Welcome back to The Big To-Do. The year is winding down, and the Globe’s critics and other experts are feeling nostalgic. Read on for some highly opinionated takes on the arts in 2025. This weekend, “Saturday Night Live” clocks out for the year with Ariana Grande hosting and — for only the second time, and the first since 1987 — musical guest Cher. After a soggy Friday, the weekend weather looks crisp and dry. Sunday brings the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year, and the beginning of astronomical winter (meteorological winter started Dec. 1).

The Big To-Do takes a break next week and returns on Jan. 2. Whatever your chosen winter celebration, happy holidays!

The Year in Arts

A still from Ryan Coogler’s movie “Sinners.” WARNER BROS. PICTURES

The best movie of 2025 is ... I won’t spoil it. Globe film critic Odie Henderson ranks his top 10, featuring surefire Oscar bait as well as a couple of curveballs, and throws in numbers 11 through 20 for good measure. Of his top pick, he writes, “Since I saw this film at the Toronto International Film Festival back in 2024, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”

The year’s 10 worst movies are terrible in an impressive variety of ways. As payback for wasting Henderson’s time, they’re tagged with adjectives including “reprehensible,” “godawful,” and “embarrassing.” The top pick has a local connection, but “psycho Tom Brady” doesn’t translate to anything hall of fame worthy.

In “a dizzying array of programming,” Globe TV critic Chris Vognar finds not just a top 10 but a top 11. “Dread and anxiety wafted through much of the year’s lineup, as did crime and conspiracy,” he writes. Death is all over his list, alongside 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century history and a welcome infusion of both animated and live-action comedy.

Boston figured in so many high-profile pop culture moments that covering them takes a top 20 list. From New Edition Day in Boston to Matt Damon on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” to the return of the DunKings and their eyesore athleisure for a Dunkin’ Super Bowl ad, the Globe’s Matt Juul has the rundown.

Family took center stage in the year’s 10 best theater productions. “As subject matter, family has a vitality that can cross time, place, race, and the particulars of stories,” writes Globe theater critic Don Aucoin. Among his picks is “Her Portmanteau,” the fourth work in Mfoniso Udofia’s nine-play Ufot Family Cycle.

Looking back on the year in museums and visual art, four bright moments stand out. The brightest is the MFA’s restitution agreement with the family of David Drake, a potter who was enslaved. The move, writes Globe art critic Murray Whyte, “prompted a wholesale rethinking of how museums ... acquire, display, and ultimately pay tribute to the works they own and to who made them.”

Pop music’s “seeming slumber” was so evident that it shook up the Billboard Hot 100. “Music has been on the leading edge of the shifts that TV and film are now trying to figure out,” writes Globe correspondent Maura Johnston. She dives deep into “a weird year where fatigue and over-it-ness ruled the world outside of one’s headphones.”

On the local classical scene, 2025 brought “memorable musicians, moments, and marvels.” The Globe’s A.Z. Madonna leverages “the longer view that only the passage of time grants” to assemble a delightful assortment spanning everything from dramatic weather in the Berkshires to the aptly named Secret Trio to a high-profile pianist’s performance at Symphony Hall.

The year’s 10 best classical albums range widely. On Globe correspondent David Weininger’s list, you’ll find everything from “the omnivorous mandolinist Chris Thile” to “underheard works from the turbulent decade between 1941 and 1951” to the BSO of 1971, under the baton of Claudio Abbado.

Literary news in 2025 was sometimes “gossipy and entertaining,” other times “downright grim and depressing.” Across the board, the stories “reminded us that books, reading, and readers still matter,” writes Kate Tuttle, who edits the Globe’s Books section.

“Much of Boston dance in 2025 was party time.” Globe correspondent Jeffrey Gantz offers an impressionistic look at a year of “dance as celebration” and a top 10. Three of them are Boston Ballet productions, including a take on George Balanchine’s “Jewels” that “glittered from every facet.”

Movies

"Avatar: Fire and Ash" moves the action to a new part of Pandora. 20TH CENTURY STUDIOS

Good news for fans of “Avatar: The Way of Water” — “Avatar: Fire and Ash” is “the same movie.” In the third installment in the series, Odie Henderson writes in a 2-star review, “The only difference is that fire is the primary element, and the new villain looks like a gigantic, enraged chicken.” Non-fans, “don’t expect to get any help from [director and co-writer] James Cameron and his crew.” And newbie or not, brace yourself for “the bladder-busting runtime (197 minutes).”

Morgan Neville’s documentary “Breakdown: 1975” “purports to be an essay on 1975 films and the history that shaped them.” It isn’t. “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Jaws,” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” are here, but “more time is spent showing and discussing clips from ‘Taxi Driver,’ ‘Rocky,’ ‘All the President’s Men,’ ‘Carrie,’ and ‘Network’” — all from 1976. The muddled mission adds up to 2 stars from Henderson.

