We’re more than a week into December, and the end-of-year lists are starting to come in quick and fast. One that’s always interesting to take a look at is the American Film Institute’s, otherwise known as AFI. Voted on by a jury of industry experts (who are encouraged to factor in both artistic achievement and cultural impact), it’s not exactly the place to go for offbeat choices, but it’s interesting to see what some of the top film people in America consider to be the year’s most important movies.
2025 is no different—in fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see most of these films nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. The ones that don’t make that final list will likely lose their spot to one of the movies that weren’t eligible for inclusion on the AFI’s list—i.e. international favourites like It Was Just an Accident (Iran), The Secret Agent (Brazil), No Other Choice (South Korea), and Sentimental Value (Norway).
Read on to learn more about the AFI’s top ten movies of 2025—which they list in alphabetical order, so we will too—and use the guide below to find them in theatres or on services like AppleTV, Netflix, Prime Video and elsewhere. For the movies yet to be released in the UK, we will have that information up as soon as it’s available.
Avatar: Fire and Ash
Despite the astronomical amount of money that the Avatar movies tend to make around the world, often pushing the limits of digital effects and exploring new aesthetic territory in the process, it’s fair to say that the films themselves are not everyone’s cup of tea.
I presume that the latest, Avatar: Fire and Ash, will be no different, especially for the fact that it largely repeats a lot of the narrative structure of the last film, The Way of Water. It does, however, bring back Payakan, everyone’s favourite talking space whale, and add a vengeful and dangerous new antagonist into the mix in Oona Chaplin’s Verang—and yes, she is Charlie’s granddaughter.
Needless to say, it’s not for the unconverted, but if you’re a fan of all things Pandora, you can basically book your IMAX tickets now.
Bugonia
Though produced via Ireland’s Element Pictures and directed by the Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, Bugonia managed to make the cut for the AFI’s top ten thanks to being at least partly produced by Focus Features. This is a loose remake of the 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet!, an eco sci-fi about an alien who comes to earth to warn of an invasion—but nobody believes him.
In Lanthimos’ film, the protagonists are two brothers who abduct a tech CEO whom they believe to be the nefarious alien. The CEO is played by Emma Stone in what is now her fourth collaboration in a row with the Greek provocateur—so if you liked all the weird stuff they got up to with The Favourite and Poor Things, you will probably like this one, too.
Frankenstein
Having seen some images and read some tepid reactions to Guilermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, I’d say my expectations were not sky high when I sat down to watch it—which is sometimes the best way to be. The beloved director (the singular artist behind such modern classics as Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water) has been threatening to adapt Mary Shelley’s novel for years, but the resulting film is surprisingly fresh.
It’s also nicely melancholy, and fittingly gruesome—which should be especially pleasing to hear for horror fans. Del Toro structures his take like Shelley’s narrative, introducing us to this fantastical world through the eyes of an arctic explorer before switching to Dr Frankenstein’s (Oscar Isaac) POV and then—lastly and most compellingly—the Creature’s (Jacob Elordi).
Hamnet
Though it’s only played at a number of film festivals and a few select cinemas in the United States so far, Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet is quickly gaining a reputation as one of the biggest tear-jerkers of the decade. The film stars Jessie Buckley (already a hot favourite for the Oscar for Best Actress) and Paul Mescal as Agnes and William Shakespeare, respectively, in a story that follows how the couple attempted to process the death of their son.
Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s bestseller, this is a deeply felt story about trauma. It’s also a film that finds a sense of refuge and calm in images of the natural world—which is to say, if you appreciated Zhao’s work on movies like Nomadland and The Rider, you’ll know exactly the kind of tone to expect here.
Jay Kelly
One of the movies on this list that’s already available to watch at home is Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly—there was a theatrical release, but Netflix has already (kindly enough) put it up for streaming just in time for the holiday season.
This is a story about an ageing movie-star (George Clooney) looking back over his life and wondering what it was all about—imagine Lost in Translation but set in Italy and mixed with one of Clooney’s Nespresso ads (this is not a dig), and you’ll have some idea of what to expect. Jay Kelly also features Adam Sandler in a rare dramatic role, so if you’re a fan of his work in Uncut Gems or Punch-Drunk Love, this might be up your alley.
Marty Supreme
And while we’re talking Uncut Gems, fans of that incredible nail-biter should put director Josh Safdie’s new film, Marty Supreme, at the top of their to-watch list—if it’s not there already. This is the movie that’s currently catching the internet’s attention with an orange-tinted marketing campaign that’s so far featured an unhinged Zoom meeting, a massive blimp above L.A. and a much sought-after zip-up jacket.
By the sounds of things, the movie (in which Timothée Chalamet plays the real-life professional ping pong champ Marty Reisman) has plenty of substance to go with all that style—another sports flick to add to the Safdie canon, albeit one that sounds more on the level of Uncut Gems than The Smashing Machine.
One Battle After Another
At the time of writing, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another looks like the movie to beat this awards season. This will be music to the ears of the director’s legions of fans, not least for the fact that the man behind Magnolia, Boogie Nights, and There Will Be Blood (to name just three) has never won a single Oscar.
If he does it for this film, however, it will be nothing if not fitting: One Battle After Another, a whirlwind story about a washed-up revolutionary trying to find his kidnapped daughter, looked like an instant classic from the moment it was released and is currently topping best-of lists across the board. As they say, he’s due one.
Sinners
As we near the halfway point of December, with news of Netflix’s potential acquisition of Warner Bros. still fresh in the memory, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners might just have been the most uplifting cinema story of the year—certainly for anyone who values the theatrical experience. This is a movie by a young director who cut his teeth in the IP system (making Creed and Black Panther) before unleashing something big and new and deeply personal.
What made Sinners such a success is that he mixed his own rich and textured ideas (about the importance of music to displaced and diaspora communities) with a tried and trusted genre—aka the vampire movie. Sinners, for lack of a better word, is awesome, and if you’re a fan of films like Near Dark and From Dusk Till Dawn, I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Train Dreams
Another movie on this list that’s already available to watch on Netflix is Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams, a film the streaming giant picked up way back at Sundance that has become a word-of-mouth hit among critics and audiences this year. Set in America’s Pacific Northwest, this is a tender, heartbreaking story about grief told from the eyes of a logger and railroad worker around the turn of the 20th century.
It’s a poetic and remarkably cinematic film that fans of Chloe Zhao and Terrence Malick (think Days of Heaven, The Tree of Life), in particular, will adore.
Wicked: For Good
Seeing Wicked: For Good on this list did make me wonder about when the voting took place. John M. Chu’s film, a direct follow-up to last year’s musical smash, certainly has its fans, but the critical reception has been middling, and the producers will now be on high alert about its awards chances after seeing the film fail to secure a nomination for Best Picture at the Golden Globes.
Whatever the case, it’s already banked a lot of money, and if you liked the first one, you won’t need reminding to watch this one—just be warned, it’s the darker of the two.
