Even with the film and streaming industries in churn, and too few new titles finding their under-marketed way to theaters this year, the movie summer of 2025 stayed alive. Job One: done. Fall comes next, and damned if that lovely season doesn’t have a way of raising our quality expectations. We have the usual quotient of critical successes coming soon, having premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May. More of these prestige titles will follow suit after first-look appearances at the Venice and Telluride and Toronto festivals in September.
It’s a good feeling, this kind of anticipation. Maybe we should make it autumn all year long. Here are 10 of many on the horizon, release dates subject to change:
“Eleanor the Great” (Sept. 26): Director Scarlett Johansson’s feature directorial debut stars June Squibb — 95, if you can believe it — as a newly minted New Yorker, relocated from Florida to be with her daughter and grandson. It’s a tale of a falsehood that escalates quickly; the film had people laughing and in tears at Cannes, they say.
“One Battle After Another” (Sept. 26): Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film is a loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel “Vineland,” marking the writer-director’s second Pynchon adventure (“Inherent Vice” was the first). The cast of this project, which I’m guessing, recklessly, may combine comic and kinetic action-thriller elements in a bracing way, includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall and Benicio Del Toro. Disorient me, baby! Surprise me! Discombobble away!
“Anemone” (Oct. 3; Chicago release on Oct. 10): Since we just mentioned Paul Thomas Anderson, we should make note of his 2017 film “Phantom Thread,” after which Daniel Day-Lewis pointedly retired from film acting. Or so he said at the time. But retirement can last as long as the retiree chooses. The magnificent actor co-wrote the script with son Ronan Day-Lewis, also the director. He leads the cast of a story described as a generational struggle, with politics and bloodshed lurking in the background.
“The Smashing Machine” (Oct. 3): Mixed martial arts warrior Mark Kerr, a fixture of the UFC ring in the 1990s and early 21st century, fell prey to painkiller addiction as he kept on fighting. His real-life story was the subject of an HBO documentary; now it’s a based-on-fact narrative feature, starring Dwayne Johnson, directed by “Uncut Gems” co-director Benny Safdie.
“After the Hunt” (Oct 10; Chicago release on Oct. 17): Know what cheesed me off last year? Director Luca Guadagnino’s feverish tennis triangle “Challengers” getting shut out at the Academy Awards. That was dumb. But hopes are high regarding this drama starring Julia Roberts as a professor whose ace student (Ayo Edebiri) accuses the professor’s beloved faculty colleague (Andrew Garfield) of sexual assault. With a director fascinated by both moral grey areas and clashing definitions of consent, with the help of a formidable cast, this could be an autumn ringer.
“A House of Dynamite” (Oct. 10; Netflix streaming Oct. 24): This is Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow’s first feature in eight years, a nail-biter (we hope) following a team of White House staffers faced with a “Fail Safe”/“Doctor Strangelove” crisis caused by a potentially catastrophic incoming enemy missile. In “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” Bigelow proved herself an intuitive expert in grace under monumental pressure. The cast here includes Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, Greta Lee, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos and Jason Clarke.
“It Was Just an Accident” (Oct. 17): Imprisoned; confined to house arrest; making art that is legitimately life-threatening for the maker: The Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi has worked stealthy wonders across much of his adult life in these conditions. His latest effort, a highly personal suspense drama about a state-sanctioned torturer finding out what the other side of the coin looks like, won top prize at Cannes.
“Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” (Oct. 24): Destined not to have much, if any, of the easygoing genius-of-musical-destiny appeal of the recent Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” this is a retelling of how Bruce Springsteen’s gorgeous, melancholy landmark album “Nebraska” came to be. As Springsteen, Jeremy Allen White trades “The Bear” for a different bear of an acting challenge; writer-director Scott Cooper’s ensemble features Jeremy Strong as manager Jon Landau, and a host of crack supporting players includes Paul Walter Hauser.
“Nuremberg” (Nov. 7): This piece of anguished WWII history comes from Jack El-Hai’s nonfiction account “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist.” Russell Crowe stars as Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second-in-command and one of many high-ranking Nazi officials on trial after the war for crimes against humanity, among other charges that can never fully encompass the millions killed in the Holocaust. Rami Malek portrays Göring’s psychiatrist; the Nuremberg Trials head prosecutor and, later, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson is played by Michael Shannon.
“Jay Kelly” (Nov. 14; Netflix streaming Dec. 5): Director and screenwriter Noah Baumbach collaborates with George Clooney for this high-price-of-stardom seriocomedy co-written by Emily Mortimer. Clooney plays a gracefully but inevitably aging Hollywood star whose trip to Italy to pick up a lifetime achievement award resets the protagonist’s brain, and ego, into reflective mode. And funny mode, too, we hope. The ensemble surrounding Clooney sounds pretty terrific: Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Stacy Keach (good to have him back on screen!), co-writer Mortimer and Baumbach’s creative and off-soundstage partner Greta Gerwig.
Editor’s note: Michael Phillips’ fall guide to movies is his final byline as a Tribune critic.