Sunday Special: The Best Movies of 2025

I'm Gilbert Cruz, and this is the Sunday special. We're spending this last couple of episodes of the year looking back on some of the big cultural moments of 2025. Today, we're talking movies. I have two extremely knowledgeable colleagues here with me. Alyssa Wilkinson is a movie critic at The Times. Hello, Alyssa. Hello, Gilbert. And Nicole Sperling reports on on the movie business, and she joins us from Los Angeles very appropriately. Welcome, Nicole. Hello. How's it going, guys? It is going great. So in the grand and very long tradition of movie podcasts, I am going to start with an, incendiary question that probably has no clear answer. Is this the last year for movies? No. It better not be. We'll be out of a coma. Gilbert. Absolutely not. The pipeline is full. We have no idea what will happen when this massive deal closes, whoever becomes the buyer, and we can, of course, talk about all that stuff. But, no, we've got movies. People go to movies. It still is a business. Love movies. People love movies. We all love movies. Nicole, you're referring to the deal. When you say the deal, you're talking about the Warner Brothers deal. Who's gonna end up with Warner Brothers in the end? Is it gonna be Netflix? Is it gonna be Paramount? We're definitely gonna talk about that. But But I wanna spend most of this episode talking about the actual, actual movies, and we'll get into, Wither Netflix. Alyssa, you put out your list of the best movies of 2025. So I wanna start with your number one movie. Possibly, it was also my number one movie even though no one cares about my list. This is One Battle After Another. Pat an eyelash. Good morning. There are no hands on the clock. Why? Because they're not needed. What time is it? You know, I don't I don't I don't remember that part. Alright? Let let let's just not nitpick over the password stuff. Look. This is Bob Ferguson. Alright? Hall Timeless Anderson's film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Tianna Taylor, Chase Infinity. Tell us very quickly what the movie is about, and then tell us why you loved it. So One Battle After Another is about a lot of things. But I guess, in brief, it's about a group of revolutionaries who wind up going into hiding. And then it kind of jumps forward, and it's about the daughter of one of the revolutionaries, kind of gets embroiled in a a I don't I don't wanna spoil it for people, gets embroiled in something. I'm not gay, if that's what you're saying. I didn't say that. I'm not a homosexual. I did not say that, but I see the lips in your shoes. No. You are a smartass. You are. And there's a lot of running around that occurs. Really, what it's about, as the name kind of suggests, is that every generation has to fight its …