Total Film Presents 500 Must-See Movies - 5th Edition 2025

We know what you’re thinking: blimey, that is a big number. And yet the funny thing about putting this bumper-sized magazine together was how difficult it was to narrow it down to just 500... This list was put together by the brains behind Total Film (and its sister titles SFX and Horrorville). We love movies obsessively, and we hope that this list demonstrates that passion. You’ll find all the classics here: Star Wars, Jaws, Halloween and so on. But you’ll also find plenty of titles old and new that you may not have encountered before. To make things easier we’ve split the book into five handy genre-based chapters: comedy, action, thriller, horror and sci-fi/fantasy. When making a list like this there’s bound to be a degree of crossover. Alien, for instance, could arguably sit in four of those sections - it’d be a bit of a stretch to place it in comedy, admittedly - but we’ve tried to position them in the chapter that seemed most appropriate. How many of the 500 have you seen? Each section comes with a handy checklist so you can tick them off as you go. So clear your diaries, grab some snacks and get watching.