Our Favorite Films of 2025 | The New Yorker

 

The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism is made possible by our subscribers. Become one today » With “The New Yorker at 100” documentary now out on Netflix and Richard Brody and Justin Chang releasing their lists of the best movies of the year, there’s a lot to watch today! Plus: • Are we getting stupider? • Zohran Mamdani’s dad wants you to read about dictators • Susan B. Glasser on “Dozing Don” and his undeclared war

David Remnick in “The New Yorker at 100.” Photograph courtesy Netflix Hannah Jocelyn Newsletter editor We’ve been celebrating our centenary all year, and today’s festivities involve “The New Yorker at 100,” a new documentary that is now streaming on Netflix. Directed by Marshall Curry, the film explores how the hundredth-anniversary issue came together—following reporters, editors, cartoonists, covers editors, and fact checkers as they do their work—and what has defined each of the magazine’s past ten decades. The result is a view of The New Yorker both contemporary and historical. At this year’s New Yorker Festival, Curry and Judd Apatow (an executive producer) sat down with our staff writer Jelani Cobb to talk about how they condensed a hundred years into a ninety-minute movie. “That was definitely a challenge,” Curry told Cobb. “You’ve got this unbelievable magazine—even just getting a tiny fraction of the current writers was impossible.” The project, Curry said, “is intended to be a celebration of that hard, underappreciated work” done by journalists. The film ends on a rather exciting note: a montage, set to a never-before-heard cover of a Taylor Swift song. Below, in an excerpt of their conversation, the film’s creators discuss exactly how they landed Swift’s O.K. for the soundtrack. Read the entire chat here. Curry: One other anecdote was that, as we were finishing the film, we needed a song for the final sequence. And we needed something that was New York-themed, but it needed to have, like, a dynamic range that could both sort of sit underneath David Remnick talking about the importance of the magazine and also under party footage, and then would have a little punch when you go to the credits that would say “New York.” And we were trying all of these different songs, and I texted Kelefa Sanneh, the brilliant music mind, who’s featured in the film, and I said, “Do you have any ideas for a New York song that would work?” And he said, “What if you got someone like Matt Berninger from the National,” this sort of cool indie-rock band, “to record Taylor Swift’s ‘Welcome to New York’?” And he didn’t know, but I’m super good friends with Matt Berninger, and Matt’s wife was a fiction editor at The New Yorker. And I’d been talking to Matt as well—like, “Can you think of any songs?” So I called him, and said, “Hey, I just had this idea—would you be willing to do this?” And he said, “The problem is”—we were talking on a Saturday—“the day after tomorrow, I’m going to California to rehearse to go on tour. But tomorrow, I could go into a studio and record the song.” But he said, “I don’t know if Taylor Swift’s going to let you use the song. You know, she’s Taylor Swift.” And so he said, “I’ll record it; if you can get the rights, then you can use it; if not, then whatever.” And so he recorded the song, he sent it to me the next day, we cut it into the film, it was perfect—it had all that fun dynamic range, it was cool, it was smart, it was poppy. I write Taylor Swift an e-mail; two days later, she says, “Sure,” and, you know— Apatow: How do you have her e-mail?! Cobb: It’s, like, Taylor Swift never replies to my e-mails. [Laughter.] Curry: So that’s the song at the end of the movie. It’s an unreleased version of Taylor Swift’s “Welcome to New York.” Watch “The New Yorker at 100”

Editor’s Pick

The Best Films of 2025 Illustration by Joanne Joo Justin Chang and Richard Brody don’t agree on everything, but, when it comes to their favorite movies of the year, they find some overlap. They both selected Richard Linklater’s “Blue Moon” and Mary Bronstein’s “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” among others. Generally, Chang noticed that, on his list, “even in the context of a crackerjack entertainment,” questions of moral and political legacy arise. For Brody, his top choices “have brought old-fashioned, sensory spectacle back to the movies.” Read the lists »

How Bad Is It?

An advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has voted to stop recommending universal at-birth hepatitis-B shots. Under its new guidelines, babies whose mothers have tested positive for the virus will still receive the vaccine, but the shot would be delayed by two months if mothers test negative. How bad is it? “The big problem is that the negative test results may not always be correct, and that the United States has never had a health-care system where everyone has good access to prenatal and maternity care. “The decades-old public-health policy to vaccinate all newborns against hepatitis B has been spectacularly effective, with no scientific evidence of harm. Today’s vote from the shambolic meeting of the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices sets us up for needless tragedy. People will likely die, but the full effects of this policy reversal, if adopted, won’t be felt for decades. That’s because a chronic hep-B infection can silently foster liver disease and cancer later in life. Today’s recommendation stands to damage the public-health safety net, and babies who are vulnerable are the ones to suffer.” — Ingfei Chen, a reporter who covers public health. For more: read Chen on the dangers of undetected hepatitis B.

More from The New Yorker

Letter from Trump’s Washington War Is Peace, the Dozing Don Edition The outcry grows over Trump's undeclared war in the Caribbean. By Susan B. Glasser Dynasty Dept. Mamdani Family Values Mahmood Mamdani, Zohran’s father, just published his twelfth book. The subject? Dictators. By Jake Offenhartz Screening Room Building a State of Fear in “Extremist” Alexander Molochnikov’s short film reinterprets an act of protest that called attention to the invasion of Ukraine, and led to the imprisonment of Sasha Skochilenko, a young Russian artist, in 2023. Film by Alexander Molochnikov Text by Joshua Yaffa

Our Culture Picks

Read: The internet is obsessed with performative reading. May we suggest David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest,” if you want to give it a go? Watch: “Jay Kelly,” starring George Clooney, is also out on Netflix today. The director, Noah Baumbach, has a way of “finding the sharp edges in soft material.” Listen: With “Belong,” Jay Som’s first album in six years, the singer-songwriter finds her place. See what else our critics recommend this week.

Daily Cartoon

Cartoon by Amy Hwang

“It looks big, but once we have you in several layers of clothing it will fit just right.”

See more carto