WITH the UK box office expected to exceed the £1 billion mark by the end of the year, here is a look at the best and worst films of 2025. 

In joint top position are Iron Ladies and I Swear. 

The former pays homage to the iron-willed women who maintained the 1984-85 miners’ strike as they fought tooth and nail to save the future of their communities. This documentary is a fitting tribute to their resilience.

I Swear celebrates the remarkable and awe-inspiring true story of John Davidson, who developed Tourette’s syndrome as an adolescent and went onto become an ambassador for the condition. It is funny yet heartbreaking and terribly moving with a cracking soundtrack and features a powerhouse performance by Robert Aramayo as John. 

Walter Salles’ Oscar-nominated I’m Still Here is a quietly profound and moving drama about the real-life abduction of dissident and former congressman Rubens Paiva from his Brazilian home in 1971 by the authorities. Also how his wife Eunice (a superlative Fernanda Torres), a mother of five, was forced to reinvent herself in order to fight for justice and answers.  

Late Shift is a much-needed reminder of the extraordinary work that nurses do while underpaid and understaffed. It is a tense and realistic portrayal as it follows Floria, a dedicated nurse, during the course of her gruelling shift on a short-staffed surgical ward. 

Nadia Fall’s powerful directorial debut feature Brides examines why British teenage schoolgirls would run away to Syria to join Isis It follows two best friends who feel alienated and decide to leave Britain in search of freedom, friendship and a more meaningful life. It is a thought-provoking drama driven by captivating performances from its two leads. 

Apocalyse in the Tropics is a powerful documentary which explores the rise of the Evangelical Church in Brazil and its profound impact on the country’s political landscape as they aimed to reshape it into their own right-wing image in the form of Jair Bolsonaro. 

Kathryn Bigalow’s A House of Dynamite is a race against time, edge-of-your-seat political thriller in which a single nuclear missile is launched at the United States. The question is who fired it and how does the US administration respond and the moral quandary that follows is terrifying and unimaginable.  

One Battle After Another is an epic screwball black comedy and hell-raising action and political thriller about a washed-up revolutionary turned paranoid stoner who lives off the grid with his daughter Willa. When his evil nemesis reappears after 16 years and Willa disappears he reunites with his former colleagues to help find her.

Marty Supreme is an exhilarating, non-stop action-packed exploration of naked ambition and taking the American dream and dreaming even bigger whatever the cost. It is driven by a tour de force, juggernaut performance by Timothee Chalamet who plays Marty Mauser based loosely on US table tennis legend Martin Reisman. It is a sports drama that will put Chalamet and ping-pong on the map.

Good Fortune is a refreshing razor-sharp comedy about the stark reality of the gig economy in Los Angeles and the disparity between the rich and the poor. It is examined through the act of a well-meaning but hapless angel (Keanu Reeves) who decides to save a struggling gig worker by giving him a taste of the high life to hilarious but disastrous effect. 

Weapons is a slow-burning and unnerving psychological horror film which centres around the mysterious disappearance of all but one child from the same class on the same night and at the same time. It sends the local community spiralling in this expertly crafted tale of frightening mystery and intrigue. 

And finally a round-up of this year’s turkeys led by the unfathomable and tedious A Minecraft Movie in which Jack Black and Jason Mamoa were just running amok. While they seemed to be having a blast, the rest of us were not in this never-ending adaptation of Minecraft the 2011 video game. 

Anemone proved to be the most pretentious and incoherent film of the year and Daniel Day-Lewis’s son Ronan Day-Lewis’s directorial debut feature. He co-wrote it with his father who also starred in it alongside Sean Bean and Samantha Morton. A true waste of a cast and an absolute slog. 

And last, After the Hunt was another miss for Luca Guadagnino as this drama set in the world of academia is odious and dull. It is full of obnoxious and entitled characters who do not have one redeeming quality among them.