Due to travel and a shocking lack of fresh releases this Christmas aside from Hallmark-like romcoms about family tensions over turkey (it makes me pine for last year’s flurry of goodies, from Carry On to the albeit shockingly disappointing new Wallace & Gromit), my 12 films of Christmas 2025 include a few cinematic releases and a great deal of rewatches. As such, from number 8 onwards, this was a rather difficult scoring process (largely because many are among my roster of favourites). Nevertheless, I give you, 2025’s 12 Films of Christmas.
12. Nowhere – Tupperware floating
The most viewed foreign language film on Netflix in 2023, Nowhere focuses on pregnant Mia (Anna Castillo), lost at sea inside a container after an attempt at fleeing a totalitarian dystopia. There is no shortage of survival dramas focused on a single person in a secluded location (think 127 Hours or The Martian), but Nowhere unfortunately does not captivate for long, even when Mia does give birth inside the container and must now tend to a daughter on top of herself. There are endless montages of building infrastructure, tracking days, and attempting to open the container as it fills with water, but the real eye-roll moments are the conversations Mia has on the phone with her husband Nico (Tamar Novas), who she is separated from in the first half of the film. It is a miracle that she has a) signal in the middle of the sea, and b) enough battery after a week afloat. Director Albert Pinto does his all to pull at the heartstrings – but neither a lost daughter, a mother ridden by guilt, or a tearful goodbye seem to have any weight. Nowhere is certainly entertaining at times, and Castillo diligently gives it her all, but overall, it ends up rather long and tedious to the point of indifference when Mia and baby are inevitably saved.
11. The Great Flood – reruns running
Though it comes in at a meagre 11, The Great Flood is certainly the most surprising film on the list. It starts as a generic, apocalyptic nightmare when An-na (Kim Da-mi) and son Ja-in (Kwon Eun-seong) wake up to their apartment filling with floodwater. From there, it is a game of survival, as agent Hee-jo (Squid Game’s Park Hae-soo) tracks her down to inform her that she is part of the government’s secret mission to save humanity. That is, until An-na wakes up in her bed to water rising again. Suddenly, The Great Flood isn’t 2025’s answer to The Day After Tomorrow anymore, but rather a Groundhog Day video game in which An-na realises she has one mission only. Kim Byung-woo’s drama is tense enough, makes sense enough (after a prompt internet search post-film), entertains enough, but its downfall is the sheer lack of inspiration its coloration and aesthetic inspires. Draped in the bluey hues of the tsunamis An-na fights, there isn’t a single attractive image in this film, as dark and uninspiring as the secret mission the government have planned for the future of humanity. Yes, this is certainly an apocalypse film – but the floods here are the least of our problems.
10. Avatar: Fire and Ash – Na’vi fighting
A preface to these comments to state that I thought Avatar: The Way of Water was positively mortifying, and had no initial intention of watching James Cameron’s third ego fest. Yet, here it is, in at number 10, and certainly an improvement on its predecessor. Despite glaring faults, one cannot deny that Fire and Ash is entertaining, particularly because of its new villain, Varang (Oona Chaplin), the psychopathic leader of the Mangkwan clan who teams up with original antagonist Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang). Both the look and personality of the character are top notch, and if anything, I’ll watch Avatar number cuatro for her. Nevetherless, I find it increasingly upsetting that the man who gave us The Terminator and Titanic, Aliens and The Abyss should now dedicate so much of his time to thwarting his marvellous cinematic journey with CGI emptiness. In fact, the CGI isn’t the real problem here – it’s both the storyline and the characters. When you boil down the three hour Fire and Ash to a sentence, it is this: Na’vi warriors have three battles with humans and other Na’vi warriors. That’s it. For three films now, Jake Scully (Sam Worthington) has been fighting for a bit of peace. Inevitably, it ends up feeling rather repetitive, even when you half-swap out villains and add in a series of confusing subplots. Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) is suddenly able to make Spider (Jack Champion) breathe Na’vi after he almost dies without his mask – convenient. Meanwhile, Jake’s eldest son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) is off with the sea mammals searching for his friend Payakan. Also, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) has grown to hate humans (and by extension, her half-human family) after her first son’s death at their hands. It’s a shame, really – even with such a lengthy runtime, Fire and Ash chooses to concentrate not on its characters, all full of potential, but on meagre, inconsequential elements, and the artifice of its aesthetics. Let us hope that in the two sequels he has already written, Cameron refocuses.
Stay tuned for 9 to 7!
