Best films released in the UK this month: January 2025

Highlights from the stacked slate include Brady Corbet's three-and-a-half hour epic The Brutalist and RaMell Ross's masterful adaptation Nickel Boys, while there's also the small matter of Timothée Chalamet starring as Bob Dylan in James Mangold's biopic A Complete Unknown.

There are other new films to look forward to from a number of top-tier directors, too, including Pablo Larraín, Steven Soderbergh and Mike Leigh, while several big stars including Florence Pugh, Nicole Kidman and Jesse Eisenberg also have new movies arriving.

Meanwhile, there are some notable releases for horror fans: Robert Eggers's acclaimed update of vampire classic Nosferatu has already arrived in cinemas, while later in the month there's Leigh Whannell's reimagining of Wolf Man, starring Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner.

To help you pick out the highlights, we've put together a selection of some of the best films to watch this month – check out the video above or read on for our choices.

Nosferatu

Release date: Wednesday 1st January in cinemas

The Witch and The Lighthouse director Robert Eggers's acclaimed remake of the vampire classic boasts Bill Skarsgård, Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult and Willem Dafoe among its starry cast, and is chock-full of gothic atmosphere.

The plot will be familiar to anyone who knows Bram Stoker's Dracula or any of the previous Nosferatu films – following events after an estate agent visits a fearsome client in Transylvania and all hell breaks loose – but Eggers makes it his own thanks to his trademark style and admirable attention to historical detail.

We Live in Time

Release date: Wednesday 1st January in cinemas

This romantic drama from Brooklyn director John Crowley stars Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh and focuses on the tragic love story between a couple named Tobias and Almut before and after the latter is given a terminal cancer diagnosis.

Told out of sequence, the film contains plenty of lighter moments but a lot of extremely sad ones – and Pugh and Garfield share excellent chemistry throughout. It will certainly make a lot of audience members rather weepy.

Nickel Boys

Release date: Friday 3rd January in cinemas

Directed by RaMell Ross, this formally daring adaptation of Colson Whitehead's award-winning novel about a brutal, segregated reform school is one of the best new films in years – told entirely in a highly unconventional POV style that works a treat and makes the tragic story all the more moving.

Relative newcomers Ethan Herisse and Brandon Taylor are superb as the main characters Elwood and Turner, while Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor shines in a deeply emotional supporting role.

A Real Pain

Release date: Friday 10th January in cinemas

Jesse Eisenberg wrote and directed this comedic but moving film about two Jewish cousins returning to their late grandmother's home country of Poland, where she had survived the Holocaust before emigrating to the US.

The film is about both ancestral pain but also the shifting dynamic between the two cousins, with Kieran Culkin shining in an exceptional performance as cousin Benji, whose unfiltered personality hides a darker recent past that comes to light gradually throughout the film.

Maria

Release date: Friday 10th January in cinemas

Angelina Jolie stars as legendary opera singer Maria Callas in this portrait of her final days in Paris, the third in a loose trilogy of films about iconic 20th-century women from Chilean director Pablo Larraín – following Jackie and Spencer.

Throughout the film, we see Maria reflecting on her life and career via a seemingly imagined interview with a reporter, while she also converses with her loyal butler and housemaid and looks back on her affair with Aristotle Onassis.

Babygirl

Release date: Friday 10th January in cinemas

Nicole Kidman stars as a high-flying CEO who finds herself engaging in a risky affair with a much younger colleague (Harris Dickinson) in this erotic drama from Bodies Bodies Bodies director Halina Reijn.

This precarious new relationship appears to be a response to her dissatisfaction with her safe, passionless marriage to theatre director Jacob (Antonio Banderas), but as the affair continues it comes to present a threat to the comfort of her home life.

A Complete Unknown

Release date: Friday 17th January in cinemas

This Bob Dylan biopic from director James Mangold stars Timothée Chalamet in the lead role, and focuses on the iconic singer-songwriter's controversial transition from acoustic to electric music in the mid-'60s.

The supporting cast includes Edward Norton, Elle Fanning and Monica Barbaro, while Chalamet provides his own vocals for several classic Dylan tunes including A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, Mr Tambourine Man and Like a Rolling Stone.

William Tell

Release date: Friday 17th January in cinemas

Claes Bang leads the cast of this epic about the Swiss folk hero, with Connor Swindells, Jonathan Pryce and Ben Kingsley among the other big names to star.

Set in 14th-century Switzerland, it follows the titular character – a once peaceful hunter – as he leads his people in rebellion after his family and country are threatened by a tyrannical Austrian King.

Wolf Man

Release date: Friday 17th January in cinemas

As he did with The Invisible Man in 2020, director Leigh Whannell updates another classic Universal monster movie – with Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner starring in the lead roles.

It follows events after Abbott's Blake moves his family back to his childhood home following news of his father's death, only for them to be attacked by an unseen animal which appears to begin a grotesque transformation for Blake.

The Brutalist

Release date: Friday 24th January in cinemas

This epic from writer/director Brady Corbet revolves around a towering turn from Adrien Brody as László Tóth, a fictional Hungarian-Jewish architect in post-war Pennsylvania .

Patiently unfolding over three and a half hours, it's a novelistic film that's primarily concerned with Tóth's uneasy partnership with wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), through which it explores much about the immigrant experience in the US and the harsh necessity for artists to compromise.

Presence

Release date: Friday 24th January in cinemas

This intriguing ghost story from prolific director Steven Soderbergh includes Julia Fox and Lucy Liu in its cast, as well as relative newcomer Callina Liang.

It takes an age-old conceit – a family moving into a suburban house and becoming convinced they're not alone – but flips it on its head by telling the story from the perspective of the haunting spirit.

Hard Truths

Release date: Friday 31st January in cinemas

The latest film from legendary British director Mike Leigh stars Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Pansy, a depressed and disillusioned woman prone to angry outbursts, and focuses on her relationship with cheerful sister Chantal (Michele Austin) – whose patience with her is wearing thin.

Leigh's first contemporary drama since 2010 – following his historical films Mr Turner and Peterloo – it contains many of the themes that have come to be associated with the master director's work, while Jean-Baptiste's central performance is one for the ages.

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