The fall festival circuit is officially underway. Over the next few weeks, the movies that will run award season, acquire mass acclaim and land atop all the year end lists will slowly trickle out. Us regular folk won’t see most of these movies until later this year (I was not able to see last year’s festival darling The Brutalist until January 10th). Still we will be forced to read rave reviews about them while tapping our feet waiting for a rare screening at a local theatre. But while the awards race and critics' cultures might be built around these movies, the business is not.
Most of the yearly box office is done in the summer when big hits like Superman, F1 and Fantastic Four hit the screens. Before every good movie this year gets devoured by a splashier more awards friendly drama, let’s celebrate 2025’s best offerings and thank them for subsidizing the festival circuit.
Black Bag directed by Steven Soderbergh
Beneath a delicious veneer of sleek espionage and impeccable tailoring is a film with a real message. The message: if you love your spouse enough you can foil international conspiracies. With Cate Blanchett as electrifying as ever and Michael Fassbender rekindling the roboticism of his Prometheus days the rest of the cast melts away and your vision is stuck wholly on the stilted but genuine chemistry these two have. Black Bag looks meticulously crafted, but it feels effortless. Like it's too easy for Soderberg. That is not to say it's small, just that the world of moviegoing has passed this one by. 30 years ago, it would have topped the year’s box office. Today, we celebrate it as a daring departure from the usual fare. A drama for adults; a dying breed.
Mickey 17 directed by Bong Joon Ho
The long gestating follow up to Parasite is not Bong Joon Ho’s best movie. It’s not even in the top half of his hall-of-fame-level output. But I will defend this film as original and deserving of praise. Viewers saw fascists wearing red hats and immediately put two and two together. But Bong did not write Mickey 17 with a newspaper in his hands and maintains that Trump is not the center of his ire. Just because fascists are repetitive, imitating and unoriginal does not mean Bong Joon Ho is. There is Robert Pattinson’s highly committed and otherworldly accented Mickey. Naomi Ackie’s charming Nasha and huge performances from Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette. There’s a lot to like! Almost too much maybe. You can feel studio notes sticking out in places they don’t belong and missing in places they should have been. It’s a confusing list of ingredients but a tasty dish nonetheless.
Highest 2 Lowest directed by Spike Lee
With a passing glance, you might mistake Highest 2 Lowest for a typical Spike Lee movie. There is Denzel. There is Brooklyn. There are head bobbing musical moments. If you flew by the film in your chauffeur driven Rolls Royce, as Denzel’s character often does, the blur would appear familiar. Comforting. Safe. That would undersell the originality, care and risk Spike imbues into his latest offering. Making a movie with Apple, the studio that famously gives no notes, is not exactly cliff jumping. But adapting the work of acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa for modern audiences takes guts. Highest 2 Lowest is more than a work of adaptation; it is reclamation. Reviving Kurosawa’s film and McBain’s novel into a modern story of digital reputation and the importance of owning the means of production. This is a filmmaker unburdened by expectations playing in his favorite sandbox with a crate of new toys.
Sally directed by Cristina Costantini
By the 1980s, the Russians had effectively conceded the Space Race but American exceptionalism was just getting started and none were more exceptional than Sally Ride. A youth tennis star who earned a Bachelor’s in physics, a Bachelor’s in English literature, a Master of Science and a Doctor of Philosophy (both in physics) in just 5 years at Stanford. She joined NASA in the first class of astronauts to include women. Later she flew to space. Becoming the first woman to do so. There was much celebrity surrounding Sally Ride, and this documentary Sally at once celebrates her notoriety and cuts through it. Told mostly through the eyes of Tam O’Shaughnessy, Sally’s longtime partner, it’s a film about being in the orbit of a giant. Tam and Sally were together for 27 years, but spent their entire relationship in secret. It was not until late in life, when pancreatic cancer had its grips on Sally did she finally say out loud that she and Tam were partners. Director Cristina Constantine explores the smallest parts of romantic relationships with one of the largest pop culture figures of the 80s. She dives into the way we memorialize our heroes. The way we hope to be memorialized ourselves. What parts of our legacy we choose. The parts that are chosen for us. For Sally Ride, I think we’re still figuring that part out.
Weapons directed by Zach Cregger
For the first hour of Weapons, my mind was racing with all the possibilities behind the movie’s amazing premise. The story sells itself, and the studio relied on that fact. Trailers and promotional material showed very little of the film, its twists or even its stars. Instead the poster just spells it out “LAST NIGHT AT 2:17 AM EVERY CHILD FROM MRS. GANDY'S CLASS WOKE UP GOT OUT OF BED WENT DOWNSTAIRS OPENED THE FRONT DOOR…” you know the rest. Director Zach Cregger’s ability to sell the movie on his own originality started to wear thin around the third quarter of the movie. But just when you think you’re headed for a worn out ending, he flips it with a Ferris Buellerian ending for the ages. Cregger has dismissed various metaphorical claims from audiences, maintaining throughout his press tour that Weapons is its own statement, not a mirror to society. But I think if you stare long and hard enough some terrifying things start to take shape.
Sorry Baby directed by Eva Victor
A hilarious and heartwarming debut, Eva Victor’s Sorry Baby is equal parts singular and applicable. Her character’s traumatic moment is depressingly common but it's her comic sensibilities and incisive thoughts on gender, sexuality and love that feel fully Victor’s. It culminates in a movie that is predictable on one hand and breaking new ground with the other. Her shovel is a beautifully rendered female friendship and a perfectly off kilter romance with an adorable neighbor. And how great to see Lucas Hedges and John David Lynch in the same tight 90 minutes.