What films are out in UK cinemas this week? Reviews from Eternity to Five Nights at Freddy's 2
Your weekly round-up of all the films currently showing in UK cinemas.
It's another busy week at UK cinemas, with a number of new movies arriving just in time to squeeze into consideration for your film of the year lists.
Unfortunately, the new release that will no doubt end the weekend with the highest box office gross doesn't seem likely to feature in too many best of 2025 round-ups. Video-game horror sequel Five Nights at Freddy's 2 currently sits on a woeful score of just 11 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, including a two-star verdict from us – which you can read below.
Luckily, there are also some more acclaimed films to seek out as well, including the high-concept romcom Eternity, which stars Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller and possible future Bond Callum Turner.
And even more acclaimed than that is Jafar Panahi's Palme D'Or winning drama It Was Just an Accident, which looks set to be a major contender in the Best International Feature category at next year's Oscars.
You can read our verdicts on all those films below, while you can also find our lowdown on the other major films released in UK cinemas in recent weeks, from Wicked: For Good and One Battle After Another to Bugonia and The Running Man.
Read on for your weekly round-up of all the films currently showing in UK cinemas.
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What films are released in UK cinemas this week? 5th December – 11th December
Eternity
Lovers of golden age Hollywood supernatural comedies will love this third feature by self-described 'little Irish indie filmmaker' David Freyne (Dating Amber), who seems right at home in the big league. Elizabeth Olsen plays the woman who dies and arrives in limbo, where she is met by the spirits of her husband and the love of her young life. Which of these two contenders is she going to sail into eternity alongside?
Callum Turner and Miles Teller play the men – one died heroically in the Korean War, the other choked to death on a pretzel – and take turns aiming for Cary Grant screwball suavité. If they’re a touch interchangeable, that’s partly the point and it barely matters because Da’Vine Joy Randolph and John Early, as celestial Afterlife Co-ordinators, provide solid comedy back-up.
The production design is another standout and provides a running gag that keeps on giving, as this limbo is a teeming marketplace of competing versions of the afterlife (such as Beach World, Capitalism World, and Man-Free World). – Steve Morrissey
Five Nights at Freddy's 2
The animatronic terrors of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza emporium are rebooted for a second helping of mayhem in this disappointingly boilerplate sequel. A year after the events of the first film, the killer robots’ folkloric fame results in party costumes and interest from paranormal investigators (including Mckenna Grace's ghost hunter). However, former security guard Josh Hutcherson has to spring into action once again to save his kid sister and on/off police officer girlfriend from the murderous 'bots.
Director Emma Tammi and screenwriter Scott Cawthon (who created the original video games on which this is based) fall foul of the same traps that stymied the first movie, namely a convoluted plot and a distinct lack of gore or scares.
Only Wayne Knight as a self-serving school teacher makes any impact among the new characters, and all of the players are hamstrung by a corny script that plays fast and loose with common sense. Here’s hoping any future reservation at the deathly diner has a more mouth-watering menu. – Terry Staunton
It Was Just an Accident
A chance encounter in modern-day Tehran sparks a cycle of violence in this cast-iron morality tale. Warehouse worker Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) spies family man Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi) and kidnaps him, fully intent on burying him alive. He’s convinced his captive is a state interrogator who tortured him in prison, but blindfolded during his ordeal, doubts creep in. Was this the man he heard? And so he gathers others – including photographer Shiva (Maryam Afshari) – who might be able to verify the prisoner’s identity.
Winner of the Cannes festival's prestigious Palme d’Or, this tense, taut thriller comes from acclaimed filmmaker Jafar Panahi (No Bears). Like his characters, he’s been imprisoned by the Iranian authorities, as well as banned from filmmaking, and there’s no escaping the film's in-baked sense of righteous anger.
