“Blue Film” (May 8)

Few contemporary films about unresolved childhood abuse — which is always unresolved, in the end, anyway — cut as narrowly close to the bone as Elliot Tuttle’s two-hander masked as provocation, “Blue Film.”

Rejected by mainstream film festivals before it premiered in Edinburgh this summer and NewFest in New York in October, this taboo-busting study of a masculine camboy confronted by the pedophile teacher who many years ago desired him holds back little and offers even less that’s palatable to swallow. Its limitations as a stagelike piece aside, the movie wrings emotional complexity from a fraught, ever-shifting dialogue between a convicted child abuser and the student, now a late twenties sex worker, he spared.

“Blue Film,” which takes place entirely in a rented Hancock Park Airbnb in Los Angeles with only two actors, dares to go places I have not seen an American movie travel to in a while. Tuttle, an American filmmaker himself who received support on the project from Mark Duplass of all possible collaborators, is willing to take you to dark places, ones that remind you of European directors who want to shake you with their frank psychosexual provocations. It’s impressive where Tuttle, this second-time feature filmmaker, goes with his surprisingly humanistic and empathetic approach to material about abuse. One where a pedophile teacher’s sexual fantasy about his former student’s talent show performance emerges as oddly wistful.—RL

“The Python Hunt” (May 8)

Xander Robin’s stranger-than-fiction doc boasts a venomous combination of mainstream crossover appeal and genuinely thoughtful insights about the world we live in. The 2025 SXSW hit follows a “Cannonball Run”-like ensemble of weirdos who descend upon the Everglades for a two-week, state-sanctioned Burmese python hunting contest designed to help control an invasive species that’s destroying the native ecosystems. It’s filled with colorful characters and snake footage that will scratch your “Tiger King” itch, but Robin also does an admirable job of presenting the wide range of opinions on the best way to take care of public lands. —CZ

“Silent Friend” (May 8)

Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi (Oscar-nominated “On Body and Soul”) returns for another inquisitive study of the natural world — here spanning three centuries and unfolding around an ancient gingko tree. With a cast including Tony Leung, Léa Seydoux, and Venice Best Young Actress winner Luna Wedler, “Silent Friend” transports audiences from 2020, to 1908, and finally, 1972, where the tree situated in a botanical garden in Germany serves as a backdrop to and witnesses a century of change. In 2020, Leung plays a neuroscientist in the early days of the pandemic, dispatched to measure the tree’s electromagnetic output, with Seydoux as the biologist guiding him. Wedler plays a young woman fighting for her position in the male-dominated world of science at the turn of the century, while the 1970s section comprises a turbulent love story against political unrest. —RL

“Is God Is” (May 15)

A pair of twin sisters weigh the pros and cons of vengeance when they’re charged by their dying mother to kill their monster of a father, who burned them all when they were younger. First-time feature director Aleshea Harris adapts her own play of the same name with “Is God Is,” which stars Kara Young and Mallori Johnson as the sisters. Co-starring Sterling K. Brown, Vivica A. Fox, Erika Alexander, Mykelti Williamson, and Janelle Monae. —SS

“Magic Hour” (May 15)

Over the course of her career, filmmaking multi-hyphenate Katie Aselton has embraced all manner of genres with her directing efforts: relationship dramas like “The Freebie,” chilly horror offerings like “Black Rock,” and even the feel-good body-swap comedy with “Mack & Rita.” For her fourth feature, Aselton has again zagged into new territory. 

This time around, Aselton heads into more twisty environs, with some serious drama and a generous dash of romance to boot. To say too much more about her “Magic Hour” runs the risk of spoiling it, but her fourth feature is yet another example of her wonderfully flexible filmmaking chops. Aselton also stars in the film alongside “Hamilton” superstar Daveed Diggs, and the pair play a married couple who embark on a trip to the desert that’s not entirely what it seems to be on first blush. 

