As the world outside the cinema grows ever crazier, many of our foremost filmmakers are putting forth some of their strongest work to date, crafting films that capture, respond to, or offer welcome respite from the chaos of 2025.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
Among tales of vampires, aliens, and superheroes, we saw standout moments that offered apocalyptic visions, death-defying stunts, and triumphant celebrations of culture and creativity.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
Without further ado, here are EW’s top 10 movie scenes of 2025, ranked.\n<\/p>\n
10. The assassination in Eddington <\/p>\n
Pedro Pascal in ‘Eddington’.<\/p>\n
A24<\/p>\n
Ari Aster’s eerie, provocative fourth feature pits prickly Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) against affable Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) in an absurd small-town mayoral race at the height of the pandemic. At first characterized by verbal attacks and vindictive posturing, the duo’s catty, low-stakes political battle should feel familiar to anyone who’s endured our last few American election cycles. That is, until the film’s most surprising sequence: an unassuming domestic spat between Ted and his teen son that abruptly ends with both Garcias bleeding out in their family room thanks to a couple of sniper rifle rounds from Joe. It’s a bold narrative pivot that unceremoniously takes the movie’s biggest star off the table with an hour of runtime left, pointedly unleashing Aster’s directorial superpower \u2014 staging viscerally graphic deaths for maximal shock value \u2014\u00a0to illustrate the violent amorality at the heart of many American power fantasies.\n<\/p>\n
9. Lois and Clark’s interview in Superman <\/p>\n
Rachel Brosnahan and David Corenswet in ‘Superman’.<\/p>\n
DC Studios\/ Warner Bros.<\/p>\n
The most riveting scene in any 2025 superhero movie isn’t an action-packed fight sequence or a VFX showcase:\u00a0it’s a 10-minute conversation. In one of Superman<\/a>‘s earliest scenes, Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) grills her boyfriend, Clark Kent (David Corenswet), over the Man of Steel’s unsanctioned intervention in an international conflict between Boravia and Jarhanpur. The scene marks a new milestone in the two journalists’ relationship, as it’s the first time Superman allows anyone to interview him (besides himself), but it quickly escalates into a tense exploration of superheroic responsibilities and journalistic ethics. Corenswet’s impassioned performance highlights the manifold identities that make Superman such a rich, complex character: he’s simultaneously an alien outsider, a mild-mannered reporter, a doting boyfriend, and an idealistic savior. And Brosnahan’s rapid-fire delivery of James Gunn’s snappy dialogue clarifies that Lois is even more thoughtful and fearless than the Big Blue Boy Scout himself.\n<\/p>\n 8. The sandwich heart-to-heart in Sorry, Baby <\/p>\n Eva Victor and John Carroll Lynch in ‘Sorry, Baby’.<\/p>\n Philip Keith\/A24<\/p>\n Eva Victor’s directorial debut chronicles a young academic’s bumpy road to recovery after surviving a harrowing sexual assault by a former mentor. In perhaps the most tender scene in any 2025 movie, our protagonist Agnes (Victor) breaks down in a panic attack on the side of the road after learning a distressing revelation about her assailant, and shares an unexpectedly impactful moment with Pete, the owner of a nearby sandwich shop. The restaurateur is played by veteran character actor John Carroll Lynch, whose prior portrayals of terrifying creeps and lovable confidants make his character’s intentions difficult to evaluate at first. But once Pete’s initial hostility softens into kindhearted support, Agnes (and the audience) can breathe a long-overdue sigh of relief as Lynch’s character offers sage advice and a life-changing sandwich, suggesting a brighter, more hopeful world may be on the horizon.\n<\/p>\n 7. The hamster escape in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You <\/p>\n The hamster in ‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’.<\/p>\n A24<\/p>\n Is motherhood a fate worse than death? Is Rose Byrne<\/a> the greatest actress of her generation? Mary Bronstein’s anxiety-inducing sophomore feature suggests the answer to both questions might be “yes.” Byrne plays Linda, an exhausted therapist in the midst of a Sisyphean quest to help her young daughter grapple with an eating disorder. Midway through the movie, as tensions at home and work have continually mounted beyond the point of any immediate solution, Linda fulfills her reluctant promise to buy her daughter a pet hamster. The rodent \u2014 surreally rendered as a twitchy puppet \u2014 quickly reveals itself as something of an inexplicable demonic force, and its unceasing shrieking and gnawing prompts immediate buyers’ remorse in both mother and daughter. Then, in a shocking moment of pitch-black comedy, the hamster suddenly\u2026stops being a problem. It feels like a moment of divine intervention and is the closest the movie comes to handing Linda a win.\n<\/p>\n 6. Sensei’s house in One Battle After Another <\/p>\n Leonardo DiCaprio in ‘One Battle After Another’.<\/p>\n Warner Bros.<\/p>\n Practically any scene from Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest masterpiece could earn a spot on this list. But for my money, One Battle After Another<\/a> peaks at its midpoint, when community leader Sensei Sergio (Benicio del Toro) invites Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) to reconvene at his house as Lockjaw (Sean Penn) descends on their hometown. Although it’s a fairly unflashy scene in which the unlikely duo<\/a> sorts out various logistics \u2014 securing a gun, charging a phone, grabbing some cash \u2014 it clarifies the fascinating dichotomy between the two men’s approaches to resistance. Bob is a paranoid, self-interested ex-revolutionary stoner past the end of his rope who’s only trying to save one person, while Sensei Sergio remains cool, calm, and collected as he quietly protects dozens in a “Latino Harriet Tubman situation” that could easily sustain its own movie. And Bob’s combative phone call with a persnickety resistance operator marks a comedic career highlight for both DiCaprio and Anderson.