After a pandemic, the streaming revolution and strikes by actors and screenwriters, the good news is that the theater experience is back in business. People are going to movies again. The less good news: Hollywood is woefully short on originality. With a few exceptions, namely Sinners and F1: The Movie, virtually all the box-office successes have been sequels, reboots or cash-grabs of existing IP.
Still, there have been plenty of bright spots. These are my top 10 as we head into fall:
10. Warfare
Director Alex Garland teamed up with Iraq War veteran Ray Mendoza for this painstakingly authentic retelling of a harrowing Navy SEALS operation in Iraq in 2006. Tense, immersive and very loud, Warfare is surely one of moviedom’s most realistic depictions ever of combat. (Streaming on Plex)
9. My Mom Jayne
Law & Order: SVU actress Mariska Hargitay was only 3 years old when her famous mother, Jayne Mansfield, died in a grisly car accident at age 34. Hollywood of the 1950s and ’60s had relegated the buxom Mansfield to caricature, but in My Mom Jayne, Hargitay lays out how reductive and inaccurate that assessment was. Through archival footage and candid interviews, this absorbing documentary reveals a more complex portrait of the actress. (Streaming on HBO Max)
8. Friendship
Few adjectives these days are quite as overused as “cringy,” but the description is apt for the comedy of Tim Robinson. In Friendship, he is a blithely affable husband and father who becomes an unlikely buddy to a new neighbor (Paul Rudd), a TV weatherman who oozes charisma. Robinson, with his simpleton smile and lumbering frame, is a physical manifestation of social insecurities, and his performance here has the morbid allure of a roadside wreck. Writer-director Andrew DeYoung’s feature debut is alternately hilarious and maddening, and you can’t look away.
7. Thunderbolts*
Has Marvel got its mojo back? While I’d be fine with an extended moratorium on superhero movies, Thunderbolts* (yes, the asterisk is intentional) represents a near return to form for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The secret weapon here is Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, an ace assassin and kid sister to Black Widow. A true movie star, her commanding presence carries the picture, although there is some irresistible scenery-chewing from David Harbour as Yelena’s boisterous dad and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a villainous CIA director. Director Jake Schreier knows how to execute terrific action set pieces, and the requisite banter among this new assemblage of misfit heroes is brisk and funny.
6. The Shrouds
At age 82, David Cronenberg shows no sign of softening. The filmmaker who practically invented the body-horror movie continues working out his cinematic obsessions — physical transformation, shadowy conspiracies, sex and death — in The Shrouds. Vincent Cassel (who bears more than a passing resemblance to Cronenberg here) portrays a wealthy widower who has channeled his grief into an industry of high-tech cemeteries where mourners can watch the decay of their dearly departed. And that’s not even the weird part. Diane Kruger deftly manages dual roles, with Guy Pearce trying his best to play a nebbish. (Streaming on Criterion Channel)
5. Superman
With filmmaker James Gunn now at the helm of DC Studios, the superhero’s superhero is getting a much-needed reset. David Corenswet’s guileless, idealistic Man of Steel is a pitch-perfect antidote for this era of cynicism, with Rachel Brosnahan his equal as a take-no-shit Lois Lane. I’m more than a little baffled over the pop-culture debate over whether this Superman is woke because Lex Luther (Nicholas Hoult) is a tech bro with an outsized hatred for aliens. The stranger-in-a-strange-land theme has always been integral to the Superman myth. The movie isn’t immune from the genre’s more eye-rolling tropes — the third act collapses into a sludge of CGI — but most of Superman soars.
4. Eephus
First-time filmmaker Carson Lund summons the spirit of Robert Altman (Nashville, Short Cuts) in this wry ode to baseball and male bonding. The title references a rare variation of the curveball; eephus is a pitch so slow, it lulls batters into forgetting to swing until it’s too late. That can also be a nifty metaphor for life, and Eephus, set in smalltown Massachusetts circa the 1990s, is about life — midlife, to be exact — in all its bittersweet, shaggy, achy-back glory. As one character opines, “Is there anything more beautiful than the sun setting on a fat man stealing second base?” Short answer: No, there is not. A quintessential hangout movie, the screenplay by Lund, Michael Basta and Nate Fisher is endlessly quotable. (Streaming on MUBI)
3. Companion
As the world loses its collective mind over artificial intelligence, let’s give it up for Companion, a comic thriller with a fresh take on the possibilities of AI. Writer-director Drew Hancock’s feature debut is set in the near future, but it very much feels like a movie of the moment. Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid play a young and in-love couple off for a weekend getaway with friends in the country. There are snappy twists and surprises I won’t spoil here — unlike Warner Brothers’ unfortunate marketing campaign — and so the less you know going in, the better. (Streaming on HBO Max)
2. 28 Years Later
In 2002, director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland (co-director of #10’s Warfare) reinvigorated the zombie flick with 28 Days Later, a box-office hit that spawned a sequel five years later from different filmmakers. Now the original collaborators have reunited for 28 Years Later, but this is no cash grab, nor would you expect it from these exceptional artists. In this scenario, the “rage virus” of the franchise has reduced the United Kingdom to a largely uninhabited wasteland overrun by flesh-eating zombies. The installment delivers the requisite gore, but at its heart is an affecting coming-of-age story for Spike (newcomer Alfie Williams), a 12-year-old boy intent on finding medical help for his ailing mother.
1. Sinners
Genre movies are comfort food for the multiplex. We’re drawn to such films because we know what to expect, that they will satisfy a specific craving. But the tenets of genre are most fun when they’re teased, tweaked and turned on their head. By way of example, we have Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s genre mashup of period drama, musical and vampire picture. Unburdened by Marvel’s Black Panther franchise and its accompanying MCU constraints, writer-director Coogler drops us in Jim Crow Mississippi circa 1932, where twin brothers Smoke and Stack (Michael P. Jordan) are opening a juke joint for the area’s black sharecroppers. Boasting richly drawn characters, across-the-board great performances and Autumn Durald Arkepaw’s exquisite cinematography, Sinners is a lotta movie to sink one’s teeth into. (Streaming on HBO Max)
Also worth noting: Black Bag, One of Them Days, The Ballad of Wallis Island, Freaky Tales.
This article appears in Best of OKC 2025.