The best movies to watch in 2025

'Better than ever': Renée Zellweger in the new Bridget Jones film

(Image credit: Alamy / Landmark Media)

last updated 20 February 2025

There are lots of movies to look forward to in 2025, including sequels and fresh new reels. Bridget Jones is set for a fourth outing, Cillian Murphy will reprise "28 Days Later" and Pixar is bringing out a new film about a "self-confessed wannabe alien abductee".

A Complete Unknown

"In 1960, John, Paul, George – but not yet Ringo – became The Beatles," said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday. "In 1962, the Rolling Stones were born. But in the year in between, 1961, another key moment in modern musical history took place – the then 19-year-old Bob Dylan arrived in New York" with his acoustic guitar. "A Complete Unknown", the title of which comes from his track "Like a Rolling Stone", is the story of what happened over the next few years, culminating in his divisive switch to electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Directed by James Mangold ("Walk the Line"), the film "grips, moves and does an excellent job of reminding everyone, even Dylan agnostics", of the importance of his music, thanks not least to its star Timothée Chalamet, "who never stops looking like Timothée Chalamet", yet somehow convinces us that "he might just be the young Bob".

The events building up to Newport unfold rather listlessly, said Deborah Ross in The Spectator – at one point we see Dylan in a record store, checking if his album is in stock – but the film "has a seductive, meditative, cumulative power. I wasn't bored for a single second." As for Chalamet, he is "astonishing, and does his own singing. He may even be better at singing Dylan than Dylan is at singing Dylan."

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"The Australian stop-motion auteur Adam Elliot scored an international hit" with the macabre "Mary and Max" (2009), said Tara Brady in The Irish Times. His new animation, "Memoir of a Snail", draws on his unusual background – the son of an acrobatic clown, he grew up on a prawn farm in the Outback – and unfolds in the same "unforgettable, grubby" style. Told partly in flashback, the story follows Grace ("Succession" star Sarah Snook), a melancholic snail collector as she looks back over her tragic life: her mother dies in childbirth; she and her twin brother (Kodi Smit-McPhee) are orphaned when their alcoholic father succumbs to his sleep apnoea; Grace is dispatched to "a foster family of sexual swingers", while her brother is sent to live with puritanical Christians, who aren't good at dealing with his homosexuality. "Themes of mutilation, grinding poverty, loneliness and death ensure that this is an adult-only animation" – but "for all the gloom", it's a "lovely, heartfelt creation" punctuated with occasional moments of "pitch-black humour".

I'm afraid I found it "unrelentingly bleak", said Alistair Harkness in The Scotsman. Narrated by Snook in a depressive, deadpan style, the film is at best "an acquired taste". "Memoir of a Snail" feels like the kind of film that might emerge if Nick Cave "crowbarred his way into Aardman studios and cursed the clay", said Nick Howells in The London Standard. It has been nominated for the best animated feature Oscar. So will it win next month? "No, that'll be 'The Wild Robot', because it's better", but I would still recommend seeing this film: it has charmingly wacky humour and, though defiantly dark, it is striking to behold.

Every now and then, a film comes along "that understands the potential of cinema so deeply that it changes the medium for everyone", said Kevin Maher in The Times. The 2015 Holocaust drama "Son of Saul" was one of those films, as was "2001: A Space Odyssey". "To that list we now have to add 'Nickel Boys', an adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that is told completely, and audaciously, through point-of-view shots of its two protagonists, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson)." Opening in Jim Crow-era Florida, the film introduces us first to Elwood, whose blissful home life is turned on its head when he is sent to the "brutal Nickel Academy, a so-called reform school based on the real-life and equally infamous Dozier School for Boys". There, he meets the "slick but sensitive Turner", and an instant bond is formed. The film commits "welcome sacrilege by altering the horribly downbeat ending of Whitehead's novel"; and though its subject matter is grim, it's surprisingly uplifting.

"The first-person use of the camera may not be a new filmmaking technique," said Alistair Harkness in The Scotsman, but in Nickel Boys, director RaMell Ross "takes it to another level", immersing viewers in the boys' world in a way that is "quite extraordinary". This is a film that is "unlike anything else out there". Whitehead's book could easily have been adapted into a "sedate, conventional" drama, said Radhika Seth in Vogue. Instead, Ross has created "something gorgeously bold and beguiling, bringing a surprising freshness and vitality to an undeniably gruelling story".

