There are very few contemporary filmmakers better able to pick scabs, to generate discomfort for an entire running time, than Ari Aster.
Eddington, his latest, is an inverted Western set in late May of 2020—you remember spring of 2020, don’t you? The lunacy. The terror. The relentless need to move from one day to the next as if we were not actively sniffing the apocalypse. Well, Aster sure remembers it.
In a lot of ways, Eddington, New Mexico resembles just about any place in the spring of 2020. An awful lot of people wanted to ignore the pandemic because it hadn’t touched their town (yet, that they knew of). Others wanted to follow the rules as closely as was convenient, hoping that business as usual would find a way. Others spiraled, whether from terror or boredom or lack of structure, often turning to the internet, many to finally realize that police brutality was a real thing.
Aster captures it all, depicting the way the façade of normalcy had protected us from ourselves and each other, and reminds us that nothing healthy grows on stolen land.
Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) just wants things to go back to the way they were. He sees the disdain, fear, maybe even hate people like him—white, unmasked men—are facing. It is disconcerting—Aster’s hint that the underlying cause of all the harm, hatred, violence, and mayhem that came from the pandemic might have less to do with Covid 19 and more with white men feeling their true vulnerability.
Phoenix is characteristically flawless—flummoxed and human in a way that engenders more empathy than Joe likely deserves. Joe’s counterpoint, the smooth, opportunistic mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), doesn’t get off any easier, and Pascal’s slightly brittle performance is enlightening.
Aster populates Eddington with a collection of the exact types of people forged by the pandemic, though many are boiled down to defining lines of dialogue (“I am a privileged white male, and I’m here to listen! And I’ll do that as soon as I’m done with this speech.”) Still, with supporting performers as strong as Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Michael Ward, and Dierdre O’Connell, even the most faintly drawn character is fascinating.
Aster’s film blames humanity, not right or left, for the cultural rot we’re left with. That may be the most honest and aggravating choice he makes, but Eddington offers very little in the way of fabrication. The town may be fictional, but I think we all remember the place.
The idea of a changeling—a baby that’s not really yours, and who knows where your dear sweet little one really is?!—is so primal a fear that it’s existed in folktales for centuries. Ireland really picks this scab well in their horror movies, but they are not alone. It’s an idea that can’t help but unsettle. Here are our five favorite “that’s not your baby!” horror movies.
5. The Baby (1973)
Lord above, here’s a weird one.
Director Ted Post (Hang ’em High, Magnum Force) gets a little unseemly with this story of welfare fraud, Greek tragedy, fear of emasculation, and more. Freud would have a time with The Baby!
Mrs. Wadsworth (Ruth Roman) does not want nosey new social services wench Ann Gentry (Anjanette Comer) sniffing around. Why does she and her two perfectly normal, not at all criminal, grown daughters have to prove that their fully grown son/brother still thinks he’s a baby? The grown man in the crib and onesie upstairs.
If that’s not upsetting enough, Ann Gentry’s not all she’s cracked up to be, either. What was the deal with the Seventies?
4. The Hallow (2015)
Visual showman Corin Hardy has a bit of trickery up his sleeve. His directorial debut The Hallow, for all its superficiality and its recycled horror tropes, offers a tightly wound bit of terror in the ancient Irish wood.
Adam (Joseph Mawle) and Clare Hitchens (Bojana Novakovic) move, infant Finn in tow, from London to the isolated woods of Ireland so Adam can study a tract of forest the government hopes to sell off to privatization. But the woods don’t take kindly to the encroachment and the interloper Hitchens will pay dearly.
Hardy has a real knack for visual storytelling. His inky forests are both suffocating and isolating, with a darkness that seeps into every space. He’s created an atmosphere of malevolence, but the film does not rely on atmosphere alone.
Though all the cliché elements are there – a young couple relocates to an isolated wood to be warned off by angry locals with tales of boogeymen – the curve balls Hardy throws will keep you unnerved and guessing.
3. Hole in the Ground (2019)
Sara (Seána Kerslake), along with her bib overalls and young son Chris (James Quinn Markey), are finding it a little tough to settle into their new home in a very rural town. Chris misses his dad. Sara is having some life-at-the-crossroads anxiety.
Then a creepy neighbor, a massive sink hole (looks a bit like the sarlacc pit) and Ireland’s incredibly creepy folk music get inside her head and things really fall apart.
