5 Unmissable Theatrical Experiences That Will Define 2025

Some years, the best thing about movies is the movies. This year, it was the screens. The theatrical experience really mattered in 2025, and not just in a vague 'support cinemas' way. Between surprise revivals, directors playing with long-shelved formats, and a few tech swings that actually connected, it felt like a reminder of why we leave the house for this stuff in the first place.

'That indescribable feeling we get when the lights begin to dim and we go somewhere we have never been before - not just entertained, but somehow reborn.'

Nicole Kidman says it better than I do in that AMC pre-roll, but you get the point. Here are the five big-screen experiences that hit the hardest for me in 2025.

1. Hong Kong Cinema Classics series

   Early in the year, Shout! Studios picked up the Golden Princess library, a treasure trove of 150-plus Hong Kong action staples, including early work from John Woo and Tsui Hark. The haul has been rolling out in art houses nationwide under the 'Hong Kong Cinema Classics' banner, and it has been a blast rediscovering the good stuff with a crowd. Personal must-sees: John Woo's 'Hard Boiled' and 'The Killer,' plus Tony Ching Siu-Tung's 'A Chinese Ghost Story' trilogy. The tour keeps going into 2026, and some titles are even sneaking into multiplexes. That is not something I expected to type in 2025, but here we are.

2. Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein (in literally any theater)

   Yes, it is a Netflix Original. Also yes: seeing 'Frankenstein' with an audience was one of the year’s great theatrical highs. Every frame is fussed over like a painting - cinematography, production design, hair and makeup, VFX, all in lockstep. A handful of lucky cities even got IMAX runs, but a standard screen still absolutely sings. And now that Netflix bought Warner Bros. (I know, that sentence is wild), here is hoping more of their big, cinematic swings actually get big screens.

3. Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another in 70mm IMAX

   Shot in VistaVision, but only four theaters on Earth projected it that way. In the U.S., the chosen three were in New York, Los Angeles, and Boston. For everyone else, 70mm IMAX was the move, and it turns out that is a pretty great consolation prize. Michael Bauman’s images play tall and towering, with the entire feature running in the full, floor-to-ceiling IMAX frame. That almost never happens; most films only open up for a few set pieces. Keeping it full-height the whole time makes the movie feel both huge and weirdly intimate - an effect you are not reproducing at home, no matter how fancy your setup is.

4. Avatar: Fire and Ash in HFR 3D

   High frame rate has humbled a lot of filmmakers. Before now, the only movies that really made it sing were Victor Kossakovsky's 'Aquarela' and Ang Lee's 'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk.' Even Cameron took lumps for the HFR in 'The Way of Water.' This time, the kinks feel ironed out. The images in 'Fire and Ash' don’t tip into video-game cutscene territory because Cameron ditches the quick zooms and POV flourishes that turned hyper-real into just plain surreal. Bonus: it is one of the rare features screened in Dolby 3D, and that paired with HFR is about as crisp a picture as you will ever see in a theater. If this is not a capital-M Movie-for-the-big-screen, nothing is.

5. Ryan Coogler's Sinners in 70mm IMAX

   This one takes the top spot because of a single knockout sequence: Miles Caton performing 'I Lied to You' as multiple generations of musicians converge in the Smoke and Stack Twins' juke joint. When the image expands from a narrower scope to the full-height 70mm IMAX frame, it is near-transcendent. The rest delivers too - sunlit drives through the fields, a climactic vampire throwdown - but that musical moment is one of the best I have seen put on film. There is a reason the movie has already had two re-releases in 70mm IMAX.

What did I miss? Drop your favorite 2025 big-screen moments in the comments.