Rebooting a horror movie is nothing new, but making “‘The Big Chill’ becomes ‘Anaconda’” is another story. Director Tom Gormican, who grew up in Natick, says of Columbia Pictures, “[A]t every point we thought they were going to say no to our ideas.” Globe correspondent Stuart Miller previews the new take on “the cheesy 1997 flick about a giant murderous snake,” which stars Jack Black and Paul Rudd.

TV & Streaming

Ella Purnell, left, and Walton Goggins in "Fallout." COURTESY OF PRIME

Season 2 of “Fallout” finds Lucy (Ella Purnell) and The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) bound for Vegas. “And it’s all still set to some of the coolest old-time music this side of a 78 record,” writes the Globe’s Chris Vognar. He zeroes in on five tunes, noting that “the show still makes the most of a simple concept: vintage jazz, blues, pop, country, and other mid-century sounds carry an ironic zing when paired with images of gore and desolation.”

Stuart Scott “brought the language of hip-hop and the backyard barbecue to ESPN.” Andre Gaines’s “Boo-Yah: A Stuart Scott Story” traces the career of the groundbreaking sportscaster, who died in 2015. The “30 for 30” film “also details the resistance Scott faced when he brought his personalized hip-hop flavor to quite-white ESPN in the early ‘90s,” Vognar writes.

The queer hockey romance “Heated Rivalry” unfolds over a decade-plus as “youth hockey phenoms ... keep encountering each other once they turn pro.” The rivals are also lovers, writes the Globe’s Lisa Weidenfeld, and “[g]iven that it’s still virtually unheard of for prominent queer male athletes to be out, the crushing weight of hiding their connection is an undercurrent in every interaction.”

Rob Reiner had “an extraordinary career as a film director,” but “television was the medium where we first got to know him.” As Michael Stivic on “All in the Family,” Reiner “rose to the occasion by putting a likable face to the issues Michael championed and a fundamental decency at the character’s core,” writes Don Aucoin. The series is available to stream, as are four of those beloved films, and Matt Juul knows where.

Music

Shane MacGowan performing with the Pogues in 1988. MAGNOLIA FILMS

The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York” is “a compact Christmas miracle, a romantic ballad wrapped inside a lively waltz.” Frontman Shane MacGowan duets with Kirsty MacColl, creating “a nasty battle between two bitter, downtrodden familiars, scorching the earth between them.” Then comes “the verse that makes me cry,” writes Chris Vognar, who deconstructs “the only Christmas song I continue to listen to by choice.”

Lori McKenna plays Club Passim this weekend, a December tradition that dates to 2007. “Year after year after year, the audiences make this show,” the singer-songwriter tells Globe correspondent Marc Hirsh. “It blows my mind that they just show up. They just support, and at the busiest time of the year. I mean, you couldn’t drag me to something this time of year other than this show.”

In the wake of the Dec. 13 shooting at Brown University, Providence-area venues faced a tough call: close or stay open? “It’s not necessarily as straightforward a decision as it seems,” Globe correspondent Victoria Wasylak writes for Sound Check. Says Natalie VanLandingham of Myrtle, which closed and reopened the next day, “People ... need to process their feelings, clear their heads, and mourn, and it’s very difficult to do that alone.”

Theater

Left to right: lydia ievins, Laura Hummel, Sammy Wetstein, and Tom Pixton. PAUL BUCKLEY

Scandinavia is the setting for this year’s Midwinter Revels. “Matchless,” Concord resident Gregory Maguire’s take on “The Little Match Girl,” inspired the production. The first act of “A Scandinavian Story for Christmas” showcases “the excellence of the acting and singing, the communal spirit of the dancing, and music director Elijah Botkin’s idiomatic arrangements,” writes Globe reviewer Jeffrey Gantz. Through Dec. 28.

Books

ADOBE STOCK; RYAN HUDDLE \GLOBE STAFF

Whatever your literary New Year’s resolution, you can probably use some expert advice. “I was curious about how other people organize their reading lives,” writes Kate Tuttle, “so I reached out to some of the most voracious bibliophiles I know — the authors who help make Boston such a bookish city.” Among their eight approaches may be one that works for you.

“The Tower and the Ruin: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Creation” takes a while to get going, but Michael D.C. Drout “offers ample rewards for the persevering reader.” Although “it’s a surprise how much apparently essential information goes unstated,” writes Globe reviewer Matthew Keeley, readers “will appreciate the honesty and vigor [Drout] brings to his analysis.”

Today's newsletter was written by Marie Morris and produced by the Globe Living/Arts staff. Marie Morris can be reached at marie.morris@globe.com. Thanks for reading.

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