The Devil Wears Prada (2006) and The Devil Wears Prada 2 (2026)

Twenty years ago, The Devil Wears Prada (2006), based on the 2003 first novel by Lauren Weisberger (which spent six months on the NY Times bestseller list) was a very popular movie, and on several streaming services it still is.  Ten days ago (May 1st), 20th Century Studios (a division of The Walt Disney Company) released the sequel, titled The Devil Wears Prada 2. The release coincided more or less with what Wikipedia describes as “the world’s most prestigious and glamorous event in fashion, where fame, wealth power social influence and spectacle collide and peak simultaneously”: New York’s Met Gala, held on May 4th.  Nice timing. And while the new film’s title is unimaginative, it too appears to be a savvy move commercially. In just its first ten days on the big screen, The Devil Wears Prada 2 has been a huge success - bringing in over $432 million worldwide. That compares to a total box office gross for the original film of $325 million for its entire theatrical run in 2006. 

In a current article (May 7, 2026) in Forbes, Olivia Shalhoup asks the question “But is it marketing or nostalgia doing the heavy lifting?” Her answer? It is BOTH. Among many other facts and observations supporting this conclusion, she points to the May 2026  cover of Vogue - released on April 7th - which depicts Anna Wintour (who in her thirty-seven years as the fearsome editor-in-chief of that magazine, had never appeared on its cover) cozying up with actress Meryl Streep (who stars in both films, as a formidable, quietly autocratic boss of a Vogue-like magazine, who’s clearly modelled on Wintour).  

The Forbes article completely sidesteps the question of quality, of course. And on that, the answers are all over the map. Rotten Tomatoes’ “Tomatometer” favorability score for The Devil Wears Prada 2 among professional film critics at a pretty high 78%; the other film review amalgamation site, Metacritic, calculates an average critical score of 62 [“generally favorable”] based on 56 critics’ reviews. What about ordinary moviegoers? Rotten Tomatoes, gives a rating of 86% positive from people who’ve seen the movie. IMDB,  which calculates its user score from ratings submitted by IMDB members, gives it a score of 6.8, i.e. 68% favorable.  

It is hard to assess whether Prada 2 is better or worse than the original film. The Devil Wears Prada is one of those exceptional adaptations where a movie’s qualities outshine the novel on which it is based. The Devil Wears Prada 2 is not an adaptation of a book; rather, it was expressly written to be a sequel. Two decades ago, The Devil Wears Prada was a not only a hit but a cultural milestone. Its satire was fresh, its script was sharp, witty and quotable. Although entertaining and apparently popular with audiences, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is above all a copy. It will not be cherished or remembered as groundbreaking or original, because it’s not. But it does have a lot in common with the earlier movie.

The screenplays for both pictures are by Aline Brosh McKenna [whose other works include We Bought A Zoo (2011) and the TV series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015-2019)]. Both Prada 1 and Prada 2 were directed by the same guy, David Frankel [Marley and Me (2008)]. And most importantly, both films boast a terrific leading cast – played by the same actors. 

The central character in both pictures is Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) a fresh out of college aspiring journalist who, in The Devil Wears Prada, “settles” for a job as second assistant to the ultra-demanding “Miranda”, who runs Vogue - err, “Runway” magazine – the top selling, most influential fashion magazine in the world. Andy doesn’t give a hoot about “fashion”, but she signs on because, as she is told repeatedly, "hundreds of girls would die to have this job". And because she’s desperate to find any job in publishing. 

In Prada 1, Hathaway is terrific as the smart, ambitious young ingénue, but her character is still overshadowed by Streep’s Miranda, a larger-than-life character who dominates everyone at Runway and pretty much everyone else in the fashion world as well. Just as Runway is clearly a fictional version of Vogue, Miranda is  - as noted above - based on its long-time supreme ruler, Anna Wintour.  Streep’s portrayal of Miranda is screen perfection. She’s the one we love to hate, and she is what makes that first film so memorable and iconic. 

Miranda’s chief assistant is Emily (Emily Blunt). Although pleasing the ultra-demanding  Miranda is nearly impossible, Emily is good at her job and proud of it.  Perhaps a bit too proud. Andy, as she quickly learns, is the latest in a string of failed 2nd assistants, (all of whom Miranda also refers to as ‘Emily’) and she must bear the brunt not only of Miranda’s tyranny, but of Emily’s discouraging, overbearing treatment as well. Eventually, Andy finds a sort-of friend in Runway’s artistic director Nigel (Stanly Tucci), who helps Andy find her footing and succeed despite the seemingly insurmountable (albeit frequently amusing) hurdles.  

So what about The Devil Wears Prada 2?  While Streep was already at the top of her game in 2006, Prada 1 effectively launched the adult careers of Hathaway and Blunt.  All three, along with Tucci are featured again in Prada 2. Despite the passage of time, all three actresses are again excellent in the sequel - in part because the circumstances of each has changed and they are of course twenty years older and, maybe wiser for that. Andy no longer has bangs and is single. Emily is out of Runway, working at Dior and canoodling with a her billionaire boyfriend. Tucci’s role has diminished here in comparison to the first movie; and frankly,  it’s little surprising to find Nigel, still working for Miranda twentyb years on. 

Some of the secondary players from Prada 1 are still in the mix as well: like Tracie Thoms who plays Andy’s longtime friend Lily and Tibor Feldman who plays Ira Ravitz, the CEO of Runway’s parent company, ‘Elias-Clark’. There are also some new cast members in supporting roles, such as Kenneth Branagh as Miranda’s husband, Justin Theroux as Emily Blunt’s billionaire boyfriend, and BJ Novak as Jay Ravitz, Irv’s son (more or less the villain of the piece). One newcomer who stands out in a small-ish role is comedian Caleb Hearon as a beaming Second Assistant to Miranda (the job Andy once had).  Another difference from the first movie, in Prada 2, there are  bunches of celebrity cameos from people like Heidi Klum, Jon Batiste, Naomi Campbell, Ciara – and a special appearance by Lady Gaga.

Happily, a few important characters from Prada 1 are absent from the sequel – most notably Andy’s cute but useless boyfriend Nate (Adrian Grenier) and Christian (Simon Baker), a celebrity writer/journalist hoping to romance Andy.

