Tom Cruise’s frankly deranged stunt habit ensured that Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning got the summer blockbuster season off to a, quite literal, flying start. We’ll soon find out if the revamped Superman, starring David Corenswet as the Man of Steel, and Jurassic Park: Rebirth, which promises to give the dusty dinosaur franchise an injection of fresh DNA, can match its sheer adrenaline rush.
Other coming attractions promise something altogether calmer: Pixar’s sci-fi animation Elio looks set to take us back to the studio’s glory days, while further ahead, there’s Hamnet, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling novel, and directed by Chloé Zhao, who won an Oscar for Nomadland. Here, our film critics offer their thoughts on all of these and the rest of the year’s most promising new cinema releases.
If you want a night in, and are looking for something to stream at home, read on for 2025’s best films so far. Or you can skip to the year’s best releases:
The best films of 2025 so far
Maria
Following Jackie and Spencer, director Pablo Larraín completes his women-on-the-edge trilogy with this account of the final days of Maria Callas. In the title role, Angelina Jolie gives her finest performance in at least 15 years. Far from requiring her to shrug off her existing glamorous image, the film doubles down on it, primps and zhuzhes it, and cranks it up to regal extremes. You’d want to send this woman out to greet alien visitors.
Where to watch: available to rent or buy on Prime Video, Sky Store and Apple TV
A Complete Unknown
James Mangold’s film about Bob Dylan’s rise to stardom is a dream – as accessible to newcomers as it is rewarding for die-hards, with a riveting central performance, a keen eye for immersive detail, and a gorgeously tactile, five-o-clock-shadow-rough surface. Timothée Chalamet is terrific, miraculously embodying the young Dylan’s once-in-a-generation coolness, genius and truculence.
Where to watch: streaming on Disney+
The Brutalist
A tremendous Adrien Brody deservedly won an Oscar for his role in Brady Corbet’s three-and-a-half-hour state-of-the-US historical epic. It follows a fictional architect, Brody’s László Tóth, who flees Holocaust-torn Europe for America, where he embarks on the kind of grand design that would make Kevin McCloud wake up with a shriek. Crackling with a mad, visionary energy, this towering feature is about the human drive to pull meaning out of tragedy and horror.
Where to watch: available to rent or buy on Prime Video, Sky Store and Apple TV
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
Every young adult in the late 1990s and early 2000s either modelled their life on Bridget Jones or had about 10 female friends who did. In this terrifically funny and well-judged part four – by some distance the best of the bunch – our heroine is now in her 50s, widowed and waist-deep in motherhood. The differences (and likenesses) between the Bridget we knew and the Bridget she’s become are expertly mined for big laughs and even bigger emotional skewerings.
Where to watch: available to rent or buy on Prime Video, Sky Store and Apple TV
Mickey 17
This enjoyably mad sci-fi confection is the latest project from South Korea’s Bong Joon-ho, whose triumph at the Oscars five years ago with Parasite resulted in Warner Bros giving him a near-blank cheque and telling him to whip up something comparable on a grander canvas. Robert Pattinson gets a welcome chance to flex his hangdog comic muscles as the luckless Mickey, a blue-collar worker who enlists for a better life as a re-clone-able worker on a treacherous interstellar voyage.
Where to watch: available to rent or buy on Prime Video, Sky Store and Apple TV
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Even by the series’ own now well-established standards, this widely presumed last entry in Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible franchise is an awe-inspiringly bananas piece of work. Over the course of its near-three-hour run time, Ethan Hunt essentially becomes Secret Agent Jesus: there is a descent into the underworld, a death and resurrection, even a battle of wills in the desert with Satan himself. It’s dazzlingly ambitious and one of the most exactingly crafted studio projects of our time.
Where to watch: in cinemas
Sinners
At first, Ryan Coogler’s latest resembles a handsome period drama. Set in the Mississippi Deep South, twin mobsters Smoke and Stack (both played by Coogler’s regular leading man Michael B Jordan) are opening a juke joint. And then the stakes are abruptly raised. It’s not quite a spoiler to say that what comes next involves Riverdancing vampires and outrageous blood sprays. As the craziness climbs, Coogler keeps finding ways to squeeze startlingly original ideas into his Southern Gothic format.
