2025 Releases You May Have Missed
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominations for this year’s Oscars a week ago, celebrating great cinema from the previous year, and the lineup is especially impressive. Between Ryan Coogler’s surprise hit Sinners getting more nominations than any other film in history, Paul Thomas Anderson making a huge impression with One Battle After Another, and a number of other great films by modern auteurs like Joachim Trier, Chloe Zhao, Guillermo del Toro, and Josh Safdie. But as much as this year’s lineup is a solid collection of films, it also continues a trend of the Oscars granting a large amount of nominations to only a handful of films, leaving less room for anything beyond the major contenders.
Sinners has 16 nominations; OBAA has 13; Frankenstein, Marty Supreme, and Sentimental Value all have 9; and Hamnet has 8. That’s 64 total nominations shared among only 6 films - well-earned, certainly, but also taking up a lot of real estate that could have gone to other deserving films. While the Oscars are not the final word in cultural legacy, getting nominated provides a large impetus for millions of viewers worldwide to check out a film they might not have heard of otherwise. And if a film doesn’t blow up the box office or get nominated for awards, it’s often difficult to get them on people’s radars.
With that said, now that 2025 is officially in the rearview mirror, we wanted to take the time to highlight some films that didn’t necessarily light the box office on fire or receive much attention from the Academy but, nevertheless, deserve some extra love:
Black Bag (dir. Steven Soderbergh)
For the last decade or so, Steven Soderbergh (of Ocean’s Eleven, Magic Mike, and Sex, Lies, and Videotape fame) has spoken at length publicly about the death of the midbudget adult-oriented dramas at the multiplex. But against all odds and despite an indifferent marketplace, he continues to march to the beat of his own drum and make intelligent, exciting films that look and feel very distinct but don’t sacrifice entertainment. Black Bag was marketed as a typical spy thriller, but the final product was more in line with classic mystery stories like The Thin Man, where the filmmakers focused on character, crackling dialogue, and a delightful sense of humor rather than action or violence.
The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (dir. Pete Browngardt)
On the one hand, it’s a miracle that The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie reached movie screens across the nation in the first place. It was originally scheduled to be an HBO Max-exclusive film, but was sold off by WB as part of CEO David Zaslav’s cost-cutting-via-tax-write-off campaign that earned him the ire of movie lovers everywhere. But this past March, Ketchup Entertainment released the film on nearly 3,000 screens nationwide, providing moviegoers the chance to enjoy crisp, beautiful 2D animation and the Looney Tunes’ zany brand of humor back on the big screen where it all began. No form of media from the Looney Tunes brand has quite matched the hilarity and beauty of the original shorts, but TDTEBU might come closest of all the feature films released under their name, finding a perfect odd-couple dynamic in Porky Pig & Daffy Duck and stuffing more jokes into 85 minutes than either Space Jam movie did. Besides all that, it has some of the best, most original animation of any major release to hit theaters this year.
Eddington (dir. Ari Aster)
Ever since the one-two punch of the instant horror classics Hereditary and Midsommar, two of A24’s biggest hits, Ari Aster has taken the good will he’s earned with the indie studio and broken away from straightforward horror and instead occupied a distinct genre for himself that could be dubbed “anxiety comedy.” Both Beau is Afraid and his new film Eddington tackle visceral anxieties about relationships, class, and the state of the modern world, but Aster chooses to examine it through the lens of pitch-black comedy that makes the viewer as stressed out as a Safdie-directed film. Eddington arguably worked a little too well, as making a film about the politics and colorful characters of a small town in America circa 2020 probably hit too close to home and it didn’t make nearly as much as his previous films. But for those tuned in to Aster’s very particular brand of dark humor, Eddington remains one of the best treats of the year.
Highest 2 Lowest (dir. Spike Lee)
He might be approaching 70 and making movies for corporations like Apple or Netflix, but when Spike Lee directs a feature-length narrative, you know you’re going to get something that’s unapologetically Spike Lee. His newest film adapts the classic hostage thriller novel King’s Ransom (also the basis for Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece High and Low), and updates it to the present day where a Black music executive faces a strong moral dilemma when his son and his friend’s son are kidnapped and held for ransom. Denzel Washington gives a powerful performance as the executive at the center of the film, but what really makes the movie shine is Lee’s energetic direction: Switching from digital to 16mm once the characters head into the streets of NYC, utilizing fourth-wall-breaking shots of characters looking directly into the camera, and freely giving way to non-diegetic scenes of fantasy in the final act. The reception for this film has been more mixed than either of Lee’s last two films - BlacKkKlansman and Da 5 Bloods - but there’s hardly any director out there willing to experiment and tackle as many issues in the context of a mainstream thriller as Lee is doing here.