\n<\/p>\n 5. The Yankees-salsa chase in Highest 2 Lowest <\/p>\n Denzel Washington in ‘Highest 2 Lowest’.<\/p>\n A24<\/p>\n The first hour of Spike Lee’s reimagining of High and Low patiently sets its pieces in place: record executive David King (Denzel Washington) ponders whether he should pay millions in ransom after Kyle (Elijah Wright), the son of his driver Paul (Jeffrey Wright), is mistakenly kidnapped in a botched attempt to nab the protagonist’s son Trey (Aubrey Joseph). The film kicks into a significantly higher gear at the exact moment that David decides to drop off the dough. In the film’s most exhilarating sequence, David and his police escorts fall into the kidnappers’ elaborate trap that exploits the celebratory chaos of a Yankees-Red Sox showdown and the National Puerto Rican Day Parade<\/a>. Any other director would see the sequence as an opportunity to show off their action-filmmaking chops, but only Lee would think to deliver a thrilling chase and a lovely tribute to the baseball fans and Afro-Latin communities of the Bronx.\n<\/p>\n 4. The biplane sequence in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning <\/p>\n Tom Cruise in ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’.<\/p>\n Paramount Pictures and Skydance<\/p>\n Though the eighth Mission: Impossible film was more noticeably uneven than other recent entries, it still ought to hold a permanent spot in the Action Movie Hall of Fame thanks to its absurdly ambitious airborne finale. The daredevil sequence sees Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) hijack a biplane to chase down the villainous Gabriel (Esai Morales), who’s in a biplane of his own. Ethan then decides to leap from one biplane to the other in order to grab the MacGuffin around Gabriel’s neck, and, eventually, he succeeds \u2014 but not before the antagonist throws him for a loop or two while our hero is clinging to the wing. Cruise, of course, performed the stunt practically and says he nearly broke his back<\/a> while slamming into the plane. Imagining a more impressive stunt sequence is, frankly, well, impossible.\n<\/p>\n 3. The ‘Boots’ montage in 28 Years Later <\/p>\n Aaron Taylor Johnson in ’28 Years Later’.<\/p>\n Sony Pictures<\/p>\n The most breathtakingly edited sequence of the year comes early in Danny Boyle’s post-apocalyptic fable 28 Years Later. As Spike (Alfie Wililams) begins his journey to mainland Britain on a rite-of-passage hunting trip with his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), editor Jon Harris intercuts DP Anthony Dod Mantle’s iPhone cinematography with black-and-white archival footage of young Britons gearing up for war in the early 20th century, snippets from battle sequences in Laurence Olivier’s 1944 film adaptation of Henry V, and shots in red-night vision capturing the infected alongside the Isles’ wildlife. And, in a move echoing the film’s brilliant trailer, the sequence is soundtracked by a hair-raising 1915 recording of Rudyard Kipling’s battle-weary poem “Boots,” resulting in an electrifying montage that weaves together a century of British wartime accounts, both real and imagined, to contextualize the characters’ imminent combat within a long lineage of bloodshed.\n<\/p>\n 2. The finale of Bugonia <\/p>\n Emma Stone in ‘Bugonia’.<\/p>\n Focus Features<\/p>\n Yorgos Lanthimos’ remake of Jang Joon-hwan’s Save the Green Planet pits Teddy (Jesse Plemons), a working-class conspiracy theorist, against Michelle (Emma Stone), a CEO he kidnaps in the belief that she’s a powerful alien in disguise. Stone’s character eventually reveals that she is, indeed, the empress of an alien race that created humanity\u2026and after spending a few days with Teddy, she ultimately decides that mankind is beyond redemption, prompting her to pop a bubble aboard her mothership that instantly wipes out all human life. The film’s closing minutes<\/a> are devoted exclusively to a montage of lifeless bodies around the world. The sequence offers a distressing yet strangely cathartic vision of our total demise, where the world seems more peaceful without any human endeavors mucking it up. And the birds and the bees persist on a post-human Earth: we didn’t make it, but life goes on.\n<\/p>\n 1. The juke joint time warp in Sinners <\/p>\n Miles Caton in ‘Sinners’.<\/p>\n Warner Bros. Pictures<\/p>\n “There are legends of people… born with the gift of making music so true, it can pierce the veil between life and death.” Ryan Coogler begins his dazzling, genre-fluid hit Sinners with these words from Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), and re-deploys them as aspiring blues singer Sammie Moore (Miles Caton) finally graces his cousins’ Mississippi juke joint with his song “I Lied to You.” Sammie’s tune is so powerful that he summons centuries of other performers across time and space for a spiritual musical summit that burns the house down. Coogler and cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw present the time-bending sequence in one long take (which was actually a series of several long takes<\/a> due to IMAX camera limitations) that unites blues, rock, hip-hop, ballet, tribal dance, and more in a transcendently powerful celebration of the lineage of Black art.\n<\/p>\n