YNOT at the Movies

The phone is ringing again, this time in "Black Phone 2" (USA/Canada 2025 | 114 min.), director Scott Derrickson's chilling sequel to his 2021 horror hit, "The Black Phone" (2021). Expanding the mythology of Joe Hill's original short story, the film leans into supernatural terror while exploring how past trauma continues to haunt the present. It's not a standalone: viewers need the first film for the emotional weight and narrative context to fully land here.

Four years after escaping the Grabber's basement, Finn (Mason Thames) is now a teenager numbing himself against trauma he can't outrun. His younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), once the sharp-tongued sibling whose prophetic dreams helped save him, is now plagued by darker visions. In her dreams, the voices of the Grabber's murdered victims return to offer cryptic clues, but so does the Grabber himself (Ethan Hawke), back as a ghost driven by pure rage and sealed forever behind his mask. Drawn to a remote winter camp, Gwen and Finn find the boundary between dream and reality collapsing into a waking nightmare.

When it lands, the horror is skin-crawling. Director Scott Derrickson's use of Super 8 dream imagery creates an eerie texture, and Madeleine McGraw delivers a standout turn, shouldering much of the film's emotional weight. What a nightmare Gwen has, especially as her dreams bleed into waking life. Ethan Hawke, unseen without the mask this time, radiates menace as a figure more frightening in death than in life.

Not every scare works. A handful of jump scares feel cheap, and the snowy camp setting, while atmospheric, can't match the suffocating terror of the first film's basement. Yet the film keeps the story grounded in trauma and sibling devotion, making it more than a formulaic ghost story. It's about how horrors never truly die, even when buried.

"Black Phone 2" opens in theaters on Friday, October 17, 2025.

Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction, and director Derek Cianfrance's film "Roofman" (USA 2025 | 126 min.) is proof of just that. Based on the incredible true story of Jeffrey Manchester, an Army veteran turned serial McDonald's roof-cutter and fugitive, the film terrifically transforms an almost unbelievable tale into a character-driven drama laced with suspense, humor, and heart.

Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum) robbed McDonald's restaurants in North Carolina by cutting through their roofs, earning him the nickname "Roofman." After escaping prison, he secretly lives inside a Toys "R" Us for six months, all while carrying on a romance with Leigh (Kirsten Dunst), an employee at the store.

Channing Tatum radiates charm and charisma, embodying Jeffrey's contradictions—ingenious, desperate, reckless, yet deeply human. Kirsten Dunst's Leigh exhibits her warmth, quiet strength, and growing connection with Jeffrey. Their relationship feels fully earned and heartfelt. Even in roles that are not major, the supporting cast shines: Ben Mendelsohn, as Leigh's pastor, is quietly impressive in every scene, and Peter Dinklage, as her mean boss, makes his authority felt and hated.

Director Derek Cianfrance, whose filmography includes "Blue Valentine" (2010), "The Place Beyond the Pines" (2012), and "The Light Between Oceans" (2016), confirms once again that he is a great storyteller. He crafts relationships that linger, not just through chemistry, but by showing the fragility, doubt, and shifting trust between people.

The film walks a delicate tonal line: the suspense of Jeffrey's hidden life keeps you on edge, yet his audacious tactics of surviving undetected in a toy store for months are at times so clever they're quietly hilarious. The film leans into that strangeness without ever losing sight of the people at the center of it.

In the end, it isn't law enforcement that catches Jeffrey—it's love. The film is not a high-concept crime story; it's a haunting portrait of how connection and devotion can reach where fear and force cannot.

"Roofman" opens in theaters on Friday, October 10, 2025.

What does it look like when a mind buckles under the weight of love, guilt, and exhaustion? Writer-director Mary Bronstein's darkly funny "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" (USA 2025 | 113 min.) is a deeply compassionate character study, with Rose Byrne's extraordinary performance, that turns a mother's unraveling into something bruising, human, and unforgettable.