Writer/director Lee Cronin’s subtext never threatens his story, but instead informs the dread and guilt that pervade every scene. You look at your child one day and don’t recognize him or her. It’s a natural internal tension and a scab horror movies like to pick. Kids go through phases, your anxiety is reflected in their behavior, and suddenly you don’t really like what you see. You miss the cuter, littler version. Or in this case, you fear that inside your beautiful, sweet son lurks the same abusive monster as his father.
2. Border (2018)
Sometimes knowing yourself means embracing the beast within. Sometimes it means making peace with the beast without. For Tina—well, let’s just say Tina’s got a lot going on right now.
Border director/co-writer Ali Abbasi has more in mind than your typical Ugly Duckling tale, though. He mines John Ajvide Lindqvist’s (Let the Right One In) short story of outsider love and Nordic folklore for ideas of radicalization, empowerment, gender fluidity and feminine rage.
It would hardly feel like a horror movie at all were it not for that whole, horrifying baby thing.
The result is a film quite unlike anything else, one offering layer upon provocative, messy layer and Abbasi feels no compulsion to tidy up. Instead, he leaves you with a lot to think through thanks to one unyieldingly original film.
1. Lamb (2021)
Among the many remarkable elements buoying the horror fable Lamb is filmmaker ValdimarJóhannsson’s ability to tell a complete and riveting tale without a single word of exposition.
Not one. So, pay attention.
Rather than devoting dialog to explaining to us what it is we are seeing, Jóhannsson relies on impressive visual storytelling instincts, answering questions as they come up with a gravesite, a crib coming out of storage, a glance, a bleat.
His cast of three – well, four, I guess — sells the fairy tale. A childless couple working a sheep farm in Iceland find an unusual newborn lamb and take her in as their own child. As is always the way in old school fables, though, there is much magical happiness but a dire recompense soon to come.
The problem with crafting a feature length film from a short story is that, often, the story’s too short. Filmmakers need to pad, and that can be tough because if the story needed more, likely the writer—certainly a writer as strong as Joe Hill—would have realized that.
But it can be done. Hill’s The Black Phone—an incredibly creepy short—benefitted from a number of changes as it leapt from page to screen. Director Scott Dickerson, who co-wrote the screenplay with regular collaborator C. Robert Cargill, added complexity and a strong B-story to enrich Hill’s original tale.
In adapting Hill’s short Abraham’s Boys, filmmaker Natasha Kermani (Lucky) keeps the core ideas intact but alters everything in the orbit of our three main characters: Dr. Abraham Van Helsing (Titus Welliver, solid), his oldest son Max (Brady Hepner), and young Rudy (Judah Mackey). The family lives, along with delicate mother Mina (Jocelin Donahue, Last Stop in Yuma County), in the as-yet isolated California desert.
Mina is but a distant memory in Hill’s writing, so her presence allows the film to round out the family dynamic. Kermani also adds railroad builders, which deepens the pool of potential victims, but also hints at Van Helsing’s paranoia when he and his family are not isolated from the rest of the world.
Why so paranoid? Like the short story, the film raises suspicions concerning Abraham’s reasoning and behavior.
Kermani’s film delivers on horror, bloody and emotional, in a way the short does not. Dreamy sequences bring depth to the inner conflict haunting Max, the film’s main focus. And none of Kermani’s additions subtract from the prickly family dynamic that was the soul of Hill’s tale.
Hepner, who had a small part in The Black Phone, struggles to carry Abraham’s Boys. It’s his arc that defines the story, but the performance is little more than a stiff spine and a pout.
The balance of the cast fares better, but bringing Mina into the story complicates what, in Hill’s tale, was a very simple premise. Her talk of having seen Dracula, of having his voice in her head, muddies the plot in ways Kermani never clarifies. The mixed message weakens the climax a bit, but thanks to the slow-boil atmosphere and Welliver’s brooding turn, all is not lost.
From the moment Push holds on the “for sale” sign in front of an isolated Michigan mansion, co-writers/co-directors David Charbonier and Justin Douglas Powell proclaim their inspirations. The Craven Road property, for sale by Hitch & Wan Real Estate, is probably not the house you want.
Will the mansion be haunted outright, a la James Wan’s The Conjuring? Or will its ghosts be all in realtor Natalie’s (Alicia Sanz) mind, like Hitchcock’s Rebecca? Or is there something more corporeal to fear, a la Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left?
