Who knew that 2025 would bring back the feeling of watching something really new? Between unexpected returns, farewells and directors testing the seemingly impossible, this year has been a rollercoaster of genres and emotions.
From Ryan Coogler mixing horror and musicals to Tom Cruise jumping the impossible for the last time, this is the year that Hollywood took risks again, and nailed it.
When Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan team up, the result is never ordinary. But in Sinners, they went further: they created a hybrid between horror, drama and musical.
Jordan plays a former pastor who, after a tragedy in his community, starts hearing voices during his sermons, voices that make him sing passages of repentance and faith. Little by little, the audience realizes that the horror is not in the supernatural, but in what it tries to hide from itself.
Tom Cruise is saying goodbye to the franchise that redefined his career, and he does it flying, literally. In Mission: Impossible – Judgment Day, Ethan Hunt is forced to confront the past and choose between saving the world or the few friends he has left.
The plot involves an autonomous AI created to replace human spies, and which now wants to erase the agencies' entire history. It's the perfect end to a 30-year cycle, balancing nostalgia, adrenaline and emotion.
Live action remakes tend to divide opinions, but this one… hit the nail on the head. The new version of How to Train Your Dragon is a love letter to the childhood of an entire generation.
Here, Hiccup is a young blacksmith who defies the traditions of his Viking village by refusing to kill dragons, until he encounters Toothless, a wounded and intelligent creature who changes everything he believed in.
Code Black delivers an elegant, cold and unpredictable spy thriller, starring Cate Blanchett and Mahershala Ali. The plot follows an agent who, after a failed operation, becomes suspicious of everyone, including herself.
A lost flash drive, a secret dossier and an international conspiracy form the most cerebral puzzle of the year. Director Steven Soderbergh proves that he still masters the art of capturing the viewer with intelligence, not just action.
The Presence abandons realism and dives into existential terror filmed almost entirely from the point of view of a ghost. The story follows a family that moves to a new house after a loss, without knowing that the presence that inhabits the place is someone they knew in life.
With minimalist photography and a narrative that mixes grief, regret and spirituality, Presence is the kind of horror that haunts you days later. Nothing is explained in an obvious way, and that's the charm.
The script is honest, cruel and sensitive in equal measure. The direction relies on silences and looks to show what words cannot. It's a reminder that independent cinema still knows how to do what Hollywood forgot: thrill without the need for special effects.
The story revolves around a couple trying to reconnect after a miscarriage. While she tries to move forward with art, he gets lost in a routine that seems to slowly erase him.
The plot takes place almost three decades after the first viral outbreak. A new generation tries to survive amid a collapsing society, while the few immune fight among themselves for control of what's left.
The pacing is brutal, the scenes are visceral and the horror has that dirty realism that only Danny Boyle can achieve. It's more than a revival: it's the redefinition of a genre that seemed dead.
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