Matt at the Movies: “The Dirty Dozen” Oscar Buzz Fall Preview
At this time of year, when I’m not teaching or watching soccer you can find me in the friendly confines of a local movie theater with buttered popcorn in hand.
Today, we’ll focus our fall preview on the films that have the most “juice” coming out of festival season as they angle to be the darlings of awards season.
Each film will be rated with an “Oscar Meter,” with “five statues” being the most likely to secure big nominations. We’ll fill you in on some other major releases for the next three months, but today we have assembled our “dirty dozen” of films that have Hollywood buzz heading into the most exciting period of releases in 2025.
Honorable Mentions
First, the Honorable Mentions:
Anemone (10/10), Roofman (10/10), Hedda (10/22), Ballad of a Small Player (October 29), Predator: Badlands (11/7), Die, My Love (11/7), The Running Man (11/17), Wicked: For Good (11/21), and many more international features will debut during the winter months.
In Theaters
The History of Sound
Spill the Tea
Making its debut at Cannes, the buzzy period love story features two of cinema’s hottest young actors Paul Mescal (Aftersun) and Josh O’Connor (Challengers). Sharing the same name as the adapted Ben Shattuck short story collection, we follow two young men who meet at the Boston Music Conservatory in 1917 at the onset of World War I. After returning the two travel through rural Maine to collect and record folk songs which become the happiest time of their lives. Through recollections and memories the movie recounts their relationship while giving time for Paul Mescal to shine as Lionel. This seemingly has the bones to wow us like Brokeback Mountain or recent Luca Guadagnino entries (Call Me by Your Name / Queer) but also seems a little too tame in its exploration of love. I watched the film this week and it was deeper and larger in scope than I imagined. Mescal once again proves why he’s one of the best actors working today.
Matt at the Movies Score: 8.5/10
Matt at the Movies Oscar Meter: 🏆
(Best Actor)
One Battle After Another
Now Playing at Independent Picture House
Spill the Tea
The Letterboxd bros are pumped as Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaption of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland features the director’s largest ever budget ($130 million) and Leonardo DiCaprio at the helm of this wild action thriller. Leo plays a single father (Bob Ferguson) taking care of his teenage daughter when the ghosts of his past come calling from his prior work with a group of domestic revolutionaries named The French 75. Hot on their trail with full military capabilities at his disposal is Sean Penn (Col. Steven Lockjaw) who spent sixteen years in pursuit. The film shows the group’s previous exploits while Bob tries to get his daughter to safety. DiCaprio might be the star but Teyana Taylor might steal the show as his former fellow conspirator and lover. What can you say after watching the trailers besides the movie looks fun as hell. Getting How to Blow Up a Pipeline energy mixed with the Coen brothers goofy sensibilities. What feels like his most mainstream film since 1997’s Boogie Nights, this should be a great time at the theaters. Edit: Watched on opening night and it is my current #1 film so far in 2025. Stop reading and go watch this immediately!
Matt at the Movies Score: 9.5/10
Matt at the Movies Oscar Meter: 🏆🏆🏆🏆
(Best Pic, Best Actor, Supporting Actress, Director, Adapted Screenplay)
Coming Soon
October 3 - The Smashing Machine
Spill the Tea
For all the stick Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) has received the past decade for taking paychecks for terrible scripts, he may have hit the sweet spot portraying former wrestler/MMA fighter Mark Kerr in Benny Safdie’s new sports biopic.
The film won The Silver Lion recently at the Venice Film Festival, and featured a fifteen minute ovation from the crowd that brought Johnson to tears. The film follows Kerr’s journey through the early days of mixed martial arts with its grueling toll on body and mind. Emily Blunt plays Kerr’s wife and biggest supporter as the two try to navigate the uncertainty of his chosen path. The film takes a conventional sports trope path, but if it can deliver at the level of The Fighter or Warrior then you could see Johnson get an Oscar nod for a career defining role.
Matt at the Movies Oscar Meter: 🏆🏆
(Best Pic/Actor/Support Actress/Makeup & Hairstyling)
October 10 (Theaters) / October 24 (Streaming on Netflix) - A House of Dynamite
Spill the Tea
Kathyrn Bigelow is one of the few women directors in Hollywood history whose longevity and success has spanned five decades.
Her new film starring Rebecca Ferguson and Idris Elba is an action packed political thriller that mixes the behind the scenes D.C. politics of Zero Dark Thirty with the action packed tension of her Oscar winning The Hurt Locker. The oncoming threat of a nuclear missile launched at the city of Chicago sets a course of events that throw the White House and country into a frenetic panic as the clock ticks down. At 73 years old, Bigelow makes her first full length film since 2017’s Detroit and it could be one of her finest works in a long illustrious career. This will be in limited theatrical release before hitting Netflix on October 24th.