The story follows Linda (Rose Byrne), a Long Island therapist and mother whose life spirals into chaos as she struggles to manage her daughter's eating disorder, an illness that has left the child dependent on a feeding tube. Her husband Charles (Christian Slater), a cruise ship captain, remains absent at sea, while one of her patients, Caroline (Danielle Macdonald), suddenly disappears. As the weight of caregiving, abandonment, and professional responsibility crushes her, Linda loses her bearings, caught between mounting paranoia and crippling guilt as she slides toward a breakdown she can neither diagnose nor escape.

Rose Byrne gives an astonishing, career-defining performance, one that earned her the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at this year's Berlin International Film Festival. She inhabits Linda's every nervous tic and flicker of dread with startling precision and turns a character who could easily have been pitied or dismissed into someone achingly human. She balances panic, denial, and dark humor with unnerving realism, grounding a role that demands extremes. Her sessions with her colleague Dr. Spring (Conan O'Brien), also Linda's own therapist, sting with awkward comedy and emotional volatility, while her fraught exchanges with James (A$AP Rocky), the motel caretaker she encounters after being displaced, offer surprising moments of warmth that highlight Linda's fragility.

Mary Bronstein's filmmaking plunges deep into Linda's psychological turbulence, blurring the line between domestic drama and mordant comedy. The film's tight, claustrophobic framing and sensory overload mirror Linda's collapsing state of mind, while its tone refuses judgment, offering instead a raw, empathetic exploration of mental collapse and the impossible pressures of motherhood.

One of the film's boldest choices is to keep Linda's daughter (Delaney Quinn) largely out of view until the very end. The child's absence, suggested only by her voice and the ever-present feeding tube, becomes a haunting metaphor for distance, denial, and the way stress warps perception. When the girl finally appears, the effect is shattering--a release of tension and a heartbreaking reminder of the love and connection obscured by Linda's turmoil.

The film unfolds as a gripping character study on burnout, self-blame, and survival. It captures the chaos of the mind when every responsibility becomes unbearable and even acts of care feel like failures. The film doesn't offer comfort or easy answers; instead, it presents a woman fraying in real time and asks us to witness her with empathy, without flinching, and without judgment.

"If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" opens in theaters on Friday, October 10, 2025.

What if a nuclear warhead is heading toward us? How would we respond when seconds decide fate? Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow's "A House of Dynamite" (USA 2025 | 112 min.) poses that question with harrowing precision, turning global annihilation into a minute-by-minute crisis that feels terrifyingly real.

When U.S. early-warning systems detect a possible incoming nuclear missile, Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) commands the White House Situation Room, directing an increasingly frantic response effort with Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso), Secretary of Defense Reid Baker (Jared Harris), U.S. Strategic Command chief General Anthony Brady (Tracey Letts), and President Thomas Reed (Idris Elba). Conflicting intelligence reports and political pressures collide as the team scrambles to determine if the threat is real, and if so, what retaliation, if any, can prevent total disaster.

Beneath the procedural precision lies a potent human drama. Every person in the chain of command has someone waiting for them, such as a spouse, a child, or a friend, and the film never lets us forget that their choices extend beyond policy and into private lives that could vanish in an instant. Kathryn Bigelow and her cast skillfully reveal the cracks in composure: a brief glance at a phone, a pause before speaking a word, a moment when duty and love collide. It is a story that's not just about command and control, but about the unbearable weight of being human in a system designed to be inhuman.

Bigelow's camera captures the urgency of each decision with kinetic precision, constantly in motion as if chasing time itself. The film echoes the structure and intensity of Annie Jacobsen's book Nuclear War: A Scenario, tracing how bureaucratic process, human error, and moral hesitation converge under impossible pressure. It's also a sharp move for the filmmaker to spell out the government and military acronyms on screen that normally cloud understanding, hinting how jargon can obscure both meaning and accountability when the stakes couldn't be higher.

