Spike Lee's Favorite 2025 Movie Is A Horror Masterpiece With 97% On Rotten Tomatoes

It's always great to learn what new movies some of our most beloved filmmakers are watching. In the case of Spike Lee, it's one that has dominated film discourse for much of 2025, earning a remarkable 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. When Bill Simmons asked the Oscar-winner what had caught his eye recently, Lee didn't hesitate. "'Sinners' from brother [director] Ryan [Coogler]," he replied. It turns out Lee even got a private showing of Coogler's vampire movie, which features an impressive pair of Michael B. Jordan performances and what arguably still ranks as the great movie scene of this year thus far (among other things).

Lee's special screening was a thing of chance, however. As the filmmaker behind classics like "Do the Right Thing" and "Malcolm X" explained, he just happened to be in Los Angeles when Coogler invited him to a preview of the film with a very special audience. "I'm on the right, Ryan's in the center, and his wonderful wife, Zinzi is there, and I know they don't want to sit next to me in a movie again because I was acting like I was at court side seats at the Garden and we were killing the Celtics," Lee recalled. Unsurprisingly, Lee was also just as amazed by the aforementioned sequence as millions of other moviegoers.

As he continued to discuss the film (which is now a box office behemoth despite Warner Bros. messing up its international rollout), Spike Lee highlighted the jaw-dropping music sequence from "Sinners," a moment of pure movie magic in which different genres of Black music from across history collide with one another. "I was jumping up and down, my mind was blown. Especially that musical sequence. I was just happy to be there and that he called me out of nowhere and then just took a chance, 'Maybe Spike was in LA,'" Lee added.

Indeed, as impressive as his previous films have been, there's no doubt that "Sinners" stands as Coogler's best movie so far, and Lee had the highest level of praise for it. "That film was transformative. That film took me to another place, and I love movies, and when I see something that's great, it lifts my spirit, and 'Sinners' to me was that film this year," the filmmaker remarked. To be sure, it's all but a given that "Sinners" will be getting some serious awards attention later this year, having already made such a massive impact.

As for what comes next for Coogler, it seems he may team up with Lee's longtime collaborator, Denzel Washington, on a third "Black Panther" film. Washington and Lee himself only just reunited on their critically-acclaimed Akira Kurosawa remake "Highest 2 Lowest," so it's possible Lee and Coogler will be seeing even more of each later in 2025 once awards season gets formally underway.