Nuremberg is a 2025 historical drama written and directed by James Vanderbilt, adapted from Jack El-Hai's nonfiction book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist. Released by Sony Pictures Classics, it dramatizes the months surrounding the first Nuremberg trial, when the surviving leaders of the Third Reich were brought before an international tribunal, and centers on the unsettling relationship that formed between a captive Nazi and the American doctor assigned to gauge his sanity.
Rami Malek plays Douglas Kelley, the U.S. Army psychiatrist tasked with evaluating the imprisoned Nazi high command, while Russell Crowe delivers a commanding turn as Hermann Göring, the charismatic and manipulative Reichsmarschall who becomes both his subject and his adversary. Michael Shannon plays Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, the chief American prosecutor determined to build a lasting framework of international law, with Richard E. Grant, Leo Woodall, John Slattery, and Colin Hanks filling out the ensemble.
Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival to one of its longest standing ovations, the film earned praise for Crowe's magnetic, chilling performance and for its sober reckoning with how ordinary-seeming men rationalized atrocity. A courtroom drama and a psychological duel in equal measure, it grossed more than $70 million worldwide. Nuremberg is streaming on Netflix.
Gladiator II is a 2024 historical epic directed by Ridley Scott, the filmmaker behind the original Academy Award-winning Gladiator (2000), and produced by Scott Free Productions and Paramount Pictures. The film is set approximately sixteen years after the events of its predecessor, returning to an ancient Rome now under the unstable joint rule of the emperors Geta and Caracalla, and follows Lucius, the son of Lucilla and nephew of the slain Emperor Commodus, who has been living in exile until Roman forces invade his adopted home. The screenplay was written by David Scarpa.
Paul Mescal stars as the adult Lucius, forced into gladiatorial combat after his world is torn apart by Roman conquest. Denzel Washington plays Macrinus, a wealthy and politically calculating former slave who controls the gladiatorial arena and nurses ambitions far beyond his station. Connie Nielsen reprises her role as Lucilla from the original film, while Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, and Fred Hechinger join the ensemble as key figures in the struggle for Rome's soul. Hans Zimmer returned to score the film, extending his sweeping sonic world from the original into the new chapter.
Gladiator II generated considerable anticipation as the long-awaited continuation of one of the most beloved historical epics in Hollywood history, and earned strong box office results globally during its theatrical run. The film was celebrated for its spectacular production design, Denzel Washington's commanding and theatrically magnetic performance, and Ridley Scott's assured command of large-scale action and period atmosphere. Critics divided on the screenplay's ambitions but united in praising the film's undeniable physical and cinematic grandeur.
Inside Out 2 is a 2024 animated fantasy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures, directed by Kelsey Mann in his feature directorial debut. The film is the sequel to Pixar's 2015 Academy Award-winning Inside Out, returning to the premise of emotions as characters living inside the minds of their human hosts. Pete Docter, who directed the original, returned as chief creative officer and executive producer alongside producer Mark Nielsen, with a screenplay by Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein.
The story follows Riley Andersen on the threshold of adolescence, arriving at high school for the first time and experiencing the profound emotional upheaval of puberty — a shift that floods Headquarters with a new wave of emotions led by Anxiety, voiced with nervous, well-meaning urgency by Maya Hawke. Anxiety rapidly sidelines Joy and her established colleagues in a desperate, misguided attempt to engineer Riley's future self into someone others will accept. Amy Poehler returns as Joy alongside Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Tony Hale, and Liza Lapira, with Ayo Edebiri, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Paul Walter Hauser, and Grace Lu joining as new emotions Envy, Ennui, Embarrassment, and Nostalgia.
Inside Out 2 became the highest-grossing animated film in history at the time of its release, earning over $1.6 billion worldwide — a result that stunned the industry and reaffirmed Pixar's unmatched ability to communicate complex emotional truths through animation. Critics praised the film's empathetic, precise portrayal of adolescent anxiety and identity formation, finding it a worthy and emotionally resonant successor to the original. It received the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 2025 Oscars.