Both films are a blend of glamour, satire and contradiction. Prada 1 was ostensibly a takedown of the fashion industry generally and the haute couture scene in particular, but was actually a seductive advertisement for the very thing it was mocking: the style, the extravagance.  In fact, the allure of the wealthy and the beautiful, more than the story, is what drew the audience to the movie!  Similarly, Prada 1, while supposedly a critique of the tyrannical boss symbolized by Miranda, she was ultimately the star of the film, an exalted personage that Andy and many moviegoers came to admire and even venerate. 

If anything, Prada 2 is even more glamorous than its predecessor, with all those cameo stars, with the billionaires and their the mega-yachts, their Hamptons estates, and so forth. As in the first movie, Andy’s supposed values are inconsistent with her actions: now supposedly a serious journalist dedicated to writing incisive features on important topics, she returns to the fashion mag Runway, and then spends most of Prada 2 fighting to save the magazine in the face of a new world turned against print media and increasingly toward digital content, online influencers, and the like. Out of a newfound loyalty to Miranda - who, while hardly a saint,  has mellowed a bit and sometimes actually appears human - Andy also schemes to save the boss’s career and influence. The common enemies are the billionaires, oligarchs and crass corporate suits who care not a whit for everything that Runway stands for (whatever that is), except the parts that can be monetized to make them richer.  

To the extent The Devil Wears Prada 2 is trying to be a message film, it is total BS. But it is a fun, entertaining, dazzling bit of BS.  It’s colorful, funny, even warmhearted at times, plus more fast-paced and actiony than Prada 1. As a copy, I’d say it’s not quite as good as the original, but not that different either. It’s a nice, highly enjoyable diversion from the scary and worrisome times we are living through.  

1 hour 55 minutes

Grade: B+

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is in wide release exclusively in theaters; streaming dates have not been announced at this time.

The Devil Wears Prada (2006) is available for streaming free with a subscription to Disney+, Hulu, or HBO Max; and rentable on AppleTV, Amazon and other platforms. 

A Magnificent Life (2025): Homage to Marcel Pagnol

by Len Weiler

The new animated film,  A Magnificent Life is written and directed by Sylvain Chomet, who is best known for his two earlier animated classics The Triplets of Belleville (2003) and The Illusionist (2010). This one is an animated documentary/bio-pic about the remarkable French playwright, screenwriter, film director and novelist Marcel Pagnol, most famous internationally  for his series of 1930s movies now known as, The Marseille Trilogy consisting of Marius (1931), Fanny (1932) and César (1936). Pagnol is also known in this country for two connected films, both released in 1986, eight years after his death: Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring. These award winning films were not directed by Pagnol, of course; rather, they are adaptations of a two-part Pagnol novel, The Water of the Hills [L’Eau des collinses], from 1962.

Pagnol is considered one of the greatest French auteurs of the last century, and he is revered  by many in that country as a national treasure. Director Chomet clearly shares that view. As a result, A Magnificent Life comes across as an homage as much as a documentary. 

I wrote an extended piece on The Marseille Trilogy back in April 2020, as part of my series entitled Stuff to Watch at Home During a Pandemic.  You may not have seen any of those films, but you have likely heard of Alice Waters’ famed restaurant Chez Panisse, or perhaps her Cafe Fanny, or maybe Chez Panisse offshoot César, now closed and replaced by Bar Panisse. Panisse, Fanny and César are all key characters in the trilogy, of which Waters was and is clearly a big fan. So am I.  If you’d like to check out my review of The Marseille Trilogy, here’s a link.

Perhaps the best thing about A Magnificent Life is that it spends a good third of its running time, essentially the entire second act, showing how the Trilogy came about, difficulties with the American production company funding the project, and the groundbreaking decision to have the characters speak in the Marseillais dialect rather than standard French, which in turn affected how the Trilogy's sterling cast was recruited.  In fact, the most interesting and fun aspect for me had to do with Pagnol’s dealings with the larger-than-life Marseille actor Raimu, whose character, César, was at the center of all three movies. 

The animation is also lovely. It's more realistic, less exaggerated than Chomet's's earlier films, although the characters' faces retain a bit of the grotesque and are very expressive.  

The other interesting thing about the film is how it’s framed. It starts in 1955 when sixty-year-old Marcel Pagnol, whose best cinematic work is seemingly behind him, accepts an assignment from Elle magazine to write a series of articles about his childhood – only to find that remembering the early part of his life is unexpectedly tough. So hard, in fact, that the usually prolific writer finds himself with a bad case of writer’s block. Until he is rescued by the appearance of “Little Marcel” – an imagined image of himself as a boy - who commences to guide his elder self, rekindling his recollection of key moments in his life and career. These reminiscences make up the film retrospective we get to see. And it explains the French title: Marcel et Monsieur Pagnol.

There are some problems, however. For one thing, the film does little to make you care about Pagnol; you need to bring that care to the film yourself. Additionally, A Magnificent Life tries to pack way too much biographical information into too short a time – just ninety minutes to encapsulate a lifetime of accomplishment. The film tries to compensate by speeding up the passage of time, thus short-changing many of Pagnol’s formative moments and the great man’s other works. For one example, the third segment of the Trilogy – César – barely gets a mention; for another, his career post-1955, including several very successful novels, is largely ignored.

I found the movie lovely to look at and kind of interesting (for reasons stated above), but not especially compelling. So, unless you are French, a devotee of The Marseille Trilogy, or a cinephile lover of animation, you may find it hard to love this movie.

1 hour 30 minutes

Grade: B-

Widely released on March 27, 2026, but after one week, showing only only at select theaters; expected on streaming and PPV (rental) platforms within about two to four weeks

Sirat (2025): Life Ecstatic & Harrowing

By Len Weiler

Sirat (or As-Sirat) is, according to Islam, the bridge which, on the Day of Resurrection, the soul of every person must pass over in order to enter Paradise (“Jannah”). The Sirat - said to be thinner than a strand of hair and as sharp as the sharpest sword - traverses the hellfire of purgatory, the heat of which causes many to fall. The righteous will cross without difficulty; the daunting challenge is for the rest of us. 