We’ll let the film’s official synopsis throw some hints at you: “Charlie and Erin escape to the desert to navigate an unexpected and challenging new phase of their relationship.”  In my review of the film, I noted that it’s “refreshingly honest and very much a return to the kind of filmmaking that kickstarted Aselton’s own directing career, back in 2010 with ‘The Freebie,’ another movie about the intricacies and intimacies of marriage.” That’s all we’ll say on this one, beyond that they’re not kidding about the film’s plot dealing being the “unexpected” and “challenging,” but the genuine discovery at the heart of the film is one of its best elements. —KE

“The Wizard of the Kremlin” (May 15)

A subdued and soothingly plaintive Paul Dano plays a fictional Putin-appointed spin doctor who trudges backward through three decades of Russian history in Olivier Assayas’ 2025 Venice competition premiere. Assayas has produced a new cut of the film, one shorn of 20 minutes of material, to tighten up his amply sized vision. A respectable if minor-register effort from the sometimes-detached director of two “Irma Veps” and “Personal Shopper,” this political epic plays out as a long monologue delivered by Vadim Baranov (Dano), tasked with serving Vladimir Putin (Jude Law) and owing to Giuliano da Empoli’s debut novel.

Assayas’ serialized tour through the dark corridors of the Kremlin and the machinations and theatrics it took to fashion a certain former KGB agent into the most reviled authoritarian of our time is chilled but with punches of humor and a cruel joke of a final shot that — it should appeal to the French directors’ longtime fan base. It’s also a rebuke of Quentin Tarantino’s much-publicized accusation that Dano can’t act; it’s one of his smartest performances. —RL

“Obsession” (May 15)

Curry Barker’s thrilling debut begins with the simplest of horror premises: Bear (Michael Johnston) is a shy and sensitive music store employee who can’t find the courage to ask his co-worker and childhood friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette) on a date. Rather than be honest with her and tell her how he actually feels, he wanders into a woo-woo crystal store and buys a One Wish Willow, a kitschy antique toy from the 1960s that promises to grant its owner one wish when they snap a branch in half. The cashier warns him that most of the customers who buy them have complained about the results, but it wouldn’t be much of a horror movie if he listened.

The Cregger-esque film is twisty, darkly hilarious, and unapologetically gory, establishing Barker as one of the next major horror voices. He’s a name to learn quickly, as he has already been tapped to direct A24’s “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” —CZ

“I Love Boosters” (May 22)

Is Boots Riley‘s “I Love Boosters” the first socialist stoner movie of the Trump era? It would appear so, and like his previous film “Sorry to Bother You” and Amazon series “I’m a Virgo,” it’s set in a world where gravity doesn’t apply, and a world constantly spinning off its axis that reveals, among many things: high-concept sci-fi, gross-out sexual body horror, and Demi Moore as a tyrannical, late-capitalist fashionista that three working-class, rookie Bay Area criminals move to take down.

They’re played by Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, and Taylour Paige, three comic geniuses totally attuned to Riley’s weird rhythms and absurdist world-building. It’s set in the Bay Area — across Richmond, Hayward, Oakland, San Francisco, and beyond — where a high-rise built at a tilt of 45 degrees, perhaps in parallel to San Francisco’s steep hilly streets, is just a fact of life. Or where LaKeith Stanfield, as an elusive local lothario, uses his legend-has-it oral sex skills to literally suck the souls out of women. That’s just a fact of life around these parts, too.

Even as Riley’s high-concept, allegorical sci-fi spins wildly out of control, especially around a teleportation device that’s somehow both under- and overexplained, the three actors ground a dizzying, entertaining acid trip that plays all the way to the back of the room. —RL

“The Mandalorian and Grogu” (May 22)

It’s certainly not outrageous that we don’t quite know the plot to Jon Favreau’s big screen “Star Wars” debut — after all, these films tend to be secretive, and we’ve also got two entire seasons of TV with our titular characters to lean on — but it does feel odd that excitement is also down on this one. It’s a new “Star Wars” film! With characters you love! Or at least know! 

Can our shared adoration of Baby Yoda make this one a hit? Probably. But how will “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” the first TV-to-film continuation in the Star Wars Universe, charm both old fans and new ones, pull in the big bucks that used to be a given in this franchise, and remind everyone why we love journeying to a galaxy far, far away? All those answers, and more, we sure hope to find this summer. For now? We’re leaning on the assured possibility of at least one “Star Wars” standard: cute little guys. —KE 

“Saccharine” (May 22)

Ideas are not in short supply in filmmaker Natalie Erika James’ latest, a horror film about body image and eating disorders (shades of “Raw,” “The Substance,” and “The Neon Demon” proliferate), that also tackles generational trauma, sexual identity, the scourge of “wellness” social media posts, and even self-help journaling. It is also, and this cannot be overstated, really, really gross. Let that be a recommendation for those who aren’t shy about these things, which run the gamut from eye-poppingly (or, as audiences will soon learn, eye-twistingly) icky, very impressive, and even occasionally playful. 

