The Best Films of 2025
If nothing else, 2025 was the year of VistaVision. I’m still plagued by the question of “why?” What’s the deal with this film stock? Why is this decades-old format suddenly making a high-profile comeback? First developed in the 50s by Paramount, it’s a higher-fidelity, wider version of the standard 35mm film frame. It peaked in popularity in the late 50s with John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock shooting some of their films on it, before suddenly vanishing by the 60s. It’s kicked around in the corner of the film world through its use in special effects, with special effects sequences in everything from Star Wars and Jurassic Park to Interstellar and White Noise . Then, this year, it’s back. Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist , Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another , and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia all used the format. And it’s not going away either, with Greta Gerwig’s The Magician’s Nephew and Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights both shot on VistaVision and due out next year. What...
