Most Anticipated Movies of 2026: A Strong Year for Cinema

I don’t have a best-movies-of-2025 list for you — new dad, sleep deprivation, the works. But from what I did see, I can bury the myth that 2025 was a bad year for cinema. It wasn’t 2023, the decade’s best so far, but it wasn’t a wasteland either. Not many homers they’ll be playing at Cooperstown, but plenty of singles, doubles, and a few triples.

Joseph Kosinski’s F1 hit 220 and stayed there — you could practically smell the burnt rubber through the screen. Carson Lund’s Eephus was the slow-burn elegy we needed for the civic life we had before the internet atomized us into content-consuming particles. Ana de Armas carried the underrated John Wick spin-off Ballerina with brutal elegance. The first 25 and final 75 minutes of Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, starring Denzel Washington as a hip-hop mogul, might be the movie that left me grinning widest all year. (In this house we don’t talk about the middle 40.) Hamnet’s third act will drain your tear ducts. And Marty Supreme settled any remaining debate about Timothée Chalamet: the kid can act.

About the Author

Giancarlo Sopo

Giancarlo Sopo is a writer exploring cinema, politics, and the conservative imagination.

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I don’t have a best-movies-of-2025 list for you — new dad, sleep deprivation, the works. But from what I did see, I can bury the myth that 2025 was a bad year for cinema. It wasn’t 2023, the decade’s best so far, but it wasn’t a wasteland either. Not many homers they’ll be playing at Cooperstown, but plenty of singles, doubles, and a few triples.

Joseph Kosinski’s F1 hit 220 and stayed there — you could practically smell the burnt rubber through the screen. Carson Lund’s Eephus was the slow-burn elegy we needed for the civic life we had before the internet atomized us into content-consuming particles. Ana de Armas carried the underrated John Wick spin-off Ballerina with brutal elegance. The first 25 and final 75 minutes of Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, starring Denzel Washington as a hip-hop mogul, might be the movie that left me grinning widest all year. (In this house we don’t talk about the middle 40.) Hamnet’s third act will drain your tear ducts. And Marty Supreme settled any remaining debate about Timothée Chalamet: the kid can act.