Sirat is also the title of the fourth feature by Spanish director Oliver Laxe. The movie is not about Islam or any particular faith nor a parable about righteousness or its opposite.   But it is about a journey, ultimately a treacherous one. And about family, mortality, and much more. By the time the credits started to roll, the title of the movie seemed quite apt to me - in fact, just about perfect. 

It was nominated for two Oscars, including Best International Film. While Sirat did not win that category, I would not have been unhappy if it had: it was/is the most unusual and deeply gripping of the five nominated films - awesomely beautiful, thrillingly dramatic, startling and more than a little unsettling –  an unforgettable experience.  Its other Oscar nomination was for Best Sound, also totally justified. The sound mixing as well as the film’s soundtrack contrinuted greatly to the gripping tension of the dramatic scenes and carried me away during the scenes featuring electronic dance music (EDM).

The movie takes place in Morocco, where hundreds of devotees have gathered in a remote location deep in the desert for a rave - a mixed crowd of mostly European, countercultural men and women, seemingly transported from the late 1960s to the current day - willing to travel far away from the confining rules and expectations of Western civilization in order to gather with like-minded humans, seeking a kind of ecstasy attained via dancing. The pulsing EDM, played ultra-loud, produces a trancelike experience for the dancers, spiritual in a deeply primitive way - which seems to be the draw.  

Watching the throng of dancing ravers somehow reminded me of the euphoric, celebratory crowd dancing to a thumping disco beat at the outset of Sorrentino’s awesome film The Great Beauty (2013) – but at Sirat’s rave it’s not a social, party-like atmosphere so much as a meditative, beatific one.

The movie’s narrative begins with a father – Luis (Sergi López), a burly, middle aged Spanish man - accompanied by Esteban - his roughly eleven-year-old, son. Luis has come to this remote place searching for his adult daughter, who has recently gone missing. One of her friends thought she might be attending this rave in the desert. Luis and Esteban are fish out of water here - but they are determined.  Holding a battered photograph of the missing daughter, they wander through the crowd asking if anyone has seen her or knows her. They eventually make the acquaintance a group of five ravers, Josh, Tonin, Bogui, Stef (Stefania) and Jade who, like everyone else Luis and Esteban have met, say they do not know or recognize the girl in the photo. But these folks, at least, are sympathetic; they suggest that she may be headed for another rave which is supposed to take place next week near the Southern border of the country.

Out of the blue, a convoy of Moroccan troops arrives on the scene announcing that a major military conflict has broken out. Everyone must leave immediately. The disappointed crowd packs up and heads for the exit. In a long, dusty caravan of motley vehicles, Luis and Estaban find themselves just behind their new acquaintances, and when those guys suddenly veer off the main exit road onto an unused alternate path, Luis makes the decision to follow.  A few minutes along this new road, the ravers stop and admonish Luis to turn back – the route they will be following is long, rough and very difficult. While they are in rugged military style vehicles, Luis’s beat up old mini-van is completely unsuited for the dangerous terrain. Luis decides to continue regardless. I have no alternative, he says. 

Thus begins a journey both physical and metaphorical, exhilarating and devastating, gorgeous and horrifying, sweet and sobering. It’s a road trip across an unforgiving landscape on crude, unmarked, unpaved rutted tracks. Traveling across the arid, yet starkly beautiful no-man’s-land, they face howling, desert sandstorms and, paradoxically, a perilous, unbridged river crossing. At one point, fearing they may be in or near an active war zone, the group opts for an alternative route across the mountains, which proves even more perilous. The roads are rocky, impossibly narrow and steep - with sheer cliffs above and below. With no prospect of help in the event of a breakdown or other catastrophe, the traverse is both thrilling and nerve-racking, carrying strong echoes of the knife-edge mountain crossing in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s classic The Wages of Fear (1953).

Danger and crises serve to bring people together. And in Sirat, we have two disparate groups compelled by circumstance to become one: Luis and young Estebon on the one hand and the five ravers on the other. As they get to know one another, we get to know them too – as individuals rather than as archetypes.  

The folks I’ve called the ravers, become distinct individuals: Josh, Tonin, Bigui, Stef (Stefania) and Jade.  Their lives have not been easy – you can read this in their faces. And in their bodies: Bigui is missing his right forearm, Tonin has a makeshift prosthesis for a missing lower leg, one of the women walks with a limp – scars of some of life’s hardships and maybe some bad choices – although there is no suggestion of regret, no bitterness. They are generous, kind and caring toward one another.  It’s a close-knit all-for-one-and-one-for all communal life. During a quiet moment, Esteban - whose mother is deceased and his sister missing - asks one of the men (Bigui, I think) whether he sometimes thinks about his family or misses them … and Bigui responds, "I prefer this family." Over time, Luis and Estebon seem a part of this makeshift family as well. 

There is a sweetness to these developing relationships taking place, as they do, amid an increasingly precarious journey. And light, even humorous moments as well, such as one evening when Tonin transforms his scarred knee (absent the prosthetic lower leg) into a quite believable puppet and puts on a very funny puppet show.

These scenes are a respite from the growing anxiety of the journey, any emotional security you might feel in the camaraderie and laughter would be misplaced. Bad things CAN happen to good people. The natural environment is heartless. Fate plays no favorites. The possibility of injury or death, always a companion to physical risk, is ubiquitous; there's a sense of dread to the story. Despite our growing attachment, not everyone will survive. 

Which is a reason Sirat may not be for everybody. Yet, the shocking final scenes help to make the movie feel so raw and so real, and so riveting.  So intellectually and emotionally provocative. So  recommendable. 

“An experience of transfixing power; for sheer visceral excitement and sustained emotional force, I haven’t encountered its equal this year." – The New Yorker

    “Original, explosive, and ovation-worthy cinema.” – The Times

    “A wild, apocalyptic epic.” – Screen Rant

    “So intense you’ll want to scarper, but so riveting you can’t leave. ... If only all movies took swings this bold.” - Empire 

    *  *  *

1 hour 54 minutes

Grade: A 

Scheduled for release March 24 to rent or purchase on Amazon, Apple TV and other VOD platforms; Available free with subscription to Hulu beginning April 6, 2026

If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You (2025) and Sorry, Baby (2025): What I’ve Been Watching Lately, part 3

By Len Weiler

If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You 

I watched If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You on HBO Max. (For other home viewing options, see below.) The movie stars Rose Byrne as a woman at her wits end in a performance that has netted her a well-deserved Oscar nomination in the best actress category. She plays Linda, whose life as the film opens is already frazzled, juggling a professional work life with solo-parenting of a sick child. 

