The FortyElephants may have been an all-female London crime syndicate in 1880s London, but they weren’t so much an underworld criminal gang as a fleet-fingered shopliftingoperation, which sounds a lot less malicious than, say, a female Dead Rabbits.
I haven’t yet sunk into Steven Knight’s AThousandBlows (Hulu) but being a scruffy 19th Century thing it’s obviously not related to the cinematic visions of the late Francois Truffaut and his 66-year-old debut film, The400Blows, which excited the imaginations of the young Harvey and Bob Weinstein. (I doubt they were the only young lads with thoughts of an oral-sex marathon.) Not that this has anything to do with the Forty Elephants…wait, I’ve lost the thread.
Here once again is HE’s best spitball roster of 2025’s strongest, most distinctive films…40 in all.
This is not about the likelihood of big box-office but about films that people may feel riveted, disturbed, challenged, gobsmacked or turned on by, or might even feel compelled to nominate for awards.
HE readers went to sleep on my previous list of 32 or thereabouts, so I’m giving it another shot.
If I’ve left any seemingly important films out, please advise.
3.10, 9 am update: Having just added Richard Linklater’s NouvelleVague and Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza‘s Warfare (A24, 4.25), yesterday’s list of 38 titles is now 40.
Please consider the 40 and select ten films that you suspect will most likely emerge as the year’s hottest (i.e., well-reviewed, award-calibre, most talked about).
And just for fun, identify the film that seems (emphasis on the “s” word) most likely to win the Best Picture Oscar in early ’26.
1. Kathryn Bigelow‘s Untitled White House Thriller (Netflix), about coping with an incoming missile. Written by NoahOppenheim, pic has been in post since last December. Willa Fitzgerald, Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Greta Lee, Tracy Letts, Moses Ingram, Anthony Ramos, Brian Tee, Jonah Hauer-King, Kyle Allen, Jason Clarke.
2. Noah Baumbach‘s Jay Kelly (Netflix), a coming-of-age comedy-drama, directed and co-written by Baumbach with Emily Mortimer. Costarring George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Riley Keough, Billy Crudup, Jim Broadbent, Isla Fisher, Greta Gerwig, Eve Hewson, Stacy Keach, Mortimer, Charlie Rowe, Patrick Wilson, Lars Eidinger.
3. David Mackenzie‘s Fuze, a British heist film that sounds extra-good. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James, Sam Worthington, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Saffron Hocking, Elham Ehsas, Honor Swinton Byrne.
4. Joachim Trier‘s Sentimental Value, a comedy-drama directed by Joachim Trier, who co-wrote the screenplay with Eskil Vogt. Costarring RenateReinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Stellan Skarsgård, ElleFanning, Cory Michael Smith.
5. John Carney‘s Power Ballad (Lionsgate), about a conflict between a rock star and a wedding singer. Paul Rudd, Nick Jonas, Jack Reynor, Havana Rose Liu, Sophie Vavasseur.
6. Darren Aronofsky‘s Caught Stealing (Sony, 8.29). “Burned-out ex-baseball player Hank Thompson (Austin Butler), forced to navigate a treacherous underworld he never imagined”…too wordy. Costarring Zoë Kravitz, Regina King, Matt Smith, Liev Schreiber, Will Brill, Bad Bunny, Griffin Dunne, Vincent D’Onofrio.
7. Scott Cooper‘s Deliver Me from Nowhere (20th Century, sometime in the fall). Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in another boomer nostalgia pic, focusing on the recording of Nebraska (’82). Costarring Stephen Graham, Odessa Young, Paul Walter Hauser, Gaby Hoffmann, Johnny Cannizzaro, Harrison Gilbertson, Marc Maron.
8. Edward Berger‘s The Ballad of a Small Player (Netflix). Synopsis: When his past and debts start to catch up, a high-stakes gambler laying low in Macau encounters a kindred spirit who might hold the key to his salvation,” blah blah. Colin Farrell, Tilda Swinton, Fala Chen
10. Joseph Kosinski‘s F1 (Warner Bros., 6.27). Brad Pitt, Damson Idris (black dudes can’t die!), Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies, Javier Bardem, Kim Bodnia, Shea Whigham.
