2025 was a year filled with cinematic moments, thrilling and devastating, cathartic and hilarious. Many of the year’s best films delivered scenes that have since proven hard to forget. Some, like Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” and Park Chan-wook’s “No Other Choice,” featured enough memorable moments, line readings and set pieces to warrant entire lists all on their own.
In the hope of being both brief and comprehensive, though, here are just the top seven best movie scenes of 2025.
The Underground Railroad, “One Battle After Another”
“One Battle After Another” has several scenes that could be considered some of the best of the year, including its climactic three-car chase over those high, paved rolling hills. But the film’s underground railroad sequence, its manic, anxiety-riddled tour through Sensei Sergio’s (Benicio del Toro) immigrant sanctuary organization, is just as breathtaking and impressive as any other scene you could have experienced on the big screen this year. Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson and cinematographer Michael Bauman shoot the sequence with long, handheld oners that are not just technically astonishing but ramp up the breakneck urgency of the entire piece.
And that is to say nothing of the banter ongoing between Sensei Sergio and Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) throughout the scene, or the compassionate way that the former — even amidst all the chaos of the moment — makes sure Bob meets and learns the name of every immigrant he has taken in. There is beautiful, messy humanity bursting through practically every frame of “One Battle After Another,” but perhaps never more so than in this sequence.
The Final Performance, “Hamnet”
There may be no more powerful stretch of cinema released this year than the final 20 minutes of director Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet.” Through the eyes of Jessie Buckley’s grieving Agnes, viewers are shown a humble stage performance of “Hamlet.” While initially confused and angered by the play’s use of her son’s name, Agnes comes to see the personal details imbued in its story by her husband, William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal). She grows to see herself in the play, and so does everyone else in the theatre, who collectively mourn its doomed hero, named after her late son (Jacobi Jupe), with her.
Some have argued that the ending of “Hamnet” does not land because “Hamlet” itself is not a 1:1 reflection of Agnes and Will’s story, but this writer would argue that is precisely why it does work. Agnes finds meaning and catharsis in “Hamlet,” the same way we all do in stories that often resemble our own lives very little. In the soaring final moments of her new film, Zhao captures that miraculous, deeply human phenomenon on screen in a series of musical cues, images, cuts and close-ups that create together a euphoric cinematic experience. To watch the end of “Hamnet” is to see one of the most beautiful aspects of human existence rendered fully, in all its power, on screen.
Memento Mori, “28 Years Later”
“28 Years Later” reaches its devastating emotional peak in its final act. When young hero Spike (Alfie Williams) and his ailing mother Isla (Jodie Comer) finally meet Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), he escorts them to his safe haven: a temple made of human bones. There, Kelson performs an examination on Isla and determines she has cancer and that it has spread to the point that no one can save her.
What follows is a confrontation with death, an acknowledgment that all things must end, in which Kelson gives Isla a more peaceful passing. Guided by Fiennes, Williams and Comer’s outstanding performances, the entire sequence becomes a strange, morbid and unexpectedly, arrestingly moving wonder. It is one of the best scenes that director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland have ever created — either together or separately.
Sammie’s Song, “Sinners”
If 2025 has a signature movie scene, then it is probably this. Writer-director Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” spends much of its first hour patiently building toward its blood-soaked, thrilling second half. It sends viewers hurtling into the latter section with a midpoint performance by young blues player Sammie (Miles Caton) that is so powerful it not only conjures spirits from the past and future, including electric guitar players, DJs and twerking dancers, but also briefly, spiritually burns down the roof and walls around him. Coogler stages this sequence as an unbroken steadicam shot that weaves its way around Sammie’s venue, moving past its many, anachronously dressed spirits and in time with composer Ludwig Göransson’s incendiary, layered score.
This sequence and its sudden, abrupt swerve into the spiritual, metaphorical world represents A Big Swing on Coogler’s part. To say it connects would be an understatement. As a piece of athletic filmmaking, it is flawless. But it works even better as a visual representation of the film’s themes and an acknowledgement of the role music can play in both expressing and healing the pain and hope of an entire culture. It sends both “Sinners” and its viewers straight into the stratosphere, if only for a few moments.
Jury Duty, “Sorry, Baby”
Writer-director Eva Victor’s “Sorry, Baby” tells its story in distinctly shaped, separate chapters, none of which are likely to linger in viewers’ minds longer than its jury duty detour. A short story in and of itself, the scene follows Victor’s Agnes as she struggles to find her place in an everyday jury selection process. After she instinctively raises her hand when the jury members present are asked if any of them have been victims of a crime, Agnes ends up questioned indirectly about her college sexual assault and the aftermath of it.
The scene works as both a testament to the strength of Victor’s sparse writing and as a bittersweet exploration of the rigidity of the justice system, its binary definition of the law and how ill-suited it is to care for rape and assault victims. Hettienne Park, for her part, gives one of the year’s best one-scene performances as the attorney who slowly realizes both the nature and complexity of Agnes’ trauma. When it comes, her eventual dismissal of Agnes from the jury arrives as both a relief and a quiet gut-punch.
The Pitch, “Sentimental Value”
There are many things to like about director Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” but none more purely impressive than its clear-eyed, earnest depiction of familial dysfunction and generational trauma. Nowhere in the film is that aspect of it more powerfully rendered than when filmmaker and estranged father Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård) meets with his daughter Nora (Renate Reinsve) at a local cafe and pitches her the lead role in his next film, all while passing her the thick, completed screenplay for it. Reinsve and Skarsgård give two of the year’s best performances in “Sentimental Value,” and the power of both their turns is on full display in this scene.
Notice the confusion in Nora’s eyes as she struggles to comprehend what her father is asking, as well as the disappointment when she realizes she will not be getting the apology or comfort she has long wanted from him. While you’re there, also take note of the desperation in Skarsgård’s eyes, the yearning to make his daughter understand him that is restricted by his inability to outright explain himself. There is immense, unspoken pain in both actors’ gazes. The pain of their characters’ disconnect bubbles up suddenly, without warning, and gives this simple conversation the emotional force of a freight train.
The Three-Way Kill, “No Other Choice”
No filmmaker alive makes complex blocking look as easy as “No Other Choice” director Park Chan-wook does. This is true of multiple scenes in his latest film, including when desperate, unemployed protagonist Yoo Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) sets out to kill Goo Beom-mo (Lee Sung-min), one of his competitors for a soon-to-be open job position. Man-su’s assassination attempt quickly goes awry, first when Beom-mo discovers his wife’s (Yeom Hye-ran) infidelity and then again when she crashes Man-su’s hit.
The three inept would-be killers all wrestle for Man-su’s gun in a sequence that brilliantly uses physical, pitch-black comedy to turn a simple action set piece into an exhilarating and exasperating thrill ride. Man-su’s subsequent escape down multiple, winding forest roads marks, like the unforgettable hanging scene in 2016’s “The Handmaiden,” another instance of Park embracing a kind of cartoonish, live-action “Looney Tunes” sense of physical comedy. Suffice it to say, it pays off in spades. The director’s unrivaled understanding and eye for widescreen geography is, to put it simply, on full display throughout this scene and many others in “No Other Choice.”
