MOVIES THAT WOWED

FUNNY THING about this year's best films: Half of them are adaptations.

- AMY NICHOLSON

As a movie lover who's always hunting for new talent, new ideas and new stimuli, I used to view that as creative inertia. But 2025 has changed my mind. ↑ Now I see artists drawing inspiration from the past to show that Hollywood should trust the sturdy bones that have kept it running for over a century: good yarns, bold casting, films that don't feel made by focus groups or doomsaying bean-counters (or, God help us, AI), but by blood and sweat. ¢ From original tales to radical reworkings of classics both highfalutin' and raucously lowbrow, these 10 filmmakers all know that the most vital part of the storytelling business has stayed exactly the same. They have to wow an audience. And they did.

1. SINNERSMultiple platformsA period-piece-vampire-musical mashup could have been discordant, but writer-director Ryan Coogler confidently makes all three genres harmonize. In "Sinners," Coogler double-casts his longtime collaborator Michael B. Jordan as twin bootleggers Smoke and Stack, then pits them against a pack of banjo-picking bloodsuckers helmed by a roguish Jack O'Connell. We're expecting a big, bloody brouhaha and we get it. Underneath the playful carnage, however, the question at stake is: Why suffer the daily indignities of the Jim Crow-era South when you could outlive - and eat - your oppressors? "Sinners" is the most exciting film of 2025, both for what it is and for what it proves: that fresh blockbusters still exist and people are eager to gobble them up.