2025 offered cinematic encounters of a rare kind. Thunderous spectacles unfurled alongside hushed, inward-facing character studies. Some films swung wildly and missed — gloriously so — while others landed with such quiet authority, they seemed to rearrange the room. It was a year defined by daring, by filmmakers who trusted audiences to lean in rather than sit back.
Start with the consensus triumphs — films that felt instantly canonical.
Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet” is a masterwork of grief rendered as poetry. Jessie Buckley delivers a performance of almost unbearable emotional clarity as a mother splintered by loss, yet somehow still breathing.
Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” is something else
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