With The Brutalist being one of the big winners at the 2025 Golden Globe Awards, taking home honours for Best Film Drama, Best Actor (Adrien Brody) and Best Director (Brady Corbet), there’s little surprise the post-Second World War, United States-set epic appears on this list of films to look forward to in 2025 (it was released in America in December, and will open in UK cinemas this January).

Nor will it surprise you, if you’ve been monitoring awards season prediction chitter-chatter, that Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain makes the cut. Reportedly, the cast had little faith that the low-budget comedy-drama would materialise into anything approaching a commercial success. Yet, following critical acclaim across the pond, and with Kieran Culkin having scooped Best Supporting Actor at the Globes, the film is already proving something of a sleeper hit. Expect the Succession star to be the recipient of a slew of nomination nods in the weeks ahead.

What else to pencil in your diaries for the coming months? Timothée Chalamet’s turn as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown (January), Michael Fassbender doing Michael Fassbender things in Black Bag (March), Rami Malek going full scorched-earth in The Amateur (April), and Robert Pattinson in what will surely be another bonkers black comedy from South Korea’s Bong Joon-ho (Mickey 17, also April).

Plus, Nicole Kidman as you’ve never seen her before in the awfully-named Babygirl, Brad Pitt’s remarkable hair in the Ronseal-named F1, and Tom Cruise in what will absolutely, most definitely be the last instalment of the deceitfully-named Mission: Impossible franchise (expect, as we all know, this being the age-defying Tom Cruise, it won’t be). Pass the popcorn…

A Real Pain

UK release date: 8 January 2025

OK, so this film stands a half-decent, at best, chance of at least getting accepted into Sundance, thought Kieran Culkin, of the likely success of A Real Pain. Fast forward to the Golden Globes 2025, and Culkin is walking away with the gong for Best Supporting Actor. Such is the buzz created by the Succession star’s performance in Jesse Eisenberg’s comedy-drama (Eisenberg wrote and directed the film) that Oscar murmurs started almost as soon as Culkin was finished giving his acceptance speech. The film follows two off-balance Jewish cousins as they take a trip to Poland in order to trace their family’s roots in pre-World World II Europe.

Babygirl

UK release date: 10 January 2025

Babygirl, which follows the thrills and fallouts of an unlikely workplace fling, saw Nicole Kidman named Best Actress at last year’s Venice International Film Festival. Critics who have seen the film since are almost universal in their praise for this New York-based power struggle that plays out between high-flying tech boss Romy Mathis (Kidman) and fanciable young intern, Samuel (Harris Dickinson). Spicy, suggestive and suspenseful, Fifty Shades this is not.  

A Complete Unknown

UK release date: 17 January 2025

James Mangold, director of 2005 smash-hit Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, has form when it comes to fictionalised film documentaries of a musical bent. Couple Mangold’s talents with a cast led by Oscar-tipped Timothée Chalamet, and also starring Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro and Boyd Holbrook, and you have the ingredients for what will surely be one of the cinematic highlights of 2025. Especially when you consider how the cult status of the musician-in-focus, folk icon Bob Dylan, only seems to crystallise with every passing year.

The Brutalist

UK release date: 24 January 2025

Epic in length (three-and-a-half hours and said to be playing in cinemas with a mandatory interval) and epic in scope (war, immigration, racism, xenophobia, poverty, wealth, class, capitalism), The Brutalist has received five stars across the board since its debut at 2024’s Venice International Film Festival, where Brady Corbet was awarded the Silver Lion for Best Direction. The film stars Adrien Brody as a Hungarian-born, Holocaust-surviving Jewish architect who emigrates to the United States to rebuild his life, becoming one of the millions of immigrants who helped lay down the foundations of modern-day America.

September 5

UK release date: 6 February 2025

Utilising extensive archival footage from ABC’s coverage of the 1972 Munich Olympic hostage crisis – in which 11 Israeli hostages were killed by a Palestinian militant group – September 5 explores the event from the point of view of the American television crew, whose split-second editorial decisions were watched by more than a billion people across the world. Only later did the journalists realise they were directly affecting the events of that day. The film was nominated for Best Motion Picture at the Golden Globes. Expect more nominations to follow.

