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The 2025 New York Film Festival marks the end of the major fall festivals — following the glamour of Venice, the tranquility of Telluride, and the onslaught of Toronto — and thus serves as the last chance for a surge of festival buzz to change the complexion of the awards race. From here on out, there will be publicity events, critics awards, and countless release-cycle media appearances, plus audience word of mouth, but nothing gooses a movie’s Oscar profile quite like a hot festival reception.
This year’s festival lineup features some of the most anticipated films of the fall, including Julia Roberts as a college professor facing a morality crisis in Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt, The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White taking on the Boss in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, and Bradley Cooper’s third directorial effort, the stand-up-comedy drama Is This Thing On? Ahead of the festival’s opening night (After the Hunt kicks things off Friday evening), we took a look at the films that have the most riding on the next two weeks and what’s at stake for them.
For anyone who has yet to join the Vulture Movies Fantasy League — or who is still fretting over which films to choose — this preview also offers some data points to help guide your selections. Take note: Tonight is the first deadline for the MFL. After this, you’ll still be able to join, but you’ll have a smaller pool of movies from which to create your entry. You can read about all the details, and submit your team, at the MFL landing page.
Now, let’s talk NYFF and beyond.
You’d think Lake Como’s own George Clooney would have had an easier time winning folks over at the Venice Film Festival, but his star turn as a Hollywood actor in director Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly was received coolly. Moving, the reviews said, but not challenging: a mid-tier Baumbach. The reception in Telluride was kinder, positioning the film’s NYFF premiere to be the tiebreaker. A lot of awards-season buzz is riding on this movie, from Clooney himself as a Best Actor contender to a deep bench of supporting players led by Adam Sandler (whom seemingly everybody wants to see get over the hump of his first Oscar nomination) and Billy Crudup (whose brief appearance was one of the few elements in the film that Venice critics liked). The American awards race doesn’t always have to take its cues from the European festivals, even with the Academy’s increased international ranks — but if Jay Kelly disappoints on the Upper West Side like it did on the Lido, that spells trouble.
Jay Kelly is out November 14. It’s a $30 pick in the MFL.
While Telluride was able to secure the world premiere of the rock biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, the real test will be seeing how it plays just across the river from Bruce Springsteen’s native New Jersey. The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White steps into the Boss’s relaxed-fit dungarees, and while there are plenty of people doubting Mr. Chicago Intensity’s ability to pull the role off, the fact that Timothée Chalamet took on Bob Dylan last fall and nearly won an Oscar for it provides reason to be optimistic. The Best Actor field is crowded this year, what with Michael B. Jordan playing twins, Leonardo DiCaprio joining forces with Paul Thomas Anderson, and Chalamet himself playing ping-pong.
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is out October 24. It’s a $25 pick.
Eight years after making his last film — Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread, for which he was nominated for an Oscar — Daniel Day-Lewis returns from his admittedly dubious retirement to star in son Ronan Day-Lewis’s directorial debut, Anemone. The world premiere of a DDL movie is always going to be an event, especially since his last film to play NYFF was the surprise screening of Lincoln in 2012. Anemone is a story of long-estranged brothers (Day-Lewis and Sean Bean), with Day-Lewis playing the one who has been living in the woods. It won’t take much to shove DDL (and thus this movie) into the Oscars race.
Anemone is out October 3. It’s a $5 pick.
Bradley Cooper’s third feature film as director, the Will Arnett–fronted stand-up-comedy drama Is This Thing On?, is set to close the festival on October 10. It’s a return to NYFF for Cooper, whose Maestro played the festival in 2023 after premiering at Venice. That Maestro screening featured the vociferous participation of Leonard Bernstein’s surviving family members, as well as Cooper himself watching silently from the audience (the strike prevented him from doing more), a perfect companion to Cooper’s alternately reverent and over-the-top biopic. With two movies and two Best Picture nominations under his belt, a new Cooper project comes with expectations. As an awards-season personality, Cooper’s hyper-earnestness and increasingly closed-off persona have made his movies both highly anticipated and largely suspect. There will be a lot of skepticism heaped upon this movie, but the potential for a surprise-masterpiece narrative is there as well. Those first reactions out of the screenings should hold a lot of weight.
Is This Thing On? is out December 19. It’s a $15 pick.
The audiences at NYFF screenings are full of Upper West Side liberals, the kind of viewers who enjoyed watching Lydia Tár dress down that one Juilliard kid a few years ago. It’ll be fascinating to see how that cohort, sitting just a few miles south of Columbia University, reacts to Guadagnino’s After the Hunt, a film about generational resentments and accusations against a backdrop of higher education that got hammered after its Venice premiere. New York seems to be its last chance to get critical salvation.
After the Hunt is out October 10. It’s a $20 pick.
The Oscars race is increasingly a creature of the global film scene, and this year promises to be no exception, with films like Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value (a $30 pick in the MFL) and Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident ($15) getting major awards buzz. If you’re waiting to select your team, keeping an ear to the ground during NYFF can help you zero in on $2 or $3 buys that could help define your season. Among them are the Brazilian Oscar hopeful The Secret Agent ($5), Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice ($5), the Spanish trek through the desert Sirāt ($3), the German Oscar entry Sound of Falling ($3), and Sony Pictures Classics’ Japanese Hamlet riff, Scarlet ($3).
NYFF is one of the last chances for quieter movies to generate some awards traction. Director Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother ($5 in the MFL) won the top prize at Venice, but there’s nevertheless an enduring sense that the family dramedy starring Adam Driver, Cate Blanchett, and Vicky Krieps will be too small for awards season. (The Oscars have never given Jarmusch his due.) Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague ($5) and Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind ($5) both feature popular and talented casts in addition to the brilliant filmmakers, but neither film was a knockout at Cannes or Telluride — at least not enough to grab the spotlight from international favorites like Sentimental Value or It Was Just an Accident. They’ll need to break out in New York, or else their MFL potential will be limited to indie awards.
With the right buzz, any of these films could become a player — and a good value, if the price is right.
➼ Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite ($15)
➼ Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You ($8)
➼ Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon ($8)
➼ Harry Lighton’s Pillion ($5)
➼ Rebecca Zlotowski’s A Private Life ($5)
➼ Geeta Gandbhir’s The Perfect Neighbor ($2)
➼ Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus’s Cover-Up ($2)
➼ Ira Sachs’s Peter Hujar’s Day ($5)
➼ Kent Jones’s Late Fame ($2)
➼ Mark Jenkin’s Rose of Nevada ($1)
Just click the button below and select your team of eight movies. Good luck.
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