A funny thing about this year’s best films: Half of them are adaptations. As a movie lover who’s always hunting for new talent, new ideas and new stimuli, I used to view that as creative inertia. But 2025 has changed my mind.

Now I see artists drawing inspiration from the past to show that Hollywood should trust the sturdy bones that have kept it running for over a century: good yarns, bold casting, films that don’t feel made by focus groups or doomsaying bean-counters (or, God help us, AI), but by blood and sweat.

Our picks for this year’s best in arts and entertainment.

Advertisement

From original tales to radical reworkings of classics both high-falutin’ and raucously lowbrow, these 10 filmmakers all know that the most vital part of the storytelling business has stayed exactly the same. They have to wow an audience. And they did.

1. ‘Sinners’

Michael B. Jordan as twins Smoke and Stack in the movie “Sinners.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

A period-piece-vampire-musical mashup could have been discordant, but writer-director Ryan Coogler confidently makes all three genres harmonize. In “Sinners,” Coogler double-casts his longtime collaborator Michael B. Jordan as twin bootleggers Smoke and Stack, then pits them against a pack of banjo-picking bloodsuckers helmed by a roguish Jack O’Connell. We’re expecting a big, bloody brouhaha and we get it. Underneath the playful carnage, however, the question at stake is: Why suffer the daily indignities of the Jim Crow-era South when you could outlive — and eat — your oppressors? “Sinners” is the most exciting film of 2025, both for what it is and for what it proves: that fresh blockbusters still exist and people are eager to gobble them up.

(“Sinners” is available on multiple platforms.)

2. ‘Hedda’

Tessa Thompson in the movie “Hedda.”

(Prime Video)

The stage’s iconic mean girl glides from 1890s Norway to 1950s England in this vibrant and venomous adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler.” Tessa Thompson stars as the restless housewife who needs to secure her milquetoast husband (Tom Bateman) a promotion and has a nasty habit of playing with guns. Keeping pace with her manipulative anti-heroine, writer-director Nia DaCosta (“Candyman”) makes a few calculated moves of her own, including gender-swapping Hedda’s ex into a curvaceous career woman (a haughty Nina Hoss) whose drab and geeky new girlfriend (Imogen Poots) irritates their hostess’ insecurities. As a capper, “Hedda” stages its brutal showdown at an all-night vodka-and-cocaine-fueled mansion shebang with a live jazz band, a lake for skinny-dippers and a hedge maze where former lovers are tempted to canoodle. The original play is over a century old, but every scene feels screamingly alive.

(“Hedda” is available on Prime Video.)

3. ‘Eddington’

Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal in “Eddington.”

(A24)

Advertisement

No film was more polarizing than Ari Aster’s COVID-set satire about a mask-hating sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix), a sanctimonious mayor (Pedro Pascal) and the high-tech cabal that benefits when these two modern cowboys come to blows. “Eddington” immortalizes the bleak humor and lingo of May 2020 (think murder hornets, Antifa and toilet paper hoarders). More stingingly, it captures the mental delirium of a small town — make that an entire planet — that hasn’t yet realized that there’s a second sickness seeping in through their smartphones. Everyone’s got a device in their hand pretty much all the time, aiming their cameras at each other like pistols in a Wild West standoff. Yet no character grasps what’s really going on. (I have a theory, but when I explain the larger conspiracy, I sound cuckoo too.) This is the movie that will explain pandemic brain to future generations. With distance, I’m pretty sure the haters will come around.

(“Eddington” is available on multiple platforms.)

4. ‘One Battle After Another’

Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie “One Battle After Another.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

Advertisement

Every shot in Paul Thomas Anderson’s invigorating nail-biter is a banger: sentinels skateboarding over rooftops, caged kids playing catch with a crumpled foil blanket, Teyana Taylor’s militant Perfidia Beverly Hills blasting an automatic rifle while nine months pregnant. It’s the rare film that instantly imprints itself on the viewer. On my second watch, I was shocked by how much of “One Battle After Another” already felt tattooed on my brain, down to the shudder I got from Sean Penn’s loathsome Col. Lockjaw licking his comb to tidy his bangs. Riffing from Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland,” the central drama follows flunky anarchist Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) fumblingly attempting to rescue his daughter (Chase Infiniti) from Lockjaw’s clutches. But he’s not much help to her, and as the title implies, this is merely one skirmish in humanity’s sprawling struggle for freedom that has, and will, drag on forever. Anderson’s knack for ensemble work stretches back as far as “Boogie Nights,” yet here, even his unnamed characters have crucial roles to play. His world-building has never before felt this holistic and inspirational.

