Half of them are adaptations. As a movie lover who’s always hunting for new talent, new ideas and new stimuli, I used to view that as creative inertia. But 2025 has changed my mind. Now I see artists drawing inspiration from the past to show that Hollywood should trust the sturdy bones that have kept it running for over a century: good yarns,

The year in moviegoing can, perhaps, be summed up by one fact: Sinners remains the only film in the Top 10 list of highest-grossing movies in the United States that isn’t based on existing IP and isn’...