While nearly every moment feels authentic and meticulously researched, one scene strains plausibility when Baerington holding a Zoom call on his phone while walking in public, a breach of protocol that undercuts the film's otherwise airtight realism. Still, the movie remains a gripping, terrifying, and deeply disturbing thriller that keeps both the audience and humanity itself on edge.

"A House of Dynamite" opens in theaters on Friday, October 10, 2025.

Bone-crunching, brutally physical, and at times so intense you have to look away, write-director Benny Safdie's "The Smashing Machine" (USA 2025 | 123 min.) is far more than just another sports biopic. It's a raw, deeply human examination of violence, obsession, and the cost of glory. Told with uncompromising honesty and elevated by a transformative performance from Dwayne Johnson, the film charts the rise and fall of one of mixed martial arts' earliest legends while forcing viewers to confront their own fascination with combat. It's not merely about the spectacle of men fighting; it's also about the inner battles, the wounds we can't see, and the restless questions that drive them into the ring in the first place.

At the center of this story is Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson), a pioneering mixed martial arts fighter whose raw strength and relentlessness will make him a dominant force inside the ring. Outside of it, he wrestles with battles no less punishing: a dependence on painkillers that spirals out of control, the psychological toll of a career built on violence, and a volatile relationship with Dawn Staples-Kerr (Emily Blunt) that mirrors the physical clashes in competition. As his fame rises and his body takes blow after blow, Kerr's personal life begins to crumble, revealing the human cost of becoming "the smashing machine" that fans come to see.

Director Benny Safdie tells Kerr's story without softening its edges. The fights are staged with documentary immediacy—sweaty, bruising, and punishingly real—and Dwayne Johnson's total physical and emotional transformation gives the film a startling sense of authenticity. Yet beyond the battered bodies and split lips, the story is also interested in the souls of its characters. It doesn't give viewers a neat answer to why men like Kerr fight, whether it's for the thrill, the high, the pride, or the ego, but it makes clear that the drive comes from somewhere deeper than money or fame.

And while the film never explicitly asks why audiences are drawn to such brutality, it's impossible to leave without that question gnawing at you. Are we simply the modern equivalent of the Roman mob, cheering from the sidelines as men destroy each other for our entertainment? Benny Safdie doesn't moralize or judge, but by confronting the sport in all its unforgiving intensity, he leaves us to wrestle with the unsettling answer ourselves.

Visceral, searching, and emotionally devastating, "The Smashing Machine" is more than a chronicle of Mark Kerr's life. It's a fearless exploration of the human appetite for violence, and the unseen battles that rage long after the final bell.

"The Smashing Machine" opens in theaters on Friday, October 3, 2025.

The 48th Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) returns to Marin County, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, from October 2-12, 2025, and once again it is shaping up to be one of the most rewarding stops on the fall film circuit. MVFF is the rare festival that can feel both intimate and expansive, a place where international heavyweights and small discoveries sit comfortably side by side, and where you are just as likely to stumble into a tiny gem in a theater as you are to see a future Oscar contender on the big screen.

The festival opens with "Hamnet" (UK 2025 | 125 min.), Chloé Zhao's deeply felt adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's novel, a reimagining of Shakespeare's life and grief anchored by performances from Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. The centerpiece presentation is "Metallica Saved My Life" (UK 2025 | 99 min. | Documentary), Jonas Åkerlund's rousing and deeply emotional chronicle of the band's enduring cultural impact. The festival closes with "Rental Family" (Japan/USA 2025 | in Japanese/English | 103 min.), Hikari's bittersweet dramedy starring Brendan Fraser as a lonely American in Tokyo who is hired by strangers to play the roles of their loved ones.

