Song Sung Blue

• Director: Craig Brewer
• Writer: Craig Brewer
• Starring: Hugh Jackman, Kate Hudson, Michael Imperioli, Ella Anderson, Fisher Stevens, Jim Belushi

Grade: C+

Craig Brewer is a filmmaker who seems particularly adept at making films of dreamers, people who have been kicked around by life, but reach for greatness by any means necessary. The Hustle & Flow and Dolemite is My Name director now adapts Song Sung Blue – from the 2008 documentary of the same name – into an often treacly but well acted character study. Brewer never shies away from the implicit darkness at the center of the story, but in trying to tell this story in a realistic, compelling way, the film too often feels unfocused to stand on its own.

Marty Supreme

• Director: Josh Safdie
• Writer: Josh Safdie, Ronald Bronstein
• Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Odessa A’zion, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin O’Leary, Tyler Okonma, Abel Ferrara, Fran Drescher, Emory Cohen

Grade: A-

When accepting his Best Actor SAG award earlier in 2025, Timothée Chalamet boldly declared that he wanted to be remembered as one of the great actors, more than a handsome face or a flash in the pan. Looking back, it makes perfect sense that the 30-year old wunderkind’s next project would be Marty Supreme. But it’s not just Chalamet, or his character, who have something to prove; director Josh Safdie is staking it out on his own after a fruitful indie career as co-director with brother Benny (who had his own debut earlier this year with The Smashing Machine). The result is a perfect storm of ambition, and one of the most exhilarating films of 2025.

Die My Love

• Director: Lynne Ramsay
• Writer: Lynne Ramsay, Enda Walsh, Alice Birch
• Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, LaKeith Stanfield, Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek, Gabrielle Rose, Clare Coulter

Grade: B

Motherhood, and all its terrifyingly wonderful aspects, has rarely been rendered with as much dimension as in Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love. The Scottish writer-director is at her best when she’s tapped into fractured psyches, and the destruction they often wreak on others (You Were Never Really Here and We Need to Talk About Kevin), but her latest is no different, utilizing a scorching lead performance from Jennifer Lawrence. And though it’s often captivating and visceral, the film’s meandering plot tends to wear down the viewer throughout its 2-hour runtime.

Blue Moon

• Director: Richard Linklater
• Writer: Robert Kaplow
• Starring: Ethan Hawke, Andrew Scott, Bobby Cannavale, Margaret Qualley, Jonah Lees, Simon Delaney

Grade: B

Richard Linklater’s long and illustrious career has taken him across genres, decades, countries, and styles to make one of the most varied filmographies since his rise on the indie scene in the 1990s. For his latest, Blue Moon – the first of his two films to be released in 2025 – Linklater reunites with his most constant collaborator, Ethan Hawke, to produce a new spin on the biopic. I had written in my review of Linklater’s last film that he’s always been interested in exploring the private persona versus public, and while this certainly applies here, he’s perhaps just as fascinated with the passage of time and how it can distort those same perceptions.