11. Antoine Fuqua‘s Michael (Universal. 10.3.25). Reportedly sanitized life of the late Michael Jackson. Jaafar Jackson, Juliano Krue Valdi, Colman Domingo, Nia Long, Miles Teller, Laura Harrier.
12. Paul Thomas Anderson‘s One Battle After Another (Warner Bros., 8.25). Leonardo DiCaprio, Regina Hall, Sean Penn, Alana Haim, Teyana Taylor, Wood Harris, Benicio del Toro.
13. Luca Guadagnino‘s After The Hunt (Amazon MGM, 10.10.25). An academic setting obviously indicates some kind of anti-wokester, anti-Zoomer drama…right? Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloë Sevigny.
14. Josh Safdie‘s Marty Supreme (A24, 12.25) — a ‘50s period drama about a ping-pong champ. Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tyler the Creator, Odessa A’zion, Penn Jillette, Kevin O’Leary, Abel Ferrara, Fran Drescher, Sandra Bernhard.
15. Spike Lee‘s Highest 2 Lowest (remake of Akira Kurosawa‘s High and Low, a kidnapping-ransom drama that I’ve never liked). (No date, A24 / Apple TV+)Denzel Washington, Ilfenesh Hadera, Jeffrey Wright, Ice Spice, ASAP Rocky.
16. Ari Aster‘s Eddington (A24). A “contemporary western with a darkly comedic attitude.” Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Luke Grimes, Deirdre O’Connell, Micheal Ward, Clifton Collins Jr.
17. Guillermo del Toro‘s Frankenstein (Netflix, November)….again? Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz, Felix Kammerer, Lars Mikkelsen.
18. I’m not including James Cameron‘s Avatar: Fire and Ash (20th Century, 12.19) as it’s just another episode in the Avatar series, and is solely about selling tickets.
19. Will Nia DaCosta‘s Hedda, a “reimagining” of Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 stage play, be shot as a Victorian period drama or as a contemporary thing? Tessa Thompson, Imogen Poots, Tom Bateman, Nina Hoss, Nicholas Pinnock, Finbar Lynch.
20. Kenneth Branagh‘s The Last Disturbance of Madeline Hynde…as an ardent non-fan of Branagh’s Belfast, I feel very concerned about any film that he’s directed and written. Jodie Comer, Patricia Arquette, Michael Sheen, Tom Bateman, Vicky McClure, Michael Balogun.
21. Celine Song‘s Materialists (A24, no date). “A Manhattan matchmaker’s lucrative business is complicated when she falls into a toxic love triangle that threatens her clients,” blah blah. Beware!!! Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Zoe Winters, Dasha Nekrasova, Louisa Jacobson.
22. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (Sony, 5.9) appears to be a serving of guaranteed agony. The words “American romantic fantasy” are death to me. Directed by Kogonada from a screenplay by Seth Reiss. Starring Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell, w/ Lily Rabe, Jodie Turner-Smith, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Billy Magnussen, Sarah Gadon.
23. Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Bugonia (Focus Features, 11.7)….aaaggghhh! “Two conspiracy-obsessed young men kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company (Emma Stone), convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying the earth. Costarring Jesse Plemons, Alicia Silverstone.
24. Paul Greengrass‘s The Lost Bus (Apple TV+). “A bus driver has to navigate a bus carrying children and their teacher to safety through the 2018 Camp Fire, which became the deadliest fire in California history,” etc. Matthew McConaughey, America Ferrera, Yul Vazquez, Ashlie Atkinson, Spencer Watson, Danny McCarthy.
25. Wes Anderson‘s The Phoenician Scheme (Focus Features, 5.30). “Dark tale of espionage following a strained father-daughter relationship within a family business beset by morally gray choices”…that’s a mouthful!. Benicio del Toro, Michael Cera, Bill Murray, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Benedict Cumberbatch, Scarlett Johansson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Rupert Friend, Willem Dafoe, Bryan Cranston.
26. Bong Joon-ho‘s Mickey 17 (Warner Bros., 3.7.25). HE has long had a problem with Bong Joon-ho, and we’ve all heard about the prolonged release-date delays — originally slated for 3.29.24. Critics will cream over it, no matter how problematic it may or may not be. 3.10 update: It stinks!
27. John M. Chu‘s Wicked: For Good (Universal, 11.21.25). Same crew as before — Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Marissa Bode, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum, etc.
