The 10 Most Important Movies Left in 2025

A version of this story appeared in Esquire’s entertainment newsletter, the Cliff-Hanger. Sign up here to receive weekly criticism of the movie or television show of the moment shipped directly to your in-box.

I’ve written a lot about TV in the Cliff-Hanger. How can I not? The fall TV lineup is incredibly exciting this year, and I’m just dying for everyone to catch up so I can finally talk to another human being about these shows. (Mark your watch lists now—HBO’s Task is going to be a big one.)

But TV isn’t all I do at Esquire. Somehow, I also need to find the time to watch movies—and, you know, write! So after bingeing Alien: Earth this past weekend, I went to Film Forum in New York City to rewatch Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) on the big screen—hoping that the nearly four-hour sword-slinging masterpiece would shock my system back into movie mode.

My plan might have worked a little too well. When I got back home, I immediately charted out every movie I wanted to watch for the rest of the year. It’s a long list, but I picked out the ten films that will make or break the rest of 2025 on the big screen.

Whatever it says about our current times, stories following desperate people entering life-or-death competitions are all the rage nowadays. The latest entry, The Long Walk, follows a group of young men who are forced to compete in an annual walking contest. The winner? The last person still moving. The story is based on one of Stephen King’s earliest novels, from 1979, now adapted to the screen by Hunger Games franchise director Francis Lawrence (very fitting). Judging by the first footage of Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza), David Jonsson (Alien: Romulus), Charlie Plummer (The Return), and Ben Wang (Karate Kid: Legends) walking to their deaths, it looks like an absolutely devastating film.

Paul Thomas Anderson and Leonardo DiCaprio finally team up for a film next month called One Battle After Another, about an ex-revolutionary—and his daughter—who reunites with his old friends to stop one of their resurfaced foes. “Wanting to do this movie was pretty simple,” DiCaprio told Anderson in Esquire’s latest cover story. “I’ve been wanting to work with you—Paul—for something like 20 years now, and I loved this idea.” One Battle After Another is Anderson’s first true action flick, which also stars Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn, Regina Hall, and a pregnant Teyana Taylor firing a machine gun.

Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson will step back into the ring to portray former MMA fighter Mark Kerr in The Smashing Machine, the first feature film directed by one of the Safdie brothers since Uncut Gems. The first trailer is riveting—it brandishes A24’s blend of nostalgic charm and self-destruction into another The Iron Claw–esque sports drama.

I would reckon this Persian thriller is likely not on your radar, but there’s a very good chance that It Was Just an Accident shows up in a big way come awards season. Why? Well, the film won the Palme d’Or at this summer’s Cannes Film Festival, following in the footsteps of recent Best Picture contenders Triangle of Sadness, Anatomy of a Fall, and Anora (which won last year). From what I’ve heard so far, it sounds like a gripping and timely adventure about a former political prisoner who hunts down a man he believes was his torturer. The director, Jafar Panahi, has also been arrested several times himself for speaking out against the Iranian government.

“I love monsters,” Guillermo del Toro once said. “I identify with monsters.” Well, the monster master will strike again this October when he releases a book-accurate Frankenstein for Netflix. It stars Jacob Elordi as the monster, Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, and scream queen Mia Goth as Victor’s fiancée, Elizabeth. We haven’t seen images of Elordi just yet, but I’m hoping it’s more macabre like Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu and less like Netflix’s Wednesday teen campiness.

Poor Things duo Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos will connect for another quirky drama called Bugonia this October. The film follows a beekeeper (Jesse Plemons) who kidnaps a powerful CEO (Stone) because he believes that she is an alien who wants to take over the world. It reminds me of those bizarre lizard-people conspiracies that live in the Internet’s wackiest forums, which is probably why Ari Aster was so willing to jump on board as a producer early into production. Stone won Best Actress at the Academy Awards for Poor Things, so I’d expect another strong showing from the pair here as well.

Springsteen receives the honor of this year’s obligatory Hollywood music biopic, with Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) pulling off his best raspy impression of the Boss. Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan flick from last year felt like the closest a music biopic has come to moving from being a major awards contender to being a major award winner since Elvis. (A reminder: Director James Mangold walked away from the Oscars with seven nominations and zero wins.) But White is a fantastic actor, and Deliver Me from Nowhere’s focus on the Nebraska sessions seems even more contained than these other massive career-arcing stories so far. I remain hopeful.

Noah Baumbach’s latest film is being described as a “coming-of-age story for adults,” as A-list actor Jay Kelly (George Clooney) travels through Europe with his manager (Adam Sandler) to reconsider the lives they’ve led and the relationships they’ve burned. Billy Crudup and Laura Dern make appearances as well, costarring in a film that feels tailor-made to cement Clooney’s legacy even more (as if he isn’t already Hollywood royalty).

Call me crazy, but I love that James Cameron’s giant CGI blue aliens hold the record for two of the top three highest-grossing movies of all time. (Avengers: Endgame’s big purple alien holds the remaining slot.) I don’t know what it says about humanity that we love these characters so much, but I must give credit to this revolutionary technology. And even though Cameron isn’t promoting some new kind of camera that he had to invent to film fire just yet, I have high hopes that this third entry in the Avatar franchise is just as riveting.

Chalamet will go for Oscar gold once again in Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, a sports comedy very loosely based on the life of professional table tennis player Marty Reisman. If Benny’s The Smashing Machine will head toward the darker side of sports biopics, Josh and Chalamet’s Marty Supreme seems to lean a tad more Hollywood. The Christmas release should bolster the film as well, especially for a year without a Star Wars or Marvel team-up to compete with at the box office.