Juror #2 is a 2024 legal thriller directed by Clint Eastwood from a screenplay by Jonathan Abrams, a taut courtroom morality play that premiered as the closing film of AFI Fest. It reunites Eastwood with Warner Bros. for a story built around a single, agonizing ethical dilemma.
Nicholas Hoult stars as Justin Kemp, a family man serving on the jury of a high-profile murder trial who gradually realizes that he himself may have caused the victim's death, leaving him torn between protecting his own future and ensuring an innocent man is not wrongly convicted. Toni Collette plays the ambitious prosecutor eyeing higher office, with Zoey Deutch, Chris Messina, J.K. Simmons and Kiefer Sutherland filling out the ensemble.
Widely regarded as possibly the final directorial effort of Eastwood, who was 94 at the time of its release, Juror #2 drew strong reviews for its lean construction and classical craftsmanship. Its rollout became a story in itself after Warner Bros. opted for an unusually limited theatrical run, a decision many critics and filmmakers publicly lamented for a picture of its pedigree. It streams on Max.
Heart Eyes is a 2025 horror romantic comedy directed by Josh Ruben, written by Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy, and released by Spyglass Media Group and Screen Gems. It gleefully fuses two genres that rarely share a screen, the Valentine's Day rom-com and the masked-slasher film, into a bloody, tongue-in-cheek crowd-pleaser.
For two years running, a masked murderer known as the Heart Eyes Killer has slaughtered loved-up couples on Valentine's Day. When advertising colleagues Ally (Olivia Holt) and Jay (Mason Gooding) are forced into a late working dinner on the holiday, they are mistaken for a couple by the killer and spend a frantic night fleeing across the city, their prickly, will-they-won't-they dynamic sparking even as the body count rises. Devon Sawa, Gigi Zumbado and Jordana Brewster round out the cast.
Opening in theaters just ahead of Valentine's Day 2025, Heart Eyes was a profitable piece of counter-programming and earned warm reviews, around an eighty-one percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, for the way it married genuine romantic-comedy chemistry to inventive slasher set pieces. Its brisk wit and slick scares made it a word-of-mouth favourite that found an even bigger audience on streaming. It is streaming on Netflix.
One of Them Days is a 2025 buddy comedy directed by Lawrence Lamont in his feature debut, from a screenplay by Syreeta Singleton, and released by Sony's TriStar Pictures. Produced in part by Issa Rae's Hoorae banner, it pairs Keke Palmer with the Grammy-winning musician SZA in her first lead film role, and consciously revives the raucous, big-hearted spirit of Black buddy comedies like Friday.
Best friends and roommates Dreux (Keke Palmer) and Alyssa (SZA) wake up to discover that Alyssa's feckless boyfriend has blown their rent money, leaving them only hours to scrape together what they owe before their landlord evicts them. What follows is a frantic, single-day odyssey across Los Angeles, through workplaces, clinics, parties and petty disasters, as the two women's loyalty to each other is tested at every turn. The supporting cast includes Katt Williams, Janelle James and Maude Apatow.
Opening over the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend in January 2025, the film was a surprise critical and commercial hit, earning strong reviews, roughly a ninety percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and comfortably outgrossing its modest budget. Critics singled out the easy chemistry between its leads and hailed SZA's assured big-screen debut, and its momentum made it one of the most talked-about comedies of the year. It is streaming on Netflix.
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is a 2025 romantic comedy and the fourth film in the beloved Bridget Jones series, directed by Michael Morris and adapted from Helen Fielding's 2013 novel of the same name. Renée Zellweger returns for a fourth time as the irrepressible, perpetually self-scrutinising Bridget, more than two decades after the character first became a cultural touchstone. In the United States the film was released as a Peacock original, while international audiences saw it in cinemas through Universal Pictures.
The story finds Bridget as a widow, raising two young children four years after the death of her great love, Mark Darcy, and tentatively re-entering the worlds of dating and work. She is pursued by a charming younger man, Roxster (Leo Woodall), whom she meets through a dating app, while also drawn to her son's watchful science teacher, Mr. Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Hugh Grant returns as the roguish Daniel Cleaver, now an unlikely friend and honorary uncle to her children, with Emma Thompson, Jim Broadbent and Gemma Jones among the familiar faces.