Linda’s perky young daughter has a feeding disorder requiring a feeding tube to get adequate nutrition; and now her treatment center is threatening to refuse further services if Linda can’t get her to meet a seemingly impossible weight gain goal - even as they assure Linda that “this is not your fault”. Linda herself is a psychotherapist with some impossibly needy clients who add - not insignificantly -  to her anxiety load.  As if this wasn’t bad enough, early in the film Linda’s apartment ceiling collapses, flooding the place and leaving a gaping, soul-sucking hole, forcing Linda to move with her daughter to a shabby motel. And the landlord is no help when the contractor he hired to fix things takes a vacation soon after. 

Where’s her husband in all this?   Charles (Christian Slater) is a ship’s captain who, because of his frequent travel,  is rarely around  – in fact, we don’t even see him until near the very end of the picture – so he’s no help. Rather, his obtuseness and his cavalier response to Linda’s anxiety only make things worse.  Her own therapist, beautifully played by Conan O’Brian, is aggravatingly useless as well.  And these are only some of the calamities that come Linda's way.  It's no wonder she is freaking out. 

While much of this plays as a dark comedy, Leah Greenblatt in the NYTimes puts it well when she writes, “Even watching the film feels harrowing, a sort-of two hour panic attack by proxy.”  Yet If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You IS a well made movie and Byrne - somewhat of a surprise choice for this definitely frantic and fraught role, is fantastic in it.  Despite all the frazzling, I couldn’t stop watching. 

At the same time, I was relieved when it was over, too .

While the story is based on writer-director Mary Bronstein’s own traumatic experiences with a similarly ill child a decade ago (and she has made it clear that the movie is no autobiography), even she doesn’t know quite how she came up with the title If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You. But it fits.

1 hour 53 minutes

Grade: B+

Streaming on HBOMax; and also available to rent on Prime Video, Apple TV and other platforms.

Sorry, Baby 

This independent film written, directed and starring relative unknown Eva Victor, has been a favorite  of many film critics and other aficionados ever since its premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, receiving numerous awards as the best first feature film by a new filmmaker. It has a high critical rating from review aggregators Metacritic (score of 90) and Rotten Tomatoes (97).  I watched this one on HBO Max, too.

I didn’t like Sorry, Baby at all. To be fair, I only watched the first third of the picture, so there‘s the possibility that I might have come around to liking it if I had stuck it out a while longer. Still, this is far from a common practice, in fact it’s rare for me to bail on a movie at all,  particularly if it is reputed to be a very good, worthy film.  (I was seconded in my decision to quit by my viewing companion/spouse., so it’s not just me!)

Larry Lee thought much more highly the movie than I did, ranking it number ten in his recent list of the ten best movies of 2025, describing it as “a nuanced, entertaining yet emotionally honest movie” with “sly, quirky humor and terrific performances” 

Sorry, Baby is centered on a young woman named Agnes, the victim of a sexual trauma several years ago, who’s still struggling to deal with what happened, while others in her life have moved along with their lives.  

Why did I bail? It isn’t the subject matter. In fact, the core issue underlying Agnes’s situation was only beginning to appear on the horizon when I quit watching. Rather, it is the largely dull, pedestrian dialogue and the flat, nearly emotionless delivery of that dialogue by Agnes and her companions – in short, writing so poor that it called attention to itself. And, while I recognize that this is a first film for Ms. Victor, that’s no justification for its self-conscious approach to the cinematography - a typical example (repeated several times in various ways) being the choice to have the camera linger on the door for five or ten seconds after all the people who had been talking have left the room. Nothing metaphorical about that – just dull.

Given that my verdict on this movie is a minority view and that I opted  to turn it off prematurely, you may want to see it anyway.  But you ought to have a plan B.

1 hour 43 minutes

Grade: C

Streaming on HBOMax; Rentable on Prime Video, AppleTV, Fandango and other PPV platforms. 

The Best Movies of 2025: Larry's Top Ten and Much More

By Larry Lee

INTRODUCTION

2025 has come and gone and what a year it was.  Those of us who see a lot of movies know that studios hold back their Oscar-worthy movies until the late fall or even the Christmas season.  (This year, Marty Supreme was released on December 25, 2025.)  I suppose the theory is that releasing a movie so late in the year ensures the films are fresh in voters’ minds during the (January) awards nomination season.  But I wonder if that reasoning is valid, especially given today’s 24/7 media landscape.  Sometimes a movie takes a while to worm itself into my consciousness, and an early release can allow for word-of-mouth to spread the news of a good movie.  That was certainly the case for Everything Everywhere All at Once, which was released in April 2022 and went on to win the Best Picture Oscar 10 months later.  Ditto Nomadland, with a February 2021 release.  An earlier release date can allow people more time to catch up to a movie on streaming that they missed during the original theatrical run.  (It’s a dirty little secret that Motion Picture Academy voters often do not see all the potentially nominate-able films before casting their votes.)  

[Note: As with Nomadland, above, clicking on any similarly highlighted title will take to our         previous review of that film on NotesOn Films.]

This year saw these late-in-the-year releases:

• Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (Oct. 24)
• Begonia (Oct. 31)
• Frankenstein (Nov. 7)
• Die My Love (Nov. 7)
• Nouvelle Vague (Nov. 14
• Train Dreams (Nov. 21)
• Rental Family (Nov. 21)
• Jay Kelly (Dec. 5)
• Hamnet (Dec. 5)
• Ella McCay (Dec. 12)
• Marty Supreme (Dec. 25)
• The Housemaid (Dec. 25)
• Avatar: Fire and Ash (Dec. 25)

Although only one of these movies made my top ten (Marty Supreme), I can see why a studio might have believed these were Oscar-worthy.  There is certainly a lot of quality there, with past Oscar-winners and movie stars galore.  But here at the home of the Half-Oscars™, we can vividly recall the movies from the first half of the year!  For a look back, here is a reiteration of my 2025 Half-Oscars™ list, updated with their current streaming homes: 

10. The Friend  (rent on Prime for $4) 
9.  The Assessment  (Hulu, rent on Prime for $4)
8.  Companion  (Prime, HBOMax)
7.  Freaky Tales  (HBOMax, $5 rental on Prime)
6.  Quisling: The Final Days (Prime) 
5.  My Dead Friend Zoe  ($4 rental on Prime)
4.  The Penguin Lessons  (Netflix, $6 rental on Prime)
3.  The Life of Chuck (Hulu, $5 rental mom Prime) 
2.  The Ballad of Wallis Island  (Prime)
1.  There’s Still Tomorrow  ($4 rental on Prime)

Recommended Movies from 2025

To winnow the many available movies down to a Top Ten list is difficult and in some part admittedly due to personal prejudices and preferences.  In addition to those films appearing on my 2025 Half-Oscars™ list, here are some worthy movies from the latter half of 2025 that failed —narrowly— to make my Top Ten list.

