Some scenes just stick with you longer than others, especially when they’re scenes from some of the year’s best movies and sit in your memory banks as highlights of those films.

Here are our picks for the 10 Best Movie Scenes of 2025.

10.) Bugonia — The Reveal

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[MAJOR SPOILERS]
You spend the whole of Bugonia wondering if Emma Stone’s character really is an alien or not. And a couple of times, the film does a good job of making you switch back and forth on that possibility. But then we see her enter her Alien mothership at the end of the film, and, basically, end the human experiment because we did such a bad job of it, the film begins to make a bit more sense.

-Dylan

9.) Splitsville — The Fight

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There’s a fight scene between Kyle Marvin and Michael Angelo Covino’s characters early in Splitsville that has them moving through a house, throwing objects, destroying many rooms, and throwing some great insults and arguments back between each of them. It is hilarious, and I laughed the most at this scene in a cinema in 2025.

-Dylan

8.) Ballerina — Flamethrower Fight

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Ballerina didn’t hit the way that I’m sure the producers of the John Wick films wanted it to, but there is always going to be the flamethrower fight, which builds on the weapon duelling the last two Wick films had done so well, and ups the ante, because now there’s a flamethrower.

-Dylan

7.) Lois Interviews Superman — Superman

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On paper, this scene doesn’t seem like much, but in execution, it says a lot about the characters and this new DCU. Clark agrees to let Lois interview him as Superman, and although they are dating, Lois isn’t going to pull any punches, questioning Superman’s actions in Jarhanpur and his reaction to negative online sentiment. Lois showcases her commitment to journalism, and Clark shows that he just wants to do the right thing, even if that upsets some people. The scene is given time to breathe, and we get to enjoy our first glipses of this new dynamic.

-Ashley

6.) One Battle After Another — “I Don’t Have the Fucking Time, Man”

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You don’t know whether to feel sorry for Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bob in this scene as he begs the person on the other end of the phone to give him the coordinates to where his daughter is being taken. It doesn’t help the build-up to this conversation; Bob has already been attempting to plug his phone in to charge numerous times, and now he’s begging a man to let him bypass a cryptic password.

-Dylan

5.) 28 Years Later — The Alpha Case

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Being chased by a naked guy is scary enough, but a roided-up zombie naked guy? Terrifying. Watching Spike and Jamie down that paritally cover causeway, water splashing with every step, as we watch the Alpha running after them in the near darkness was one of the most tense sequences of the year, captured in the run and gun style Danny Boyle is known for, which only amplifies the fear we’re feeling that they too could soon have their heads ripped off.

-Ashley

4.) One Battle After Another — The City Escape

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After getting the coordinates to his daughter’s location, Bob needs to escape the city. From the rooftop, he attempts to follow some skater kids across jumps, as a civil standoff takes place below the city. The injection of social commentary here is fantastic, but the audience, each time I watched the film, lost it as Bob fell off the rooftop. The rescue scene after this: Bob finally gets in a car and leaves with Benicio Del Toro’s car, beers ready to open. Fantastic.

– Dylan

3.) Submarine Sequence — Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

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While the biplane sequence was heavily featured in the marketing, it was the submarine sequence that stood out for its pure, suffocating tension filled with silence and claustrophobia. Every groan of metal and flicker of light feels dire to Ethan’s mission, turning the scene into a slow-burn test of endurance and nerve. Incredibly put together with multiple stages and the constant movement due to the submarine rotating, it is one final example that this series can be just as thrilling when it tightens the screws instead of doing crazy, death-defying stunts.

-Ashley

2.) One Battle After Another — The Car Chase

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[MAJOR SPOILERS]
One Battle After Another kept teasing a standoff between Bob and Sean Penn’s Steven Lockjaw, but when Lockjaw is sent to his presumed death, we then get one of the most thrilling car chase sequences I’ve seen in films in over ten years. Bob is in one car, trying to find his daughter, holding onto the hope she’s still out in the middle of this desert somewhere, while Chase Infinit, as Willa doesn’t know her dad is close, is attempting to escape the presumed danger of another vehicle coming up close behind her. The winding up-and-down hills perfectly contextualise the film’s themes, and in IMAX, this scene is particularly stunning.

-Dylan

1.) Sinners — Musical History / “I Lied To You” Sequence

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This musical sequence comes about halfway through Sinners, and yet the nearly four-min sequences and song are the film’s most important and the most memorable moment in any film from 2025. As Sammie, played by Miles Caton, plays his guitar at the Juke Joint, a steadicam moves around the barn, and we see future and past music come to combine with him in a spiritual way. Everything from rock to hip-hop, as well as the forms of dance that evolve around different genres of music. It’s a beautiful exploration and a romantic love letter to blue music and how it connects to everything in Black music’s past and future.

-Dylan

Find all of Explosion Network’s Best of 2025 coverage right here, and be sure to let us know your thoughts on any of our lists in the comments section.