This year's lineup features 138 films from 40 countries. The program pulls together some of the most acclaimed titles from Cannes and beyond, including Iranian director Jafar Panahi's "It Was Just an Accident" (یک تصادف ساده | Iran/France 2025 | in Persian | 101 min.), winner of the Palme d'Or, and French director Oliver Laxe's "Sirât" (Spain/France 2025 | in Spanish/French/English/Arabic | 115 min.), recipient of the Cannes Jury Prize. Korean director Park Chan-wook's "No Other Choice" (어쩔수가없다 | South Korea 2025 | in Korean | 139 min.), a razor-sharp adaptation of Donald E. Westlake's novel "The Ax," also makes its West Coast premiere here.

There is a rich mix of highly anticipated premieres too. Director Richard Linklater is bringing not one but two films this year: "Blue Moon" (USA/Ireland 2025 | 100 min.), a portrait of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart unfolding over one night, and "Nouvelle Vague" (France/USA 2025 | 106 min.), a lively homage to the birth of the French New Wave. Yorgos Lanthimos returns with "Bugonia" (Ireland/South Korea/Canada/USA 2025 | 120 min.), a pitch-black satire about conspiracy and corporate control, while Joachim Trier's "Sentimental Value" (Affeksjonsverdi | Norway/France/Germany/Denmark/UK/Sweden 2025 | in Norwegian/English | 133 min.) takes a more intimate look at fractured family dynamics.

Other buzzy selections include "The Plague" (الطاعون | USA/Australia/United Arab Emirates 2025 | 95 min.), a brutal coming-of-age story set in a water polo training camp, and "Sound of Falling" (In die Sonne schauen | Germany 2025 | in German | 149 min.), an ambitious, century-spanning exploration of memory and time.

As always with Mill Valley, the biggest surprises often come from the films without the red carpets or marquee names, the ones that explore overlooked histories, personal struggles, and shifting cultural landscapes.

Here are a few other films at this year's festival.

One of the very best films at this year's festival, director Huo Meng's engrossing "Living the Land" (生息之地 | China 2025 | in Chinese | 132 min.) captures a world on the cusp of change with extraordinary warmth and beauty. Set in rural China in 1991, it tells the story of a ten-year-old boy left behind as his family departs for Shenzhen in southern China, unfolding as both a portrait of tradition and a fond remembrance of a way of life now fading into history. The film's rich, painterly cinematography lingers on landscapes, seasons, and the rituals of everyday existence, creating a sensory experience that feels both deeply affecting and universally nostalgic.

French drama "Case 137" (Dossier 137 | France 2025 | in French | 115 min.) begins as a procedural investigation into a violent incident of police misconduct but quickly grows into something more complex. As an internal affairs officer peels back layers of bureaucracy, silence, and denial, the search for truth becomes a soul-bearing confrontation with the cost of accountability. The film's refusal to deliver tidy resolutions gives it an authenticity that lingers, raising tough questions about justice and power.

Luca Guadagnino's "After the Hunt" (USA/Italy 2025 | 139 min.) centers on Julia Roberts' character, a philosophy professor whose life and beliefs are tested when an accusation sparks intense debate and fractious encounters within the philosophy department. The film is dense with philosophical arguments and moral dilemmas, and it asks uncomfortable questions about responsibility, reputation, and community. Michael Stuhlbarg stands out playing her husband, delivering a mesmerizing performance as a wonderfully attentive partner trying to hold family life together while the storm around them intensifies.

Kleber Mendonça Filho's "The Secret Agent" (O Agente Secreto | Brazil/France/Germany/Netherlands 2025 | in Portuguese | 158 min.) is a gripping political thriller set amid the paranoia and repression of 1970s Brazil. When a widowed scientist named Marcelo becomes a target of the military dictatorship's secret police, he is thrust into a dangerous world of betrayal, resistance, and survival. What makes the film compelling is not just its suspense but its attention to how ordinary people navigate extraordinary political violence and the small acts of defiance that carry enormous weight.