The filmmakers have set a high bar, and though their film doesn’t entirely clear it, Push does deliver an often effective little thriller.
The year is 1993 and Natalie, a very pregnant, recently widowed Mexican transplant peddling real estate in Michigan, finds herself trapped in the mansion she’s trying to sell. The sprawling, remote property is on the market because of the murder of its previous owners. Maybe that’s why only one guy (Raúl Castillo) shows up for the open house.
Cinematographer Daniel Katz’s floating camera is like a ghost warning you to pay attention. Both filmmakers and both leads amplify the atmospheric tension. One character is the picture of vulnerability, the other, a silent and brutal menace.
Push offers next to nothing in terms of motivation or location backstory. We know enough about Natalie to understand her arc, but the situation and how it came to be is forever a mystery. That can work—people step into unexplained horrors every day. That moment when you realize you’ve willingly put yourself in a perilous situation can deliver revelatory thrills.
Both Sanz and Castillo are up to that challenge, but the script sometimes is not. The conveniences and cliches pile up, and suspension of disbelief is strained to breaking.
It’s interesting to circle back to that for sale sign because in choosing not to clearly commit to a path—psychological, supernatural, or brutal—Push limits its impact.
James Gunn’s brand of humor is so sincere—never snarky, never brooding and mysterious—that he seemed a good fit for Superman, the most sincere of all the superheroes. Still, we were skeptical. Can something as wholesome as Superman be relevant in a time more rife with corruption and swampy with cynicism than any in modern history? And he has a dog?!
Yes, it turns out Superman (David Corenswet) and Gunn’s brand of sincerity is exactly what we need in the face of all this ugliness. And honest to God, by Act 3, we even loved Crypto the dog.
Gunn ‘s script wisely skips the origin story, quickly catching us up via onscreen text and dropping us in the snow with a superhero already battling his toughest opponent. That foe may look like a supervillain, but really Superman’s enemy is every human being’s enemy: greed.
Carving out yet another fine performance in a career littered with them, Nicholas Hoult delivers a searing, self-aware turn as Lex Luthor, the billionaire tech blowhard and would-be king. Though the character is clearly patterned after some real-life supervillainy, Hoult’s performance is all the more unnerving for its believability. And even when Gunn saddles him with some overwritten speeches, Hoult’s talent elevates the moment beyond cartoon theatrics.
Corenswet is a delightfully earnest Big Blue, offset nicely by a more cynical and wonderfully physical Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and a trio of metahuman helpers, the Justice Gang: Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl (Cleveland’s own Isabela Merced), and Mr. Terrific (a scene stealing Edi Gathegi and his statement-making jacket).
Act 1 takes a little while to find its groove, but the slow start is easy to forget once the story elements begin to gel. The social commentary is in your face, pointed and matter-of-fact relatable, but doesn’t sink to preachiness or finger wagging. And while it is consistently funny, the film never makes humor as much of a focus as Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy series, opting instead for smaller, more organic asides.
Of course, there’s an added bonus for those of us here in Ohio, as Cleveland makes a pretty spectacular Metropolis, even when it’s taking a beating. Filming specifically for IMAX, Gunn and cinematographer Henry Braham make the upgrade a worthy and welcome piece of the immersive world-building.
The biggest weakness here – other than kryptonite – is Gunn’s comfort with some unnatural dialog and overly detailed speeches of exposition. And ironically, it’s the level of entertainment that surrounds these moments that causes them to land as unnecessary and curious.
But more often than not, Gunn’s storytelling choices pay off. We know the character pretty well by now, but this Superman/Clark Kent is unlike any we’ve seen before. Gunn and Corenswet make him more vulnerable and more human than ever, sometimes doubting himself but never doubting his mission to do good.
Remember the hero’s motto of “truth, justice and the American way?” Superman does. And even though those words are never spoken, the film finds a cinematic joy in reminding us how those ideals can be twisted until they’re barely recognizable.
Lord knows humanity needs a win right now. Thanks to a man and his dog, we get one.
It is! It most definitely is time to celebrate how great the first half of 2025 has been for horror. Indeed, easily the best film of the year so far (and a tough contender for the balance of the year) is a vampire movie! Here are our favorite horror films of the first half of 2025.