(“One Battle After Another” is now playing in theaters.)

5. ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’

Jennifer Lopez and Tonatiuh in the movie “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”

(Roadside Attractions)

The backstory behind this stunner couldn’t be more baroque: Director Bill Condon (“Dreamgirls”) boldly revamped a Broadway musical of an Oscar-winning drama (itself taken from an experimental novel) about two inmates in an Argentinean cell who mentally escape into the movies. Each incarnation has doubled down on the sensorial overload of what came before. If you know “Kiss of the Spider Woman’s” lineage, you’ll be impressed by how Condon ups the fantasy and stokes the revolutionary glamour with more Technicolor dance showcases for Jennifer Lopez’. (She’s doing her best Cyd Charisse, which turns out to be darned good.) If this is your first taste of the tale, give yourself over to the prickly but tender relationship between prisoners Luis and Valentin, played by feisty new talent Tonatiuh and a red-blooded Diego Luna. This is go-for-broke filmmaking with a wallop. As Luis says of his own version of “Kiss of the Spider Woman” playing in his head, “Call it kitsch, call it camp — I don’t care, I love it.”

(“Kiss of the Spider Woman” is available on multiple platforms.)

6. ‘A Useful Ghost’

A scene from the movie “A Useful Ghost.”

(TIFF)

Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s Cannes Grand Prix winner opens with a haunted vacuum cleaner. From there, it gets even more surprising. Ghosts have infested a wealthy widow’s factory and are possessing appliances, seducing her son and cozying up to the prime minister for favors. Some of these people have died by accident, some by corporate neglect or worse. This droll spook show bleeds into romance and politics and, to our shock, becomes genuinely emotional. (It helps to remember that the military killed over 80 Bangkok protestors in 2010.) But why vacuum cleaners, you ask? The conceit is more than a sticky idea. Ordinary people can get crushed but the anger they leave behind lingers like fine dust.

(“A Useful Ghost” opens Jan. 16, 2026, in theaters.)

7. ‘The Roses’

Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch in the movie “The Roses.”

(Jaap Buitendijk / Searchlight Pictures)

Technically, “The Roses” is rooted in the 1980s hit novel and subsequent blockbuster “The War of the Roses,” which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as an estranged couple who attack each other with lawyers, poison and chandeliers. In spirit, however, this redo is pure 1930s screwball comedy. Leads Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman are skilled verbal ninjas who hurl razor-sharp insults at each other’s egos, and although their characters’ divorce happens in California, director Jay Roach lets the actors keep their snippy British accents. The script by two-time Oscar nominee Tony McNamara (“The Favourite,” “Poor Things”) adds a cruel twist to the original: This time around, the marrieds truly do try their damnedest to love and support each other. And still, their walls come tumbling down.

(“The Roses” is available on multiple platforms.)

8. ‘In Whose Name?’

Ye and Elon Musk in the documentary “In Whose Name?”

(AMSI Entertainment)

Advertisement

Nico Ballesteros was a high schooler with an iPhone when he entered Kanye West’s orbit in 2018. Over the next six years, the Orange County kid shot over 3,000 hours of footage as Ye (as the artist legally became known in 2021) jetted from Paris to Uganda, Calabasas to the White House, meeting everyone from Kenny G to Elon Musk on a quest to fulfill his creative and spiritual goals while incinerating his personal life and public reputation. Ye gave the documentarian full access with no editorial oversight, besides one moment in which he tells the camera that he wants the film to be about mental health. This riveting tragedy definitely is. We see an egomaniac whose fear of being beholden to anything motivates him to go off his meds, a billionaire provocateur who believes he can afford the consequences of his bigotry and, above all, a deeply flawed man who nukes his entire world to insist he’s right.

(“In Whose Name?” is available on multiple platforms.)

9. ‘Sirāt’

An image from the movie “Sirāt,” directed by Oliver Laxe.

