SD enterprise: 10 Movies I Need to See This Fall

If you're having trouble viewing this email, view in browser

The 10 Most Important Movies Left in 2025

I've written a lot about TV in The Cliff-Hanger. How can I not? The upcoming fall TV lineup is incredibly exciting this year, and I'm just dying for everyone to catch up so I can finally talk to another human being about these shows. (Mark your watchlists now—HBO's Task is going to be a big one.)

But TV isn't all I do at Esquire. Somehow, I also need to find the time to watch movies—and, you know, write! So, after bingeing through Alien: Earth this past weekend, I went to Film Forum in New York City to rewatch Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) on the big screen—hoping that the nearly four-hour sword-slinging masterpiece would shock my system back into movie mode.

My plan might have worked a little too well. When I got back home, I immediately charted out every movie I wanted to watch for the rest of the year. It's a long list, but I picked out the ten films that will make or break the rest of 2025 on the big screen.

The Long Walk (September 12)

Whatever it says about our current times, stories following desperate people entering life-or-death competitions are all the rage nowadays. The latest entry, The Long Walk, follows a group of young men who are forced to compete in an annual walking contest. The winner? The last person still moving. The story is based on one of Stephen King's earliest novels from 1979, now adapted to the screen by Hunger Games franchise director Francis Lawrence (very fitting). Judging by the first footage of Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza), David Jonnson (Alien: Romulus), Charlie Plummer (The Return), and Ben Wang (Karate Kid: Legends) walking to their deaths, it looks like an absolutely devastating film.

One Battle After Another (September 26)

Paul Thomas Anderson and Leonardo DiCaprio finally team up for a film next month called One Battle After Another, about an ex-revolutionary—and his daughter—who reunites with his old friends to stop one of their resurfaced foes. "Wanting to do this movie was pretty simple," DiCaprio told Anderson in Esquire's latest cover story. "I've been wanting to work with you—Paul—for something like twenty years now, and I loved this idea." One Battle After Another is Anderson's first true action flick, which also stars Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn, Regina Hall, and a pregnant Teyana Taylor firing a machine gun.

The Smashing Machine (October 3)

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson will step back into the ring to portray former MMA fighter Mark Kerr in The Smashing Machine, the first feature film directed by one of the Safdie brothers since Uncut Gems. The first trailer is riveting—it brandishes A24's blend of nostalgic charm and self-destruction into another The Iron Claw-esque sports drama.

It Was Just an Accident (October 15)

I would reckon this Persian thriller is likely not on your radar, but there's a very good chance that It Was Just an Accident shows up in a big way come awards season. Why? Well, the film won the Palme d'Or at this summer's Cannes Film Festival, following in the footsteps of recent Best Picture contenders Triangle of Sadness, Anatomy of a Fall, and Anora (which won last year). From what I've heard so far, it sounds like a gripping and timely adventure about a former political prisoner who hunts down a man he believes was his torturer. The director, Jafar Panahi, has also been arrested several times himself for speaking out against the Iranian government.

Frankenstein (October 17)

"I love monsters," Guillermo del Toro once said. "I identify with monsters." Well, the monster master will strike again this October when he releases a book-accurate Frankenstein for Netflix. It stars Jacob Elordi as the monster, Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, and scream queen Mia Goth as Victor's fiancée Elizabeth. We haven't seen images of Elordi just yet, but I'm hoping it's more macabre like Robert Eggers's Nosferatu and less like Netflix's Wednesday teen campiness.

Oscar Isaac in Frankenstein / Netflix

Bugonia (October 24)

Poor Things duo Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos will connect for another quirky drama called Bugonia this October. The film follows a beekeeper (Jesse Plemons) who kidnaps a powerful CEO (Stone) because he believes that she is an alien who wants to take over the world. It reminds me of those bizarre lizard people conspiracies that live in the Internet's wackiest forums, which is probably why Ari Aster was so willing to jump on board as a producer early into production. Stone won Best Actress at the Academy Awards for Poor Things, so I'd expect another strong showing from the pair here as well.

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (October 24)

Springsteen receives the honor of this year's obligatory Hollywood music biopic, with Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) pulling off his best raspy impression of The Boss. Timothée Chalamet's Bob Dylan flick from last year felt like the closest a music biopic has come to moving from beyond a major awards contender to a major award winner since Elvis. (A reminder: Director James Mangold just walked away from the Oscars with seven nominations and zero wins.) But White is a fantastic actor and Deliver Me from Nowhere's focus on the Nebraska sessions seem even more contained than these other massive career-aching stories so far. I remain hopeful.

Jay Kelly (November 14)

Noah Baumbach's latest film is being described as a "coming-of-age story for adults," as A-list actor Jay Kelly (George Clooney) travels through Europe with his manager (Adam Sandler) to reconsider the lives they've led and the relationships they've burned. Billy Crudup and Lauren Dern make appearances as well, co-starring in a film that feels tailor-made to cement Clooney's legacy even more (as if he isn't already Hollywood royalty).