Widely regarded as the warmest and best-reviewed entry in the series since the original, the film was praised for balancing its trademark comedy with a genuinely moving portrait of grief, single parenthood and second chances. It became one of the most-watched original film launches in Peacock's history in the United States and a substantial box-office success overseas, reaffirming the enduring appeal of a heroine audiences have followed through every stage of adult life. It is streaming on Peacock.
Ne Zha 2 is a Chinese animated fantasy epic written and directed by the filmmaker known as Jiaozi, a sequel to his 2019 smash that reimagines figures from the classical novel Investiture of the Gods. A dazzling blend of mythological spectacle, slapstick humor, and genuine emotion, it became a cultural phenomenon on a scale rarely seen in animation anywhere in the world.
The story picks up after the young demon-child Ne Zha and the dragon prince Ao Bing have had their physical bodies destroyed, leaving their souls sharing a single fragile form. To restore themselves, the two former rivals must undergo a series of perilous trials set by the immortals, a quest that pulls them into a larger war between the heavenly order and the long-oppressed dragon clans. Beneath the breathless action lies the first film's defiant theme: that destiny is not fixed by birth, and that a being branded a monster can still choose who to become.
Released during the 2025 Chinese New Year, Ne Zha 2 shattered records to become the highest-grossing animated film in history and the highest-grossing film ever in a single market, climbing past two billion dollars worldwide and ranking among the top-grossing films of all time. A24 handled the English-language release in North America, where critics praised its astonishing visual craft. It is streaming on HBO Max.
Sentimental Value is a tender, richly layered family drama from Norwegian director Joachim Trier, who reunites with his Worst Person in the World star Renate Reinsve and co-wrote the screenplay with his longtime collaborator Eskil Vogt. A study of estrangement, art, and inherited pain set largely within a single storied Oslo house, it confirmed Trier's standing as one of world cinema's most humane and precise storytellers.
Reinsve plays Nora, an acclaimed stage actress who, with her sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), is drawn back into the orbit of their estranged father Gustav (Stellan Skarsgard), a once-celebrated filmmaker mounting his first project in fifteen years. When Gustav offers Nora the lead in a deeply personal film inspired by his own mother's wartime trauma and she refuses, he casts a visiting American movie star (Elle Fanning) instead, setting off a delicate reckoning between a father and the daughters he failed. The house itself, thick with memory, becomes the story's quiet fourth character.
The film premiered in competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix after a reported nineteen-minute standing ovation, and went on to earn some of the year's strongest reviews and a sweep of awards attention, including nine Academy Award nominations and a Golden Globe win for Skarsgard. It became the first Norwegian film to win the Academy Award for Best International Feature. It is streaming on Hulu.
Train Dreams is a quietly devastating period drama directed by Clint Bentley, who adapted Denis Johnson's acclaimed 2011 novella with his longtime writing partner Greg Kwedar. Spanning roughly eight decades in the early twentieth-century American West, it is a profound meditation on love, grief, and the vanishing wilderness, lived out by an ordinary man far from the centers of history. Joel Edgerton anchors the film with one of the most restrained and affecting performances of his career.
Edgerton plays Robert Grainier, an orphaned day laborer who builds railroads and fells timber across the forests of the Pacific Northwest around Bonners Ferry, Idaho. He finds unexpected happiness with his wife Gladys (Felicity Jones) and their infant daughter, only for a catastrophic wildfire to shatter the life he has made. The rest of the film traces his solitary years in the woods as the country modernizes around a man who remains bound to the land and to his memories, with Kerry Condon and William H. Macy in support and Will Patton narrating in the cadence of Johnson's prose.
Premiering at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival before its Netflix release, Train Dreams drew rapturous reviews as a gorgeous, elegiac portrait of American life, earning an exceptional 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. It became a major awards contender, collecting multiple Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, and was named one of the year's best films by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute. It is streaming on Netflix.
Drop is a tightly wound Blumhouse thriller from director Christopher Landon, the filmmaker behind Happy Death Day and Freaky. Meghann Fahy, breaking out after The White Lotus, stars as Violet, a widowed single mother stepping back into the dating world for the first time in years. Her date at an upscale high-rise restaurant is meant to be a fresh start — until her phone begins to buzz.
