A squirmy delight with real insight into both celebrity culture and exploitative relationships, it stands out as one of 2025’s most promising debuts.

Those looking for bleak, slow horror and who are willing to suspend plenty of disbelief might want to check it out, but it won’t rock the worlds of the rest of us.

The approach and tone is decidedly non-maudlin, and determinedly hopeful despite capturing the staggering hardships Fox faces simply navigating an average day.

A Different Man is a major work—even as it shapeshifts from Cronenberg to Kaurismäki, developing into new territory at every turn, Schimberg never loses sight of his central questions: What makes us who we are? What does it mean to be a good person in this weird but beautiful world, surrounded by other people?

The sensation of the film, on the other hand, is suspicion, the relentless and sickening notion that nobody can be trusted. Whether the thrumming electronic soundtrack or Rodríguez’s photography, composed to the point of feeling suffocating, Chile ’76 drives that anxiety like a knife in the heart.

Not only does the film provide an exhaustive account of the band’s rise and fall, but it also clearly articulates their importance in music history, their singular character as a performing entity and even the distinctive nature of their fandom.

Kosinski’s dogfights are pristine, incredible feats of filmmaking, economical and orbiting around recognizable space, but given to occasional, inexplicable shocks of pure chaos. Then quickly cohering again.

This is all the makings of Oscar gold, rife with the story beats that The Social Network codified—and even succeeds in some clever elliptical storytelling, the stuff that makes award bodies shiver—but Johnson’s and Raab’s aesthetic consistently pulls the iconism of the story into messier immediacy.

Oddity is simultaneously an impressive production and a bizarre lesson in the vagaries of fear: without visibly shifting its tactics, it can be shiver-inducing in a few scenes and tedious in others.

What is a fishing community if restrictions deny their catch? The world continues to change no matter what anyone does. Camilleri understands that dilemma and puts it on film with humble clarity.

With a silly genre premise that could easily have been rendered as either an Asylum-esque B movie or a four minute SNL sequence, Sketch instead stands out as a triumph of movie-making chutzpah, an impressively confident and well-executed combination of family comedy, adventure, fantasy and even the occasional twist of horror and suspense.

Moss’ creation is more than a sentient pile of parts with a fresh coat of mortuary makeup: It’s a savvy, gross, black-hearted gem with a humanity all its own.

As a blistering exercise in sustained tension, Warfare works. As a depiction of the toll war takes on the body and soul, well, it’s pretty good at that, too.

In Dìdi, development is occurring on multiple axes: technological, social and generational, and the film is best when it’s unmooring these at once. Dìdi is bogged down, though, by its reliance on coming-of-age clichés: sex and drugs as markers of maturity, family conflict that’s easily smoothed over, the struggle of forming an identity when one has an insecure sense of self.

Though it might meander at times, After Yang—based on Alexander Weinstein’s short story “Saying Goodbye to Yang”—is always emotionally intelligent and artfully prescient, showcasing Kogonada’s penchant for sparse storytelling even if the narrative throughlines don’t always feel as rewarding as the film’s aesthetic splendors.

Through capturing victim testimonies as they were presented in court during this months-long trial as well as the dogged pursuit for justice by a ragtag team of bravely dedicated prosecutors, the film wholly resists sensationalization, opting instead to faithfully reconstruct the events that culminated in a landmark win for social justice amid a shakily budding democracy.

Love, Antosha lays Yelchin’s immense spirit bare, but the film remains wanting for depth. Make no mistake: This is the definitive Encyclopedia of Anton Yelchin, a tome to chronicle the best of him. But there’s so much about him to learn, and so much breezed over to fit into a 90-minute running time, that Price’s study feels somewhat diffuse.

Like all worthwhile children’s work, Ernest & Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia is driven by something deeper than the need for superficial laughs or spectacles: The desire to inspire its young audience to pursue their passions and stand up against authorities that threaten their freedom of expression and individuality.

Refreshingly devoid of a traditional plot and any forced conflict, Gloria instead studies how such a character can enjoy the ups and downs of life even after her family has left her behind.

Shults’s film is many things—heart-wrenching, paced to perfection, a masterclass in visual storytelling and genuinely terrifying.

Blessed/cursed with a charmingly unwieldy title (To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar comes to mind), Good Luck to You, Leo Grande can bobble the more dramatic elements of the pair’s professional and personal relationship, but its feel-good story satisfies to completion.

Visually, the film can be a bit rough around the edges, but at its heart it is built from the kind of pulpy sci-fi goodness that longtime series fans have likely been craving.

Everything on screen is stupendous. This is what we want, to watch John Wick murder the whole world, forever and ever amen.

It’s a humble exploration of a fascinating and untapped community, reminiscent of great cinéma verité documentarians like Frederick Wiseman.

As soon as you unearth a place’s past, it lives on in you—changes you. This is the heart of folk horror that Enys Men speaks to, but its dull, repetitive, padded delivery of images makes its genre findings (in words British enough to befit the film) weak tea.

In truth, this isn’t a movie about understanding why—a question that desperately wants an easy answer to a complicated problem—but about understanding Bourdain. Appreciating him. Mourning him. To that end, Roadrunner succeeds once the mythologizing dies down and we see the person inside the romantic.

Queens of the Qing Dynasty is a unique film with a distinct voice, a brave example of queerness existing beyond sexuality at many different confluences. Though the follow-through is not as dynamic as I’d like, and the duration sometimes drags, the film takes big swings.

On film, The Humans is more Thanksgiving-appropriate than ever. No preludes, no gifts, no tinsel. Just you and your family—or, worse, you and yourself.