2025’s Must-Watch Movies: The Ultimate List of This Year’s Biggest Hits As Chosen by You

2025 is coming to a close and although there are still a couple of blockbusters like Avatar: Fire and Ash and Wicked: For Good still to come, it’s about that time we start to look back at the best movies, music and books of the year!

We asked around the office here at Rarewaves as well as you across our social media to tell us what your picks are, so let’s dive in!

Staff Pick: Tornado

Tornado is only John McLean’s second film and coming a decade after his 2015 debut Slow West. He trades in the American frontier setting of his Michael Fassbender-led first venture to the vast hilly landscapes of Edinburgh, Scotland. Tornado is a striking period action-drama set in the 1790s starring Kōki as a samurai-trained puppeteer’s daughter, joined by Jack Lowden, Takehiro Hira, and Tim Roth.

Visually rich and with a wonderfully intense score, the film blends Western revenge tropes with samurai aesthetics and delivers a raw, elemental tale of survival and vengeance.

Audience Pick: Weapons

Zach Cregger returns following his breakout 2022 debut Barbarian with the bigger and more frightening Weapons. Weapons stars John Brolin, Julia Garner,  Benedict Wong, and Amy Madigan, and follows the disappearance of 17 schoolchildren from a small Pennsylvania town, leaving only one survivor.

Cregger’s masterful command of sound design, suspense and score mixed with supernatural mystery, community trauma, and psychological horror, makes Weapons a deeply unsettling experience.

Staff and Audience Pick: Sinners

Directed, written, and produced by Ryan Coogler (Black Panther, Creed), Sinners is a genre-bending horror film set in the 1932 Mississippi. It stars Michael B. Jordan in dual roles as twin brothers who return home to face a supernatural evil, with a supporting cast including Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell, and Delroy Lindo.

Coogler brings gothic and musical elements together to create something chilling, emotional and incredibly stylish.

Staff Pick: The Brutalist

Technically a 2024 movie, Brady Corbet’s Best Picture-nominee The Brutalist saw its UK release in January of this year. It’s an emotionally powerful epic starring Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, and Joe Alwyn. The emerging Corbet- coming off of two previous works The Childhood of a Leader and Vox Lux- tells the story of a Jewish-Hungarian architect rebuilding his life in post-WWII America.

The film earned praise for its sweeping ambition, layered performances, and its meditation on art, memory, and the immigrant experience.

Audience Pick: F1 (F1: The Movie)

F1: The Movie is directed by Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick) and stars Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes, a former Formula 1 driver returning to the sport for one final shot. Also featuring Damson Idris, Javier Bardem, and Kerry Condon, the film is produced by Lewis Hamilton, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Kosinski and Hans Zimmer on score duties.

With a lineup like that, I’d be concerned if it wasn’t appearing on “best of the year” lists! The movie combines high-octane action with emotional redemption, and includes footage from real F1 events.

Staff Pick: The Long Walk

Directed by Francis Lawrence (known for all but the first The Hunger Games movies), The Long Walk adapts Stephen King’s dystopian novel. It stars Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, and Mark Hamill (appearing in his second King adaptation of 2025 alongside The Life of Chuck) in a brutal televised contest where fifty boys must keep walking without rest- or face death.

With a tense premise and morally haunting atmosphere, it’s a gripping survival thriller with real emotional weight.

Audience Pick: Companion

Directed by Drew Hancock in his feature debut, Companion is a slick 2025 sci-fi thriller starring Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid. The film follows a “weekend getaway” at a secluded cabin that spirals into chaos when it’s revealed that one of the guests is a companion robot. With Zach Cregger and Roy Lee producing, the movie mixes dark comedy, horror, and feminist themes.

Staff Pick: Nosferatu

Nosferatu just barely made it into 2024- releasing on Christmas Day in the US and New Year’s Day here in the UK, it’s Robert Eggers’ fourth film following The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman. It’s also his first not to start with “The.” Nosferatu is a Gothic horror reimagining of the classic Dracula-based vampire tale that first graced our screens in 1922. The cast includes Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Willem Dafoe.

Eggers’ signature atmospheric style along with his painfully meticulous period detail and sheer passion make Nosferatu a visually haunting and deeply unsettling film- both repulsive and seductive.

Staff and Audience Pick: One Battle After Another

From auteur Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, Magnolia, Boogie Nights) comes One Battle After Another- a sprawling action thriller. Inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, it stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, and Teyana Taylor.

One Battle After Another tells the story of a former revolutionary forced back into violent conflict to protect his daughter, and is one of the first films to be shot primarily on VistaVision since the 1960s, giving it a unique visual quality. The film blends high-stakes action with emotional intensity, delivering PTA’s most ambitious film yet.

Staff Pick: A House of Dynamite

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (Oscar-winner for The Hurt Locker), A House of Dynamite is a tense apocalyptic political thriller about the US government racing to respond to a nuclear missile threat. The film features an ensemble cast including Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, and Jared Harris. Bigelow’s return to high-stakes cinema delivers razor-sharp pacing, moral complexity, and cinematic spectacle.

Audience Pick: Late Shift

Late Shift- it’s original German title being Heldin (‘Heroine’) is a Swiss-German drama written and directed by Petra Volpe and starring Leonie Benesch as a nurse working an exhausting shift at a massively understaffed hospital.

The film has garnered critical acclaim for its raw depiction of the emotional and physical pressure on healthcare workers. Volpe based the story on real experiences and literature from nurses, making Late Shift both a gripping thriller and a powerful social commentary. The film has been selected as the Swiss entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards.

What’s your favourite movie of 2025?

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