The Substance is a 2024 body horror film written and directed by Coralie Fargeat, the French filmmaker whose debut feature Revenge established her as one of the most formally radical voices in contemporary genre cinema. The film is a visceral, unflinching provocation about the entertainment industry's treatment of aging women, told through the vehicle of science fiction body horror and delivered with the maximalist visual confidence of a filmmaker who treats disgust and beauty as equally legitimate artistic instruments.
The film stars Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle, an aging Hollywood celebrity and aerobics television host who, upon learning she is being replaced by a younger talent, injects a mysterious medical substance that generates a second, younger version of herself — played by Margaret Qualley. The two versions must share their single body on a strict alternating schedule, but as Elisabeth's envy and the younger self's ambitions escalate past the boundaries of the agreement, their shared existence begins to deteriorate in increasingly grotesque and operatic ways. The film uses its horror mechanics as a relentless formal metaphor for the way women are conditioned to consume themselves in the pursuit of an impossible standard of desirability.
The Substance premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where Fargeat won the Prix du Scénario for Best Screenplay. The film subsequently won the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling at the 2025 Oscars, and Demi Moore won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama — her first major acting award after a career spanning decades. The film divided critics and audiences with its commitment to escalating excess, but united them in acknowledging it as an uncompromising vision that demanded to be reckoned with.
Conclave is a 2024 political thriller directed by Edward Berger — whose previous film, All Quiet on the Western Front, won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film — and adapted from Robert Harris's bestselling 2016 novel. The film is set in the days following the sudden, unexpected death of a sitting Pope, as the College of Cardinals is sealed inside the Vatican to elect his successor in absolute secrecy. What unfolds is a story of hidden ambition, institutional power, and buried secrets that turns the ancient ritual of papal election into a taut, suspenseful exercise in moral drama.
The film stars Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Lawrence, the Dean of the College of Cardinals responsible for managing the conclave's integrity, who finds himself drawn into an escalating conspiracy as surprising candidates emerge and long-buried truths surface. The ensemble includes Stanley Tucci as the reform-minded Cardinal Bellini, John Lithgow as the politically calculating Cardinal Tremblay, Sergio Castellitto as the ultra-conservative Cardinal Tedesco, and Isabella Rossellini in a pivotal supporting role. Peter Straughan adapted Harris's novel with a screenplay that preserved the book's propulsive pacing while deepening its character work.
Conclave was among the most acclaimed and commercially successful prestige releases of 2024, earning the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 2025 Oscars. The film grossed over $100 million worldwide against a modest budget, and Berger's direction was praised for bringing the intellectual precision of a chess match to the emotional stakes of a political thriller. Critics celebrated the film's craftsmanship — its cinematography, score, and performances — as a masterclass in classical filmmaking applied to a genuinely contemporary story.
Anora is a 2024 romantic drama written and directed by Sean Baker, the filmmaker behind Tangerine and The Florida Project. Shot on location in Brooklyn and Las Vegas, the film is Baker's most ambitious production to date — a work that blends screwball comedy, romantic fantasy, and hard-edged social realism into a story about ambition, exploitation, and the limits of the American dream as experienced by those closest to its margins.
The film stars Mikey Madison as Ani, a young sex worker at a New York City strip club who falls into a whirlwind romance with Ivan (Yura Borisov), the son of a Russian oligarch living carelessly in New York on his family's limitless wealth. When their impulsive Las Vegas wedding triggers the intervention of Ivan's family — who dispatch associates to have the marriage annulled before word reaches his powerful parents — Ani fights furiously and desperately to preserve the life she believed she had finally secured. The cast includes Karren Karagulian and Vache Tovmasyan in scene-stealing supporting turns as the family's emissaries.
Anora became the defining film of 2024, winning the Palme d'Or at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and going on to win five Academy Awards at the 2025 Oscars — including Best Picture, Best Director for Baker, and Best Actress for Mikey Madison. Critics celebrated Baker's characteristic ability to find grace in characters mainstream cinema overlooks, and Madison's fearless, physically committed performance as a young woman who refuses to accept that her story is over before it starts.