What starts as a documentary about baseball becomes something much larger in "Diamond Diplomacy" (USA 2025 | in English/Japanese | 86 min. | Documentary), which traces more than a century of U.S.-Japan relations through a shared love of the sport. From Babe Ruth's barnstorming tours to Shohei Ohtani's meteoric rise, the film shows how baseball has transcended politics, healed historical wounds, and built cultural bridges, a reminder that diplomacy sometimes happens not in conference rooms but on the field. It is a moving testimony to the power of a game that can build bridges in a divided world.

With its mix of heavy hitters and hidden gems, its bold visions and small, personal stories, MVFF48 once again shows why it is one of the most beloved festivals in the United States. It is a place to catch the season's most talked-about films, but just as importantly, it is a place for discovery. Some of the most affecting work here resonates not just through scale or spectacle, but through how it evokes disappearing worlds and the lives rooted in them, how it uncovers beauty and longing in the smallest of gestures, and how it probes the complicated ties that bind families together. In the end, these films reflect what makes Mill Valley special: a festival that celebrates not just the breadth of cinema, but its ability to illuminate the quiet, deeply human corners of our lives.

What if today's political divides worsened into a future of repression, silenced dissent, and mounting violence? Acclaimed writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson takes that chilling premise and shapes it into his most electrifying work yet, "One Battle After Another" (USA 2025 | 161 min.). Both a fantastic thriller and a grand political fable rooted in timeless human struggles, the film feels piercingly of-the-moment while never losing sight of the intimate family story at its core.

The story centers on Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a once-idealistic radical who has been driven into hiding with his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti), living in paranoia as the consequences of his past catch up with him. When his old nemesis Lockjaw (Sean Penn) resurfaces and Willa disappears, Bob is forced back into a world of unfinished battles. Sixteen years after the French 75's heyday, their revolutionary fervor has splintered into memory while new underground networks—like the one led by Sensei (Benicio Del Toro)—fight to shield immigrants from government crackdowns. The film frames this struggle against an America where the administration rounds up immigrants, silences political opponents, and fuels rising political violence, projecting a chilling vision of where our current trajectory could lead.

Leonardo DiCaprio is sensational, bringing a sincerity and comedic vulnerability to Bob that makes him one of the actor's most endearing creations. His stoned paranoia, bumbling missteps, and sudden bursts of conviction are played with such humanity that even his funniest moments come from a place of truth. Sean Penn is extraordinary as Lockjaw, using stiff, almost statuesque body language to embody a villain both terrifying and absurd. Benicio Del Toro, meanwhile, mesmerizes in a more subdued register as Willa's martial arts teacher Sensei, grounding the film with quiet gravity and moral clarity. Their work, along with Regina Hall's steadiness and Teyana Taylor's fiery energy, creates an ensemble where every performance feels lived-in and essential.

Despite its nearly three-hour running time, the film never drags. The film's pacing is a marvel; every scene engrosses, every exchange crackles, and the tension never lets up. Nowhere is this more evident than in the desert car chase sequence, staged with breathtaking clarity and precision. Shot in VistaVision and IMAX, it isn't just thrilling, it's a set piece destined to be studied as one of the greatest in cinema history.

What elevates "One Battle After Another" beyond spectacle is its resonance. Beneath the action lies a story about disillusionment, fractured ideologies, and the persistence of resistance against creeping authoritarianism. In its portrait of how violence, paranoia, and misplaced idealism reverberate across generations, the film feels both timely and timeless.

This is, without doubt, the best film of the year so far, and an instant Oscar front-runner. In Paul Thomas Anderson's hands, the battles may be chaotic, absurd, even comical, but the filmmaking is nothing short of sublime.

"One Battle After Another" opens in theaters on Friday, September 26, 2025.

Fifteen years after we first entered the grand halls of Highclere Castle, "Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale" (UK/USA 2025 | 123 min.) brings the curtain down with warmth, wit, and a deep affection for the characters who have become like a family to audiences worldwide. Writer Julian Fellowes and director Simon Curtis present a parting gift that feels both celebratory and wistful, a reminder of why this saga became a global phenomenon, and why saying goodbye is so bittersweet.