The film follows Hana (a riveting Midori Francis), whose obsession with bodies may feel primarily focused on her own (binge-eating, rendered in the film as a series of close-up mukbang-style sequences), though her entire world is shaped by bodies of all kinds. There’s her thin mother and her obese father. Her comfortable-in-her-own-skin best pal Josie (Danielle Macdonald, doing solid work as a very necessary voice of reason). Alanya, the sexy and sweet trainer at her gym (Madeleine Madden). And the obese cadaver she and Josie are studying in medical school, who soon becomes a character in her own right, horrifyingly nicknamed “Big Bertha.” 

But Hana’s obsession with her body is standing in the way of more than just feeling good at the gym, so when she runs into an old friend (once fat! now thin!) at a bar, Hana is intrigued by the little gray pills her pal says have made her into a “completely new person.” Won’t Hana try one or two? Just to see? Oh, you’ll see. —KE

“Tuner” (May 22)

It’s a dream elevator pitch: He’s a piano tuner with a condition that makes him sensitive to sound, which also makes him an ideal safecracker. Such is the wonderfully intriguing logline of “Tuner,” Academy Award-winning director Daniel Roher’s first narrative feature, which follows Leo Woodall as our titular tuner. 

The film also stars Tovah Feldshuh, Jean Reno, and Lior Raz. It debuted at Telluride last fall and then went on to play at TIFF, where financier Black Bear announced it would also distribute it.  

In the film, Woodall stars as Niki, “a gifted young piano tuner whose heightened sense of hearing draws the attention of criminals, who see his talents as useful for opening safes as for tuning Steinways.” Niki, who once dreamed of a career playing the piano, suffers from an ailment that makes loud noises unbearable to his ears, which also means he’s a very gifted tuner, able to hear the slightest wrong note over the course of his work. The film is both a high-style heist film and a warm character study, with a truly hey-this-guy-is-a-movie-star! turn from Woodall. They really don’t make ’em like this anymore, and man, “Tuner” reminds us why they should. —KE

“Backrooms” (May 29)

Most of the early conversations about “Backrooms” inevitably focus on the incredible story behind the film. At just 20 years old, Kane Parsons is now our youngest major filmmaker by a mile. Seeing such a young artist land a massive A24 canvas to bring their own material to life is the kind of feel-good story that the industry needs right now, but it somewhat obscures the fact that the film also looks really, really good.

An adaptation of Parsons’ viral videos about unsettling liminal spaces, the film stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as a furniture salesman who becomes hypnotized by a seemingly endless room that emerges in his store. The web series already proved that Parsons has a knack for using little more than lighting and negative space to make us uncomfortable without actually showing us anything scary. Now that he has the budget to build 30,000 square feet of real backrooms, the sky is the limit for his vision. A24 gave the film a prime summer release date, suggesting that the indie studio has some real confidence in the finished product. —CZ  

“Fucktoys” (May 29)

Annapurna Sriram’s “Fucktoys” is the ultimate example of a truly independent film finding its own audience on the strength of its storytelling alone. Without any major cast members or producers, the “After Hours”-esque story of a sex worker trying to navigate one crazy night in Trashtown, USA, took the festival circuit by storm, debuting at SXSW before hitting just about every cool festival on the calendar for the better part of two years. Sriram refused to change the title or soften the subject matter to land a better distribution deal, and the film’s unapologetically bold voice earned it a cult following before it even hit theaters. And now, anyone who missed its festival run should be able to find a chance to see it on the big screen this summer. If you want to support a truly new voice in independent cinema, look no further than “Fucktoys.” —CZ

“Pressure” (May 29)

