Miller
Senior Leisure Editor
