It’s that time again! We all picked our favorites at the end of the year; the guilds have spoken; critics groups have doled out their laurels (and/or fishes); and now, nearly a quarter of the way through 2026 (Thanks, Olympics), it’s finally time for the Academy to put a bow on the movies of 2025 with the Oscars. In advance of Sunday’s telecast – hosted once again by Conan O’Brien – airing at 4:00 PDT on ABC and Hulu (thanks, East Coast), your friends at the SunBreak gathered ’round the old roundtable to make our predictions on how the awards will (and should) go when all’s said and done.
Undertone brims with promise, but it’s undercooked
Horror movies often tap into the intersection of mortality and grief with a disarming fidelity seldom present in more literal-minded, non-scary mainstream movies. It’s one of many reasons I love the genre. Alongside the rollercoaster endorphin rush and dark escapism that draw me inexorably to them, the best horror films also serve as catharsis of the most profound variety.
Sirāt rattles the body to shock the soul
Instant reactions to movies playing at the Toronto International Film Festival, which is in full swing from September 4-14 with celebrities and films flooding downtown.
The Bride! was engrossing, unnerving and surprising
Long after her death, Mary Shelley (Jessie Buckley) takes a lead role in the story of The Bride! Together with a bored, free-spirited, but troubled young woman (also Jessie Buckley) she intends to dispense chaos in order to relieve her spirit of a story that she deems must be told. In a world where she not only wrote about Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, but they were real beings (manifested by her words or created in reality? We’ll never know) she burns to continue the tale that has yet to conclude in her mind.
Hoppers proves Pixar still hasn’t run out of good ideas
Unsurprisingly the studio has come up with a creative, silly, and emotional way to broach a complex subject once again. It’s not the first time they’ve laid their heavy hand on us about the environment, but this one might be the most direct discussion of what humans continue to do to the planet despite the plethora of warning signs it’s been giving us.
Suburban Fury allows Sarah Jane Moore to make her own myth
One of the best entries in last year’s SIFF Northwest Connections program is situated 800 miles south on I-5 and a half century in the past: the biography of Sarah Jane Moore, one of two women who independently attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford while he campaigned for election in California. Eschewing typical documentary conventions, the story of the would-be assassin is told by the subject herself, having been released from prison 32 years into her life sentence.
Pillion brings BDSM to the multiplex
Who could have possibly guessed that the squirmiest elements of watching a meek all-grown-up Dudley Dursley (Harry Melling) inadvertently stumble his way into a submissive arrangement with a godlike motorcycle dom played by Alexander Skarsgård would be the amount of holiday barbershop quartet singing?
How to Make a Killing taps the breaks on the Glen Powell Experience
John Patton Ford taps Glen Powell to star in his loose re-imagining of a 1949 black comedy in which an outcast needs to eliminate everyone on the family tree ahead of him in the line of succession to inherit a fortune. For once, his charisma isn’t enough to make it work.
BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions explodes the documentary as visual album
Kahlil Joseph’s multi-sensory film takes inspiration for W.E.B. Du Bois’s dream — unfinished at the time of his death, but realized decades later by a group of scholars led by Henry Louis Gates — of creating an Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience. Acting more as chief curator or executive producer than a typical film director, he assembles a richly textured visual album for the screen that includes a long list of talented filmmakers, collaborators, and guest stars.
Crime 101 strikes gold with Chris Hemsworth masterminding freeway robberies
Bart Layton’s newest crime thriller, Crime 101, has nearly everything going for it. A stacked cast led by Chris Hemsworth, beautiful cinematography from Erik Wilson, an intriguing story adapted from Don Winslow’s novella,, and so much more.