Where to watch: in cinemas and available to rent or buy on Prime Video, Sky Store and Apple TV
Warfare
In a sense this is Alex Garland’s simplest film; in another, it’s his most experimental. Working (and sharing top-line credits) with the military advisor and ex-Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza, the two men have reconstructed an incident from Mendoza’s years in active service: the seizure, siege and evacuation of an apartment block in the Iraqi city of Ramadi in 2006. The result feels like the most honest depiction of modern warfare ever made.
Where to watch: available to rent or buy on Prime Video, Sky Store and Apple TV
The rest of the year
June
Elio
Heard the one about the 11-year-old boy who accidentally becomes Earth’s ambassador and makes contact with aliens? Pixar’s latest is a cosmic heart-warmer in waiting, which embroils Elio in intergalactic intrigue, and promises to dazzle us with trippy visions of the beyond. For the studio, the hope is that their stonking box-office success with Inside Out 2 was no one-off, and that they don’t slide back to the dismaying figures achieved by Onward and Lightyear.
In cinemas from Jun 20
28 Years Later
It’s been 23 years since Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s fearsome millennial zombie horror overran UK cinemas. An underwhelming sequel appeared in 2007 (from a different writer-director team), but this one reunites the original duo. Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, it centres on a quarantined community who’ve spent nearly three decades fending off the undead. Garland has gnomically declared that Ken Loach’s Kes was a guiding influence.
In cinemas from Jun 20
F1
Brad Pitt stars as a legendary driver from the 1990s, forced into retirement by a horrific crash. He’s lured back to mentor a rookie (played by British up-and-comer Damson Idris) for a fictional team called APXGP, chaired by Javier Bardem. Joseph Kosinski directs, hoping to bottle some of that Top Gun: Maverick spirit for the chicanes. And while Pitt didn’t take the wheel of an actual F1 car, he came close: they used cleverly disguised F2 models.
In cinemas from Jun 25
M3GAN 2.0
The murderous AI doll – whose killer moves inspired a viral TikTok dance – is back, in what sounds like a crafty spin on Terminator 2. Her software has been unscrupulously stolen by a defence contractor to make a vicious military robot called Amelia with global-takeover plans. M3GAN must be reprogrammed by her creator (Allison Williams) to fend off this threat, while (one would hope) debuting a few more renditions of Sia songs.
In cinemas from Jun 27
July
Jurassic World: Rebirth
A rebirth of the franchise is sorely needed after the recent dumb (but extremely profitable) trilogy starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard – which was barely entertaining and badly cast. Hopes rest on director Gareth Edwards (Rogue One, Godzilla) and a sexily revamped ensemble. Three years after Jurassic World Dominion, Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali and Jonathan Bailey must travel to a forbidden island where failed dino-experiments have produced some very, very deadly fauna.
In cinemas from Jul 2
Superman
Yep: a Superman reboot. The Man of Steel phase ran into trouble when it got tangled up with the chaotic production of Justice League in 2017 – so bye bye, Henry Cavill. In comes a new and younger model, played by the extremely promising 31-year-old David Corenswet (Twisters). In his new position as co-chairman of DC Studios, James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy) is the writer-director. Everything is riding on this to refresh the brand.
In cinemas from Jul 11
The Fantastic Four: First Steps
After a relatively quiet 2024 – apart from Deadpool & Wolverine – Marvel Studios are attempting to heave the crisis-stricken franchise back on track with a slate of new films. The most promising is this re-re-introduction of the crime-fighting quartet, last seen in 2015 in a barely releasable misfire, but now revamped with a new cast and a zippy atomic-age aesthetic. Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach will star, while the cosmic adversaries include Julia Garner’s gender-flipped Silver Surfer and Ralph Ineson’s Galactus.
In cinemas from Jul 25
August
One Battle After Another
Any new Paul Thomas Anderson film has cinephiles all ears, but this one is pretty unique for budgetary reasons: it’s thought to have cost some $140m, making it easily PTA’s priciest venture to date. Leonardo DiCaprio will have eaten up a healthy chunk of that, but he also makes this California-set crime drama a likely hit. DiCaprio stars as an ex-revolutionary who reunites with his former comrades when one of their daughters goes missing. It’s thought to have been loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, a political satire set in the Reagan era.