But Panahi wisely seasons the film with black comedy: witness two security guards who take a bribe (with a handheld credit card terminal!) to look the other way when they hear a ruckus in Vahid’s van. A powerful, poignant meditation on the futility of vengeance. – James Mottram
Cover-Up
This eye-opening documentary is a sharp and sometimes knotty portrait of American investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. Blessed with a keen sense of distrust that’s vital in his business, Hersh is a combative and reluctant interviewee – co-director Laura Poitras first approached him 20 years prior to the film's release – as he sits in his home office recounting war stories. But you’re left to admire the tenacity of a journalist who has taken on government and military abuses of power, breaking stories that ranged from My Lai to Abu Ghraib.
Joined here by co-director Mark Obenhaus, Poitras is no stranger to tackling those who take on authorities at the highest level – notably in Citizenfour, her timely 2014 look at whistle-blower Edward Snowden.
Here, she meets her match in the 88-year-old Hersh, who continues to needle the great and the not-so-good. He frequently refuses to answer questions, guarding his anonymous sources, but the film never balks, even covering the scandal that engulfed him when penning his John F Kennedy memoir involving forged Marilyn Monroe letters. Thoroughly absorbing. – James Mottram
Best of the rest still showing in UK cinemas
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Having previously staged star-studded murder mysteries at a cosy mansion and a lavish private island, Rian Johnson's third Knives Out film unfolds against the backdrop of a small Catholic parish in upstate New York. This time, Daniel Craig's Southern sleuth Benoit Blanc is tasked with solving the murder of an intimidating priest (Josh Brolin), whose increasingly warped fire and brimstone sermons have seen him brush up against Josh O'Connor's younger clergyman.
What makes the mystery so enticing is that it initially appears to be an impossible crime, with Johnson's script making several references to John Dickson Carr's classic locked room mystery novel The Hollow Man. The church setting allows the director to make cinematic use of religious iconography and deliver a pointed satire about the way contemporary right-wing figures have weaponised faith to their own ends.
Meanwhile, the film gets a little darker, more unsettling, and weirder than the previous instalments – embracing elements of gothic horror – and although there are times where the case threatens to get a little too convoluted, it eventually leads to a hugely satisfying denouement. – Patrick Cremona
- Read our full Wake Up Dead Man review
- Read our interview with Daniel Craig
- Read our interview with Josh O'Connor
- Read our interview with the supporting cast
Blue Moon
Ethan Hawke stars as real-life lyricist Lorenz Hart in this melancholy, moving tale from director Richard Linklater (Boyhood). Set across one evening in New York restaurant Sardi’s, the film sees an embittered Hart arriving from the opening performance of Oklahoma!, written by hot new partnership Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) and Oscar Hammerstein (Simon Delaney).
Hart and his one-time mentee Rodgers were celebrated for penning beloved standards My Funny Valentine and Blue Moon but Hart’s alcoholism has left their working relationship soured. With Hawke wearing an unconvincing bald wig and made to look shorter than his co-stars (Hart was under five foot), his appearance distracts.
Thankfully, on his ninth collaboration with Linklater, the actor brings alive the dazzling, witty script, especially in his exchanges with an on-song Scott. Only Margaret Qualley is shortchanged as the demure Elizabeth, whom the tortured Hart is enamoured by. Still, this is a touching tribute to an artist whose contributions to popular culture deserve to be recognised. – James Mottram
Christy
Sydney Sweeney delivers a powerhouse performance as real-life boxer Christy Martin, in a sports movie with a sting. During the 1990s, West Virginia native Christy is a fighter on the rise when she crosses paths with trainer James (Ben Foster), who soon proposes marriage, despite Christy's obvious interest in women. While her success brings wealth and fame – the way she fronts up to a rival fighter (Katy O’Brian) is telling – James’s increasingly controlling behaviour leads to a very dark final act.
Directed by David Michôd (Animal Kingdom) and co-scripted with his partner Mirrah Foulkes, this is less a boxing movie and more a study of female resistance. Whether it’s in the ring in a male-dominated sport or facing up against domestic abuse, Martin is a remarkable figure, given her due by Sweeney, who pours her heart into this transformation.