Killers of the Flower Moon is Martin Scorsese's sweeping 2023 epic based on David Grann's bestselling non-fiction book of the same name. Set in 1920s Oklahoma, the film chronicles the Osage Indian Nation Murders, a horrifying series of killings targeting wealthy Osage people after oil was discovered on their land. With Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro headlining alongside Lily Gladstone's Oscar-nominated performance, it is a haunting American tragedy.
The film follows Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio), a World War I veteran who comes to work for his uncle William Hale (De Niro) in Osage County. Ernest marries Mollie Kyle (Gladstone), an Osage woman whose family begins to die under mysterious circumstances. What unfolds is a methodical exposé of greed, racism, and systemic betrayal, as the newly formed FBI under J. Edgar Hoover begins investigating what became one of the most significant murder conspiracies in American history.
Running at approximately three and a half hours, Killers of the Flower Moon is a monumental work of cinema that insists on its audience confronting the ugliest chapters of American history. The film was celebrated for its performances, particularly Lily Gladstone's groundbreaking portrayal of Mollie, and earned numerous awards nominations. It is both a mystery thriller and a profound meditation on guilt, complicity, and the erasure of Indigenous peoples.
Poor Things is a 2023 black comedy fantasy film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and based on the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray. The film follows Bella Baxter, a young woman brought back to life by an eccentric scientist who implants the brain of her own unborn child into her body. Starring Emma Stone in an Academy Award-winning performance, the film is a wildly imaginative and darkly comedic journey of self-discovery.
Set in a surreal, anachronistic vision of Victorian-era Europe, Bella escapes her sheltered life under the care of her creator, Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), and embarks on an adventure across the world with the roguish lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo). Along the way she encounters men who seek to control her and discovers the injustices woven into the fabric of society, refusing to be constrained by the era's expectations.
Poor Things swept awards season, winning four Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Actress for Emma Stone. The film is a daring, visually spectacular work that challenges conventions of gender, bodily autonomy, and personal freedom through Lanthimos's trademark blend of absurdist humor and pointed social commentary. It stands as one of the most inventive and celebrated films of the 2020s.
Wicked is a 2024 musical fantasy film directed by Jon M. Chu, based on the beloved Broadway production that itself adapts Gregory Maguire's novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. The film tells the untold backstory of Oz, centering on the unlikely friendship between Elphaba — an ostracized young woman with green skin and extraordinary magical gifts — and Glinda, a privileged blonde with big ambitions and an even bigger personality.
The film stars Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda, with a supporting cast including Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard, Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero, Ethan Slater, Marissa Bode, and Michelle Yeoh. Director Jon M. Chu, whose work on Crazy Rich Asians and In the Heights proved his instinct for emotionally charged spectacle, brings a sense of wonder and heartbreak to one of musical theater's most celebrated stories.
Wicked grossed over $700 million worldwide during its theatrical run, proving the enduring power of the stage musical's devoted fanbase. The first of two films, its sequel Wicked: For Good is set to continue and complete the story in 2025 — making this one of the most ambitious split-film musical adaptations in Hollywood history.
Dune: Part Two is a 2024 science fiction epic directed by Denis Villeneuve, serving as the second chapter in his adaptation of Frank Herbert's landmark 1965 novel. The film follows Paul Atreides as he unites with the Fremen of Arrakis to wage war against House Harkonnen — the ruthless dynasty that murdered his family — while wrestling with his own messianic destiny and the terrible power that prophecy demands of him.
The film stars Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides alongside Zendaya as Chani, with a sweeping ensemble including Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux, and Stellan Skarsgård. With Hans Zimmer's otherworldly score and Greig Fraser's stunning cinematography — the same Oscar-winning team behind Part One — the film delivers a sensory experience that critics called one of the most immersive theatrical events of the decade.
Released in March 2024, Dune: Part Two grossed over $714 million worldwide, surpassing its predecessor and cementing Denis Villeneuve's adaptation as one of the great science fiction achievements in cinema history. The film is widely considered the rare sequel that surpasses the original, completing a story that Hollywood had long deemed unfilmable.