If there’s one thing you can take all the way to the bank — or the box office — it’s a World War II drama. Even when the material feels familiar, something like last year’s Oscar shut-out “Nuremberg,” starring Russell Crowe as Nazi war criminal Hermann Göring, still grossed more than $56 million globally. Enter “Hotel Mumbai” director Anthony Maras’ Focus Features release “Pressure,” set in the 72 hours leading up to D-Day and starring Brendan Fraser as General Dwight D. Eisenhower on the cusp of making a potentially historically cataclysmic decision: whether or not to launch the seaborne Allied invasion. Andrew Scott co-stars as Captain James Stagg, with the ensemble also including Kerry Condon, Chris Messina, and Damian Lewis. —RL

“Scary Movie” (June 6)

Twenty-six years after they created the “Scary Movie” franchise and 25 after they left it to explore other ideas — most successfully with the comic masterpiece that is “White Chicks” — the Wayans brothers return to take aim at “Get Out,” “Terrifier,” “Longlegs,” “M3GAN,” and just about every other horror movie to hit it big in the last couple decades. “Scary Movie” scribes Marlon, Shawn, and Keenen Ivory Wayans are back, joined this time by nephew Craig Wayans and frequent collaborator Rick Alvarez as cowriters. Keenen’s absence from the director’s chair after helming the first “Scary Movie” and its follow-up is disappointing, but hopefully, “A Haunted House” auteur Michael Tiddes can apply his knack for outrageous parody (most effectively displayed in the hilarious “Fifty Shades of Black”) to this, his sixth film with Marlon Wayans. —JH

“Disclosure Day” (June 12)

Director Steven Spielberg returns to the milieu of some of his best and most popular films with this UFO thriller starring Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colman Domingo, and more. The case is pretty much all we know about this one — trailers have been purposefully enigmatic, short on plot details and long on hints of a conspiracy and characters with unspecified supernatural abilities. Then again, the director of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” returning to the sci-fi genre more or less sells itself — who wouldn’t want to see more Spielberg aliens? But will these be the kindly aliens of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T.” or the malevolent killers of “War of the Worlds?” On June 12, all will be revealed. —JH

“The Death of Robin Hood” (June 19)

Our estimate is that the supply of “Robin Hood” films over the last 20 years has far outstripped demand. However, director Michael Sarnoski is coming off an “A Quiet Place” prequel no one was really clamoring for, which ended up being far better than most expected, so maybe we should just let the “Pig” helmer cook. A couple more details bode well for this dark fable being released by A24: Hugh Jackman in the lead, playing the character in a different, more mature place than we often see him, seemingly with a young apprentice, and Emmy and Tony winner Jodie Comer to boot. —MJ

“Leviticus” (June 19)

“It Follows” meets “Heated Rivalry” sounds like a reductive comparison for the totally original queer horror movie “Leviticus,” a Sundance 2026 smash hit about a forbidden romance amid small-town homophobia. But as a helpful entry point to getting butts in seats, we’ll take it — and we wrote it, anyway, in our Sundance review.

Just as “It Follows” felt like a revelation out of Cannes in 2014, the similarly sexually charged and specter-haunted “Leviticus” pronounces a bold new voice in horror: Adrian Chiarella. The Australian writer/director’s hugely entertaining and breathtakingly scary feature debut stars rising talents Stacy Clausen and Joe Bird as two teenage boys stalked by a violent entity that resembles the person they desire the most, and in this case, it’s each other.

That entity’s origins have something to do with the Church located in the repressed, religious suburb Naim’s (Bird) just moved to with his mother, played by the brilliant Aussie actress Mia Wasikowska. (She’s slowly making her return more regularly to screens after retreating from Hollywood years ago.) The church offers a conversion therapy-like deliverance ceremony that’s led to Ryan (Clausen) being fully haunted by this shape-shifting menace, and so, of course, Naim is next.

The scares are real, but what anchors “Leviticus” is the young adult romance blooming between the two teenage boys — one capable of devastating and then terrifying you when suddenly you find yourself unsure of who is really who. —RL

“Maddie’s Secret” (June 19)

Star and first-time filmmaker John Early’s inspirations for his debut film run the gamut, blending everything from Sirkian melodramas to old-school TV movies of the week. All of that (and more) plunge us into his very specific, very funny, and often weirdly moving mindset, making for a hell of a debut for Early, one so gimlet-eyed that you almost (almost) forget that Early is playing a woman, nailing his long-held dreams to play a classic ingenue. 