28. Andre Gaines‘ The Dutchman (no distrib — debuting at SXSW on 3.8). Sexual intrigue between harried black businessman (Andre Holland) and whitey-white chick (Kara Mara). Co-adapted by Gaines and Qasim Basir, based on same-titled 1964 play by Amiri Baraka.
29. Mimi Cave‘s Holland (no distrib — opened at SXSW on 3.9) Small town Michigan woman (Nicole Kidman) suspects husband (Matthew Macfadyen) may be living a double life. Costarring Gael García Bernal, Jude Hill, Rachel Sennott.
30. Julian Schnabel‘s In The Hand of Dante. Synopsis of Nick Tosches‘ same-titled 2002 book: “An interweaving of two separate stories, one set in the 14th century in Italy and Sicily and featuring Dante Alighieri, and another set in the autumn of 2001 and featuring a fictionalized version of Tosches as the protagonist. The historical and modern stories alternate as Dante tries to finish writing his magnum opus and goes on a journey for mystical knowledge in Sicily.” Oscar Isaac as Nick Tosches / Dante Alighieri, w/ Jason Momoa, Gerard Butler, Gal Gadot, Sabrina Impacciatore, Franco Nero, Martin Scorsese.
32. Jonah Hill‘s Outcome (Apple TV+). Black comic satire about social-media harpooning of big movie star (Keanu Reeves). Costarring Jonah Hill, Cameron Diaz, Matt Bomer, Susan Lucci, David Spade, Laverne Cox.
33. Steven Soderbergh‘s Black Bag (Focus Features, 3.14). London-shot cloak and dagger with dry Soderbergh attitude….right?
34. Michel Franco‘s Dreams. Rich Anerican socialite Jennifer (Jessica Chastain) blows off, fucks over her younger Mexican ballet dancer boyfriend (Isaac Hernández)
35. Richard Linklater‘s Blue Moon (Sony Classics, May ’25) — The last few months in the life of composer Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke). Depression, alcoholism, closeted sexuality. Andrew Scott, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale. Opened in Berlin on 2.18.
36. Richard Linklater’s NouvelleVague, a period drama about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (‘60). Linklater will no doubt attempt to replicate the mood and spirit of Godard’s playful zeitgeist–shifter, a relationship piece about a small-time, Humphrey Bogart-emulating felon (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and his American-born, pixie-cut girlfriend (Jean Seberg). Linklater’s costars include Zooey Deutch, Guillaume Marbeck, Aubry Dullin.
37. Chloe Zhao‘s Hamnet (Focus Features, no date) — Fictional tale about Mr. and Mrs. William Shakespeare coping with the death of their son. Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Joe Alwyn, Emily Watson.
38. Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s The Bride! (Warner Bros., 9.26). Feminist take on James Whale‘s The Bride of Frankenstein. All men are scheming, wounding pigs! Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Penélope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard, Annette Bening.
39. Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s Warfare (A24, 4.11). Based on Mendoza’s Navy SEAL experience during the Iraq War in 2006 and shot in real time. Only 94 minutes!
40. Ethan Coen‘s Honey Don’t (Focus Features, May ’25). Another lesbian caper flick a la Drive Away Dolls. Set in Bakersfield, pic focuses on a private investigator (Margaret Qualley), a cult leader (Chris Evans), and a “mystery woman” (Aubrey Plaza).
Beyond a certain age ass-cheeks tend to jiggle when jarred, shaken or slapped. I’m not sure when the jiggle propensity kicks in, but you’ll never see it among young kids or teenagers (unless they’re obese) or 20somethings who’ve kept themselves in shape. It generally tends to manifest in our mid to late 30s or certainly by our 40s.
I myself haven’t had rock-hard buns since my late teens or early 20s…something like that.
I’m talking jiggle cheeks because there’s a scene in Mickey 17 in which a nude Robert Pattinson falls off a platform of some kind, and when he hits the floor his ass briefly jiggles like a sonuvabitch. My immediate reaction was “oh, that’s unfortunate” because it makes RPatz look like a somewhat older dude, which he is, of course, being 38. (He’ll be 39 in May.) It wasn’t so long ago when RPatz was a trim hunk whose ass rarely if ever wiggled, jiggled or hubba-hubba’ed. Ahh, the old Twilight days.