Restoring "mystery and magic to the concept of an undead bloodsucker", "Nosferatu" is a remake of F.W. Murnau's 1922 silent classic, which was based on Bram Stoker's "Dracula", said BBC Culture. Written and directed by Robert Eggers, it stars Lily-Rose Depp and Nicholas Hoult. Bill Skarsgård (who is also returning as It the clown in a new TV series next year) will play the "horrible old vampire". Those oh-so familiar "vampire clichés" are absent and it's shot like an "arthouse period drama" with costumes and props appropriate for the 19th-century setting, "spectacular outdoor scenes" shot in the Czech Republic and Romania, and some indoor scenes "illuminated only by candlelight". It is, however, still a Dracula film, so "familiar things keep happening to familiar characters", and while it's less scary than sad it still has its "share of gruesome shocks". Not many Dracula films "give you so much to sink your teeth into".

On 5 September 1972, 11 Israeli athletes were taken hostage at the Munich Olympics and then shot by Black September, a Palestinian militant organisation. Director Tim Fehlbaum retells the story through the eyes of the ABC Sports team as they "scramble to follow the tragedy" and in the process write "the rules of capturing a terrorist attack live on air", said Esquire. "We thought it would be interesting to take a step back, look at the first time a crisis like this was on live television, and reflect on how we consume media today," said Fehlbaum. Starring Peter Sarsgaard, it is however "more of a white-knuckled journalism thriller than a deep look into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict".

"Hold the blue soup and pack away the big knickers," said Kevin Maher in The Times: "Bridget Jones has finally grown up." Over three "increasingly shambolic movie outings", we've seen this "de facto national treasure" (deftly played by the Texan actress Renée Zellweger) pratfalling boozily "into mud piles and out of taxis", and worrying incessantly about her "'wobbly bits'. But you can only play the nincompoop for so long, and thankfully, and rather thrillingly, it's all change here – in a film of sly sobriety and uncommon depths."

It turns out that Bridget has had a tough few years, said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday: her beloved father (Jim Broadbent) has died, as has her husband Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) – killed while on a human rights mission to Sudan. That was four years ago. But Bridget, who now lives with her two children in a wisteria-draped house in Hampstead, has decided that it is time to stop moping, and allows a friend to sign her up to Tinder as a "tragic widow seeking sexual reawakening". Two romantic options soon materialise: Roxster, a 29-year-old student nicely played by "One Day"'s Leo Woodall, and Mr Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a science teacher at Bridget's kids' posh prep school. Not everything in the film "quite works" – a sequence in which Bridget acquires "trout-pout lips" feels "clumsy and dated", for instance – but Zellweger is "better than ever", Ejiofor is "cleverly restrained", and a "beautifully written last lap will send virtually everyone out onto the streets dabbing gently at their eyes".

The title of the eighth "Mission: Impossible" film suggests "it might be Tom Cruise's final mission", said The Guardian. Its budget of $400 million (£314 million) makes it the fourth most expensive film ever. "The Final Reckoning" follows on from 2023's "Dead Reckoning" and sees the return of Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Angela Bassett and Vanessa Kirby, joined by Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff and Hannah Waddingham. As Ethan Hunt, Cruise is "up against a dangerous AI program", The Entity, which "seems to predict his every move" and if it falls "into the wrong hands" could be disastrous, said Variety. He discovers The Entity is "stashed aboard" an old Russian submarine, but there's a "foe from Ethan's past" on its trail too…

"Expectations have been set sky high" for Pixar's latest offering after the success of their "highest-grossing animated film of all time", 2024's "Inside Out 2", said Empire. The "legendary animation studio" has aimed high with the narrative of "Elio", a "self-confessed wannabe alien abductee" who is "swept off to an interplanetary organisation's HQ" to discover who he is and how he fits into the universe. The hook "feels fresh" and visually the film evokes "expressive elasticity" and "intricately detailed world-building" of past Pixar offerings

Twenty-three years on, Cillian Murphy is rumoured to be reprising his "28 Days Later" lead role in this "highly anticipated sequel" to the 2002 zombie tale, said Metro. Among other cast members are "some of Hollywood's biggest names" including Jodie Comer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. No plot details have been released but Danny Boyle is back in the director's seat and the production is believed to have been filmed on iPhone.

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Adrienne Wyper has been a freelance sub-editor and writer for The Week's website and magazine since 2015. As a travel and lifestyle journalist, she has also written and edited for other titles including BBC Countryfile, British Travel Journal, Coast, Country Living, Country Walking, Good Housekeeping, The Independent, The Lady and Woman’s Own.