2025 hasn’t felt like a classic year for cinema (yet). In a year of endless sequels, live-action adaptations, and IP cash-ins, there are some good movies in here.
Just what have you missed in the world of action, horror, and comedy? Now we are halfway through the year, here are 10 films that are worth your time.
Sinners
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is arguably the buzziest film of 2025, so far. Set in the Mississippi Delta in 1932, it follows a pair of twins (both played by Michael B. Jordan at his coolest) who open their own juke joint. Part a portrait of life for black communities in that era, part a slick vampire horror flick, and part a tribute to the power of blues music, Sinners is a film like no other.
The terrific soundtrack pulses throughout the supernatural film, as a troup of white vampires try their best to crash the party. It’s smart, it’s cool, it has something to say, and it manage to please critics and film-goers alike. It feels like nothing on the big-screen came close to matching that scene in the middle of Sinners, which celebrates the power of music and filmmaking.
Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy
Despite the earlier disappointing sequels, the optimistic British singleton Bridget Jones (Renee Zellweger) returned for the fourth instalment in the popular franchise. This time, she is less concerned about men seeing her big pants and more concerned with keeping her children alive.
This poignant rom-com ditched its slapstick humor and instead focused on Bridget’s life as a middle-aged woman learning to love again after loss. It’s a sweet, heart-felt portrayal of aging and coming to terms with the hand life deals you. There are still laughs and men to swoon over (Leo Woodall, Chiwetel Ejiofor and the scene stealing Hugh Grant), but Jones has all grown up.
Companion
Companion is a science fiction horror/comedy that works better the less you know going in. A couple’s (Jack Quaid and Sophie Thatcher) weekend away goes awry after a drunken evening with friends ends in bloodshed.
The big-screen debut of writer-director Drew Hancock is a sharp satire of AI, modern technology and the male loneliness epidemic. At only 97 minutes long, Companion succinctly gets to the point, never tries too hard to hammer home its point and never takes itself too seriously. It’s a film that will shock you, make you laugh but also makes a relevant point about the state of modern dating.
Thunderbolts*
2025 was the year the MCU returned to making good films; it’s just a shame no one was clamoring to see them on the big screen anymore. Thunderbolts* sees Marvel’s most talented actors (Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Sebastian Stan) and interesting anti-hero came together to form an antithesis to The Avengers. Finally, all the characters pushed to the side in the MCU were allowed to shine in all their complicated, depressed, unconfident glory.
Thunderbolts* wasn’t just your average superhero team-up movie. It was an exploration of mental health. These heroes questioned their actions, second-guessed their skills and had regrets. It’s not all bleak; there are still plenty of laughs and action sequences, but it finally felt like Marvel was prioritizing characters over CGI fights.
Black Bag
Steven Soderbergh’s sharp spy thriller follows married British intelligence officers (Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett) tasked with trying to weed out a traitor. This leads them to suspect all their closest friends (Regé-Jean Page, Marisa Abela, Naomi Harris, Tom Burke) and question their own relationship.
Black Bag is what happens when the James Bond is running around on location and downing Martinis. Many of the scenes take place at tense dinner parties and in claustrophobic offices, proving you don’t need big set pieces and car chases to make a good spy flick. All you need is a good cast and even better script.
Bring Her Back
Danny and Michael Philippou follow up Talk To Me with another chilling exploration of grief. After their father dies, 17-year-old Andy (Billy Barratt) and his legally blind sister, Piper (Sora Wong), end up in the care of a foster mother from hell (Sally Hawkins, giving one of the performances of the year).
The Philippous understand the slow unravelling that comes with grief, as explored by Hawkins’ grieving mother in Bring Her Back. The YouTubers-turned-directors trade in the youthful house parties of their last film for a more somber and unsettling horror. While the duo up the gore and blood, it’s the emotional weight that will linger long after the credits roll.
28 Years Later
2002's 28 Days Later revolutionized the genre with its gonzo filming style and quicker variety of zombies (although they are never called this). While 28 Weeks Later wasn’t quite the same hit, it explored how society, and more specifically, the UK, handled a crisis.
28 Years Later saw director Danny Boyle partner with screenwriter Alex Garland to tackle what life would look like in England years after the infection took over. Instead of creating a cliché zombie slick, the duo holds a mirror up to a post-pandemic Britain and their penchant for isolating themselves. With a powerhouse performance from Jodie Comer and strong lead from newbie Alfie Williams, 28 Years Later saw the world of the rage virus through the eyes of people too young to remember what the world was like.
Presence
The second Steven Soderbergh entry on this, Black Bag and Presence could not be any more different. Presence found a new way to present a poltergeist film, with the whole movie being shot from the POV of the ghost left in a home.
The film centers on a family (Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan) moving into a new home after their teen daughter (Callina Liang) suffers a tragedy. We see the family’s relationships, marriage struggles and teenage pressures all through the eyes of a spirit left behind in the home. It’s an original take on the genre with a gentler take on spirits lingering on Earth after death.
Together
Together is a relationship drama masking as a body horror. When a couple (real-life couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco) move to a rural community and away from their friends, they learn how dangerous co-dependency is. Their dependency manifests itself when the couple starts to physically stick to each other.
While the camera looks away during the most gruesome moments, the scares come less from the body horror and more from the truth it spills about love. Together is an uncomfortable exploration of long term relationships that just happens to manifest itself as a horror.
Mickey 17
Bong Joon-ho's follow-up to the Oscar-winning Parasite took its time to arrive in theaters , but was worth the wait. Mickey 17 is a wacky science comedy that proved Robert Pattinson to be the Willem Dafoe of his generation. The film sees Mickey (Robert Pattinson) play a test subject, doomed to die and be reincarnated and die again.
Mickey 17 is full of wacky performances from the likes of Tilda Swinton, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo (whose American politician might be slightly too on the nose). Underneath all the eccentric science fiction and space dystopia is a hypercapitalist black comedy about a man trying to find himself in a world that sees him as an expendable commodity.