With the after-effects of the pandemic and the Hollywood labour strikes finally becoming a distant memory, there have been new controversies sent to test the entertainment industry during 2025.
The war in Gaza has caused consternation among many key players, with around 4000 actors and film-makers – including Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo and Yorgos Lanthimos – pledging to boycott Israeli institutions they say are complicit in genocide. A rival campaign – including Liev Schreiber – raised about 1200 signatures in calling the boycott an anti-semitic roadblock on the road to peace, saying arts should be a bridge, not a bludgeon. Perhaps more significantly, one of the major Hollywood studios, Paramount, rejected the boycott, saying “Silencing individual creative artists based on their nationality does not promote better understanding or advance the cause of peace,” adding, “We need more engagement and communication — not less.”
As the year drew to a close, it looked like the streaming giant Netflix had beaten Paramount in the bidding war to take over Warner Brothers, which would give the streamer more clout at the box office, while securing swift small-screen exhibition for some of the bigger theatrical releases.
And shrugging off legal efforts by their former owners, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, to take back the Golden Globes, the ceremony’s new owners have announced their latest set of nominations, hoping that the controversy will be silenced, with the public and the industry focusing on what they do best – patting themselves on each other’s backs.
It’s these awards that often define the on-screen highlights of the year, so here is our lookback at What’s Worth Seeing from 2025 – on the big screen and the small screen – and what’s not.
FILMS WORTH SEEING
Our best three films of the year scored . Back at the start of 2025, as part of last year’s awards season, we had Timothée Chalamet’s portrayal of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. Another winter release showed us the remarkable way America’s ABC sports journalists covered the Black September terrorist attack on the Munich Olympic Games in September 5. And in the autumn, Channing Tatum brought to life one of the most peculiar real-life stories about a burglar who escaped from jail and hid for more than six months inside a branch of Toys “R” Us in Roofman.
Other films worth catching if you can – among our films rated were Brad Pitt’s stylish F1 drama, Robert Pattinson’s quirky sci-fi Mickey 17 and the hotly Oscar-tipped revolutionary revenge drama, One Battle After Another.
FILMS NOT WORTH SEEING
We were lucky not to see any appalling films in 2025, with the lowest rating being . Three films achieved that status – all of them being sequels or reboots. Captain America: Brave New World, Jurassic World: Rebirth and Tron: Ares are all films we can advise you are not worth seeing, unless all other options have been exhausted.
TV WORTH SEEING
The Northern Ireland police drama Blue Lights returned for its third series, delivering more compelling thrills, with a dash of sectarian politics. The Netflix drama about a teenager accused of murdering a girl at his school, Adolescence, had perhaps the most impact, with the Prime Minister himself recommending it to schools as an aid to help children understand toxic masculinity. But an unlikely gem, that hasn’t had the attention it might have deserved was the Australian comedy Austin, about a young autistic man who discovers that his father is a cancelled British author.
TV NOT WORTH SEEING
The big Netflix Harlan Coben adaptation, Missing You, failed to hit the mark. Another literary adaptation that failed to live up to its promise was the BBC’s Mix Tape. And the romance Film Club was the Normal People of 2025, with young people – ostensibly destined to be together – doing everything in their power to ensure that that doesn’t happen. Although that could similarly describe Mix Tape.