Matt at the Movies Oscar Meter: 🏆🏆
(Best Pic/Sound)
October 10 - After the Hunt
Spill the Tea
One of my favorite working directors, Luca Guadagnino, throws us a curveball from his usual exploration of self discovery and sexual awakenings to tackle power dynamics of a college professor’s role in a “he said, she said” sexual abuse accusation involving one of her students with a close colleague. Julia Roberts stars as a well respected Yale Professor with former baggage who is torn from finding out the truth, protecting her students, and dealing with high stakes academia politics in this charged drama. The film features Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri as the two at the center of the accusation along with Michael Stuhlbarg playing Roberts’ psychiatrist husband. With her reputation at stake and years of blurred lines with those she holds sway over, we see the fallout that brings shades of 2022’s Tár to mind to decipher what really happened in one of America’s most powerful institutions.
Matt at the Movies Oscar Meter: 🏆🏆
(Best Pic/Actress/Original Score)
October 15 - It Was Just an Accident
Spill the Tea
Jafar Panahi is one of the most celebrated but unknown directors in mainstream films working today. The Iranian director has had several critically acclaimed successes including 2022’s No Bears and 2018’s 3 Faces. He is part of the Iranian New Wave movement and in 2010 was banned by the government for twenty years from making films and traveling internationally (including a six year prison sentence). However he has continued making films that have been smuggled out of Iran to screen in film festivals, most notably Cannes while even being granted special permission to promote his films outside his country.
His newest film won the coveted Palme d’Or this year at Cannes and has a great chance of receiving an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature. The film centers around a man named Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi) who accidentally kills a dog with his car forcing him to pull into a garage to get his vehicle fixed. While there he meets Vahid who notices the man’s prosthetic leg and its sound reminds him of an officer who tortured him in a political prison. Vahid kidnaps Eghbal and rounds up others who were imprisoned at the same time to try and identify the man in order to dispel vengeance on their torturer. The film focuses on the morality of taking another’s life and what constitutes justice particularly with the vagueness of evidence they have.
Matt at the Movies Oscar Meter: 🏆🏆
(Best Pic/International Feature)
October 24 - Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
Spill the Tea
It feels we have been inundated with musician biopics the last decade with the payoff being great individual performances for subpar scripts. Last year’s major entry to the cannon, A Complete Unknown, starring Timothée Chalamet was a pleasant surprise that held up as both entertaining and well acted. This year multiple Emmy winning actor Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) portrays Bruce Springsteen as he prepares to make his classic 1982 album Nebraska.
As we work through the recording we are moved back and forth through Bruce’s life working his way from complicated childhood upbringings in New Jersey to the cusp of being America’s preeminent solo rock artist. You can’t say that White doesn’t have the chops or looks to pull off Springsteen, but will the writing of director Scott Cooper’s vision hold up? Jeremy Strong and Paul Walter Hauser also star in the film which has gotten favorable reviews since its premier at Telluride Film Festival.
Matt at the Movies Oscar Meter: 🏆
(Actor/Supporting Actor)
October 24 - Bugonia
Spill the Tea
Surprise surprise!
Yorgos Lanthimos and his strange brew of friends have come together for another absurdist dark comedy in this English remake of the 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet!. Starring his favorite muse Emma Stone as a pharmaceutical company CEO, two conspiracy pilled men (Jesse Plemons & Adian Delbig) kidnap her convinced she is an alien trying to destroy. The satire may have Stone as the vehicle for the plot but this feels like Jesse Plemons has been given the floor shine. In his second Lanthimos project (Kinds of Kindness) it’s clear that Plemons understands the assignment as fellow actors Stone, Rachel Weisz, and Colin Farrell previously embraced the farcical risibility that make his films work. This film seems more on par with Dogtooth or The Lobster than Poor Things in structure which hopefully leaves you scratching your head while wanting more at the end credits.
Matt at the Movies Oscar Meter: 🏆🏆🏆🏆
(Best Pic/Director/Actor/Supporting Actor/Cast/Adapted Screenplay)
November 7 - Sentimental Value
Spill the Tea
This may be my most anticipated film of the fall slate. Norwegian director Joachim Trier teams up with Renate Reinsve for their second film after the exceptional 2021 entry The Worst Person in the World. Premiering at Cannes, it won the Grand Prix award and focus on two estranged sisters coming together after the death of their mother. With her passing they must confront their formerly famous director father Gustav, played by Stellan Skarsgård, who abandoned them when they were children. Gustav has an idea for a new film to revive his career and ask his stage actress daughter Nora (Reinsve) to play the main role which she refuses forcing him to tap the talents of Hollywood actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning). Gustav tries to use the unfortunate events to repair the damage done to his daughters in this dramedy which has been nominated by Norway as its Best International Film entry to the Oscars.
