A story about North Korea and Japan, an exhilarating political film and a funny spy thriller – the three best releases of 2025
In 2025, there was a lot of excellent art and culture to rave about.
Anora, a film about a sex worker who gets caught up in the world of a Russian oligarch’s son, won best picture at the Oscars. Nnena Kalu was the first disabled artist to win the coveted Turner Prize for her hypnotic multimedia work.
Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep, a tale about the ongoing fallout of the Holocaust in 1980s Holland, won the Women’s Prize For Fiction – a book that was loved by the arts team.
Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq’s short story collection about the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India, won the International Booker. Flesh by David Szalay, an exploration of modern masculinity, won the Booker.
We consulted with our academic experts to whittle down the year’s cultural offering, presenting you with lists of the best books, films and albums. But here are the novels, movies, dramas and music that really left a lasting impression on the Something Good team.
Flashlight by Susan Choi
I’ve learned a lot about Korean history – and the trauma that still lingers – through literature.
This year, I read Han Kang’s We Do Not Part, a haunting indictment of the US-backed Jeju 4.3 massacre, and Yeji Y. Ham’s The Invisible Hotel, which examines inherited trauma through the Korean ritual of “washing bones”.
The book that stayed with me most, though, was Susan Choi’s Booker-shortlisted Flashlight.
Set in motion by the disappearance of Serk – a Korean man raised in Japan – on a Japanese beach in 1978, the novel traces how his life led to that moment, and the emotional fallout for his interracial American family. Moving from pre-war Japan to 1980s America, Flashlight is both an intimate family drama and a sweeping meditation on identity, imperialism and the hidden currents of history.
It recalls, and is a great companion to, Min Jin Lee’s seminal novel Pachinko in its exploration of Korean life in Japan and the lasting scars of post-war East Asia. Drawing on the real North Korean abductions along Japan’s coast in the 1970s, Flashlight is, as our reviewer Sojin Lim writes, “an ambitious, emotionally resonant work that rewards close reading”.
Honourable mentions
The epic work of musical fusion that is Lux, by Spanish singer-songwriter Rosalia.
The film Friendship is a surreal, absurd and surprisingly deep mediation on male mental health.
Fundamentally is a darkly funny novel about an academic forced to test her theories while running a UN programme to de-radicalise Islamic State brides. Nussaibah Younis draws on a decade of real-world experience peace-building in the Middle East.
Naomi Joseph, Arts and Culture editor
One Battle After Another
I have a bad habit of finishing my popcorn before the trailers have even ended. But during One Battle After Another, I barely touched it. I couldn’t risk drowning out a second of the dialogue with my munching.
This is Paul Thomas Anderson’s tenth film, and to my mind, his best yet. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Bob, a former member of the radical collective the French 75, now a permanently stoned single father. His daughter’s mother, Perfidia Beverly Hills (an astounding performance by Teyana Taylor), once led the group. After her arrest, she became a “rat”, cutting a deal with Lockjaw (an unrecognisable Sean Penn), the collective’s sworn enemy.
Anderson reveals the French 75’s past in jagged flashes: migrant holding cell breaks at the Mexican border and bank robberies to fund their activism, interspersed with the present-day lives of the revolutionaries, now scattered and on the run.
Watching One Battle After Another felt like splashing my face with ice water again and again. And forget about just 2025 – the much-talked-about car chase is one of the most electrifying moments I’ve experienced in a cinema ever.
Honourable mentions
Watching Severance season two I lost more hours than I care to admit trawling Reddit for Lumon theories.
Love in Exile by Shon Faye is a whip-smart and deeply researched book exploring love and self-worth.
Mayhem by Lady Gaga is camp, dark and gloriously theatrical.
Anna Walker, Senior Arts and Culture Editor
Slow Horses
I have to confess I am bereft ever since season five of Slow Horses ended. I waited dutifully for the new episode to drop every week (how terribly old-school – but the delayed gratification just made it even more delicious).
Every episode is a joy, mixing top-thrills espionage with top laughs. From the snooty idiot toffs in charge of MI5, to the bored office bantz and casual gun-slinging at Slough House (an arms-length office for demoted loser spies), all the real-world grimness is leavened by the japes, sarcasm and arm-punching that go on.
Best of all is the obnoxious Jackson Lamb and his unparalleled insults, grubby mac and two-thirds-gone bottle of whisky. (Sir) Gary Oldman is just superb – you can practically smell his stinky socks from your telly – and he never overplays it. That Lamb tries so very hard to hide the fact that he does actually care about his little band of MI5 misfits, just adds a layer of unexpected tenderness. There had better be a season six.
Honourable mentions
I saw Christmas Comes to Moominvalley, a magical festive show, this week with an entranced 11-year-old.
Patti Smith’s Horses at 50 is an extraordinary album by a trailblazing genius.
I read our review, then immediately bought the book, then watched the film Train Dreams. It’s one of those dreamy, ambiguous, richly visual films you can’t get out of your head afterwards, but the book haunts you more.
Jane Wright, Arts and Culture Commissioning Editor
This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.
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