(Festival de Cannes)

Advertisement

The techno soundtrack of Oliver Laxe’s desolate road thriller has rattled my house for months. Lately, I’ve spent just as much time contemplating the movie’s silence — those hushed stretches in which this caravan of bohemians speeds across the Moroccan desert looking like the only free people left on Earth. A father, Luis (“Pan’s Labyrinth’s” Sergi López), and his 12-year-old son team up with this band of tattooed burnouts in the hope of finding the boy’s runaway sister. Before long, Luis is just hoping to make it to safety, assuming anywhere safe still exists. Static on the radio warns that World War III might be underway. These outsiders click off the news and crank up the music. The paradox of “Sirāt” is that I’m dying to talk about it more but I’ve got to keep my mouth shut until people experience its dramatic twists for themselves.

(“Sirāt” returns to theaters on Feb. 6, 2026.)

10. ‘The Naked Gun’

Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson in the movie “The Naked Gun.”

(Frank Masi / Paramount Pictures)

Liam Neeson needed this pummeling pun-fest. So did everyone else in 2025. Director Akiva Schaffer’s continuation of the “Police Squad!” franchise let the 73-year-old “Taken” star poke fun at his own bruising gravitas. Playing the son of Leslie Nielsen’s Lt. Frank Drebin, Neeson kept us in hysterics with a stupid-brilliant barrage of surreal wordplay and daffy slapstick. The casting was as odd — and perfect — as rumors that he and his co-star Pamela Anderson started dating on set. This fourth sequel didn’t try to outsmart the classic Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker template. It simply told the same old story: Cop meets babe, cop and babe canoodle with a magical snowman, cop drops his trousers on live TV, this time minus the blimp. Goodyear? No, the worst — which made Neeson our hero.

(“The Naked Gun” is available on multiple platforms.)

Since I’m all jazzed-up about great movies, here are 10 honorable mentions very much worth a watch.

“The Ballad of Wallis Island”
A kooky millionaire strong-arms his favorite mid-aughts folk duo into playing a reunion show on his Welsh island. Sounds cutesy, but it’s the movie I recommended most — to everyone from my mailman to my mother. They all loved it. Join the fan club.

“Bunny”
This East Village indie by debut director Ben Jacobson is a scummy gem. A gigolo’s birthday goes very wrong. But all the characters racing up and down the stairs of his uber-New York walk-up hovel are a howl.

“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”
Rose Byrne excels equally at comedy and drama. This audit of a breakdown smashes both together and cranks the tension up to eleven. Playing a high-stress working mom of an ill child, her try-hard heroine leans in so harrowingly far, she goes kamikaze.

“Lurker”
Today’s celebrity might be viral on Instagram and unknown everywhere else. Alex Russell’s stomach-churning psychodrama stars Archie Madekwe as an L.A.-based singer on the brink of genuine fame and Théodore Pellerin as the hanger-on who endures — and exploits — the fledgling star’s power moves and hazy boundaries.

“Magic Farm”
Filmmaker Amalia Ulman’s rascally farce stars Chloë Sevigny and Alex Wolff as clickbait journalists who fly to Argentina to shoot a viral video about a singer in a bunny costume and wind up looking twice as ridiculous.

Keke Palmer, left, and SZA in the movie “One of Them Days.”

(Anne Marie Fox / Sony Pictures)

“One of Them Days”
Keke Palmer and SZA play broke Baldwin Hills roommates who have nine hours to make rent. I’d happily watch their stoner hijinks in real time.

“The Perfect Neighbor”
Pieced together primarily from police body-camera footage, Geeta Gandbhir’s documentary unfurls in a Florida cul-de-sac where a community — adults, kids and cops — agrees that one woman is an entitled pill. The problem is she thinks they’re the problem. And she has a gun.

“Sisu: Road to Revenge”
If Buster Keaton were alive, he’d hail this grisly, mostly mute Finnish action flick as a worthy successor to “The General.” It even boasts a thrilling sequence on a train, although director Jalmari Helander also brazenly poaches from “Die Hard” and “Mad Max: Fury Road.”

“Train Dreams”
Trees fall in the woods and a 20th-century logger (Joel Edgerton) plays an unheard, unthanked but beautiful role in the building of America.

“Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery”
Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) teams up with a soul-searching priest (Josh O’Connor) to solve a perplexing church stabbing. From deft plot twists to provocative Catholic theology, Rian Johnson’s crowd-pleasing murder mystery is marvelously executed.