The Pamphleteer’s Most Anticipated Films of 2025

This weekend’s release of Captain America: Brave New World ushers in the opening salvo of the year in movies. With pandemics, strikes, and corporate activism all hopefully in the rearview, the year offers a bounty that, for the first time in awhile, is laser-focused on original concepts despite the latest iterations of Superman and Avatar. While we have a complete rundown of the year’s offerings in our hot-off-the-presses 2025 film guide, these are the films that have us most excited to visit the multiplex over the next ten months. 

10) Jurassic World: Rebirth

The franchise gets back to its horror roots as Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali play mercenaries journeying to the defunct park’s research island to extract some cancer-curing dino DNA. With original JP screenwriter David Koepp and Godzilla/Rogue One director Gareth Edwards mining Michael Crichton’s novel for unexplored story threads, it looks like a worthy successor–even without Jeff Goldblum. (7/2)

9) The Drama

The mad millennial genius behind 2023’s Sick of Myself and Dream Scenario enters the romantic comedy fray with Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Mamoudou Athie, and Alana Haim. Whatever Kristoffer Borgli has planned should cement his reputation as the greatest cinematic social critic of the 2020s. (TBA)

8) A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

Former Nashvillian Kogonada follows up instant classics Columbus (2017) and After Yang (2022) with this big-budget fantasy tale of a couple (Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell) drawn together on a journey suggested by a magical GPS. It may sound awful, but there’s not a more singular and emotionally generous filmmaker working today. (5/9)

7) The Phonecian Scheme

Wes Anderson occupies his obligatory space on this list with his foray into comedic espionage featuring a fractured family and an always unrivaled profundity. Of course, the cast is stacked with Anderson regulars and newcomers alike, including Benicio del Toro, Michael Cera, Bill Murray, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Benedict Cumberbatch, Scarlett Johansson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Rupert Friend, Willem Dafoe, and Bryan Cranston. (6/6) 

Note: frequent Anderson collaborator Noah Baumbach has a new droll coming-of-age dramedy, Jay Kelly, featuring George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Riley Keough, Stacy Keach, and Billy Crudup, but we can’t bring ourselves to put a Netflix movie on this list despite our love of Baumbach. 

6) Roofman

Since the release of 2010’s Blue Valentine, director Derek Cianfrance has remained scarce, churning out two brilliant, but largely ignored follow-ups in The Place Beyond the Pines (2013) and The Light Between The Oceans (2016) and co-writing 2020 Oscar nominee Sound of Metal. But the true story of a former US Army Reserve officer with a penchant for robbing McDonald’s locations via rooftops in the early aughts could finally initiate his long-overdue coronation. With Channing Tatum in the lead backed by Kirsten Dunst, Ben Mendelsohn, Peter Dinklage, Uzo Aduba, Juno Temple, Emory Cohen, and LaKeith Stanfield, this is essential fall viewing. (9/26)

5) The Running Man

Of course, the late-80s Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle about a dystopian future centered on battle royale of a gameshow is a perfect movie that gets more prescient year after year (and the best Stephen King adaptation–Shawshank fans be damned). That doesn’t mean an updated take starring bona fide movie star Glen Powell and helmed by Edgar Wright of Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim fame couldn’t reach a True Grit level of remake mastery. (11/7)

4) Bugonia

Yorgos Lanthimos continues running the table following 2023’s best film, Poor Things, and last year’s gloriously off-kilter Kinds of Kindness in this remake of the South Korean movie Save the Green Planet. Lanthimos muse Emma Stone plays a pharmaceutical CEO who becomes the victim of two conspiracy theory-obsessed Gen Zers’  kidnapping plot. With Jesse Plemons and Alicia Silvertone in the mix, expect more of the nuanced and bawdy satire that will again enrage the worst personalities on the Left and Right. (11/7)

3) The Shrouds

Our pick for last year’s most anticipated never made it to theaters after its Cannes premiere, but should finally see the light of day this spring. The latest from Canadian body-horror pioneer David Cronenberg is an ode to his late wife featuring a widower played by Vincent Cassel who copes with his grief by creating a device to communicate with the dead via a burial shroud. By all accounts Cronenberg’s most personal film since his 1979 sci-fi divorce allegory, The Brood. (April)

2) Sentimental Value

Norway’s Joachim Trier follows up 2022’s instant millennial ennui classic The Worst Person in the World with a bleakly comic tale of adult sisters mourning the loss of their mother as their estranged father enters the picture to offer one of the women an acting role in his new project. If it’s half as searing in its study of insecurity as his last effort, it’ll easily be one of the year’s best. With Elle Fanning, Stellan Skarsgård, and Worst Person breakout Renate Reinsve. (TBA)

1) One Battle After Another

A Paul Thomas Anderson project always maintains a veil of secrecy. Purportedly an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland (or maybe not), the film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Regina Hall, Sean Penn, Alana Haim, Teyana Taylor, Wood Harris, and Benicio del Toro. Pynchon’s book is an epic examination of 60s idealism going sour in the 80s. Anderson’s movie is supposed to have his biggest budget ever and lots of car chases and explosions. The guy behind There Will Be Blood and Magnolia may confound, but he never disappoints. (8/8)