Looking back at 2025, there was a lot to enjoy in the cinema this year. There was no radical change compared to what has been released over the last ten years, and there is no sign of where the future might lead, beyond more of the same. That said, this year did manage to serve up a range of high-profile enjoyable movies, which is more than some recent years.
Let’s start with some of the brighter moments from this year. Superman was an excellent summer blockbuster, filled with the right amount of action, humour and heart. Gone are the days of DC making everything dark and gritty in an attempt to replicate the success of The Dark Knight. This film reminded me why superheroes are fun and why they make such good subjects for films. James Gunn found a blend of action and comedy that was a slightly more family-friendly take on his signature style that still felt fresh and not an attempt to copy Marvel’s mix of action with ironic snark.
Marvel came back from their break with three movies this year. Their summer offering, Thunderbolts*, also brought the humour and the fun with a rag-tag group of assassins, spies and villains teaming up to take on an existential threat. Led by the always excellent Florence Pugh, and with a brilliantly silly supporting comedic performance from David Harbour, this was another really fun outing to the cinema and reminded me why Marvel has dominated superhero blockbusters for the better part of 20 years.
Marvel’s time at the top
Marvel’s later offering, Fantastic Four: First Steps, had an interesting atompunk aesthetic and enough family good vibes to make a pleasingly entertaining movie. Strong performances from Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach anchored the movie and put Marvel on a strong footing for next year’s Avengers: Doomsday, which will unite the Fantastic Four cast with the Thunderbolts* cast and a few old faces from the 00s X-Men movies. This will be an acid test for Marvel, as if a new Avengers movie isn’t one of the biggest things of 2026, then it will be seen as a failure and add to a narrative of Marvel running out of steam after many years at the top.
Sadly, Marvel’s other release was a mess. Captain America: Brave New World lacked charm and character. Harrison Ford phoning in his performance only added to the feeling of the film’s pointlessness and raised the question: if the people in this film don’t care about it, then why should the audience?
Some unlikely franchises had a good year, especially Predator, with two strong outings. Predator: Killer of Killers was a tense animated anthology film blending a range of styles and settings into an exciting and creative smorgasbord of violence.
Then Predator: Badlands refocused the action on the Predators themselves, to make a blockbuster with strong fundamentals that made for an exciting evening in the cinema. Following up the success of Prey a few years ago, this shows that the smaller franchises (still owned by behemoth Disney, it must be said) can be the sites of creative, original and fun storytelling.
Mission: Completed
Mission: Impossible bowed out on a high with Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, which contains all the outrageous Tom Cruise stunts you could ask for. Throw in a race against time plot and a warning about the dangers of AI, and you get a real rollercoaster of a summer blockbuster.
I have a soft spot for this franchise, but sadly this “final” (if anything is final in a world that is bringing Chris Evans back for more Avengers movies) instalment was not as good as the previous one. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning still managed to be an entertaining modern update on 90s action movies and showed that Tom Cruise is still very bankable in an age of multiverse superhero franchises that seems to have largely moved on from the stunt led blockbuster that Cruise is still making. Where will he go next? Hard to say, but it seems as if the sun is setting on what has been a legendary film career.
This year was a strong year at the Oscars, with the hugely powerful Anora walking away with the best picture prize. Sean Baker has quietly become one of the best American auteur directors working today, through brilliant hard-hitting films like Tangerine, The Florida Project and Red Rocket, but this is truly his masterpiece: the story of a Russian sex worker who gets caught up in the lives of billionaires, with tragic consequences.
A Real Pain was a powerful film about the Jewish American experience and the difficult relationship between cousins, that had excellent performances from Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg; the former of which was justifiably rewarded with a best supporting actor Oscar, marking him out as one of the best young actors working today.
The Brutalist was a modern epic in every sense of the word, from the scale of the story it was telling, its subject – monumental modernist architecture and the enormous egos that go into making it – and its length, at a bottom numbing 3 hours and 35 minutes. It used this huge scope to tell an epic tale of survival, guilt, rivalry, artistic vision and betrayal that matched the scope of the epics of the past, from Gone With The Wind to Lawrence of Arabia.
