Oscars, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and more: it’s award season at the movies, and all the film critics are making their lists of the best movies of the year.
So, just what were the best artistic movies of 2025? From award winners and surprisingly lyrical genre projects to new animated classics and forays from beloved directors, these 10 movies are generating a lot of buzz this year…
Academy Award winner Chloe Zhao directs this “staggering cinematic catharsis” (NPR), which tells a fictionalized account of William Shakespeare’s marriage to Agnes Hathaway, the death of their son, Hamnet, and the impact of that death on the writing of one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays.
Obviously bucking for more Oscar gold, this tearjerker stars Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Paul Mescal as Will, and is adapted for the screen by Maggie O’Farrell, the author of the award-winning novel on which it was based.
It has already won several accolades, including being named one of the American Film Institute’s Top 10 Films of the year, and you can expect it to dominate award lists.
The Focus Feature film isn’t streaming yet, but head out to the theater, and keep your eyes peeled for a release in late January or early February 2026.
Few stories have been adapted to the screen more often than Mary Shelley’s immortal novel, but it’s comparatively rare that the end results are regarded as especially “artistic.”
Enter Guillermo del Toro, who has long been associated with sumptuous films, and who now has a couple of Academy Awards tucked under his belt.
Frankenstein has been a passion project for Del Toro for decades now, and the culmination of that obsession is everywhere in his lavishly epic retelling of the familiar tale, featuring Oscar Isaac and a potentially star-making turn from Jacob Elordi as Victor Frankenstein and his creation, respectively.
Paul Thomas Anderson is no stranger to artistic films. He’s the only director to have won Best Director at Cannes, the Silver Lion at Venice, and the Silver and Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, not to mention a range of other awards and accolades.
His most recent (and most expensive) film promises to be no exception, as One Battle After Another racked up more Golden Globe nods than any other movie this year.
Adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, One Battle After Another follows Leonardo DiCaprio (along with a star-studded supporting cast) as a former revolutionary who is pulled back into combat when his past catches up with him.
Korean director Park Chan-wook exploded onto the international scene with the release of his 2003 film Oldboy, and has been a director to watch ever since. The Handmaiden won a BAFTA Award in 2016, while his 2022 film Decision to Leave won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival.
His latest is an unlikely black comedy adapting a Donald Westlake novel, starring Lee Byung-hun as a papermaker who makes the grim decision to kill off the competition in his search for a job to maintain his home and his family’s lifestyle.
It was selected as South Korea’s entry for the Best International Feature Film category of the Academy Awards, and promises to be one of the most talked-about films of the year. No Other Choice hasn’t been released on major streaming platforms yet, but it will be soon after its festival run.
“An absolutely breathtaking piece of filmmaking,” raves Screen Rant about this Norwegian drama that received a 19-minute standing ovation during its premiere at Cannes, where it won the Grand Prix.
From celebrated director Joachim Trier (The Worst Person in the World), Sentimental Value follows a director who tries to reconnect with his two estranged daughters while also making a movie about their complicated family history.
The result, according to the Critics Consensus at Rotten Tomatoes, is a “bracingly mature work” that is “marvelously acted across the board.”
Ryan Coogler’s latest breaks the mold of vampire movies with its historical setting in the Mississippi Delta and its breathtaking use of music.
With a whopping seven Golden Globe nominations, including Best Motion Picture—Drama and Best Original Song, Sinners is the rare piece of genre fare to break into the rarified air of awards season.
With Michael B. Jordan playing dual roles as twin brothers who open a juke joint in the 1930s that is threatened by sinister outside forces on its debut night, Sinners became a box office phenomenon and a cultural touchstone.
A remake of the South Korean film Save the Green Planet, the latest from controversial director Yorgos Lanthimos stars Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, and Aidan Delbis in the story of two beekeepers who kidnap a powerful CEO because they believe that she is actually an alien.
Receiving praise for its lead performances, Bugonia has divided audiences but, like most of Lanthimos’s films, has certainly gotten people talking.
The idiosyncratic director has previously accrued a massive 23 various Academy Award nominations for films like The Favourite and Poor Things, and Bugonia seems likely to follow suit, having already gathered three Golden Globe nods, including for Best Motion Picture—Musical or Comedy.
A French animated film about a Belgian family living in Japan, Little Amelie follows a young girl, who is born in a vegetative state, as she bonds with her family and her nanny, Nishio, who teaches her about loss, about the world, and the kanji for “rain,” among other things.
Little Amelie “employs swaths of eye-popping color, broad shapes and thoughtfully rendered two-dimensional art style” (Salon.com) to convey a “gently transcendent, tear-inducing” story (Los Angeles Times) that saw it nominated for Best Motion Picture–Animated at the Golden Globes and makes it one of the most artistic animated films of the year.
The most awarded film at Cannes this year was The Secret Agent, a Brazilian political thriller about the final years of that country’s brutal military dictatorship in the 1970s.
Following a former teacher-turned-member of the underground (Wagner Moura), this “smart, brutal, often funny thriller” (NPR) uses social commentary and gritty sensibilities to “weave a vividly dangerous yet darkly human tale” (Rotten Tomatoes).
The Secret Agent took Cannes by storm and is likely to make it one of the most talked-about movies of the year. Although it is not yet widely available to stream, it should be available in the New Year.
The latest adventure for Daniel Craig’s “gentleman sleuth” Benoit Blanc follows a similar pattern to previous installments in the Knives Out franchise, using the format of the murder mystery (and a star-studded supporting cast) as a microcosm to examine current events.
In this case, however, writer/director Rian Johnson also tackles a more personal topic, exploring the role of religion, faith, and forgiveness.
The result is “the most rewarding episode in the series” (NPR), and a must-watch for fans of whodunnits and mystery novels.
Featured image: Stills from Neon and Warner Bros. Pictures