This could be the year that veteran Swedish actor Skarsgård puts as a crowning achievement to a lifetime of film. He has always played cold and calculated roles and frequently collaborated with the provocative filmmaker Lars von Trier. While he excels at that frequency, I have found him to be wonderful in more mild mannered performances such as Good Will Hunting, Thor, and even Mamma Mia!. This role could get him his first acting nomination at the Oscars for a role he was born to play. Reinsve and Trier hopefully will get their plaudits as well come awards season.
Matt at the Movies Oscar Meter: 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆
(Best Pic/Director/Actress/Both Supporting/Original Screenplay)
November 7 (Theaters) / November 21 (Streaming on Netflix) - Train Dreams
Spill the Tea
This film premiered at Sundance and was snatched up by Netflix. Starring Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones, we follow the Granier family as husband Robert works the expanse of the United States building railroads. With long stretches away from his wife and daughter, Robert begins to struggle with changes happening in the world around him in the early 20th century. The film was adapted by Greg Kwedar (Sing Sing) from the 2011 Dennis Johnson novella and features a strong supporting cast including William H. Macy, Kerry Condon, and Clifton Collins Jr.. Having only seen the trailer the cinematography and landscapes set the scene for what feels like an examination of one’s life through the passing of time. Coming from a simple life to an age of invention and how it affects the psyche of blue collar workers is a really interesting concept to be flushed out. The Australian Edgerton has worked steadily in Hollywood the past two decades with few lead roles outside of 2022’s Paul Schrader film Master Gardener. He’s always been added value in supporting roles and I hope this film makes use of his often measured & stoic persona.
Matt at the Movies Oscar Meter: 🏆🏆
(Best Pic/Adapted Screenplay/Cinematography)
November 26 - The Secret Agent
Spill the Tea
Last year Brazil won its ever Academy Award for Best International Feature with the historical drama I’m Not Here, which centered around a family dealing with the fallout of the military coup d’etat in the 1970s. This year they strike again with Wagner Moura (Civil War/Narcos) starring as a persecuted teacher running from the same dictatorship in 1977.
Moura, who won best actor at Cannes this year, plays Marcelo who is on the run in the city of Recife trying to find his son during carnival. Spies, government officials, and murderers all seem to be on the trail in hopes of capturing him. Moura has been in our sphere for close to a decade through TV and films but this could be his biggest breakout yet even earning him a best Actor nomination. Will Brazil go back to back with Best International Feature? We’ll see soon enough.
Matt at the Movies Oscar Meter: 🏆🏆🏆
(Best International Feature/Actor/Original Screenplay)
November 27 - Hamnet
Spill the Tea
I feel it’s apropos that the final film has the most classical example of Oscar bait. A fictional historical drama about William Shakepseare and his wife Agnes after the death of their eleven year old son Hamnet directed by Oscar winner Chloé Zhao… do we need to examine further? Ok how about it’s produced by Stephen Spielberg, stars the amazing Jessie Buckley as Agnes, and oh there he is again Paul Mescal as William. Let’s throw in that it’s based on the 2020 award winning Maggie O’Farrell novel and call it a wrap.
The trailer exposed a lot more life than parents grieving over the death of their child. You see a passion between Agnes and William, sadness that fuels art, and a breathtaking series of shots from Zhao who is masterful at the helm. I’m not sure if this is “the” favorite heading into December, but it has all the makings of a great film that often catches the academy’s eye.
Matt at the Movies Oscar Meter: 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆
(Best Pic/Director/Actress/Supporting Actor/Adapted Screenplay/Cinematography/Costume/Editing)
After the Credits
This is just our fall preview, as there are many December releases looking to move the needle, including George Clooney in Jay Kelly (Dec. 5); the third Avatar installment from “Big Jim” Cameron, Avatar: Fire and Ash (Dec. 19); the Josh Safdie/Timothée Chalamet sports venture Marty Supreme (Dec. 25); and the highly anticipated Park Chan-wook film No Other Choice.
After a middling summer we are fully back in action. I’ll be writing more as the movies release over the coming weeks. Until then, thanks for reading Matt at the Movies here at Y’all Weekly and go support local cinema!