10. Dead Mail
Filmmakers Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy’s thriller Dead Mail builds on a wildly unrealistic concept: smalltown post offices with super-secure back rooms where pains are taken and spies may be accessed to solve mysteries behind lost mail. And yet, their analog approach to this period piece gives it a true crime feel you never fully shake.
The bulk of the film is carried on John Fleck’s shoulders. As Trent, the seemingly harmless organ enthusiast who has a man trapped in his basement, Fleck’s delivers magnificent work. There’s a beautiful loneliness in his performance that makes the villainous Trent irredeemably sympathetic.
Filmmaker and cast investment pays off. Dead Mail is clever, intriguing and wholly satisfying little thriller.
9. Final Destination: Bloodlines
Final Destination: Bloodlines is the best since James Wong’s clever 2000 original, if not the best in the whole franchise. And the presence of genre beloved Tony Todd in his final role seals the emotional deal.
The Rube Goldberg of Death franchise boasts many clever, nasty kills and the sixth episode does not let us down. Smart, nutty and goretastic with some of the most impressive comic-beat editing of the year, the bloody mayhem in this film is giddy with its power.
Plus we all get to spend a few more minutes with Tony Todd.
8. Hood Witch
Co-writer/director Saïd Belktibia examines the muddy difference between a religion’s acceptable magic and harmful witchcraft. However similar the practice, the differentiator seems to be based primarily on whether a woman benefits.
Though Hood Witch is far more a drama/thriller than an outright horror film, it does follow a longstanding genre tradition of using witchcraft to point out religions’ hypocrisy and misogyny. But the filmmaker goes further, complicating characters by implicating capitalism as being equally dangerous—particularly to the desperate and easily manipulated—as religion.
Hood Witch is a tough watch, as misogyny and apathy play out in the film the same way they play out every miserable day, infecting each generation like a poison.
7. Companion
It’s not to say that writer/director Drew Hancock is saying anything new, exactly. Most of the ideas are borrowed, and even the look of Companion feels cribbed from more insightfully stylized films. But the way he puts these ideas and images into play and keeps them playing guarantees a mischievously, wickedly good time.
Lars and the Real Girl meets Revenge meets AI meets maybe twenty other movies, but damn if Hancock and this sharp ensemble doesn’t make it work. Turns out it’s kind of fun to be on the side of AI for a change.
6.Freaky Tales
Look, I’m not saying I didn’t expect someone to make a Sleepy-Floyd-as-a-ninja-assassin horror comedy. I am saying I didn’t expect it to be Boden and Fleck.
Eric “Sleepy” Floyd played thirteen years in the NBA, making the All Star team in 1987 as a member of the Golden State Warriors. Freaky Tales makes him the heroic centerpiece of a wild anthology that loves the late 80s, Oakland, and Nazis dying some horrible deaths.
Let’s party!
Buried under all this blood and camp, the film displays a genuine love of time, place and genre that you cannot ignore. These Freaky Tales are truly off the leash, usually in the best possible way.
5. Bring Her Back
Filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou drew attention in 2022 for their wildly popular feature debut, Talk to Me. Before releasing the sequel, due out this August, the pair changes the game up with a different, but at least equally disturbing, look at grief.
It’s a slow burn, a movie that communicates dread brilliantly with its cinematography and pacing. But when Bring Her Back hits the gas, dude! Nastiness not for the squeamish! Especially if you have a thing about teeth, be warned. But the body horror always serves the narrative, deepening your sympathies even as it has you hiding your eyes.
Australia has a great habit of sending unsettling horror our way. The latest package from Down Under doesn’t disappoint.
4. The Monkey
Why is it that so many kids’ toys are creepy? Not that you should call The Monkey a toy. You should not, ever. Because this windup organ grinder monkey, with its red eyes and horrifyingly realistic teeth, is more of a furry, murder happy nightmare.
The film itself is a match made in horror heaven. Osgood Perkins (Longlegs, Gretel & Hansel, The Blackcoat’s Daughter) adapts and directs the short story by Stephen King about sibling rivalry and the unpredictability of death.
Perkins surrounds deliberately low energy leads with bizarre, colorful characters—even more colorful when they catch fire, explode, are disemboweled, etcetera. The film is laced with wonderful bursts of Final Destination-like bloodletting, as the Monkey’s executions are carried out via Rube Goldberg chain reactions that quickly become fun to anticipate.
