Best movies of 2025: The Irishman, Parasite and Midsommar among the year's instant classics

 Best movies of 2025

The Irishman, Parasite, and Midsommar are not 2025 films — they came out in 2019. But I agree they’ve already achieved instant-classic stat

A sweeping gangster epic, it’s a reflective take on mortality, loyalty, regret, aging. The performances (De Niro, Pacino, Pesci) are top‑tier, the scale is huge, and Scorsese’s craft is fully on display: cinematography, editing, pacing—even the CGI de‑aging (which is controversial) shows ambition. Many critics praised it as one of Scorsese’s late‑career masterpieces

Parasite (dir. Bong Joon Ho)

Probably one of the most culturally and critically significant films of the last decade. It blends genre (satire, thriller, family drama) with keen social commentary about class, inequality, and risk, all wrapped in a tightly plotted, surprising story. It also broke ground internationally: the first foreign‑language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Less about social critique, but this folk horror stays with you: its visuals, its breakdown of grief and relationships, its unsettling daylight horror. It’s so stylistically bold—lighting, sound design, set design—and emotionally intense. For many viewers, it reframed what horror could do in daylight, with dread not just of the supernatural but of human tensions