•  Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight  ($6 Prime rental) (99 min.)  This one came and went from the theaters quickly and that’s a shame, for it tells a story that hasn’t been much told:  the life and fate of White Rhodesian landowners near the end of the Bush Wars in what is now Zimbabwe.  Told from the perspective of a young girl, who has amazing freedom to roam around the sprawling property, this was clearly a labor of love for Embeth Davidz (Schindler’s List, Mansfield Park, Bridget Jones’s Diary), who wrote, directed and stars in the movie, bringing Alexandra Fuller’s book to the screen.  Nuanced and beautiful. 

  Sinners  (Prime) (137 min.)  Momentum is building for this movie, which was justrecognized with a record 16 Oscar nominations.  That’s 2 more than Titanic, La La Land, and All About Eve (the latter of which, to be fair, achieved its total without a Best Song or Visual Effects nomination).  Only history will tell whether this movie is an important film or just a really fun one.  (Back in 1967, people probably wondered the same thing about The Graduate.)  But this mashup story combining elements of Southern Gothic, violent race revenge, and vampire horror movie in order to produce an allegory of race relations in America was certainly unique.  I felt the film tried to tell too many stories, however, with three different movies smushed together.  Are White people trying to take Black people’s power?  Or just their music and culture?  Or, more benignly, are they simply trying to achieve the neo-liberal goal of complete racial integration, albeit at the loss of racial independence?  I’m not at all sure but the movie is well worth seeing and talking about, as I am sure film students and scholars will be for years to come.

•  It Was Just an Accident  (in theaters, $10 Prime rental) (103 min.)  Appearing on many Top Ten lists and nominated for the International Feature Film Oscar, director Jafar Panahi’s latest movie, like some of his other films, was filmed in secret in Iran.  It was then smuggled out of the country with French financial backing, and became France’s submission to the foreign film Oscar competition.  It is also a worldwide hit, with several international honors, including the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.  Here is the set-up:  Years after he was imprisoned and tortured by an oppressive government, car mechanic Vahid believes he has crossed paths with his torturer in civilian life.  He kidnaps him and takes him to others who were similarly brutalized by the man to ask what he should do with him.  Should they take revenge and kill him, and thereby risk becoming that which they abhor?  Or just move on with their lives?  This is an intense movie that asks big questions.

•  Nouvelle Vague (Netflix) (106 min.) Director Richard Linklater’s loving and creative homage to the beginning of the French New Wave and it’s place in film history, with a terrific performance by Zooey Deutch as Jean Seeberg.  I previously reviewed the movie here. 

•  Eddington (HBOMax, $5 Prime rental)  (148 min.)  Director Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar) has given us a movie set in the early Covid-era that is so meaty, so chock-full of stuff to chew on, that one struggles to know where to start.  Immigrant rights, Black Lives Matter, religious cults, mask mandates, six feet buffer zones, conspiracy theories, corrupt government officials, liberal snowflakes protesting, police violence, corporate interests building data centers.  Oh, and a murder-revenge plot.  Some might complain the story is ultimately hollow because we cannot tell where Aster stands on any of this, but 20 years hence, I think we might see this movie somewhat differently:  as a prescient omen that our Covid-era society was rotting from the inside out.  Fascinating and entertaining. With Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal.

•  Eleanor the Great  ($6 Prime rental)  (98 min.)  On its face, the story of a elderly gentile woman (June Squibb) pretending to be a Jewish Holocaust survivor is off-putting.  I mean, c’mon man!  I certainly prejudged this movie along these lines and initially didn’t give Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut a fair shot.  But on second viewing, I saw that the plot plausibly shows how a good woman could have done such as thing, and that the movie is not really about that big lie.  Instead, the movie is about the feeling of loss when a loved one dies, and how that grief can distort your life.  Indeed, how the grief can become your life.  The acting is uniformly superb, especially Erin Kellyman (who I think was better than One Battle After Another’s Chase Infiniti) and Ukranian-born actress Rita Zohar as Bessie, Eleanor’s best friend.  

•  Blue Moon (in theaters, $20 Prime rental)  (100 min.)  Director Richard Linklater (Hit Man, Boyhood, the Before Sunrise trilogy) has had a year, releasing two very different but high-quality films: Nouvelle Vague and Blue Moon.  The latter is a showcase for Ethan Hawke, who plays famed lyricist Lorenz Hart.  The movie is set on the opening night of the now-classic musical, Oklahoma!.  But that massive Broadway triumph was created by Hart’s former writing partner Richard Rodgers with his new writing partner, Oscar Hammerstein III.  Having been cast aside by Rodgers, the evening is a professional nadir for Hart and he seems to know it, and although he’s trying to be a good sport about it, the bitterness can’t help bubbling up in sad and amusing ways.  Hawke was deservedly nominated for a Best Actor Oscar.  With Andrew Scott and Margaret Qualley.  

•  Rental Family  (in theaters, $20 Prime rental)  (110 min.)  Brendan Fraser does his best work since his career renaissance in 2022’s The Whale (for which he won an Oscar), portraying an American actor working in Japan who finds work pretending to be a woman’s husband and the father of her young, mixed-race daughter.  The set-up seems preposterous—the fakery is intended to enhance the girl’s chances of being accepted into a prestigious school—until we learn that businesses proving such faux family members are a real thing in Japan.  And acting is just pretending anyway, isn’t it?  But the emotions aren’t real, are they?  Are they?!  With Mari Yamamoto (Pachinko) and Takahiro Hira (Shōgun).