Yes, fun. And funny.
3. Invader
Lean, mean and affecting, Mickey Keating’s take on the home invasion film wastes no time. In a wordless—though not soundless—opening, the filmmaker introduces an unhinged presence.
Immediately Keating sets our eyes and ears against us. His soundtrack frequently blares death metal, a tactic that emphasizes a chaotic, menacing mood the film never shakes. Using primarily handheld cameras from the unnerving opening throughout the entire film, the filmmaker maintains an anarchic energy, a sense of the characters’ frenzy and the endless possibility of violence.
Joe Swanberg, with limited screentime and even more limited dialog, crafts a terrifying image of havoc. His presence is perversely menacing, an explosion of rage and horror. Invader delivers a spare, nasty, memorable piece of horror in just over an hour. It will stick with you a while longer.
2.The Ugly Stepsister
Writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt infuses her feature debut with an impossible-to-ignore blast of sharp wit, subdued rage, and grotesque bodily horrors.
The Ugly Stepsister(Den stygge stesøsteren) is the latest new angle to a classic tale, but don’t expect it follow the trend of humanizing misunderstood villains. Blichfeldt makes sure there are plenty of bad guys and girls throughout this Norwegian Cinderella story, punctuated by grisly violence surprisingly close to what’s in the 17th Century French version of the fairy tale penned by Charles Perrault.
It is fierce, funny, gross and subversively defiant. But is one feature film enough to immediately put Blichfeldt on the watch list of cinema’s feminist hell raisers?
Yes. The shoe fits.
1. Sinners
Ryan Coogler reteams with longtime creative partner Michael B. Jordan to sing a song of a 1932 Mississippi juke joint. The Smoke Stack twins (Jordan) are back from Chicago, a truckload of ill-gotten liquor and a satchel full of cash along with them. They intend to open a club “for us, by us” and can hardly believe their eyes when three hillbillies come calling.
Jack O’Connell (an amazing actor in everything he’s done since Eden Lake) has a brogue and a banjo. He and his two friends would love to come on in, sing, dance, and spend some money, if only Smoke would invite them.
It’s scary. It’s sexy. The action slaps. It’s funny when it needs to be, sad just as often. It looks and sounds incredible. And there’s a cameo from Buddy F. Guy, in case you needed a little authenticity. When Ryan Coogler writes and directs a vampire movie, he gives you reason to believe there is yet new life for the old monster.
Every great creature feature from King Kong to Godzilla to Jaws to Jurassic Park and on and on understands one basic principle. The monster is not the problem. Human greed is the problem. Some monster movies are just better than others at telling that story.
It’s not a new notion to director Gareth Edwards, who riffed on it in Monsters (2010), Godzilla (2014), and The Creator (2023). For Jurassic World: Rebirth, he teams with writer David Koepp, who adapted Michael Crichton’s novel for Spielberg’s 1993 original. Given the sheer volume of callbacks in Rebirth, I’d say Koepp is pretty pleased with how that first one turned out.
Scarlett Johansson is an extraction specialist hired by Big Pharma in white linen, Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) to gather DNA samples from three living dinosaurs: the biggest on the sea, land, and air. Mahershala Ali is the ship’s captain who’ll get crew and scientist Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) to the island no one is allowed to visit, they’ll gather some samples and get home. Zip in, zip out.
But wait! Naked alpha zombies!
Just kidding. But seriously, why can’t someone write a proper film for Mahershala Ali and Scarlett Johanssen? Because these are talented individuals (hell, one of them has two Oscars), and they are better than this retread.
To be fair, Edwards crafts some eyepopping set pieces early in the film as two different boats—Ali’s, and that of the cloying B-story family—run afoul of the swimming beasties. These action sequences set you up for thrills, but once both A and B story hit dry land, Gareth is more interested in recycled ideas and images, not just from this franchise but from the Alien series as well. Just get a look at the monster they kept hidden away on that island. I think I know what they were cross breeding that with.
The B-story about a shipwrecked family (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono, and Audrina Miranda) is cliché straight from the family friendly action movie playbook, complete with a comically adorable (and tonally discordant) baby dinosaur stowing away in the littlest daughter’s backpack.
The presence of the family softens the best members of the elite team and amplifies the villainy in the worst. Of course it does because Jurassic World: Rebirth is nothing if not obvious. It obviously knows the story it’s supposed to tell, it just doesn’t tell it especially well.