Avatar: Fire & Ash (December 19)

Call me crazy, but I love that James Cameron's giant CGI blue aliens hold the record for two of the top three highest grossing movies of all time. (Avengers: Endgame's big purple alien holds the remaining slot.) I don't know what it says about humanity that we love these characters so much, but I must give credit to its revolutionary technology. And even though Cameron isn't promoting some new kind of camera that he had to invent to film fire just yet, I have high hopes that this third entry in the Avatar franchise is just as riveting.

Marty Supreme (December 25)

Chalamet will go for Oscar gold once again in Josh Safdie's Marty Supreme, a sports comedy very loosely based on the life of professional table tennis player Marty Reisman. If Benny's The Smashing Machine will head toward the darker side of sports biopics, Josh and Chalamet's Marty Supreme seems to lean a tad more Hollywood. The Christmas release should bolster the film as well, especially for a year without a Star Wars or Marvel team-up to compete with at the box office.

If there's a film that you're excited about that didn't make the list (sorry, Wicked: For Good, I can't wait to see you too!), let me know at josh.rosenberg@hearst.com.

Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street / Paramount Pictures

Mailbag!

Last week, we wrote about the movies that define Leonardo DiCaprio in celebration of our latest cover story. After writing about The Wolf of Wall Street, I received a beautiful email from someone who said that her mother's surprising love for DiCaprio's performance brought their relationship closer than ever before. Here's a little excerpt:

"I told her she needed to write to Scorsese and tell him this woman in her mid-70s, a great-grandma from a flyover state in the Midwest, had LOVED his movie and he shouldn't listen to any of his naysayers because he had made a work of art and he had a new fan. She never wrote to him, but she did tell all her other mid-70s/80s friends in her retirement community about the movie, and they all went out to see it and all equally loved it. They talked about it at their weekly mahjong for months! So thank you, Leo and Scorsese, for strengthening the movie-going bond between mother and daughter and bringing a section of a retirement community together."

The power of movies, folks! Our parents were kids once, too, and it sometimes takes an insane movie theater experience like watching DiCaprio snort cocaine off a naked woman's ass to inspire that unexplainable glee once again. Thanks for writing!

If you have a story to share, I'd love to hear it at josh.rosenberg@hearst.com.

Did someone forward you this email? Sign up here.

The Continuing Adventures of the Esquire Entertainment Desk

Actor Shawn Hatosy, who plays Dr. Jack Abbot on The Pitt, talked to Esquire about his Emmy nomination and his hopes for season 2. "I love the technical stuff," Hatosy says. "It makes us, as performers, seem invisible. So any kind of little character things that emerge, such as Abbot's way of not playing by the rules, these little nuggets that we get are so powerful because the procedure of it is everything." Read the full interview here. >>

Tony Hawk looked back on the legacy of the Pro Skater video games for the release of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 remake. "There is a generation of pros in their 20s or 30s, they have told me they started skating because they played the games," Hawk tells Esquire's Eric Francisco. "It inspired them to learn tricks that are impossible in real life. Which is incredible to me and just shows the progression of skating through the years as it continues to evolve." Read the full interview here. >>

Shawn Hatosy will return for The Pitt season 2 on HBO Max / Steven Lippman

The Cliff-Hanger's Winners and Losers of the Week

Winner: Britt Lower

If you haven't seen Lower's audition tape for Severance making the rounds on social media yet, Apple TV+ shared her first go as Helly R. on YouTube. She absolutely nails it on the first try—no surprise there.

Loser: The Conjuring: Last Rites Popcorn Bucket

They want me to pay $45 to eat popcorn out of a haunted doll? This is the last popcorn bucket I ever want to see. Stop making these. Please.

Winner: Quentin Tarantino

The Once Upon a Time in Hollywood director served up a killer answer to which movie he thinks is his best-ever film... "Kill Bill is the movie I was born to make," he told The Church of Tarantino podcast. "I think Inglourious Basterds is my masterpiece, but Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood is my favorite." Folks, I must agree with him here.

Loser: This Ad for the New ESPN App

The streaming wars are driving me insane. I regret to inform you that ESPN's creepy new mascot, App-E, just announced that you can now access "All of ESPN. All in one place" through the new ESPN standalone streaming service for $30 a month. Well, you could already access all of ESPN, all in one place, if you owned a traditional cable package or Live TV streaming equivalent. Sorry, App-E.

Winner: Xenomorphs

You did it, buddy! The killer alien has been fighting for 46 years since the release of the original Alien film to reach planet Earth—and it finally succeeded with the release of the brilliant Alien: Earth TV series on FX. It's bad news for humanity, but you simply must appreciate the alien's perseverance.