Unfortunately, whether it’s dealing with LGBTQ issues or the boxing world, it feels skin-deep at times – typified by the distracting wigs that both leads wear. – James Mottram
Zootropolis 2
Brimming with rapid-fire sight gags and movie in-jokes, the sequel to Disney’s hit 2016 animation is a fast and funny combination of buddy cop comedy and conspiracy romp. It picks up where the original left off, with perky bunny Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) on police duty with her wily fox partner Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman).
Despite their clashing methods, the duo stumble on a mystery involving Zootropolis’s 100-year anniversary and Gary De’Snake (Ke Huy Quan), a rogue viper slithering amok in the supposedly reptile-free city. Predictable plot twists aside, the duo’s investigation nimbly spans genres and Disney tropes, with animal jokes, crime film influences and lightly handled messages about prejudice deftly interwoven.
Old and fresh characters are breezily balanced, with series newcomers Quan, Fortune Feimster and Andy Samberg playfully nailing their voice roles. Featuring a winning lead pairing, pacey chase sequences and a richly realised world, the film builds on its predecessor’s appeal with charm, energy and the wittiest nod to The Shining in a kids’ movie yet. – Kevin Harley
Pillion
A nerdy young man finds his mojo in this racy, charming and hilariously funny British gem. Colin Smith (Harry Melling) is a parking attendant locked in a humdrum life until, one day, he’s picked up in a pub by enigmatic biker Ray (Alexander Skarsgård). After an unusual first date on Christmas Day, Colin is bewitched by this leather jacket-wearing hunk, and soon finds himself in an S&M relationship with the dominant, mysterious Ray.
With its titular double meaning – slang in the niche world of BDSM-practising bikers, meaning those who take the submissive role – the film may prove a little too outré for certain viewers. However, British writer/director Harry Lighton finds humour and sweetness in the premise, leaning into the sexual dynamics on show without ever kink-shaming its participants.
Melling and Skarsgård are wonderfully cast, especially Melling, who convincingly goes from dowdy and downtrodden to confident and cool. Seasoned with a dash of Mike Leigh-style suburban angst, Pillion will truly tickle your fancy. – James Mottram
Wicked: For Good
After last year’s Wicked: Part One, we’re back for some more Ozploitation. Jon M Chu’s two-part adaptation has already been a wild ride, tapping into the perennial enthusiasm for the long-running stage show by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, which itself came inspired both by Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel and, of course, Hollywood Golden Age musical The Wizard of Oz. Part One conjured a healthy $756 million global box office, followed by 10 Oscar nominations and two wins.
There’s no reason to think Wicked: For Good won’t perform the same trick, or better it, with Chu bringing events to a rousing close. While he infuses enthusiasm into every frame, the same can be said for his leading ladies. Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo are back in top, lung-busting form as, respectively, the pink-hued Glinda the Good and Elphaba, the green-skinned witch who has been cast out of Oz, thanks to the machinations of the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum, wickedly charming as ever), the ultimately carney-man.
Now in exile, the demonised Elphaba’s name has been stained by the Wizard, in league with her one-time tutor, the former Dean of Sorcery at Shiz University, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh, still wearing that delicious Mr Whippy ice-cream hair-do). The slightly vapid Glinda, meanwhile, thinks they need to be trademarking the word "good", while she’s also caught up in preparations for her impending wedding to Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who has been charged with capturing Elphaba. – James Mottram
- Read our full Wicked: For Good review
- Read our interview with Wicked production designer Nathan Crowley
The Running Man
Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick) steps into Arnold Schwarzenegger’s shoes with this big-budget remake set in a dystopian United States where violent TV is the opium of the people. Director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) stays faithful to the original Stephen King story, as irascible, hard-up Everyman Ben Richards (Powell) volunteers for the lethal Running Man show to provide for his family. Avoid capture for 30 days and $1 billion is the reward.