Mostly, it’s hard to explain just how interesting and out of the box “Maddie’s Secret” is and how deeply it speaks to Early as a person and a performer. He stars as the titular Maddie, a budding food influencer whose relationship with the camera and delicious treats is, well, pretty fraught. It’s funny, yes, but it’s also one of the most personal and specific debuts we’ve seen in years. —KE

“Rose of Nevada” (June 19)

One dark jewel — pardon, rose — of the 2025 fall festival circuit was a new film from Cornish director Mark Jenkin starring two of the hottest British actors working right now. And it’s a movie IndieWire likened to a “haunting aesthetic nirvana.”

George MacKay and Callum Turner play fishermen caught in a time warp at sea and ashore in “Rose of Nevada,” which premiered in the Orizzonti section at Venice before wending its way to TIFF, the New York Film Festival, BFI London, and beyond. Here, the “Enys Men” director turns small towns and their denizens along the coast of Cornwall into sights of the science-fiction uncanny.

The titular Rose here is a ship that’s returned to a Cornish village 30 years after disappearing previously. Now back in the harbor, the ship arrives as if from the past without its long-missing deckhands, who may have thrown themselves overboard. That’s when two unskilled fishermen, desperate for money to feed their families, take a job on said ship without knowledge of its past — and then things get really weird, as timelines shift, and people and their personalities seem to swap. For one, Nick (MacKay) and Liam (Turner) come home to very different family scenarios than before, ones where their loved ones might not even remember them. —RL

“Toy Story 5” (June 19)

Somehow, “Toy Story” has returned. Director Andrew Stanton (“Finding Nemo,” “WALL-E”) takes Pixar’s original franchise out for another spin, after a seemingly satisfying ending in “Toy Story 3.” Most of the toys are still making their new child, Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), happy, while Woody (Tom Hanks) rescues toys abandoned in the wild. But when young Bonnie gets an iPad and becomes absorbed in screen time, technology — you know, it might have some unintended consequences. New additions to the stacked voice cast include Greta Lee, Krys Marshall, Matty Matheson, and Craig Robinson. —SS

“Bouchra” (June 26)

Autofiction meets an anthropomorphized animated cast in artists Orian Barki and Meriem Bennani’s mesmerizing 3D-animated “Bouchra,” which blends in documentary technique (including actual phone calls and letters) to tell the story of a queer Moroccan filmmaker and her complex relationship with her mother. That filmmaker here, drawing on the directors’ own story, is imagined as a jackal named Bouchra who lives in New York City while trying to reconnect with her Casablanca-residing mother. The film’s at times photorealistic animation style makes for a dizzying blend of fact and fiction, where the directors call upon their own friends and family to play versions of themselves. “Bouchra” also works as a great, vibey New York City, as cozy as a late-night cartoon but with resonant emotional depth. —RL

“The Invite” (June 26)

In a relatively quiet year for Sundance, Olivia Wilde’s third feature was the buzziest film in Park City, sparking a bidding war before coming under the A24 umbrella. Wilde stars as part of a terrific quartet that also includes Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, and Penelope Cruz for a remake of the Spanish comedy “The People Upstairs,” as two couples meet for a dinner where one invites the other two to join their weekly orgies. Will McCormack and Rashida Jones wrote the script for the film, which promises a modern update on the sexual freedom exploration of “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.” —WC

“Romería” (June 26)

One of the most visually, sonically gorgeous movies to play the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, Spanish filmmaker Carla Simón’s “Romería” finally gets a proper theatrical release in 2026. Here, Simón and her breakout star Llúcia Garcia chase biological destiny to Spain’s Atlantic Coast in a coming-of-ager that looks beautiful under cinematographer Hélène Louvart’s (“La Chimera”) eye.

Newcomer Llúcia Garcia, in her first major film role and whom the Spanish director found on the street amid a wide-ranging casting call for actors to play an 18-year-old woman at a pivotal spiritual turn, becomes the surrogate eyes and ears who embody Simón’s real-life story: Simón’s parents died of AIDS when she was a small child, sending her to northern Catalonia with an uncle. She was left, as a hardly formed six-year-old, to contend with little knowledge and fewer memories of her parents.