If the heat doesn’t get under your skin, maybe this will: 2025 is half over! What? I guess we should get those Christmas decorations down. But it has been quite a year already in terms of movies. From Ryan Coogler’s masterpiece to a grown up spy movie, incredible indie horror to revelatory documentary, awkward buddy comedies to beautiful dramas, the year already has it all. So much, in fact, that we couldn’t stop at 10!
11. Eephus
It’s mid-October in a small New Hampshire town, and rec league teams are assembling to wrap up the season at Soldiers Field. Some bellies are a bit larger, some fastballs are a bit slower, but the cracks are as wise as ever and the love of the game has never wavered. And though what bleachers there are will be nearly empty, Franny (Cliff Blake) will be keeping the scorebook as usual, and there may even be fireworks after the final out.
Because next year, local development will bulldoze the field, and these players may have to accept a future without that diamond life.
Director/co-writer (and veteran cinematographer) Carson Lund finds the emotional pull that exists in the space between an enduring game and the souls forced to let it move on without them. The ensemble cast (including legendary MLB free spirt Bill “Spaceman” Lee on hand to perfectly illustrate the titular type of pitch) is authentic and eccentric in equal measure, and anyone who has ever spent time around the ballfield will recognize these people, and the simpler way of life that may also be slipping away.
10. My Dead Friend Zoe
Filmmaker Kyle Hausmann-Stokes impresses with his feature debut, My Dead Friend Zoe. Based on his 2022 short Merit x Zoe, the film follows Army veteran Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green, Star Trek: Discovery) as she tries to overcome some post-Afghanistan trauma.
While the title and premise may sound a tad flippant, My Dead Friend Zoe turns out to be a rewarding and earnest drama. Natalie Morales delivers a boldly funny and equally vulnerable turn, and love interest Alex (Utkarsh Ambudkar) injects the film with charming, self-deprecating humor. But the levity tends to enrich the film’s truly human quality rather than distract from its underlying tensions.
9. Mickey 17
People mainly familiar with filmmaker Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar-sweeping masterpiece Parasite may not know of his remarkable skill with a SciFi creature feature. Mickey 17, then, will be an excellent primer.
Robert Pattinson is the titular Mickey. Well, he’s a bunch of Mickeys, all 17 of them. He’s a hilarious, self-deprecating charmer, a man who believes he somehow deserves his fate. Fates. Through him the filmmaker employs absurd, sometimes even slapstick humor to satirize our own current fate. Beautifully (and characteristically), all of this is in favor of the reminder that our humanity requires us to be humane.
Weaving sensibilities and ideas present in Snowpiercer,Okja, The Host as well as any number of clone movies, Mickey 17 could feel borrowed. It doesn’t. Like the best science fiction, it feels close enough to reality to be a bit nightmarish.
8. Surviving Ohio State
A searing takedown of abuse, power and heartbreaking betrayal, HBO’s Surviving Ohio State deconstructs the decades of alleged abuse of athletes by Ohio State University physician Richard Strauss. Based on the reporting of Sports Illustrated writer Jon Wertheim and directed with a patient hand by Eva Orner, the film features first-person interviews with victims that reveal the timeline of a calculating predator and shatter a pervasive myth.
Amid a backdrop of social media posts that doubt how big, strong athletes could become easy prey, the men detail just how and why they felt powerless to stop the atrocities. The only thing more heartbreaking is how the coaches they looked up to (yes, including Congressman Jim Jordan) and the university they still love refused to support them once the whispers became screams and the accusations grew too big to ignore.
The one or two occasions where the film tries to connect dots for us are the exceptions in a measured and precise exposé. Surviving Ohio State is no joy to watch, but it’s too important to ignore.
7.Sacramento
Michael Anganaro’s instincts are sharp in Sacramento, only his second feature as writer/director after decades of acting gigs. He co-stars wth Michael Cera as two men with differing challenges facing adult life who take a weird road trip down memory lane. It’s a witty combination of finely-drawn characters, consistently boasting a dry self-awareness that earns the LOLs.
Sacramento haș plenty of fun with arrested development – Cera’s desperate phone calls to one of his old buddies are awkwardly hilarious. But the film’s heart comes from those moments when boys (and girls, too) start accepting the responsibilities of adulthood. It’s far from a new story, but these characters make it one worth revisiting.