•  If I Had Legs I’d Kick You  ($5 Prime rental)  (113 min.)  Rose Byrne (Bridesmaids, Juliet Naked) gives a justly admired, Oscar-nominated performance as a psychiatrist whose life pushes her to the brink of sanity.  She has a husband away at work for weeks at a time (he’s a sea captain), a severely-disabled daughter, a newly flooded apartment, raging insomnia, and some crazy, crazy patients.  This is a portrayal of a woman’s extreme difficulty with work-life balance on atomic steroids.  With rapper A$AP Rocky (Highest 2 Lowest) and Conan O’Brien.

•  Jay Kelly  (Netflix) (132 min.)  George Clooney is the prototypical American movie star, having done some truly admirable work (The Descendants, The American, Up in the Air, Michael Clayton, Good Night and Good Luck, Three Kings, Syriana), some Hollywood catnip (Oceans 11, Out of Sight, Intolerable Cruelty, Gravity, Ticket to Paradise, The Perfect Storm) and some pretty goofy yet entertaining stuff (Hail, Caesar!, Burn After Reading, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Men Who Stare at Goats).  So now we have him playing a Clooney-esque character in Jay Kelly, who is questioning his decision to prioritize his career over his family.  He’s quite good here, but probably not good enough to escape the criticism that he appears to just be playing himself.  But even if that’s true, they said the same thing about Cary Grant and how did that turn out?  

•  Train Dreams  (Netflix)  (102 min.)  This surprise nominee for the Best Picture Oscar is a beautiful, elegiac movie set in the Pacific Northwest in the early part of the 20th Century; that is, at the tail end of the Old West.  Robert Granier (Joel Edgerton) works as a logger and railroad worker.  But the world is changing fast, and life for Robert and his wife, Gladys (Felicity Jones) will prove vulnerable to the vagaries and brutalities inherent in their rural, once bucolic, life.  Smart and touching.  With William H. Macy (Fargo, The Cooler) in a small but key role.  

I recommend all the above movies.  But here are my Top Ten movies for 2025:

LARRY'S TOP TEN MOVIES FOR 2025

10.  Sorry, Baby  (HBOMax, $5 Prime rental)  (103 min.)  It’s difficult to compare a movie with a large
cast and historical scope (like One Battle After Another or Marty Supreme or Sinners) with this small, introspective movie.  But don’t let that fool you.  Sorry, Baby is a moving film about a modern concern:  sexual assault, and how to move past the trauma.  Sorry, Baby is about a young academic named Agnes at a small college who is assaulted by a colleague.  The film makes my list because of its honest emotions, sly, quirky humor, and terrific performances by writer/director Eva Victor as Agnes, Naomi Ackie as Agnes’s best friend, and Lucas Hedges as the neighbor.  John Carroll Lynch has a brief standout scene as a stranger who comforts Agnes.  Despite the subject matter, this one is not a depressing slog (for example, we never actually see the assault) but a nuanced, entertaining yet emotionally honest movie.

9.  The Penguin Lessons (Netflix, $6 rental on Prime) (111 min.)  A holdover from my 2025 Half-
Oscars™ list, memories of this movie keep popping up in my mind.  Don’t assume this is a clichéd story of a cute animal teaching life lessons to a stupid human.  (OK, there is a little of that.)  There’s much more to the movie.  Steven Coogan (Philomena, The Trip to Italy) is just right as the depressed, drifting British expat, teaching English at a fancy boy’s school in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1976.  His life is on a downward spiral and we get the feeling this is his last stop before personal oblivion.  But the military junta is oppressing the civilian populace, people are disappearing, and regular people must find a way through the terror to live their lives.  What can one do in the face of such injustice in society?  What can he do?  Based on a true story.  Recommended.

8.  No Other Choice  (in theaters)  (149 min.)  There was early buzz for this movie, and it was shortlisted for the International Feature Film Oscar.  Alas, it was not meant to be, for although consistently recognized at international film festivals, No Other Choice won no Oscar love.  That’s a shame, for this dark yet funny movie from legendary Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) was great fun and taps into today’s anxiety over job security in a changing, globalized world that we see here in America—tariffs, anyone?—and around the world.  (See, e.g., the Yellow Vest movement in France.)  Recently laid-off employee Man-Su, played by international superstar Lee Byun-hun (Squid Game, Terminator Genisys, RED 2) will do anything to regain his former income and the social standing that came with it.  And he has a good idea how to achieve that.  A fun, supercharged ride.   

7.  The Life of Chuck  (Hulu, $5 rental on Prime) (111 min.)  Another holdover from my 2025 Half-Oscars™ list, this is one of the best cinematic adaptations of a Stephen King story since, possibly, Stand By Me in 1986.  Unlike most Stephen King stories, however, this is no horror story but is what might be called speculative fiction or sci-fi adjacent.  The title does not lie, for this movie is indeed a story about the life of someone named Chuck, although the viewer might be slightly befuddled by the goings-on at first.  But stick with it and you will be rewarded with a satisfying story and an emotionally powerful finale.  As I said in a previous post:  “[I]n the end, you will ponder a life well-lived, however short, and perhaps consider all the people who have populated your life through the years.” 

6.  The Ballad of Wallis Island  (Prime) (99 mins.)  The third of four movies from my 2025 Half-Oscars™ list to make my Top Ten, this movie is the type of quirky dramedy the British do so well.  I loved the premise:  What would you do, and how would you feel, if the pinnacle of your professional and emotional life converged in your 20s and then suddenly disappeared?  What would the rest of your life look like?  Would you spend your remaining days chasing the same high?  And then what if, after years of predictable disappointment, you had a chance to recapture that high point, if only for a moment?  Tom Basden (After Life) plays Herb McGwyer, a folk singer and songwriter who enjoyed fame and fortune years ago as part of a performing duo with Nell Mortimer, played by Carey Mulligan (Maestro, Saltburn, Promising Young Woman, An Education).  After awhile they split up, she quit the music business and moved on.  But Herb, alone with his memories, is still chasing fame and fortune.  A goofy millionaire might give them a second chance, but is that even possible?  Tender and melancholic, with plenty of odd comedic moments to propel this unusual story along.

