Boxing Day Thrills: The Best New Films Worth Visiting The Cinema For This Festive Season

Between blowing off the cobwebs and munching on leftovers, feast your eyes on these new flicks landing in UK cinemas this festive season. And no, they’re not all about Christmas.

Best New Movies In UK Cinemas December 2025

Kate Winslet and Toni Colette in Goodbye June. (© Kimberley French/Netflix)

Goodbye June

From Sense and Sensibility to Titanic, The Reader to… a Netflix Christmas film? Kate Winslet is set to make her debut on the streamer this festive season, amid a slate spanning champagne scions and clashing exes to a London department store heist, all vivified in Netflix’s notoriously kitschy Yuletide fashion. But our hopes are higher for Goodbye June which stars Winslet as one of an ailing mother’s four disparate adult children, gathered beside her sickbed for the holidays. It’s an unexpected move from the Oscar-winner and also marks Winslet’s directorial debut – from a screenplay penned by her 21 year old son, no less. And Winslet has leafed through her contact book to make this a star-studded affair: she’ll be joined by Helen Mirren as the quick-witted June, staunchly declining on her own terms, along with siblings in the form of Toni Collette, Johnny Flynn and Andrea Riseborough while Timothy Spall stars as their exhausting father. In cinemas 12 December, on Netflix 24 December.

Timothee Chalamet in Marty Supreme.

Marty Supreme

In his first solo outing since The Pleasure of Being Robbed (2008), disruptive director Josh Safdie is pursuing his independence with visceral vim. Germinating since 2018, high-stakes table tennis-cum-gambling dramedy Marty Supreme is the result of a lifelong obsession with the sport on Safdie’s part plus a then-new (now eight-years-long) friendship with Call Me By Your Name (2017) star Timothee Chalamet. And though he now has Beautiful Boy (2018), Little Women (2019), the Dune trilogy (2021–26) and more under his belt, that’s how Chalamet was known back in 2017 when he first met Safdie at a party and pretended to be tripping on acid. Noting a strange aura around the future A lister and his physical resemblance to American champion table tennis player Marty Reisman, Safdie cast Chalamet in his fictionalised spin, which is officially A24’s most expensive roll of the dice to date at $90 million. Also starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin O’Leary and Tyler, the Creator in his feature film debut, expect a frenetic rise as Marty attempts to elevate basement ping-pong into a stadium-filling sport, backdropped by vibrant 1950s NYC. In cinemas 26 December.

Renate Reinsve & Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas in Sentimental Value. (© Kasper Tuxen)

Sentimental Value

Oscar and BAFTA nominated filmmaker Joachim Trier may have wrapped up his beloved Oslo trilogy – Reprise (2006), Oslo, August 31st (2011) and The Worst Person in the World (2021) – but his international rise is just beginning. Reuniting with frequent co-writer Eskil Vogt and magnetic muse Renate Reinsve (star of the latter two of the trilogy), Trier’s latest, Sentimental Value, is a delicate autopsy of art, ego and inheritance, bagging Cannes’ Grand Prix earlier this year. Reinsve is Nora Borg, a successful stage actress who rejects her estranged father Gustav Borg’s (Stellan Skarsgård) offer to cast her in his latest film. Clinging to the fringes of obscurity but intending to make a magnificent comeback, Gustav instead enlists polished American star Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) for his intimate film, which is based on a Borg family tragedy and set in the Oslo family home Nora occupies. This is all quietly anchored by Nora’s sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) researching the dark truth behind the family lore Gustav is flippantly dramatising. In cinemas 26 December.