Hot Takes From the 2025 New York Film Festival

Most of the time I just like looking at Wagner Moura. But it’s no exaggeration to say The Secret Agent provides the actor with his finest role to date. The movie also heralds the complete arrival of Kleber Mendonça Filho as a filmmaker (shout out to fellow Bacurau fans.) Genre movies can be relegated to the margins by studios, streaming services, and critics, but The Secret Agent has more to say, convincingly, than the higher-profile films at NYFF this year. I am going to keep details sparse here and plead for you to go on a bender of your choice before seeing the movie, so you can fully soak in its sweat.

A Private Life is a messy, imperfect, and totally re-watchable thriller with Jodie Foster playing a therapist who is somehow not disbarred after a hysterical episode in the wake of her client's mysterious death. It is by far the NYFF film I enjoyed the most, a reminder that diamonds can be formed from coal, provided you break free from the conventional world. There's an audience out there who will continue to discover director Rebecca Zlotowski's unhinged fever dream that advocates for hypnotherapy as a means for later-life catharsis. My only critique: the story and its visuals could have gone even further off the rails.

If Sentimental Value is your first Joachim Trier, welcome to the cult. For me, the surefire Oscar contender hits just below the high bar Trier established with The Worst Person in the World, but it’s one of the most affective apologies I've seen from a parent to their adult child, with its tender handling of how parental love can skip a generation. Stellan Skarsgård reawakened my dormant father issues, thanks. It’s weird to realize he’s never received an Academy Award nomination before. And I can’t wait to watch Oscar presenters try and pronounce Renate Reinsve’s name (it’s her third film with Trier and his go-to screenwriter, Eskil Vogt. Check out Oslo, August 31st if you’ve never seen it.) There's also commentary on Trier's filmmaking career, the tentative steps he has taken as a Norwegian director working in English, and a look at the effects of WWII from an angle we don't see often. It’s near-perfect, and I’ll probably love it more with repeat viewings.

Who wouldn’t want to sit at a bar and listen to Ethan Hawke deliver some of the most delicious monologues in contemporary times? Richard Linklater's assured direction makes Blue Moon, a single-character story about the last months of famed lyricist Lorenz Hart’s life, into something that should be watched by more than just the Broadway set, or people, like me, who feel Hawke still is, somehow, a profoundly underrated actor. Bobby Cannavale is peak Chazz Palminteri as the bartender at Sardi’s, and he deserves all the tips. Margaret Qualley ascends in a tricky role as the ambitious young socialite with whom Hart is foolishly in love. And as you might expect, Andrew Scott walks off with the movie as Richard Rodgers, Hart’s longtime creative partner who is transitioning into his Rodgers and Hammerstein era.

Lesser Luca Guadagnino still can haunt you. After the Hunt, a chamber piece shot within gorgeous interiors, is an irritant, a story unconcerned with truth or conclusions. I’m just not convinced there’s more to these provocations than icky characters, most of them careerist academics who are protected, to varying degrees, at a fictional version of Yale University. With no one to champion, and no certainty any transgression occurred, I felt unaffected as the characters gravitated toward their own black holes. With the exception of Michael Stuhlbarg’s Frederik, who plays Julia Roberts’ mildly addled husband; I wanted him to get a divorce and teach me how to make a cassoulet.

I want a Courteney Cox moment if I’m going to watch a Bruce Springsteen biopic, to feel young, enraptured, and pulled up on stage by my hero for a dance. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, Scott Cooper's depressed and imprecise biography of The Boss's early-career crisis, really needs a hug. The movie is as uncompromising as its source material, Nebraska, the acoustic record Springsteen released before Born in the USA made him a superstar. It’s a story that doesn’t mention any member of the E Street Band by name. Jeremy Allen White has the voice and the guitar chords down, but there are no callouses on his fingers. He’s a trained dancer, but there are zero sexy moves when he’s on stage at the famed Stone Pony. The story's coda knocked me off balance with its father-son understanding — it’s so Stephen Graham’s year — but there's no moment for the audience share in the hero's triumphs. The "Ted Lasso" maxim doesn't apply; you need to know Nebraska, down to its linear notes, to walk out of the theater with your fist in the air.

Kathryn Bigelow introduces US President Idris Elba near the midpoint of her contemporary disaster movie, where a doomsday scenario plays out in 18-minute segments from an array of government situation rooms and military outposts. Normally, I'd love to live in a movie world where the former Stringer Bell runs the country, just shooting hoops with kids from an after-school program. But A House Full of Dynamite is Rashomon stripped of the notion of subjective truth. Instead, we watch Bigelow's ensemble cast acknowledge the same harrowing reality, where their respective training and billions of dollars spent on defense are no certain guarantee against an attack on domestic soil. This isn't The Hurt Locker, or even Zero Dark Thirty; it's is a salvo from a director who has brought the threat home.

Noah Baumbach isn't in the business of making crowd-pleasers, but I don’t know anyone who'd want to watch George Clooney as the self-possessed A-list actor Jay Kelly in the twilight of his career. Good thing the movie belongs to Adam Sandler, who plays Ron Sukenick, Kelly's devoted manager, who is more than worth the 20% he earns from his client's going rate. This is Peak Mensch Sandler, and he’s thoroughly deserving of his first-ever Oscar nomination. I’d watch Ron Sukenick, especially if that edit lived more in an alternate world where Billy Crudup, who plays a failed actor from Kelly's past, is a star.

Ronan Day-Lewis is a painter, and Anemone would play better in a collection of his artwork. As a prestige feature film being positioned as an awards contender, one distinguished by Daniel Day-Lewis' return to acting, the project is a thorough let-down. Mixtape emotions and prosaic filmmaking obscure the story, where themes of child abuse, areligion, and veteran's trauma are drowned out by the beautiful score by Bobby Krlic (aka The Haxan Cloak). Two decades ago, Ray (DDL’s character) made a personal choice to retreat from the world to a cabin the woods, completely off the grid. In the present day, as Jem (Sean Bean’s character, Ray’s estranged sibling) learns why Ray made his decision – courtesy of a vile DDL monologue that no one will turn into a meme – the best decision Ray could have made for his family, and the audience, would have been to cut tail and respect this irredeemable character’s life choices.