Prestige films
Other Oscar nominees this year included The Nickel Boys, a dark story about abuse in American reform schools that used Peep Show-style point of view shots to focus the drama on the suffering of the abused students, which led to an extremely powerful film. A Complete Unknown captured the creative spirit of New York in the 60s for a warts-and-all biopic of Bob Dylan and the American folk scene at the time.
The Oscars wasn’t the only time this year when prestige films were released. Netflix unveiled a series of five films from visionary directors including Kathryn Bigelow, Edward Berger, Guillermo del Toro, Noah Baumbach and Rian Johnson.
This included A House of Dynamite, a very tense thriller set in the moments before a nuclear missile hits Chicago, Frankenstein, a largely faithful adaptation of the classic Mary Shelley novel, Ballad of a Small Player, a visually stunning depiction of moral downfall set in Macau, Jay Kelly, which featured George Clooney parodying himself, and Wake Up Dead Man, a fitting third chapter to the excellent Knives Out series that was filled with excellent plot twists and strong performances. I’m glad that Daniel Craig and Rian Johnson have found a franchise that they really enjoy making – as both have been burned in the past – and that sense of fun comes through in these movies.
Several high-profile directors used the studio and streaming system to their advantage to create original movies. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners was dark and tense and effectively used the setting of segregation-era Deep South to tell a powerful story about how music transcends time that was filled with great performances and excellent action scenes.
Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 was a brilliant dark comedy, parodying Donald Trump with an excellent comic performance from Mark Ruffalo as well as great performances from Robert Pattinson and Tim Key. Wes Anderson continued his run as the American indie darling, deploying his signature style with The Phoenician Scheme.
My favourite film of the Year was Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, which featured stellar performances from Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor and Benicio del Toro and told an urgent story about resistance to American fascism that balanced tension, humour and heart so that all tones supported each other and added to the whole. Anderson is a master auteur going through an imperial phase, where each film is better than the last; so based on the strength of this excellent movie, I am very excited to see what he does next.
As good as anything we had in the past
The success of these films shows that there are still creative, talented and interesting filmmakers working within the confines of the modern risk-adverse filmmaking industry, producing gems as good as anything we had in the past.
British film had a solid year, with 28 Years Later and Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy taking the box office by storm. Less high profile but much more interesting films were Tornado, a Scottish samurai film starring Tim Roth, Jack Lowden and Kôki that blended the conventions of samurai films with the beautiful Scottish landscape to great effect.
Meanwhile, The Ballad of Wallis Island was an excellent bitter-sweet comedy with great performances from Tim Key, Tom Basden and Carey Mulligan. The lower profile British films were where the most interesting work was happening within the year, and I’m glad that there is still funding and an audience for this kind of British filmmaking.
A special shout out should also go to viral Netflix hit KPop Demon Hunters, which brought all the frenetic energy and humour of a classic kids movie and married it to modern KPop and a blend of fantasy action that worked seamlessly together. It could be this year’s most left-field hit, and is hugely fun, so it is hopefully a sign that creative choices by Netflix or other streamers can pay off.
There were many gems to be had in the cinema this year, although most were found away from the highest-profile action blockbusters. This is likely to be true for next year, and I am excited for the unexpected films from auteur directors that I might not be aware of yet.
As for mainstream cinema for 2026, there is a lot of excitement for Christopher Nolan’s Homer adaptation The Odyssey and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part 3, all following up from recent success leading to high expectations. In terms of superheroes, Marvel is hoping for big box office with new Avengers and Spider-Man films. Elsewhere, DC has Supergirl, a follow up to this year’s successful Superman, and Steven Spielberg is back with creepy alien thriller Disclosure Day. We also have a high-profile adaptation of Wuthering Heights to look forward to, as well as Michael, a Michael Jackson biopic, The Devil Wears Prada 2 and new Star Wars movie The Mandalorian and Grogu.
Again, It seems unlikely that there will be radical change in the cinema next year, but following on from a surprisingly good year for both high and low profile films, I am encouraged to see what surprises in the cinema 2026 will bring.