As Violet sits across from her seemingly perfect date, Henry (Brandon Sklenar), she starts receiving anonymous, escalating messages through an AirDrop-style app. The sender can see her, is somewhere inside the restaurant, and threatens to have her young son killed at home unless she obeys — including a demand that she murder her date. Unfolding almost in real time within a single location, the film turns a candlelit dinner into an agonizing pressure cooker.
Written by Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach and produced under the Blumhouse and Platinum Dunes banners, Drop opened in April 2025 to an 83% Rotten Tomatoes score and strong word of mouth for Fahy, grossing roughly $28 million against an $11 million budget. Critics praised how Landon sustains tension almost entirely through a woman, a phone and a table she cannot leave.
Black Bag is a sleek, sharp-witted espionage thriller from director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp, the duo behind Kimi and Presence. Set inside Britain's intelligence establishment, it stars Michael Fassbender as George Woodhouse, a fastidious counterintelligence officer, and Cate Blanchett as his wife Kathryn, a senior agent who may have betrayed her country. The title is spy tradecraft for the secrets a spouse is never obliged to reveal.
When George learns that a devastating cyberweapon has been leaked and that his own wife sits near the top of the suspect list, he invites the likely culprits to a dinner party and quietly laces the food to loosen their tongues. The ensemble — Pierce Brosnan, Marisa Abela, Regé-Jean Page, Tom Burke and Naomie Harris — circle one another through lie-detector tests and elegant dinner-table cruelty, as loyalty to a marriage and loyalty to a country are pitted against each other.
Shot at Pinewood Studios and around London, Black Bag drew some of the strongest reviews of 2025, holding a 96% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and praise for Koepp's tight, talky script and the sheer movie-star wattage of its leads. Though its box office was modest against a reported $50-60 million budget, it was widely hailed as a throwback to the adult, dialogue-driven thriller.
The Accountant 2 is director Gavin O'Connor's long-awaited sequel to the 2016 sleeper hit, reuniting Ben Affleck with the role of Christian Wolff — the mathematically gifted, autistic forensic accountant who moonlights as a lethal operative. Screenwriter Bill Dubuque returns to the world he created, picking up Christian's fractured family ties and shadowy client list nearly a decade after audiences first met him.
When former Treasury official Raymond King (J.K. Simmons) is killed, FinCEN deputy director Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) is pulled into a case that forces Christian to call on the one person he cannot control: his estranged brother and rival hitman Braxton, played with volatile charm by Jon Bernthal. What starts as a hunt for a missing family becomes a sprawling story about the bond between two dangerous siblings, mixing gunfights and ledgers with unexpectedly funny buddy-comedy beats.
Released in April 2025, the film outgrossed its predecessor with more than $103 million worldwide against an $80 million budget, and critics singled out the Affleck-Bernthal chemistry as the reason the sequel works. Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey returned to give the action its polished sheen, while Bryce Dessner of The National took over scoring duties. The warm reception has fueled talk of the franchise expanding into a trilogy.
Scary Movie is a 2026 horror-comedy that revives the long-dormant spoof franchise, reuniting brothers Marlon and Shawn Wayans with the series they helped create a quarter-century earlier. Distributed by Paramount, the reboot returns the Wayans clan to the parody format they popularized with the original 2000 film, taking aim at the modern wave of horror hits that has dominated screens in the years since.
The film strings together its gags around a familiar setup of oblivious young characters stalked by a masked killer, using that skeleton to lampoon recent scary movies, prestige horror and pop-culture obsessions alike. The cast reunites multiple members of the Wayans family, including Damon Wayans Jr. and Kim Wayans, alongside comic performers such as Heidi Gardner and a roster of Saturday Night Live alumni, all game for the franchise's trademark barrage of sight gags, pratfalls and pop-culture riffs.
Arriving twenty-five years after the original, the reboot leaned on nostalgia for the Wayans brothers' brand of anything-goes comedy while updating its targets for a new generation of horror fans. It became an immediate streaming hit after its theatrical run. Scary Movie is streaming on Paramount+.