In cinemas from Aug 8
Freakier Friday
The Lindsay Lohan comeback will be complete if this Disney “legacy sequel” pans out even averagely well. Just 17 when the 2003 Freaky Friday made her a teen idol, she’s now 38, and playing a mother herself – so we’ll get three generations embroiled somehow in body-swapping shenanigans. Recent Oscar-winner Jamie Lee Curtis is getting frisky yet again, this time as a teenager trapped in a grandma’s skin.
In cinemas from Aug 8
Lurker
Hype has been building around this creepy imbalance-of-fame drama since Sundance. It stars Canadian up-and-comer Théodore Pellerin as a desperate wannabe who infiltrates the inner circle of a rising pop star (Saltburn’s Archie Madekwe). Gen Z obsessions and the corrosive influence of social media are in this film’s sights, with writer-director Alex Russell (whose credits include The Bear and Beef) pegged as a name to watch.
In cinemas from Aug 22
September
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale
No, it won’t be the same without the late Maggie Smith’s waspish dowager countess. (Thank goodness the previous film gave her the send-off she deserved.) But the rest of the Crawley clan and their associates are reconvening for a third and final theatrical feature, written again by series creator Julian Fellowes.
Paul Giamatti returns as the eyebrow-arching playboy Harold Levison from the fourth season’s Christmas special, while Joely Richardson, Alessandro Nivola and Simon Russell Beale are among the starry additions to the troupe.
In cinemas from Sep 12
October
Tron: Ares
In the earlier Tron films, human heroes travelled into the digital world; this time the premise is flipped, with Jared Leto as a “programme” called Ares sent into the real world. The chaos-packed teaser trailer suggests something like a Tron disaster movie, with a possibly limited cameo from original star Jeff Bridges. Rather than a score by Daft Punk, who revved up the 2010 sequel Tron: Legacy, we’ll get Nine Inch Nails blasting us with synthesised doom.
In cinemas from Oct 10
November
Bugonia
Yorgos Lanthimos shows no sign of slowing down or of switching muses: Emma Stone stars in what will be her fourth Lanthimos picture in a row, and Jesse Plemons joins her once again. It’s a remake of a goofy 2003 Korean film called Save the Green Planet!, which follows the chaotic kidnapping of a Big Pharma CEO (Stone) by two conspiracy theorists who are convinced she’s an alien. Because Lanthimos rarely does what we expect, it was shot around High Wycombe.
In cinemas from Nov 7
The Running Man
Edgar Wright has gone back to the eponymous novel – originally published under Stephen King’s pseudonym, “Richard Bachman” – so he claims this isn’t technically a remake of the 1987 Arnie action-thriller. The book, it’s true, is very different. In any form, though, it’s about a deadly gameshow in which the contestants are hunted down. Glen Powell stars, with Josh Brolin as smarmy host Damon Killian, alongside Lee Pace, Michael Cera and Katy O’Brian.
In cinemas from Nov 7
Wicked: For Good
With Cynthia Erivo’s heart-rending yodel still ringing in our ears from the first film’s climax, it’s almost time to find out what happens next in Universal’s two-part adaptation of the Wizard-of-Oz-prequel Broadway smash. Part Two’s hit-in-waiting status is already assured thanks to the extraordinary success of the initial instalment. Reviews for the first were mixed – in these pages, anyway – but it’s hard to complain about an old-fashioned studio musical grabbing the zeitgeist like this.
In cinemas from Nov 21
Hamnet
Awards hopes will be rife for this adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s devastating bestseller, about the sudden death of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet and the impact of this loss on the family. Paul Mescal is the Bard, Jessie Buckley his wife Agnes, and Emily Watson his mother Mary. Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) co-wrote the script with O’Farrell, and directs what ought to be a ten-hankie wipeout.
In cinemas from Nov 27
December
Avatar: Fire and Ash
Forest? Hundred-percented. Ocean? Completed it, mate. The third level – sorry, instalment – of James Cameron’s trippy sci-fi series will shepherd audiences into Pandora’s volcanic mountain ranges for an eco-adventure with the planet’s hardy Ash clan. Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña and their interchangeable offspring return, while David Thewlis is among the newcomers as the crater-dwelling chieftain Peylak. The CG is bound to impress, but ideally this time the plot might be able to look past it.
In cinemas from Dec 19
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