As I wrote in my Cannes review, this film finds the “Alcarràs” and “Summer 1993” filmmaker “operating behind her most intensely personal lens yet. Where her family history was previously abstracted in her prior films about families fractured by circumstance, Marina (Garcia) is now a stand-in for the director, here a budding moviemaker herself, who travels to Galicia to convince the late paternal grandparents she’s never met to endorse a scholarship application to study cinema.” —RL

“Supergirl” (June 26)

Dark. Gritty. Broody. Superheroes have been through it in recent years, and plenty of blockbuster films have made it a habit to reflect that same emotional ethos. And while the returns have been mixed, from the dramatic highs of Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” franchise to the decidedly downbeat lows of Zack Snyder’s own Batman stories, it seems that audiences are eager to get a little more lightness in their comic book tales. 

But! Could someone perhaps tap into both the darkness of being an all-powerful being in a wacky world and the relative fun of, well, that exact same thing? Consider Craig Gillespie’s “Supergirl,” which attempts to bridge both elements.  

Yes, being a superhero can be strange, but surely it’s also fun? Milly Alcock stars in the titular role, as Kara Zor-El (aka Supergirl), who fans first got a glimpse of at the end of James Gunn’s “Superman” earlier this year, where her existence as an unreliable party girl was teased in the film‘s post-credits. That’s the kind of new superhero we can get behind. —KE

“Evil Dead Burn” (July 10)

Known for his nerve-shredding creature feature, “Infested,” French filmmaker Sébastien Vaniček has an extraordinary knack for conjuring tension in tight, suffocating spaces. That skill makes him a surprisingly natural fit for “Evil Dead Burn,” the sixth installment in Sam Raimi’s iconic “Evil Dead” franchise. After a stretch of increasingly gruesome entries, Vaniček’s approach to suspense could offer a welcome and restrained recalibration for “Evil Dead” — or, at least, give a sharper edge to the same amount of goop.

Following in the footsteps of filmmaker Fede Álvarez and Lee Cronin ( the latter of whom executive produces here alongside Bruce Campbell), Vaniček looks to expand the Deadite playbook while doubling down on pure, panic-inducing terror. Co-written by Vaniček and Florent Bernard, “Evil Dead Burn” continues the series’ recent shift toward standalone stories. An early tease promises intense claustrophobia and back-to-basics brutality, with one victim scrambling helplessly across the floor as an attacker pursues. The cast includes Souheila Yacoub, Tandi Wright, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, and more. —AF

“Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” (July 10)

David Wain and Michael Showalter’s latest collaboration just might be the funniest thing they’ve ever made outside of the “Wet Hot American Summer” franchise. The loose “Wizard of Oz” parody sees Zoey Deutch playing a naive small-town hairdresser who embarks on a journey to sleep with Jon Hamm after finding out her fiancé cashed in on their celebrity hall pass agreement, picking up a collection of misfits along the way who all have their own reasons to meet the “Mad Men” star. Like all of Wain and Showalter’s work, it’s chock full of jokes ranging from the wholesome to the wildly explicit and features a brilliant ensemble cast. If you’ve been lamenting that big, laugh-out-loud comedies don’t come to theaters anymore, consider this the answer to all of your prayers. —CZ

“The Odyssey” (July 17)

Muses, tell me about a complicated man. Not Odysseus, because the legendary King of Ithaca’s deal has been written about for over a millennium. No, it’s Christopher Nolan, whose quest to interrogate the minds of clever men continues in his adaptation of Homer’s epic poem. The director’s follow-up to “Oppenheimer” stars Matt Damon as the wily Greek, Anne Hathaway as his long-suffering wife Penelope, Tom Holland as their son Telemachus, who strikes out from home to look for his lost father 10 years after the end of the Trojan War, and a host of acting demigods, some playing actual gods — including Zendaya as Athena and Charlize Theron as Calypso. —SS

“Motor City” (July 24)

“Old Henry” director Potsy Ponciroli’s nifty action thriller “Motor City” started as a Chad St. John-written Black List script in 2009 before becoming an internationally acclaimed movie to premiere out of the 2025 Venice Film Festival. Alan Ritchson, Shailene Woodley, Pablo Schreiber, and Ben Foster star in the 1970s Detroit-set gangster movie, which follows Ritchson as a working-class romantic pursued by a ruthless criminal after Ritchson’s character falls for the drug kingpin’s girlfriend (Woodley). The adrenaline-packed thriller is told almost entirely without dialogue, but with Fleetwood Mac, Bill Withers, Donna Summer, and more iconic ’70s needle-drops to fill the silence. —RL