The film finds Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) navigating scandal after her divorce becomes public, threatening both her reputation and her ability to lead Downton into the future. Her parents Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) and Lady Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern) are tested by financial crisis and the prospect of handing over their legacy, while her sister Lady Edith Hexham (Laura Carmichael), her husband Lord Hexham (Harry Hadden-Paton), and Tom Branson (Allen Leech), once the family's chauffeur and now their trusted son-in-law, step forward with hard truths and steadfast support. For Lord Grantham, the reckoning is especially painful: the Crawleys can no longer afford both their ancestral home and their grand London residence, forcing him to consider life in the smaller Dower House and even a modest Kensington flat. The arrival of Lady Grantham's brother Harold Levinson (Paul Giamatti) and his dubious American friend Gus Sambrook (Alessandro Nivola) further complicates matters, as family honor and fortune once again hang in the balance.

Below stairs, life is changing too. Mr. Carson (Jim Carter) struggles to step aside as Andy Parker (Michael Fox) becomes butler, while Daisy Parker (Sophie McShera) prepares to inherit Mrs. Patmore's (Lesley Nicol) kitchen. Familiar faces—Anna Bates (Joanne Froggatt), John Bates (Brendan Coyle), Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis Logan), Mr. Molesley (Kevin Doyle), and Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier)—each take their bows with grace, reminding us how much joy their stories have brought.

The film sparkles with spectacle—the glittering Petersfield Ball, the elegance of Ascot, and the bustling County Fair—yet its real treasures are in the conversations, the cutting one-liners and tender exchanges that Fellowes writes so well. The interplay between family and servants, once marked by rigid lines, now carries the gentle acknowledgment that times are changing, and life at Downton must change too.

Hovering over it all is the memory of Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess. Though Dame Maggie Smith is no longer with us, her presence lingers, her wit echoed in Lady Mary's resilience, her wisdom in Lord Grantham's reluctant grace. The film closes with a quiet, heartfelt tribute that honors both the character and the legendary actress who embodied her, a farewell that resonates on and off screen.

Charming, witty, and suffused with affection, "Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale" is more than a film, it is a love letter to its audience. It allows us one last chance to revel in the splendor of Downton, to laugh at its sharp dialogue, and to cherish these characters before the lights dim. As the Crawleys pass the torch to a new generation, we leave the Abbey with gratitude for the journey, and with the wistful knowledge that these beloved voices will echo in memory long after the screen fades to black.

"Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale" opens in theaters on Friday, September 12, 2025.

Bleak, chilling, and merciless, "The Long Walk" (USA 2025 | 108 min.) makes the road itself into a graveyard, and makes the journey as harrowing for the audience as for the boys. The film is director Francis Lawrence's adaptation of Stephen King's first-written novel, a dystopian story King penned in the shadow of the Vietnam War, when American teenagers were drafted by lottery to die on the battlefield. Here, the battleground is a bleak stretch of highway, and the war is replaced by a state-sanctioned endurance contest designed to grind fifty boys down to one lone survivor.

The rules are cruelly simple: keep walking at three miles per hour, no stops, no rest, no mercy. Fall behind and receive three warnings before instant execution. Among the walkers, Ray #47 (Cooper Hoffman), an empathetic, natural leader, becomes the quiet center of the story, while Peter #23 (David Jonsson), charismatic and confident, emerges as his closest ally and eventual rival. Their bond, forged in exhaustion and terror, gives the film its emotional core. Others drift in and out of focus—Stebbins #38 (Garrett Wareing), the so-called Superman fitness fanatic; Arthur #6 (Tut Nyuot), a gentle dreamer who longs to travel to the moon; Gary #5 (Charlie Plummer), a taunting agitator who masks insecurity with cruelty; Hank #46 (Ben Wang), the street-smart, superstitious talker who joins Ray, Peter, and Arthur as part of "the Four Musketeers"; Curly #7 (Roman Griffin Davis), the youngest participant, whose aching legs remind us of the boys' supposed adolescence; and Collie #48 (Joshua Odjick), an Indigenous participant with a tough look and deep conviction. Over them all looms The Major (Mark Hamill), an authoritarian true believer in dark sunglasses, meting out slogans and death with equal detachment.