5.  The Secret Agent  (in theaters)  (161 min.)  It feels like Brazil is having a moment.  Last year, I’m Still Here was one of the best, and most honored, movies of the year.  This year, Apocalypse in the Tropics was shortlisted for the feature-length documentary Oscar, and 2002’s City of God (stream on Paramount+ or Kanopy, $4 rental on Prime) was #15 on the New York Time’s Top 100 movies of the quarter century.  I have previously touted 2021’s 7 Prisoners (on Netflix) and the 2023 documentary Skin of Glass, both of which were shot in Brazil.  In The Secret Agent, a regular guy, played by Walter Moura (Narcos, Civil War) is being persecuted by the powers that be.  Is it the military junta?  Corrupt politicians?  Ruthless corporate interests?  It is not initially clear, but he has to run and hide.  Fortunately, it is the 1970s, there is no internet, and Brazil is a very big place, so he is not initially discovered.  By the time he is, we have been treated to several wonderful set pieces—the opening scene is fantastic—and really get a sense of what life was like back then in Brazil.    

4.  Marty Supreme  (in theaters) (149 min.)  Timothée Chalamet has quietly become one of America’s greatest actors.  Call Me By Your Name, Lady Bird, Little Women, Dune: Part One, Wonka, Dune: Part Two, A Complete Unknown.  It’s an impressive resumé, we can now add Marty Supreme to the list.  We should take a moment to admire the faith and audacity of director Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems), who saw the story of a fast-talking Jewish New York ping pong hustler in the 1950s had the potential to be such a compelling movie.  But it is compelling, as Marty Mauser (based on true-life table tennis champion Marty Reisman) wheedles and cajoles his way to Japan with the aim of competing in the table tennis world championship.  Watching his journey is like riding a roller coaster through a world of hustlers, gangsters, condescending corporate types, and implacable Asian table tennis players, and reminds us there are other stories of the American Jewish diaspora that are largely unrelated to the Holocaust.  Watching the movie, I was reminded that the mid-20th Century was a time when American Jews took pride in the many athletic heroes who were shared their faith, from Sandy Koufax and Hank Greenberg, to Dolph Schayes, Sid Luckman, and Ron Mix.  Marty Mauser (Reisman) fits comfortably within this universe, albeit in a fringe sport.  Be that as it may, Marty Supreme is immensely entertaining and boasts terrific performances by Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A’zion, Tyler the Creator, and Kevin O’Leary.  Blink and you’ll miss author Pico Iyer and director Abel Ferrara in small roles, and former NBA pros Kemba Walker and Tracey McGrady as members of the Harlem Globetrotters.

3.  Sentimental Value  (in theaters, $15 Prime rental) (133 min.)  Possibly the most impressive movie I’ve seen this year, this one has no sweeping panorama like Marty Supreme or historical scope like One Battle After Another.  The sweep here is emotional, for this is a smaller, more introspective movie about a creative family (they work in the theater) with some rather significant interpersonal, familial issues to work through.  Stellan Skarsgård is great as the brilliant, professionally- and publicly-lauded father who successfully pursued his art and career at the expense of his role as a husband and father.  Following up on The Worst Person in the World, her 2021 collaboration with director Joachim Trier, Renate Reinsve plays Skarsgård’s actress daughter and continues her admirable professional upward arc; she was justly rewarded with an Oscar nomination for Best Actress this time around.  (In between, she appeared in two quietly disturbing movies in 2024:  Armand and A Different Person, both of which are worth a viewing.)  Sentimental Value, a Norwegian movie, was nominated for a whopping nine Oscars:  Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas were also nominated for acting Oscars along with Skarsgård and Reinsve.  (Oddly, the movie was not nominated for the new Oscar for Best Casting.)  This is an incredibly well-acted movie in which the grievances feel familiar and the emotions real.  

2.  There’s Still Tomorrow  ($4 rental on Prime) (118 min.)  It’s odd how some foreign language movies somehow catch the interest of American audiences and critics, while others fall by the wayside.  This year’s international darlings are Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value from Norway, and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent from Brazil, both Oscar-nominated for Best Picture (and both on this Top Ten list).  In addition, Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, from France but in Farsi, won many international awards.  There’s Still Tomorrow, from Italy, is predictably missing from the Oscar hype-machine, probably because it was made in 2023 but released here with little fanfare in early 2025.  But that you will see a more satisfying and original movie this year is unlikely.  Filmed in beautiful black-and-white with just a few touches of magical realism, the film tells the story of a poor Italian family in the immediate post-WWII period, a time when American soldiers are still posted in their city.  Paola Cortellisi impressively co-wrote, directed, and stars as Delia, the nearly illiterate, put-upon wife and mother holding the family together despite a physically abusive, hard-drinking and philandering husband, a verbally abusive invalided father-in-law, and three unappreciative children.  We follow Delia as she proceeds through her daily life, cobbling small jobs together and quietly suffering one indignity after another while holding her family together.  Is there hope for Delia?  Well, as the title says: There’s Still Tomorrow. 

1.  One Battle After Another  (in theaters, HBOMax, $7 Prime rental)  (161 min.)  This one tops many end-of-year lists and does so for me as well.  Director Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza, There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights) has crafted a wild, farcical journey through America’s recent history, freely adapting Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland and updating it, moving it forward in time from the Nixon Era to the more recent past.  Like Ari Aster in Eddington, Thomas uses satire and dark humor to mine the current dissatisfaction with the direction of America under the present administration, showing us a band of dissidents fighting a guerrilla war against an oppressive government.  Leonardo DiCaprio is terrific as Bob, a not-wholly-committed cadre member in love with an intense true-believer named Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor).  But when things go sideways, he is forced to go underground with his infant daughter, Willa.  Time passes and Bob eventually loses his way in a cloud of cannabis.  Years later, Bob and the now almost-grown Willa (Chase Infiniti) have become the focus of Colonel Steven Lockjaw (a fantastic Sean Penn) who, like Inspector Javert, will stop at nothing to capture them.  I know many will be confused (or offended) by the weird sexual relationship between Perfidia Beverly Hills and her pursuer, Lockjaw, even more so following a key betrayal.  But she is taking his power as much as the other way around.  Moreover, consider her name:  “Perfidy” means deceitfulness, untrustworthiness, and Beverly Hills represents the epitome of superficiality.  But these two characters, like all of those in the movie, are unusual yet sharply drawn, and the acting is uniformly excellent.  I especially liked Benicio del Toro as Sensei Sergio and the whole secret White supremacist Christmas Adventurer’s Club thing (“Hail, St. Nick!”)  This movie is a thrilling, funny, rollicking good time, with just enough weirdness to keep it interesting.