But contestants are also hunted relentlessly across the country by assassins, with the action televised to an audience willing to dob them in for reward, all under the auspices of Josh Brolin’s scheming network puppet-master. No stranger to delivering breakneck action with the likes of Hot Fuzz and Baby Driver, Wright produces plenty of nerve-jangling set-pieces, while the cross-country pursuit reveals an America riven by economic inequality and manipulated by a self-satisfied few.
The episodic nature of the plot, with Richards donning a variety of disguises to lay low, occasionally leads to a lull in pace and tension. However, Powell is a hero to root for, and there are tasty cameos from William H Macy and Michael Cera, whose mercurial rebel lives in a booby-trapped bolt-hole worthy of Rambo. – Jeremy Aspinall
Now You See Me: Now You Don't
Combining legacy characters with a new trio of younger illusionists, the third film in this action-comedy series is a busily disposable – if fitfully fun – combination of reunion gig and new-generation franchise spruce-up. Director Ruben Fleischer (Venom, Uncharted) replaces predecessors Louis Leterrier and Jon M Chu, stepping in to juggle the expected ingredients of a tangled heist, some tricksy set pieces, a couple of crowd-pleasing cameos and splashes of globe-trotting glitz.
Yet as the crowded cast grapple with the script’s patchy supplies of sparkle and finesse, it can be hard to care which way the plot’s cards end up landing. The set pieces lift proceedings, with action sequences at a public diamond display and in a house of illusions showing flashes of pacy wit, levity and invention.
However, the narrative linking them is frustratingly loose – even for a franchise that revels in the ridiculous. One or two twists prove inconsequential, while the script is rarely as clever as it thinks it is and hardly ever as fresh as it should be. – Kevin Harley
Nuremberg
Russell Crowe is captivating as Hermann Göring in this compelling but somewhat muddled drama set against the Nuremberg trials. These events have been dramatised before – most notably in Stanley Kramer’s 1961 classic Judgement at Nuremberg – but writer/director James Vanderbilt finds a new way in by focusing on the conversations between Göring and military psychiatrist Douglas Kelley.
Kelley had been assigned to investigate whether each Nazi defendant was fit to stand trial, but also hoped to find fame and fortune by diagnosing something new about the nature of evil – perhaps something unique to the German character. Although Vanderbilt doesn’t always land on the right tone, there’s an undeniable spark to the scenes between Kelley and Göring, while a late reveal about Kelley’s translator Sergeant Howie Triest (Leo Woodall) is profoundly moving.
The many scenes devoted to explaining how the trials came about feel rather more perfunctory, while as an exploration of Nazi evils Nuremberg pales in comparison to Jonathan Glazer’s recent masterwork The Zone of Interest. But this is an engaging study of Kelley and Göring’s unusual dynamic. – Patrick Cremona
Die My Love
Featuring the one-two punch of leads Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, Die, My Love is an absorbing and quietly devastating relationship drama. Lawrence plays Grace, a new mother living in a rural Montana backwater with husband Jackson (Pattinson). Gradually, as marital woes unfold between the two, Grace's mental health deteriorates. Is this a problem of nature or nurture?
One flashback, to their wedding night, shows her inebriated and out of control. There’s a self-harming, self-destructive impulse buried in her DNA, but it’s clear she loves her baby more than life itself. Adapting from Ariana Harwicz’s 2017 novel, director Lynne Ramsay (You Were Never Really Here) is in supreme command of her craft, conjuring an atmospheric character piece that showcases Lawrence's great talents as she and Pattinson are pushed to their limits.
Featuring acting legends Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte in small but potent roles, the film also spins on brilliant cinematography from Seamus McGarvey, whose subtle work heightens the increasingly sombre mood. Scored with to-die-for tracks (Cream, David Bowie), this perfectly essays one woman's psychological journey and builds to a heartbreaking crescendo. – James Mottram
Bugonia
A ruthless CEO is kidnapped by two men who think she’s an alien in this pleasingly madcap comedy-drama. A remake of 2003 South Korean movie Save the Green Planet!, Emma Stone plays the power-dressing biomedical honcho Michelle Fuller, abducted by Jesse Plemons's greasy-looking conspiracy theorist Teddy and his slobby cousin (Aidan Delbis).