Lurker (dir. Alex Russell)
One of the most exciting debuts from any first-time filmmaker this year, Alex Russell’s Lurker is the dark and suspenseful tale of a fan who tries to ingratiate himself in the life of an up-and-coming artist, only for things to take a sharp turn when the fan thinks he isn’t getting the attention he deserves. Tales of obsession, especially obsession over an artist, aren’t anything new, but beyond the great performances and solid pacing throughout the film, what makes Lurker stand out in the genre is the film’s dedication to a visual aesthetic that alternates between grainy 16mm film and the digital video camera the main character, Matthew, uses to document the life of singer Oliver. Despite both modes of shooting being outdated, the collision of such wildly different formats feels immediate and modern in a way few other movies this year have. Before this film, Alex Russell was only known for writing episodes of acclaimed TV shows The Bear and Beef, but if Lurker is anything to judge him off of, Russell shows a lot of talent making intense stories for the big screen.
The Monkey (dir. Oz Perkins)
Osgood Perkins worked for nearly a decade before his career really took off, but ever since then, it seems like he can’t stop working. After Longlegs became NEON’s biggest hit ever in the summer of 2024, he’s shot and released two additional films, and is currently filming a third for release later this year. For our money, the best film he released this year was his Stephen King adaptation The Monkey, which trades in the surreal cult vibes of Longlegs for a more fantastical, macabre tale about a supernatural monkey toy that, when activated, will kill a random person in its vicinity. Beyond the creative kills and gore effects, what really makes the movie sing is Theo James’s lead performance as twin brothers whose dislike of each other turns deadly for everyone around them.
Sorry, Baby (dir. Eva Victor)
Social media blew up the second Oscar nominations were announced and Eva Victor’s debut film Sorry, Baby didn’t receive a single nomination. Released by A24 the same year they focused on marketing Marty Supreme as a major awards contender, it’s no surprise that Victor’s gentle, deeply moving dramedy about a graduate student struggling with depression following a sexual assault flew under the radar. But make no mistake: This is still one of the best films of 2025, and one that will be talked about over the years as an incredible debut feature. Victor writes and directs with the confidence of a veteran filmmaker, masterfully balancing tonal shifts and knowing when to trust the audience to put the pieces together instead of showing everything. For them to pull off such a feat of writing and directing would be impressive enough if it weren’t for the fact that they also STAR in the movie as well! Let’s just say: There’s a reason why Julia Roberts was so bowled over by the film that she called out Eva Victor by name on the Golden Globes stage this year.
The Testament of Ann Lee (dir. Mona Fastvold)
Wife-and-husband creative duo Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet have made a number of stirring dramas over the years, with Corbet directing films like The Childhood of a Leader and Vox Lux from scripts the two have written together and Fastvold directing films on her own such as The World to Come. Corbet’s last film The Brutalist - again, from a script by him and Fastvold - reached a wider audience and cultural impact than any film the two of them had made since their careers took off. In the midst of that film’s Oscar run last year, Fastvold was in Budapest filming Ann Lee, an experimental musical epic about the founding of the religious sect the Shakers in the mid-1700s. The film stars Amanda Seyfried giving perhaps the performance of her career as Ann Lee, the leader of the Shakers, and their dedication to expressing their religious ecstasy through impromptu shouting, singing, and dancing. It doesn’t shy away from some rather brutal scenes about 18th-century living, such as a montage featuring graphic childbirth scenes as well as a scene where the Shakers are assaulted by other religious leaders, but it’s a strong and forceful vision that treats cinema like an art form rather than mere entertainment.
The Wedding Banquet (dir. Andrew Ahn)
This past year, it seemed like comedies returned to the big screen on a level that hadn’t really been seen since the pandemic. Since that dreadful period of time, it seems most studios thought audiences only wanted to see big blockbusters and visual spectacles on the screen, and would be content to watch comedies at home. This has been such a talking point among industry professionals for the last few years that The Naked Gun made it a part of their marketing campaign, asking people to see comedies back on the big screen. It worked for titles like Naked Gun and the Keke Palmer/SZA-starring One of Them Days, but one that might have slipped through the cracks is Andrew Ahn’s warmhearted queer romantic comedy The Wedding Banquet. Based on the 1990s Ang Lee comedy of the same name, the film stars Kelly Marie Tran and newcomer Han Gi-chan as two friends who agree to get married so that he can stay in America and she can get IVF treatment to have kids with her partner. Only what starts as a simple plan to do a quick and easy green card marriage turns much more complex when Tran’s grandmother insists on throwing a huge wedding celebration. The film is a warmhearted romcom that would delight just about any audience, and it provides great showcases for some of the best young talent in Hollywood today like Tran, Lily Gladstone, and Bowen Yang.