For cinephiles, there is nothing like the theatrical experience of seeing a movie in the cinema. Nicole Kidman puts it best in the now-famous AMC pre-roll ad: “That indescribable feeling we get when the lights begin to dim and we go somewhere we’ve never been before — not just entertained, but somehow reborn.”
2025 has, of course, been filled with great movies, but even more exciting is the fact that it has been filled with big-screen experiences. From re-releases of long-lost classics to some of cinema’s greatest auteurs experimenting with long-dormant styles and emerging technologies, this year has been a great testament to the importance of the silver screen.
Here are our five favorite theatrical experiences of 2025.
5. The Hong Kong Cinema Classics Series
A still from John Woo’s The Killer.
One of the biggest news stories for cinephiles in the beginning of 2025 was Shout! Studios’ acquisition of the Golden Princess library — a catalog of over 150 classic action films from Hong Kong, including early films from such well-known auteurs as John Woo and Tsui Hark. These films have been playing in art house cinemas across the country in 2025 as part of the “Hong Kong Cinema Classics” series, and getting to discover (or rediscover) some of these gems has been a clear theatrical highlight of 2025 for this writer.
Some personal favorites include John Woo’s Hard Boiled and The Killer and Tony Ching Siu-Tung’s A Chinese Ghost Story trilogy. This series will be continuing into 2026, with some films even making the jump to multiplexes.
4. Frankenstein in any theatrical format
Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein may be a Netflix Original, but seeing it in a theater was easily one of the greatest theatrical experiences of 2025. Like the rest of Del Toro’s films, essentially every frame of Frankenstein could be a painting, with painstaking attention to detail paid to every element from the cinematography to the production design, hair and make-up, and visual effects. Lucky cinephiles in a handful of cities got the chance to see the film in IMAX, too, but even seeing it on a regular cinema screen was incredible. Hopefully, after its acquisition of Warner Bros., we’ll get the opportunity to see more cinematic Netflix releases like this on the big screen like they deserve.
3. One Battle After Another in 70mm IMAX
(L-r) TEYANA TAYLOR as Perfidia and SEAN PENN as Col. Steven J. Lockjaw in “One Battle After Another.” A Warner Bros. Pictures Release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another was shot in VistaVision, but it was only projected in this format in four theaters in the world, with the three in the United States being in New York, Los Angeles, and Boston. The next best thing is 70mm IMAX, and this format does a great job of capturing the beauty of Michael Bauman’s cinematography. The entire film is shown in a floor-to-ceiling aspect ratio, which is exceedingly rare — most films only open up to that larger image for key action sequences. However, seeing the entire film in this huge size creates an intimacy and immersion that simply cannot be recreated at home.
2. Avatar: Fire and Ash in HFR 3D
Zoe Saldaña as Neytiri in 20th Century Studios’ AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Few filmmakers have attempted to use high frame rate (HFR) technology in their films, and even fewer have used it well. To date, the only films that had effectively used the technology were Victor Kossakovsky’s documentary Aquarela and Ang Lee’s military drama Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. Even James Cameron received much criticism for its use in Avatar: The Way of Water.
However, with Avatar: Fire and Ash, Cameron seems to have worked out many of the kinks. The visuals look much less like a video game cutscene because Cameron avoids the quick zooms and POV shots that caused the style to move from hyper-realism into outright surrealism. It is also one of the rare films to be shown in Dolby 3D, which, combined with the HFR, creates one of the crispest images you will ever see in a cinema. If this is not a “big-screen movie,” there never will be one.
1. Sinners in 70mm IMAX
MILES CATON as Sammie Moore in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. © 2025 Warner Bros. Ent. All Rights Reserved.
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners earns its spot at the top of this list of best cinematic experiences of 2025 thanks to one scene: Miles Caton’s stirring performance of “I Lied to You,” resulting in a scene in which different generations of musicians come together in the Smoke and Stack Twins’ juke joint. When the aspect ratio in this scene opens up from the narrower scope to the floor-to-ceiling frame of IMAX 70mm, it’s a borderline religious experience.
Of course, plenty of the rest of the film looks great in IMAX 70mm, from the scenes of characters driving through the fields to the climactic vampire battle, but this musical sequence is arguably one of the best ever committed to celluloid. There’s a reason that the film already had two re-releases in the format.
What were your favorite big-screen experiences of 2025? Let us know in the comments below.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