“Rosebush Pruning” (July 24)

Karim Aïnouz‘s lustily awaited, prickly family drama “Rosebush Pruning” (inspired by Marco Bellocchio’s 1965 drama “Fists in the Pocket”) boasts one of the year’s toniest indie ensembles: Callum Turner, Elle Fanning, Jamie Bell, Riley Keough, Lukas Gage, Tracy Letts, Pamela Anderson, and Elena Anaya among them. Written by Efthimis Filippou, the “Motel Destino” and “Invisible Life” director’s latest is set at an opulent villa in Catalonia. There, four American siblings (Bell, Turner, Gage, Keough) wallow amid isolation and inherited wealth, while under the thumb (if not quite the eye) of their blind father, played by Letts. When eldest brother Jack announces he is leaving the family nest to move in with his girlfriend Martha (Fanning), the truth about their matriarch’s death resurfaces as generational lies unravel and blood ties snap. —RL

“Jackass: Best and Last” (July 26)

Johnny Knoxville, the face of the “Jackass” franchise for over two decades at this point, recently gave an emotional interview about not being able to work with bulls anymore for his own safety. After all, he spent years putting himself at risk of being gored to death in service of horrifying, hilarious stunts like the “Toro Totter” from “Jackass Number Two.” His inexplicable emotion about not being able to put himself in any more danger must be how the franchise’s fans feel about this bittersweet last outing from Knoxville and his crazed cohort. For however gnarly or grotesque the stunts they complete will be, every “Jackass” film ends up being the best hang, so it will be hard to say goodbye. —MJ

“I Want Your Sex” (July 31)

The summer of Olivia Wilde is here between her third directing effort “The Invite” (June 26) and her kinky, irresistible latest role in Gregg Araki’s sex-positive Gen Z satire “I Want Your Sex.” The zany throwback to teen sex comedies of yore stars Cooper Hoffman as the assistant to gallerist/artist Erika Tracy (Wilde), with whom he enters into a BDSM relationship in and out of the workplace. In his social orbit are a flamboyantly gay colleague played by Mason Gooding and a roommate questioning her own sexuality, played by Chase Sui Wonders. It’s classic, return-to-form Araki with his first feature since 2014’s “White Bird in a Blizzard” after pivoting to television with his cult Starz series “Now Apocalypse” and directing episodes of “Dahmer” and “American Gigolo.” —RL

“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” (July 31)

A whole lot has happened in the MCU since “No Way Home” five years ago, but at the end of the third film, Doctor Strange cast a spell that made everyone forget who Peter was. In “Brand New Day,” we pick up with Peter (Tom Holland) still Spider-Man but kinda depressed at that decision, and in footage from CinemaCon, we saw that Ned (Jacob Batalon) is trying to figure out Spider-Man’s identity, and MJ (Zendaya) has a new boyfriend. This one does feature cameos by Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) and the Punisher (Jon Bernthal). But beyond that, we don’t know who the big bad is, the identity of Sadie Sink’s character (X-Men’s Jean Grey is a solid guess), or how it ties into “Avengers: Doomsday.” —BW

“Ice Cream Man” (August 7)

Eli Roth’s “Ice Cream Man” marks the horror auteur’s exciting return to the director’s chair after a stretch spent shepherding indie genre titles from other filmmakers through his still emerging The Horror Section banner. Arriving late this summer, Roth’s latest movie promises enough sticky-sweet menace to justify him delaying the release of “Thanksgiving II” beyond 2025 — and, if its trailer is any indication, the story Roth chose to tell here will push his filmography into even eerier, cheerier territory than the holiday-themed slasher series.