Watching the film feels like walking it: grim, punishing, and utterly exhausting. Director Francis Lawrence stages the dystopian story as the simplest, most brutal concept—step after step toward annihilation. The inevitability of the outcome doesn't dull its impact. Even if we know only one boy will remain, the gradual attrition, the blistered feet and hollow eyes, leave us shaken. Yet the plausibility falters: could anyone really march nonstop for five days and more than 300 miles? The film asks us to accept the impossible as allegory, and when viewed as a reflection of war, conscription, and how young lives are treated as expendable, it works with chilling clarity.

The casting, however, is less convincing. The actors bring intensity and gravitas, but they look too old for roles that should be unbearably raw, unformed teenagers. Had younger faces been chosen, the horror might have felt even sharper. As it stands, Ray and Peter dominate the screen time while most others remain lightly sketched, and the emotional investment narrows accordingly.

Still, the film grips and unsettles in equal measure. It's heavy, haunting, and often hard to watch, a slow march into despair that channels the same unease Stephen King captured nearly half a century ago. Like the boys doomed to keep walking, the audience emerges drained, shaken, and grimly aware that survival is no victory at all.

"The Long Walk" opens in theaters on Friday, September 12, 2025.

What begins with a simple favor—watching a neighbor's cat—quickly explodes into one of the year's most gripping thrillers. Director Darren Aronofsky's "Caught Stealing" (USA 2025 | 107 min.) drags audiences into the neon-lit chaos of 1990s New York, where nothing is as it seems and danger lurks in every alleyway.

Hank Thompson (Austin Butler), a former high-school baseball star once destined for the San Francisco Giants, is now reduced to bartending and drinking his days away. Still loyal to his team, still calling his mom faithfully, Hank masks his unfulfilled potential behind a tough exterior, while the memory of the accident that shattered his future continues to haunt him.

Hank is in love with his girlfriend Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz), who sees a spark of possibility in him, even as he numbs himself with alcohol and struggles to imagine a way forward. But after his punk-rock neighbor Russ (Matt Smith) leaves town and asks him to take care of his cat, his fragile routine unravels and he is pulled into a criminal underworld. Soon he's hunted by a group of criminals, including the brutal Russian gangsters Pavel (Nikita Kukushkin) and Aleksei (Yuri Kolokolnikov), alongside with the Puerto Rican hustler Colorado (Bad Bunny), and the chilling yet darkly comic Orthodox brothers Shmully (Vincent D'Onofrio) and Lipa (Liev Schreiber). Of course, he is also under investigation by Detective Roman (Regina King). Hank doesn't know what they want or why he is targeted, yet he has to run for his life.

Austin Butler gives a riveting performance, capturing both Hank's broken spirit and his desperate determination to fight back when cornered. His physicality is staggering, and he performs every stunt himself. He smartly channels Hank's athletic past into the way he runs, fights, and scrambles for survival, lending a grounded believability to the chaos. Yet it's the emotional depth he brings that makes Hank so compelling.

Director Darren Aronofsky, long known for his psychological intensity, proves just as masterful in the realm of pulse-pounding suspense. He directs with precision and playfulness, crafting a ride full of shocking twists that keep audiences constantly off balance. The city itself—East Village dive bars, Brighton Beach backstreets, and Coney Island's desolate corners—becomes a living, breathing character, captured with his gritty, electrifying eye.

With its blend of relentless action, bursts of grim humor, and a hero you can't help but root for, "Caught Stealing" is a masterfully crafted thriller that jolts, surprises, and entertains at every turn.

"Caught Stealing" opens in theaters on Friday, August 29, 2025.