The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

Honourable Mentions: Aftersun, The Banshees of Inisherin, Kimi

We may only be halfway through the 2020s, but Jordan Peele's Nope already feels like it's the definitive movie of the decade. Divisive though it may be (and really, it's so unjust that it carries that reputation), Peele's film crash-landed and spilt its post-pandemic guts all over audiences, with a story all about the trauma of the moving image, the relentless bombardment of violent information in the digital age - which is processed largely at a remove through our own individual lenses - and the absurdity that is simply getting on with it.

Nope is both historical and thoroughly contemporary, a movie of our time for the time, and one in which Peele reiterated his talent for conjuring a genre vibe that is truly distinct. In this case, he orchestrates a suffusion of sci-fi, horror, and western, a multi-genre composition that speaks to Nope's approach to the evolution of film and the violence that is baked into its DNA.

It doesn't hurt either that Peele is able to draw from a stellar cast, with Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, and nineties staple Michael Wincott all delivering career-best work as the movie industry figures whose paths cross thanks to a menacing extraterrestrial influence.