Best 2025 Movies for cinematography

#1 Mayday
4.8

The camerawork is widely praised as fluid, inventive, and unusually cinematic for streaming, especially in fights, aerial scenes, long takes, and moving POV shots.

Pros: sexual content level, acting performance

Cons: score quality, family friendliness

#2 Goodbye June
4.5

The photography is generally admired for clear, restrained framing, with particular praise for soft-focus work that reflects June’s fading perception.

Pros: lead performance, supporting cast performance

Cons: originality, plot originality

#3 Avatar: Fire and Ash
4.0

Cinematography is frequently admired for balancing enormous spectacle with intimate detail, although ultra-clear imagery and frame-rate shifts can look unnerving.

Pros: supporting cast performance, chemistry between characters

Cons: tonal consistency, dialogue quality

#4 The Housemaid
3.9

Clean thriller lighting and gliding camera movement earn praise, although one critic calls the overall sheen dull and televisual.

Pros: lead performance, costume design

Cons: soundtrack quality, editing quality

#5 A Merry Little Ex-mas
3.0

The photography is divisive: it helps create an attractive Christmas look, but repeated shots framed through blurry holiday foliage can feel mannered and distracting.

Pros: directing quality, world-building

Cons: suspense, rewatch value

#6 Wicked: For Good
2.9

Camera movement and a few musical sequences are praised, but the dim, washed-out, heavily backlit look is a persistent complaint. Reviewers are split between admiring inventive framing and wishing the...

Pros: makeup quality, special effects quality

Cons: cultural representation, screenplay quality

#7 My Secret Santa
2.0

One reviewer was distracted by an orange facial tint that made the image look jarring early on.

Pros: special effects quality, practical effects quality

Cons: plot originality, plot clarity