6. Friendship
Writer/director Andrew DeYoung harnesses the essence of Tim Robinson’s socially awkward comedic stylings, attached it to Paul Rudd’s impeccable comic delivery, and crafted the most profoundly uncomfortable and endlessly watchable bromance in film.
Friendship is a bizarro-world I Love You, Man, and it is so much more than what that tantalizing trailer promises. Unpredictable, absurd, cringy, perfectly cast and that coat! How priceless is that coat?!
It’s maybe the funniest film of 2025.
5. Invader
Lean, mean and affecting, Mickey Keating’s take on the home invasion film wastes no time. In a wordless—though not soundless—opening, the filmmaker introduces an unhinged presence.
Immediately Keating sets our eyes and ears against us. His soundtrack frequently blares death metal, a tactic that emphasizes a chaotic, menacing mood the film never shakes. Using primarily handheld cameras from the unnerving opening throughout the entire film, the filmmaker maintains an anarchic energy, a sense of the characters’ frenzy and the endless possibility of violence.
Joe Swanberg, with limited screentime and even more limited dialog, crafts a terrifying image of havoc. His presence is perversely menacing, an explosion of rage and horror. Invader delivers a spare, nasty, memorable piece of horror in just over an hour. It will stick with you a while longer.
4. Black Bag
What is more diabolical: enacting a global plan for widespread destruction, or pursuing a selfish agenda in your relationship, ready to twist the knife precisely where it hurts your partner the most?
Black Bag has a satchel full of fun weighing the two options, as director Steven Soderbergh and a crackling ensemble contrast the power plays in both love connections and spy games.
Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett (already sounds good, right?) are downright delicious as Londoners George Woodhouse and Kathryn St. Jean, master spies and devoted spouses. He’s emotionless and tidy, an expert cook, and a dogged sleuth with a hatred of dishonesty. She’s cool, calculating and seductive, with a wry sense of humor, a prescription for anxiety meds and a sudden cloud of suspicion around her.
Throw in a fine meal beforehand, and you’ve got a damn fine date night that just might put you in a pretty friendly mood when you get home.
3. The Ugly Stepsister
Writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt infuses her feature debut with an impossible-to-ignore blast of sharp wit, subdued rage, and grotesque bodily horrors.
The Ugly Stepsister(Den stygge stesøsteren) is the latest new angle to a classic tale, but don’t expect it follow the trend of humanizing misunderstood villains. Blichfeldt makes sure there are plenty of bad guys and girls throughout this Norwegian Cinderella story, punctuated by grisly violence surprisingly close to what’s in the 17th Century French version of the fairy tale penned by Charles Perrault.
It is fierce, funny, gross and subversively defiant. But is one feature film enough to immediately put Blichfeldt on the watch list of cinema’s feminist hell raisers?
Yes. The shoe fits.
2. Pee-wee as Himself
If there’s one thing Matt Wolf’s 2-part documentary Pee-wee as Himself does, it reminds you what a cultural phenomenon Pee-wee Herman was in the 80s. Movies to TV to MTV to toys to talk shows, he was everywhere and he was beloved by children, college kids, and adults alike.
Charmingly acerbic but often candid, Paul Reubens is openly reluctant to hand over control of his image after so many years of calculating every detail of his public life. Part of what makes the film so electric is how early and often the two butt heads over which of them ought to be in control of the documentary. This conflict itself paints a portrait of the artist more authentic than any amount of historical data ever could.
1. Sinners
Ryan Coogler reteams with longtime creative partner Michael B. Jordan to sing a song of a 1932 Mississippi juke joint. The Smoke Stack twins (Jordan) are back from Chicago, a truckload of ill-gotten liquor and a satchel full of cash along with them. They intend to open a club “for us, by us” and can hardly believe their eyes when three hillbillies come calling.
Jack O’Connell (an amazing actor in everything he’s done since Eden Lake) has a brogue and a banjo. He and his two friends would love to come on in, sing, dance, and spend some money, if only Smoke would invite them.
It’s scary. It’s sexy. The action slaps. It’s funny when it needs to be, sad just as often. It looks and sounds incredible. And there’s a cameo from Buddy F. Guy, in case you needed a little authenticity. When Ryan Coogler writes and directs a vampire movie, he gives you reason to believe there is yet new life for the old monster.
