Netflix has had an attention-grabbing 12 months. Its advert tier, launched final 12 months, has grown significantly, and its reside TV initiative has expanded to incorporate not solely bizarre one-offs like hot-dog-eating grudge matches but in addition WWE programming. Taking KPop Demon Hunters off Sony’s fingers for the enterprise equal of $200 in a potato chip bag additionally turned out to be a reasonably good transfer for Netflix. The animated characteristic about, effectively, demon-hunting Okay-pop stars, turned the most watched movie in the platform’s history and a global cultural phenomenon in its own right. The sing-along theatrical launch offered out, songs from the film sat comfortably at the top of music charts for weeks, and we received Huntr/x in Fortnite and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade mere months after the film’s launch.
However KPop Demon Hunters wasn’t the streamer’s solely high quality providing this 12 months. Right here’s an inventory of Netflix’s better of 2025.
Sean Combs: The Reckoning
There are two life classes to remove from this documentary: Don’t be a horrific abuser and never piss off a self-described petty man with cash to burn. This four-part docuseries, directed by Alex Stapleton and produced by Lifetime Achievement Fellow in the Hater Hall of Fame Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, chronicles the rise of Sean “P Diddy” Combs from music video character actor, to hip-hop enterprise mogul, to convicted prison.
The documentary options new interviews from former associates, workers, and pals who allege every thing from dishonest enterprise companions out of their share to having information of if not outright arranging the hit that took Tupac Shakur’s life. This isn’t a “enjoyable” watch, so heed the content material warnings, however if you need a succinct accounting of the place Combs got here from and the way the enterprise of hip-hop can flip males into monsters, that is an informative overview.
There may be vanishingly little I can say about KPop Demon Hunters’ brilliance that hasn’t already been mentioned. So I’ll let what has been mentioned communicate for it:
Rian Johnson’s Knives Out sequence has as soon as once more delivered a sharply funny, intensely moving whodunit. Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc drips southern attraction, aided by an ensemble solid that includes Josh Brolin as a fiery Catholic priest and Glenn Shut as his secretary. Josh O’Connor delivers some lovely moments as a junior priest struggling to search out which means in his religion, creating attention-grabbing rigidity towards Blanc’s chilly, grim logic. With them working collectively, Wake Up Lifeless Man turns into a enjoyable story that examines the aim religion can have in our lives.
One factor director Guillermo del Toro is gonna do is make a luxurious, sumptuous-ass movie with over-the-top units and costuming. However Frankenstein isn’t just a visible delight. Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as his monster give unimaginable performances which are each grounded within the film’s late Victorian aesthetic whereas resonating with the tales of right now. A quote unquote discovered man irresponsibly utilizing know-how to create one thing he doesn’t perceive and in his vanity tries to regulate that winds up destroying his life and others? It’s not that Frankenstein is anyone allegory for right now, it has a number of functions.
And whereas we now have quite a few Frankenstein variations, there’s nothing fairly like watching GDT do it. You simply know that man is gonna grab all the production designers, make-up artists, and costumers, give them some money, and say primarily “Prepare dinner,” and rattling in the event that they didn’t do precisely that.
The Nice British Baking Present
I reside for The Nice British Baking Present (generally known as The Nice British Bake Off outdoors the US). When the solar begins setting at 4:30PM and seasonal have an effect on begins disordering my life, I’m okay as a result of I do know meaning it’s Baking Present season. This 12 months, the present has carried out some attention-grabbing issues with the format, attempting new variations on the present’s technical problem the place bakers are tasked with making one thing with stripped-down instructions. I want the challenges weren’t so overly targeted on sweets, nevertheless it’s at all times enjoyable studying the completely bonkers names the Brits have for his or her pastries. There isn’t any approach in a logical world that an oatmeal bar like this needs to be referred to as a flapjack — it doesn’t even flap! Actually, yelling about how British English is Incorrect is simply as a lot enjoyable as watching the newbie bakers themselves.
The first half of the final season of Stranger Things is out, and whereas we will quibble about whether or not or not it’s high quality tv, it’s good for one particular cause: it’s lastly ending. The present began off actually robust, telling a enjoyable story about children saving the world from the adults which are attempting to spoil it. However that sort of storytelling received misplaced within the close to decade between the primary season and now — though the Duffer Brothers need us to imagine that it’s solely been 4 years since Will first went to the Upside Down. It’s okay that tales finish, and I’m glad we’ve received the chance to finish this present on a excessive word by returning focus to what made it so nice within the first place — them meddling children.
Squid Game is one other one among Netflix’s tentpole hits that has come to an finish this 12 months. Gi-hun / Participant 456 (Lee Jung-jae) has returned to Mr. Beast’s Murder Island to show the organizers of the lethal video games as soon as and for all. He’s befriended one other crop of determined individuals prepared to do no matter for life-changing quantities of money and identical to within the first two seasons it’s brutal to look at the video games destroy them one after the other.
Clocking in at just below 200 days, James Garfield has the second shortest time period of a US president, and I used to be genuinely enthralled watching Dying By Lightning chart his rise to the workplace and tragic fall by way of an murderer’s bullet. As with Frankenstein, Netflix is as soon as once more on time with a metaphor appropriate for current events. Dying By Lightning takes a have a look at how incendiary political discourse, like the sort fomented towards Garfield by his personal get together, can result in violence.
However greater than the prescient political commentary, the performances make this present. Michael Shannon imbues Garfield with a salt-of-the-earth high quality that makes you root exhausting for him. Shea Whigham has entered his character actor villain period taking part in New York Senator Roscoe Conkling, and Matthew “Mr. Darcy / Tom Wambsgans” Macfadyen provides a heartbreaking efficiency taking part in Garfield’s murderer Charles Guiteau.
The present’s finest moments come from Nick Offerman as Garfield’s reluctant vp, Chester A. Arthur. Offerman as Arthur is regency-era Ron Swanson. All through many of the present’s 4 episodes, Offerman is both drunk, combating, raving about sausages, or a mix of all three. That man is having a blast chewing the surroundings in a prime hat and mutton chops, and I might genuinely watch a complete White Home sitcom with him because the star.