Set in an idyllic town that spoils into candy-colored chaos, Roth’s “Ice Cream Man” leans hard into a nightmarish spin on classic suburbia. The film follows a creepy food vendor (Ari Millen) whose dairy treats spark grotesque violence among the community’s local kids. Not to be mistaken for a remake of the cult oddity starring Clint Howard from the ’90s (which, full disclosure, I absolutely have), Roth’s next film seems more like a queasy cousin of Zach Creggers’ “Weapons.” And with swarms of bloody children turning their neighborhood into the devil’s playground, its promo gives a gleefully dark new meaning to the familiar phrase, “You scream, I scream, we all scream… for ice cream.” —AF

“Late Fame” (August 7)

The best adaptation of an Arthur Schnitzler novella since “Eyes Wide Shut,” Kent Jones’ “Late Fame” stars the dependably great Willem Dafoe as a New York poet reconfronted with his long-abandoned legacy. Ed Saxberger, once a literary force of the late 20th century, now works a civil servant job and hangs out with his working-class friends in a bar (though he’s given up drinking). But a coterie of twentysomething adulators, led by an unabashedly pretentious Edmund Donovan, come to him promising to restore his genius to the contemporary cultural imagination. But does he even want late-in-life fame? 

He is, though, intoxicated by the attentions of Gloria, the “tragic heroine” of the group who styles herself as a faded Jazz Age starlet, crooning Kurt Weill in a cabaret bar but with secrets of her own at home. The second feature from former critic and New York Film Festival director Kent Jones after the wounding Independent Spirit Award nominee “Diane” from 2019, “Late Fame” is scripted by “May December” writer Samy Burch, who applies an unsparing, unsentimental approach to her characters. —RL

“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” (August 7)

After premiering their first two features at Sundance, Jane Schoenbrun is heading to Cannes for their latest film. Like “I Saw the TV Glow,” it’s a heavily meta and queer take on classic genre conventions, this time drawing inspiration from the gaudy cult slashers of the ‘80s like “Sleepaway Camp.” “Hacks” star Hannah Einbender is a director hired to reboot a long-running slasher franchise who casts the reclusive final girl (Gillian Anderson) from the original movie. The results seemingly enter “Persona” territory, as the two women’s mutual obsession causes them to descend into psychosexual mania. —WC

“The End of Oak Street” (August 14)

Not too much is known about the plot of David Robert Mitchell’s latest film, but it certainly looks like a version of “It Follows” where the “It” is lots and lots of dinosaurs. “The End of Oak Street” stars Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway as a married couple living in a nice suburb, with two kids (Maisy Stella and Christian Convery), when something extraordinary happens that transports Oak Street to somewhere (or perhaps somewhen) else. —SS

“Coyote vs. Acme” (August 28)

It’s quite literally the movie they didn’t want you to see. After being canceled by Warner Bros. for cost-cutting reasons, the “Looney Tunes” live-action and animation hybrid “Coyote vs. Acme” will finally be released. The film is part Roadrunner-and-Coyote antics and a big part courtroom drama, as Wile E. Coyote sues the Acme Corporation for all his failed attempts to catch his nemesis. Star Will Forte has talked about being willing to move heaven and earth to promote this film now that it is finally seeing the light of day after it looked like no one would ever get to watch it. —BW

“The Dog Stars” (August 28)

Steven Spielberg isn’t the only sci-fi master returning to the genre this summer; “Blade Runner” and “The Martian” director Ridley Scott is back, too, with this post-apocalyptic thriller based on the novel by Peter Heller. Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley, Allison Janney, Guy Pearce, Benedict Wong, and an incredibly cute dog star in what looks to be a typically ambitious Scott spectacle that combines large-scale action with intimate relationship drama and philosophical musing. It’s the kind of thing Scott — now 88 years young — still does better than anybody when he’s at his best, and the trailer for this one is very promising. —JH

“Filipiñana” (August 28)

Beneath the pristine surface of a country club in the Philippines, a sinister buried truth. First-time writer/director Rafael Manuel’s “Filipiñana” debuts with a surreal visual language that hat-tips everyone from Jacques Tati to Michael Haneke and the filmmaker’s longtime mentor Jia Zhangke. This striking, startling class critique (based on Manuel’s own Silver Bear-winning 2020 short film) follows a teenage girl named Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto), who works at the posh club outside Manila. She develops a fascination with the club’s charismatic director, Dr. Palanca, but that takes a darker turn as colonial history is unearthed, as are the violent truths happening beneath the club’s surface. Fans of “Beef” might want to check it out. —RL