This is the best 40th birthday present I could have asked for. The last couple years I combined the non Oscar bait and Oscar bait movies onto 1 anticipated Top 10 List, because frankly, the movie selection was just not that great. I was going to do that for 2025, but then I started putting the list together and had to split it…because of the awards contenders.
This fall was the fall a host of great directors decided to release their movies. Don’t believe me? Here’s some directors who couldn’t even crack the TOP 15 most anticipated award movies this fall: Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie, Noah Baumbach, Nia DaCosta, Lynne Ramsay, Ira Sachs, Bradley Cooper, Derek Cianfrance, Edward Berger, and previous Best Picture winner Guillermo del Toro.
So despite my misgivings initially, I’m officially pumped for the Fall 2025 movie release slate.
The big “Red Flag” winner: it’s a musical tie, between Wicked: For Good, and Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. Both feel like the less good remix of the 2024 versions: Wicked and A Complete Unknown.
Here’s 5 Awesome Directors with Movies that just missed the Top 10:
Richard Linklater pulling double duty: Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vague
Hikari: Rental Family
Luca Guadagnino: After the Hunt
James L. Brooks: Ella McCay
Mona Fastvold and her partner, Brady Corbet: The Testament of Ann Lee
Let’s see who’s even more anticipated than the crazy intimidating talent already mentioned above:
| 10 | The Mastermind |
| I know how great of a filmmaker Kelly Reichardt is, but our Venn Diagrams haven’t really intersected broadly. This one finally gives me excitement that it could happen: a heist movie with Josh O’Connor going on the run after stealing some art. It’ll likely be a Reichardt movie first, so let’s see how that translates to a more high tension genre of movie than their usual humanist character studies. |
| 9 | Hamnet |
| This was off my board on premise: a period piece about William Shakespeare’s family/life. But buzz out of the fall festivals is sky high on this one; sounds like Chloe Zhao, who’s already won best director, has done it again, and lived and survived the Marvel machine to bring tears out of people’s eyes. |
| 8 | The Secret Agent |
| Incredible Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho may have finally gotten a big international hit on his hands. The buzz for his latest is sky high, boasting an incredible Wagner Moura performance, and a great premise of a man on the run during a Brazilian Carnivale. Never count out the Brazilians when it comes to supporting their own cinema! |
| 7 | The Perfect Neighbor |
| Documentarians can be great filmmakers too! Geeta Gandbhir earned her way onto my list, for good reason. This one promises to be a searing look at Florida’s Stand Your Ground laws via a masterclass in editing making the doc look like June 17, 1994 with real footage. I’m gonna be mad…and impressed…at what Gandbhir has in store for me. |
| 6 | Bugonia |
| I’m less roller coastery than Luca with Yorgos Lanthimos, who makes weirdo movies with sneaky mass appeal. This one puts him with Emma Stone again, and another great hook for a film, merging the fringes of American society and their deep distrusting sentiments to hopefully walk that dark funny line while looking amazingly strangely beautiful which Lanthimos does better than anyone. |
| 5 | Cover-Up |
| Laura Poitras is my favorite documentary filmmaker working today. This latest one, about journalist Seymour Hersh, continues her success streak, as early reviews/buzz are rock solid, and she highlights the importance of investigative journalism, what I consider to be the cornerstone of a truly great society. |
| 4 | It Was Just An Accident |
| If you know me by now, the Palme D’Or winner at Cannes is basically a lock for the top 5 anticipated list. Jafar Panahi’s masterpiece settles for third on mine. The real life Iranian renegade takes his No Bears approach to bluntly, brutally, powerfully rebuke authoritarian regimes like the one he’s excommunicated from today; it’s great seeing an amazing director reach dizzying heights again. |
| 3 | A House of Dynamite |
| Kathryn Bigelow was overdue for a big return. She partners with Netflix to hopefully deliver one, and based on the premise of a real time thriller about people dealing with a missile strike in the US, here’s hoping she can channel that expert tension she can craft as one of our great action thriller filmmakers. |
| 2 | Sentimental Value |
| This is Sinners’s current big challenger. Joachim Trier took The Worst Person in the World and made a masterpiece out of it, showcasing the modern woman. Early buzz is he’s done it again, and then some, reteaming with Renate Reinsve while adding Norwegian Stellan Skarsgard and American Elle Fanning to make a personal, beautiful affirming character study. No one can be Ingmar Bergman, but if this one’s as good as his first, we could be in a new age of amazing Norwegian filmmaking led by Joachim Trier. |
| 1 | No Other Choice |
| Even amongst all these amazing directors, the minute I heard Park Chan Wook had a new film coming out, that vaulted to the top of my list. He teams up with Squid Game’s Lee Byung-hun built around a wonderfully Wook premise of an unemployed man finding, um, innovative new ways to try to get a job. Decision to Leave left an insatiable appetite for the Korean filmmaker’s next one, and here’s hoping it’s as special as that one was. |