I don’t know for a fact that Pattinson was unhappy with the afore-mentioned jiggle when he first saw Mickey 17, but I’ll bet he probably was. Actors are vain; they like to look good from all angles. I can tell you for sure that if I had been the director of Mickey 17, I would have given RPatz’s ass a nice CG smooth-over in post-production. I would have protected the poor guy from the snickers and carpings of people like myself.
Why didn’t Bong Joon-ho do the right thing? Probably because he personally related to the jiggling; he saw nothing wrong or compromising or distasteful about it. Primarily because Bong is a large, fleshy kind of dude who has that well-fed-and-then-some look. He’s not yet “fat” but is well on the way to Orson Welles-hood. If he’d been a tad more considerate Bong would’ve put himself into RPatz’s head or male ego and decided to spare him the embarassment. Alas, he couldn’t be bothered.
Warner Bros. will release Maggie Gyllenhaal’s TheBride (which reportedly contains “big dance numbers”) on 9.26.25. Here’s the Wikisynopsis:
Jessie Buckley’s “bride” naturally has to exact revenge upon her malevolent murderer…totally necessary, dramatically required. But my blood ran cold and my skin turned to alabaster when I read the words “sparking radical social change”….aaagghh!
The book is a nonfiction speculation about how the Manson horrors may (emphasis on the “m” word) have been subtly triggered or egged on or possibly even orchestrated by “Jolly” West, an apparently sinister figure with ties to the CIA and the MKUltra project in particular.
The film is basically about the white-haired O’Neill (no, not the squishy Oscar prognosticator Tom O’Neil) trying to sell Morris on his theories and suspicions about West, and Morris asking many, many questions and gradually coming to believe that the West-Manson legend isn’t all that credible.
I feel the same way.
The Manson malice happened in part because of a surreal, over-the-waterfall psychology that took hold among alienated middle-class youths who had sampled psychedelia and took the proverbial cosmic plunge, and especially among a few impressionable ditzoids who populated the Manson family in ‘68, ‘69 and, for a few, well beyond.
Charlie Manson was a crafty, headstrong, drillbit sociopath and a half-decent singer-guitarist who wanted to be a rich and famous rock star, but couldn’t quite pull it off. Manson knew deep down that all of his spiritual guru sermons and posturings were more or less a bullshit side activity.
Late last night I attempted a re-watch of Blake Edwards‘ S.O.B. (’81), which I was amused and moved by way back when. It’s an inside-Hollywood satire that feels somewhat realistic (Edwards seemed to be going for broke with this one) and was stocked with roman a clef characters (Robert Vaughn as Bob Evans, Marisa Berenson as Ali McGraw, Shelley Winters as Sue Mengers, etc.)
From the mid ’60s onward Edwards had been a celebrated slapstick guy, of course. People actually liked the fact that his films were broad and over-performed. But S.O.B.really didn’t work for me yesterday, and I distinctly recall writing a positive review in late ’81 for The Film Journal, for which I was the managing editor. That was then, this is now. S.O.B. is bruising.
HE’s 12.15.10 obit: I’ve always found most of Edwards’ stuff laborious, in part because so many of his films (certainly beginning in the early ’70s) exuded a square establishment sensibility. A respected auteur, surely, but I always sensed the attitude of a schmaltzy, well-paid, Malibu-colony type of guy.
I never sensed, in short, that Edwards’ film were about anything more than (a) the fact that he had a certain instinct for comic timing and orchestrating pratfalls, a gift that arguably put him in the same realm as Mack Sennett (but nowhere near that of Buster Keaton), and (b) that he enjoyed livin’ the high life and therefore felt compelled for some reason to stock his films with evidence or reflections of this. And I always hated the way his films were lighted and shot in a typical big-studio “house” style.
Edwards had a good run with Peter Sellers, of course, but Sellers’ greatest director friend/ally was Stanley Kubrick, not Edwards.
There are only two Edwards films I really and truly admire (as opposed to liking or tolerating), and they’re (a) both San Francisco-based and (b) were released in ’62. Numero uno is Experiment in Terror (’62), a creepy no-frills noir about a terrorized bank teller (Lee Remick) and an FBI guy (Glenn Ford) trying to protect her. The other is the legendary drama of alcoholism, Days of Wine and Roses, with Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick.