…AND FINALLY, A FEW YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

And finally, two small movies that came and went with little fanfare, and one that came with a full-court media press but inexplicable dropped like a stone:

•  A Little Prayer  ($6 Prime rental) (91 min.)  Sometimes a small movie about not much sticks with you long after the credits have rolled.  Here is one.  San Francisco native David Strathairn (Lincoln, L.A. Confidential, Goodnight, and Good Luck) plays Bill, the patriarch and owner of a family business in North Carolina that he runs with his son.  Bill is close to his daughter-in-law Tammy, played by Jane Levy (an alumnus of Drake High School in San Anselmo).  Bill loses his moorings when he discovers his son is cheating on Tammy.  This is the rare movie showing a genuine and touching emotional relationship between a father-in-law and a daughter-in-law.  Careful movie watchers will not be surprised to find the movie reminiscent of 2005s Junebug, which gave Amy Adams her first big break.  Director Angus MacLachlan made both movies.

•  Twinless  (Hulu, $6 Prime rental) (100 min.)  This one had a unique setup.  Two young men meet in a support group for twinless twins; that is, people who have had a twin brother or sister pass away.  They hit it off and begin hanging out, comfortable in their unique grief.  But all is not as it seems and (warning) the movie gets very dark when secrets are told.  With Dylan O’Brien and James Sweeney.

•  Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere  (Hulu, $20 Prime rental) (119 min.)  This one received a huge promotion but went nowhere in the theaters and in retrospect, it's is not difficult to see why.  This is not your typical rockstar biopic where we see a humble beginning, a meteoric rise later undermined by the vicissitudes of fame, wealth, and drugs, followed by ultimate redemption.  (See Elvis, Bohemian Rhapsody, Back to Black, Rocketman, Ray, The Doors).  There isn’t much in the way of triumphant concert footage in this movie.  We are instead treated to an angst-filled phase of Bruce Springsteen’s life when he was questioning his musical and career trajectory before releasing his acoustic, low fidelity album, Nebraska - a career marker and album of intense interest of Springsteen fans but probably of little interest to most movie fans.  But Jeremy Allen White is fantastic as Bruce (he even bears a strange resemblance to him), and the re-creation of life on the Jersey Shore in the early 1980s seems authentic.  Jeremy Strong (The Apprentice, The Trial of the Chicago 7) continues his fine work playing Jon Landau, Springsteen’s manager. 

Song Sung Blue (2025) - What I’ve Been Watching Lately, Part 2

 By Len Weiler

As I’ve been out of town a lot and/or otherwise engaged for several weeks, I haven’t gone out to the movies. But there are a bunch of films I meant to write about earlier that are worth telling you about, some of which I’ve seen again in the interim. Some have been nominated for Oscars or have already received othet awards.  All are now available for home viewing, so I think they’ll be of interest. This is the second of a series of several posts about such movies. To see Part 1, about Sentimental Value, click here. 

Three keys to why the new film Song Sung Blue is such a winning movie to watch are (a) the romantic, melodramatic  story, (b) the assured direction by Craig Brewer [Hustle and Flow (2005)] and especially (c) the strong, lovely acting of its two lead actors Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson. They play a middle aged  Milwaukee couple in the 1990s - Mike, an auto mechanic and recovering alcoholic, and Claire, a single mom  - musicians both, who gig around in various oldies shows (her specialty being a swell Patsy Cline impression). When they meet cute, fall for each other and pair up to form their own act, Lightning and Thunder, a Neil Diamond tribute band, they become -  eventually (and surprisingly) - a local sensation.  

It seems a rather sappy proposition but it works!  Partly because we know it’s a poignant true story and partly because it’s done so exceptionally well. What really puts the story and the movie across is terrific acting: the two leads, Hudson in particular, are great; in fact, Hudson has been nominated for the best actress Oscar for her performance here.  Also terrific are the quirky but likeable ensemble around them.  There is also the palpable chemistry between the Jackman and Hudson, so realistic that  it reportedly created tension between Jackman and his wife. I was also surprised by the story arc in Song Sung Blue  especially the ups and downs of Mike and Claire’s life together which is  by turns uplifting and tragic, verging on the melodramatic except for the fact that, as I’ve said, it’s a true story.   

Neil Diamond was known initially as a prolific songwriter, having composed a number of tunes for  The Monkees [“I’m A Believer”] and others. His commercial success as a solo act came in the late 60’s and early 1970s, with songs like Sweet Caroline, Song Sung Blue, I Am…I Said, and Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon – material which was not at all “cool”, but got a lot of radio airplay in an era where top-40 radio was a big deal. His music was  “great, pretentious, goofy pop”, according to Rolling Stone’s Lester Bangs. His audience may not have been hip, but he sold an awful lot of records.     

Important note #1: You definitely do not have to love Neil Diamond’s music to enjoy this film. Myself, I’ve never been a fan, even though (or maybe because) Diamond rose to prominence in the mid-60s and early 1970s, when I was in my late teens and early twenties, and deeply into the heady countercultural music scene of those days. Definitely not Diamond’s milieu. But somehow the story and even the music sucked me in. 

Important note #2: The movie is not about Neil Diamond; in fact, he is not even a character in the movie. His music is featured less because of its merit than because of its nostalgic allure to his fans. So the performance of  his hit songs by Lightning and Thunder winds up being both adoring and campy. Jackman and Hudson perform both aspects well.

All in all, Song Sung Blue turns out to be a very beguiling, entertaining movie. And a heartwarming,  engaging one as well.

2 hours 12 minutes

Grade: B+

Now rentable at premium prices  ($19.99) on Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV, and a few other pay-per-view platforms; it’s expected to start streaming on Peacock in mid-February.