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy

UK release date: 14 February 2025

Bridget is back and, regardless of how you feel about the franchise, the fourth instalment of the kitschy, London-based rom-com promises to be one of the cinematic events of 2025. As the trailer sets out, Jones is now a widower and, presumably having moved on from the tragedy of losing Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), is back in the market for love. Who will it be, charismatic teacher Mr. Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor) or cheeky toyboy Roxster (Leo Woodall (Essex boy, Jack, in The White Lotus))? Find out on Valentine’s Day, naturally.

Black Bag

UK release date: 14 March 2025

In case you’ve not had your fill of sleek, sartorial-led spy escapades – looking at you The Day of the Jackal and Black Doves – Steven Soderbergh’s new thriller, Black Bag, promises more shootouts, car chases and sharp tailoring on the streets of Europe (London to be precise). Two-time Oscar nominee Michael Fassbender and two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett take the lead as husband-and-wife intelligence agents, one of whom is accused of going rogue. Also starring Regé-Jean Page, Marisa Abela, Naomie Harris, Tom Burke and (former secret service agent himself) Pierce Brosnan.

The Amateur

UK release date: 11 April 2025

The exceptionally watchable Rami Malek returns to our screens in 2025 in The Amateur, a James Hawes-directed film that sees CIA cryptographer Charlie Heller (Malek) go full vigilante after his wife is killed in a London terrorist attack. With his superiors refusing to pursue the perpetuators of the assault, Heller embarks on a one-man mission to track down those responsible and deliver his own scorched-earth retribution. Malek at his most menacing.

Mickey 17

UK release date: 18 April 2025

Remember Parasite, the offbeat, Oscar-triumphing 2019 South Korean black-comedy thriller from hallowed filmmaker Bong Joon-ho? Hard to believe it’s been more than half a decade since that film burned Joon-ho’s name into the cinema-going public’s consciousness. The wait for Joon-ho’s next (black comedy) project is over. A full three years after Mickey 17 was first teased, the sci-fi flick is finally being released. Watch Robert Pattinson’s character volunteer himself to be cloned in order to colonise a new planet. What could go wrong?

Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning

UK release date: 21 May 2025

Incredibly, it’s been almost 30 years since Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt first balanced at the end of a zipwire in the original Mission: Impossible. Three decades, and eight films later, the next instalment is here. ‘Trust me, one last time,’ Hunt asks of his team in the trailer to Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (a direct carry-on from 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning). The concluding chapter in the franchise, then? Don’t bet on it. Cruise has suggested he’ll keep going into his 70s. Either way, with a budget of some £320 million, The Final Reckoning stands to be one of the most expensive films ever made.

28 Years Later

UK release date: 20 June 2025

Danny Boyle, who directed the original 2002 film, famously said that 28 Days Later wasn’t a zombie flick – even though the movie was ostensibly Cillian Murphy being chased by zombies. Murphy didn’t return for the follow up – 2007’s 28 Weeks Later – and isn’t officially credited in the cast of this year’s 28 Years Later, not that the fact has put paid to rumours of a cameo. Boyle does return, however, directing a film that sees a group of human survivors eking out an existence on a remote island – until one of them decides to venture onto the mainland. Smart, real smart.

F1

UK release date: 25 June 2025

Following the breakneck success of Netflix’s Drive to Survive, it was perhaps inevitable that Formula 1 would (once again) race onto the big screen. It’s not the first F1 film to be made of course, but the imaginatively-named, er, F1 promises to be the most authentic. A collaboration between Warner Bros. and Apple, the project has been embedded within the sport for the previous two seasons, seeing Brad Pitt’s fictional race team, with its Mercedes-designed cars, having set up garages at actual F1 meets and lined up on the starting grid of several real Grands Prix. Written and directed by the team behind Top Gun: Maverick, and with Lewis Hamilton acting as producer, expect F1 to provide the most realistic depiction yet of life behind the wheel of a 230mph racing machine. Vroom vroom.

Read more: The 2025 London theatre guide