The Edwards films I regard as “fine,” “okay” and/or “relatively decent” are Breakfast at Tiffany’s (except for Mickey Rooney‘s awful performance), A Shot in the Dark (moderately funny at times), The Party (some brilliant portions), Wild Rovers (decent western), 10 (overrated but funny at times), What Did you Do in The War, Daddy? (’66) and the low-budget That’s Life (Jack Lemmon facing old age and male menopause depression — honest and decent).
The beginning of the end of Chumash culture happened in 1769, when the first Spanish soldiers and missionaries arrived in Southern California with the intent of Christianizing the natives and facilitating Spanish colonization.
And then the mean-ass Mexicans arrived in the mid 1830s, and life for the Chumash natives became even worse. The Chumash were driven off the land and enslaved by the new administrators. Many found “highly exploitative” work on large Mexican ranches. After 1849, most Chumash land was lost due to theft by Americans and a declining population, due to the effects of violence and disease.
In 1855, a small parcel of land (120 acres) was set aside for just over 100 remaining Chumash Indians near the Santa Ynez mission. This land ultimately became the only Chumash reservation, although Chumash individdles and families continued to live throughout their former territory in southern California. The Chumash population was between roughly 10,000 and 18,000 in the late 18th century. In 1990, 213 Indians lived on the Santa Ynez reservation.
Nothing lasts forever. The Chumash had their era, and then it ended.
Thank God I don’t have to hate on The Brutalist any more. The debate’s over and nobody of any weight or wisdom or professional merit will want to discuss it ever again. Consigned to history’s dust bin.
Whatever the Brutalist want-to-see factor might have been, it was pretty much suffocated by Adrien Brody‘s six-minute acceptance speech. So many millions of viewers were muttering “good heavens, shut up…just shut the fuck up.” If only Timothee Chalamet or Ralph Fiennes had won…
On the other hand it’s not fair to put Brody down over the chewing-gum toss. Before watching the below video I hadn’t realized that Brody’s age-appropriate g.f. Georgina Chapman emphatically told him, gesture-wise, to throw the gum her way.
Arthur Penn‘s surreal Mickey One (’65) is a black-and-white low budgeter about a hunted, haunted stand-up comic (Warren Beatty) on the bum in Chicago. It’s about paranoia and loneliness and how the game is rigged against the individual. It feels a bit coarse and splotchy at times, but it’s also a kind of loose-shoe, catch-as-catch-can arthouse whatsis with a kind of French nouvelle vague or Italian neorealist vibe (can’t decide).
Is Mickey One a better film than Bong Joon-ho‘s Mickey 17? I never liked Penn’s film all that much, but it feels like a raggedy-ass masterwork compared to the latest Mondo Bongo.
Mickey One is about something that we’ve all sensed or feared at one time or another (i.e., the world is run by predators). Mickey 17 is a woke instructional about the necessity of feeling compassion for society’s lessers or outcasts. Mickey One is an in-and-outer but it’s thematically relatable (at least to existential lone-wolf types). Mickey 17 is about Bong banality.
Martin Scorsese and Isabella Rossellini were married from 1979 to 1982, or during his period of cocaine withdrawal + Raging Bull rebirth, followed by The King of Comedy and the anxiety, uncertainty and commercial failure that provided accompaniment.
The response to New York, New York (’75), one of the biggest cocaine movies of all time + a film that Pauline Kael called “an honest failure“, drove Scorsese into depression.
Wiki: “By several accounts (Scorsese’s included), De Niro saved Scorsese’s life when he persuaded him to (a) kick coke and (b) make Raging Bull.
“Mark Singer: “Marty was more than mildly depressed. Drug abuse, and abuse of his body in general, culminated in a terrifying episode of internal bleeding. De Niro came to see him in the hospital and asked, in so many words, whether he wanted to live or die.
“If you want to live, De Niro proposed, let’s make this Jake LaMotta picture.” Artistic adulation and Oscar glory resulted. Then came The King of Comedy (’82).
No marriage could have survived Scorsese’s ’79 to ’82 period.
The Guardian‘s Simon Hattenstone: “After they separated, Marty told Isabella it had been important to him ‘to think that he was in a relationship with Roberto Rossellini’s daughter.’ Family history repeated itself when she and Scorsese divorced; by then, she was pregnant with another man’s child — that of the former model Jonathan Wiedemann.”