Taken to Teddy’s mother’s basement, Michelle is tied up as her captors try and force her to confess that she’s an extraterrestrial out to obliterate our planet. Scripted by Will Tracy (TV's Succession), this marks the fourth film collaboration between Stone and director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite, Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness), and her sparring with the excellent Plemons lingers.
Also featuring Alicia Silverstone in a key role, the film is unpredictable, even for those familiar with the Korean version. A prod at the way corporations have taken over our planet, maximising profits at the expense of all else, it smartly asks if we’re the masters of our own demise. Or whether, as Michelle says, 'Sometimes a species just winds down.' – James Mottram
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
Bruce Springsteen goes back to basics in an intimate biopic that explores the singer’s troubled past as he confronts questions about his future. Jeremy Allen White stars as The Boss, opening a can of analytical worms while writing and recording songs for the low-key 1982 album Nebraska, a far cry from the amped-up anthems of his previous LPs.
As he delves deeper into the creative process, he’s reminded of an often unhappy childhood and difficult relationship with his father (Stephen Graham), while in the present day his manager and mentor (Jeremy Strong) strives to shield him from the hits-hungry demands of the music biz.
Director Scott Cooper follows author Warren Zanes’s acclaimed book of the same title relatively closely, the film working best in its quieter, more subdued moments. Blessed by subtle performances from the leads (although White is less convincing when called upon to be Springsteen as a louder, strutting stage presence), it’s an eloquent, if occasionally flawed, film about self-examination and the power of music as a form of therapy. – Terry Staunton
Black Phone 2
Writer/director Scott Derrickson and co-writer C Robert Cargill have upped the supernatural ante for the sequel with ghoulish and gory aplomb by taking the original film’s characters (and cast) out of small-town suburbia and stranding them at an isolated, blizzard-hit Christian youth camp where boys had vanished mysteriously back in the 1950s.
Horror fans will spot allusions to all sorts of fright flicks, whether it’s Freddy Krueger, Friday the 13th, Poltergeist or The Shining, but Derrickson is navigating his own creepy groove, sustained by stars Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw, who have literally grown into their roles and deliver emotionally compelling performances.
The first Black Phone was a serial-killer horror with a side order of supernatural, but this gripping sequel embraces the paranormal and gruesomeness in all its gory glory, too. Meanwhile the dream sequences, seemingly shot on scratchy 70s film stock and recalling Derrickson’s 2012 spine-chiller Sinister, ooze unsettling menace and deliver some hearty jump-scares. – Jeremy Aspinall
One Battle After Another
This terrific film from Paul Thomas Anderson is loosely based on Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland. Rather than a straight adaptation, the auteur expertly borrows elements and crafts them into something his own, keeping the book's rebellious spirit, absurdist comic tone and thematic weight intact.
Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Bob Ferguson, a former member of resistance group the French 75, now completely sapped of his revolutionary spirit. But when his old nemesis (Sean Penn in sensationally odious form) re-emerges, Bob must rediscover his fight so he can protect his teenage daughter (Chase Infiniti, a revelation).
The resulting chase is thrilling, uproarious and perfectly paced, with DiCaprio excelling as a frustrated layabout thrust back into the fold. Anderson stages the film's set pieces – including a mesmerising car chase – in unpredictable, inventive ways, with Jonny Greenwood's frantic, piano-led score the perfect complement.
The film feels urgent and timely, tapping into contemporary themes from the USA's barbaric treatment of immigrants to the growing prevalence of extremist ideologies among people with influence, but there's also a dash of hope and poignancy. Anderson's choice to put a touching father/daughter relationship front and centre amid the thrills gives his masterful film undeniable emotional heft. – Patrick Cremona
Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Authors
Patrick Cremona is the Senior Film Writer at Radio Times, and looks after all the latest film releases both in cinemas and on streaming. He has been with the website since October 2019, and in that time has interviewed a host of big name stars and reviewed a diverse range of movies.
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